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Lawgiver

noun
1.
A maker of laws; someone who gives a code of laws.  Synonym: lawmaker.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lawgiver" Quotes from Famous Books



... in a position to summarize the claims and prerogatives of the bishop of Rome or pope. (1) He was the supreme lawgiver. He could issue decrees of his own, which might not be set aside by any other person. No council might enact canons without his approval. From any law, other than divine, he might dispense persons. (2) He was the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... the sort of master he was to work for. He had had no warnings, and he had concluded as a matter of course that Bunster would be like other white men, a drinker of much whiskey, a ruler and a lawgiver who always kept his word and who never struck a boy undeserved. Bunster had the advantage. He knew all about Mauki, and gloated over the coming into possession of him. The last cook was suffering from a broken arm and a dislocated shoulder, so Bunster made Mauki ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... services which sanctify society while fortifying it. Atheism has fled before liberty: in proportion as despotism has receded, the divine idea has advanced in the souls of men. Liberty lives by morality. What is morality without a God? What is a law without a lawgiver? ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine

... Hohen-staufen; Gargano takes us back into Byzantine mysticism and monkery. And now from Altamura with its dark record of Bourbon horrors, we glide into the sunshine of Hellenic days when the wise Archytas, sage and lawgiver, friend of Plato, ruled this ancient city of Tarentum. A wide sweep of history! And if those Periclean times be not remote enough, yonder lies Oria on its hilltop, the stronghold of pre-Hellenic ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... full of the majesty of Thy Glory!" What an astonishing thing that, standing where we stood and seeing what we saw, there are men who should be able to deduce this law or that from their observation of its working and yet be unable to see the Lawgiver!—who should be able to push back effect to immediate cause and yet be blind to the Supreme Cause of All Causes; who can say, "This is the glacier's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes," and not see Him "Who ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck

... state of things at Paris. Since parliament had elected him Ryland's deputy, all the surviving English had submitted to Adrian. He was our captain to lead us from our native soil to unknown lands, our lawgiver and our preserver. On the first arrangement of our scheme of emigration, no continued separation of our members was contemplated, and the command of the whole body in gradual ascent of power had its apex in the Earl of Windsor. But unforeseen circumstances ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... former times, a more public homage was paid to Christian principle. But the fact is, that not the anti-Christian character of the offence so much as its greater frequency, and the consequent extension of a civil mischief was the ruling consideration with the lawgiver. Among other causes for this greater prevalence of duels, was the composition of armies, more often brought together upon mercenary principles from a large variety of different nations, whose peculiar usages, points of traditional honour, and even the oddness of their several languages ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... rabbi had said, which was all their learning. Christ quoted no one. He did not even say, 'Moses has said.' He did not even preface His commands with a 'Thus saith the Lord.' He spoke of His own authority: 'Verily, I say unto you.' Other teachers explained the law; He is a lawgiver. Others drew more or less pure waters from cisterns; He is in Himself a well of water, from which all may draw. To us, as to these rude villagers in the synagogue of the little fishing-town, Christ's teaching ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... received tradition of events that happened more than nine thousand years ago, when the Athenians themselves were such ideal citizens. Critias has received this tradition, he says, from a ninety-year-old grandfather, whose father, Dropides, was the friend of Solon. Solon, lawgiver and poet, had heard it from the priests of the goddess Neith or Athene at Sais, and had begun to shape ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... direction of the Lawgiver, certain good and substantial steps, placed even through the very midst of this slough; but at such time as this place doth much spew out its filth, as it doth against change of weather, these steps are hardly seen; or if they be, men, through the dizziness of their ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... it settled opposite the Tabernacle. Thereupon the leaders of the twelve tribes would appear, each with his staff and chant these words to the well, "Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it; nobles of the people digged it by the direction of the lawgiver with their staves." Then the water would gush forth from the depths of the well, and shoot up high as pillars, then discharge itself into great streams that were navigable, and on these rivers the Jews sailed ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... vanquished; but the soul of Una is never darkened, and the spear of Britomart is never broken. Nay, I could go back into the mythical teaching of the most ancient times, and show you how the great people,—by one of whose princesses it was appointed that the Lawgiver of all the earth should be educated, rather than by his own kindred;—how that great Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver's shuttle; and how the name and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... functions of government among his official counsellors and those from whom new counsellors are to be chosen. He spreads an elaborate network over all the interests and functions of the State, holding the line in his own hand, and drawing or relaxing it at his own pleasure. He is still the lawgiver and the judge, dictating according to his own judgment, and deciding according to his own conviction. Of his laws there is no revision; from his sentence there is no appeal. The duties of the subject are defined by the rights of the sovereign; and of those ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... [Lennie has "Always" with a capital.] "The first word of a quotation, introduced after a colon, or when it is in a direct form: as, 'Always remember this ancient maxim: Know thyself.' 'Our great lawgiver says, Take up thy cross daily, and follow me.'"—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 284. "8. The first word of a quotation, introduced after a colon, or when it is in a direct form. EXAMPLES.—'Always remember this ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... mine anointed, and do my prophet no harm. From that small seed, accordingly, sprang the greatest tree that grew in those old days upon the earth. Moses, the terror of Pharaoh, the scourge of Egypt, the leader of the Exodus, the lawgiver of Israel—Moses in his manhood was to the foundling infant what the towering tree is to the imperceptible seed from which ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... not seem to stand in his way; and he now assumed the functions of the most powerful judge, lawgiver, and ruler of the two most influential Arabic tribes. He devoted his time and study to the organization of the worship of God according to Mohammed, his sole prophet. He was gathering in converts all the ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... time of the founder Moses and the Jewish exodus out of Egypt to the appearance of the first great prophet Elijah (say 1300 B.C. to about 860 B.C.) is indeed but little known to us; yet it gives us the great historical figure of the initial lawgiver, the recipient and transmitter of deep ethical and religious experiences and convictions. True, the code of King Hammurabi of Babylon (in 1958 to 1916 B.C.; or, according to others, in about 1650) anticipates many of the ...
— Progress and History • Various

... peace, and prescribe limits to their hostility in war. This important science comprehends only that part of private ethics which is capable of being reduced to fixed and general rules. It considers only those general principles of jurisprudence and politics which the wisdom of the lawgiver adapts to the peculiar situation of his own country, and which the skill of the statesman applies to the more fluctuating and infinitely varying circumstances which affect its immediate welfare and safety. "For there are in nature certain ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh

... him, are so very beautiful and appropriate, that we may be pardoned for extracting some of them:—"Two names only from the Anglo Saxon period are still held in unquestioned and universal reverence. One is the Great Alfred, the illustrious king and lawgiver, in the south of England; the other is Bede, the venerable father of English history and English learning, in the North of England. Venerable he truly was. We need not go back to the legend which supposed that he received the title from the Roman Senate for having ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... to Socrates doubtless dates from this incident. He treasured it up against him, and afterwards, when he was one of the Thirty and associated with Charicles as their official lawgiver, (17) he framed the law against teaching the art of words (18) merely from a desire to vilify Socrates. He was at a loss to know how else to lay hold of him except by levelling against him the vulgar charge (19) against philosophers, by which he hoped to prejudice him with the public. It ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... is enough?' Was he not overpowered by the people's clamours?—They would have a king no longer; the name, sir, the very name was as a foul stench in their nostrils; the time had arrived when the lawgiver was to depart from Judah. Could he, or could any man—ought he, or ought any man to fight against the Lord, or the Lord's people?" He spoke thus far with strength and energy, then suddenly pausing, he added, "But, as I said before, there is time enough for this. As to yourself, young man, if ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... that somewhere Blackstone says something about eavesdropping,—I mean in its literal sense—something about the drippings from A's roof falling on B's estate; but for the life of me I couldn't tell what he says. More distinctly do I remember this learned lawgiver stated that there could be no doubt of the evidence of witchcraft, because the Bible was full of it, and that witches should be punished with death. This made an impression upon me, because it was an instance, rare to me then, but common enough now, of how minds, otherwise exceptionally ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... had now re-established itself as a subject of perennial interest. In the hope of the fulfilment of the biblical promise: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until he comes to Shiloh," even the most famous Jewish traveller of the middle ages, Benjamin of Tudela, did not disdain to follow up the "traces of salvation." Nor has interest waned in ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... canal within the space of a half mile they skated, exerting their racing powers to the utmost. Often the swiftest among them was seen to dodge from under the very nose of some pompous lawgiver or doctor who, with folded arms, was skating leisurely toward the town; or a chain of girls would suddenly break at the approach of a fat old burgomaster who, with gold-headed cane poised in air, was ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... why Luther failed is, because he could not make a Pharisee of himself, which is only another name for hypocrite. The Law of God had such a terrible meaning to him because he applied it as the Lawgiver wants it applied, to his whole inner life, to the heart, the soul, the mind, and all his powers of intellect and will. It is comparatively easy to make the members of the body go through certain external performances, but to make the mind obey is a different proposition. The discovery ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... we know it, both of which it seems to me to be very important that we should carry in our minds in interpreting the Scriptural doctrine. There is the forgiveness known to law and practised by the lawgiver. There is the forgiveness known to love and practised by the friend, or parent, or lover. The one consists in the remission of external penalties. A criminal is forgiven, or, as we say (with an unconscious restriction of the word forgiven to the deeper ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... own generation and in the generations just before and after it. But the breed of England's adopted children and rulers never died out. The name of William the Deliverer stands, if not beside that of his namesake the Conqueror, yet surely alongside of the lawgiver from Anjou. And we count among the later worthies of England not a few men sprung from other lands, who did and are doing their work among us, and who, as statesmen at least, must count as English. As we look along the whole line, even ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... was nothing. The empire of the Incas rested on both. It was a theocracy more potent in its operation than that of the Jews; for, though the sanction of the law might be as great among the latter, the law was expounded by a human lawgiver, the servant and representative of Divinity. But the Inca was both the lawgiver and the law. He was not merely the representative of Divinity, or, like the Pope, its vicegerent, but he was Divinity itself. The violation of his ordinance ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... the place from whence Salvation is to proceed, "Jerusalem, a quiet habitation;" the Eternity of it, "a tabernacle that shall not be taken down," &c. The Saviour of it, "the Lord, their Judge, their Lawgiver, their King, he will save us;" the Salvation, "the Lord shall be to them as a broad mote of swift waters," &c. the condition of their Enemies, "their tacklings are loose, their masts weake, the lame shal take the spoil of them." The condition of the Saved, "The Inhabitants ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... the Hebrews the rules they were to observe during all their generations, until a new dispensation should come. These form that great system of original jurisprudence that has entered, more or less, into the codes of all nations, and by which the genius of the lawgiver is especially manifested; although it is not to be forgotten he framed his ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... myself hand-tied by conditions, and fettered by laws and circumstances, in making which my voice had no part. While in the womb I was an automaton; and death will find me a mere machine. Therefore not I, but the Law, or if, you please, the Lawgiver, is answerable for all my actions. Let me here observe that to the Western mind Law postulates a Lawgiver; not so to the Eastern, and especially to the Soofi, who holds these ideas to be human, unjustifiably extended to interpreting the ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no favorable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has the spell ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... institutions: you are guided in your choice of a horseman, by the quantity of his property; in your choice of a foot soldier, by the quantity of his property; and your plan is, that a few should abound in wealth, and that the body of the people should be in subjection to them. Our lawgiver did not choose that the administration of government should be in the hands of a few, such as you call a senate; or that this or that order of citizens should have a superiority over the rest: but he considered ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... equation of his terms, and, baffled in his search, in the insanity of intellectual pride, denies his Maker. He puts the infinite mysteries of revelation into the narrow crucible of the finite, the residuum is—nothing; he calls it immutable laws, as if laws could exist without a lawgiver, and bows before a pitiless phantom, where he should love and worship the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... doing of this purpose of God. It means that surrender of purpose that has utterly changed the lives of the strongest men in order that the purpose of God might be dominant. It cut off from a great throne earth's greatest jurist, the Hebrew lawgiver, and led him instead to be allied to a race of slaves. It led that intellectual giant Jeremiah from an easy enjoyable leadership to espouse a despised cause and so be himself despised. It led Paul ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon

... heroes at a new epoch of development. As rivers generally spring from high mountains, so knowledge and moral power rises and is ever nourished from the heights of humanity. Abraham, the father of the faithful; Moses, the lawgiver of the Jewish theocracy; Elijah, among the prophets; Peter, Paul, and John among the apostles; Athanasius and Chrysostom among the Greek, Augustine and Jerome among the Latin fathers; Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus among the schoolmen; Leo I. and Gregory VII. among the popes; Luther and Calvin ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the law prevail," cries this second Draco. "The law is sacred, and must not be moved. You are so clever that you will not live, by fixed rule and order, and you deride the approved principles of political wisdom. Every one of you wants to be a lawgiver, a statesman, and a reformer, and to manage the public affairs in his own way. We, who understand your true interests, are bound to resist this mood of lawless extravagance, and keep you in the right path, whether you ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... "Their original lawgiver had taught them that they were all brethren, one of another.... They become incredibly alert when anything ... affects ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... both male and female. I will tell you how it is that I so especially recollect. It was because I had heard from our lawgiver here about the beautiful Samian girl you have borne home among your share of the spoils. You did not think, perhaps, that I knew of her; but when I offered to throw the dice, I held her in my mind. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... certain number of years; reserving to himself and his relations the right of redeeming it, should they ever possess the means; and having at all events the sure prospect of a reversion at the period of the jubilee. In the eye of the lawgiver this transaction was not regarded as a sale of the land, but merely of the crops for a stated number of seasons. It might indeed have been considered simply as a lease, had not the owner, as well as his nearest kinsman, enjoyed the privilege of resuming occupation whenever they could repay ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... the desire of some idolatrous nation, craving new objects of worship, by leading them to canonize this Hebrew chief; and thus make of the lawgiver and prophet of Israel a ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... Hamurabi. Thus natural standards of temper and conduct are seen to exist, below which men may not live without loss, and hence there are natural laws to disobey which is sin. The table given on Sinai, though given to Moses, was in the world long before Moses. But higher sanction was given it by the lawgiver, and the highest by the re-enactment of ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell

... principles of obedience, veracity, justice, and charity." And again, Lord Brougham says, when enforcing the immense importance of training and example in youth, "I trust everything, under God, to habit, on which, in all ages, the lawgiver, as well as the schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance; habit, which makes everything easy, and cast the difficulties upon the deviation from a wonted course." Thus, make sobriety a habit and intemperance will be hateful; make prudence ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... as too appropriating in its character, and as making the divine Being appear cruel.(234) He denied the originality of the Hebrew moral law,(235) and pointed out the supposed defectiveness of the Hebrew polity; comparing unfavourably the type of the Hebrew lawgiver as seen in Moses, and of the king as seen in David, with the great heroes of Greek history.(236) The Hebrew prophecy he tried to weaken by putting it in comparison with oracles. In estimating the character ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... of opinion as to the proper amount of dilution. Odysseus ("Odyssey," IX. 209) mixed his fabulously strong wine from Maron in Thrace with twenty times its bulk of water. Hesiod abstemiously commended three parts of water to one of wine. Zaleucus, the lawgiver of Italian Locri, established the death penalty for drinking unmixed wine save by physicians' orders ("Atheneus," ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... force for its execution must be purchased; and the mass of its subjects must be persuaded to respect the authority which employs this force. But how is such respect to be implanted in them if they are unable to comprehend the thought of the lawgiver? Clearly, only by associating the legislative power with such displays of splendor and majesty as will impress their senses and awe their imaginations. The god turned lawgiver, in short, must be crowned Pontiff and King. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... what is characteristic in Wordsworth we must recur to a more generalized conception of the relations between the natural and the spiritual worlds. We must say with Plato—the lawgiver of all subsequent idealists—that the unknown realities around us, which the philosopher apprehends by the contemplation of abstract truth, become in various ways obscurely perceptible to men under the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... already fully shown, that, according to the principle out of which this consequence is attempted to be drawn, it is not the actual man, but the abstract reason alone, that is the sovereign and rightful lawgiver. The confusion of two things so different is so gross an error, that the Constituent Assembly could scarce proceed a step in their declaration of rights, without some glaring inconsistency. Children are excluded from all political power; are they not human beings in ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... The dead are by far the more numerous.' Assuredly, the dead are by far the more numerous. By the multitudinous numbers and the magnitude of their work, they are more powerful. It's they who rule; we obey them. Our masters lie beneath these stones. Here is the lawgiver who made the law to which I submit to-day; the architect who built my house, the poet who created the illusions which still disturb us; the orator who swayed us before our birth. Here are all the artisans of our knowledge, true or false, of our wisdom and of our follies. There they lie, ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... O'Conor has been hardly dealt with by most modern writers. He was not, like his father, like Murkertach O'Brien, Malachy II., Brian, Murkertach of the leathern cloaks, or Malachy I., eminent as a lawgiver, a soldier, or a popular leader. He does not appear to have inspired love, or awe, or reverence, into those of his own household and patrimony, not to speak of his distant cotemporaries. He was probably a man of secondary qualities, engulfed in a crisis of the first importance. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... upon this Subject in Holy Writ, the Author has numberless Allusions to them through the whole course of this Book. The great Critick I have before mentioned, though an Heathen, has taken notice of the sublime Manner in which the Lawgiver of the Jews has describ'd the Creation in the first Chapter of Genesis; [4] and there are many other Passages in Scripture, which rise up to the same Majesty, where this Subject is touched upon. Milton has ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... cured—not perhaps one in ten of all who came in confidence. That surely was wonderful. . . . Was it then that that same Sovereign Power who had permitted the pain elected to retain His own sovereignty, and to show that the Lawgiver was fettered by no law? One thing at least was certain, if those records which the priest had examined this morning were to be believed, that no receptiveness of temperament, no subjective expectancy of cure, ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... children of senators, to whom the prohibition had even previously extended, but also their grandchildren, who naturally found a place in the equestrian class, to do anything of the sort again. [-3-] In these ordinances he let both the substance and the name of the lawgiver and emperor be seen. In other matters he was more moderate and even came to the aid of some of his friends when their conduct was subjected to official scrutiny. But a certain Marcus Primus was accused of having made ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... the awfulness of His presence as a Lawgiver, whom the nations were to honor, by His voice from Mount Sinai which "shook the earth." The glorious manifestation of God's presence at the tabernacle, in the midst of the camp of Israel, impressed them with the fact that ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... feelings, he is asked to conceive of God as a living, personal Being, everywhere present, beholding the evil and the good, whose "eyes are as a flame of fire," and can discern "the very thoughts and intents of the heart;" when he conceives of such a Being as his Lawgiver, Governor, and Judge, as one who demands the homage of the heart and the obedience of the life, and who has power to enforce His rightful claims by the sanctions of reward and punishment, he will ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution—to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up" their oaths are unanimous. ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... to these questions will expose an error as wide in the popular estimate of Bacon's intellectual greatness as that which has prevailed so generally regarding his character. He is called the inventor of inductive reasoning, the reformer of logic, the lawgiver of the world of thought; but he was no one of these. His grasp of the inductive method was defective; his logic was clumsy and impractical; his plan for registering all phenomena and selecting and generalizing from them, making the discovery ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... Akkadian Sippar and the Sumerian Larsa. In these the sun god, Shamash or Babbar, was the patron deity. He was a god of Destiny, the lord of the living and the dead, and was exalted as the great Judge, the lawgiver, who upheld justice; he was the enemy of wrong, he loved righteousness and hated sin, he inspired his worshippers with rectitude and punished evildoers. The sun god also illumined the world, and his rays penetrated every quarter: he saw all things, and read the thoughts of men; nothing could ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... just as physical philosophers tell us that if the principle of strife and opposition were removed, the heavenly bodies would stand still, and all the productive power of nature would be at an end, so did the Laconian lawgiver endeavour to quicken the virtue of his citizens by constructing a constitution out of opposing elements, deeming that success is barren when there is none to resist, and that the harmonious working of a political system is valueless if purchased by the suppression of any important element. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... the Analytic of Principles sounds bold enough. The understanding is the lawgiver of nature: "It does not draw its laws a priori from nature, but prescribes them to it"; the principles of the pure understanding are the most universal laws of nature, the empirical laws of nature ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... Providence has left a liberty to man in many things in order to prove him, why should human law abridge that liberty, and take upon itself to compel what the great Lawgiver does ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—you ought to be ashamed of such criminal ignorance. Why, Moses, the great guide, soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel! Jack, from this spot where we stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful desert three hundred miles in extent—and across that desert that wonderful man brought the children of Israel!—guiding ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... plagues—wonder-working man! Born of an obscure family and buried in the Land of Moab in a sepulcher which "no man knoweth," and yet between these two humble events he rose to a higher pinnacle than any uninspired man has ever reached—leader without comparison—lawgiver without ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... describe the fortunes of the Emperor's ignoble descendants. The realm was divided, sub-divided, at times partially reunited, like a family farm, among monarchs incompetent alike to hold, to delegate, or—to resign the inheritance of the great warrior and lawgiver. The meek, bald, fat, stammering, simple Charles, or Louis, who successively sat upon his throne—princes, whose only historic individuality consists in these insipid appellations—had not the sense to comprehend, far less to develop, the plans of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... essential to the maintenance of unity in the Church, while the absence of a Head necessarily leads to anarchy, we are forced to conclude, even though positive evidence were wanting, that, in the establishment of His Church, it must have entered into the mind of the Divine Lawgiver to place over it a primate invested with ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... Jesus Himself first declares it openly in His trial before the Sanhedrin. In Matthew and Luke, on the contrary, Jesus is presented to the public as the Son of God from the beginning of His ministry; He comes forward at once as the supreme Lawgiver, the Judge, the anointed of God. The Fourth Gospel goes much further still. His heavenly origin, His priority to the world, His co-operation in the work of creation and salvation, are ideas which are foreign to the other Gospels, but which the author ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... these perplexed the patriot brain Of Jones, Lawgiver to the Commonwealth, As on the threshold of this chaste domain He paused expectant, and looked up in stealth To darkened canvases that frowned amain, With stern-eyed Puritans, who first began To spread their roots in Georgius Primus' ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... Constitution and the laws made under it, as unjust and immoral, cannot ... justify resistance. In their view, such laws are inconsistent with the justice and benevolence and against the will of the Supreme Lawgiver, and they emphatically ask, 'Which shall we obey, the law of man, or the Will of God?' I answer, 'OBEY BOTH!' The incompatibility which the question assumes [between Right and Wrong, or Good and Evil, or God and the Devil] does not exist! Unjust and oppressive laws may indeed be passed ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... fully free, drove some of the best men from the limits of the colony. Roger Williams, a minister in Salem, and one of the most worthy and enlightened men of his age, sought shelter from the persecution of his brethren amid the wilds on Narragansett Bay. In June, 1636, the lawgiver of Rhode Island, with five companions, embarked in an Indian canoe, and, sailing down the river, landed near a spring, on a sheltered spot, which he called Providence. He was gradually joined by others, who sympathized with his tolerant spirit and enlightened ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... humble requisites, it appears that a missionary ought on occasion to be able to add those of a prime minister and lawgiver. Angadhohua, a bright, clever lad, only too easily led, was to be instructed in the duties of a chief; Mr. Patteson scrupulously trying in vain to make him understand that he was a person of far more consideration and responsibility ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... under any solemn and commanding effect of the true idea of the Divine Majesty. And it is undeniable that this is the state of conscience among them. The vague, faint notion, as they conceive it, of a being who is said to be the creator, governor, lawgiver, and judge, and who dwells perhaps somewhere in the sky, has not, to many of them, the smallest force of intimidation from evil, at least when they are in health and daylight. One of the large sting-armed insects of the air does not alarm them less. A certain transitory fearfulness that ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. WHEREFORE, security being ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine

... Buddha came only as an adviser and a friend; but, as regards his own priesthood, he assumes all the authority of a lawgiver and chief. Spurning the desires and vanities of the world, he has taught them to aspire to no other reward for their labours than the veneration of the human race, as teachers of knowledge and examples of benevolence. Taking ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... objected that the preventive theory is immoral, because it overlooks the ill-desert of wrong-doing, and furnishes [43] no measure of the amount of punishment, except the lawgiver's subjective opinion in regard to the sufficiency of the amount of preventive suffering. /1/ In the language of Kant, it treats man as a thing, not as a person; as a means, not as an end in himself. It is said to conflict with the sense of justice, and to violate the fundamental ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... timid, well-meaning statesmen who now found themselves pitted against Napoleon, and Napoleon's Minister, Talleyrand; against the greatest warrior and lawgiver, and against one of the greatest diplomats, of modern times; against two men, moreover, whose sodden lack of conscience was but heightened by the contrast with their brilliant genius and lofty force of character; two men who were unable to so much as appreciate that there was ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... the Parliament [Footnote: Called the Ecclesia.] of Athens, and served on the juries chosen by lot from the whole body of the citizens, before whose judgment-seat, unassailable by bribery or intimidation, the mightiest offenders trembled. He was a statesman, a judge, a lawgiver, and a warrior, and he might even hope to climb to the highest place in the State, and rule, like Pericles, as a prince of democracy. Around him rose the temples and statues of the gods, fresh from the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... should soon know with whom she had to deal. Not but what Lucia would give her the chance first of behaving with suitable loyalty and obedience; she would even condescend to cooperate with her so long as it was perfectly clear that she aimed at no supremacy. But there was only one lawgiver in Riseholme, one court of appeal, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... thought, word, or deed against the law of God." Deontology therefore presupposes and is consequent upon Natural Theology. At the same time, while Ethics indicate a valuable proof of the existence of God as the requisite Object of Happiness, Deontology affords a proof of Him as the requisite Lawgiver. Without God, man's rational desire is frustrate, and man's conscience a misrepresentation of ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... "organ of sitting still" is the real lawgiver of all civilized humanity. We are to sit or at best to stand, never to walk, much less to run for once in a while. My hero is the "bold runner Achilles." I would rather run to death than sit still and get sick. That is your opinion also, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... is this: "Cum lege coniuncta est gratia, qua lex observari possit." That is, every divine law, by special ordinance, carries with it the grace by which it may be observed. In other words, the laws of God can always be obeyed because the lawgiver never fails to grant sufficient ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... found not to work very successfully in practice. Various dissensions and difficulties arose; and at length, about two hundred years after the original establishment of the two lines, the kingdom became almost wholly disorganized. At this juncture the celebrated lawgiver Lycurgus arose. He framed a system of laws and regulations for the kingdom, which were immediately put in force, and resulted not only in restoring the public affairs to order at the time, but were the means, in the end, of raising Sparta to the highest ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... it is the work of the devil, who is often permitted by God to deceive those whose foolishness and impiety lead them to address themselves to him and place their confidence in him, all which the wise lawgiver, animated by the Divine Spirit, justly repressed by ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... sagacious foresight of the great lawgiver of systematic zoology, Linnaeus, becomes justified, and a century of anatomical research brings us back to his conclusion, that man is a member of the same order (for which the Linnaean term PRIMATES ought to be retained) as the Apes and Lemurs. This order is now divisible into seven ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley

... bring forth living creatures abundantly; and without which, those that inhabit the land, even all creatures that have breath in their nostrils, must suddenly return to putrefaction. Moses, the great lawgiver and chief philosopher, skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians, who was called the friend of God, and knew the mind of the Almighty, names this element the first in the creation: this is the element upon which the Spirit of God did first move, and is the chief ingredient in ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... dilapidated wharf and cheered us by their words and evident interest. Johnny Bowden and I were both rowing in haste to get out where we could catch the breeze and put up the small sail which lay clumsily furled along the gunwale. Mrs. Todd sat aft, a stern and unbending lawgiver. ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... appeared unto them Moses and Elijah talking with Him." How did the disciples know the Lawgiver and the Prophet? We are not told. There may have been given them some supernatural powers of discernment. They may have known by the conversation between Jesus and His celestial visitants, as, in earthly language with heavenly tone, ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed

... their virtues. The discipline of Sparta was military; and a sense of its use in the field, more than the force of unwritten and traditionary laws, or the supposed engagement of the public faith obtained by the lawgiver, may have induced this people to persevere in the observance of many rules, which to other nations do not appear necessary, except in the ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... savage state has produced, for under such circumstances it is impossible that they could have been promulgated and enforced throughout so wide a range of country, and amongst a dispersed race of barbarians of such a variety of dispositions, who acknowledge no chief or lawgiver, and are so ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... corpse-worship until a comparatively late period. The main seats of the sun-worship were at Heliopolis in the Delta and at Edfu in Upper Egypt. Heliopolis seems always to have been a centre of light and leading in Egypt, and it is, as is well known, the On of the Bible, at whose university the Jewish lawgiver Moses is related to have been educated "in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." The philosophical theories of the priests of the Sun-gods, Ra-Harmachis and Turn, at Heliopolis seem to have been the source from which sprang the monotheistic heresy of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... to die!' It penetrates then, and it sticks. It is easy to say 'All men are sinners.' That never yet forced anybody down on his knees. But when we shut out on either side the lateral view and look straight on, on the narrow line of our own lives, up to the Throne where the Lawgiver sits, and feel 'I am a sinful man,' that sends us to our prayers for pardon and purity. And in like manner nobody was ever wholesomely terrified by the thought of a general judgment. But when you translate it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... history is filled with the enforced wanderings of the sons of Israel. The lawgiver prophesied well, "There shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot." But we are not concerned here with the victim of expulsion and persecution. The wayfarer with whom we shall deal is the traveller, and not the exile. He was moved by no caprice but his own. He will excite our admiration, perhaps ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams



Words linked to "Lawgiver" :   jurisprudence, legislator, lawmaker, promulgator, Draco, leader, law



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