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Bias

adjective
1.
Slanting diagonally across the grain of a fabric.



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"Bias" Quotes from Famous Books



... of all, was the most assiduous and exact. The naturalist of D'Entrecasteaux's expedition, he saw mankind with the eye of a philosopher. He was pleased to examine the passions of a race, least of all indebted to art; yet the prevailing notions of Citizen Frenchmen, perhaps, gave him a bias, when estimating an uncivilised people. He left Europe when the dreams of Rousseau were the toys of the speculative, and before they became the phantoms of the populace. His observations were, doubtlessly, correct; ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... began with a bias against rather than for the worker, and the determination to do strictest justice to employer as well as employed. Long experience had taught what was to be expected from untrained, unskilled laborers, with no ambition or power to rise. Approaching the subject with the conviction ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... and when MacRae had convinced him that our business was urgent, and not for his ears, he graciously allowed us to enter the Presence—who proved to be a heavy-set person with sandy, mutton-chop whiskers set bias on a vacuous, round, florid countenance. His braid-trimmed uniform was cut to fit him like the skin of an exceedingly well-stuffed sausage, and from his comfortable seat behind a flat-topped desk he gazed upon us with the wisdom of a tree-full of owls ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... his account of the appearances and occurrences, at the examinations before the committing Magistrates, it must be allowed that he exposed a decided bias, in his own mind, to the belief and reception of the spectral evidence. He commences that account in these words: "Some scores of people, first about Salem, the centre and first-born of all the towns in the Colony, and ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... especially when related by one who saw them. It is no slight help to our charity to recollect that, in disputable matters, every man sees according to his prejudices, and is stone-blind to whatever he did not expect or did not mean to see. Even where no personal bias can be suspected, contemporary and popular evidence is to be taken with great caution, so exceedingly careless are men as to exact truth, and such poor observers, for the most part, of what goes on under their eyes. The ballad which was hawked about ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... free from the common sense and scientific bias towards substituting explanations for actual facts the more clearly we see that this continuous process of changing is the very essence of what we know directly, and the more we realize how unlike such a continuous process is to any series of ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen

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

... search which is so eminently desirable. As a rule, they have contrived rather to hide than to bring to light the object sought for. It would be doing them injustice to assume that this has been done with deliberate intention. It is much more likely due to professional bias, which exercises over the minds of members of definitely limited professions incessant and potent domination. When alluding to occurrences included in the enumeration given above, they exhibit signs of a resolve to defend their profession ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... Bias Supersede Sly Aversion Capital Meerschaum Extravagant Travel Alley Concur Travail Fee Attention Apprehend Superb Magnanimity Lewd Adroit Altruism Instigation Quite Benevolence Complexion Urchin Charity Bishop Thoroughfare Unction Starve Naughty Speed Cunning Moral ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... interested motives intervene; but when they do, the result is jobbery more unblushing and audacious than the worst corruption which can well take place in a public office under a government of publicity. It is not necessary that the interested bias should extend to the majority of the assembly. In any particular case it is of ten enough that it affects two or three of their number. Those two or three will have a greater interest in misleading the body than any other of its members are likely to have in putting it right. ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... and degrees of imperfection as its stages. Spinoza was prevented from making much of this idea by his rejection of the principle of teleology. He regarded appreciation or valuation as a projection of personal bias. "Nature has no particular goal in view," and "final causes are mere human figments." "The perfection of things is to be reckoned only from their own nature and power."[318:7] The philosophical ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... taken to the fact that he starts upon his task with a definite bias in a certain direction. He candidly admits from the outset that his aim is to find a meaning for life, and in doing this he of course tacitly assumes that life has a deep and profound meaning. Strict scientists aver that the investigator ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones

... mission of reform, and some one suggested that the character of that mission would be raised in the eyes of the public if so well known a philanthropist as Gordon, whose views on all subjects were free from official bias, could be associated with it. I do not know whether the idea originated with Sir Bruce Seton, Lord Ripon's secretary, while at the War Office, but in any case that gentleman first broached the proposition to ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... benevolent will exerted for an immediate benefit,[28] and transcending the then existing range of human intelligence to explain and power to achieve. The historic reality of at least some such acts performed by Jesus is acknowledged by critics as free from the faintest trace of orthodox bias as Keim: "The picture of Jesus, the worker of miracles, belongs to the first believers in Christ, ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton

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

... to be engaged in the factions of the settlement,—and if they should ever happen to be so engaged, that the native people were then without that remedy which obviously lay in the chance that the court and jury, though both liable to bias, might not easily unite in the same identical act of injustice. Your Committee, on full inquiry, are of opinion that the use of juries is neither ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... help uniting internal moral intensity with external physical reference; and the natural conditions of sensibility require that perceptions should owe their existence and quality to the living organism with its moral bias, and that at the same time they should be addressed to the external objects which entice that ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

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

... nurse him, with Dr Brandram to attend him, with his own strong bias towards life to buoy him up, emerged slowly from the valley of the shadow of death, and in due time stood once more on his feet. Weeks before that happened he had told and heard all that was to be said about his lost brother. Dr Brandram had recounted the incident at Miss Jill's party, ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... the evidence for it is precisely analogous to that adduced by Agassiz, "that it is in accordance with the working of our minds," still further illuminated by the side-lights which science has thrown on it since Agassiz died. The ultimate decision in the individual mind will be according to the bias for or against the "conscious mind" or automatic creation; and it must not be forgotten that one of the most powerful arguments for a large evolution was the discovery by Agassiz that the embryo of the highest organizations passes through ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... Solon of Athens, his motto "Know thyself"; Chilo of Sparta, his motto "Consider the end"; Thales of Miletus, his motto "Whoso hateth suretyship is sure"; Bias of Priene, his motto "Most men are bad"; Cleobulus of Lindos, his motto "Avoid extremes"; Pittacus of Mitylene, his motto "Seize Time by the forelock"; Periander of Corinth, his motto ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

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

... when he did so those listening to his rivals turned and surged towards him. There was plenty of movement. It was what the newspapers call an animated scene—or a disgraceful scene—according to their political bias. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... in truth she was, but love of country and love of freedom, with a clear sense of justice, had overpowered them, and although she did not possess the enthusiasm of her aunt, she was still a strong advocate of the popular cause. Had she indeed the bias I originally supposed, her aunt would have thrown all her influence to prevent me from making any further advance than I had already done, and I am certain that the young lady would not have acted in opposition to the wishes and advice of her family. ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... the old way,' I shall attempt of that kind nothing further. I follow the bias of my own mind, without considering whether women or men are or are not ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... wonders and romance of Nature. He enlists among his characters a whole series of inanimate objects, such as Bread, Sugar, Milk, Light, Water, Fire and Trees, besides the Cat, the Dog and other animals, investing them all with individuality,—making for instance, with characteristic bias, the Dog the faithful friend of his boy and girl companions and ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc

... it something more than an isolated act. It leads him down to its motive; that motive carries him to the state of mind in which it could have power; that state of mind, in which the motive could have power, carries him still deeper to the bias of his nature as he had received it from his parents. And thinking of how he had fallen, how upon his terraced palace roof there the eye had inflamed the heart, and the heart had yielded so quickly to the temptations of the eye, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... many kindred passages Sir C. Lyell protests against the bias here illustrated, he seems himself not completely free from it. Though he utterly rejects the old hypothesis that all over the Earth the same continuous strata lie one upon another in regular order, like ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... Defoe's misfortune that his biographers on the large scale have occupied themselves too much with subordinate details, and have been misled from a true appreciation of his main lines of thought and action by religious, political, and hero-worshipping bias. For the following sketch, taking Mr. Lee's elaborate work as my chronological guide, I have read such of Defoe's undoubted writings as are accessible in the Library of the British Museum—there is no complete collection, ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... so strongly, the writer of these speculations says to himself: "Let me, at all events, try to eliminate any bias, and see the whole thing as should an umpire—one of those pure beings in white coats, purged of all the prejudices, passions, and predilections of mankind. Let me have no temperament for the time being, for I have to set down—not what would be the effect on me ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... percent of the newsmen involved in the affair thought they were honestly giving the news as they saw it, and none of them saw the invisible but very powerful hand of Stanley Martin shifting the news just enough to give it the bias ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... indeed, all the journals agreed, Spite of "politics," "bias," or "party collision;" Viz.: to "give," when they'd "further accounts" of the deed, "Full particulars" ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

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

... any favourable conclusion which may, by some, be drawn from the phenomena, and quite apart from the more general opinion that all modern instances are compact of imposture, malobservation, mythopoeic memory, and superstitious bias, the systematic comparison of civilised and savage beliefs and alleged experiences of this kind cannot wisely be neglected by Anthropology. Humani nihil a ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

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

... dominance over servile women and helpless children, free rein was given to the growth of pride and the exercise of irresponsible tyranny. To these feelings, developed without check for thousands of years, and to the mental habits resultant, it is easy to trace much of the bias ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... detested each other with a detestation rooted in the most essential differences of character and outlook. As good fortune arranged it, however, each came to occupy precisely that political station in which he could do his best work and from which he could best correct the bias of the other. Marshall's nationalism rescued American democracy from the vaguer horizons to which Jefferson's cosmopolitanism beckoned, and gave to it a secure abode with plenty of elbowroom. Jefferson's emphasis ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... first-rate writer could have afforded to appear in person not only because of damage to his stature lest it be noted he was doing his own spadework; but, more important, first-hand observation might limit his capacity for rationalizing the situation into the mold demanded by the bias of his commentator or columnist. It was always difficult to maintain author integrity when the facts did not support the sensationalism required by the employers, and best not to put oneself in ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... must be on her guard against their propensity to cheat and annoy a lonely and helpless woman; for, to tell the truth, in her good father's over-anxiety to defend her from the snares of evil men after his death, his teachings had given her opinion this bias, and he had forgotten to tell her how kindly and how true he had found many of his own parishioners, how few inclined to harm or pain him. So Miss Lucinda made her entrance into life at Dalton, distrustful, but not suspicious; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... satisfactory in making her the court of appeal, on any point of doubt; even though her decision might not be a favorable one, you always felt sure you were getting it straight without any affectionate bias. ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... simply operating with the ideas which were all round him in a society saturated with Cartesianism,—supremacy of human reason, progressive enlightenment, the value of this life for its own sake, and the standard of utility. Given these ideas and the particular bias of his own mind, it required no great ingenuity to advance from the thought of the progress of science to the thought of progress in man's moral nature and his social conditions. The omnipotence of governments to mould the destinies of peoples, the possibility of the ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

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

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

... who reasoned as Choate did were a necessity; but to keep them in the party of political evasion would depend upon the ability of this party to play the game of politics without acknowledging sectional bias. Whether this difficult task could be accomplished would depend upon the South. Toombs, on his part, was anxious to continue making the party of evasion play the great American game of politics, and in his eagerness he perhaps overestimated ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... continued to write for it until June, 1848. He was more patronising in his abuse than either Blackwood or the Quarterly, and on the whole fairer and more dignified; though he was considerably influenced by political bias. In fact, his judgments—though versatile—were narrow, his most marked limitations arising ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... waited for the bodily form wherewith to clothe it. "In the absence of good judges and handsome women"—that is to say, models, he paused, as he said in one of his letters to Castiglione. One feels instinctively that with his Gothic bias Donatello would not have minded. He did not ask for applause, and at the period of St. George classical ideas had not introduced the professional artist's model. Life was still adequate, and the only model was the subject in hand. The increasing discovery ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... Walton's—is often in this way changed and corrupted by the habit of over-vigilance, and pushed beyond its natural limits of candour. Neither was Sir Aymer de Valence free from a similar change; suspicion, though from a different cause, seemed also to threaten to bias his open and noble disposition, in those qualities which had hitherto been proper to him. It was in vain that Sir John de Walton studiously sought opportunities to give his younger friend indulgences, which at times were ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... recommended Virgil and Horace to him; whose praises help'd to make him popular while he was alive, and after his death have made him precious to posterity. As for the religion of our poet, he seems to have some little bias towards the opinions of Wycliffe, after John of Ghant his patron; somewhat of which appears in the tale of Piers Plowman.[19] Yet I cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the vices of the clergy ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... which had taken place against the form of fiction he adopted, but far more to the personal animosities he aroused. We are now far enough removed from the prejudices and passions of his time to take an impartial view of the man, and to state, without bias for or against him, the conclusions to which the world has very generally come as to his merits and defects as ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw: Or if an unexpected call succeed, Come when it will, is equal to the need: —He who, though thus endued as with a sense And faculty for storm and turbulence, Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes; Sweet images! which, wheresoe'er he be, Are at his heart; and such fidelity It is his darling passion to approve; More brave for this, that he hath much to love:— 'Tis, finally, the Man, who, lifted, high, Conspicuous ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... he reasoned as a man of his class and antecedents was likely to reason—only with a bias against himself. To capture Connie, through Otto, before she had had any other chances of marriage, seemed to him a mean and ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... in the propaganda as it was presented and as it affected us in the campaign fighting the Bolsheviki in North Russia in 1918-19. We write this chapter with great hesitation and with consciousness that it is subject to error in investigation and sifting of evidences and subject to error of bias on the part of the writer. However, no attempt has been made to compel the parts of this volume to be consistent with one another. Facts have been stated and comments have been written as they occurred ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... the school where this method is in vogue the examination takes on the color and character of the recitation. At the close of the term, or semester, the teacher makes out the proverbial ten questions which very often reflect her own bias, or predilections, and in these ten questions are the issues of life and death. A hundred questions might be asked upon the subjects upon which the pupils are to be tested, but these ten are the ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... Possibly, from "streams" came "brooks,"—hence, "Punchbrook,"—which, under the strange mutations of time, has become "Pinchbrook." But we are not learned in these matters, and we hope that nothing we have said will bias the minds of antiquarians, and prevent them from devoting that attention to the origin of the word which its ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... a mind such as I have described? You see what these priests say under oath—picked men, men chosen for their places in that terrible court on account of their learning, their experience, their keen and practised intellects, and their strong bias against the prisoner. They make that poor country-girl out the match, and more than the match, of the sixty-two trained adepts. Isn't it so? They from the University of Paris, she from the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... think I regard the matter more sanely than ever yet. I am quite free from sexual bias. I can see that Amy was not my fit intellectual companion, and all emotion at the thought of her has gone from me. The word "love" is a weariness to me. If only our idiotic laws permitted us to break the legal bond, how glad both of us ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... which I have traced Waverley's pursuits, and the bias which these unavoidably communicated to his imagination, the reader may perhaps anticipate, in the following tale, an imitation of the romance of Cervantes. But he will do my prudence injustice in the supposition. My intention ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... only been away from me six weeks, and it takes longer than that to alter any one. By the way,' he went on smoothly, 'how have you been all this time? I have no doubt your tour has been as adventurous as that of Gil Bias.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... I have hardly kept my promise. The reader has decorated but little for himself as yet; but I have not, at least, attempted to bias his judgment. Of the simple forms of decoration which have been set before him, he has always been left free to choose; and the stated restrictions in the methods of applying them have been only those ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... question, and two to every phase of this great immigration question. Especially is this true when we come to estimating effects upon character, for here we are in the domain of inference and of reasoning from necessarily limited knowledge. Here, too, temperament and bias play their part. One person learns that of every five persons you meet in New York four are of foreign birth or parentage, notes the change in personality, customs, and manners, and wonders how long our free institutions can stand this test of unrestricted ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... Bias, prejudice, preconceived opinion, credulity and incredulity, are all like a crooked lens to the eye of the mind, or to the perception ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... our army, who has since the war made valuable contributions to the history of its operations—especially valuable as well for their accuracy as for their freedom from personal or partisan bias—writes thus of the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

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

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

... in spring and early summer before the annual departure of the Hanbury family for the sea, the pleasant yard with its wide shade trees and its shrubbery was a land of enchantment threatened by a genie. Black Bias, the family coachman, polishing the fat carriage horses in the stable yard, was the genie; and George the intrepid knight who, spurred by Honora, would dash in and pinch Bias in a part of his anatomy which the honest darky had never seen. An ideal genie, for he could assume an astonishing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... children to study the subject in their histories or in any reference books that may be handy. Help them to get at the truth of the matter. Hawthorne may show prejudice. Does he? We may feel a bias in favor of one side or the other. Do we? Then to the extent of that bias we are liable to be unfair and to fail in making ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... is puzzled to say which of these shapes it will ultimately assume, but sees clearly it must be one or other of them. Whilst a fourth is not wanting, who with no less confidence affirms that the Constitution is so far from having a bias towards either of these dangers, that the weight on that side will not be sufficient to keep it upright and firm against the opposite propensities. With another class of adversaries to the Constitution, the language is, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments are intermixed ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... nevertheless it had passed through Deronda's mind that under other circumstances he should have given way to the interest this girl had raised in him, and tried to know more of her. But his history had given him a stronger bias in another direction. He felt himself ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... again. I hear, by mere rumour, that you have extended your operations to the other kingdom. I hope I have not been the means of inducing you to do so; but, advice, if not complied with, often gives a bias in an opposite direction. With regard to Miss Wyndham, I must express—and I really had thought it was unnecessary to do so, though it was certainly my intention, as it was Miss Wyndham's wish, that I should have written to you formally on the subject—but your ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... the very teeth of the law, was twofold. First, it threw into many separate presbyteries a considerable accession of voters—all owing their appointments to the General Assembly. This would at once give a large bias favourable to their party views in every election for members to serve in the Assembly. Even upon an Assembly numerically limited, this innovation would have told most abusively. But the Assembly was not limited; and therefore the whole effect was, at the same moment, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... fill ae bumper, fill but ane, And drink wi' social glee, man, May curlers on life's slippery rink, Frae cruel rubs be free, man; Or should a treacherous bias lead Their erring course ajee, man, Some friendly in-ring may they meet, To guide them ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

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

... leads science on to greater victories. Copernicus, great as he was, could not disentangle scientific reasoning entirely from the theological bias: the doctrines of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as to the necessary superiority of the circle had vitiated the minor features of his system, and left breaches in it through which the enemy was not slow to enter; but Kepler sees these errors, and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... shoals of garbled Greek We trace his favourite bias, But when the malice comes to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various

... promptly discerning the signs of the times, took the initiative toward making the national attitude and tendency on the subject of slavery the touchstone of politics. Politic and prudent by nature, and with no personal disappointments or grievances to bias his course, he doubtless would have preferred to save and use the accumulated and organized force of one or the other of the political parties which divided the country, and press its power into the service of the principles and the ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts

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

... passed, the weight upon his heart grew heavier, and the chill of dread more unendurable. He saw his character as another might see it. He saw a nature to which, from infancy, a wrong bias had been given, made selfish by indulgence, imperious and strong only in carrying out impulses and in gratifying base passions, but weak as water in resisting evil and thwarting its vile inclinations. The pride and hope ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... thought to have necessarily exposed him to party influences, and thus given an undue bias to his narrative. It is not difficult, indeed, to determine under whose banner he had enlisted. He writes like a partisan, and yet like an honest one, who is no further warped from a correct judgment of passing affairs than must necessarily ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... little space to this particular period, but it reveals the contemporary point of view. Richard Hildreth's "History of the United States," 6 vols. (1849-1852), is another early work that is still of value, although it is written with a Federalist bias. J. B. McMaster's "History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War," 8 vols. (1883-1913), presents a kaleidoscopic series of pictures gathered largely from contemporary newspapers, throwing ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... much impaired by her misfortunes that an innocent person was in danger of being ruined by her disorder. He had no sooner finished his harangue, than the forlorn princess renewed her lamentations, and cautioned the company against his eloquence, which, she said, was able to bias the most impartial bench in Christendom. Ranter advised him to espouse her immediately, as the only means to save his reputation, and offered to accompany him to the Fleet for that purpose; but Slyboot proposed that a father should be purchased for the child, and a comfortable ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... with exceeding bitterness and party bias, he had some warrant for his diatribe. In the Injunctions of Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich[71] (1569), he says: "Item, that no person or persons calling themselves lords of misrule in the Christmas ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... so made to strike the imagination and to prepare changes of opinion, came a series of notable books. They were all similar in that they bore the stamp of the romanticism of the thirties and forties, interpreting history in terms of the {4} individual; but they differed in their political bias. These works were written by Carlyle, Louis Blanc, Lamartine ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

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

... been retrieved, past the hope of redemption, and precipitated the Revolution which hurled France through anarchy into despotism, and sent Lafayette to a foreign dungeon, and his master to the block. You came out victorious; but, from the violence of the rupture, you took a political bias not perhaps entirely for good; and the necessity of the war blended you, under equivocal conditions, with other colonies of a wholly different origin and character, which then "held persons to service," and are now your half-dethroned tyrant, the Slave Power. This Revolution will lead to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... charges which I understand you desire to bring against him. State, therefore, those charges; but before doing so ye shall swear by the Light of our Lord the Sun that your motive in instigating these proceedings is free from all bias or personal ill will; that you are animated therein solely by anxiety for the public welfare, and that you will say no word save what you, personally, know to ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... The Stations Leading in Poultry Work The Story of the "Big Coon" Important Experimental Results at the Illinois Station Experimental Bias The Egg Breeding Work at the ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... one more was wanted to justify the slightest suspicion against the missing boy. Let it be shown that he had carried firearms on the Wednesday night, and Thrush undertook to join his satellite on the other side; but his mental bias may be gauged from the fact that he made no mention of the ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... strait I have ever known, the Christian that came to my relief was a Jew in a town of seven thousand people; and when I had the smallpox a Sister of Charity took me to the hospital and nursed me, when every one had deserted me and left me to die or live without any meddling from them to bias me in my decision. After that I said to myself, 'Job Ketchum, if the Lord can make and stand as great a fool as you have been, he can make plenty of good Jews and Roman Catholics, and if they have got his hall-mark they can do without your valuable endorsement; and when smelting-day comes I reckon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... bias was also present, which confounds ignorance with faith. It is often forgotten that He who surrounded us with this ever-evolving mystery of creation has also implanted in us the desire to question and understand. Through many years of miscomprehension, I came to know that the life ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... provide a school-room and hire a teacher for the instruction of the Negroes. The following persons, since known as Mrs. Emma Stewart (Mason), Miss Mary Thomas, Mr. John Brown, Jr., Miss Alice Brown, and Mr. Harry Bias, presented themselves as the first students of this school. One Mr. Ross, a white man, was the first instructor. The next teacher of this school was a white man, and he was followed by a member of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... swayed Hastie, but in the end he dropped the idea of a regular quota system, judging it unworkable in the case of the officer candidate schools. He concluded that many commanders approached the selection of officer candidates with a bias against the Negro, and he recommended that a directive or confidential memorandum be sent to commanders charged with the selection of officer candidates informing them that a certain minimum percentage of black candidates ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... world himself, is always the man to help others to do so. Every one has such a friend as this, and Mr. Neversaye Die was Harcourt's friend. Mr. Die himself was supposed to be a Tory, quite of the old school, a Lord Eldon Tory; but Harcourt knew that this would in no way bias his judgment. The mind of a barrister who has been for fifty years practising in court will never be biassed ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... is a morning promenade costume. A high dress of black satin, the body fitting perfectly tight; a small jacket cut on the bias, with two rows of black velvet laid on a little distance from the edge. The sleeves are rather large, and have abroad cuff turned back, which is trimmed to correspond with the jacket. The skirt is long and full; the dress ornamented up ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... fact would keep Hampton from being run down by Harriet when she cuts corners bias, as she insists on doing?" I asked, as I started in the door to procure the toilet necessaries to Luella May's telegraphic career, whether it devastated my supply of tennis clothes or not. Nothing that any woman or any member of her family ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... you escaped being a genius! That is precisely what I was about proposing to do, and now, dear, be sure you bid adieu to all bias. Elise, I received a letter two days since, which ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... willing to own Cecil's claims to county supremacy as Lady Tyrrell, her bias was all towards Sirenwood; and whereas such practices as prevailed at Dunstone evidently were viewed as obsolete and narrow by these new friends, Cecil was willing to prove herself superior to them, and was far more irritated than convinced when her ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... theological writers and alien to the spirit of science. Seeing, therefore, that the men of science ranged themselves more and more decidedly on Mr. Darwin's side, while his opponents had manifestly—so far as I can remember, all the more prominent among them—a bias to which their hostility was attributable, we left off looking at the arguments against "Darwinism," as we now began to call it, and pigeon-holed the matter to the effect that there was one evolution, and that ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... sober statement of the result of personal investigation, which produced a far deeper and more historical impression than all the impassioned rhetoric which had rent the air since the agitation began. He appeared to have no feeling on the matter, no personal bias; he told what he had seen, and he had seen misery, starvation, and wholesale death. He blamed the Spaniards no more than the insurgents, but two hundred thousand people were the victims of both; and the bold yet careful etching he made of the Cuban drama burnt itself into ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... for the Study of Northern Antiquities prefixed to her Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue is an answer of a very different kind. It did not appear until 1715; it exhibits no political bias; it agrees with Swift's denunciation of certain current linguistic habits; and it does not reject the very idea of regulating the language as repugnant to the sturdy independence of the Briton. Elizabeth Elstob speaks not for a party but for the group ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob

... necessary antagonism between the general theory of "evolution" and a Divine action, but the compatibility between the two is recognized by naturalists who cannot be suspected of any strong theological bias. ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... distinguished French students of sociology, Professor Letourneau has long stood in the first rank. He approaches the great study of man free from bias and shy of generalisations. To collect, scrutinise, and appraise ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... said Mrs. Campion with a sigh. "But I don't think your father has given quite the bias to his mind that I should have liked best. I have always hoped that he would spend his strength in the service of the Church; but——You have not heard him say much about his ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... I read your views on the providence of God and the nature of man with interest. You are already aware that in much of what you say my opinions coincide with those you express, and where they differ I shall not attempt to bias you. Thought and conscience are, or ought to be, free; and, at any rate, if your views were universally adopted there would be no persecution, no bigotry. But never try to proselytise, the world is not yet fit to receive what you and Emerson say: man, as he now is, can no more do without ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter



Words linked to "Bias" :   racism, tabu, tendentiousness, oblique, angle, partisanship, handicap, irrational hostility, slant, partiality, Islamophobia, homophobia, straight line, prepossess, taboo, weight



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