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More "Justifiable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well-informed and clever writer like the late Harold Frederic in the hands of Christian Scientists (a sort of sealing with his blood of the contemptuous disbelief in and dislike of doctors he had bitterly expressed in his books), the scathing and quite justifiable exposure of medical practice in the novel by Mr. Maarten Maartens entitled The New Religion: all these trouble the doctor very little, and are in any case well set off by the popularity of Sir Luke Fildes' famous picture, and by the verdicts in which juries from time to time express their ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... Elmore's regret did reflect a monstrous and distorted image of his conduct. He had really acted the part of a prudent and conscientious man; he was perfectly justifiable at every step: but in the retrospect those steps which we can perfectly justify sometimes seem to have cost so terribly that we look back even upon our sinful stumblings with better heart. Heaven knows how such things will be at the last day; but at ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... that as soon as Shakespeare has to find, I will not say a magical expression for courage, but even an adequate and worthy expression, he fails absolutely. And is the patriotism in "Ye, good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England" a "noble patriotism"? or is it the simplest, the crudest, the least justifiable form of patriotism? There is a noble patriotism founded on the high and generous things done by men of one's own blood, just as there is the vain and empty self-glorification of "limbs made in England," as if English limbs were better than ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... temporarily bereft her of the power of motion. An extraordinary sight met her eyes. Round the end of the kitchen burst Mr. Pryor, running as stout, pompous Mr. Pryor had not run in years, with terror imprinted on every lineament—a terror quite justifiable, for behind him, like an avenging fate, came Susan, with a huge, smoking iron pot grasped in her hands, and an expression in her eye that boded ill to the object of her indignation, if she should overtake him. ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... proved justifiable, for the trail had lost itself in a mountain stream, up or down which the outlaws must have filed. A month later and the creek would have been dry. But it was still spring. The mountain rains had not ceased feeding the brook, and of this the outlaws had taken advantage ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... regarded in his troop rather as a hound that will "riot" is regarded in the pack; but when the —th came back to Brighton and to barracks, the evil spirit of rebellion began to get a little hotter in him under th Corporal's "Idees Napoliennes" of justifiable persecution. Warne indisputably provoked his man in a cold, iron, strictly lawful sort of manner, moreover, all the more irritating to a temper ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... for almost every one has been somewhere, and has written about it. The only compromise I can suggest is, that we shall go somewhere, and not learn anything about it. The instinct of the public against any thing like information in a volume of this kind is perfectly justifiable; and the reader will perhaps discover that this is illy adapted for a text-book in schools, or for the use of competitive ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... account, you know, to rescue my child from a fate far worse than death, and it may be some consolation to you, young men, to recollect, at the close of your own careers, which I trust will yet be long and happy, that a parent, in his last moments, found a consolation in the justifiable hopes he had placed on your ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... these States are, by their rulers, declared out of the Union, without appeal to the people; they have commenced the war, and now they are regarded by the whole world as in a state of rebellion, not of justifiable revolution. They would submit to no method of adjustment that we could honorably allow. They desired war, as they have been for years preparing for it, at the expense of the Government, and in its service and trust, ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... mother, the more so as I believe that she thinks she has been doing right, and has my interest sincerely at heart: she appears to consider that an alliance with people of rank cannot be purchased too dear, and that every attempt is justifiable to secure for me such an advantage. Little does she know me: if she forgets, I never shall, that I am the daughter of a Greenwich pensioner, and never would ally myself with those whose relations would look upon me as a disgrace to their family. No, Tom; even if I were so ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... tried to fancy him beside her, and acted the scene over again, "making believe," childish fashion, that she stood on tiptoe attempting to reach up to his mouth—a very long way!—and there breathing out the "Yes" in a perfectly justifiable and unquestionable fashion. And then she laughed at her own conceit—the foolish little wife!—and tripped off into the drawing-room, lest the old butler, who always went round the house at midnight to see that all was safe, might catch her at her ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... there was profound silence, then a general cry of protest arose. To be defrauded of their Virginia Reel for no justifiable reason, and sent to bed before ten o'clock like a lot of naughty children when they really had not done a ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... cupidity or covetousness, and lead even to the appropriation of what is not our own. Kleptomania is met with in the book-worm or the antiquarian, as well as in the feminine lover of dress or those in poverty and distress. Firmness may become obstinacy; the justifiable love of self may, by abuse, become pride; and a proper and chaste wish for the approbation of others may be turned into the most absurd of vanities. Even religion itself may be carried to uncharitableness, fanaticism ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide. Thus, in a case lately decided before Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, and urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe replied by asking, When charity was like a top? It was in evidence that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 1653. It proclaimed that Cromwell's Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate had been an interruption of the natural course of things, dexterously leaving it an open question whether that interruption had been necessary or justifiable, but calling on all men, now that Oliver was dead and his greatness gone with him, to regard his rule as exceptional and extraordinary, and to revert to the old Commonwealth. It involved, therefore, a very ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... would have been killed by another hand in either case; but the attitude of the public would not have been the same in either case. The public would have considered the killing of Mazarine before the eyes of the world as justifiable homicide; its dislike of the man would have induced it to add ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... moderation and Christian charity. He arose from the blow, adjusted his clothes, and made no attempt at retaliation at all—merely muttering a few words about "taking summary vengeance at the first convenient opportunity,"—a natural and very justifiable ebullition of anger, which meant nothing, however, and, beyond doubt, was no sooner given vent to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... contempt for the sheriff was too great to permit his speaking directly to Minter, "will you explain to the sheriff that my determination to have satisfaction does not come from the fact that he killed my father, but because of the manner of the killing? To the sheriff it seems justifiable. To me it seems a murder. Having that thought, there is only one thing to do. One of us must not leave this place!" Gainor bowed, but the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... the Liberal Prime Minister, did not think that the conquest of the Transvaal, supposing it to be justifiable, would pay for its cost, and he accordingly made a treaty with the people of that country (1881). Lord Beaconsfield thought this policy a serious mistake, and that it would lead to trouble later on. He said, "We ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will then pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them. The fly wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed in a somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all interest in him. Thus the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Alec and Aunt Janet down on the homestead; and our housekeeper, who belonged to the Island and was now returning to it, took charge of us on the journey. I fear she had an anxious trip of it, poor woman! She was constantly in a quite justifiable terror lest we should be lost or killed; she must have felt great relief when she reached Charlottetown and handed us over to the keeping of Uncle Alec. Indeed, she said ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... producing in quantity. Orders for four thousand Vickers had been placed the preceding December, but deliveries had not been made by the beginning of April. Either because of jealousy in the department, or because of justifiable technical reasons, various experts demanded a better machine gun than any used by the Allies, and Secretary Baker took the responsibility of delaying matters so as to hold the competition recommended by a board of investigation. This competition ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... historian of high distinction, could not see his way with his colleagues, and retired from their company. Another, who came from the working-classes, is understood to have resigned from thought of the sufferings which any war, however justifiable, must inevitably inflict upon the poor. A third, a lawyer in a position of the utmost authority, is believed to have had grave misgivings about our legal right to call Germany to account. And I have heard that a fourth, who had been prominent as a pacifist in the days of an earlier conflict, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... here, more or less about the time the fire was noticed. What do you think of that for circumstantial evidence, Mr. Connelly? And in addition to this, I can point out his incentive—which I prefer to hold in reserve for the present. He might think his incentive justifiable; but the Bench might differ with him." And El Corregidor held me with his glittering eye while ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... been an age-long battle between the Germans and antiquity, i.e., a battle against the old culture. It is certain that precisely what is best and deepest in the German resists it. The main point, however, is that such resistance is only justifiable in the case of the Romanised culture; for this culture, even at that time, was a falling-off from something more profound and noble. It is this latter that the Germans ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... told me why. Of course, I did not grasp all the things he told me at once, but I listened and felt comforted; I began to feel that perhaps I might amount to something, might have some life of my own, and that my rebellion was perhaps justifiable. I began to understand why work was so objectionable to me and why I rebelled against the authority of my parents. My conceptions of freedom were crude, but I began to feel that my revolt was just, and was based upon the terrible injustice ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... were justifiable; as long as the two below were in sight, and as often as they came round, they did not exchange word or look with each other. Schilsky frowned sulkily, and his loose-knitted body seemed to hang together more loosely than usual, while as for Louise—Maurice staring hard from his ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... learn no experience thus; but when they form a circle of their own and the same expansion happens, they do as their parents did, saying to themselves, "My parents lost my confidence by insisting on what was not really important; but my objections are reasonable and justifiable, and my children must trust me to ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that the title is justifiable. Conceding that this sudden 'good' ending looks like a concession and certainly is a constructive weakness, yet in the inwardness of the subject it is excellently motivated by the typically mediaeval attitude of Kolbein to salvation and the Church as its sole bestower. Notwithstanding the ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... which they could not penetrate; and their spears, their shields, their canoes, and their persons, were equally exposed to the violence of the new settlers. It was easy to foresee the consequences of such conduct: the natives at first discovered symptoms of justifiable reserve, and subsequently adopted steps of an hostile complexion, several unfortunate convicts being found murdered in the woods. In vain did the governor issue order after order, and proclamation after proclamation; ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... "tendency-criticism" has fallen into disrepute; hence we must also free ourselves from the pedantry and hair-splitting which were its after effects. In consequence of the (erroneous) assumptions of the Tuebingen school of critics a suspicious examination of the texts was justifiable and obligatory on their part. (3) Individual difficulties about the date of a document ought not to have the result of casting suspicion on it, when other good grounds speak in its favour; for, in dealing with writings which have no, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... regarded as an interruption of religion. When I am at pains to justify my religion, I am already doubting; and for common opinion doubt is identical with irreligion. In so far as I am religious, my religion stands in no need of justification, even though I regard it as justifiable. In my religious experience I am taking something for granted; in other words I act about it and feel about it in a manner that is going to be determined by the special conditions of my mood and temperament. The mechanical and prosaic man acknowledges God ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... chief questions may arise; but here also there seems to me to be only one of these—it is true it is the most important of all—on which there should be much debate. The succumbing of Constantin seems perhaps a little more justifiable by its importance to the story than by its intrinsic probability.[384] Clemenceau seems to me "constant to himself," or in the "good childlikeness" of his character, throughout; and to ask whether it was necessary to make him smash the bust that he finds in Serge's possession ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... those modifications of matter called sound, would the blind man be able to have any conception of them? It certainly would not be wise in him to aver, that such a thing as colorific sound had no existence, was impossible; but at least he would be very justifiable in saying, they appeared contradictions, because he had some ideas of sound which did not at all aid him in forming those of colour; he would not, perhaps, be very inconclusive if he suspected the competency of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... from the classes to the masses. It is in its nature an appeal from a verdict likely to be pronounced by the understanding or the prejudice of educated men, to the emotions of the uneducated crowd. The appeal may or may not be justifiable. This is not the point for discussion; but the making of such an appeal necessarily implies that the existence of certain widespread feelings is a condition requisite for full appreciation of the reasoning in support of Home Rule. The reasons may be good, ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... good as it used to?) "No, I don't think so." (What is the difference?) "There is no difference." (What did I ask you?) "The difference." (The difference between what?) "You did not say." In this the shallowness of her comprehension and thinking is well shown, and it seems here again perhaps justifiable to formulate the main defect as one of attention, which prevents completion of a complicated process of comprehension. A feature of further interest in this case is that automatic intellectual processes, such as those ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... loved peace. He hated to thwart the boy, because he knew that it would arouse the ire of the mother, whose love had run away with her commonsense. Love is beautiful—soft, yielding, gentle love—but the common law of England upholds wife-beating as being justifiable and desirable on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... is something terrifying in the very word. And this justifiable terror is a national tradition. To thousands of honest folk a Perquisition was an ever present fear through the old Regime, and this fear became acute terror in the Revolution. Then a search warrant meant almost certainly subsequent arrest, ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... backward with a debt of honour (though I write it, how foolish the expression: as if all debts were not equally incumbent), but any tradesman may wait for years. He does not lie, except to save a woman's reputation (query—Is it then justifiable? I really don't know), but he exaggerates fearfully. Animal courage he has, but nothing of the moral attribute. Except as regards his egotism, personal and national, he is not offensive in manner or language. To ladies he is courteous, but his opinion of woman is of ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... either accidental, criminal, or justifiable, that is, brought on to preserve the life of the mother. Accidental abortions may follow a sudden fall or a sudden shock, either mental or physical, to the mother. They may be due to some disease either of ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... too large, monopolize the market,—or trade for a profit which they know dealers of smaller fortunes cannot possibly live by. If such men really think that raising themselves on the ruin of others, in this manner, is justifiable, and that riches obtained in this manner are fairly earned, they must certainly have either neglected to inform themselves, or stifled the remonstrances of conscience, and bid defiance to ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the result of the two successive Balkan Wars, though these had exhausted the material resources of the two countries, was a justifiable return of national self-confidence and rejoicing such as the people, humiliated and impoverished as it had habitually been by its internal and external troubles, had not known for very many years. At last Serbia and Montenegro had ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... highness, tell the whole truth to Cerise; for I have always considered it perfectly justifiable to retain facts which cannot add to people's happiness. I declared that I left her because my life would have been forfeited if I had remained, and I valued it only for her sake. That I always intended to return; and when I quitted Valencia, and had become a man of property, I immediately ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... wrongfully detained on board of the Austrian brig of war; that at the time of his seizure he was clothed with the nationality of the United States, and that the acts of our officers, under the circumstances of the case, were justifiable, and their conduct has been fully approved by me, and a compliance with the several demands of the Emperor of Austria ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... was forgetting. I should say that the good young man will be acquitted because it was justifiable homicide or that he will return after a short term of imprisonment; in any case I think he will marry Rosina and live ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... whether the decapitation of Charles the First were a justifiable act, and the debate was opened in the affirmative by a young man with a singularly sunny face and a voice of music. His statement was clear and calm. Though nothing could be more uncompromising than his opinions, it seemed that ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... priests; while the queen was called Madame Veto, though in fact she had finally joined Dumouriez in urging her husband to give his royal assent to the decree against them, not, as thinking it on any pretense justifiable, but as believing, with the general, in the impossibility of maintaining its rejection. Yet nothing could more completely prove the absolute innocence and unimpeachable good faith of both king and queen than the act of his enemies in giving them this nickname; ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... do for one another. With reference to the Atonement, the demand for ethical treatment is usually expressed in two ways. (a) There is the demand for analogies to it in human life. The demand is justifiable, in so far as God has made man in His own image; but, as has been suggested above, it has a limit, in so far as God is God and not man, and must have relations to the human race which its members do not and cannot have to each other. (b) There is the demand that ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... lay my finger in the marks of the wounds." The other is, "Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief." In abstract logic or rigid science the former may be appropriate and right. The latter alone can be justifiable in moral and religious things. If a man sorrowfully and humbly doubts, because he cannot help it, he shall not be condemned. When he is proud of his doubts, complacently swells with fancied superiority, plays the fanfaron with his pretentious arguments, and sets up as a propagandist ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... causes, was a masterpiece of political strategy designed to concentrate the odium of failure on those who were only responsible in part and to preclude their return to political power. Of these hidden causes there were two in particular: one the possibly justifiable refusal of Greece to lend her army to the scheme when a comparatively small military force might have been sufficient, and the other the far more culpable failure of Russia to co-operate with the 100,000 troops which ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... are the ways of God, And justifiable to men; Unless there be who think not God at all. If any be, they walk obscure; For of such doctrine never was there school, But the heart of the fool, And no man therein doctor ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... her two coal barges, she proceeded slowly and quietly, and was not discovered till she had passed the upper batteries. When the first gun was fired, she started ahead full speed, and, though under fire for twenty minutes longer, was not struck. With justifiable elation the admiral could now write: "This gives us complete control of the Mississippi, except at Vicksburg and Port Hudson. We have now below two XI-inch guns, two IX-inch, two 30-pounder rifles, six 12-pounders, and ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... attributed to the activity, courage, and enterprise of our privateers. The principle has been adopted in all ages, that private property, captured on the high seas, is a lawful prize to the captors; also, that the destruction of private property belonging to an enemy is a justifiable act. To a well-constituted mind it must appear, on investigation, that such principles are unjust, belong to a barbarous age, and cannot be advocated on any platform of ethics recognized among civilized nations in ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... save the limb of a young subject, it is justifiable to run risks which would not be permissible in the case of an older person. To save an upper limb, also, risks may be run which would not be justifiable in the case of a lower limb, because, while a serviceable ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... justifiable, all that the law requires is that the captor shall be held responsible for due diligence; it is not enough that the captor should use as much caution as he would in his own affairs, the law requires that there should be no ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... no justification for such a condition on any possible theory of popular Sovereignty. This defect has not hitherto had very many practical inconveniences, but it is an absolute violation of the theory and the spirit of American democratic institutions. The time may come when the fulfillment of a justifiable democratic purpose may demand the limitation of certain rights, to which the Constitution affords such absolute guarantees; and in that case the American democracy might be forced to seek by revolutionary means the accomplishment of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... him, and spoke to the following purpose:—"It may not be known to you, Sir Jasper, that since the general pouring out of Christian light upon this kingdom, many solid men have been led to doubt whether the shedding human blood by the hand of a fellow-creature be in any respect justifiable. And although this rule appears to me to be scarcely applicable to our state in this stage of trial, seeing that such non-resistance, if general, would surrender our civil and religious rights into the hands of whatsoever ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the influence of passion has committed an act contrary to the truth he recognizes, remains none the less free to recognize it or not to recognize it; that is, he can by refusing to recognize the truth regard his action as necessary and justifiable, or he may recognize the truth and regard his act as wrong ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... districts south of the Thames. It will be an interesting task for our Legislature to ascertain whether there is any actual law to account for the transfer, as it inevitably will have to do when the delicate choice is forced upon it between justifiable infanticide, wholesale Hospices des Enfants Trouves, and possibly some kind of Japanese "happy despatch" for high-minded infants who are superior to the slow poison administered by injudicious "farmers." At all events, one fact is certain, and we can scarcely reiterate it too ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... obstacle to be overcome. He is apt to conclude that this is all, that some force will be needed to break it down, and that therefore an amount of urgency even to the degree of inflicting considerable pain is justifiable. This is usually wrong. It rarely constitutes any obstruction, and, even when its rupturing may be necessary, it ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... because if this did occur you would probably not be able to accomplish your mission. Later you may have to run a big chance of sacrificing several of your men, in order to get the desired information, which would be entirely justifiable. Tell me how your men are arranged and what ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... better for all that enlisted men should be soldiers rather than thieves. To secure the ends which alone can justify war—and if the Netherlanders engaged in defending national existence and human freedom against foreign tyranny were not justifiable then a just war has never been waged—a disciplined army is vastly more humane in its operations than a band of brigands. Swift and condign punishments by the law-martial, for even trifling offences, is the best ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ask you to come but your influence among them is so great that it seems justifiable ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... at all. It was necessary for the Panamanian to return to the Cedars. His purpose, whatever it was, compelled him to remain for the present in the mournful, tragic house. Therefore, he would crush his justifiable anger. He would make it practically impossible for Bobby to refuse his hospitality. And he had asked for money—only a trifling sum, yet Graham would grasp at the fact to support ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... upon me as she swung from the tree, the blood driven into her features by the agonizing pressure of the halter. 'Tis the very look that has haunted me for years, and caused me many bitter moments of remorse; though, God knows, the deed was lawful and justifiable, done in the execution of my duty to the republic. And yet she lives," he continued musingly. "How could she have been saved? True, she had not been hanging long when we left the place. Some of her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... shooting, we rarely punished; although, strangely enough, our innate Anglo-Saxon feeling for the formality of government always resulted in a Sunday "inquest." We deliberated solemnly. The verdict was almost invariably "justifiable self-defence," which was probably near enough, for most of these killings were the result of quarrels. Murders for the purpose of robbery, later so frequent, were as yet almost unknown. Twice, however, and in both instances the prisoner ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... of the Belgian treaty. Bernhardi argued most earnestly, that if a treaty placed a difficulty in the way of a great nation's realising its purposes, then it was not only justifiable, but the duty of that nation to ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... Spain sprang from the attempts of the British merchants to prosecute an illicit trade with the Spanish main. These unjustifiable practices on their part produced severity on the part of the Spaniards toward the subjects of Great Britain which were not more justifiable, because they exceeded the bounds of a just retaliation and were chargeable with inhumanity and cruelty. Many of the English who were taken on the Spanish coast were sent to dig in the mines of Potosi; and by the usual progress of a spirit of resentment, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... savings-bank, and he survives her, it is sometimes the rule of such establishments to compel him to take out administration in order to receive such money, although it is questionable whether such rule is legally justifiable. Widows and widowers pay no legacy-duty for property coming to them ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... who with Sexby and Wildman represented on the Army Council the private soldiers of the Model Army, during the debate on the right of voting, gave expression to the view that some fundamental changes in the laws of the Land were both necessary and justifiable, in the following words: "I hear it said, 'It's a huge alteration it's a bringing in of new laws.' ... If writings be true, there hath been many scuttlings between the honest men of England and those that have tyrannised over ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... came to Amiel, when a man feels himself great like the universe and calm like a god, one may thrill with love and admiration for Nature without resigning sense of superiority over all other of her works or abating one jot of justifiable pride. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... night, this their first in Florida. The trees, festooned with the long, swinging, gray Spanish moss, looked like the real tropical thing to all of the boys. And they felt a pride that was surely justifiable, in the success that had attended their ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... flattered portrait of an earthly beauty; the wife, at best, of the artist; or, it might be, a peasant girl of the Campagna, or some Roman princess, to whom he desired to pay his court. For love, or some even less justifiable motive, the old painter had apotheosized these women; he thus gained for them, as far as his skill would go, not only the meed of immortality, but the privilege of presiding over Christian altars, and of being worshipped with far holier ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said, "what did I tell you? Didn't I tell you you ought to take this case?" Mr Winter, with his chest thrust out, plumed and strutted in justifiable pride of prophecy. "Now, I'll tell you another thing: today's event will do more for you than it has for ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... preliminary to any useful discussion of passive resistance is the clear recognition of the fact that it is rebellion, and nothing less. To say, or admit, this is not necessarily to condemn it; for there are few persons to-day, I suppose, who would contend that rebellion is never justifiable. All it asserts is that passive resistance has to be judged by the same measures and according to the same standards as any other kind of revolt against constituted political authority. It is all the more needful to make this plain because some of the milder but more ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... in the philosophies of Hume, Kant and Hegel!—I regarded tragic knowledge as the most beautiful luxury of our culture, as its most precious, most noble, most dangerous kind of prodigality; but, nevertheless, in view of its overflowing wealth, as a justifiable luxury. In the same way, I began by interpreting Wagner's music as the expression of a Dionysian powerfulness of soul. In it I thought I heard the earthquake by means of which a primeval life-force, which had been constrained for ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... did decline the king's authority in certain particulars! But were they not justifiable? A glance at the situation will solve ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... of their own deserts? In like manner our antagonist in a law-suit, and our competitor for any office, are commonly regarded as our enemies; though we must acknowledge, if we would but reflect a moment, that their motive is entirely as justifiable as our own. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... in his accustomed manner and he was pleased with the news brought him because he had been expecting in any event to overcome Vindex and because he thought he had now secured a justifiable ground for money-getting and murders. He enjoyed the same degree of luxury; and upon the completion and adornment of the heroum of Sabina he gave it a brilliant dedication, taking care to have inscribed upon it: "The Women have built This to Sabina, the Goddess Venus." And the writing ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... foreigner is the most honest manufacturer of the two—and, lastly, you know, what is worse than all, that these cruel and wicked deceptions, and many more like them, are regarded, on the highest commercial authority, as 'forms of competition' and justifiable proceedings in trade. Do you believe in the honourable accumulation of wealth by men who hold such opinions and perpetrate such impostures as these? I don't! Do you find any brighter and purer prospect when you look down from the man who deceives you and me on the ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... The moment that they overstepped the slightest bounds of law, in rushed the authorities with summary punishment. The prisons of the period were full of mechanics whom serfdom or poverty had stung on to commit some crime or other. However trifling the offence, or whatever the justifiable provocation, the law made no trades-union memorialized Congress to limit the hours of labor of those employed on the public works to ten hours a day. The pathos of this petition! So unceasingly had the workers been lied to by politicians, newspapers, clergy and employers, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... values not those Acclamations which are not seconded by the impartial Testimony of his own Mind; who repines not at the low Station which Providence has at present allotted him, but yet would willingly advance himself by justifiable Means to a more rising and advantageous Ground; such a Man is warmed with a generous Emulation; it is a virtuous Movement in him to wish and to endeavour that his Power of doing Good may ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... it yet refuses to vote the budget to pay for them. It supports a large parliamentary party without any clear or consistent parliamentary policy in internal or external affairs, unless to be "agin the Government" is a policy. And lastly, if some of its economic demands are justifiable, and have in several respects been satisfied by modern legislation, its fundamental doctrine, the basis of the entire edifice, is a wild hallucination, sickening to common sense, and completely out of harmony with the progressive economic ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... that revenge may have influenced Egfrid's conduct: this, however, does not make it more justifiable in a Christian king. Ireland was not merely the refuge of men of learning in that age; it afforded shelter to more than one prince driven unjustly from his paternal home. Alfred, the brother of the Northumbrian monarch, had fled thither ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the whole event with indifference—their rage and their regard equally—but for my suffering and sensitive wife. Wronged as she had been, and so persecuted as to render all her subsequent conduct justifiable, she yet forgot none of her filial obligations; and, in compliance with her earnest entreaties, I had already, the very day after this conflict, prepared an elaborate and respectful epistle to both father and mother, when an event took place of startling solemnity, which was calculated ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Mr Pecksniff. 'Be that as it may, here we are; and being here, we are to consider whether it is possible by any justifiable means—' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... well, I think," said Abbott, with justifiable pride, as he picked up the telephone. After several moments he reported that the President would see Enoch ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... also,' he goes on to say, 'that it leads them in their desire to rise in the social scale to attempt by dishonest means to live at a higher rate than is justifiable, to gamble and speculate, in order to keep up a false position. I have come across those who have fallen where this has confessedly been the case, and who have lamented that such wrong ideas had been put into their heads. Young people ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... With justifiable pride they surveyed their handiwork. "Now let's get under way!" cried Lord Reginald. "She floats well on the water, and is higher out of it ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... happen that there would be rash governors who might act inconsiderately, and only through self-will or caprice, and cause great and excessive expenses of the royal revenues. Consequently, it is preferable that action be taken by many votes, since in justifiable and even in doubtful cases the preference of him who governs or presides is always followed. Madrid, July 11, 1631." "Let ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... gentleman from his overseer; and knowing him to be on an excursion with the ladies, and thinking he would be back about mid-day, I advised him, sir, to delay his return to the station, until he had seen his master. Hence, you see, sir, his presence on the station was perfectly justifiable. With regard to his peccancy I will not attempt, sir, to offer any palliation beyond the expression of my belief, that the tobacco was taken without any notion of the offence he was committing; in proof of which, I may mention, sir, the absence of any concealment on his part, when you came ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... make it conform to her ideas of a man's duty to the woman he had promised to marry—or to any woman. She had heard him speak of reason in connection with the affair, as though there were no such thing in the world as rage so justifiable as to make a man yearn to inflict punishment upon another man who had attacked his woman. He had looked upon the matter cold-bloodedly, and she had resented that. But now that she had been avenged, she felt that she had been wrong. It had been such a trivial thing, ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... barely indicate in a mysterious note to one of the books of his Emile. This shows the philosopher so completely under the influence of the mediaeval superstition of knightly honor that he considers it justifiable to murder a man who accuses you of lying: whilst he must have known that every man, and himself especially, has deserved to have the lie given him times ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... this side of wickedness; one of those dark and comic dramas to which that of Tartuffe is mere child's play,—dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which may be characterized as not vice, only ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... that dangerous encounter: Fanny's knowing that he had turned the Ballingers out. As he would have been very unwilling to admit that Mrs. Levitt had forced his hand there, he took the whole of the responsibility for that action. But, inevitable and justifiable as it was, he couldn't hope to carry it off triumphantly with Fanny. It was just, but it was not magnanimous. Therefore, without making any positively untruthful statement, he had let her think that Ballinger had given notice of his own accord. The chances, he thought, were all against ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... true, is not always or wholly evil. Sometimes it is justifiable and necessary. Sometimes it is professedly and in part really due to some strong wave of philanthropic feeling produced by great acts of wrong, though of all forms of philanthropy it is that which most naturally defeats itself. Even when unjustifiable, it calls into action splendid qualities of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... distribution, the State must adopt the same methods of doing business as the present owners. I mean that even as the big Trusts and companies are crushing—by competition—the individual workers and small traders, so the State should crush the trusts by competition. It is surely justifiable for the State to do for the benefit of the whole people that which the capitalists are already doing for the profit of a few shareholders. The first step in this direction will be the establishment ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... It is hardly justifiable to cover the whole system of Buddhism with a single epithet[FN5] 'pessimistic' or 'nihilistic,' because Buddhism, having been adopted by savage tribes as well as civilized nations, by quiet, enervated people ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... Mrityu or death being of two syllables, the correspondence is justifiable between it and Mama or mineness which also is of two syllables. So in the case of Brahman and na-mama. Of course, what is meant by mineness being death and not-mineness being Brahman or emancipation, cannot be unintelligible to one who has ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... this was not true, or only partially true, but considered it justifiable after Tommy's warning—and Tommy knew a lot about women. I remembered him saying once that a girl's determination could be changed in two ways: by opposition, and by cooperation. I had tried opposition, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the conclusion of the sentence. His mind was working swiftly. For, if Farwell tried to come across, he would probably be killed by the coming explosions; and that must be prevented at any cost. The destruction of the dam was justifiable, even necessary. But homicide with it would never do. To shoot in self-defence or to protect his rights was one thing; to allow a man to be killed by a blast was quite another. But just how to prevent it ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... it be conceded that the charges against the Japanese which we find in the Blue Book and in Sir Rutherford Alcock's 'Capital of the Tycoon,' are all well founded, and the resort to strong measures on the part of the British will be admitted to be justifiable. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which, if not new, we are quite willing to exhibit—and of going to see our neighbors, and staying just long enough to ask how they do, say a few stale or silly things, and prove an interruption and a nuisance, and then going elsewhere—a whit more justifiable, in beings made in the image of God, and who are to be ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... corpuscles and so forth, that a searching investigation cannot be undertaken. In addition the preparation and staining of dried blood specimens is amongst the simplest and most convenient of the methods of clinical histology. In the interest of its wider dissemination, it will be justifiable to describe it more ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... which was wrested from my hands by the sailor; and I acknowledge that I attempted with that gun to defend my family and my house from immediate violence; I am, however," continued he, "happy to have escaped having injured any person, even in the most justifiable cause, for the piece did not go off, it only flashed in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... distinctive interest and employment not less urgent and necessary than the interests and employments of men. And when she failed, as she plainly must have failed, to find any such occupation, her sense of beauty and her justifiable demand for life found an outlet largely in shopping, in entertaining, in all such ephemeral attractions and amusements as women in her class may seek and reject. That way of escape, however, soon raised financial obstructions to Trafford's work. He had to find ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... submission; so I made it my business to look up the manorial title-deeds. The pretensions of the ecclesiastical "Moses" to exercise a control over the operations of the reasoning faculty in the search after truth, thirty centuries after his age, might be justifiable; but, assuredly, the credentials produced in justification of claims ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... exalted and enthusiastic temperaments; both were skilled in the arts of oratory and the management of men, and both possessed a visionary side. For each the situation in the New World formed an ample and, indeed, justifiable field. ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... was justifiable at Christ-tide. An ordinance for governing the household of the Duke of Clarence in the reign of Edward IV. forbade all games at dice, cards, or other hazard for money "except during the twelve days at Christmas." And, again, in ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... for "damage caused by any kind of maltreatment of prisoners of war," is more doubtful on the strict letter, but may be justifiable under the Hague Convention and involves a ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... on hearing such soothing and delicious sounds, was, at least, justifiable; for it was long—very long, since she had listened to any thing like melody. The fierce trumpet and the shrill fife were the only instruments she had heard, since ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... years,) that as we do not instantly pronounce a man a murderer upon hearing that he has killed a fellow-creature, but, according to the circumstances of the case, pronounce his act either murder, or manslaughter, or justifiable homicide; so by parity of reason, suicide is open to distinctions of the same or corresponding kinds; that there may be such a thing as self-homicide not less than self-murder—culpable self-homicide —justifiable ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... to see this regatta and to help in it that the Rob Roy had pushed her way to Paris; and for this six hundred miles of river navigation in a sea-going boat were justifiable, yet often did I feel much the sea-trim lifeboat yawl was out of place upon a calm inland water ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... when he was sorely tempted to regret a little that some of the feasts of the Church were "moveable." True, they moved only within strictly prescribed limits, and in accordance with certain unalterable, wholly justifiable rules. Yet, in the very fact that they did move, there seemed—to use an expressive slang phrase of the day—"something not quite nice." It was therefore the fixed feasts that pleased Percy best, and on Christmas ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... into the absurd positions of absolute subjective idealism on the one hand and sensationalism and absolute materialism on the other. The Christian mind lays emphasis on the will and accordingly is alone able to reach reality, a reality justifiable alike to the reason and to the heart. For will is the creative faculty in man as well as in God. As God through His will creates reality, so man through his will first comes to know reality. Mere intellect can never pass over from thought to ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... For example: a Yale professor of history had an article in the New York Times, a while ago, declaring that the constitutional amendments conferring citizenship on the Negroes were wrong and that the reaction against them in depriving the Negroes of the vote was justifiable; to which I wrote a reply, mostly in the language of Mr. Flemming, a native Southerner who had represented Georgia in Congress, arguing that the amendments were not only justifiable but indispensable, and the Times would not publish ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... as dogs and cats, however, attempts at treatment are justifiable, and we are convinced that in many cases of difficulty in the application of splints and bandages a patient may be placed in a condition of undisturbed quiet and left to the processes of nature for "treatment" as safely and with as good an assurance of a favorable result as if ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Senators who have served with me here, that I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union. Therefore, if I had not believed there was justifiable cause; if I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation, or without an existing necessity, I should still, under my theory of the Government, because of my allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... and abjure him? I have no reserve on this subject, and will frankly state that, setting aside that stage of the entertainment when he counterfeited the death of some creature he had shot, by laying his head on his hand and shaking his left leg - at which time I think it would have been justifiable homicide to slay him - I have never seen that group sleeping, smoking, and expectorating round their brazier, but I have sincerely desired that something might happen to the charcoal smouldering therein, which ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... by repute—as who did not? Since at that period it was the widest-known name in the whole medical profession in Scotland. And the first sight of him confirmed the reputation, and made even a stranger recognize that his fame was both natural and justifiable. But the minister had scarcely time to cast a glance on the acute, benevolent, wonderfully powerful and thoughtful head, when his attention was attracted by the poor infant, whom Janet was carefully unswathing from ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... division of his forces in the presence of an enemy of twice his strength, Lee is not entitled to commendation. It is justifiable only—if at all—by the danger of the situation, which required a desperate remedy, and peculiarly by the success which attended it. Had it resulted disastrously, as it ought to have done, it would have been a serious blow to Lee's military ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... a child in rebellion. Rebellion is sometimes justifiable. Anger may be a virtue. You would not take this force out of your child any more than you would take the temper out of a knife or a spring. Anger manifested vocally or muscularly is the child's form of protest. But, established as a habit of the life, it is altogether unlovely. Who does not know ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... slaves for a term of years. The English courts were busy grinding out human material for the Virginia plantations; and, as the objects of commerce were considered paramount, this process of disposing of what was regarded as the scum element was adjudged necessary and justifiable. No voice was raised ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... Dean of St. Paul's, had recently published a thesis, to prove that suicide, under some circumstances, was justifiable. Hopeful answers all his arguments, and proves it to be the foulest of murders. Bunyan, in his treatise on Justification, volume 1, page 314, thus notices the jailer's intent to commit suicide, when the doors of the prison ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... recurring form of art, continually responding to the new needs of man's developing consciousness, I must go, rapidly and generally, over the "literary epic"; and especially I must question whether it is really justifiable or profitable to divide epic poetry into the two contrasted departments ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... I think, awakened some of that ill-feeling you have just noticed." He checked himself too late: he had again lost not only his tact and self-control, but had nearly betrayed himself. He was surprised that the girl's justifiable ignorance should have irritated him. Yet she had evidently not noticed, or misunderstood it, for she said, with a certain ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... blame him. Suffering, as he was, from the ceaseless agony of hunger and thirst, any indiscretion, or even crime, seemed justifiable, for the sake of ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... poison. Too long we had waited and allowed the enemy to use this fearful weapon against us, thinking the neutral nations might intervene; but their interest in the cause of humanity was largely a financial one, and we determined to adopt a broader view, perhaps, of what justifiable weapons are, and make use of the advances of science. France was already using the gas, but Britain hesitated at setting her hall-mark on such a usage, necessary as ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... Byron, whether there is one single principle in Schlegel's work (which is not an admitted drawback from its merits), that was not established and applied in detail by me. Plutarch tells us, that egotism is a venial fault in the unfortunate, and justifiable in the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... along the corridor of the Bureau building. He paused only when he came to the glass door which was lettered in gold: National Bureau of Scientific Development, Dr. William Baker, Director. He was unable to regard that door without a sense of pride. But he was convinced the pride was thoroughly justifiable. ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... result of poverty, and the polyandrous races are little fecund and tend to disappear. The normal man is instinctively more polygynous than the normal woman is polyandrous. There are, however, cases where polyandry is justifiable. There are women whose sexual appetite, more or less pathological, is so insatiable that a normal man ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... secret was simple. She had a good cook and housekeeper, who managed all these important but tedious details admirably, under her suggestions. In order to do this Edith had to practise a little fraud on Bruce, a justifiable and quite unselfish one. She gave the cook and housekeeper a quarter of her dress allowance, in addition to the wages Bruce considered sufficient; because Bruce believed that they could not afford more than a certain amount for a cook, while he admitted that Edith, who ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... table was properly laid at the time fixed, and Amalia Ivanovna, feeling she had done her work well, had put on a black silk dress and a cap with new mourning ribbons and met the returning party with some pride. This pride, though justifiable, displeased Katerina Ivanovna for some reason: "as though the table could not have been laid except by Amalia Ivanovna!" She disliked the cap with new ribbons, too. "Could she be stuck up, the stupid German, because she was mistress of the house, and had consented as a favour to help her poor lodgers! ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... you may unfortunately have (and few are without them) by a gentleness of manner, but make them feel the steadiness of your just resentment; for there is a wide difference between bearing malice and a determined self-defence; the one is imperious, but the other is prudent and justifiable. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... these were filled with the protestations of love, written with passion certainly, but also with that deceit which men so often think it justifiable to use to the other sex. Judith had shed tears abundantly over the first packet, but now she felt a sentiment of indignation and pride better sustaining her. Her hand shook, however, and cold shivers again passed ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... explain the evolution and the vast variety of the vegetable kingdom. To attribute this to any power of modification by environment, when we see how little environment can do to make any essential change in vegetation, would require more credulity than I would consider justifiable in the pursuit of scientific truths. So in the evolution of the animal kingdom, I believe the power of the physical ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... confessed themselves guilty of the crime imputed to them; and it being affirmed that poison had in fact been found in a well at Zofingen, this was deemed a sufficient proof to convince the world; and the persecution of the abhorred culprits thus appeared justifiable. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... matter of closing the deal," Johnny told her with a perfectly justifiable smile which Constance, from a distance, criticized severely. He drew an envelope from his pocket and took from it a paper which he passed to ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... had been schooled to set a high price upon herself. I know she cared for you—very much, even. But she could not face poverty; or, if you like, I will say that she could not face an obscure existence—sacrifice her ambition, a justifiable ambition in one so lovely, at the bidding of her first wooer. And then, again, she was told that if she married you, she would for ever forfeit my regard. You must not blame her for ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... London Central Mission on "Brass Bands," for the London Association of Correctors of the Press at the Trocadero, for the C.S.U. at Church Kirk, Accrington, at the Men's Service in the Colchester Moot Hall. He debates at the St. German's Literary Society, maintaining "that the most justifiable wars are the religious wars"; opens the Anti-Puritan League at the Shaftesbury Club, speaks for the Richmond and Kew branch of the P.N.E.U. on "The Romantic Element in Morality," for the Ilkley P.S.A., on "Christianity and Materialism," and so ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... piece of foolery when one looks back, but at the time we thought it high-minded and justifiable rebellion. We assembled in the court, and cheered after the senior tutor had been three parts smothered in his bed by a red-pepper squib dropped down the chimney; and on the morning after the Master's laundry was raided, and the linen (belonging ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... Shakespeare has to find, I will not say a magical expression for courage, but even an adequate and worthy expression, he fails absolutely. And is the patriotism in "Ye, good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England" a "noble patriotism"? or is it the simplest, the crudest, the least justifiable form of patriotism? There is a noble patriotism founded on the high and generous things done by men of one's own blood, just as there is the vain and empty self-glorification of "limbs made in England," as if English limbs were better than those ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... therefore of opinion that there is no justifiable ground for expecting that by continuing the war the nation will retain its independence, and that, under these circumstances, the nation is not justified in continuing the war, because this can only lead to social and material ruin, not ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... of his thoughts should have addressed herself to such an assembly. Why did she not leave it to him or her father! If it was not degrading enough to appear before such a canaille, surely to sing to them was! How could a woman of refinement, justifiable as was her desire for appreciation, seek it from such a repulsive assemblage! But Vavasor would have been better able to understand Hester, and would have met the distastes of the evening with far less discomposure, if he had never been in worse company. One main test of our dealings in the world ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... would my mother say, or my guardian? What version of the story had Plummer given them? It consoled me to work myself up into a fury as I sat in the corner of the railway carriage, and prepare an indictment of his conduct which should make my conduct appear not only justifiable, but heroic. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... advance on account of the ensuing quarter, and at others, that which was due at the end of the quarter was not completely drawn out. The secretary entered into an examination of the constitution and laws to show that this practice was justifiable, and illustrated his arguments by many examples in which an advance on account of money appropriated to a particular object, before the service was completed, would be absolutely necessary. However this might be, it was a transaction in which ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the copying out and publishing thereof, until I have a little better consulted with my pillow, and taken some further advice of Madame Sperienza. In the mean time, take this for a general caveat, and say I have revealed one great mystery unto you: I am of opinion, there is no one more regular and justifiable direction, either for the assured and infallible certainty of our English artificial prosody particularly, or generally to bring our language into art, and to frame a grammar or rhetoric thereof; than first of all universally to agree upon one and the same ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... away, indignant that one to whom he had offered to be reconciled—very much against his own feelings—should have refused to join what, in his smaller knowledge of the gospel plan, he considered right and justifiable. Herder had become a Protestant, and knew enough about the truth to be aware that Christians are bound to forgive their enemies. He also was convinced that the saints cannot hear prayer, that purgatory is a fiction, and that confession should be made to God and not to ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... compelled the leaders of both parties to lay aside their arms, and banished Corso, with many of the Neri. And as an evidence of the impartiality of their motives, they also banished many of the Bianchi, who, however, soon afterward, under pretense of some justifiable cause, returned. ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... reached him. Two aged men from the lower city arrived at the Alhambra—demanded and obtained an audience; and the effect of that interview was instantaneous upon Boabdil. In the popular frenzy he saw only a justifiable excuse for the Christian king to break the conditions of the treaty, rase the city, and exterminate the inhabitants. Touched by a generous compassion for his subjects, and actuated no less by a high sense of kingly honor, which led him to preserve a truce solemnly ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... she? I thought she looked wondrous mysterious when I met her down the street. It was justifiable, though, under the circumstances. I suppose they, the Randalls, ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... obstacle to peace was the mutual distrust with which each of the three parties regarded the others. Korea hated the Japanese with a perfect and justifiable hatred; she also feared and despised the pompous and pretentious pride of China. But in the negotiations which ensued the country which had suffered most had least to say. It remained for the two greater powers to ...
— Japan • David Murray
... vehemently against this arrest to the English Consul, and also to the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Lord Levison Gower; but they both declined interfering, as they considered his arrest legal and justifiable. On his release he came to Liverpool, whence he went to Dublin, where he met his future wife, Miss Neville, a native of Newry. Having become possessed of a legacy of 400 pounds, left him by his aunt, Mrs. Daw, he returned to Liverpool, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... you! put it away from you!" exclaimed Capitola earnestly; "suicide is never, never, never justifiable! God is the Lord of life and death! He is the only judge whether a mortal's sorrows are to be relieved by death, and when He does not Himself release you, He means that you shall live and endure! That proves that ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... remember, always, that we have in the word of God a standard of truth and right that will always govern us according to heaven's will. Many persons, forgetting this truth, have been led to conclude that departures from the word of truth, as a matter of "liberality," or "broad-gauge religion," are justifiable. And, as "liberalists," or "broad-gauge Christians," they are disposed to recognize all the existing divisions in faith and practice that are known in Christendom. They even go further and allow that ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... first saw the Opium Schools, built in the form of large dens. After this came the Schools of Iniquity, operated in darkness. Here all forms of evil are taught and made to appear justifiable under certain conditions. Many of these underground schools could not be clearly seen by Mr. World, but ere the telescope completed its third revolution he saw the Schools of Suicide more distinctly than during his visit, and got a glimpse of ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... recollection of the confiding friendship which she had always shown this man. She said to herself with bitterness: "See how weakness and fear may lead one to unjust and odious suspicions! Yes; for until the last extremity, it is not justifiable to believe in so infernal a deception—and then only upon the clearest evidence. I will call some one: it is the only way of completely satisfying these doubts." Then, remembering that there was no bell, she added: "No matter; I will knock, and some one will doubtless ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... excursion with the ladies, and thinking he would be back about mid-day, I advised him, sir, to delay his return to the station, until he had seen his master. Hence, you see, sir, his presence on the station was perfectly justifiable. With regard to his peccancy I will not attempt, sir, to offer any palliation beyond the expression of my belief, that the tobacco was taken without any notion of the offence he was committing; in proof of which, I may ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... many charming glimpses down passages and along narrow streets that it is hard to realize that we are not in some town in Normandy such as Lisieux or Falaise, and yet those towns have no walls, and Falaise, has only one gateway, and Lisieux none. It is surely justifiable to ask, in Kingsley's words, 'Why go gallivanting with the nations round' until you have at least seen what England can show at York and Chester? Skirting the west end of the Minster, and having a close view of its two towers built in late Perpendicular ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... straightforward. He held that he had sent the letter at a time when he was a prisoner simply, which was justifiable; not when a prisoner on parole, which was shameless. The temper of the court was against him. Most important was the enmity of the Jesuits, whose hatred of Puritanism cried out for sacrifice. They had seen the work of the saints in every turn of the late siege, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... assurance of the legitimacy should precede the submission; so I made it my business to look up the manorial title-deeds. The pretensions of the ecclesiastical "Moses" to exercise a control over the operations of the reasoning faculty in the search after truth, thirty centuries after his age, might be justifiable; but, assuredly, the credentials produced in justification of claims so ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... they had reached Reigate. The inquest did not last many minutes, and the jury without hesitation returned a verdict of justifiable homicide. ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... gave birth to a vindictive feeling in many, which led to the perpetration of similar enormities and sunk civilized man, to the degraded level of the barbarian. They served too, to arouse them to greater exertion, to subdue the savage foe in justifiable warfare, and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... managed herself and she knew to a sesterce the value of every piece of property, the justifiable expenses of maintaining each, and the income each should yield. Self-indulgent as she was and moreover an inveterate gambler, she grew richer ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... great battlefield and has shuddered in the depths of his soul at all the horrors confronting him, will have found new strength and exaltation in the thought that here the whole tragic gravity of military necessity is regnant, and here a justifiable passion has done its work.—GENERAL v. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... were making for the future peace of the country. It was the establishment of the "Pax Britannica," as Commissioner Perry said with justifiable pride in the record the Police had made throughout the years. He quotes the words of a famous Indian Chief to which we have already called attention in the chapter on Indian treaties when that Chief, referring to the Police, said, "Before you came the Indian crept ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... disadvantages, and with this addition to them, that I am thy friend and intimate, am I to make a visit to this unhappy lady to-morrow morning! In thy name, too!—Enough to be refused, that I am of a sex, to which, for thy sake, she has so justifiable an aversion: nor, having such a tyrant of a father, and such an implacable brother, has she the reason to make an exception in favour of any of it on ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... suggestion for the lad's future was made by any of the people who admired his cleverness. Miss Cadman still clung in a fitful way to the idea of making her nephew a cleric; she had often talked it over with the Misses Lumb, who of course held that 'any sacrifice' was justifiable with such a motive, and who suggested a hope that, by the instrumentality of Lady Whitelaw, a curacy might easily be obtained as soon as Godwin was old enough. But several years must pass before that Levitical stage could be reached; and then, after all, perhaps ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... could not be found for making acts of confiscation, sequestration, spoliation, transfer of Government, or whatever they may be called, dependent upon some formal and judicial proceeding which should secure the Queen from acts being done in her name—which might not be entirely justifiable morally, as well as legally—which should relieve the Government agents from the fearful responsibility of being sole advisers on steps implying judicial condemnation without trial on their mere personal opinion, and from which they ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... was a very awkward affair. The bell is rung, up come the friends; the story is told, nor is it other than they had suspected. It does not end here, for, of course, there must be an inquest. It is an Irish jury. All said it served him right—and so what is the verdict?—Justifiable felo-de-se." Here, Eusebius, you have something remarkable;—one happier at the termination than the commencement of the honeymoon—a widow happier than a bride. She might go forth to the world again, with the sweet reputation of having smothered him with kisses, and killed him with kindness—if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... one-fifth of this trade was with the West Indies. Consequently, both to swell the volume of British commerce and protect it from privateering, the seizure of the French West Indian colonies—"filching the sugar islands," as Sheridan called it—was a very justifiable war measure, in spite of the scattering of forces involved. Hayti was lost to France as a result of the negro uprising under Toussaint l'Ouverture. Practically all the French Antilles changed hands twice in 1794, the failure of the ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... British Association for refusing to examine the production. I suppose that the author, finding his first proof wrong, invented the second, of which the Association never had the offer; and, feeling sure that they would have equally refused to examine the second, thought it justifiable to {13} present that second as the one which they had refused. Mr. Upton has discovered that the common way of finding the circumference is wrong, would set it right if he had leisure, and, in the mean time, has solved the problem of the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... these. But alas! their ideal is too evident to be mistaken. I call it the "divitial" ideal, that of the rich man, that which makes the acquisition of material wealth the one standard of success in life, the only justifiable aim of effort. To most American citizens the assertion that there is any more important, more sensible purpose than this, is simply incomprehensible ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... considered, flirted most outrageously with Mr. Spotts. Indeed Cecil was already strongly of the opinion that the actor was trying to succeed where he had failed—a course of action which he thought quite justifiable on his, Banborough's, part, but highly reprehensible on the part of any one else. Matters had now culminated. Fate had brought the three together at this inopportune moment, and as it was manifestly impossible not to say something, Cecil laid himself ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... Scripture teaching that Jesus suffered the penalty of our sins for us is plain and simple, and all efforts to take from the Scripture language its simple, plain, natural meaning are pitiable, and if contempt were ever justifiable, would deserve the contempt of all honest men. Let the reader turn back and read the Scriptures at the head of this chapter and decide for himself as to their obvious, ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... have decided," continued Augustus, solemnly, without regard to the exclamation, "that the action would be perfectly justifiable!" ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... post, so far from the real centre of conflict. Could its capture have lessened in any way the power or resources of the Russian Government, or, by creating a diversion, have attracted attention from the decisive struggle in the Crimea, it would perhaps have been justifiable; but it could not possibly have any direct or indirect influence upon the ultimate result, and only brought misery upon a few inoffensive Kamchadals who had never heard of Turkey or the Eastern Question and whose first intimation ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... republican government elected by universal suffrage, and guaranteeing to every tiniest village its full meed of local independence,—the very idea of all this would have been scouted as a thoroughly impracticable Utopian dream. And such scepticism would have been quite justifiable, for European history did not seem to afford any precedents upon which such a forecast of the future could be logically based. Between the various nations of Europe there has certainly always existed an element ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... his hands in his pockets, stands by the stern, smoking a cigar, is sufficient to excuse a breach of the peace by itself; and the lordly whistle for you to get out of the way would, I am confident, ensure a verdict of "justifiable homicide" from any ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... for them now to be reconciled. Our disunion is not only a reproach, but a danger to us. Those who believe in modern miracles have more right, or at least more excuse, to neglect all secular caution; but for us, it is as justifiable to have no religion as wilfully to throw away the human means of preserving it.—I am, Dear Sir, your most affectionate ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homocide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another—the classification is for ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... university to control, beyond the demands necessary for the main object of instruction. As the circumstances of parents vary, so will the pecuniary allowance made to their offspring. It would be a task neither practicable nor justifiable for the university to regulate the outlay of the collegian, or, in fact, become the paymaster of his menus plaisirs. Only let such a task be imagined in its enormity of control, from the son of the nobleman with an allowance of a thousand a year to one of a hundred and ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... these opinions (and they were to be found in every party) regarded with resentment and alarm every addition to what seemed to them the useless burdens assumed by the nation, and required to be satisfied that every new annexation of territory was not merely justifiable, but inevitable. ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... in their unguarded moments. I have scarcely ever been admitted to the presence of a real notoriety, that I did not find the man, or woman—sex making little difference—an actor; and this, too, much beyond the everyday and perhaps justifiable little practices of conventional life. Inherent simplicity of character is one of the rarest, as, tempered by the tone imparted by refinement, it is the loveliest of all our traits, though it is quite common to meet with those who affect it, with an address that is very apt to ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in America and England are not quite identical and I believe it to be a justifiable statement that British industry is better able to stand so high a tax than American industry, for reasons inherent in the ...
— Government Ownership of Railroads, and War Taxation • Otto H. Kahn
... sent forth by an interloper under the same title; and why should not the same triumph be repeated now? There would, in short, have been a pride of talent in this manner of avenging myself, which would have been justifiable in the case of an injured man; but the state of my health has for some time been such as to render any attempt of this nature in every ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... be any the less dead, or any the less effectually buried, if one nail is not driven home in the coffin. The slayer is modernity at large, made up of science, steam, democracy, universal education, and many other things—but especially universal education. And the verdict can be, at the most, justifiable, or at any rate inevitable, pasticide. You cannot eat your cake and have it; you cannot kill off all the bad things and keep all the good ones. With sterilization goes purification, pasticide may be accompanied by pasteurization. At any rate, "the old order changeth," ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... we. For, in addition to those great and holy interests, to keep one's own interests a little in view is manly and justifiable. My heavens! life would have been perfectly hateful and abominable in this dirty, cheerless Berlin if we had not seen above us a glittering star, to which we could look up when all was so dismal here below, which shone upon our path and cheered us when we feared to sink ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... an absolute injury pardoned—one is raised to self-esteem by such an act of forgiveness; but there is no elevation in submitting patiently to a slight. It is simply the confession that the liberty taken with you was justifiable—was even natural.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... revolutionary methods was a good trait in his character; but surely revolutions are sometimes justifiable, and it looks, at this distance, as though this one was as nearly so as most of those that have succeeded. If Luther had put his great heart and mighty will at the head of this movement which he confessed to be most righteous, it might have succeeded, and Protestantism, ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... and they had been reared in different schools. Poor Maude Kirton had learnt to be anything but scrupulous, and really thought it a very slight thing she was about to do, almost justifiable under the circumstances. Almost, if not quite. Nevertheless she would not have liked to be ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... proposed. In most of these cases there was manifest a disposition greatly to over-accentuate organization, to make too much of the disciplinary side of the Rule and to forget the entire subordination of such things to active thought and constructive effort. They are valuable and indeed only justifiable as a means to an end. These attempts of a number of people of very miscellaneous origins and social traditions to come together and work like one machine made the essential wastefulness of any terrestrial realization of my Samurai very clear. The only reason for such an Order is the ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... positive basis for medical science by the practice of dissection of animals, and discovered the optic nerves and the Eustachian tubes. He even extended his researches to Embryology, describing the head of the foetus as the first part to be developed—a justifiable deduction from appearances. Alcmaeon introduced also the doctrine that health depends on harmony, disease on discord of the elements within the body. Curiosity as to the distribution of the vessels was excited by Empedocles and Alcmaeon and led to further ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... he, smiling, that if I were to pursue a vengeance so justifiable in my own opinion, I must be in apprehension of falling by Mr. Lovelace's hand?—I will assure you, that I have no fears of that sort—but I know this is an ungrateful subject to you. Mr. Lovelace is your friend; and ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... England upon Ireland. Here Barry observed, that although he was not competent to speak on the matter, and had no desire to endorse or countenance such an invasion, he regarded a Fenian attack upon Canada fully as justifiable as an assault of the same character upon England, or any other portion of her majesty's dominions. The empire, he contended, was a unit and no part of it could be assailed, that did not possess, in relation to Ireland, just as inoffensive people as the Canadians were. Fenianism, ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... verse of this lucubration, and Mr. Sladen informs us with justifiable pride that the parts printed in italics are from his own pen! This is certainly editing with a vengeance, and we cannot help saying that it reflects more credit on Mr. Sladen's good nature than on his critical or his poetical powers. The appearance, also, in a volume of 'poems produced in ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... to dog the steps of the murderer, who kept on the watch, not daring to go far from his village.... Finding him playing cards under a tree, they fired at and killed him, and besides this accidentally shot another man who was asleep a few paces off. The relatives on both sides pronounced the act justifiable and according to rule." Ibid., I., 143: "On reaching Bastia from Ajaccio the two principal families of the place, the Peraldi and the Visuldi, fired at each other, in disputing over ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... girl's eyes flashed, but her acquaintance with AEsop had given her the thoroughly justifiable impression that he was a man whom it was better to obey, and she retired into the caravan and shut the green-and-red door with a bang ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... anything for Lucia was the influence of a unique and irresistible personal charm. As far as he could see, Jewdwine was merely desperately anxious to protect his kinswoman from what he considered an undesirable acquaintance. And five years ago his fears and his behaviour would have been justifiable; for Rickman owned that at that period he had not been fit to sit in the same room with Lucia Harden, far less, if it came to that, than poor Soper. But his life since he had known her was judged even by Jewdwine ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... will take a fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will then pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them. The fly wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed in a somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all interest in him. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... these things is acquired, not natural, though the acquisition may be through hereditary influence. An idea is held by a majority of even fairly intelligent individuals that there is a justifiable, harmless, and even beneficial use of these substances by the general public, though acknowledging that beyond a certain indefinite line this ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... months from that day Mme. Veuve Vauquer availed herself of the services of M. Goriot's coiffeur, and went to some expense over her toilette, expense justifiable on the ground that she owed it to herself and her establishment to pay some attention to appearances when such highly-respectable persons honored her house with their presence. She expended no small amount of ingenuity ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... not an apology for murder. It is an honest effort to unravel the tangled mesh of circumstances that led up to the Armistice Day tragedy in Centralia, Washington. The writer is one of those who believe that the taking of human life is justifiable only in self-defense. Even then the act is a horrible reversion to the brute—to the low plane of savagery. Civilization, to be worthy of the name, must afford other methods of settling human differences than those of ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... chap to do anything for I ever saw," I groaned, with the justifiable annoyance of a martyr who has failed to convert a pagan hero. "As if you hadn't made things difficult enough already by 'Mistering' yourself. At any moment you may be found out—though, on second thoughts, it won't matter a rap if you are. If you're a mere Mister, you ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... either of the others, was forced to give way. Fidelity of representation was less their object than beauty; with us it is exactly the reverse. On this principle, the use of masks, which appears astonishing to us, was not only justifiable, but absolutely essential; far from considering them as a makeshift, the Greeks would certainly, and with justice too, have looked upon it as a makeshift to be obliged to allow a player with vulgar, ignoble, or strongly ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... position, contending that the methods of the Russian Government rendered terrorism not only justifiable, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... only, much larger than any of the others, and which was called Mary. Now this bell was never rung but when our house was in great danger, and it had this legend on it, "When Mary rings the earth shakes;" and indeed from this we took our war cry, which was, "Mary rings;" somewhat justifiable indeed, for the last time that Mary rang, on that day before nightfall there were four thousand bodies to be buried, which bodies wore ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... Kearney bought some lovely blush-pink charmeuse in Brown Thomas's to let into the front of Kathleen's dress. It cost a pretty penny; but there are occasions when a little expense is justifiable. She took a dozen of two-shilling tickets for the final concert and sent them to those friends who could not be trusted to come otherwise. She forgot nothing, and, thanks to her, everything that was ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... on both flanks, and starvation in the rear. So when the advancing British met, all together, at the island of Montreal, he and his faithful regulars laid down their arms without dishonour, in the fully justifiable belief that no further use of them could possibly retrieve the great lost ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... your highness, tell the whole truth to Cerise; for I have always considered it perfectly justifiable to retain facts which cannot add to people's happiness. I declared that I left her because my life would have been forfeited if I had remained, and I valued it only for her sake. That I always intended to return, and when I quitted Valencia, and had become a man of property, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sudden storm of indignation in his breast. Whether his future action was based on the decision of his council to which he submitted, sanctioning on his own part the treachery by which alone Douglas could be beguiled within his reach, as the chroniclers, to whom such a device was quite justifiable, tell us; or whether when he issued his safe-conduct he still hoped to be able to convince the Earl of his folly in resisting, and to bring him to a real and effectual change of mind, no one can now tell. But James ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... them in bathing and also wash their feet and give them food and I say to them only what is agreeable, leaving out what is unpleasant. I consider it to be my highest duty to do what is agreeable to them even though it be not strictly justifiable. And, O Brahmana, I am always diligent in attending on them. The two parents, the sacred fire, the soul and the spiritual preceptor, these five, O good Brahmana, are worthy of the highest reverence from a person who seeks prosperity. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... respect to the other, it brings back very strongly to my mind what I felt and still feel on the subject of Eden's conduct last year. I cannot think that we are either of us justifiable in withholding from persons in the King's Government any information upon the situation of Ireland; but that, on the contrary, the best mode of enforcing acquiescence in your wishes as to the Bill, would ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... Performances of others; especially when, besides the Reputation of the Author, the Play itself had an Intrinsic Merit; for we find it full of Humour, Wit, and Variety; the Conversation Gay and Genteel, the Love Soft and Pathetic, the incidents Natural, and Easy, and the Conduct of the Plot very Justifiable. So that I may reasonably impute its miscarriage to some Faction that was made against it, which indeed was very Evident on the First day, and more on the endeavours employed, to render the Profits of the Third, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... homely head, and stole a nap gratefully. For the twentieth time Vivian rehearsed her speeches, the one to Carver and the other to the insulted ranger. That is, he had every cause to be insulted, though her memory of the smile with which he had received her thrust would seem to dispute his justifiable indignation. Perhaps here in the mountains people were not so easily insulted. They, the mountains, were so big and generous that they ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... inserted by Prior Goldstone II., who, as already stated, built the Angel Steeple above the roof-line where it had been left by Chillenden. The arch has been called a disfigurement, and as it was not originally intended such an opinion may be justifiable, and yet the beauty of the reticulated stonework and the consummate skill which conceived the bold simplicity of design is so satisfying that it is scarcely possible to wish that it were absent. Beneath this flying arch appears the splendid western ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... it is a book of horrors. I started to mark the passages of peculiar tragedy and found that I was marking every page, and yet it is a justifiable book ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... that I have the courage—or effrontery—to write you once more, will you misconstrue my letter—and my motive? If I cannot be reconciled to what I hear of you—if what I hear pains, frightens me out of a justifiable silence which perhaps you might respect, will you respect my motive for breaking it the less? I do not know. But the silence is now broken, and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... laughed Ernshaw in reply, "and I think justifiable; a little kiddy was knocked down in Addison Road there by a butcher's cart, and I picked her up and took her to the hospital in Hammersmith Road, and this good fellow won't charge me more than a shilling for both journeys, although it is ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... Michael's reason seemed to her such a justifiable one that their secret might be ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Sam, in justifiable wrath, "as dat 'ar ole houn' Bose wuz de triflin'est meanest dog in de whole State ob ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... is not justifiable on the part of any nation to collect in behalf of private individuals financial claims against any American nation. Pearson, ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
... and so forth, that a searching investigation cannot be undertaken. In addition the preparation and staining of dried blood specimens is amongst the simplest and most convenient of the methods of clinical histology. In the interest of its wider dissemination, it will be justifiable to describe it ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... and justifiable indignation, Mrs. Darling at once sought Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Flight. "They had an awful scene, I'm sure," said she, "for his face was as black as a storm, and I knew how it would be. Some one's been blabbing and making matters infinitely worse than they really ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... The woman felt a justifiable sense of irritation. She was new to the city and thought she was taking the most direct method of replacing "same." Perhaps she should have known better, but she did not. Buying a key is not so simple as buying a box of matches and ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... quite abruptly, "Doctor, do you believe that any possible conditions could exist—that would make it justifiable for a man to show a woman's love-letter to ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... sentiment that induced you to act as you did. This declaration may seem strange to you. From what you knew of me, you acted rightly; but there may be a time, sir, when you will know me better: when the deeds which you abhor may seem not only pardonable, but justifiable. Enough of this at present. The object of my being now at your bedside is to request that what you do know of ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... they are convenient terms for geographical facts, especially since the Palaearctic region expresses the unity of Europe with the bulk of Asia. Sclater further brigaded the regions of the Old World as Palaeogaea and the two Americas as Neogaea, a fundamental mistake, justifiable to a certain extent only since he based his regions mainly upon the present distribution ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... before the Municipal Court and there promptly discharged. Governor Ford, whose righteous soul had been vexed to the limit of endurance by unmerited abuse from Mormon and Gentile alike from the beginning of this controversy, here indulges in a few expressions of justifiable irony. Of these ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... race), it goes on to assert that it is not a valid immediate cognition at all. Now, I am not concerned here to inquire into the logical value of this transition, but simply to point out that it is extra-scientific and distinctly philosophic. If logically justifiable, it is so because of some plainly philosophic assumption, as that made by Hume, namely, that all ideas not derived from impressions are to ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... our childhood is not wholly justifiable: so much a man may lay down without fear of public ribaldry; for although we shake our heads over the change, we are not unconscious of the manifold advantages of our new state. What we lose in generous impulse, we more than gain in the habit of generously watching others; and the capacity ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Callandar kindly. "Just hang on a few moments longer, dear Mrs. Sykes, and your non-existent but very justifiable curiosity shall ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... broad-minded man. Having experienced most things that fall to the lot of men, he did not believe in restraining her against her will in order that her conversion might be accomplished as many a zealous priest might have considered justifiable in her case. But should she manifest a desire to remain with him, she would be reared in the very lap of Mother Church. With this project in mind, it was with the greatest solicitude that he watched her recovery, and when she was informed that she ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... had been prettily fringed and embroidered by Parthenia, and even now clothed him. How he, Ingomar, had killed several "Injins," and was once nearly scalped himself. All this with that ingenious candor which is perfectly justifiable in a barbarian, but which a Greek might feel inclined to look upon as "blowing." Thinking of the wearied Parthenia, I began to consider for the first time that perhaps she had better married the old Greek. Then she would at least have always ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... unacquainted with the barbarous treatment their people receive when they have the misfortune to be your prisoners here in Europe, and that if your conduct towards us is not altered, it is not unlikely that severe reprisals may be thought justifiable from a necessity of putting some check to such abominable practices. For the sake of humanity it is to be wished that men would endeavor to alleviate the unavoidable miseries attending a state of war. It has been said ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Her strictures were justifiable; as long as the two below were in sight, and as often as they came round, they did not exchange word or look with each other. Schilsky frowned sulkily, and his loose-knitted body seemed to hang together more loosely than usual, while as for Louise—Maurice staring ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... individual Negroes, by fiendish assaults on white women, now and then rouse men to frenzy, but statistics show that only about a fifth of the lynchings of Negroes are because of the 'usual crime.' Burning at the stake is never justifiable under any circumstance, and it is undeniable that in race riots scenes of horror have been enacted that are a disgrace to American civilization. Such scenes are sadly out of place in a nation that proclaims itself the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... incredible number of women were reduced to the utmost distress. Some were delivered and spoiled by the rashness and ignorance of those who pretended to lay them. Children without number were, I might say, murdered by the same but a more justifiable ignorance: pretending they would save the mother, whatever became of the child; and many times both mother and child were lost in the same manner; and especially where the mother had the distemper, there nobody would come near them and both sometimes perished. Sometimes ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... which Mr. Hill took he was justifiable in feeling as he did. Everything about the little farmhouse reminded him of the woman he had loved. He never came to the house without a pang of painful loneliness at her absence. He felt himself incapable of caring for the children. She ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... that it would be improper not to mention what had happened to Mad. de Coulanges, because this would deprive her of an opportunity of judging and acting for herself in her own affairs. "This French gentleman has offered to carry letters, or to do her any service in his power; and we should not be justifiable in concealing this: the information may be false, but of that Mad. de Coulanges should at least have an opportunity of judging; she should see this botanist, and she will recollect whether what he says of the count, and his allowing him the use of his library, be true or false: from ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... by the clock. Luckily the cashier had not come yet. Mortimer's mind worked rapidly. He must make some excuse and get away; anything; he must even lie; if he saved the boy it would be justifiable. Why did not the cashier come, now that he was ready for him? Each minute seemed an age, with the honor of Allis's brother hanging in the balance. He would need money. He drew a check for a hundred dollars. A hasty inspection showed that he still had a trifle more than this amount to his ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... were the standard of right and wrong, and obedience to autocracy was better than the resistance which led to civil war or anarchy—the very things that induced men to establish sovereignty. Only when the safety of the state was threatened was rebellion justifiable. ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... ridding the world of the miscreants, he was upheld in the deed by the whole Delhi army, men in every respect better qualified to form a judgment in this particular than the sentimental beings at home who denounced with horror this perfectly justifiable act ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
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