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Consistency   Listen
noun
Consistency, Consistence  n.  
1.
The condition of standing or adhering together, or being fixed in union, as the parts of a body; existence; firmness; coherence; solidity. "Water, being divided, maketh many circles, till it restore itself to the natural consistence." "We are as water, weak, and of no consistence." "The same form, substance, and consistency."
2.
A degree of firmness, density, viscosity, or spissitude; a measure of the ability to hold together when manipulated.
Synonyms: body. "Let the expressed juices be boiled into the consistence of a sirup."
3.
That which stands together as a united whole; a combination. "The church of God, as meaning the whole consistence of orders and members."
4.
Firmness of constitution or character; substantiality; durability; persistency. "His friendship is of a noble make and a lasting consistency."
5.
Agreement or harmony of all parts of a complex thing among themselves, or of the same thing with itself at different times; the harmony of conduct with profession; congruity; correspondence; as, the consistency of laws, regulations, or judicial decisions; consistency of opinions; consistency of conduct or of character. "That consistency of behavior whereby he inflexibly pursues those measures which appear the most just." "Consistency, thou art a jewel."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Consistency" Quotes from Famous Books



... expressions were so many examples of varied consistency. This was the discomfiture of solemnity. My interest of course ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... the Greek poet, 'There is a great God in them, and he grows not old.' (iv) This vast ideal system is supposed to be based upon experience. At each step it professes to carry with it the 'witness of eyes and ears' and of common sense, as well as the internal evidence of its own consistency; it has a place for every science, and affirms that no philosophy of a narrower type is capable of comprehending ...
— Sophist • Plato

... service of his church whenever it was held among us, and he revered the Book of Common Prayer while he disputed the authority of the Bible with all comers. He had become a citizen, but he despised democracy, and achieved a hardy consistency only by voting with the pro-slavery party upon all measures friendly to the institution which he considered the scandal and reproach of the American name. From a heart tender to all, he liked to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the middle of the afternoon, warm rather than hot, and quite windless; the clouds high up and light, pearly white, and gleaming, softened the sun's burning, but did not hide the pale blue in most places, though they seemed to give it height and consistency; the sky, in short, looked really like a vault, as poets have sometimes called it, and not like mere limitless air, but a vault so vast and full of light that it did not in any way oppress the spirits. It was the sort of afternoon ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... territory by purchase. But Louisiana was necessary not only to the growth, but to the maintenance of the Union. It mattered not that the professions of the Republican party had to be violated. The prize outweighed the virtue of party consistency. Jefferson himself was forced to admit the want of power, but having resolved on the act, he said: "The less that is said about any constitutional difficulty the better." Again he said: "It will be desirable for Congress to do what is ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... teaching was its simple and ingenious interpretation of nature. Countless matters which Shinto had never attempted to explain, and could not have explained, Buddhism expounded in detail, with much apparent consistency. Its explanations of the mysteries of birth, life, and death were at once consoling to pure minds, and wholesomely discomforting to bad consciences. It taught that the dead were happy or unhappy not directly because of the attention or the [193] neglect shown them by the living, but because ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... combination of materials gives the impression of two things juxtaposed, not of a single whole. If in defense of this one were to say that through the difference of materials real differences in the object are portrayed, consistency would require that the principle be carried out, that the hair be of another material, and the eyes of still a third, with the result of making the statue a sheer agglomerate. And when more than one individual is represented, even a unity of material is not sufficient; ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... up the midnight ghost; exhibits before us his witches amidst their unhallowed mysteries; peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs:—and these beings, existing only in imagination, possess such truth and consistency, that even when deformed monsters like Caliban, he extorts the conviction, that if there should be such beings, they would so conduct themselves. In a word, as he carries with him the most fruitful ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... given, but only in the light of a problem—a problem which serves, however, as a principle for the various and particular exercise of the understanding in experience, directs it with regard to those cases which are not presented to our observation, and introduces harmony and consistency ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... human nature is!" she commented, when he had made an end. "My better judgment says you were all kinds of a somebody for not clinching the nail when you had it so well driven home. And yet I can't help admiring your exalted fanaticism. I do love consistency, and the courage of it. But tell me, if you can, how far these fair-fighting scruples of yours go. You have made it perfectly plain that if a thief should steal your pocketbook, you would suffer loss before you'd compromise ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... humanity, and therefore challenge the attention of the world. Thousands of the wisest and best men of the ages have been intensely interested in its contents. Its great influence and reputation are evidences of its trustworthiness, and of the consistency and intelligence of those who give it their attention; for sensible men do not disregard questions of great importance. This book contains a record of many ugly, dark and wicked deeds, known in the lives of wicked men and nations, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various

... no view but merely to have the pleasure of bestowing their crowns on some of their subjects without any advantage to ourselves. Nevertheless, I will own that my expedition to India was an exploit of the son of Jupiter, not of the son of Philip. I had done better if I had stayed to give more consistency to my Persian and Grecian Empires, instead of attempting new conquests and at such a distance so soon. Yet even this war was of use to hinder my troops from being corrupted by the effeminacy of Asia, and to ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... Dialogue of considerable length, which after many years had elapsed, she wrote down as having passed between Dr. Johnson and herself at this interview. As I had not the least recollection of it, and did not find the smallest trace of it in my Record taken at the time, I could not in consistency with my firm regard to authenticity, insert it in my work. It has, however, been published in The Gent. Mag. for June, 1791. It chiefly relates to the principles of the sect called Quakers; and no doubt the Lady appears to have greatly the advantage of Dr. Johnson in argument as well as ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... journey comfortably in an hour and a half. On the first of these occasions—it was in the course of a vacation trip for the purpose of studying the country—I happened upon two other travelers and together we floundered for many weary miles through black mud varying from the consistency of soup to that of pudding. The road was indescribably bad, and riders and horses were covered with mire and thoroughly fatigued. That evening at the inn, through the open door between our rooms, I heard my traveling ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... background for the dark spruces is wonderfully effective. We found it growing luxuriantly almost everywhere, except in the burned districts, and in places it is six inches in height. When dry, it is brittle, and may be crumbled to powder in the hands, but when wet is very much the consistency of jelly, and just as slippery. Through the wooded land the soil appeared to be simply a tangle of fallen and decayed tree-trunks grown over with thick moss of another variety, in which you sank ankle deep, while dark perilous looking holes yawned ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... presence of some minute foreign substance within the shell, which is distasteful to its occupant. Not being able to cast out the intruder, the feeble but diligent inhabitant covers it with a sort of saliva, which hardens over it into a substance similar in consistency and sheen to the interior surface of its own shell. The act of covering a base substance of any shape with gold or silver by the process of electrotype is in human art an analogous operation. When the material, distilled in imperceptibly minute portions from the living ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... the functions of her system ever had time to fulfill their offices, or the flesh to accumulate, as it did, to a very respectable consistency; for she never, to my knowledge, finished a meal while under our roof; nor do I believe that she ever slept out a nap in her life. As she became a study well fitted to interest one of my novel, fun-loving age, I used often to steal out of bed at different times in the night ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... could have held such incredible quantities of fish. The Viceroy, an intrepid pioneer in gastronomic matters, had a great cattla boiled for his dinner. The first mouthful defeated him; he declared that the consistency of the fish was that of an old flannel shirt, and the taste a compound of mud and of the smell of a covered racquet-court. A lady insisted on presenting the midshipmen with two dozen bottles of a very good champagne for the Gun-room Mess. In the innocence of her heart ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... which has not its corresponding obligation, and no obligation which has not its corresponding truth. And not until every truth is rounded into its duty, and every duty is referred back into its truth shall we attain to that clearness of vision and consistency of moral life, to promote which is the primary ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... could have obtained the recompense, which, according to Philip's thrifty policy, was not to be paid until it had been earned. Sainte Aldegonde's hands were clean. It is pity that we cannot render the same tribute to his political consistency of character. It is also certain that he remained—not without reason—for a long time under a cloud. He became the object of unbounded and reckless calumny. Antwerp had fallen, and the necessary consequence of its reduction was the complete and permanent prostration of its commerce and manufactures. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... emperor; and it was in fact no more than an absurdity to admit the authority of a papal commission, and to refuse to permit an appeal from it to the pope in person. We may thank Clement for dispelling a chimera by a simple act of consistency. The power of the See of Rome in England was a constitutional fiction, acknowledged only on condition that it would consent to be inert. So long as a legate's court sat in London, men were able to conceal from themselves ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... borrowed: for, by the supposition, the thing borrowed has been spent. True; but on the same principle these ancestors ought to have forbidden every man to sell any article whatsoever to him who paid for it out of other funds than those produced by the article sold. Mere logical consistency required this: it happens, indeed, to be impossible: but that only argues their entire ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... believe it necessary to be so very respectful, consistency should lead you to refrain from reproving ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley

... matter, and the national character, which it was agreed on all hands was even now as high as it well could be, would probably be raised many degrees higher. The negotiations had commenced in a spirit of compromise; and our character for consistency required that this spirit of compromise should continue to govern our conduct as long as a single ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the mob, with that beautiful consistency which usually distinguishes those august individuals, insisted upon shooting poor Harry, for, said they,—and the reasoning is remarkably conclusive and clear,—a man so hardened as to raise his hand against his own life will never ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... There was no consistency in the long range blast damage. Observers often thought that they had found the limit, and then 2,000 feet farther away would find further ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... above all, one that they could not avoid. Chance discovered it to Alcide Jolivet in this way:—Lying at the right side of the raft, he let his hand hang over into the water. Suddenly he was surprised by the impression made on it by the current. It seemed to be of a slimy consistency, as if it had been made of mineral oil. Alcide, aiding his touch by his sense of smell, could not be mistaken. It was really a layer of liquid naphtha, floating on the surface of ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... they had protested against the heretics being heard, and had declared that whoever conferred with them would be excommunicated! "Disants que ceux qui confereroient avec eux seroient excommunies." The reader, if he cannot admire their consistency, will certainly be struck with astonishment at the fortitude of the prelates who, a few hours later, could bring themselves with so little apparent trepidation under the highest censures of the Church. Bruslart goes ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... by violence, or whether mere distaste of life and the loathing he had for mankind brought Timon to his conclusion, was not clear, yet all men admired the fitness of his epitaph and the consistency of his end, dying, as he had lived, a hater of mankind. And some there were who fancied a conceit in the very choice which he had made of the sea-beach for his place of burial, where the vast sea might weep forever upon his grave, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... tablespoonfuls. This he rubbed into the flour with the back of the large cooking spoon until it was thoroughly mixed. He now added water while he mixed it with the flour, a little at a time, until the dough was of the consistency of ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... was applied with far more thoroughness and consistency by the advocates of Historical Judaism. Zunz, Frankel, Graetz, Herzfeld, Luzzatto and Joel drew the line between adaptation and assimilation. They laid down the principle that it was fatuous to speak of a religion adjusting itself ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... passages of Scripture that represent the exercise of vowing, as not obligatory in certain cases, may be explained in perfect consistency with the general command enjoining it. These do not imply that the neglect of the vow may be in general allowable; nor do they teach, that it may be vowed, solely, or at all, according to caprice. They manifestly admit that vowing is lawful in ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... this he was very consistent. The same consistency cannot be claimed for his support of a Reform Bill far more Radical than that which his party had so recently rejected. In my own judgment it is impossible to defend with success the conduct of the Derby Ministry on this question, and although ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... think I should have told you then. Well, so I should, only I know there are a lot of traps for the unwary, and that stones may be of any size and yet of little value where color and consistency are clean off. Therefore, I brought them back, and on the first day at home I took one round to Spink's, and asked him to have it roughly ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... readily, and withstands the drought remarkably, remaining green when other grasses are parched and dried up. It has numerous succulent leaves which furnish an abundance of sweet fodder, greatly relished by stock of all kinds. It attains its greatest luxuriance on soils of medium consistency and richness, but does very well ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... "Better be fools than naves, Josiah Allen! if we have got to be one or the other, but we haint. We are a standin' on firm ground, Josiah Allen," sez I. "The platform made of the boards of consistency, and common sense, and decency, is one that will never break down and let you through it, into gulfs and abysses. And on that platform we will both stand to-night, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley

... and fuse them together glaze by glaze as Leonardo did, but used an opaque dead colouring which allowed of correction; the system was rapid, but deficient in depth and mellowness; "the lights are fused and bright," but "the shadows, owing to their viscous consistency, imperfectly fill the outlines." [Footnote: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. in. chap. xvii. p. 670.] In a Holy Family in the Louvre, S. Elizabeth's hand is painted across S. John, and shows the shadow underneath it, being grey at that part. Though ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... with sagacity, merciful with piety, secretive with modesty, revengeful with valor, poor on account of thy labors with true conformity, prodigal with economy, active with ease, economical with liberality, innocent with sagacity, reformer with consistency, indifferent with zeal for learning: God created thee to feel the raptures of Platonic love! Aid me in singing thy greatness and thy name higher than the stars and clearer than the sun itself that circles about thy ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... done that since the world began," said I. "The unwavering love of woman for her home-made idiot is her sole consistency." ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... a noble Gallery of Pictures?—I do not think that they ought to do so; but I do not know how far they will be consistent. I certainly think they ought not to put up with any such expedient. I am not prepared to say what limits there are to consistency or inconsistency. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... science a series of propositions which God has communicated to us as so many detached and, to us, irreconcilable verities; the common link or connecting principle of which He has not seen fit to communicate. I am profoundly convinced of the consistency of all the declarations of Scripture; but I am as profoundly convinced of my own incapacity to perceive that they are consistent. I can receive them each in turn, and to some extent I can, however feebly, draw nutriment from each of them. To blend them one with another into an ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... "Yes; but consistency's my motto. I like to see the royal soul immaculate, unchanging, immovable by fortune. Anyhow, when better times came for Mortlake the engagement still dragged on. He did not visit her so much. This last autumn he saw very ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... life by violence, or whether mere distaste of life and the loathing he had for mankind brought Timon to his conclusion, was not clear, yet all men admired the fitness of his epitaph, and the consistency of his end; dying, as he had lived, a hater of mankind: and some there were who fancied a conceit in the very choice which he had made of the sea-beach for his place of burial, where the vast sea might weep for ever upon his grave, as in contempt of the transient ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... sections; and, when organized, he is always looked upon with grave suspicions. That people should go so far out of the way to circumvent the legitimate endeavors of the undeserving, to my mind, is the most unnatural thing to be sure. "Consistency, thou ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... rather an acquisition of substance by seizure. Such being the barbarian man's work, in its best development and widest divergence from women's work, any effort that does not involve an assertion of prowess comes to be unworthy of the man. As the tradition gains consistency, the common sense of the community erects it into a canon of conduct; so that no employment and no acquisition is morally possible to the self respecting man at this cultural stage, except such as proceeds on the basis ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... seen under different circumstances, and in diverse places. Inside and out they were the same; without deviation or turning, they went straight forward. It is well said that Bunyan has here snatched a grace beyond the reach of art, and has applied it to exalt and beautify consistency of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... omitted unless they were in the same location (morphological boundary) as the hyphen in the headword, or if the hyphenated word was a compound. Within these two groups, final decisions were based on more fluid criteria such as internal consistency within an entry, or hyphenization of other words from the same source. These ambiguous hyphens ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat

... be simplicity. But how can we be convinced that they are actually simple? We shall hold them to be so if we see them accompanied and supported by all the other circumstances which also have their spring of action in nature; for nature can only be recognized by the close and strict consistency, by the unity and uniformity of its effects. It is only a soul that has on all occasions a horror of all kinds of artifice, and which consequently rejects them even where they would be useful—it is only that soul which we permit to be emancipated from them when the artificial conventionalities ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... morning we examined several we had knocked down. They measured twenty-eight inches across the wings, which were of a leathery consistency, the bodies being covered with grey hair. We found their stomachs filled with the pulp and seeds of fruits, with the remains of a ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... is strength. Nay, my Lord, start not; I am not going to advise you to throw yourself into the arms of opposition; leave such advice for greenhorns. I am not going to adopt a line of conduct, which would, for a moment, compromise the consistency of your high character; leave such advice for fools. My Lord, it is to preserve your consistency, it is to vindicate your high character, it is to make the Marquess of Carabas perform the duties which society requires from him, that I, Vivian Grey, a member of that society, and an humble ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... I recollect thinking unsurpassed for cool calm courage. Those were the right names—which we owed wholly to the French explorers and Jesuit Fathers; so much the worse for us if we vulgarly didn't know it. I lose myself in admiration of the consistency, the superiority, the sublimity, of the not at all game-playing, yet in his own way so singularly sporting, Louis. He was naturally and incorruptibly French—as, so oddly, I have known other persons ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... and advantage at an age when the enthusiasms of youth have given way to the critical attitude of experience. Grant all the critics say of it, that the reasoning by which Lecky attempts to demolish the utilitarian theory of morals is no longer of value, and that it lacks the consistency of either the orthodox or the agnostic, that there is no new historical light, and that much of the treatise is commonplace, nevertheless the historical illustrations and disquisitions, the fresh ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... less explicit, and may have been too little of a politician by nature to care for preserving an outward consistency in his incidental remarks concerning the lower classes. In his "Clerk's Tale" he finds room for a very dubious commonplace about the "stormy people," its levity, untruthfulness, indiscretion, fickleness, and garrulity, and the folly ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... of beauty to the picture when he calls for the best robe to be put upon his boy. I allow no one to go beyond me in paying tribute to a mother's love, but I desire in some special way to pay tribute to the devotion and consistency of a father. ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman

... Latin literature. When English versions of Theocritus and Ovid, of Plato's Phaedrus and the Ecclesiazusae, now within the reach of every school-boy, have been suppressed, then and not till then can a 'plain and literal' rendering of the Arabian Nights be denied with any colour of consistency to adult readers. I am far from saying that there are not valid reasons for thus dealing with Hellenic and Graeco-Roman and Oriental literature in its totality. But let folk reckon what Anglo Saxon Puritanism logically involves. If they desire an Anglo-Saxon Index Librorum Prohibitorum, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... which he was so brilliant a theorist. Strangely enough, however, this was not the case. There were few better bats in the School than Pringle. Norris on his day was more stylish, and Marriott not infrequently made more runs, but for consistency ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse

... Citizen, your letters of the 22d and 27th Fructidor [8th and 13th September]. They afford me more and more reason to be pleased with the measure you have adopted, to detail to me your conversations with Mr. Murray. These conversations, at first merely friendly, have acquired consistency by the sanction I have given to them by my letter of the 11th Fructidor. I do not regret that you have trusted to Mr. Murray's honor a copy of my letter. It was intended for you only, and contains nothing but what is conformable to the intentions of Government. I am thoroughly convinced ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson

... was always worthless, and whose deterioration, while it condemned it to living obscurity, by a strange obliquity of moral perception constitutes its title to posthumous renown. To embody the flying colours of folly, to arrest evanescence, to give to bubbles the globular consistency as well as form, to exhibit on the stage the piebald denizen of the stable, and the half-reasoning parent of combs, to display the brisk locomotion of Columbine, or the tortuous attitudinizing of Punch;—these are the occupations of others, whose ambition, limited ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... of perspiration in a healthy state is that of an oleaginous liquid consistency resembling, say, a thin cream; but the water exuded by the lungs has the appearance of dew, and is indeed called by a term signifying "lung-dew." It does not amalgamate with the oleaginous part ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... as a whole; for if such a rotating mass broke up, its parts would retain its direction of rotation. But such a mass, filling all space as far as or beyond Saturn, although containing the materials of the whole solar system in itself, must have been of very rare consistency. Occupying so much bulk it could not have been solid, nor yet liquid, but ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... as for his boys. Rosa soon became a favorite with the girls in the Fauborg St. Antoine School, especially because she could draw such witty caricatures of the teachers, which she pasted against the wall, with bread chewed into the consistency of putty. The teachers were not pleased, but so struck were they with the vigor and originality of the drawings, that they carefully preserved the sketches in ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... household living, the possession of wealth, the holding of certain luxuries. It is, however, very evident that many of these disciples have repeatedly carried their obedience to Jesus to the extreme limit, regardless of financial loss. There is no lack of courage or consistency ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... with apparently no intention of allowing itself to be absorbed by the surrounding waters. It is true that a belt of muddy water bordered its wild and forbidding coast and that its shore line was of a consistency suitable for the making of mud pies, but its body seemed as solid and resistant ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... the act of 1773 was the Council-General. This institution was intended to produce uniformity, consistency, and the effective cooeperation of all the settlements in their common defence. By the ancient constitution of the Company's foreign settlements, they were each of them under the orders of a President or Chief, and a Council, more or fewer, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... effect of this predominant clerical influence would have been to make the aim of the Puritan codes lofty, their consistency unflinching, their range narrow, and their penalties severe,—and it certainly was so. Looking at their educational provisions, they seem all noble; looking at their schedule of sins and retributions, one wonders how any rational being could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... sound and show, should stir the stream like a leviathan, her companion floated off with the sense of rocking violently at her side. More than prepared, however, for that excitement, Mrs. Stringham mainly failed of ease in respect to her own consistency. To attach herself for an indefinite time seemed a roundabout way of holding her hands off. If she wished to be sure of neither touching nor smutching, the straighter plan would doubtless have been not to keep her friend ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... turned their attention to this. After some difficulty they established the fact of a three-dog team. Testing the consistency of the snow they proved a ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... fluid of the consistency of mucus. It is secreted by the testicles and is intermixed with the fluids secreted by the prostate and by Cowper's glands. Its fertilizing property depends on the presence of minute bodies, termed spermatozoa. These consist of little polliwig-shaped bodies (Fig. 3), having large heads and long ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... which is the sign and symbol of its mastery over the earth around it and the inhabitants thereof ever changing and in all its changes watched with awe by fearful men who read in those changes their own fate now taking heart as they see it more tenuous in its consistency anon shuddering as they see it gathering in denser folds and finally awe-stricken and all overcome as they see the thick black cloud rise proudly up to heaven in a long straight column at whose upper termination the ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... the United States as well as the whole world, he must have satisfied himself, for Mr. Lodge never permits his emotions to control his intelligence, that his action was wise and patriotic. But although Mr. Lodge will not surrender his convictions he has no scruples about consistency. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... Morley has the doubtful merit of consistency. As recently as April 27th, 1906, he alluded to the South African War as "that delusive and guilty war," in an address to the Eighty Club. According to The Times report this expression was received ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... incapable of education. Some of them carry out seemingly marvelous activities, yet their acts are as automatic as those of a machine and as devoid of foresight. A species of mud wasp carefully selects clay of just the right consistency, finds a somewhat sheltered nook under the eaves, and builds its nest, leaving one open door. Then it seeks a certain kind of spider, and having stung it so as to benumb without killing, carries it into the new-made nest, lays its eggs on the body of the spider ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... shores of the British Isles and feels the propinquity of Ireland, rises into the air, turns into soup, and comes down on London. At times the soup is thin and is in fact little more than a mist: at other times it has the consistency of a thick Potage St. Germain. London people are a little sensitive on the point and flatter their atmosphere by calling it a fog: but it is not: it is soup. The notion that no sunlight ever gets through and ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... cuts with the switch, Rolf retired, as before. Again the sick ox waited for silence, and reaching out with greedy haste, he gulped down the rest and emptied the bucket; seeing which, Rolf ran in and gave the rogue a final trouncing for the sake of consistency. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the subtle tenacity of Louis the Eleventh of France, the keen foresight of Richelieu with a talent for the surprising which would have raised him to eminence in journalism. In short he was an opportunist void of conviction and indifferent to consistency. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... interprets a law: in order that we may avoid drawing any inferences not conformable to our former intention, as a judge avoids giving any decision not conformable to the legislator's intention. The rules for this interpretation are the rules of the syllogism: and its sole purpose is to maintain consistency between the conclusions we draw in every particular case, and the previous general directions for drawing them; whether those general directions were framed by ourselves as the result of induction, or were received by us from an authority competent ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... things be? Is it possible that French journalists can so forget themselves? The rogues! they should come to England and learn consistency. The honesty of the Press in England is like the air we breathe, without it we die. No, no! in France, the satire may do very well; but for England it is too monstrous. Call the press stupid, call it vulgar, call it violent,—but honest it is. Who ever heard of a journal changing its politics? ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... at their arrival, and proceeded forthwith to pierce the spirit cask, and issue to each of the household the portion of rum which had been promised on the first day of the year. The spirits, which were proof, were frozen, but after standing at the fire for some time they flowed out of the consistency of honey. The temperature of the liquid, even in this state, was so low as instantly to convert into ice the moisture which condensed on the surface of the dram-glass. The fingers also adhered to the glass, and would, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... attempts to leap over all obstacles, to create what must grow, and to turn comradeship into friendship simply because one naturally grows out of the other; the more conservative and logical Philistine recognizes the futility of this attitude, and in his too careful consistency sometimes needlessly brings about the very same failure by ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... be writing a book about Mr. Bernard Shaw at all. It is indefensibly foolish to attempt to explain a man whose whole object through life has been to explain himself. But even in nonsense there is a need for logic and consistency; therefore let us proceed on the assumption that when I say that all Mr. Shaw's blood and origin may be found in John Bull's Other Island, some reader may answer that he does not know the play. Besides, it is more important to put the reader right about England and Ireland even than ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... said Cecilia, "the full worth of steadiness and prudence till I knew this young man; for he has every thing else; talents the most striking, a love of virtue the most elevated, and manners the most pleasing; yet wanting steadiness and prudence, he can neither act with consistency nor ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... he loved you as his own soul, and his soul were knit with yours—to use the words of Scripture—he would not demand this consistency, because each man must know and feel his own immeasurable vacillation and inconsistency; and if he had complete sympathy with another, he would not be greatly surprised or ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... merely, but in all the affairs of life, the wisdom of man is continually called upon to reconcile these opposite methods of exhibiting, or using, the materials in his power. By change he gives them pleasantness, and by consistency value; by change he is refreshed, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... solicitude, but for the most part he wore a thoughtful smile. Now and then he stroked his smoothly-shaven jaws with thumb and fingers. Occasionally he became observant of wayside details—of the colour of a maple leaf, the shape of a tall thistle, the consistency of a fungus. At the few people who passed he looked keenly, surveying them from head ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... everything within it which is in and on the present moon. The separation of the sun takes place because higher beings could no longer carry on their own evolution as well as their task on Earth within this atmosphere, now densified to the consistency of water. They separate from the general mass of the Earth the only substances useful to them, and fare forth to make a new abode for themselves in the sun. They now influence the earth from the sun, from outside. Man, ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... faith in the consistency of public men was rudely shaken a few minutes later, when the messenger returned with orders that the lady was to be ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... the play consist in its perfect naturalness, its progressive interest, the consistency, variety, and vitality of its personalities, the deep emotional interest, of situations arising out of contrasted character, and the easy action of its hidden machinery. This work puts Mr. Ervine in the first rank ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... could brave death, and all the military consequences of desertion from a ship lying at Spithead, were not likely to listen to the suggestions of prudence when Eugenia was to be found; and, having once given out that I was a widow, I resolved to preserve the consistency of my character for my own sake—for your sake, and for the sake of this blessed child, the only drop that has sweetened my cup of affliction. Had you by any means discovered my place of abode, the peace of my uncle's house, and the prospects of my child ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the desert stands quite alone; he is in a manner freed from the ties which bind him to any great human community; he must fill up the void by his own identity, and seek in it that which may give his existence significance and consistency. Here, where the present retires into the background, the thoughtful spirit finds ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... bestow a benefit, and afterwards were to learn that your man was ungrateful, would you bestow it or not? If you do, you do wrong knowingly, for you give to one to whom you ought not; if you refuse, you do wrong likewise, for you do not give to him to whom you promised to give. This case upsets your consistency, and that proud assurance of yours that the wise man never regrets his actions, or amends what he has done, or alters his plans." The wise man never changes his plans while the conditions under which he formed them remain the same; therefore, he never feels regret, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... their leader. He was a messenger to the great world-rulers of his time, through the visions he interpreted, and through his unbending faithfulness and purity of life; The thing that stands out largest is the life he lived, a life of simplicity in habit, of purity and consistency, with an unwavering faith in God. God could use him to speak to the great emperors. So he helped God to get His message to men so hard to reach through ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... the best that the world has produced and only examine the trivial and the inferior in their relation to the most excellent, their attainments reach such fullness, their judgment such certainty, their taste such consistency, that they appear within their own circle most wonderfully, even astonishingly, cultured. Winckelmann also attained this good fortune, in which indeed he was greatly assisted by the influence of the fine arts and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... with walls several feet in thickness. At the time of its building, it would have resisted any armament that could have been brought to bear against it. The crevices between the stones throughout the structure had been filled with clay or adobe, which in the course of centuries had hardened to the consistency of rock itself. The second and third stories contained each four apartments, whose walls were of less thickness, but the whole constituted a veritable Gibraltar. Sloping stone steps connected each story, but only ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... As there was no tangible proof that I had actually been on Mars, I might have been led to the conclusion that I had chloroformed myself into unconsciousness only, and had passed from this state into a deep sleep, in which I had dreamed my remarkable experiences. But the clearness and consistency of every detail were amply sufficient to convince me of the genuineness of my experiences on Mars, and that the characters, so vividly portrayed in my mind, lived in flesh and blood on a world millions of miles away. Much more convincing than this, however, was the moral obligation that I felt ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood

... eyes first looked over the letter I received last night, my mind instantly dictated a high-spirited vindication of the consistency, integrity, and faithfulness of the friendship thus abruptly reproached and cast away. But a sleepless night gave me leisure to recollect that you were ever as generous as precipitate, and that your own heart would do justice to mine, in the cooler judgment of future reflection. ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... observance of this rule should keep you from putting into the mouth of a grown man, who is supposed to be most manly, expressions only a "sissy" would use; or introducing a character as a wise man and permitting him to talk like a fool. As in life, so in dialogue—consistency ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... general-news editor of the paper will keep the run of all the details of all the histories of all the rest of the world, but he hardly attempts this in addition. If he does, he fails. It is therefore necessary, from the most cogent reasons, that any American news office which has a strong regard for the consistency or truth of its South American intelligence shall employ some person competent to take the charge which I held in the establishment of the Boston Daily Argus at the time of which I am speaking. Before that enterprising paper was sold, I was its "South American ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... Representatives of but four of these courses returned from the captivity, but from these the orders were reconstructed on the original plan. In the days of Herod the Great the temple ceremonies were conducted with great display and outward elaborateness, as an essential matter of consistency with the splendor of the structure, which surpassed in magnificence all earlier sanctuaries.[185] Priests and Levites, therefore, were in demand for continuous service, though the individuals were changed ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... the material which had heretofore been firm or stiff had, under erosion, obtained a soup-like consistency, and that a huge cavity some 3 ft. wide and 26 ft. deep had been washed up toward the ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem

... way, and consistency another. Captain Morville had never been so much in the condition of Mahomet's coffin in his life; and he grew more angry with his uncle, Charles, and Guy, for having put him in so unpleasant a predicament. So the self-debate ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... right directions is well on the way toward becoming educated. For earnest wishing precedes and conditions every achievement that is worthy the name. The man who does not wish does not achieve, and the man who does wish with persistency and consistency does not fail of achievement. Had Columbus not wished with consuming ardor to circumnavigate the globe, he would never have encountered America. The Atlantic cable figured in the dreams and wishes of Cyrus W. Field long before even the ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... (which Thomas Hood, who was present, facetiously termed the "wheel of fortune") was supplied with refreshments truly supernal. Here were fruits of most brilliant dyes; some of soft, pulpy flesh, and others of the consistency of honey; some more transparent than the diamonds of earth; others substantial, seemingly intended to supply the demands of hunger. Here were confections resembling foam and cloud, whose very taste was elysium. The guests ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... personal Virtue. It should train the conscience, the heart and its affections aright, and guide to consistency of character. "Want of perseverance," says Madam Necker, "is the great fault of woman, in every thing, morals, attention to health, friendship, &c." Her intellect is cultivated too exclusively, in our times. It is to be feared that her education now gives her little moral energy. ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... not only speculate, but dogmatize, on the highest questions of philosophy, morality, and religion. And further, admitting the special claims to deference on the part of scientific men, other men have their rights. They have the right to judge of the consistency of the assertions of men of science and of the logic of their reasoning. They have the right to set off the testimony of one or more experts against the testimony of others; and especially, they have the right to reject all speculations, ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... spell of Lloyd George to some extent, who showed himself quite as liberal as the President in many instances. But Wilson was clearly troubled by the Welshman's mercurial policy, and before he finally left for America, found relief in the solid consistency of Clemenceau. He always knew where the French Premier stood, no matter how much he might differ from him in ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... setting forth the all-sufficiency of is building, in the passive sense, goes on to say: 'The reformers who object to the phrase I am defending must, in consistency, employ the proposed substitute with all passive participles, and in other tenses as well as the present. They must say, therefore, "The subscription-paper is being missed, but I know that a considerable sum ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... afraid I may have given offence to those whom I should most of all like to please—the living contributors to this anthology—by tampering in this way with the text of their poems. In defence of what I have done, I must put forward the plea of consistency. If I had preserved every poet's text as I found it, I should have reduced ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... birth, Nature and humanity, is the key to any true theory of life and the universe—at any rate, the only theory out of which I wrote—it is, and must inevitably be, the only key to "Leaves of Grass," and every part of it. That, (and not a vain consistency or weak pride, as a late "Springfield Republican" charges,) is the reason that I have stood out for these particular verses uncompromisingly for over twenty years, and maintain them to this day. That is what I felt in my inmost brain ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman



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