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Inequality   /ˌɪnɪkwˈɑləti/  /ˌɪnəkwˈɑləti/  /ˈɪnikwˈɑləti/   Listen
Inequality

noun
(pl. inequalities)
1.
Lack of equality.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Inequality" Quotes from Famous Books



... his "recitations." Such a student also, if he can be trained to be a hustler and an advertiser, will undoubtedly "make good." But beyond that the professor does not think of him. The everlasting principle of equality has inserted itself in a place where it has no right to be, and where inequality is the ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... some difficulty in finding the number. It was a house like any other in the street—like any other in any other street. For St. Petersburg is a monstrous town, showing a flat face to the world, exhibiting to the sky a flat expanse of roof broken here and there by some startling inequality, the dagger-like spire of St. Peter and St. Paul, the great roof of the Kasan Cathedral, the dome of St. Isaac's—the largest cathedral in ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... not acquired such decided popularity, and it has not often been published with it in former Collections. Of the fact of its inequality, the accomplished author was fully aware: she wrote it simply to gratify the desire of her venerable mother, who often wished to know how "the unlucky business of Jeanie and Jamie ended." The Countess, it may be remarked, was much ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... grieved at what I heard a few days ago. What I saw yesterday confirms and increases my distress. Why show this repugnance to Louis? Instead of rendering it the more annoying, by caprice and inequality of temper, why not endeavor to surmount it? You say he is not amiable. Every thing is relative. If he is not so to you, he may be to others, and all women do not see him through the veil of dislike. As for myself, ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... Duke Harpe not on that; nor do not banish reason For inequality, but let your reason serue To make the truth appeare, where it seemes hid, And ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... are six on each side of the jaw, and are composed of alternate convolutions of enamel, dentine and cement, which wear unequally by the lateral motion of grinding, and so form the necessary inequality of surface. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... and being specially responsible for Horn, sends Athulf instead. Athulf finds that the princess has been deceived, and declares at once that he is not Horn. When at length Horn does meet Rymenhild, he points out to her the inequality of his rank. She gets her father to knight him. She also gives him a ring, in which the stones are of such virtue that if he looks on them and thinks of her he ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... prolongation of the outlines of adjoining rooms. Such excavation to obtain level floors is quite unusual among the pueblo builders; it was practiced to a very small extent, and only where it could be done with little trouble. Any serious inequality of surface was usually incorporated in the construction, as will be noticed at Walpi (Pl. XXIII). Vestiges of masonry indicating detached rooms were seen in each of the courts of ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... air, helpless, like some monster sprawling with limbs stiffened in death. Behind it, crouched close, squatted some infantry soldiers, firing from the cover of the wreckage. Behind every tree, every stump, every inequality, lay infantry, dead, wounded, or alive and cautiously firing. Several took advantage of the fallen battery horses for shelter. Only one horse of that gun-team remained alive, and the gunners had lashed the prolonge to the trail of the overturned cannon and to the ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... old times, the domestic servant of to-day, the senora who happens to sell you fish, or the senor who mends your boots, all strike the same note—an absolute incapacity for imagining that there can be any inequality between themselves and any other class, however far removed from them by the possession of wealth or education. Wealth, in fact, counts for nothing in the way of social rank; a poor hidalgo is exactly as much respected as a rich one, and he treats his tenants, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... the Mahar caste at the hands of the well-born Hindoos. [54] All relations, all intercourse with them were tainted with pollution; a host of lucrative occupations were forbidden to them. Moreover, we know the frightful inequality of laws in Mahomedan countries, where the general rule is to grant aid and protection to the true believers and to ignore these rights in the case of the infidels. Instances of this are too numerous to be quoted; we will content ourselves with pointing ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant

... desire I shall cause them some disappointment; and that, when they have read the play through, they will not care to remember much beyond what they knew already. "Dr. Dodypoll" affords a curious illustration of the astounding inequality in the work of the old dramatists. The opening scene, between Lucilia and Lord Lassenbergh, shows rich imagination and a worthy gift of expression. The writer, whoever he may have been, scatters his gold with a lavish ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... that the nebular hypothesis is null without a creative act to produce the inequality of distribution of cosmic ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... and a special messenger was sent to fetch him at a cost of 5s. In the following year he wrote an elaborate address to the Governors, in which he said, "Permit me to say, I have been a faithful labourer and Disciplinarian in your School. You are truly sensible of the Inequality of the Attendance and Salaries. Now Gentlemen, if it be consistent with your Approbation, and the Institution of your Seminary, to make a small adjustment, the Favor shall be gratefully acknowledged." He was accordingly "put to the trouble of Keeping Accounts, etc., for the Governors," and paid ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell

... one which I had never discussed with my almost infallible counsellor, and I have no evidence that she would have concurred in it. As far as I have been able to observe, it has found favour with nobody; all who desire any sort of inequality in the electoral vote, desiring it in favour of property and not of intelligence or knowledge. If it ever overcomes the strong feeling which exists against it, this will only be after the establishment of a systematic National ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... encouraging about this wrong-headed, right-hearted outburst. After the usual Wellesley fashion, freedom of speech prevailed; everybody spoke her mind. In the end "sweetness and light" dispersed the mists of sentiment which had assumed that to acknowledge inequality of achievement was to abolish equality of opportunity, and burned away the ethical haziness which had magnified mediocrity; the crusaders realized that the pseudo-compassion which would conceal the idle and the stupid, ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... a most formidable part of the evil of slavery, that the race is far more prolific than that of the whites, and that their population advances in a greater ratio. They are at present in this region more numerous than the whites, and this inequality is increasing every day. Thinking people here, who look to the condition of their posterity, are appalled at this view of things, and admit that something must be done to avert the certain final consequences of such an order of things. I remark, in concluding this subject, that the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... the institutions of the country to the unlicensed power of the Commissaries of the People. And these Commissaries rely upon the Soviets, which were chosen at elections that were carried out according to rank, with open balloting and inequality of vote, for therein the peasants count only as many representatives as the workmen of the cities, although in Russia their number is ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... supplied in the same proportion, and under similar regulations. Excellent claret and champagne were liberally distributed among the Chief's immediate neighbours; whisky, plain or diluted, and strong beer refreshed those who sat near the lower end. Nor did this inequality of distribution appear to give the least offence. Every one present understood that his taste was to be formed according to the rank which he held at table; and, consequently, the tacksmen and their dependants ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... sophistry and illusion. As the component parts of quantity and number are entirely similar, their relations become intricate and involved; and nothing can be more curious, as well as useful, than to trace, by a variety of mediums, their equality or inequality, through their different appearances. But as all other ideas are clearly distinct and different from each other, we can never advance farther, by our utmost scrutiny, than to observe this diversity, and, by an obvious reflection, pronounce one thing ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... prefers stalking alone. There are some, however, of more social inclining, who hunt in couples; one of the pair being almost universal a veteran, the other a young man—as in the case of Sime Woodley and Ned Heywood. By the inequality of age the danger of professional jealousy is avoided; the younger looking up to his senior, and treating him with the deference due ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... times more, and then rest; double your Advancings, and repeat them till it becomes habitual to him, to keep his Ground certain, advance of an equall height before and behind, and observe a due Time with the motions of your Leggs. The Inequality of his advancing his hinder Legs, is helpt by a Jerk on the Fillets by some body behind ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett

... might be doing very well for himself. As they talked of Scotland—it transpired that Dr Drummond knew all the braes about Bross as a boy—he found himself more than ever annoyed with Finlay about the inequality of other things; and when they passed Knox Church and Miss Cameron told him she hadn't realized it was so imposing an edifice, he felt ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... and RIGHTEOUSNESS and PEACE have kissed each other; which has no state lines, no national partitions, no geographical boundaries; in which there is no distinction of rank, or division of caste, or inequality of sex; the officers of which are PEACE, its exactors RIGHTEOUSNESS, its walls SALVATION, and its gates PRAISE; and which is destined to break in pieces and consume all ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... not the abolition of inequality (only a certain sort of social theorists are insane enough to expect that). All men are born unequal in a variety of ways, physical, intellectual, moral; and under any form of society that so far has been invented they are born in social classes which remain ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... of the respondent did not amount to legal cruelty, the law was in an anomalous state, and did emphasize in a marked manner the inequality which existed in the laws relating to these matters between ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... usually asserted that the human being inherits his mentality and morality from his parents. But even if that were true the injustice of one being born a genius and another a fool would remain. It is the fact of inequality that constitutes the injustice, and it is of no importance whether it comes about through heredity or otherwise. But as a matter of fact heredity is confined to the physical side of existence. As more and more is learned by observation the old theory ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... dropped his empty revolver when he flung himself on Craddock. There was no inequality between them except such as nature had given in the strength of arm and back. They swayed in silent, terrible determination each to have the other's life, and Morgan had a glimpse, as he turned, of women and children watching ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... this part of the subject. Every word I now speak bears on interests still in suspense, which vitally concern Mr. Vanstone's daughters. As we get on from past to present, keep in mind the terrible inequality of Michael's inheritance and Andrew's inheritance. The harm done by that vindictive will is, I greatly fear, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... foot," cried this weird personage, "you are right, my master! My sun does not always mark noon at the same moment as your clocks; but some day it will be known that this is because of the inequality of the earth's transfer, and a mean noon will be invented which ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... Sir Alfred Milner received a deputation at Cape Town and reviewed the situation. 'The principle of equality of races was,' he said, 'essential for South Africa. The one State where inequality existed kept all the others in a fever. Our policy was one not of aggression, but of singular patience, which could not, however, lapse into indifference.' Two days later Kruger addressed the Raad. 'The other side had not conceded ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... No one notices inequality in the power of the notes of a scale when it is played very fast and equally, as regards time. In a good mechanism the aim is not to play everything with an equal sound, but to acquire a beautiful quality ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... inequality of mankind[1301] was at this time a fashionable topick. It gave rise to an observation by Mr. Dempster, that the advantages of fortune and rank were nothing to a wise man, who ought to value only merit. JOHNSON. 'If man were a savage, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... payment of equal tonnage a strong proof was afforded of an accommodating spirit. To abandon to it the transportation of the whole would be a sacrifice which ought not to be expected. The demand in the present instance would be the more unreasonable in consideration of the great inequality existing in the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... well as Rome, is faced with a new problem touching the old practice of getting the work of the world done somehow. We have now to assume not only that all citizens are equal, but that all men are citizens. Capitalism attempted it by combining political equality with economic inequality; it assumed the rich could always hire the poor. But Capitalism seems to me to have collapsed; to be not only a discredited ethic but a bankrupt business. Whether we shall return to pagan slavery, or to small property, or by guilds or otherwise get to ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... to praise either sex at the expense of the other. The social inequality of the sexes was not produced so much by the voluntary tyranny of man, as by his great practical advantage at the outset; human history necessarily beginning with a period when physical strength was sole ruler. It is unnecessary, too, to consider in how many cases women may ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... career as an author with the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, 1750 (the discussion of a prize question, crowned by the Academy of Dijon), which he describes as entirely pernicious, and the Discourse on the Origin and the Bases of the Inequality among Men, 1753. By nature man is innocent and good, becoming evil only in society. Reflection, civilization, and egoism are unnatural. In the happy state of nature pity and innocent self-love (amour de soi) ruled, and the latter was first corrupted by the reason into the artificial feeling ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... told. She saw Mr. Fuseli frequently; he amused, delighted and instructed her. As a painter, it was impossible she should not wish to see his works, and consequently to frequent his house. She visited him; her visits were returned. Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius, without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society, she transferred by association to his person. ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin

... memoirs, to explain this inequality of distribution on the fundamental assumption that the stars were nearly equably distributed in space. If they were so distributed, then the number of stars visible in any gauge would show the thickness of the stellar system in the direction ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... chapter, after stating that the ocean has repeatedly covered the greater part of the earth, he then claims that "the displacement of the sea, producing a constantly variable inequality in the mass of the terrestrial radii, has necessarily caused the earth's centre of gravity to vary, as also its two poles.[79] Moreover, since it appears that this variation, very irregular as it is, not being subjected to any limits, it is very probable that each point ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... The other, we are almost ashamed to say, was the venerable Uncle Venner, in a clean shirt, and a broadcloth coat, more respectable than his ordinary wear, inasmuch as it was neatly patched on each elbow, and might be called an entire garment, except for a slight inequality in the length of its skirts. Clifford, on several occasions, had seemed to enjoy the old man's intercourse, for the sake of his mellow, cheerful vein, which was like the sweet flavor of a frost-bitten apple, such as one picks up under the tree in December. A man at the very lowest point of ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... language and your laws and your liberties, have not been destroyed by captivity; rather slavery has saved them. At last you know their value; in contrast with the idolatry of the Euphrates, the jargon of tongues, the inequality of rights, the organization of justice and oppression, how wonderful the equity of the laws of Moses! How beautiful the faith of the fathers! How surely founded the laws of God. Henceforth idolatry, injustice and sin became as monstrous ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... with such an era excepting after Bannockburn? So I will set about to fill up the volumes, which are too short, with some additional matter, and so diminish at least, if we cannot altogether remove, their unsightly inequality in size. The rest of the party went to Dryburgh—too painful a place of pilgrimage for me.[108] I walked with the Lord Chief Commissioner through our grounds at Huntly Burn, and by taking the carriage now ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... book of Euclid. The inquiry is, Are the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle equal or unequal? The first thing to be considered is, what inductions we have, from which we can infer equality or inequality. For inferring equality we have the following formulae: Things which being applied to each other coincide, are equals. Things which are equal to the same thing are equals. A whole and the sum of its parts are equals. The sums of equal things are equals. The ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... reflecting on his dignity. There is nothing unusual in the sight of a barge being towed by an old woman, her daughter or daughter-in-law, and several children. As they strain at the rope the work seems extremely hard, but the people themselves appear unconscious of any hardship or inequality in the distribution ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... no grievance, however, even in his own thoughts, of either inequality. She had been charmingly frank and fair about the question of the names, when it first arose. The usage had latterly come to be, she explained, for a widow bearing even a courtesy title derived from her late husband, to retain it on marrying ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... really pagans, but because of something lacking in men, or some kind of force hindering them from being what they already feel themselves to be in their consciousness, and what they genuinely wish to be. Men of the present day do not merely pretend to hate oppression, inequality, class distinction, and every kind of cruelty to animals as well as human beings. They genuinely detest all this, but they do not know how to put a stop to it, or perhaps cannot decide to give up what preserves it all, and ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... here, paddling in the shallow stream, while dinner was preparing, we established an intimacy with the children and exchanged philosophical observations on life with the old negress who was dabbling the clothes. What impressed this woman was the inequality in life. She jumped to the unwarranted conclusion that the Professor and the Friend were very rich, and spoke with asperity of the difficulty she experienced in getting shoes and tobacco. It was useless to point out to her that her ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... legitimate property, consecrating the usurpation of the soil.—To day the contract is still more unjust "by means of which a child may govern an old man, a fool lead the wise, and a handful of people live in abundance whilst a famished multitude lack the necessities for life." It is the nature of inequality to grow; hence the authority of some increases along with the dependence of the rest, so that the two conditions, having at last reached their extremes, the hereditary and perpetual objection of the people seems to be a divine right equally with the hereditary ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... other countries should be subjected to heavy discriminating tonnage duties. This is neither equality nor reciprocity, and is in violation of the arrangement concluded in December, 1831, between the two countries. The Spanish Government have made repeated and earnest remonstrances against this inequality, and the favorable attention of Congress has been several times invoked to the subject by my predecessors. I recommend, as an act of justice to Spain, that this inequality be removed by Congress and that the discriminating duties which have ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... August a deputation from the Lords and Commons attended a court of Common Council and desired a loan of L100,000 on the security of the poll tax. The court declined to commit itself to any promise. It was much dissatisfied, and more especially with the inequality of the poll tax; it therefore preferred submitting the matter to a committee for investigation before giving an answer.(1195) A committee was then and there nominated to ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... when it is finite is unstable: and matter, presumably not being co-extensive with space, necessarily forms aggregates which have an inside and an outside. The parts of such bodies are accordingly differently exposed to external influences and differently related to one another. This inequality, even in what seems most quiescent, is big with changes, destined to produce in time a wonderful complexity. It is the source of all uneasiness, ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... it seemed a long time before I made my worming way around every inequality in the shore and reached the inlet where we had eaten lunch. Here I lifted the canoe, turned it bottom side up in the meadow, and covered it with a sailcloth. I wanted it to dry, and the air was still dripping moisture. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... however, that a shooting board and plane practically never give a true right angle, owing to wear and the grinding of the blade. Therefore, the boards should not all be laid with the "face mark" on the shooting board whilst the edges are shot, because any inequality would be multiplied by the number of pieces jointed. A better method is to alternate the boards, face side up, then face side down, whilst shooting the edges; this will prevent convexity or concavity on the ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham

... thirty senators, his next task, and, indeed, the most hazardous he ever undertook, was the making of a new division of their lands. For there was an extreme inequality amongst them, and their state was overloaded with a multitude of indigent and necessitous persons, while its whole wealth had centred upon a very few. To the end, therefore, that he might expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime, and those yet more inveterate diseases of want and ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... can, the critic could thoroughly discover the secret of the inequality of The Church of Brou, he might, like the famous pedant, "put away" Mr Arnold "fully conjugated in his desk." The poem is in theme and scheme purely Romantic, and "nineteenth century" in its looking back to a simple and pathetic story ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... Inequality begins from the very cradle. Some are born into an easy and sheltered affluence. Others are the children of mean and sordid want. For some the long toil of life begins in the very bloom time of childhood and ends only ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... possible quantity of bread-roots, and women not being so capable in the fields as the stronger sex, females are considered an undesirable addition to society. The one thing the Saturnians dread and abhor is inequality. The whole object of their laws and customs is to maintain the strictest equality in everything,—social relations, property, so far as they can be said to have anything which can be so called, mode of living, dress, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... defenceless, but besides and before this, it might have been supposed that nothing in a child could provoke the equal passion of scorn. Between confessed unequals scorn is not even suggested. Its derisive proclamation of inequality has no sting and no meaning where ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell

... corollary, that the necessity of restraining population is not, as many persons believe, peculiar to a condition of great inequality of property. A greater number of people can not, in any given state of civilization, be collectively so well provided for as a smaller. The niggardliness of nature,(140) not the injustice of society, is the cause of the penalty attached to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... study to enter college for the next term. Then he broke out on me with a torrent of abuse as an idle, shirking boy, who only cared to avoid work, ending with the accusation that all I wanted was to "eat the bread of idleness," a phrase he was very fond of. I suppose I inherited some of his inequality of temper, and I replied by leaving the table, throwing my chair across the room as I did so; and, assuring him that when I ate another morsel of bread in his house he would know the reason why, I left the house in a towering rage. Having forewarned ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... perhaps, occupy a good position from which to watch the discussion and criticise those objections which are seemingly inconclusive. On surveying the arguments urged by those who have undertaken to demolish the theory, we have been most impressed with a sense of their great inequality. Some strike us as excellent and perhaps unanswerable; some, as incongruous with other views of the same writers; others, when carried out, as incompatible with general experience or general beliefs, and therefore ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... splendid and devout, which surrounded him during his early years. Remember his long life of obscurity at sea, and the slow kindling of the light of faith in something beyond the familiar horizons; remember the social inequality of his marriage, his long struggle with poverty, his long familiarity with the position of one who asked and did not receive; the many rebuffs and indignities which his Ligurian pride must have received at the hands of all those Spanish ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... circumstances would judge his thumb, with which he might hide a tower or hinder its being seen, equal to that tower, or his hand, the interposition whereof might conceal experimental means the firmament from his view, equal to the firmament: how great an inequality soever there may in our apprehensions seem to be betwixt those two things, because of the customary and close connexion that has grown up in our minds between the objects of sight and touch; whereby the very different ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... on this account. Among his people the eldest son always became the family heir and also received the choicest blessing from the father, a privilege coveted as much as wealth. In this case therefore the privileged son was Jacob's brother Esau. Jacob resented keenly the inequality of his lot; and his mother sympathized with him, as he was her favorite. A feeling of enmity grew up between the brothers, and in the end Jacob did Esau ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... will look to the thirtieth chapter of vol. i. in the new edition of the "Stones of Venice," which, by the gift of its publishers, I am enabled to lay on your table to be placed in your library, you will find one of my first and most eager statements of the necessity of inequality or change in form, made against the common misunderstanding of Greek symmetry, and illustrated by a woodcut of the spiral ornament on the treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. All that is said in that chapter respecting nature and the ideal, I now beg most earnestly to recommend ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... everything. The French overtook the English on the 24th of October, and by judicious action might have destroyed them, for they were by far the more numerous,—though most English authorities, with characteristic "unveracity," grossly exaggerate the inequality of numbers that really did exist between the two armies. On the night of the 24th the rain fell heavily, making the ground quite unfit for the operations of heavy cavalry, in which the strength of the French consisted, while the English had their incomparable archers, the worthy predecessors of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... themselves. Their descent, it is affirmed, lasted as many hours as Vulcan occupied in falling from Heaven to Lemnos; but when the last tail was over the brink, the gulf closed as effectually as the gulf in the Forum closed over Marcus Curtius, not leaving the slightest inequality by ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... lyrist, however, he stands much higher, and in such gems as "Proud Maisie" and "A weary lot is thine, Fair Maid," he takes his place among our greatest singers. His chief fame rests, of course, upon the novels. Here also, however, there is the same inequality and irregularity, but there is a singular command over his genius in virtue of which the fusing, creating imagination responds to his call, and is at its greatest just where it is most needed. For ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... and receiving a proportionate share in the new division of power and wealth. In short, when the era of war had become fully inaugurated, the old social and political relations of mankind were broken up with great rapidity; equality of power was replaced by inequality, which steadily grew more and more declared; equality of wealth in like manner vanished; in all directions the individual emerged from the mass, class distinctions became intricate, and the relations of rich and poor, of king, noble, ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... except when her brother died and her mother died. What did she lack for happiness? Nothing that this world can give in the opening twentieth century ... not even a very good pianola or a motor. I feel somehow it was almost unfair (in my rage at the inequality of treatment meted out by the Powers Beyond). Shall not General Sir Petworth Armstrong die in the great debacle of the world-wide War? I shall see, later. And yet I feel that this nucleus of pure happiness housed in Kensington Square—or at Petworth Manor—was to the little world ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... subject. The lord-mayor, aldermen, and common-council of London, presented a petition, setting forth, that the duties already laid upon coals and culm imported into London, affected the trade of that city only; that the inequality of the burden was a great discouragement to their manufactures, and a hardship upon all the trading inhabitants. The petition was rejected, and the tax imposed. The house having addressed the king for a particular and distinct account of the distribution ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... with us, and that our Constitution had the gunwale under water. But can you fairly and distinctly point out what one evil or grievance has happened which you can refer to the representative not following the opinion of his constituents? What one symptom do we find of this inequality? But it is not an arithmetical inequality with which we ought to trouble ourselves. If there be a moral, a political equality, this is the desideratum in our Constitution, and in every constitution in the world. Moral inequality is as between places and between ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... per capita income four times that of most nations of sub-Saharan Africa. This has supported a sharp decline in extreme poverty but because of high income inequality a large proportion of the population remains poor. Gabon depended on timber and manganese until oil was discovered offshore in the early 1970s. The oil sector now accounts for 50% of GDP. Gabon continues to face fluctuating prices for its oil, timber, manganese, and ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Death, at present, has the monopoly. Mr. Mallock thinks that Social Equality, if it ever came to pass, would be ruinous to the welfare of the nation; but happily we are in no immediate danger of it. Inequality, he says, is the condition of Progress, and if it is only Inequality that is wanted, Progress ought to be making rapid strides. Oh yes, we have Social Inequality enough to carry us on at the rate of a mile a minute. It would be ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... hadn't been able to find out anything definite from his friends in government service. On Omega, the law was kept secret. Older residents used their knowledge of the law to enforce their rule over the newcomers. This system was condoned and reinforced by the doctrine of the inequality of all men, which lay at the heart of the Omegan legal system. Through planned inequality and enforced ignorance, power and status remained in the hands ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... lad,' said the good man, 'but that packing you off like that, among your inferiors in breeding and everything else, would put an end to all hope of your redeeming the past— outwardly I mean, of course—and lodge you in a position of inequality to your brothers and ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... from under a bridge," has given a wise and admirable suggestion in regard to choice of sites, "leaving the climate and productiveness of soil out of the question, the main things to find united, are, shade, water, and inequality of surface. With these three features given by nature, any spot may be made beautiful, and at very little cost: and fortunately for purchasers in this country, most land is valued and sold with ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward

... think of the hundreds and thousands of young ladies, intelligent, amiable and capable, who are assembled in schools and academies there; and then turn my eye to Jerusalem, Hebron, Nazareth, Sychar, Damascus, Tyre, Sidon, Jaffa, and to the numerous villages of Mount Lebanon, and think, 'Why this inequality of condition and privileges? Why can there not be stationed at every one of those morally desolate places, at least one missionary family, and one single female as a teacher? Does not Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, require it of His youthful friends in America, that from love to Him, ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... unfrequently amazed at this inequality of nature in her favorite pupil. On one side he seemed a full-grown man of grand proportions; on the other, a pigmy-child. She had heard him pour forth torrents of eloquence on the Sabbath, and felt the force of a nature exceptionally rich and strong in its conception of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... walls. His name is shouted and is carried by the wind into the tiny inclosure in which other men live and in which they are for the most part absorbed in doing some petty task for the furtherance of their own comfort. Men and women stop their complaining about the unfairness and inequality of life and wonder about the man whose name they ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... of capital into larger units, there was an inequality of the bargaining power of the individual. Labor has therefore gradually developed its defense against the aggregation of capital by counter-organization. The organized uses of strike and lockout on either side and the entrance ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... accrue from the process described, provided due care is taken that there is no overstraining, and the damping is neither excessive nor insufficient. The result of the former is likely to be an inequality in the bending, the line or level of the edging when looked at along its course, will look uneven, as if some upheaval had taken place here and there. Courage and caution are faculties brought to bear strongly and continuously on the subject by every repairer with a reputation for success. ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... fancy," game to the backbone. His faults, besides those incident to most satirists,—such as undue severity, intrusion into private life, anger darkening into malignity, and spleen fermenting into venom,—were carelessness of style, inequality, and want of condensation. Compared to the satires of Pope, Churchill's are far less polished, and less pointed. Pope stabs with a silver bodkin—Churchill hews down his opponent with a broadsword. Pope whispers a word in his enemy's ear which withers the heart within ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... the advocate's wife, casting an uneasy glance over her table, "isn't that the way of the world? We know that inequality—" ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... efface all the marks of their circumcision, that they might enter the games with as much freedom as the Romans or other uncircumcised nations; so that the present aversion to out-of-door sports evinced by the Jew is not necessarily a racial trait; the persecutions and political inequality that until lately he has been made to suffer have driven him into retirement and seclusion. Although seeking neither converts nor political power and influence, he has been hunted down, massacred, and chased about as a dangerous beast. As the children of the great Rabbi ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... directly through mobs or indirectly through hostile legislation and administration, which fix upon him the brand of a caste whose members have no rights in Southern society which white men are bound to respect. Such social injustice and political inequality as exist between the races in the South are bad for the whites as they are bad for the blacks—are very bad for their collective interests and for the National interests of the great industrial democracy of which they form a part. Is it astonishing then that under such circumstances there have sprung ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke

... the general suffering was seen in a new revolt against the whole system of social inequality which had till then passed unquestioned as the divine order of the world. The Peace was hardly signed when the cry of the poor found a terrible utterance in the words of "a mad priest of Kent" as the courtly Froissart calls him, who for twenty years ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... about writing for the paper, as the chance of gaining reputation by unsigned contributions was very small. "I feel strongly," he wrote to me years ago, "as many writers do on the paper, as to the inequality of authors and artists. It keeps very good men ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... the mob, that blocked the entire street. As the head of the force appeared, the rioters, instead of being frightened, greeted it with jeers and curses. It was two hundred against a thousand; but the inspector did not hesitate a moment on account of the inequality of numbers, but instantly formed his men and ordered a charge. The mob, instead of recoiling, closed desperately on the police, and a fierce hand-to-hand encounter took place. The clubs, however, mowed a clean swath along the street, and the ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... accurate resemblance of that which exists in the civilized world. Amongst children of different ages, strength, and talents, there must always be tyranny, injustice, and that worst species of inequality, which arises from superior force on the one side, and abject timidity on the other. Of this, the spectators of juvenile disputes and quarrels are sometimes sensible, and they hastily interfere and endeavour to part the combatants, by pronouncing certain moral sentences, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... grumbled now and then because his chum was queening "like all the rest of the frat-men," and their jovial expeditions to Mayfield were over, "because she wouldn't understand" (most conclusive proof!), but he ended by taking it as he might have taken an inequality of temper—as a flaw in character to be overlooked in a friend. Then again, Pellams found it positively uncanny to be getting on so well in his work, an uneasy feeling as though he were walking along the edge of a steep place. As for the joke itself, he could laugh over ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... this country a monstrous inequality of law and right. What is a trifling fault in the white man, is considered highly criminal in the slave; the same offences which cost a white man a few dollars only, are punished in the negro ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... the broad system of equal rights," he declared, "this inequality should no longer be tolerated. If it cannot be speedily put down—not by force but by fair persuasion—if we are always to remain shackled by unjust, constitutional provisions, when the emergency that imposed them has long since passed away; if we must share in the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... savage. At nine o'clock that morning Mme. Sauvage half-carried Schmucke downstairs, and from the cab he was obliged to beg Remonencq to come with him to the registrar as a second witness. Here in Paris, in this land of ours besotted with Equality, the inequality of conditions is glaringly apparent everywhere and in everything. The immutable tendency of things peeps out even in the practical aspects of Death. In well-to-do families, a relative, a friend, or a man of business spares the mourners these painful details; but in this, as in the matter of taxation, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... whose tastes, habits and characters, cannot but be in every way uncongenial. And on the other hand, how often do we see the finest specimens of men unequally joined to women who seem to have no true appreciation of what is really excellent in morals or social life. The reason for such inequality is very apparent to all who observe with any intelligence. The affinities which govern among those who enter life's dazzling arena, are, in most cases, external instead of internal. Accomplishment, personal appearance, and family connections, are more considered ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... certain, however, that I played Juliet upward of a hundred and twenty times running, with all the irregularity and unevenness and immature inequality of which I have spoken as characteristics which were never corrected in my performances. My mother, who never missed one of them, would sometimes come down from her box and, folding me in her arms, say only the very satisfactory words, "Beautiful, my dear!" Quite as ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... son. If, in such a state, a man breaks the general rule, our judgment of his conduct would be determined perhaps by considering whether he was before or behind his age, whether he was acting from a keener perception of the evils of inequality or actuated by spite or regardless of the public interests which he believed to be concerned. A parent treats his children equally in his will in regard to money; but he does not, unless he is a fool, give the same training or the same opening to all his children, whether ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... angry with me. "What have you to complain of?" said I. "In a gift which I propose to give of my own free will am not I master of the conditions? Who makes you run? Did I promise to make the courses equal? Is not the choice yours? Do not you see that I am favouring you, and that the inequality you complain of is all to your advantage, if you knew how to use it?" That was plain to him; and to choose he must observe more carefully. At first he wanted to count the paces, but a child measures paces slowly and inaccurately; moreover, I decided to have several races on one ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... see, and prompt to avail themselves of the happy chance or instrument, that the partisans of the revolution in the southern colonies, under Marion and others, asserted their vast superiority over the invader, and maintained their ground, and obtained their final triumph, in spite of every inequality ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... impossible that she could continue to live; or that, if she did, it must be through the giving way of her reason. They proved, however, to be mistaken; or, at least, if (as some thought) her reason did suffer in some degree, this result showed itself in the inequality of her temper, in moody fits of abstraction, and the morbid energy of her manner at times under the absence of all adequate external excitement, rather than in any positive and apparent hallucinations of thought. The charm which had mainly carried off the instant danger to her faculties, was doubtless ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... culture from man, whose works are bad in proportion as he is remoter from natural innocence, as his desires increase upon him, as he seeks more refined pleasures, and stores up more superfluity. It promotes inequality, selfishness, and ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... experiences it can be only in the art principles they reveal. To me in the present small instance the principle illustrated was that of the true profile line for ascent or descent in a garden. You may go into any American town where there is any inequality of ground and in half an hour find a hundred or two private lawns graded—from the house to each boundary line—on a single falling curve, or, in plain English, a hump. The best reason why this curve is not artistic, not pleasing, ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... their stone, however small it may be, to the building of civilization, or of bringing happiness to their kind, they feel that they live; and whatever be the wounds received, they are not out of the battle of life—the inequality of arms only increases their ardor." This inequality of arms should, and usually does, act as a spur to the courageous man or woman, but to the mind of the average sighted person, this inequality seems to apply inability, and ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley

... year, when the heavy metal of the young Dutch giant told in our struggles. After that period was past, I found Dirck too much for me, in a close gripe, though my extraordinary activity rendered the inequality less apparent than it might otherwise have proved. I ought not to apply the term of "extraordinary" to anything about myself, but the word escaped me unconsciously, and I shall let it stand. One ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... as violent and 97 strong; while of the remainder, 1,808 were weak, 1,041 feeble, and 409 were sounds alone without any accompanying shock. The slight intensity of most of the shocks is also evident from the inequality in the numbers recorded at Gifu and Nagoya, from which it appears that nearly two-thirds were imperceptible more than about 25 miles from the chief origin of the shocks. Only 70 of the after-shocks during the first two years were registered at Osaka, ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... own part, I believe neither the one theory nor the other. People are the worse for having people above them, and are the ruder and coarser for having to fight their way. If the triumph of social inequality is such that there are not four men in London who are not snobs, it cannot boast itself greater than the success of economic inequality with ourselves, among whom the fight for money has not produced of late a first-class poet, painter, or sculptor. The English, if they are now the ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... one another, the city upon their death at once falls back into ruin; or, if it be preserved, must be so by incurring great risks, and at the cost of much blood. For the corruption I speak of, is wholly incompatible with a free government, because it results from an inequality which pervades the State and can only be removed by employing unusual and very violent remedies, such as few are willing or know how to employ, as in another place I shall ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... the actors we have ever seen in the old world or in the new, he who imposes the most difficult task upon the critic is Mr. Cooper. It is scarcely possible to generalize his acting. The great inequality of his performance, the defects of some parts, the doubtfulness of others, and the amazing beauties which he frequently displays, forbid the critic, if he have a due regard to truth, to give to the different parts of any one character ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... he and they had to bear the results of the archaic caste system; injurious as it is and fatal to the community not less than to the individual, raising between the pretended equals of our so-called "democracies" the excessive inequality of fortune, education, and life. Journalists supply the only means of communication between caste and caste, and they form a caste by themselves, representing neither the one side nor the other. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... what is to become of you and me. I talked long with Gregg about this when Storer had left us. It is my opinion, from all I hear of your circumstances and my own, that we shall be both reduced to 2,000 a year each, and as great as the inequality is between us in all other respects, in that we shall be equal, and the alternative is to submit to the terms imposed by the new people, which may be very humiliating to us both. If you are not an object of their justice, of their esteem, and respect, you will, I am sure, not consent to be ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... Charlie, if you loan me a hundred dollars. I would not ask this of you, only my need is sore, and you and I have so long shared hearts and minds together, however unequally on my side, that nothing remains to prove our friendship than, with the same inequality on my side, to share purses. You will do me the favor ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... cow lots, unpainted houses, and mud, and always noting, as well, the presence of cleanliness, grace, taste in adorning and beautifying, even to the disposition of a tree or the turning of a hedge, the marvel of roads in perfect repair, void of ruts and guiltless of even an inequality of surface—we bowled along, hour after hour, that brilliant summer day, and as nightfall approached we entered a wilderness of odorous flowers and shrubbery, sped through it, and then, excited, delighted, and half persuaded that we were ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... more painful to the modern mind than that men are not born with equal brains; and every day we grow more and more determined to thwart Nature's desire of inequality by public education. Whether everybody should be taught to read and write I leave to politicians—the matter is not important; but that the nation should not be instructed in drawing, music, painting, and English literature ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... during the course of the year. Economic inquiries, for instance, have suggested that younger and older workingmen who ordinarily show the same efficiency become unequal in their ability to do good work in the spring months, and the economists have connected this inequality with sexual conditions. But other factors as well, especially the blood circulation of the organism and the resulting reactions to external temperature, different gland activities, and so on, cause great personal differences in efficiency during the various seasons of the year. ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... poor and miserable, and who, tho' he has all Things to compleat his Happiness, his avaricious Temper will not permit him to enjoy the common Necessaries of Life: The Pleasures of living he's a Stranger to, he lives despis'd, and will die unpitied: But such is the inequality of Fortune's Favours, that Merit must stoop and Ideots be advanc'd to the highest Pomp and Magnificence. It is entirely out of your Power to give the pitied Leander the least Relief; your Father's House is a Nunnery, he has his Locks and Keys to secure ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob

... become so embittered that it was better to part in peace; better to part anyhow; and, as a separation was inevitable, that the South should begin at once, because the possibility of a successful effort was yearly lessened by the rapid and increasing inequality between the two sections, from the fact that all the European immigrants were coming to the Northern States and Territories, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... always cropping up afresh: before Waterloo, in Bonaparte overthrowing the old thrones; after Waterloo, in Louis XVIII. granting and conforming to the charter. Bonaparte places a postilion on the throne of Naples, and a sergeant on the throne of Sweden, employing inequality to demonstrate equality; Louis XVIII. at Saint-Ouen countersigns the declaration of the rights of man. If you wish to gain an idea of what revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to acquire ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... this inequality presses heavily upon the "working" class, and must visibly tend to destroy their hope of rest at least, and so, in that particular, make them worse off than mere beasts of the field; but that is not the sum and end of our folly of turning useful work into useless toil, but ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris



Words linked to "Inequality" :   disparity, difference, unevenness, nonequivalence, equality



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