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Criterion   /kraɪtˈɪriən/   Listen
Criterion

noun
(pl. criteria, sometimes criterions)
1.
A basis for comparison; a reference point against which other things can be evaluated.  Synonyms: measure, standard, touchstone.  "They set the measure for all subsequent work"
2.
The ideal in terms of which something can be judged.  Synonym: standard.



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"Criterion" Quotes from Famous Books



... described the water as of salt-bitter taste, like that of Epsom (iii. 203). Sir William Muir (in his excellent life of Mahomet, I. cclviii.) remarks that "the flavour of stale water bottled up for months would not be a criterion of the same water freshly drawn;" but soldered tins-full of water drawn a fortnight before are to be had in Calcutta and elsewhere after Pilgrimage time; and analysis would ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... comfortably, and unvexed by any question of fractions. She died a serene integer, with such comfortable assurance of just valuation as is denied most of us, and contented that it should be expressed in terms that were, to her, the only sure criterion applicable ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... believed, had never seen such magnificence before; for the belief that poverty and poor fare are the common lot of the country folks at the North is one of the fallacies commonly held by all classes at the South. As slavery, which was the universal criterion of wealth and culture at the South, did not prevail at all at the North, they unconsciously and naturally came to associate self-help with degradation, and likened the Northern farmer to the poor white "cropper." Where social rank was measured by the length of the serving train, it ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... section of the community revolt against the punishment of the alleged anti-social act, then we are not entitled to dignify it with the appellation of "crime." This is not an altogether sure or satisfactory criterion because there are frequently times and places, especially under the stimulation of some particular occurrence evoking an outburst of increased public emotion, when a section of the community succeeds ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... misinterpreted the lack of enthusiasm. "When I was a medical student," he said, "I failed dozens of times in my final examination—dozens. It's no criterion of knowledge, you know: it is just luck. Never let examination failure dishearten you. Go along happily, George, and take your chance when ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... shook: 'and Rose, Rose is, simply self-willed; a "she will" or "she won't" sort of little person. No criterion! Henceforth the world is against us. We have to struggle with it: it does not rank us ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... not a good criterion of wealth. It might continue the same when society had relapsed into the most abject misery, or had advanced to a high state ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... situation. The arguments, too, seem quite comparable to the arguments of the jury. Both consist in pointing out factors of the situation that have been overlooked and in showing how different interpretations may be possible." Another man writes: "In the experiment it seemed that one man judged by one criterion and another by another, such as distribution, size of spots, vacant spaces, or counting along one edge. Discussion often brought immediate attention to other criterions than those he used in his first judgment, and these often outweighed the original. Similarly, different ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... of the impure and crossed stocks resulting from crosses between the true Pear tomato and garden sorts which are frequently sold by seedsmen as pear-shaped. Many garden sorts—like the Plum (Fig. 8), the Egg, the Golden Nugget, Vick's Criterion, etc.—are known to have originated from crosses of the Pear and I think that most, if not all, the garden sorts in which the longitudinal diameter of the fruit is greater than its transverse diameter owe this form ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... authors from Plautus onwards carry the history of the language to its completion; but it should be remembered that few of these authors wrote in what was really the speech of the people. In most cases a literature would be the best criterion of a language. In Latin it is otherwise. The popular speech could never have risen to the complexity of the language of Cicero and Sallust. This was an artificial tongue, based indeed on the colloquial idiom, but admitting many elements borrowed from the Greek. If we compare the language ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... one really mean to say that there is any internal or external criterion by which the reader of a biblical statement, in which scientific matter is contained, is enabled to judge whether it is to betaken au serieux or not? Is the account of the Deluge, accepted as true in the New Testament, less precise and specific ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... devoted to physical speculations. In Lower Italy, on the contrary, and in colonies which were for the most part Doric, a science was constituted which, although it included physics and natural phenomena, did not only consider their material value, but sought to extract from their laws and harmony a criterion of good and evil. Ritter observes that the intimate connection between the Pythagorean philosophy and lyrical music—of which the origin was sought as a clue to explain the world—shows how far this philosophy ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... and away we went. You will remember that his talk had been of a house in Portman Square; but no sooner had I turned the corner by the Criterion than he began speaking through the tube, and telling me to go to Playford's in Berkeley Square. There he stopped, notwithstanding that it was getting on for twelve o'clock; and when he had rung the bell and entered the house, I had to ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton

... it can be taken as a criterion that those living in hotels are not invalids, then the visitor contingent of Pau must consist principally of healthy people, who prefer a good climate and lively society to the attractions that England and America have to offer from October to May. This is hardly correct, but there can be ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... sultan's capital itself, by opening these famous straits and sending British ships to lay Constantinople under their guns, was a splendid conception worthy the military imagination of the daring ages when the British Empire was built and the days of the Spanish Main, but the only criterion in the ghastly business ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... wrinkles on his cheek would not have anything to do with his age, for time was powerless against the richness of his blood. He would still be a boy when he was dying of old age; but if protestations, kisses and homage were any criterion then the fact that he loved his wife was fixed beyond any ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... one is looking at total area (land and water) when making the comparison (which is the criterion used by the Factbook) or just land area (which excludes inland water features such as rivers ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... will be better done. I look for the day when the woman who has a political or judicial brain will have as much right to sit in the Senate or on the Supreme Bench as men have; when women will have equal property, business and political rights with men; when the only criterion of excellence or position shall be the ability and character of the individual; and this time will come. All of the Western colleges are now open to women, and send forth more than 2,000 women graduates every year. Think of the effect upon the race to come! The woman of the future will be ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... deprived of the earning power of her husband should not claim. In fact the case for including Pensions and Separation Allowances largely depends on exploiting the rather arbitrary character of the criterion laid down in the pre-Armistice conditions. Of all the losses caused by war some bear more heavily on individuals and some are more evenly distributed over the community as a whole; but by means of compensations granted by ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... class, who by some are considered not only as little lower than the angels, but far beneath them; but I have long since learned that we are not to look at the color of the hair, the eyes, or the skin, for the man or woman; their life is the criterion we are to judge by. The writer of this book has seemed to be ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson

... external accomplishments had been neglected; but her understanding and principles were left to the imperfection of nature corrupted by custom. Religion was thought too serious a thing for so young a person. The opinion of the world was always represented to her as the true criterion by which to judge of everything, and fashion supplied the place of every more material consideration. With a mind thus formed, she entered the world at sixteen, surrounded with pomp and splendour, with every gratification at her command that an affluent fortune and ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... dimorphic and trimorphic plants are important, because they show us, firstly, that the physiological {184} test of lessened fertility, both in first crosses and in hybrids, is no safe criterion of specific distinction; secondly, because we may conclude that there must be some unknown law or bond connecting the infertility of illegitimate unions with that of their illegitimate offspring, and we ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... and the poured cement house have not yet reached the stage of great commercial enterprises, and therefore have not yet risen to the dignity of patent litigation. If, however, the experience of past years is any criterion, there will probably come a time in the future when, despite present widely expressed incredulity and contemptuous sniffs of unbelief in the practicability of his ideas in these directions, ultimate ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... country leaves room for any number of additional workers and collections. Even so far as the materials already collected go, a large number of the commonest incidents in European folk-tales have been found in India. Whether brought there or born there, we have scarcely any criterion for judging; but as some of those still current among the folk in India can be traced back more than a millennium, the presumption is in favour ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... conspirators! He could see over my head, so we could both look at once; and he kept muttering scraps of information in my ear, so that it quite buzzed. Yes, I know you are shocked, dear madam, but it really could not be helped; and you said once to Jack—poor old Jack!—that his uncle was a criterion of gentle breeding and ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... series of tariff measures (in 1664 and 1667). Moderate duties on the exportation of raw materials were first laid on, followed by heavy customs imposed on the importation of foreign goods. The shipment of coin was forbidden; but Colbert's criterion of prosperity was the favorable balance of trade. French agriculture was overlooked. The tariff of 1667 was based on the theory that foreigners must of necessity buy French wines, lace, and wheat; that the French could sell, but not buy; but the act of 1667 cut off ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... The great criterion of the state of the common people is the amount of their wages; and as four-fifths of the common people were, in the seventeenth century, employed in agriculture, it is especially important to ascertain what were then the wages of agricultural ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward

... wish to call attention to a further point in connection with evaporation. If the final measure of the loss of weight by evaporation were the only criterion of correct conditions of moisture in the chick's body, the hatches that show 12 per cent., or whatever the correct amount of evaporation may be, should be decidedly superior to those on either side. That they are ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... A criterion of the extent and success of our participation and of the thoroughness with which our exhibits were organized is seen in the awards granted to American exhibitors by the international jury, namely, grand prizes, 240; gold medals, 597; silver medals, 776; ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... Thus attired, she passed out of her dressing-room, locking the door behind her, and after a brief conversation with the jocose acting manager, whom she met on her way out, she left the theatre, and took a cab to the Criterion, where the young Duke of Moorlands, her latest conquest, had invited her to a sumptuous luncheon with himself and friends, all men of fashion, who were running through what money they had as fast as ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... was in its own way setting aside the Holy Scriptures, and exalting human wisdom as the source of religious truth and knowledge. Rationalism idolizes reason, and makes this the criterion for religion. Romanism, claiming for her sovereign pontiff an inspiration descended in unbroken line from the apostles, and unchangeable through all time, gives ample opportunity for every species of extravagance and corruption to be concealed under the sanctity ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... "A very poor criterion," interrupted Miss Leigh; "I draw my inferences from a higher source." And turning to Flora, she inquired, in a kind, friendly tone, "if she were going all the way to Edinburgh, the age of the baby, and how both ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... governing itself through an intelligent citizenship, the test of educating all of its people to their political and social responsibilities. Whether these tests will be met successfully is for the future to decide, but if the past is any criterion, the American republic will not fail. National structures have risen to a certain height and then fallen, because they were not built on the solid foundations of mutual confidence, co-operation, and loyalty. Building a self-governing nation that will ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... authors of that generation had been "gentlemen"; perhaps the unknown persons who succeeded them had gentlemanly sentiments, but their origin, their appearance, their hair, their intimacy with the stage and the Opera, made any old New York criterion inapplicable to them. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... there Joy or any other good thing in Abnegation? Is there Beauty in Sacrifice? What Handsome purpose do these serve a being in his race with Time? His Days will soon be spent and they will come no more; thus my Criterion: Is This the most Joy gathering, Awareness touching, Beauty sensing act of which he is capable? None other ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta

... mysterious to us—should be set in motion. The factor making this provision in a more or less direct way is the excitation of the sensible surfaces of the skin and sensory organs, while the most immediate exciting influences are exerted on certain parts which are designated as erogenous zones. The criterion in all these sources of sexual excitement is really the quality of the stimuli, though the factor of intensity (in pain) is not entirely unimportant. But in addition to this there are arrangements in the organism ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... sacrifice, and tobacco-smoking have been prohibited, the dress of the native has been modified, and himself warned in strong terms against rival sects of Christianity; all by the same man, at the same period of time, and with the like authority. By what criterion is the convert to distinguish the essential from the unessential? He swallows the nostrum whole; there has been no play of mind, no instruction, and, except for some brute utility in the prohibitions, no advance. To ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... veterans receiving financial aid or by the number of dollars we spend. History will judge us not by the money we spend, but by the further contribution we enable our veterans to make to their country. In considering any additional legislation, that must be our criterion. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... or not our Downs are to us delectable mountains, and let the reader who scoffs at the noun remember that size is no criterion of either beauty or sublimity. That Sussex lover and greatest of literary naturalists, Gilbert White, in perhaps his most frequently quoted passage so characterizes the "majestic chain"; to his contemporaries such a description ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... an Egyptian monk of the fourth century. (see Jortin, Ecc. Hist. i. p. 368, edit. 1805,) and the latter (not earlier) lives of Xavier, there is no claim laid to the gift of tongues since the time of Irenaeus; and of this claim, Xavier's own letters are profoundly silent. See Douglas's Criterion, p. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... words Mrs. Chao gave a smile. "Enough, enough!" she cried. "Don't again refer to such contingencies! the present is a fair criterion. For up to whom in this house can my son and I come? Pao-y is still a mere child; but he is such that he wins people's love. Those big people may be partial to him, and love him a good deal, I've nothing to say to it; but ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... that Europe is much more populous now than in the time of Julius Caesar—Best criterion of population—Probable error of Hume in one the criterions that he proposes as assisting in an estimate of population—Slow increase of population at present in most of the states of Europe—The two principal ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... The Criterion Restaurant, we see, is advertising a "Souper Dansant." Personally we dislike the kind of supper which, when eaten, will not lie down ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various

... safely allow that the task of the modern player, who must change his person without concealing it, is much more difficult; but this difficulty affords no just criterion for deciding which of the two the preference must be awarded, as a skilful representation of the noble and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... go and he goeth. They are enamored of offices, typewriters, telegrams, long-distance messages, secretaries, programs, conferences and drives. Getting results is their goal; everything is judged by the criterion of effective action; they are instinctive and unconscious pragmatists. They make good cheer leaders at football games in their youth and impressive captains of industry in their old age. Their virtues are wholesome, if obvious; they are good mixers, have shrewd judgment, immense physical ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... is shown to have been accurately exemplified in the history of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the order of Jesuits. (Douglas's Criterion of Miracles, p. 74.) His life, written by a companion of his, and by one of the order, was published about fifteen years after his death. In which life, the author, so far from ascribing any miracles to Ignatius, industriously states the reasons why he was not invested with ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... been too much praised by travellers as a proof of goodness of heart, when, in my opinion, indiscriminate hospitality is rather a criterion by which you may form a tolerable estimate of the indolence or vacancy of a head; or, in other words, a fondness for social pleasures in which the mind not having its proportion of exercise, the ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... our notion of final causes; we invert the order of nature, and interpret God's action through our own; we speak of his intentions, as if he were a man; we assume that we are capable of measuring them, and finally erect ourselves, and our own interests, into the centre and criterion of all things. Hence arises our notion of evil. If the universe be what this philosophy has described it, the perfection which it assigns to God is extended to everything, and evil is of course impossible; there is no shortcoming ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... the "First Census of the United States" any criterion in this regard, for the obvious reason that the enumerators made no returns of unmarried persons. This fact is important when we consider that the Irish exodus of the eighteenth century was largely comprised of the youth of the country. Although the First ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... service. But what then? other people may be as good as he, though they have not had such opportunities; if he speaks five or six languages, he does not pretend to any taste in the liberal arts, which are the criterion ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... safely to be presumed that he has nothing to lose, in a material way, and there is reason to look for some slight gain in creature comforts and in security of life and limb, consequent upon the elimination, or at least the partial disestablishment, of pecuniary necessity as the sole bond and criterion of use and wont in ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... sometimes marry for Wealth. They have been educated to regard this as the criterion of excellence. A man's "worth" is reckoned, not in moral attainments, but in dollars and cents. He, therefore, who is poor, is set down as beneath much consideration. From her earliest days, the girl has, perhaps, heard her parents talk of "being well-settled," of "a good establishment," ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... advantages of the first selected form? for, as I understand, both female forms occur on the same island. I quite agree with your distinction between dimorphic forms and varieties; but I doubt whether your criterion of dimorphic forms not producing intermediate offspring will suffice; for I know of a good many varieties, which must be so called, that will not blend or intermix, but produce offspring quite ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... of the heated mind, perhaps working at its best, perhaps overstraining itself, and overstating its idea, might really be regulated. But they are few who consider so closely, fewer perhaps they who have the heart to cut out their own fine or refined things. Again, our author suggests another criterion. We are, as in Lamb's phrase, "to write for antiquity," with the souls of poets dead and gone for our judges. But we are also to write for the future, asking with what feelings posterity will read us—if it reads us at all. This is a good discipline. ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... conceive," says Mr. Mill, very properly, "is in no case to be received as a criterion of axiomatic truth." What modern in his senses would ever think of disputing this truism? The only wonder with us must be, how it happened that Mr. Mill conceived it necessary even to hint at any thing so obvious. So far good—but let us turn over another paper. What have ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... are well known to be perfect riders. The idea of being thrown, let the horse do what it likes; never enters their head. Their criterion of a good rider is, a man who can manage an untamed colt, or who, if his horse falls, alights on his own feet, or can perform other such exploits. I have heard of a man betting that he would throw his horse down twenty times, and that nineteen times he would ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... have we toward a better mode of determining the value which ought to be attributed to each of the numerous electives, when the young men cannot present all the permitted subjects, and hardly three fifths of them, indeed, if the range is adequately widened? I believe that the best criterion for determining the value of each subject is the time devoted to that subject in schools which have an intelligent program of studies. The Committee of Ten[22] examined the number of subjects used in about two hundred of the best secondary schools in this country, ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... a woman now, and well worthy of a minute description here; but we never could describe a woman to our own satisfaction. We have frequently tried and failed; so we substitute, in place, the remarks of Kate's friends and acquaintances about her—a criterion on which to form a judgment that is a pretty correct one, especially when the opinion pronounced happens to be favourable. Her father said she was an angel, and the only joy of his life. This latter expression, we may remark, was false; ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... the pre-eminence among professional men. The proportion of successful men in the professions is difficult to obtain, but if a wide reputation be regarded as the criterion of success, the college-bred men take ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... unqualified approval. The classics have become our sole models, and whilst even the most glaring faults of the sincere beginner receive liberal consideration and sympathetically constructive attention, there is no longer a seat of honour for complacent crudity. Genuine aspiration is our criterion of worth. The spirit of this newer amateur journalism is splendidly shown by such magazines of the year as Eurus, Spindrift, The Vagrant, and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... between religion and irreligion; and the true Church, of course, has ever been on the religious side. This, then, is a sure test in every age where the Christian should stand.... Now, applying this simple criterion to the public Parties of this DAY, it is very plain that the English Church is at present on God's side, and therefore, so far, God's Church; we are sorry to be obliged to add that there is as little doubt on ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... it not possible to apply a test whereby a true species may be known from a mere variety? Is there no criterion of species? Great authorities affirm that there is—that the unions of members of the same species are always fertile, while those of distinct species are either sterile, or their offspring, called hybrids, are so. It is affirmed not ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley

... used as a criterion of the age of a formation, or of the contemporaneous origin of two deposits in distant places, under very much the same restrictions as the test of ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... epicurean romances as vehicles of his new views of human life and happiness. Among his tales are "Agathon," "Musarion," and "Aristippus," which last is considered his best work. In all these writings his purpose was to represent pleasure or utility as the only criterion of truth. Although there is much in his prose writings to subject him to severe censure, he maintains his place in the literature of his native country as one of its most gay, witty, and graceful poets. His "Oberon" is one of the most charming and attractive ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... you received those proposals is fair criterion," Number One resumed, "there can be little doubt as to our decision. Speaking for myself, I think it would be suicidal to reject the overtures of the Soviet Government in Russia. Let me ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... English standpoint she may even sometimes appear somewhat dark:[164] In determining what I call the index of pigmentation—or degree of darkness of the eyes and hair—of different groups in the National Portrait Gallery I found that the "famous beauties" (my own personal criterion of beauty not being taken into account) was somewhat nearer to the dark than to the light end of the scale.[165] If we consider, at random, individual instances of famous English beauties they are not extremely fair. Lady Venetia Stanley, in the early seventeenth century, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... where now only conjecture and probability exist. It will enable us to establish on a firm and secure foundation the Laws or Principles of every department of the Universe of Matter and of Mind, and to penetrate the Phenomena of all realms to an extent now scarcely imagined. It will furnish us the 'Criterion of Truth' so long sought after—a ground of intellectual agreement in all the concerns of life, so far as this is essential, similar to that which we now have in Mathematics, where difference of opinion is impossible ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... the touchstone of his systems, the test of his opinions, the criterion of the actions of man; it is the standard of the esteem, the measure of the love he owes to truth itself: the most useful truths are the most estimable: those truths which are most interesting for his species, he styles eminent; those of which the utility limits itself ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... more vividly impressed with the fact of the brevity of life, if we adopt some criterion wider than these familiar measurements. The narrative, the story, engages our ears, in the pauses of care and labor. We listen to it in the noonday rest, and around the evening fire. It is a slight break in the monotony of our business,—an ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... architectural message except that of a background for ornamentation by the genius of the soil's productivity. They waited on vines to cover their sides and trees to cast shade across their doorways. One need not remain long to know the old families in this community, where the criterion of local aristocracy was the size of your plums or the number of crops of alfalfa you could grow ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... of old stirs feebly and heavily within me." The prisoner paused a moment, and resumed in an altered tone: "Leaving, then, my own character to the ordeal of report, I cannot perhaps do better than leave to the same criterion that of the witness against me. I will candidly own that under other circumstances it might have been otherwise. I will candidly avow that I might have then used such means as your law awards me to procure an acquittal and to ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that the author uses the weight on the drivers as the criterion, but the tractive power is not directly as the weight on the drivers, some engines being over-cylindered, or under-cylindered; in the class of engines above mentioned the tractive power is 23.35% of the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Beverly S. Randolph

... what flaws the austere critic might find with a microscope in those lines. I feel certain that there is no one who would not at this first reading experience that inevitable glow of satisfaction which, in the cultured mind, is the unfailing criterion that the art is good. Whether Mr. Watson is further an original poet, a signal poetic force; whether he is a poet for the mind as much as for the ear, is a further question to be decided by a detailed analysis; but that he is a poet is, I beg leave to think, wholly undeniable. At first sight, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... constitutional monarch; Heir Apparent Crown Prince DIPENDRA Bir Bikram head of government: Prime Minister Sher Bahadur DEUBA (since 12 September 1995); note - in 1994, the king appointed Man Mohan ADHIKARI to be prime minister using the standard criterion - he was the leader of the majority party in the House of Representatives following the last election; however, in September 1995, a parliamentary coalition of the Nepali Congress Party, the Rastriya Prajantra Party, the Nepal Sadbhavana Party, and independents voted ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... They deposited those they had with them by sections in the Municipality, and emerged with the others, bright, brand-new Berdan breechloaders. They seemed proud of their weapons; some went so far as to kiss them; and, if looks were any criterion of feelings, their glowing faces said, as emphatically as it could be said, "Now that we have good tools, we shall show what good work we can do." Boxes of metallic ball-cartridges, centre-primed, were piled on the Plaza, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... consideration will show that it cannot be a mere idea. It must be something more valid than a capricious product of the individual imagination. For we cannot wisely condemn things because they do not happen to answer to any casual conception which we may choose to elevate into a criterion. A criterion must have objective validity. It must be an idea of something and not an empty notion; and that something must, at the worst, be possible. Nay, when we consider all that is involved in it, it becomes ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... every appearance of formality, and endeavouring to draw them into familiar conversation, that we might correctly ascertain the state of their religious knowledge on the three following points, which we considered to be the best criterion by which to judge of their understanding of the other less important points in the gospel scheme of salvation.—These points were, 1. Our connection, as sinners, with Adam; 2. Our connection with Christ as the Saviour; 3. The means by which we become interested ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... between them reappears the problem of the origin of ideas. If the problem is not present to them, there is confusion; if it is present to them, there is separation. They only agree as to the goal—truth; but never as to the road, the method, and the criterion. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... are not courageous. There could not be a greater mistake, at least as far as they are themselves concerned, nor do I hold it to be any proof that they are cowards, because they dread or give way before Europeans and their fire-arms. So unequal a match is no criterion of bravery, and yet even thus, among natives, who were labouring under the feelings, naturally produced by seeing a race they were unacquainted with, and weapons that dealt death as if by magic, I have seen many ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... criterion to the mele above given, it may be judged to be by no means a product wholly of the archaic period. While certain parts, say from the first to the tenth verses, inclusive, bear the mark of antiquity, the other parts do not ring clear. It seems as if some poet of ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... daily average of over 20,000 persons in prison in 1878, and a daily average of about 15,000 in 1888, many people immediately jump at the conclusion that crime is diminishing. But the daily average is no criterion whatever of the rise and fall of crime. Calculated on the principle of daily average, twelve men sentenced to prison for one month each, will not figure so largely in criminal statistics as one man sentenced to a term of eighteen ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... the misconduct of managers. The fact was, that these in general sought to establish their characters by producing large crops at a small immediate expense; too little considering how far the slaves might suffer from ill-treatment and excessive labour. The pursuit of such a system was a criterion for judging of their characters, as both Mr. Long and ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... he at last broke loose from Reynolds, as was inevitable, after his study of Pre-Raphaelitism, and all the varied experiences of the last ten years. The lesson of the Tulse Hill ivy had been brought home to him in many ways: he had found it to be more and more true that Nature is, after all, the criterion of art, and that the greatest painters were always those whose aim, so far as they were conscious of an aim, was to take fact for their starting-point. Idealism, beauty, imagination, and the rest, though necessary to art, could not, he felt, be made the object of study; ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... was as aloes in his mouth. Thrice within an hour he had fallen short of his promises, to Cecelia Brooke, to himself, to his idee fixe. His three chances, to redeem his word to the girl, to measure up to his queer criterion of honour, to rid his world of Ekstrom, all had slipped through fingers seemingly too ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... with it by many an hour of solitary reflection, by meditation which will diffuse its aroma like a fragrant perfume through our characters, and by the habit of bringing all circumstances, moods, and desires to be tested by its infallible criterion, and by the unreluctant acceptance of its guidance at every moment of our lives. There are many of us who, in a real though terribly imperfect sense, hold the truth, but who know nothing, or next to nothing, of its power ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... immortal essence. The town is dangerous in that it has little beauty. It causes us to forget. It is exploring the illusion of trade, and its whole song is of trade. If you understand this, you have a criterion for Life— ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... the lobe of the ear; to avoid which, they are supported by a thong of red leather, which passes over the crown of the head from one ear to the other. The necklace displays greater fancy; and the proper arrangement of the different beads and plates of gold, is the great criterion of taste and elegance. When a lady of consequence is in full dress, her gold ornaments may be worth altogether from fifty ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... persons and properties to pass severe laws which they might hold over their heads to terrify and restrain them."[7] In the next generation an American citizen wrote in similar strain and with like truthfulness: "The laws of the slaveholding states do not furnish a criterion for the character of their present white population or the condition of the slaves. Those laws were enacted for the most part in seasons of particular alarm produced by attempts at insurrection, or when the black inhabitants were doubly formidable by reason of the greater ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... a criterion by which we may distinguish our voluntary acts or thoughts from those that are excited by our sensations: "The former are always employed about the means to acquire pleasurable objects, or to avoid painful ones; while the latter are employed about the possession of those that ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... Drake, or Drake Jim. Both had done equally good times in practice, and both were known to be in the best of training. The adherents of Jim pointed to the fact that he had won the half off Drake—by a narrow margin, true, but still he had won it. The other side argued that a half-mile is no criterion for a mile, and that if Drake had timed his sprint better he would probably have won, for he had finished up far more strongly than his opponent. And so on the subject of the mile, public opinion was for ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... virtues the one which strengthens with use and withers with disuse—every piece of new legislation should be most carefully examined as to its probable effect on the self-control of the people. Control, in short should be the paramount criterion of new legislation. A proximate advantage, unless it be a matter of life and death, is too dearly purchased by an ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... meet with the deities; or, at such times when wealth is gained, adherence to the duties of sacrifice and gift is laudable. [1125] The sages have said that the accomplishment of the objects by means of agreeable (pacific) means is righteousness. See, O Yudhishthira, that even this is the criterion that has been kept in view in declaring the indications of righteousness and iniquity.[1126] In days of old the Creator ordained righteousness endowing it with the power of holding the world together. The conduct ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... woman therefore placed her husband on the funeral pyre, and consumed him to ashes; so that, continues the philosopher, when the soul of Hermotimus came back again, it no longer found its customary receptacle to retire into. [92] Certainly this kind of treatment appeared to furnish an infallible criterion, whether the seeming absences of the soul of this miraculous man ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... activity; the latter are fairly managed, and are somewhat like "experiences meetings;" talking, singing, and praying are done at them; there is a constant fluctuation, whilst they are going on, between bliss and contrition; and you are sometimes puzzled to find out—taking the sounds made as a criterion—whether the attendants are preparing to fight, or fling themselves into a fit of crying, or hug and ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... from fresh skin punctures gives a further criterion of the quantity of blood, within certain limits, but is modified by changes in the coagulability of the blood. Anyone who has made frequent blood examinations will have observed that in this respect extraordinary variations occur. ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... the old Studio Building in Tenth Street long before the "Old Masters" of New York went there to work, and Carmencita came to dance in Chase's studio. In the big brown structure Henry T. Tuckerman once lived, and kept his library, and wrote "The Criterion," and the "Book of the Artists," and entertained his friends of the world of letters; and there Fitzjames O'Brien, the genial Fitz, the "gipsy of letters," the author of "The Diamond Lens," visited him. Almost across the street, in a little rear wooden house that was to serve as the New York ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... There was only one criterion for membership in the Brotherhood—membership in the human race. No matter how decadent or primitive a population might be, if it was human it was automatically eligible for Brotherhood—a free and equal partner in the society ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... The criterion of truth then was no other than the gripping phantasy. Such at least was the doctrine of the earlier Stoics, but the later added a saving clause, "when there is no impediment." For they were pressed ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock

... acknowledging the fact that the basis of all society is the recognition of the rights of others. The thief often excuses his acts by asserting that society owes him a living. Is this position right or do you agree with the following statement? "The criterion of what is for the benefit of the community at large must be settled by the community itself, not by an individual. The citizen, then, may and must do what the community determines it is best for him to do; he must stand in the forefront of battle if so ordered. He must not do what the ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks

... continued fraction of the second class there is no complete criterion. The following theorem covers a large ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... own vernacular LANGUAGE. Hence it may safely be considered, nor only as the primaeval source from which all subsequent historians of English affairs have principally derived their materials, and consequently the criterion by which they are to be judged, but also as the faithful depository of our national idiom; affording, at the same time, to the scientific investigator of the human mind a very interesting and extraordinary example of the changes incident to a language, as well as to a nation, in its progress ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... relief from cramp and pain, to Alvina. "It takes his sort to make all sorts." It took her sort too. And it took her father's sort—as well as her mother's and Miss Frost's. It took every sort to make all sorts. Why have standards and a regulation pattern? Why have a human criterion? There's the point! Why, in the name of all the free heavens, have human criteria? Why? Simply ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... Office to make no search an inventor would "run every risk of being beaten in the courts should any one essay to contest his claims." The fact is that in spite of the Office examination for novelty this risk always has to be encountered, and forms a criterion by which to judge of the exact value of that examination. Furthermore, we take decided issue with our correspondent when he says that the present is the only feasible way of executing these searches thoroughly. They are not so executed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... of the relevant facts, that the aim may be fairly simply defined, as the training of India to self-government within the Empire, combined with its good administration in trust meanwhile. That gives you a clear criterion—India's welfare, not British interests, and fixes the limit of the employment of Indians as the ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... Rousseau when he proclaims that "in matters of feeling and common sense, of which each individual is the best judge, the majority are in the right.... It is an absurdity to suppose that there can be any better criterion of national grievances, or the proper remedies for them, than the aggregate amount of the actual, dear-bought experience, the honest feelings, and heart-felt wishes of a whole people, informed and directed by the greatest power of understanding in the community, unbiassed by any ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... experience in another dress. It is alleged that death is the will of God. How do we know that it is the will of God? Because the facts prove it so, is the ultimate answer of all religious systems with one exception; so here we are back again at the old race-experience as the criterion of truth. Therefore the theological argument is nothing but the materialistic argument disguised. It is in our more or less conscious acceptance of the materialistic argument, under any of its many ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward

... "The criterion of civilization, physical force," "Strength as the measure of right,"—as recent writers have defined the divine right of might—seemed the basis of reasoning with those who claimed that woman should not be given the ballot because she might not carry the sword. Dark pictures ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... theologians before him, that human personality cannot be assumed as an exact copy of the Divine, but only as that which is most nearly analogous to it among finite things. But these two positions, if admitted, involve a corresponding practical conclusion as regards the criterion of religious truth or falsehood. Were we capable, either, on the one hand, of a clear conception of the Unconditioned, or, on the other, of a direct intuition of the Divine Attributes as objects of consciousness, we might be able to construct, deductively or inductively, ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... a snob; but all dogs are so, though in varying degrees. It is hard to follow their snobbery among themselves; for though I think we can perceive distinctions of rank, we cannot grasp what is the criterion. Thus in Edinburgh, in a good part of the town, there were several distinct societies or clubs that met in the morning to—the phrase is technical—to "rake the backets"[21] in a troop. A friend of mine, the master of three dogs, was one day surprised to observe that they had left one ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... be a very great patriot, but, nevertheless, I am. Yet I am unable to make my Spanish or Basque blood an exclusive criterion for judging the world. If I believe that a better orientation may be acquired by assuming an international point of view, I do not hold it improper to cease to feel, momentarily, as a Spaniard ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and they are therefore the law of the land by the concurrent act of the legislative, the executive, and the judicial departments of the Government. Regarded as affording a criterion of what is navigable water, and as such subject to the maritime jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and of Congress, these acts are objectionable in this, that the rule of navigability is an arbitrary one, that Congress may repeal the present rule ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson



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