"Arbitrary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... don't pay too much attention to the rather arbitrary rules on painting laid down by the Painters' Union. Life is too short. For instance, I don't put my brushes in turpentine when I have finished for the day; and if I do I put the green brush and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... thinking may be carried on without any overt, definite use of laws and principles, as in constructive imagination or in apperception, but, if this is so, it seems better to call the thinking by one of the other names. Of course this classification is somewhat arbitrary, but there can be no question that types of thinking do differ. As has already been noted, some psychologists have used the terms thinking and reasoning as synonyms, but such usage has resulted in confusion and has not been of practical value. It is only as the mental process ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... with the usual thick-headed official lack of imagination, with the result that the excess paid was deducted from his slender salary. With a man of less conscience this condition would easily have been offset by another wherein other rates, less arbitrary, would have been adjusted to negotiate the official deficit. With Orion Clemens such a remedy was not even considered; yielding, unstable, blown by every wind of influence though he was, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... at its pleasure with the lives and properties of citizens?—criminals though they might be, what right had Cicero to strangle citizens in dungeons without trial? If this was to be allowed, the constitution was at an end; Rome was no longer a republic, but an arbitrary oligarchy. Pompey's name was on every tongue. When would Pompey come? Pompey, the friend of the people, the terror of the aristocracy! Pompey, who had cleared the sea of pirates, and doubled the area of the Roman dominions! Let Pompey return and bring ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... narrow and fretted arch, as the minute-hand moved round and round the dial of the old clock. At length assuming to himself the command, which in those times was as willingly ceded to the Reformed minister as it had formerly been to the not more arbitrary Catholic priest, he ordered the procession "to tarry no longer the coming of him whose feet were shod with heaviness, but to depart forthwith in the name of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
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