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Bias   Listen
verb
Bias  v. t.  (past & past part. biased; pres. part. biasing)  To incline to one side; to give a particular direction to; to influence; to prejudice; to prepossess. "Me it had not biased in the one direction, nor should it have biased any just critic in the counter direction."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bias" Quotes from Famous Books



... opposite sides of the case. How far these men are from being like your hired advocates and prosecutors, determined to acquit or convict, may appear from the fact that unless both agree that the verdict found is just, the case is tried over, while anything like bias in the tone of either of the judges stating the case would be ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... applicable to the general concerns and dealings of mankind. Is it not plain, then, that we have been guilty of no violation of duty towards the weaker party? Our duty, Sir, was discharged not only without any unfriendly bias against Spain, but with tenderness, with preference, with partiality in her favour; and, while I respect (as I have already said) the honourable obstinacy of the Spanish character, so deeply am I impressed with the desirableness of peace for Spain, that, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... appearance recompensed us for our trouble. Lilly's was trimmed with folds of blue from mine, around collar, cuffs, pockets, and down the front band; while mine was pronounced a chef d'oeuvre, trimmed with bias folds of tiny red and black plaid. With their fresh colors and shining pearl buttons, they were really very pretty. We sent word that we would be happy to make as many as they chose for themselves or ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... spirit of old Roman fortitude, roused me to a more immediate resolution than any other form of solace. There are times when a splendour of exaggeration is the best foil to truth. The Roman's pride is the best corrective to the earthward bias of the diffident; by its excess of an opposite defect it drives us soonest into the mean of a simple and manly confidence. It is better for us first to repeat, "Dare to look up to God and say: Make use of me ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... It certainly sounds more conceited to say: "I am trying to be virtuous," than to say: "I am trying to do my duty." On the other hand, the admonition, "Be truthful," appears to leave one a little latitude. We take the truthful man, so to speak, in the lump. If he has a strong bias toward truth-speaking, and is felt to be reliable, on the whole, it is not certain that we should rob him of his title on the ground of one or two lapses for which weighty reasons could be urged. The admonition: "Speak the truth!" ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... that of Mr. Fox stands the name of John Forster among the first spontaneous appreciators of Mr. Browning's genius; and his admiration was, in its own way, the more valuable for the circumstances which precluded in it all possible, even unconscious, bias of personal interest or sympathy. But this belongs to a somewhat ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... possess a passion warm and unreasoning. It was strong enough to induce the leaning toward him which, on Carrie's part, we have seen. She might have been said to be imagining herself in love, when she was not. Women frequently do this. It flows from the fact that in each exists a bias toward affection, a craving for the pleasure of being loved. The longing to be shielded, bettered, sympathised with, is one of the attributes of the sex. This, coupled with sentiment and a natural tendency to emotion, often makes refusing ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... himself or on one of his children, relations or friends. Turgot gave his indult to his friend Abbe Morellet, who consequently obtained (in June 1788) the priory of Thimer, with 16,000 livres revenue and a handsome house.—Ibid., p.887. "The bias of the Pope, ecclesiastical or lay patrons, licensed parties, indultaires, graduates, the so frequent use of resignations, permutations, pensions, left to the bishop, who is now undisputed master of his diocesan appointments, but very few situations to bestow."—Grosley, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... relationship to another source of importance, viz. that from which are derived the accounts of the Four Hundred and the Thirty. The view taken of the character and course of these revolutions betrays a strong bias in favour of Theramenes, whose ideal is alleged to have been the [Greek: patrios politeia]. It has been maintained, on the one hand, that this last source (the authority followed in the accounts of the Four Hundred and the Thirty) is identical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... consideration his private bias in favour of Bob, and adds to it the reaction caused by this sudden unmasking of Mike, it is not surprising that the list Burgess made out that night before he went to bed differed in an important respect from the one he had intended to write ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... business to do; besides, their decisions necessarily aggrieved one party or the other and sometimes caused feuds and bad feelings, and were always liable to be suspected of being tinged with partiality; whereas the judges being strangers in the district would give their decisions without bias or favour. ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... dear Chamisso, is merely to submit myself to thy judgment, not to endeavor to bias it. I have long passed the severest sentence on myself, for I have nourished the tormenting worm in my heart. It hovered during this solemn moment of my life incessantly before my soul, and I could only lift ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... a certain pomp and elevation. Accordingly, the bias of the former is toward over-intensity, of the latter toward over-diffuseness. Shakespeare's temptation is to push a willing metaphor beyond its strength, to make a passion over-inform its tenement of words; ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... type, but a well-known person who, until recently, conducted one of the most influential journals in Norway. The play is an act of retribution, and a deserved one. But its weaknesses, which it is vain to disguise, are also explained by the author's personal bias—the desire to wreak vengeance ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... more free and independent, he would not be haunted by the bugbear of losing his position by temporarily displeasing his political friends, he could give his undivided attention, as he cannot do now, to federal affairs, and work without bias or fear, and without interruption, for the welfare of his nation. He would have more chance of really doing something for his country which was worth while. A further advantage is that the country would not be so frequently troubled with the turmoil and excitement arising from the presidential ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... form of separate stories, "Billy's Hut," "The Colonel's Lady" and others. The purpose of this book was to determine, as closely as possible, the real values, whatever those might be, of the work actually accomplished by the Overseas Y, and to lay the plain truth without bias or color, before ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... thus evinced. The work entitled Voyage du Duc du Chatelet en Portugal, although usually quoted under this title, was really written by M. Comartin, a royalist of La Vendee, and written during the French Revolution. If it had any bias at all, that bias was all in favor of Portugal, yet this is his description of her people: "Il est, je pense, peu de peuple plus laid que celui de Portugal. Il est petit, basane, mal conforme. L'interieur repond, en general, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... the field of action of the human will. Every act of choice involves a special relation between the ego and the conditions before it. But no man knows what forces are at work in the determination of his ego. The bias which decides his choice between two or more motives may come from some unsuspected ancestral source, of which he knows nothing at all. He is automatic in virtue of that hidden spring of reflex action, all the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... admitted the judge, subsiding, "when I radically disagreed with my late client; when I opposed her strongly. But when she willed her whole estate to you, Miss Smith, instead of to Nicholas Jelnik, I heartily approved. Understand, I have no personal bias, no animosity against this young man; but he is, I am told, more or less of an artist, and one might as well leave an estate to an anarchist at once. I have expressed this opinion to the town at large, and I seldom express my opinion publicly," ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... evidence." Mr. Flick was by this time quite sure that Sir William was right, in his opinion,—though perhaps wrong in declaring it,—having been corroborated in his own belief by the reflex of it on a mind more powerful than his own. "Thinking as I do," continued Sir William,—"with a natural bias towards my own client,—what will a jury think, who will have no such bias? If they are cousins,—distant cousins,—why should they not marry and be happy, one bringing the title, and the other the wealth? There could be no ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... cause of incalculable losses. Nor is it alone in the matter of circulating false information that these news venders are at fault. The habit of retailing 'points' in the interest of cliques, the volunteering of advice as to what people should buy and what they should sell, the strong speculative bias that runs through their editorial opinions, these things appear to most people a revolting abuse of the ...
— Successful Stock Speculation • John James Butler

... tablespoonfuls of flour. Mix all well together and let it stand an hour or more. Sprinkle a pastry board thickly with flour, turn the mixture out from the bowl, cut off pieces of it and roll with the hands until about an inch and a half thick, cut in pieces about two inches long, the ends bias. Have a saucepan ready with boiling water, drop the pieces into this without crowding and cook until they float—about five minutes—take them out with a skimmer. Roll in dried bread crumbs, fry brown on both sides in butter, and serve hot with ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight

... incapable and indisposed to it. You ask, why passions were implanted in human nature? The reply is, to extend the means of our happiness, by rendering us more capable of glorifying and enjoying God. If they have acquired a sinful bias, the obligation to devote them to their original purpose is by no means diminished: But their great Author, to whom we are responsible for every faculty, requires that we should oppose their perverse propensities, earnestly repent of the irregularities produced ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... Birrell. Borrow was shy, angular, eccentric, rustic in accent and in locution, but with a charm for me, at least, that was irresistible. Hake was polished, easy and urbane in everything, and, although not without prejudice and bias, ready to shine ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... their families; wherefore the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so and the phrase PARENT or MOTHER COUNTRY hath been jesuitically adopted by the king and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from EVERY PART of Europe. Hither have they fled, not ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine

... forces not adequately known by the historians of the previous generation. Unquestionably each investigator and writer is influenced by the times in which he lives and while this fact exposes the historian to a bias, at the same time it affords him new instruments and new insight for dealing ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... e.g. xxxiii. 10, 8, 'si Valerio qui credat, omnium rerum immodice numerum augenti'; xxxix. 43, 1, 'Valerius Antias, ut qui nec orationem Catonis legisset et fabulae tantum sine auctore editae credidisset.' He also recognizes the bias of Licinius Macer: vii. 9, 5, 'quaesita ea propriae familiae laus leviorem auctorem Licinium facit.' For the untrustworthiness of family records, cf. viii. 40, 4, 'vitiatam memoriam funebribus laudibus reor falsisque ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... Virginia, to organize the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, provided for by the Legislature of the "Old Dominion." He remained here three years and endeared himself to the pupils of the new school and to the citizens of Petersburg, irrespective of race, political bias or denominational creeds. He then returned to Washington and from that time until the present he has been teaching in ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... his political career. His birth in 1782 just after the Revolution, and in South Carolina, gave him the opportunity to share in the victory that the West and the far South won over the Virginians, headed by Madison. His training at Yale gave a nationalistic bias to his early career, and determined that search for the via media between consolidation and anarchy which resulted in the doctrine of nullification. His service in Congress and as Secretary of War under Monroe gave him a practical training in affairs that was not without influence in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... light, yet, if there is any imperfection in the sight, or if the eye is not directed towards it, it will not be distinctly seen. And though a demonstration be never so well grounded and fairly proposed, yet, if there is withal a stain of prejudice, or a wrong bias on the understanding, can it be expected on a sudden to perceive clearly, and adhere firmly to the truth? No; there is need of time and pains: the attention must be awakened and detained by a frequent repetition of the same thing placed oft in ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley

... His bias, the precise nature of his propaganda, are frankly exposed. He would have the State and European society, especially the society of England, revived by a return to the profession and the practice of his own faith. In Prussia also historians compose their works with such a definite ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... The bias was given by the recollection of a message from his father to Frampton. It would be less trouble to go home than to write, and, besides, Aunt Catharine was alone. She was his unfailing friend, and it would be a great treat ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... flashes the brightly costumed and pleasure-loving courtier, Thomas Morton. An agent of Gorges, Morton with thirty followers floated into Wessagusset to found a Royalist and Episcopalian settlement. This Episcopalian bias was quite enough to account for Bradford's disparaging description of him as a "kind of petie-fogie of Furnifells Inn," and explains why the early historians never made any fuller or more favorable ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... knowledge was accurate and profound. Most men who have attained to distinguished excellence, have done so by confining themselves to a single department—frequently being led to the choice by a strong, original bias. Even when this is not the case, there is some class of objects or pursuits, towards which a particular inclination is manifested; one loves facts, and devotes himself to observations and experiments; another loves principles ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... conviction. The following exquisite tribute by Horace to his worth is conclusive evidence how often and how deeply he had occasion to be grateful, not only for the affectionate care of this admirable father, but also for the bias and strength which that father's character had given to his own. It has a further interest, as occurring in a poem addressed to Maecenas, a man of ancient family and vast wealth, in the early days of ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... should go to Paris with an order which declares me suspected. It will naturally be presumed that the representatives did not draw up this decree without accurate information, and I shall be judged with the bias which a ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... ceaseless vitality, that is true. The world as it now is cannot grow old. But a nation may grow old, may decay, and die. And the youth of a nation—its young people—carry with them its destinies. If there is in these more of wilfulness, of selfishness, of slothful and luxurious bias—less of energy, of gentleness, of kindness, of manliness, of purity—than there was in those who were young twenty—thirty years ago, then decrepitude is growing upon the nation. It is sinking. The sap of its ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright

... which his hand was visible throughout, has been subjected to some degree of scrutiny. A man's words and deeds, although arising only on one occasion, may supply an effectual test of his real self. There could, for instance, be hardly any doubt regarding the leading bias of his disposition, if a supremely able ruler, that he may ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... ideal way. The abuses from which they suffered are no more; the methods which were unjust have been abandoned; the ignorance of the ruler has been dispelled; in place of despotism there is autonomy; justice rules where ignorance and bias sat; liberty where there was interference; protection for oppression; progress and civilization have increased as in no other epoch; and the nation and Government from which they severed themselves have taken their place in the very forefront of all. But ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... one who examines the collected pedigrees of families marked by feeble-mindedness, can deny that it does appear at first sight to behave as a unit character, inherited in the typical Mendelian fashion. The psychologist H. H. Goddard, who started out with a strong bias against believing that such a complex trait could even behave as a unit character, thought himself forced by the tabulation of his cases to adopt the conclusion that it does behave as a unit character. And other eugenists have not hesitated to affirm, mainly on the strength of Dr. Goddard's researches, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... think women don't need to know much beside housekeeping and sewing. I just hate to hear about ruffles cut on the straight or bias, and I couldn't tell what Dacca muslin, or jaconet, or dimity was to save myself. And eyelet work and French knots and run lace—that's what the big girls who come to see Polly talk about. But I like books, and studies, and different countries. I'd like to travel. But I don't know that ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... institutions and policies. Without this, there can be no change, no progress. But intelligent criticism implies scientific criticism, that is, criticism based upon adequate scientific knowledge and without personal bias. This means the scientific study of institutions and social organization. If the American people are to perfect their institutions, they must maintain and develop their moral freedom; and to maintain true moral freedom, they must encourage ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... beings of like passions with himself, but vastly transcending him in power. Thus the notion of causality—the assumption that natural things did not come of themselves, but had unseen antecedents—lay at the root of even the savage's interpretation of Nature. Out of this bias of the human mind to seek for the causes of ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... J. Hill", by Joseph Gilpin Pyle (1916), which also recounts at length the rise and development of the Great Northern Railway system. But in these volumes, as in many biographies of great men, the authors often betray a bias and misrepresent facts vital to an understanding of the development of both of these railroad systems. A recent volume entitled the "Life Story of J. P. Morgan", by Carl Hovey, although extremely laudatory and therefore in many ways misleading, contains valuable ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody

... misrepresentation do, at the time, induce people to form their judgment, to say the best, harshly, and but too often, incorrectly. It is for posterity to calmly weigh the evidence handed down, and to examine into the merits of a case divested of party bias. Actuated by these feelings, we do not hesitate to assert, that, in the point at question, Mr Vanslyperken had great cause for being displeased; and that the conduct of Moggy Salisbury, in cutting off the tail of Snarleyyow was, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... of Mr. ELIAS Are so laudably free from all bias That their moderate strain Has given much pain To the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various

... So long as Alexander remained true to liberal principles himself, there was some hope that he might abolish serfdom throughout his dominions. He abhorred the "peculiar institution" of his empire with all the force of a mind that certainly was generous, and which had a strong bias in the direction of justice. Once he made a solemn religious vow that he would abolish it. It is probable that he would have made an attempt at complete emancipation, if the circumstances of his time and his country had enabled him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... not apt to bias judgment? and whether traders only are to be consulted about trade, or ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... life." He spoke bitterly, and leaned his face upon his hands; and, between his fingers, the tears were seen slowly trickling. In truth, he had no taste or inclination for the trade to which he was forced. If the bias of his own mind had been consulted, he might have been contented in some employment ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... followed his wife to the gate. On his way to his office, he turned and looked after her with a frown as she rattled her team along the uneven road. She was a vain and covetous woman with a bias towards intrigue, but there had been times since her marriage when she despised herself, and as a natural consequence blamed her husband. Sometimes she hated Thurston, also, though more often she was sensible of vague regrets, and grew morbid thinking of what might ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... small assault of words. When Dennis attacked Addison's "Cato," Pope thought himself free to strike; but Addison took occasion to express, through Steele, a serious regret that he had done so. True criticism may be affected, as Addison's was, by some bias in the canons of taste prevalent in the writer's time, but, as Addison's did in the Chevy-Chase papers, it will dissent from prevalent misapplications of them, and it can never associate perception of the purest truth and beauty with ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... gratitude to a few people who endeavoured to serve you, and whose politics were never your concern. If you are a Whig, as I rather hope, and as I think your principles and mine (as brother poets) had ever a bias to the side of liberty, I know you will be an honest man and an inoffensive one. Upon the whole, I know you are incapable of being so much of either party as to be good for nothing. Therefore, once more, whatever you are or in whatever state you ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... gave utterance to their opinions; journals avowed themselves pro-Ally, large subscriptions were raised in many sections for the relief of the European sufferers, particularly Belgium, and a number of young men joined the Entente armies. In Brazil, which was always supposed to have a German bias on account of her large German colonies, some of the foremost publicists and writers voluntarily formed the "Liga pelos Alliados" (League in favor of the Allies) with the famous orator, Ruy Barbosa, at its head, and the prince of Brazilian poets, Olavo Bilac, as one of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... more productive channels. I can see what a great influence such reports would have if they came from Christian laymen. We have learned to expect stories of complete failure when the ordinary traveler comes back; and maybe the missionaries have their bias too. But business men with Christian ideals—that would ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... who had come into the possession of the full truth not so much from hatred of error as from love of truth. Brownson's soul was intensely faithful to its personal convictions, faithful unto heroism—for that is the temper of men who seek the whole truth free from cowardice, or narrowness, or bias. He has admitted that the effect of his intercourse with the bishop was not fortunate. He confesses that he forced him to adopt a line of public controversy foreign to his genius, and one which had not brought him into the Church, and perhaps ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... either an artificial entity or one of the many varieties of nature spirits that is meant, for the elemental kingdoms proper do not admit of any such conceptions as good and evil, though there is undoubtedly a sort of bias or tendency permeating nearly all their subdivisions which operates to render them rather hostile than friendly towards man, as every neophyte knows, for in most cases his very first impression of the astral plane is of the presence all around him of vast hosts of Protean spectres who advance upon ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... worth while don't run after 'respectable working girls'; they leave that to things who wear 'Modish Men's Clothing'—with braided cuffs and pockets slashed on the bias!—and stand smirking on corners we have to pass going home. Do you think I'd do my hair becomingly, and—and all ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... know if Anthony were really dead. She had not yet missed the dagger from her pocket; she had not yet even thought of it. At the sight of Anthony lying dead, her nature had rebounded from its new bias of resentment and hatred to the old sweet habit of love. The earliest and the longest has still the mastery over us; and the only past that linked itself with those glazed unconscious eyes, was the past when they beamed on her with tenderness. She forgot the interval of wrong ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... of bringing political influence to bear upon the question, but who would prefer voting for such anti-slavery candidates, as might be nominated by either of the two great parties already existing, or in the absence of any such candidate would decline voting at all. My own bias was in favor of this course, since it was the one pursued in Great Britain, and which had been so eminently successful in the general election of 1833. I became convinced, however, that the "third party" has strong reasons in its favor, and that in various ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... Cobbett, the political writer, who resided for some years at Botley, a village a few miles distant from Itchen. Anne might be about two or three and twenty years of age when she came to us; and a very notable, industrious servant she was, and remarked, moreover, as possessing a strong religious bias. Her features, everybody agreed, were comely and intelligent. But that advantage in the matrimonial market was more than neutralised by her unfortunate figure, which, owing, as we understood, to a fall in her childhood, was hopelessly deformed, though still strongly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... power that it triumphs over its world and delights us. Burns may triumph over his world, often he does triumph over his world, but let us observe how and where. Burns is the first case we have had where the bias of the personal estimate tends to mislead; let us look at him ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... popularly designated as "Common Sense" comprehends, according to the modern point of view, the sound judgment of mankind when reflecting upon problems of truth and conduct without bias from logical subtleties or selfish interests. It is one of Nature's priceless gifts; an income in itself, it is as valuable as its ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi

... Person of singular Humanity and Justice. Rhynsault, with no other real Quality than Courage, had Dissimulation enough to pass upon his generous and unsuspicious Master for a Person of blunt Honesty and Fidelity, without any Vice that could bias him from the Execution of Justice. His Highness prepossessed to his Advantage, upon the Decease of the Governour of his chief Town of Zealand, gave Rhynsault that Command. He was not long seated in that Government, before he cast his Eyes ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... counsel of Miss Anthony." At this meeting the committee reported a set of resolutions beginning, "We believe in God," etc., when she at once protested on the ground that "the woman suffrage platform must be kept free from all theological bias, so that unbelievers as well as evangelical Christians can stand ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... any practical knowledge on the subject of food production. But Kropotkin is an exception. His two books, "The Conquest of Bread'' and "Fields, Factories and Workshops,'' are very full of detailed information, and, even making great allowances for an optimistic bias, I do not think it can be denied that they demonstrate possibilities in which few of ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... that before in English poetry; it has the bizarrerie of a new thing in beauty. How far it is really beautiful how can I tell? How can I discount the "personal bias"? Only I know that it ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... a vendetta, the family quarrel with Henry VII., and earned the title of Henry's Juno by harassing him as vindictively as the Queen of Heaven vexed the pious AEneas. Other rulers, with no Yorkist bias, were slow to recognise the parvenu king and quick to profit by his difficulties. Pretenders to their rivals' thrones were useful pawns on the royal chess-board; and though the princes of Europe had no reason to desire a Yorkist restoration, they thought that a little judicious ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... idolize intellect. Brilliancy is placed before goodness and intellectual dexterity above fidelity. Intellect walks the earth a crowned king, while affection and sentiment toil as bond slaves. Doubtless our scholars, with the natural bias for their own class, are largely responsible for this worship of intellectuality. When the historian calls the roll of earth's favorite sons he causes these immortals to stand forth an army of great thinkers, including philosophers, scientists, poets, jurists, generals. The great ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... Bias! I shall never forget them, for there was such good grace and charm about everything. When Victor Hugo arrived, everything brightened up. His two satellites, Auguste Vacquerie and Paul Meurice, scarcely ever left him, and when the Master was absent they kept ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... one could guess what was going on across the wide dark space called No Man's Land. The captain sent anxious messages to other officers, and the men at the listening posts had no clue to give. It was raining and a chill bias sleet that cut like knives was driving from the northeast. Water trickled into the dugouts, and sopped through the trenches, and the men shuddered their way along dark passages and waited. Only scattered artillery fire lit up the heavens here and there. It was a night when ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... Rohilla war and with the trial of Nuncomar, now better known as Nand Kumar. The genius of Burke and the genius of Macaulay have served not merely to intensify the feeling against Hastings, but in some degree to form the judgments and bias the opinions of later writers. But it is only due to the memory of a great man to remember that both in the case of the Rohilla war and in the case of Nand Kumar there were two sides to the question, and that Hastings's side has not always been investigated with the care it deserves. The adversary ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... of the liquor coursed through his inert blood; "I, too, would be loth to break the gallows' back! For fear of halters, we must alter our way of living; we must live close, Bardolph, till the wars make us Croesuses or food for crows. And if Hal but hold to his bias, there will be wars: I will eat a piece of my sword, if he have not need of it shortly. Ah, go thy ways, tall Jack; there live not three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat and grows old. We must live close, Bardolph; we must forswear drinking and wenching! ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... imagination, do we deal with identically similar units, and with absolutely commensurable quantities. In the real world it is reasonable to suppose we deal at most with practically similar units and practically commensurable quantities. But there is a strong bias, a sort of labour-saving bias in the normal human mind to ignore this, and not only to speak but to think of a thousand bricks or a thousand sheep or a thousand sociologists as though they were all absolutely true to sample. If it ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... you, impressed me favourably. It was not that of a guilty man. But I could not let an opinion bias me, for, in spite of everything, you might still have been guilty. There was a great possibility that ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... the scenes amid which they live. If not personally taking an active part in the conduct of public affairs, they have friends who are, and in whose success or failure their own welfare is in some way bound up. The bias which interest always gives will necessarily attach to their judgment of current events, and the leading actors by whom these events are controlled. Cotemporaneous history, for this reason, will always be found partisan history—not entitled to, and, if intelligently ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Mayberry, as she took the apron from Susie and started across the Road on her rescue mission, "a woman have got to cut her conscience kinder bias in the dealing with children. If they're stuffed full of food and kindness they will mostly forget to be bad, and oughtent to be made to remember they CAN be by being punished too long. Now, sonny, I'll get you fixed up so stylish with these ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... either counsel for the state or for the defendant, or by any other party or, source directly or indirectly interested in this inquisition. You are the court's commission, and you must enter upon your duties free from any bias or prejudice, if any there be. You should assume your duties, and I know you will, with the highest motives in seeking the truth, and then pronounce your judgment without regard to the effect it may have upon the state or upon the defendant; in other words, ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey

... Harry and the Old Judge," for the purpose of making a pretty consistent tale,—consistent with itself, but not with the truth of history,—to amuse children in their earliest days, at the risk of misleading them, and giving them a wrong bias through their lives. ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... Wood must have failed very much in point of dexterity, if he had not taken care to provide a sufficient quantity of such halfpence as would bear the trial; which he was well able to do, although "they were taken out of several parcels." Since it is now plain, that the bias of favour hath been wholly on ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... short, misgives me less, when I resolve this way, than when I think of the other: and in so strong and involuntary a bias, the heart is, as I may say, conscience. And well cautions the wise man: 'Let the counsel of thine own heart stand; for there is no man more faithful to thee than it: for a man's mind is sometimes wont ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... things which had common-sense in them, and not about learning! Celia had those light young feminine tastes which grave and weatherworn gentlemen sometimes prefer in a wife; but happily Mr. Casaubon's bias had been different, for he would have had no chance ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy—if they are not in the dependence of absolute beggary, in the name of common sense, are they not equals? And if the bias, the instinctive bias of their souls run the same way, why ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... him through the same studies which I had pursued under the auspices of our clergyman, and was secretly pleased to find, not only that he was singularly quick in imbibing my instructions, but displayed a strong natural taste for those investigations towards which I had shown so marked a bias. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... and vigour were equally diffused through the whole. They were men of letters. Their minds were by nature and by exercise well fashioned for speculative pursuits. It was by circumstances, rather than by any strong bias of inclination, that they were led to take a prominent part in active life. In active life, however, no men could be more perfectly free from the faults of mere theorists and pedants. No men observed more accurately ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... hundred-pound weight, and up it goes as steadily as if the laws of gravitation had suddenly shifted their course, and worked upward instead of down. Lest, however, they should suddenly resume their original bias, let us cross to the dressing-room, and, while you are assuming flannel shirt or complete gymnastic suit, as you may prefer, let us consider the merits of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... reason I preferred the legal profession it would be hard to say. Neither mental bias nor interest gained by any searching examination of the science to which I wished to devote myself, turned the scale. I actually gave less thought to my profession and my whole mental and external life than I should have bestowed upon the choice ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... dictate to him whatever it was they wanted the people of the United States to believe, for when they talked to Keating they talked to many millions of readers. Keating, in turn, wrote out what they had said to him and transmitted it, without color or bias, to the clearinghouse of the Consolidated Press. His "stories," as all newspaper writings are called by men who write them, were as picturesque reading as the quotations of a stock- ticker. The personal equation appeared no more ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... professional philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing to sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion with their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass. I may appeal to experience during the present contest for a verification of these conjectures. But if they be not certain in event, are they not possible? are ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or take no notice of it. I was not conscious of the slightest mysterious bias, influence, or attraction, one way or other. Of that I am as strictly sure as of every other statement that I make here. Ultimately I decided, as a break in the monotony of my life, that I ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens

... Munro (N.Y.) in 1878 and reprinted many times in the U.S. This is a different translation from that of Ellen E. Frewer who translated the book for Sampson and Low in London entitled Dick Sands, the Boy Captain. American translations were often free of the religious and colonial bias inserted by the English translators of ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... the password in the mechanics of patch-budding. In the first place, the knives should be of the finest quality so that they will hold a clean, fine edge. All cuts should be made with accuracy and precision, so that there are no rough edges and bias corners. The number of living buds will, under ordinary circumstances, be in exact proportion to the accuracy with which the bud patch fits the place made for it on the stock. The experienced pecan budder as he takes the bud off the stick can tell whether or not they will grow. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various

... three-fourths of it could, by no human means, raise out of the slough of inanity to their own intellectual level, it was particularly strange, and it was even particularly affecting, to see this crowd of earnest faces, whose honesty in the main no competent observer free from bias could doubt, so agitated ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... uncommon contingency in this land of mist and fog—he takes down a likely-looking bottle from the shelf, and tries a dose of the contents on this Mrs. Goochy—and awaits results. If nothing untoward transpires, he then passes the medicine on to the patient. Mrs. Goochy has a strong acquisitive bias, and raises no objections to this vicarious proceeding. She argues: "I doesn't need 'un now, but there be's no tellin'. I may need 'un when ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... characters of mankind, my curiosity is quite satisfied: I have done with the science of men, and must now endeavour to amuse myself with the novelty of things. I am, at present, by a violent effort of the mind, forced from my natural bias; but this power ceasing to act, I shall return to my solitude with redoubled velocity. Every thing I see, and hear, and feel, in this great reservoir of folly, knavery, and sophistication, contributes to inhance the value of a country life, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... history of England; or a history of any country. All history was conducted on ordinary morality: with his extraordinary morality he is certain to read it all askew. Thus Carlyle tries to write of the Middle Ages with a bias against humility and mercy; that is, with a bias against the whole theoretic morality of the Middle Ages. The result is that he turns into a mere turmoil of arrogant German savages what was really the most complete and logical, ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... order, it represents, on the contrary, the rural population that, hide-bound in the old order, seeks to see itself, together with its allotments, saved and favored by the ghost of the Empire; it represents, not the intelligence, but the superstition of the farmer; not his judgment, but his bias; not his future, but his past; not his modern Cevennes; [7 The Cevennes were the theater of the most numerous revolutionary uprisings of the farmer class.] but his modern Vendee. [8 La Vendee was ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... readers of the mother country are William James and Sir Charles Lucas. James was an industrious naval historian; but he was quite as anti-American as the earlier American writers were anti-British. Owing to this perverting bias his two books, the Naval and the Military Occurrences of the late War between Great Britain and the United States, are not to be relied upon. Their appendices, however, give a great many documents which are of much assistance in studying the real history of the war. James wrote only ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... Goethe, compared with those against him, are in the proportion, as we reckon them, both as to the number and value, of perhaps a hundred to one. We take in, not Germany alone, but France and Italy; not the Schlegels and Schellings, but the Manzonis and De Staels. The bias of originality, therefore, may lie to the side of censure; and whoever among us shall step forward, with such knowledge as our common critics have of Goethe, to enlighten the European public, by contradiction in this matter, displays a heroism, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... in her modest obscurity, was—and, believe me, I do not speak from bias—one of the most perfect women to be found in France. Had she desired or been compelled to make herself known to the world, she would assuredly have been famous and extolled beyond all her sex. But she found her happiness in her ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... George. "Nay, nay, never look down or shake your head—the king has not refused your Supplication, for he has not seen it—you ask but justice, and that his place obliges him to give to his subjects—ay, my lord, and I will say that his natural temper doth in this hold bias with ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... Gladstone a Vice-President. This Society has trained some hair-dressers, clerks, glass engravers, book-keepers, and telegraph operators, but its greatest service consists in the constant issue of tracts, to bias developing public opinion. Such an association should be started in New York. I should have been glad to inaugurate in Boston, during the last six years, several important industrial movements. The war checked ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Dysart, fixing a cold gaze on him. It is so cold, so distinctly hostile, that Beauclerk grows uncomfortable beneath it. When uncomfortable his natural bias leads him towards ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... in overcoming self you will begin to see things in their right relations. He who is swayed by any passion, prejudice, like or dislike, adjusts everything to that particular bias, and sees only his own delusions. He who is absolutely free from all passion, prejudice, preference, and partiality, sees himself as he is; sees others as they are; sees all things in their proper proportions and right relations. Having nothing ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen

... days a jury of twelve hard-faced citizens was sworn who asserted that they had no bias against us and could give us a fair trial and the benefit of every reasonable doubt. Fair trial, indeed! We were convicted before the first witness was sworn! Convicted by the press, the public, ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... am indeed as far as you may suppose from assuming that what you speak to me of as the 'political' bias is the only ground on which the work of our corps for the Allies should appeal to the American public. Political, I confess, has become for me in all this a loose and question-begging term, but if we must resign ourselves to it as explaining some people's indifference, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... imagine a novel with which I could sympathise deeply, based upon the theme of England's regeneration by means of the right type of Tory squire, but it would be a novel with a more credible hero and conceived in a less petty spirit of party bias than Mr. H. N. DICKINSON has given us in The Business of a Gentleman (HEINEMANN). For, in the first place, Sir Robert Wilton, who figured of course in Keddy and Sir Guy and Lady Rannard—he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various

... Despensers, father and son, both named Hugh. The elder Despenser, then nearly sixty years of age, had grown grey in the service of Edward I. A baron of competent estate, he inherited from his father, the justiciar who fell at Evesham, an hereditary bias towards the constitutional tradition, but he looked to the monarch or to the popular estates, rather than to the baronage, as the best embodiment of his ideals. Ambitious and not over-scrupulous, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... town, was the symptoms of approaching spring and verdure. Who need think of the torrents of rain which must precede it? The little episode with Jack outside the door afforded her secret entertainment, and although she did not look upon it as a bona-fide proposal, that did not bias her intention of relating the anecdote for Bertie's delectation. It might be just as well to let him see if he couldn't speak out, others could, and if he were jealous, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... St Cyr, in preparation for their solemn office. They were of marked but very contrasted characters. The elder inherited the strong will and dominant energy of her race. As yet, and for some time afterwards, without any religious bias, she contemplated her prospects with a quiet and proud consciousness of responsibility. The younger sister was of a softer and more submissive nature. She shrank from her high position, saying that an abbess had to answer to God for the souls of her nuns, and she was sure that she would have ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... authority for her history. For English affairs we are reduced to the meagre accounts of William of Worcester, of the Continuator of the Crowland Chronicle, and of Fabyan. Fabyan is a London alderman with a strong bias in favour of the House of Lancaster, and his work is useful for London only. The Continuator is one of the best of his class; and though connected with the house of York, the date of his work, which appeared soon after Bosworth Field, makes him fairly impartial; but he is sketchy ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... up with our kind: and so men train the young, guiding them on their course by the rudders of Pleasure and Pain. And to like and dislike what one ought is judged to be most important for the formation of good moral character: because these feelings extend all one's life through, giving a bias towards and exerting an influence on the side of Virtue and Happiness, since men choose what is pleasant and avoid ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... Cambridge Mr. Bertie Tremaine was at first the solitary pupil of Bentham, whose principles he was prepared to carry to their extreme consequences, but being a man of energy and in possession of a good estate, he soon found followers, for the sympathies of youth are quick, and, even with an original bias, it is essentially mimetic. When Mr. Bertie Tremaine left the university he found in the miscellaneous elements of the London Union many of his former companions of school and college, and from them, and the new world to which he was introduced, it delighted ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... an unwilling witness of some wicked manifestation of that power which was temporarily committed to the invisibles. In both of these expectations, however, he was fated to be disappointed Notwithstanding the strong spiritual bias of the opinions of the credulous sentinel, there was too much of the dross of temporal things in his composition, to elevate him altogether above the weakness of humanity. A mind so encumbered began to weary with its own contemplations; and, as it grew feeble with its extraordinary efforts, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... the editorial and reportorial functions of a newspaper are apt to be much less clearly defined in the United States than in England. The English reporter, as a rule, confines himself strictly to his report, which is made without bias. A Conservative speech is as accurately (though perhaps not as lengthily) reported in a Liberal paper as in one of its own colour. All comment or criticism is reserved for the editorial columns. This is ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... Queen and Court. His description is so vivid that one is tempted to believe it to be history: it is that, and not mere fiction, for it is based on a careful study of facts, and, allowance made for the writer's strong Royalist bias, it is true ethically or in spirit, that highest truth which accurate and laborious historians ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... the palm of beauty over the saint. The power of the music of good, as Wagner lets us see, lies just in the fact that it is good; the final victory of the saint in the fact that she is a saint, and that from a mysterious eternal bias of human nature man finally must prefer good. He has a soul, he cannot help himself; that, as we have seen, is the secret reason why Venus cannot forever completely content him, why the pale hand of the saint, beckoning him at the end of a penitential ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... its great moments of dramatic activity can show us these facts and supplement the bias of the present moment toward but one way of support, I shall appeal to it to make our ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various

... Hall, had been neglected, no other might have occurred. The man whose name is recorded on high stands in no need of human praise; yet survivors have a debt to pay, and whilst I disclaim every undue bias on my mind in estimating the character of one who so ennobled human nature, none can feel surprise that I should take a favorable retrospect of Mr. H. after an intercourse and friendship of more than forty years. Inadequate ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... advocates.[2-93] These arguments may not have swayed Hastie, but in the end he dropped the idea of a regular quota system, judging it unworkable in the case of the officer candidate schools. He concluded that many commanders approached the selection of officer candidates with a bias against the Negro, and he recommended that a directive or confidential memorandum be sent to commanders charged with the selection of officer candidates informing them that a certain minimum percentage of black candidates was to be chosen. Hastie's ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... Froude often in error; often, as I think, misunderstanding, misquoting, omitting and even adding, but I have never once seen reason to suspect him of conscious misrepresentation, of knowingly giving a false impression. ... It is easy to show that Mr. Froude erred contrary to his bias on occasion, and it must never be forgotten that he did what no consciously dishonest historian could possibly do. He deposited at the British Museum copies, in the original Spanish, of the documents, very ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... BIAS, one of the seven wise men of Greece, born at Priene, in Ionia; lived in the 6th century B.C.; many wise sayings are ascribed to him; was distinguished for his indifference to possessions, which moth and rust can corrupt, and thieves break through ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... of Clive, who, it must be remembered, started life as a civilian "writer" in the East India Company's service. Dupleix encountered his first check by Clive's dashing capture of Arcot in 1751. From that time the fortunes of war inclined with ever-increasing bias to the British side, and the decisive battle of Plassey in 1757 (three years after Dupleix's return to France) was a death-blow to the French aspirations to become ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... sociable, and intensely religious in their disposition. Their excellent social qualities make them the best of companions. They are musical, humorous and generous to a fault. Coupled with their strong religious bias, these attractive qualities will in time lift them to the highest possible grade in our dwarfed civilization, where the fittest does not always survive; the drossiest, flimsiest, most selfish and superficial often occupying the high places, social and political. ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... myself; and I found the other day from Rev. Peter Jones that the subject is engaging the attention of different parties on your side of the water. Could you not open a discussion on this question in your periodicals? But it should be free from party bias, from angry passions, from national views and partialities; indeed, the discussion of such a subject requires the highest reason, philosophy and statesmanship. If a calm head and pure patriot could be found amongst you to argue such a point, it would be ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... The value of his evidence, as to the condition and prospects of that colony, must depend, not upon any singular acuteness of observation or depth of reflection, but upon his freedom from partizan bias, and his consequent ability to perceive a certain degree of truth, and inclination to express it frankly. A northern man, but not unacquainted with the slave institutions of our own and other countries—neither an Abolitionist nor a Colonizationist—without prejudice, as without prepossession—he ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... fingers, the bloodstained shirt, the dark night resounding with the shout 'Parricide!' and the old man falling with a broken head. And then the mass of phrases, statements, gestures, shouts! Oh! this has so much influence, it can so bias the mind; but, gentlemen of the jury, can it bias your minds? Remember, you have been given absolute power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... travel without a servant, and chance kindly provided me with one. I was sitting with Madame Rufin, when a young Lorrainer came in; like Bias, he bore all his fortune with him, but, in his case, it was carried under his arm. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... round, it may be said that Christ Church is a good substantial building, but is rather too plain and weighs too much for its size; that its minister is a mildly-toned, well-educated, devout gentleman, with no cant in him, with a tender bias to the side of gentility, and born to be luckier than three-fourths of the sons of Wesleyan parsons; that its congregation is influential, rose-coloured, good-looking, numerous, thinks that everybody is not composed exactly of the same materials, believes that familiarity is a flower ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... was chiefly in the hands of a lout of nineteen, who wore ready-made clothes and taught despicably. The head-master and proprietor taught us arithmetic, algebra, and Euclid, and to the older boys even trigonometry, himself; he had a strong mathematical bias, and I think now that by the standard of a British public school he did ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... The strong political bias of the time drew into its vortex most of the miscellaneous literature that was produced. A number of ballads, serious and comic, whig and tory, dealing with the battles and other incidents of the long war, enjoyed a wide circulation in the newspapers or were hawked about in ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... manifest, the history was again surveyed in two works, the one, Geschichte des Deutschen Protestantismus, by Kahnis (translated 1856), who belongs to the Lutheran reactionary party; the other, Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, 1856, by C. Schwarz, whose work is so candid and free from party bias, that it is unimportant to remark the party to ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... from choice or necessity have knocked about the world for any length of time are more or less fatalists. Jimmy was an optimistic fatalist. He had always looked on Fate, not as a blind dispenser at random of gifts good and bad, but rather as a benevolent being with a pleasing bias in his own favor. He had almost a Napoleonic faith in his star. At various periods of his life (notably at the time when, as he had told Lord Dreever, he had breakfasted on bird-seed), he had been in ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... much the cleverest thing the writer ever heard in the French Chambers, and, generally, he knew few men who said more witty things in a neat and unpretending manner than General Lafayette. Indeed this was the bias of his mind, which was little given to profound reflections, though distinguished ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... suppressing adverse facts. I am not intolerant, because I believe that dissent from the general doctrine of evolution can only arise either from ignorance of some special departments of science, or from a bias of feeling against the doctrine—to both of which weaknesses evolutionists can afford to be indulgent. And in order to show that I have not been trying unfairly to make out a case, I shall conclude by briefly reviewing the ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes

... and animosity against England; and her felicity was equally rare, in having the fortunes and fame of so dangerous a rival, who had long given her the greatest inquietude, now entirely at her disposal. Some circumstances of her late conduct had discovered a bias towards the side of Mary: her prevailing interests led her to favor the enemies of that princess: the professions of impartiality which she had made were open and frequent; and she had so far succeeded, that each side accused her commissioners of partiality towards their adversaries.[*] ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... her upon these matters, and had said very much what I have written, she smilingly replied; "And yet we must admit that I have been fortunate, and this should not be. My good father's early trust gave the first bias, and the rest followed, of course. It is true that I have had less outward aid, in after years, than most women; but that is of little consequence. Religion was early awakened in my soul,—a sense that what the soul is capable to ask it must attain, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... over. He could only commiserate others. Your intensest grief must begin with yourself. Like the watchful Levite of old, be a guardian at the temple-gates of your own soul. Whatever be your besetting iniquity, your constitutional bias to sin, seek to guard it with wakeful vigilance. Grieve at the thought of incurring one passing shadow of displeasure from so kind and compassionate a Saviour. Let this be a holy preservative in your every hour of temptation, "How can I do this great ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... his history of our own country; and judge, however you may wish that the author had gone less into abstruse and ponderous subjects, whether it was barely possible to avoid falling upon such themes, considering the gross ignorance and strong bias of the age? Before this, perhaps, I ought slightly to have noticed INA, king of the West Saxons, whose ideas of the comforts of a monastery, and whose partiality to handsome book-binding, we may gather from a curious passage in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... only a few months ago. We discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks whilst a free man; but there is a breadth of vision in the free man which in the lover we vainly seek. Where there is much bias there must be some narrowness, and love, though added emotion, is subtracted capacity. Boldwood exemplified this to an abnormal degree: he knew nothing of Fanny Robin's circumstances or whereabouts, he knew nothing of Troy's possibilities, yet ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... this work the author shows not only the reactionary character of anarchism, but he exposes its class bias and its empty philosophic idealism and utopian program. He shows anarchism to be just the opposite of scientific socialism or communism. It aims at a society dominated by individualism, which is simply a capitalist ideal. Such ideals as "liberty," "equality," "fraternity," first sprang ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... I have to say of the work of the Irish poets, I am thinking of it solely as a part of English literature. I have in mind no political bias whatever, though I confess I have small admiration for extremists. During the last forty years Irishmen have written mainly in the English language, which assures to what is good in their compositions an influence bounded only by the dimensions of the earth. Great creative writers are such an ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... And these are the three women who have influenced my life, who fought in me then for mastery; one from out the unchangeable past, the others in the tangible and delible present. Most of us have to pass through such ordeals before character and conviction receive their final bias; before human nature has its wild trouble, and then settles into "cold rock and quiet world;" which any lesser after-shocks may modify, but ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... succession of Mr. Addington, that is to say, in June 1800," are the opening words of the Quarterly article—an extraordinary blunder for a contemporary to make. The Quarterly was, of course, bitterly adverse to Addington's administration, in politics; but though party bias is responsible for strange behaviour, we shall be safe in attributing to lapse of memory this censure of a minister for the act of his predecessor. St. Vincent was in active service, as Admiral in command of the Channel Fleet, when ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... the school where this method is in vogue the examination takes on the color and character of the recitation. At the close of the term, or semester, the teacher makes out the proverbial ten questions which very often reflect her own bias, or predilections, and in these ten questions are the issues of life and death. A hundred questions might be asked upon the subjects upon which the pupils are to be tested, but these ten are the only ones offered—with no options. Then the grading of the papers ensues, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... in Hesketh's; that it produced in his case a condition only to be properly treated by personal experience. Hesketh was coming over to prove whatever advantage there was in seeing for yourself. That he was coming with the right bias Lorne might infer, he said, from the fact that he had waited a fortnight to get his passage by the only big line to New York that stood out for our mercantile supremacy against ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... pomp which belongs, in mood, situation, or utterance, to the loftier phases of human suffering. The sorrow of those who most attracted his sympathy was not theatrical or imposing. It has been well said of him, that his "bias was towards all that was poor and unregarded." And thus, while those who painfully moved the charity and compassion of his genius were considered by him the victims of artificial civilization, his own feeling for them was natural and instinctive; yet never did natural and instinctive feeling ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... collected with great industry and gave impartially all the original facts (so that from what he gives alone it is quite possible to prove that the speech is certainly genuine), yet his own conclusions show great bias. Thus he severely rules out any testimony against Cresap that is not absolutely unquestioned; but admits without hesitation any and every sort of evidence leaning against poor Logan's character or the authenticity of his speech. He even goes so far (pp. 122, 123) as to say it is not a "speech" at ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... as 1/40 of an inch. This is no doubt partly the fault of the telescopes themselves, but unless the eye is rigorously educated in this work, it is apt to accommodate itself to a small amount, and will invariably do so if there is a preconceived notion or bias in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... moment, gave up the idea of the connection. There might be those who would suspect Nancy of a selfish bias in the advice she gave; but Jane knew that no such feeling influenced her pure soul. For one long year the two sisters traversed the hills between Cressbrook and Tideswell. But they had companions, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... the bias of our kind, 'Tis happiness we wish to find. In rural scenes retired we sought In vain the dear, delicious draught, Though blest with love's indulgent store, We found we wanted something more. 'Twas company, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... in a strikingly similar spirit to that in which it is discussed in the Prologue to one of the translations which have come down to us. It is to be hoped that the subject may receive further investigation, and that without the importation of theological bias. ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... friends bore evidence to his honesty. Jefferson said, "his integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity or friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man." Pickering wrote that "to the excellency of his virtues I am not disposed to set any limits. All his views were upright, all ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... communication, appear to have greatly influenced his election.[13] The unfortunate king, Gustavus Adolphus, after being long kept a close prisoner in the castle of Gripsholm, where his strong religious bias had been strengthened by apparitions,[14] was permitted to retire into Germany; he disdainfully refused to accept of a pension, separated himself from his consort, a princess of Baden, and lived in proud poverty, under the name of Colonel Gustavson, in Switzerland.— Bernadotte, the ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... for ridicule, if they are absurdly considered as the real principles of that union: but they are in truth merely the occasions, as anything may be of anything, upon which our nature carries us on according to its own previous bent and bias; which occasions therefore would be nothing at all were there not this prior disposition and bias of nature. Men are so much one body that in a peculiar manner they feel for each other shame, sudden danger, resentment, honour, prosperity, distress; one or another, or all ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler

... sure of going down to the latest posterity, I thought it material to set facts to rights as much as possible. The author was well disposed; but could not entirely get the better of his original bias. I send you the article as ultimately published. If you find any material errors in it, and will be so good as to inform me of them, I shall probably have opportunities of setting this author to rights. ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... task of exterminating the royalists of La Vendee. Santerre had undertaken this work, and had failed in it, and it was now said that he was a friend and creature of Danton's; that he was not to be trusted as a republican; that he had a royalist bias; that it would be a good thing that his head should roll, as the heads of so many false men had rolled, under the avenging guillotine. Poor Santerre, who, in the service of the Republic, had not shunned the infamy of presiding at the death of Louis. He, however, contrived to ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... of airing himself. He was essentially glib, as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random. There was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal, to flatter himself, and to please and interest ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of West Street nearest the barracks, the daily passing of the troops, the constant blowing of trumpet-calls a furlong from her windows, coupled with the fact that she knew nothing of the inner realities of military life, and hence idealized it, had also helped her mind's original bias for thinking men-at-arms the only ones worthy of a ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy



Words linked to "Bias" :   handicap, taboo, Islamophobia, tabu, oblique, partiality, weight, partisanship, homophobia, prejudice, straight line, angle



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