Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Inconsistent   Listen
adjective
Inconsistent  adj.  
1.
Not consistent; showing inconsistency; irreconcilable; contradictory, or having contradictory implications; discordant; at variance, esp. as regards character, sentiment, or action; incompatible; incongruous. "Compositions of this nature... show that wisdom and virtue are far from being inconsistent with politeness and good humor."
2.
Not exhibiting uniformity of sentiment, steadiness to principle, etc.; unequal; fickle; changeable. "Ah, how unjust to nature, and himself, Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man."
Synonyms: Incompatible; incongruous; irreconcilable; discordant; repugnant; contradictory. Inconsistent, Incongruous, Incompatible. Things are incongruous when they are not suited to each other, so that their union is unbecoming; inconsistent when they are opposed to each other, so as render it improper or wrong; incompatible when they can not coexist, and it is therefore impossible to unite them. Habitual levity of mind is incongruous with the profession of a clergyman; it is inconsistent with his ordination vows; it is incompatible with his permanent usefulness. Incongruity attaches to the modes and qualities of things; incompatibility attaches to their essential attributes; inconsistency attaches to the actions, sentiments, etc., of men.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Inconsistent" Quotes from Famous Books



... that my mother suspected my brother John, and tried to open his little hands which were lying clasped in front of him. Now my brother was as yet very crude and inconsistent in his theories concerning sleep, and had no conception of what a real sleeper would do under these circumstances. Fear deprived him of his powers of reflection, and he thus unfortunately concluded that because sleepers, so far ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... would never suffer every thing to be done in the Navy, and he never be consulted; and it seems, in the naming of all these commanders for this fleete, he hath never been asked one question. But we concluded it wholly inconsistent with his honour not to go with this fleete, nor with the reputation which the world hath of his interest at Court; and so he did give me commission to tell Mr. Coventry that he is most willing to receive any commands ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... Conference to accept sundry regulations as to the rights of minorities, the transit of goods, and an equitable regime for international commerce. The other States which had inherited the Habsburg Empire were, all of them, faced with the same demands; and they objected that to sign such Articles was inconsistent with their sovereignty. The most onerous item—relating to the racial and religious minorities—had been imposed—at America's instance, owing to the manner in which the Jews were treated in Roumania, despite King Charles' promises in 1878. The Yugoslavs, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... then inclined him to slighting thought of Rosamund; yet, on the whole, his view of her was not depreciatory. The disadvantage to his mind was her remarkable comeliness. He could not but fear that so much beauty must be inconsistent with the sterling qualities ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... nature, and the method of their operation. This is due, in the highest degree, to certain theories which were developed, and which made their way, pari passu, with the advancements of electrical and electro-magnetic science. These theories, specious, inconsistent, illogical, yet withal plausible, and even fascinating, served to blind the mental vision so that mankind might not ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... accounts state, that the spires were pulled down by Charles, King of Navarre, who was at war with his namesake, Charles Vth, then Dauphin and Regent. The abbey at that time bore the two-fold character of nunnery and fortress.—Strangely inconsistent as this union may appear, the fact is undoubted. Even now a portion of the fosses remains; and the gate-way indicates an approach to a fortified place. Ancient charters likewise expressly recognize the building in both capacities: they endow the ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... he wore at the express desire of Mrs Tozer, his parent, who, designing him for the Church, was of opinion that he couldn't be in that forward state of preparation too soon—Tozer said, indeed, that choosing between two evils, he thought he would rather stay where he was, than go home. However inconsistent this declaration might appear with that passage in Tozer's Essay on the subject, wherein he had observed 'that the thoughts of home and all its recollections, awakened in his mind the most pleasing emotions of anticipation and delight,' and had also likened himself to a Roman General, flushed ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... or to the justling of parties, I cannot pretend to determine; but likewise happily for us, the kingly power was shifted into another branch of the family, who, as they owed the throne solely to the call of a free people, could claim nothing inconsistent with the covenanted terms which placed ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... Chopin had a predilection for Field's A flat Concerto and the Nocturnes, and that, when playing the latter, he used to improvise the most charming embellishments. To take liberties with another artist's works and complain when another artist takes liberties with your own works is very inconsistent, is it not? But it is also thoroughly human, and Chopin was not exempt from the common failing. One day when Liszt did with some composition of Chopin's what the latter was in the habit of doing with Field's Nocturnes, the enraged composer is said to have told his friend to play his compositions ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... lifetime either by my vote or by your own." Finally he said: "If I do not obtain this request, I shall hasten on to death." So pure and excellent and godfearing did he show himself throughout his career. [Nothing could force him to do anything inconsistent with his character, neither the wickedness of daring attempts nor the expectation of similar events to follow as the result of pardon. To such an extent did he refrain from inventing any imaginary conspiracy and concocting any tragedy that had ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... "No: that were inconsistent with a true earnestness of purpose," said Mr. Brown. "And, after all, the girl we both love is no such weakling as to accept a man simply because he asks her. She will decide between us fairly ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... foreign blood, excepting in the case of British royalty, in whose foreign matches she felt unfeigned delight—wherefore, Heaven, perchance, knoweth. But then Lilian was not a woman of a logical turn of mind; she was inconsistent and amiable, as good girls always are; and being strongly opposed to marriages of this kind in general, determined to lay herself out, heart and soul, for the prosperity of this particular arrangement. So she kissed Thecla vivaciously, and went to mamma, and ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray

... write, there were two streams flowing in his brain, and these were, like everything else about him, inconsistent with one another. The faithful tender colour of modern life competed with the preposterous oddity of burlesque erudition. When he started the annals of Tristram Shandy, the Rabelais vein was in the ascendant, and there is plenty of evidence that it vastly ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... braved the wrath of the formidable Toussac in order to extricate me. It was evident also that he might have made his achievement more striking by delivering up two prisoners instead of one to the troopers. It is true that I was not a conspirator, but I might have found it difficult to prove it. So inconsistent did such conduct seem in this little yellow flint-stone of a man that, after walking a mile or two in silence, I asked him suddenly what the meaning ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... shield the arms of the City, a cross with a sword in the dexter chief, and on either side of it a demi-lion as a supporter. As to the origin of the sword, there is a very old story, very generally credited, which only requires retelling to show how inconsistent it is with historical truth. About the part played by the Lord Mayor, Sir William Walworth, in slaying Wat Tyler at Smithfield, there need be little doubt, and at the hall of the Fishmongers' Company is preserved the veritable ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... first discoveries effected by the police on the day following upon that strange murder, vague, inconsistent discoveries to which the subsequent inquiry imparted neither consistency nor certainty. The movements of Antoinette Brehat remained as absolutely inexplicable as those of the blonde lady, nor was any light thrown ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc

... resulted only in the punishment of his traitorous companions. In revising the Quarto, the Poet sees that the passage before us, in which is expressed the strongest suspicion of his companions, with a determination to outwit and punish them, is inconsistent with the representation Hamlet gives afterwards of a restlessness and suspicion newly come upon him, which he attributes ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... boarding-school. There she was taught to be a persuasive ornament, now she is taught to be an individual mind, will and conscience and to use these in acting herself. I hold that there is no more graphic illustration of inconsistent waste than the spectacle of a college-trained woman falsifying her entire education by shying away from suffrage.... The time has gone by when a college woman can be allowed to be noncommittal on this subject. If she has not thought about equal suffrage she must do so now, exactly as persons ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... says Zurita, "that Isabella, before appointing her husband to the regency, exacted an oath from him, that he would not marry a second time." (Anales, tom. v. lib. 5, cap. 84.) This improbable story, so inconsistent with the queen's character, has been transcribed with more or less qualification by succeeding historians from Mariana to Quintana. Robertson repeats it without any qualification at all. See History of Charles V., vol. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... Of course such interviews could not take place in the presence of Diana. Gustave was wont, therefore, to wait with praiseworthy patience until the conclusion of the young lady's visit; and would even, with an inconsistent gallantry, urge her to prolong her stay ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... powers of the head, throat, and chest." In the execution of rapid passages the under jaw was in a continual state of agitation, "in a manner, too, generally thought incompatible with the production of pure tone from the chest, and inconsistent with a legitimate execution. This extreme motion was also visible during the shake, which Catalani used sparingly, ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... not Socialism. I have read many books on the subject, I have consulted many doctors; but they differ so much that I never could understand what they really mean. However, the only sense which I can see in socialism, is inconsistent with social order and ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... for granted, as I do very sincerely, that you have personally no design against the constitution, nor any view inconsistent with the good of your subjects, I think you cannot hesitate long upon the choice which it equally concerns your interests and your honour to adopt. On one side you hazard the affection of all your English subjects, you relinquish every hope of repose to yourself, and you endanger the ...
— English Satires • Various

... what a scene would be laid open! and to drop my metaphor what a character of our mistaking friend might an angry enemy draw and expose! particularizing that unnatural conjunction of vices and follies, so inconsistent with each other in the same breast: Furious and fawning, scurrilous and flattering, cowardly and provoking, insolent and abject; most profligately false, with the strongest professions of sincerity, positive and variable, tyrannical ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... by an inferior poet, who took thence fragments of sentences and of ideas and stitched them together. In the Invocation Kirchhoff cuts out the allusion to the oxen of the Sun (lines 6-9) as being inconsistent with his theory. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... and jigged along the corridor with me after her, longing to jig it with her, but hobbled by my new dignity. I had no clear notion of an assistant aide-de-camp's duties, but felt that they required a certain solemnity of manner inconsistent with her ladyship's ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... Spaniards on June 4th. In the despatch from Madrid it was stated that one of our most powerful vessels attempted to enter the harbor of Santiago de Cuba and had been blown up by a torpedo and sunk, her crew of six men and one officer being captured. There was something very inconsistent about the statement "most powerful vessel" with a crew of six men and one officer, but apparently the Spaniards overlooked this. The fact of the matter is that Admiral Sampson decided to close the harbor ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... of the lower classes in consequence of a democratic constitution. Communism is the logically not inconsistent exaggeration of the principle of equality. Men who always hear themselves designated as "the sovereign people," and their welfare as the supreme law of the state, are more apt than others to feel more keenly ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... Extempore Verses On the Death of a Son To Leila On Moderation in our Pleasures The Vale of Bozaa To Adversity On the Incompatibility of Pride and True Glory The Death of Nedham Almolk Lines to a Lover Verses to My Daughters Serenade to My Sleeping Mistress The Inconsistent The Capture of Jerusalem To a Lady An Epigram On a Little Man with a Very Large Beard Lamiat Alajem To Youth On Love A Remonstrance with a Drunkard Verses On Procrastination The Early Death of Abou ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... himself. Mr. Beecher was to all appearance well-nigh reckless in the vigour with which he made statements that seemed to him to be true, with little or no regard to their relation to other truths. The result was that he was charged with being grossly inconsistent. One day he would preach a sermon that would have delighted the old New England divines. The next Sunday he seemed an out-and-out Unitarian, while Quakers, Swedenborgians and all sorts of beliefs ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold

... to appear that the inconsistent, half-conscious Will that was the sum and substance of Hardy's pessimism was given certain attributes of gloom that scarcely belonged to it. The ruthless struggle for life by which the fittest for the circumstances of the moment, and by no means the best, survive at the expense of the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... endure what he sees fit to command, or call him to, in the exercise of his function. He virtually bids farewell to friends, pleasures, and comforts, and stands in readiness to endure the greatest sufferings in the work of his Lord, and Master. It is inconsistent for ministers to please themselves with thoughts of a numerous auditory, cordial friends, a civilised country, legal protection, affluence, splendour, or even a competency. The slights, and hatred of men, and even pretended friends, gloomy prisons, and tortures, the society ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... to follow their example, and the most acceptable worship that can be offered them; for they believe that though by the imperfection of human sight they are invisible to us, yet they are present among us, and hear those discourses that pass concerning themselves. They believe it inconsistent with the happiness of departed souls not to be at liberty to be where they will: and do not imagine them capable of the ingratitude of not desiring to see those friends with whom they lived on earth in the ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... man who had shown a disposition to be her daughter's lover, yet had not said anything or committed himself in any way, would, twenty-four hours before, have seemed to her impossible. It would have seemed to her inconsistent with Chatty's dignity and her own. But opposition and a desire to have the better of one's domestic and intimate opponents is very strong, and tempts people to the most equivocal proceedings. Mrs. Warrender did not wait to think, but took out a fresh sheet of paper and dipped ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... point in her nature he went to another, till he again recurred to her romantic interest in the De Stancy family. To wish she was one of them: how very inconsistent of her. That she really did ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... unhackneyed in the ways of men, having so lately left the society of ignorant and inconsistent youth, till that hour I had imagined, though I discovered no qualities in Enoch that greatly endeared him to me, that he was sincerely my friend. His duplicity on this occasion was in my opinion a heinous crime, and I rushed ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... making it a perfectly sane and gratuitous document, not only glaringly inconsistent with your charges, my good friends, with Don Jose's attitude towards you and his flight from home, but open to the gravest suspicion in law. In fact, its apparent propriety in the face of these facts would imply ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... have simplified the tariff still further than I have done, and admitted free many more articles—some of food, others used in our industries—had the Legislature not objected; the tariff as it stands is inconsistent. The English bankruptcy system has been introduced, and an Act passed regarding fraudulent debtors; distillation has been permitted under proper safeguards; Sunday closing of public-houses has been rendered compulsory with good ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest

... wrote to beg that I would make a point of being with her that evening by nine p.m. "You will think this very inconsistent with what I told you yesterday," she wrote, "but I said only what was the exact truth, as matters then stood. It is the Queen herself who has communicated with me this morning, and insists upon your being present this evening. The Abbe and I can only bow to this decision. I need not ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... a convert to Wesleyanism, and a lay minister. He was in the habit of entertaining the members of the Methodist Conference at this home, and was once good-humoredly twitted by one of them in regard to his inconsistent roles of "proclaimer of the gospel of peace and forger of weapons of war." To this he replied: "If I do make guns to destroy men's bodies, I build churches to ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker

... people would think this intimacy one of the most painful inflictions in the course of my task; but was he not a tool of the most valuable kind? Woe to him who despises his axe, or flings it carelessly aside! Would it not have been very inconsistent, moreover, if I, who wished to improve a district, had shrunk back at the thought of ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... a letter, in which all the fierce passion and anguish of his heart was cramped and held down by formal words and phrases, and poor young Evelina did not see beneath them. When her lover wrote her that he felt it inconsistent with his Christian duty and the higher aims of his existence to take any further steps towards a matrimonial alliance, she felt merely that Thomas either cared no more for her, or had come to consider, upon due reflection, that she ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... explained by their difference in origin. In Pyrrhonism there was no constructive element. In the Academic Scepsis such an element was found throughout all its history in the theory of Probability. Arcesilaus himself laid great stress upon this doctrine, which Sextus carefully shows us[2] is utterly inconsistent with Pyrrhonism. Arcesilaus plainly teaches that, having suspended one's judgment in regard to matters of knowledge, one should control his choices, his refusals, and his actions ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick

... exclamation, but out of place and inconsistent from the lips of Fa-hien. The Chinese character {.}, which he employed, may be rendered rightly by "fate" or "destiny;" but the fate is not unintelligent. The term implies a factor, or fa-tor, and supposes the ordination ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... is entirely inconsistent with his wild ideas of liberty. As such he is determined to do it down on all occasions and by every means. Not only is he a Scot, he is also a barrister of the most pronounced type. Brief him in your cause, and provided ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various

... "as misty a vapourer as I ever saw; a poetic, self-contradicting and inconsistent orator, a blower of bubbles, a seer of visions, a mystic, and a dreamer—about as scientific as Alice's White Knight! Harman's aunt, who lived in London, the only relative he had left, I believe—and she has died since—put him in Keredec's charge, and he was taken up into the Tyrol and virtually ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... confided to her management, or to attend her devotions at the meeting-house of her sect. It is true the daughter of Foster was thus liberally entrusted under the solemn condition that she should not avail herself of these privileges to do anything inconsistent with the safe-keeping of the Countess; for so her residence at Cumnor Place had been termed, since she began of late to exhibit impatience of the restrictions to which she was subjected. Nor is there reason to suppose that anything short of the dreadful suspicions ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... whose name was Macallan, was also most deservedly a great favourite with Captain M—-; indeed, there was a friendship between them, grown out of long acquaintance with each other's worth, inconsistent with, and unusual, in a service where the almost despotic power of the superior renders the intimacy of the inferior similar to the smoothing with your hand the paw of a lion, whose fangs, in a moment of caprice, may be darted into your ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... over Glory's back and came lightly to earth, immediately taking possession of the vacant half of doorstep. The schoolma'am obligingly drew skirts aside to make room for him—an inconsistent movement not at all in harmony with ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... thus faced the popular inferences as to the effect of the doctrine of evolution upon religious beliefs long before the world was moved in all its deeps by Darwin's Origin of Species. Thus the geological record is inconsistent, we learned, with the record of the first chapters of Genesis. If man is a differentiated monkey, and if a monkey has no soul, or future life (which is taken for granted), where are man's title-deeds to these possessions? With ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... of the four is there the slightest notice of the others. 2. Because, if either of the evangelists may be thought, from the remarkable similarity of any particular part of his narrative, to have copied out of either of the other Gospels, we immediately light upon so many other passages, wholly inconsistent with what the other three have related on the same subject, that we immediately ask why he has not copied from the others on those points also. It only remains, therefore, for us to infer that there was a common source, first traditional ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... Theodore laughed, and said to his sister, 'Alice is as fond of taking characters, as an actress. She attempted to reprove me, for the very thing she had laughed at a little while before. Rather inconsistent in our favourite, Nelly, don't you think so?' Eleanor laughed, and said good-naturedly, 'Alice is impulsive, she don't measure what she says, before ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... him the letter, which he in turn handed to his wife, saying, "Did I not tell you to commit your ways unto the Lord?" Unfortunately for this story, the hymn in question had been published in 1666, and the story is otherwise inconsistent with the known facts of his history.[5] The story is equally groundless, that this hymn was the means of procuring him an invitation from the Elector to ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt

... | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original | | document have been preserved. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this | | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this | | ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... cause them to comprehend the nature of these doubts, it was to be expected that they would ill brook the return of the prisoners to their farms and occupations, without having received some punishment: a circumstance wholly inconsistent with their own ideas and customs; and, indeed, they loudly threatened to burn the crops as soon as it could be effected.* Fire, in the hands of a body of irritated and hostile natives, might, with but little trouble to them, ruin the prospect of an abundant harvest; and it appeared by this ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... the grave; yet you will observe he was abroad by day. And inconsistent as it may seem with the hours of the night watch and the many references to the rising of the morning star, it is no singular exception. I could never find a case of another who had seen this ghost, diurnal and arboreal in its habits; but others have heard the fall ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the sciences, which, in the eyes of M. Comte's adherents, constitutes his second great claim to the dignity of a scientific philosopher, appears to me to be open to just the same objections as the law of the three states. It is inconsistent in itself, and it is inconsistent with fact. Let us consider the main points of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... plaintiffs, Adolf, succeeded in eluding surveillance and escaping from the camp at Wailly. He made his way successfully to Namur disguised as a Franciscan monk. Then, at the ferry, he gave a florin when a penny would have sufficed. The liberality, inconsistent with his assumed role, aroused suspicion and led to the detection of his rank and identity. He was stayed in his flight and imprisoned in the castle of Namur to await a decision on his case by his self-constituted judge. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... biographer, "were for the most part realities to him, and he accepted them with implicit credence, except when they exhibited the gods in a point of view which was repugnant to his moral feelings; and he accordingly rejects some tales, and changes others, because they are inconsistent with his moral conceptions." As a poet correctly describes him, using one of the names ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... at large would be the work of a volume, and inconsistent with the intention of these papers. I will, therefore, only add, for a conclusion, that he was a man of uncommon thought and judgment, and always kept his appetites and ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe

... readers. But all the great novelists of the two last generations indulged themselves and their readers in these unrealities. It is vastly easier to invent a consistent character than to represent an inconsistent one;—a hero is easier to make (so all historians have found) than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... of Zulu terms, is wildly inconsistent; likewise his capitalization, especially of Zulu terms. For example, Masapo is the chief of the Amansomi until chapter IX; thereafter his tribe is consistently referred to as the "Amasomi". In general, ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... in this, from his point of view; he never, in those days, professed to be a pacifist, for, though he wielded throughout the war a pen in preference to a sword, he truly believed it to be mightier; he was, in fact, in the Ministry of Information. He was not inconsistent in those days, though he was, I imagine, never easy in his mind about this money he had, and held his shares under his wife's name only. But when the League Secretariat was formed, he was one of the first to receive an appointment on it. It was ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... evening she tried to banish from her tell-tale face all traces of exultation. This was her secret; he could not know it yet. So poorly did she succeed that he was happily surprised by finding her cheerful, instead of sad; and yet, inconsistent mortal, he began to feel slightly annoyed that she seemed to be taking the prospective separation ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... is unbecoming my station, Mr. Touchwood," said the clergyman—"a folly altogether inconsistent with ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... magazine. It is an idea taken over by Christianity with the rest of the qualities of the Hebrew God. It is natural enough in minds so self-centred that their recognition of weakness and need brings with it no real self-surrender, but it is entirely inconsistent with the modern conception ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... in all his remonstrances, wholly inconsistent with greatness of mind. He thus talks of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... his story in a straightforward honest way, it was, upon the face of it, so inconsistent that even the loafers, changing feet again, pitied the prisoner and many of them actually left the room before the judge could pronounce sentence. Moran was held, of course, and sent to jail without bail. He had hosts of friends, but somehow they all appeared to be busy that evening ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman

... than, and very inconsistent with, these were also found. The lower results are, however, easily explained if we assume that the helium—which is a gas under prevailing conditions—escapes in many cases slowly ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... said it should be, "a marvelous work, a wonder." But my friend says that it is too mysterious, too wonderful, for human credence, and challenges me to point out anything told in the Bible that seems inconsistent with reason or experience. Now, which is the more reasonable, that Nephi built a boat after the pattern mentioned in the Mormon Bible, being directed by God how to build it, and then crossed the ocean to this continent, or that Jonah was in the whale's belly for three days and three nights, ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... p. 94. l. 3. My sire, a Brahmin hermit he—my mother was of Sudra race. This seems inconsistent with Menu: "A Brahmin, if he take a Sudra to his bed as his first wife, sinks to the regions of torment; if he begets a child by her, he loses even his priestly rank." iii, ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman

... argument is too well understood to need explanation. One familiar with courts of law knows that a witness who contradicts himself is not believed. Furthermore, if the testimony of several witnesses for the same side is inconsistent, the case for that side is materially weakened. So it is in general debate: the arguer who wishes to succeed must not use evidence that is self-contradictory. His proof must "hang together"; his facts must all go to establish the ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... was said that he, being very deeply skilled in the arts of prophecy and the interpretation of auguries and omens, had very often predicted coming events. And to these charges were added others very inconsistent with the laws of the religion over ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... he heard the King make a declaration so inconsistent with his nature, and believed at first that nothing short of the approach of death could have brought him to speak in depreciating terms of military renown, which was the very breath of his nostrils. But recollecting he had met the royal confessor ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... fallacies and contradictions. In every country, it presents romances void of probability, the hero of which is composed of impossible qualities. His name, exciting fear in all minds, is only a vague word, to which, men affix ideas or qualities, which are either contradicted by facts, or inconsistent. ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... averse to gallantry; but would have liked it more simple than as it was practised at Turin. The ordinary forms would not have disgusted him; but he found here a sort of superstition in the ceremonies and worship of love, which he thought very inconsistent: however, as he had submitted his conduct in that matter to the direction of the Chevalier de Grammont, he was obliged to follow his example, and to conform to the customs of ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... been thinking about the matter," he resumed. "Ever since we have been at Stapi, my mind has been almost solely occupied with the grave question which has been submitted to me by yourself—for nothing would be unwiser and more inconsistent than ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... key, while that from Shelley is all imagination, and is crowded with audacious imagery, all exquisite except in the first line, where the moon, converted by metaphor into a maiden, has that said of her that is inconsistent with ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... altered by the Volksraad, or other competent authority, all laws, whether passed before or after the annexation of the Transvaal territory to Her Majesty's dominions, shall, except in so far as they are inconsistent with or repugnant to the provisions of this Convention, be and remain in force in the said State in so far as they shall be applicable thereto, provided that no future enactment especially affecting the interests ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... sound philosopher once said: "He that thinks any innocent pastime foolish has either to grow wiser, or is past the ability to do so"; and I have always counted it an impudent fiction that playfulness is inconsistent with greatness. Many men and women have died of Dignity, but the disease which sent them to the tomb was not contracted from Charles Dickens. Not long ago, I met in the street a bleak old character, full of dogmatism, egotism, and rheumatism, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... what an over precipitate passion had betrayed him into denying. For many reasons, principally because we are satisfied that Job said then no more than the real fact, we cannot think Ewald right; and the concessions are too large and too inconsistent to be reconciled even with his own general theory of the poem. Another solution of the difficulty is very simple, although, it is to be admitted, that it rather cuts the knot than unties it. Eliphaz ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... maiden, 'you are really quite intense, And I ever of this honour shall retain the highest sense; But forgive me, if I venture'—faintly blushing thus she spoke— 'Is not true love inconsistent ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... of Mrs. Gaskell's book was very interesting,' she says. 'She seems a hasty, impulsive person, and the needful drawing back after her warmth gives her an inconsistent look. Yet I doubt not her book will be of great use. You must be aware that many strange notions as to the kind of person Charlotte really was will be done away with by a knowledge of the true facts of her life. I have heard ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... attributed to vanity if their shoulders had been pretty, but that, being as they were, it was not reasonable to suppose that they showed their necks from a love of display, but rather from some obligation not inconsistent with sense and modesty. She felt convinced, as she opened her box, that this must be her aunt Osgood's opinion, for Miss Nancy's mind resembled her aunt's to a degree that everybody said was surprising, considering the kinship was on Mr. Osgood's side; ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... thought so last evening as I saw him coming up the path. I took it home to myself—what I should feel, and what I would think if he were my son. Somehow we women are so inconsistent and foolish. I knew if he were my son, I never could give my consent to his going, never in the world,—but there! I would be so proud of him for doing just what your boy has done; I would look up to him in admiration, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... be quite illogical, and inconsistent with physiological facts, to aver that, were the poor less given to indulge the pleasures of sense, their fecundity would be modified in an ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple

... by an array of Quartos, of earlier date than F1. To desert F1 for these, where they exist, would be but an occasional, and at best an uncertain means of attaining the lost spelling of Shakespeare, while the spelling of our volume would become even more inconsistent than that of F1 itself. Add to this; there are places, though, as has been seen, not many, where we have had to leave the reading of F1 altogether. How then shall we spell the ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare

... disgust; and as my family felt towards them as I did, they were seldom mentioned at all. I even, as much as possible, avoided having any company at my house, that their blood-stained names might never be introduced. I shall, perhaps, be told by some who read this, that I am inconsistent to express such a horror at blood-stained tyrants, and yet take every opportunity of extolling Napoleon, who was as great a tyrant as any of those whom I condemn. To the unthinking, an explanation is certainly necessary from me; for I fully concur in the opinion ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... I? I only tell you this to show you how inconsistent I should be if I threw myself into the midst of a gay life and thought of nothing ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre

... of his moral government; and especially of that amazing display of his love, in the work of redemption—it will fill our hearts with "JOY UNSPEAKABLE AND FULL OF GLORY." Nor is rejoicing in God at all inconsistent with mourning for sin. On the contrary, the more we see of the divine character, the more deeply shall we be abased and humbled before him. Says Job, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... that nations pay for their aggrandizement. To-day, when the book is understood, when peace conferences invite me to address them and navy leagues condemn me in resolutions, Hanks wonders why I accepted his commission with such hearty acquiescence. He deems me inconsistent. ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... productions of several writers, who set up for men of humour, what wild, irregular fancies, what unnatural distortions of thought do we meet with? If they speak nonsense, they believe they are talking humour; and when they have drawn together a scheme of absurd, inconsistent ideas, they are not able to read it over to themselves without laughing. These poor gentlemen endeavour to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... as his panegyrists contend, an affectionate friend, husband, and father; a very good fellow when his vanity or his whims were not touched; and inexhaustibly fertile in the kind of rough profusion of flower and weed that uncultivated soil frequently produces. But it most certainly is also not inconsistent, but on the contrary highly consistent, with the picture drawn by Lockhart in his great book; and it shows how, to say the least and mildest, the faults and foibles of the curious personage known as "the Shepherd of the Noctes" were ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... the last analysis, would it not show a lamentable lack of logic, if one were glad to have it otherwise? It is inconsistent to love life, and none the less to endeavor constantly with every possible device to drag it over to your side, to win it over to the finesses and melancholies, the entire diseased nobility of literature. The realm of art is waxing, and that of health and innocence is ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... of antenatal influences, or the child's surroundings in its earliest years, the effect of some passing word or sight on one, that makes no impression on another? The unhappiness of one child under a certain home discipline is not inconsistent with the content of another under this same discipline. One, yearning for broader freedom, is in a chronic condition of rebellion; the other, more easily satisfied, quietly accepts the situation. Everything is seen from a different standpoint; everything ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... would confess all; if not, he would return to his wife and do the best he could. But she must be provided for during his absence, and to effect this, he wrote to his father, saying he stood greatly in need of five hundred dollars, and that immediately on its receipt he would start for home. Inconsistent as it seemed with his general character, the elder Mr. Graham was generous with his money, lavishing upon his son all that he asked for, and the money was accordingly ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... exists in the statement of one attribute of any thing; but an idea of imitation only in the resemblance of as many attributes as we are usually cognizant of in its real presence." Hence it follows that ideas of truth are inconsistent with ideas of imitation; for, as we before said, ideas of imitation remove the impression by an ever-present sense of the deception or falsehood. This is put very conclusively—"so that the moment ideas of truth are grouped together, so as to give rise to an idea ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... brought herself to look it straight in the face. And what she saw was that if she could be brave enough to go herself into a more spacious country, leaving hurts behind, she must not be so cowardly, so ignobly inconsistent as to refuse the hurts coming to her through others who would dare. Through the conflict of many emotions, out of much misery, she at last wrenched from a sore heart the admission that Wayne had as much right to be "free" as she had. That if Ann had a right ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... the import or export duties on their cargoes, are in excess of the fees, dues, or duties imposed on the vessels of such country or on the cargoes of such vessels; but this proviso shall not be held to be inconsistent with the special regulation by foreign countries of duties and other charges on their own vessels, and the cargoes thereof, engaged in their coasting trade, or with the existence between such countries and other states of reciprocal stipulations founded on special conditions ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... what he had built on. The dear old governor, goodness knew, had prejudices and superstitions, but if they were numerous, and some of them very curious, they were not rigid. He had also such nice inconsistent feelings, such irrepressible indulgences, such humorous deviations, and they would ease everything off. He was in short an old darling, and with an old darling in the long run one was always safe. When they reached the house ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... find too much. But then this characteristic, which is one source of his endless attraction, is also a source of perplexity. For in those parts of his plays which show him neither in his most intense nor in his most negligent mood, we are often unable to decide whether something that seems inconsistent, indistinct, feeble, exaggerated, is really so, or whether it was definitely meant to be as it is, and has an intention which we ought to be able to divine; whether, for example, we have before us some unusual trait in character, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... of the lines of argument adopted by the author to support the possibility or probability of mesmerism, we perceive they are of two sorts, essentially different, and in some measure inconsistent with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... Sittard is a view of vast extent over the Netherlands. The cathedral of Aix is a large Gothic structure, but many of its decorations are trifling, and inconsistent with the solidity of its massy columns of marble and granite. Its doors are of bronze highly ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... such Concord to be inconsistent with the use of Monosyllables, he had surely banished them from these two Lines; and were I to fetch Testimonies out of his Writings, I might pick a Jury of Twelve out of ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob

... adopted, British Jews in Russia would be entitled to be relieved from the disabilities to which native Jews are liable, but such a construction would also involve the supposition that Russia had agreed to create a state of things inconsistent with the traditions of her Government, which could not fail to be a ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf

... character, with equal severity. To believe in the second sight, for instance, or in any form of life as having the slightest relation to this world, except that of men, that of animals, and that of vegetables, was with him wicked, antagonistic to the Church of Scotland, and inconsistent with her perfect doctrine. The very word ghost would bring upon his face an expression he meant for withering scorn, and indeed it withered his face, rendering it yet more unpleasant to behold. Coming to the benighted country, then, with all the gathered wisdom of Edinburgh in his gallinaceous ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... at a loss to imagine what conversation they have among one another, which I may not be present at: since I love innocent Mirth as much as any of them; and am shocked with no freedoms whatsoever, which are inconsistent with Christianity. ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... dingle, in more instances than one, in drinking more hollands and water than is consistent with decorum. He has a motive indeed in doing so; a desire to learn from the knave in his cups the plans and hopes of the Propaganda of Rome. Such conduct, however, was inconsistent with strict fair dealing and openness; and the author advises all those whose consciences never reproach them for a single unfair or covert act committed by them, to abuse him heartily for administering hollands and water to the Priest ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... such lethargic action, wholly inconsistent with true military principle, and bitterly criticised by Hood,—who affirmed that twenty ships might have been taken,—Rodney drew up an express account, which cannot be considered as adequate ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... constantly cropping up and bewildering one who is trying to understand the Hindu trend of thought. So, though those men all affirmed that there is only one God, they admitted that they each worshipped several. They saw nothing inconsistent in this. Just as the air is in everything, so God is in everything, therefore in the various symbols. And as our King has divers representative Viceroys and Governors to rule over his dominions in his name, so the Supreme has these sub-deities, less in power ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... admitted to having taken part in five wars should be mixing in a by-election in the cause of Peace, was not so inconsistent as might be supposed; for he had always fought on the losing side, and there seemed to him at the moment no side so losing as that of Peace. No great politician, he was not an orator, nor even a glib talker; yet a quiet mordancy of tongue, and the white-hot look in his eyes, never failed to make ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... would never own to having come as low down as that; and I expressed a hardy and somewhat inconsistent doubt of the quality of the amusement that could be had for that money. I questioned if anything intellectual could be had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... all other vices inconsistent with the character of a social being, because it sacrifices truth and kindness to very weak temptations. He that plunders a wealthy neighbour gains as much as he takes away, and may improve his own condition in the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... of sixteen, Franklin was disposed to adopt the lower of these creeds as his rule of life; at times affirming that it was superior to the teachings of Jesus Christ; while again there would be the very clear and inconsistent avowal that, in this wicked world, something more was needed than teachings which he could plainly see seldom, if ever influenced a lost and degraded man, to be changed from a Saul of Tarsus to a Paul the Apostle. No one can understand the peculiar religious and moral character of Benjamin ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... absolutely lack the authority to deal with interstate business in any form; and second, because of the inevitable conflict of authority sure to arise in the effort to enforce different kinds of state regulation, often inconsistent with one another and sometimes oppressive in themselves. Such divided authority can not regulate commerce with wisdom and effect. The Central Government is the only power which, without oppression, can nevertheless thoroughly and adequately control ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... day be sapphire or obsidian. And the resolutions arising from one mood are thwarted by the actions of the next. Janet had observed this phenomenon, and sometimes, when it troubled her, she thought herself the most inconsistent and vacillating of creatures. She had resolved, far instance, before she fell asleep, to leave the Chippering Mill, to banish Ditmar from her life, to get a position in Boston, whence she could send some of her wages ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Compare Vanderdonck, Cusick, Sagard, and other writers. According to Vanderdonck, Ataentsic became mother of a deer, a bear, and a wolf, by whom she afterwards bore all the other animals, mankind included. Brbeuf found also among the Hurons a tradition inconsistent with that of Ataentsic, and bearing a trace of Algonquin origin. It declares, that, in the beginning, a man, a fox, and a skunk found themselves together on an island, and that the man made the world out of mud brought ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... rocks. Two hundred yards from the creek is a neat inn after the English style, with a large sitting-room, a tap, a bar, and a coffee-room. The bed-rooms are so arranged as to separate nobs from snobs—an arrangement rather inconsistent in a democratic colony. The inn also affords good stabling and high charges. Up to this distance on our road there is a scarcity of wood ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... account for it on the ground of that inconsistency which he has observed in all human behavior, but Mrs. Kenton is not inclined to admit that it is so very inconsistent. She contends that Ellen had simply lived through that hateful episode of her psychological history, as she was sure to do sooner or later and as she was destined to do as soon as some other person arrived ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the characteristic and unique formation of the country set at naught all the approved deductions and theories of the scientific world. A paradox, or, as a clever writer recently put it, "a surviving fragment of the primitive world," with a nature contradictory and inconsistent, as compared even with itself, cut off from the rest of the globe, and left to work out the problem of its existence alone; no wonder it was only after successive generations had toiled at it, that Australia was, even in ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... for him!" replied my friend, with the usual inconsistent indignation that good Protestants invariably display when their pet corn, the Bible, is accidentally trodden on. "It has been very well said that the devil can quote Scripture, and this musician (a good job he IS dead, I'm sure) is perfectly blasphemous ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... the clouds gave way and I saw an island. I aimed for it and slowed more, preparing to land on it. I did, though just barely, for it was extremely small, being one of those inconsistent volcanic islands. Getting out of the plane, I was greeted by a strong blast of wind that was dripping water from its cold grip, and I was instantly chilled to the bone. There was nothing on the island at all, except for the hole in its center, from which, no doubt, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... wish these very apprehensive young ladies knew, their virtue is not half so often in danger as they imagine, and that there are many male creatures to whom they may safely shew politeness without being drawn into any concessions inconsistent with the strictest honor. We are not half such terrible animals as mammas, nurses, and novels represent us; and, if my opinion is of any weight, I am inclin'd to believe those tremendous men, who have designs on the whole sex, are, and ever were, characters as fabulous ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... attracted the attention of Assyriologists. The presence of short inscriptions in Aramaic on a few contract-tablets naturally raised hopes, in the early days of decipherment, of finding some check upon the reading of cuneiform. So far as these went they were by no means inconsistent with the readings of the cuneiform. But they were too few, too disconnected, and in themselves too uncertain, to be of great value. Indeed, for many of them, it is the cuneiform that now gives the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... disfigure the annals of those republics the advocates of despotism have drawn arguments, not only against the forms of republican government, but against the very principles of civil liberty. They have decried all free government as inconsistent with the order of society, and have indulged themselves in malicious exultation over its friends and partisans. Happily for mankind, stupendous fabrics reared on the basis of liberty, which have flourished for ages, have, in a few glorious instances, refuted ...
— The Federalist Papers

... when applied to the ordinary business of life, should be found inconsistent with those moral obligations which are dictated to us by conscience; or even were we to discover that the ablest, most virtuous, and most successful person, amongst us were uniformly despisers of religion, then there would certainly be some explanation, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... diligently propagated, might in time overpower and repress it, since no one can nurse it for the sake of pleasure, as its effects are only shame, anguish, and perturbation. It is, above all other vices, inconsistent with the character of a social being, because it sacrifices truth and kindness to very weak temptations. He that plunders a wealthy neighbour, gains as much as he takes away, and improves his own condition in the same proportion as he impairs another's; but ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... his departure to summon the old keeper, we have no farther account. Partly for the sake of appearing original, and partly from an idea that to make Orestes kill the king and queen in the middle of their capital would be inconsistent with probability, Euripides has involved himself in still greater improbabilities. Whatever there is of the tragical in his drama is not his own, but belongs either to the fable, to his predecessors, or to tradition. In his hands, at least, it has ceased to be tragedy, but ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... without reason, since it implies the collation of effect and cause, i.e. inasmuch as when we see an effect and are ignorant of its cause, we seek to know it, as is said Metaph. i, 2. Secondly, it is inconsistent with the purpose of the Incarnation, which is the justification of man from sin. For the human soul is not capable of sin nor of justifying grace except through the mind. Hence it was especially necessary for ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... power was exhibited, and that in fashion really inconsistent with the democratic principles which the American statesmen professed, in the determination that the President should be chosen by the people only in an indirect fashion, through an Electoral College. ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... irreconcilable with carrying clandestine love messages. I acknowledged that I pitied his condition; for to see the tears that he shed, and listen to the supplications which he had made, would have softened almost anybody; but that notwithstanding my great regard for him, I thought it inconsistent with my duty to interfere in such a business: I added, that he had told me that he had walked before the house yesterday afternoon, with the hopes of meeting one of the servants, whom he might bribe to convey a letter; and that I had threatened to acquaint Donna Celia if he mentioned ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... Among the peoples who have incarnated their divinities in no statue, in no human or animal form, we find the Germans and the Celts. But the mythology of the former is clear, well kept within large lines; that of the latter is fleeting and inconsistent—the despair ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... blamed and found to be guilty of superstition for creating idols in the spiritual world. Is not, then, the educated man, the man who craves after knowledge, who is enlightened, still more inconsistent than these masses, when he deals with his favorite authorities? Are not half a dozen laurel-crowned heads allowed by him to do whatever they like with facts, to draw their own conclusions, according to ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... is true that this unbroken course of development, this omnipresent reign of law, is inconsistent with the theological theories of supernatural intervention that have so often claimed a monopoly of faith. But independent of all scientific reasons, on religious and philosophical grounds themselves, this dogmatic view is no longer to be accepted. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... By an inconsistent twist of fate he was known as Honest John. His father before him had raced in old Kentucky to considerable purpose, and with the full vigor of a man who races for sport; and so to the son John, in consequence, had come little beyond a not-to-be-eradicated love of thoroughbreds. To race squarely, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... now they found her a woman and the mother of two children. Moreover they were guided by the opinion of her kinsfolk. Their attitude provokes some astonishment, however, when one thinks of the conversation at the banquet, and of the awkward and inconsistent remarks the dame must have uttered. If they were not then undeceived, these burgesses must have been passing simple and strongly prejudiced in favour ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... my work. Through the camera of my jealously guarded window I could catch a glimpse of the vivid, quivering blue of the sky, the glittering intensity of the ocean, the long motionless leaves of the horse-chestnut in the road,—all utterly inconsistent with anything as active as this lamentation. I stepped to the open door and into ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... that facts are nothing compared to his superior sense of intellectual virtue. But to attack consistency is quite a different thing from elevating inconsistency to the rank of an ideal. The man who was proud of being inconsistent, not from necessity but from choice, would be as much of a fool as his opposite. Life, in a word, can never be lived by ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook

... have been repaired, but inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been left as printed in light of the author's extensive use of dialect and deliberate ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... ears.[1769] But the astonishing point is that, saint as she was, she should have consented to arm and fight on the day of the Nativity. It was contrary to her action on the 5th of May, Ascension Day, and inconsistent with what she had said on the 8th of the same month: "As ye love and honour the Sacred Sabbath do not ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... and crouching animal, compared with the free people of the upper country who have remained under their native princes. Throughout England there is a deference to rank, a servility, a toadyism, entirely inconsistent with ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... even for an instant, be contrary to his will, is inconsistent with his foresight and omnipotency. It would be a miracle that anything counter to his ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... our age. Nor could I think much better of those who, more sensitive to the contradictions in and around them, sought refuge in art or religion. The catastrophe of the war had shown me that this departmentalizing of life, which at one time I had myself considered a sort of ideal, was quite inconsistent with the needs of to-day. To make use of art or religion as a refuge was a sign of their increasing separation from the rest of human culture. It implied a cleavage between the different spheres of society which ruled out any ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... New Testament—has been of incalculable value to the historical theorists of the last and present centuries. To question the existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more excusable act, than to believe in that of Romulus. To deny a fact related in Herodotus, because it is inconsistent with a theory developed from an Assyrian inscription which no two scholars read in the same way, is more pardonable, than to believe in the good-natured old king whom the elegant pen of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... of "all London" to the same purpose. She fled, he tells us, from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown. Thus when Macaulay chastises Mrs. Elizabeth Porter for marrying Johnson, he is not inconsistent, for he pursues Mrs. Thrale with equal rigour for her audacity in keeping gaiety and grace in her mind and manners longer than Macaulay liked to see such ornaments added to the charm ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... citation of Articles III and IV of the same Treaty. Under the first of these articles it is declared that 'Russia has no territorial advantages or preferential or exclusive concessions in Manchuria in impairment of Chinese sovereignty or inconsistent with the principle of equal opportunity'; whilst the second is a reciprocal engagement by Russia and Japan 'not to obstruct any general measures common to all countries which China may take for the development of the commerce ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... making some reply, representing to him how unjustifiable such a procedure was to me, in a case where the happiness of my life was at stake; and how inconsistent it was with the charitable precepts of our faith, to allow feelings of resentment to influence his conduct. My remonstrances, as in the preceding meeting, were ineffectual. The more I spoke, the more intemperate he grew. I therefore ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... it! But it galled me so—and yet I had been ready an hour ago to have accepted him as my husband! Why, then, this revolt at the idea of receiving a fair substitute in gold? Really, one is a goose, and I had time to realize, even in this tumult of emotion, that there can be nothing so inconsistent as the feelings of ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... the Methodists, having all their strength at the South, levied a spiritual warfare against this great wrong. It was at the South that the Baptists, in 1789, "Resolved, That slavery is a violent deprivation of the rights of nature, and inconsistent with a republican government, and we therefore recommend it to our brethren to make use of every legal measure to extirpate this horrid evil from the land."[222:1] At the North, Jonathan Edwards the Younger is conspicuous in the unbroken succession ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... countries, as a foundation for changes in their own. The spirit of such changes, though avoiding the extravagance of a popular assembly, being only so much change as the conservative temper of old members is likely to allow, is nevertheless inconsistent with the fixedness of Egypt which Plato wishes to impress upon Hellenic institutions. He is inconsistent with himself as the truth begins to dawn upon him that 'in the execution things for the most part fall short of ...
— Laws • Plato

... physical disease, but they do not exactly parallel any one of them. It may take a skilled eye to discover the differences, but differences there are. Functional troubles usually show a near-picture of organic disease, with just enough contradictory or inconsistent features to furnish a clue as to their real nature. For this reason it is important that the treatment of the disease be solely the province of the physician; for only the carefully trained in all the requirements of diagnosis can differentiate the pseudo from the ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... a rhinoceros; or has remembered, while he faces the beast, that a good rhinoceros is a pleasant member of the community in which his life is passed? We see only the folded hide, the horn, and the angry little eye. We know that he is strong and cunning, and that his desires and instincts are inconsistent with our welfare. Yet a rhinoceros is a simpler creature than a German, and does not trouble our thought by conforming, on occasion, to civilized ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... once before in these "Confessions" claimed to myself the privilege, not inconsistent with a full disclosure of the memorabilia of my life, to pass slightly over those passages, the burden of which was unhappy, and whose memory is painful. I must now, therefore, claim the "benefit of this act," and beg of the reader to let me pass from this sad portion of my history, and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... better or worse," added Mr. Lee, "and I think he is the strangest and most inconsistent ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur

... emolument, and instead of instantly despatching the ships with supplies, and thereby preventing a noise, he left the ships, and returned quite to Paris without the least ground, that I can find, for his conduct; and has laid his scheme to pass into America in a ship without the artillery, which is inconsistent and absurd, and contrary to our original agreement, and constant understanding, as I engaged with this man solely on account of the artillery he was to assist in procuring, expediting, and attending in person. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... While still an Arab, he had done as Arabs do, gambolling in the mud, charging into butchers' stalls, a cat-hunter, a sturdy beggar, a common rogue and vagabond; but with his rise into society he laid aside these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more, he hunted no more cats; and conscious of his collar, he ignored his old companions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to recognise the upstart, and from that hour, except for human countenance, he was alone. Friendless, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... neighbour's kine; look, with a furacious eye, on a bundle of hay, and regret, in his heart, that it had not four legs like a cow, by which he could make it steal itself home to his semi-baronial residence.[3] These apparently inconsistent and opposite qualities were possessed by the laird of Henderland. There was not in all Liddesdale a nobler champion of the rights of war; and few there were that entered more keenly into the spirit of enterprise, to take from his neighbour a fat ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... to me at that time to reflect that I was less graceful only because I was more earnest, more sincere. This is usually the case, and is reasonably accounted for. Intensity and great earnestness of character, are wholly inconsistent with a nice attention to forms, carriage, demeanor. But what does a lady care for such distinction? Does she even suspect it? Not often. If she could only fancy for a moment that the well-made but awkward man who traverses the room before her, carried in his breast a soul of ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms



Words linked to "Inconsistent" :   contradictory, at odds, self-contradictory, incongruous, unconformable, variable, incompatible, consistent, discrepant, conflicting, spotty, irreconcilable



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com