"Inconsistency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have never coquetted with the spirit of the age. I, and I alone, have never submitted my creeds to be overhauled by infidels. Join me, acknowledge my authority, and you need dread no side attack and fear no charge of inconsistency. Succeed finally I must, but even were I to fail, yours would be the satisfaction of knowing that you had never held an opinion, used an argument, or said a word, that could fairly have served the purpose of ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Reverend's inconsistency and mortgaged Possum Gully. With the money thus obtained he started once more and managed to make a scant livelihood and pay the interest on the bishop's loan. In four or five years he had again reached loggerheads. The price ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... most remarkable revelation of his strange character. Having totally ignored Bambi himself, it distressed him to think of any other man being attracted by her. His references to Mr. Strong's coming were many and satirical. This display of manly inconsistency was nuts and ale to Bambi. She wondered how much Mr. Strong would play up, and she decided to give Jarvis Jocelyn an uncomfortable hour. She herself was an adept in amatory science, but she was a trifle unsure of Mr. Strong. However, she remembered a ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... Christians get the idea that when we stand in the pulpit we believe it is wicked for any man to have money—until the collection-basket goes around, and then we almost swear at the people because they don't give more money. Oh, the inconsistency of such ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... of disguising the inconsistency is not a peculiar art of his own, I dare say. Even in him it was probably quite unconscious, well as he was aware of most of the refinements of his craft; and perhaps it is only a sleight of hand that might come naturally to any good story-teller. But it is interesting ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... took the ground that Austria should be permitted to proceed to aggressive measures against Servia without interference from any other Power, even though, as was inevitable, the humiliation of Servia would destroy the status of the Balkan States and threaten the European balance of power. The inconsistency between Germany's claim that it could give Austria a carte blanche to proceed against Servia and agree to support its action with the sword of Germany, and the other contention that neither Russia nor any European State had any right to interfere on behalf ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... quarrels arise which in the eye of wives give an air of tyranny to husbands. The tyranny of a husband is always a terrible excuse for inconsistency in a wife. Then, in their frivolous discussions they are enabled to prove to their families and to ours, to everybody and to ourselves, that we are in the wrong. If, for the sake of peace, or from love, you acknowledge ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... all afraid of immediate independence. They admitted that the country and people would not be ready for it for years, and, when pressed for an explanation, said they feared, if they did not press the question now, it would not avail them to do so later on. The inconsistency of the present position must strike every sensible person who examines it. Let us assume that the United States Government decides at this time to give ear to the plea of those who are politically active ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... is my Lord and teacher," says Ballou in one of his essays exposing the inconsistency of Christians who allowed a right of self-defense and of warfare. "I have promised leaving all else, to follow good and through evil, to death itself. But I am a citizen of the democratic republic of the United States; and in allegiance to it I have sworn to defend the Constitution of my country, ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... the maid you's got a spite agen? Lors! but 'tis a poor stomach you's got to'rds her if you'm angered by such a bit o' philanderin' as I've tawld 'ee of. What d'ee mane, then?" he added, his temper rising at such unwarrantable inconsistency. "I've knawed as honest women as ever her is that's a done that, and more too, for to get their men safe off and out o' way—iss, and wasn't thought none the wus of, neither. You'm growed mighty fancikul all to wance 'bout what us is to do ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... inconsistency—our dearest heritage from good old Mother Eve. Being a mere man, you can't understand that, so you neglect to ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... in the victory over animalism. The contempt of and the struggle against the lower form of eroticism animating the dualistic period was absolutely consistent; asceticism represents the highest form of culture attainable by that period. (The rejection of spiritual love was an inconsistency on the part of the clergy.) The principle of personality was the fundamental principle of Christianity; this is clearly expressed by the fact that Christianity regarded the soul as the supreme value. And what is the soul but the consciousness of human personality ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... wrote with an elfin mockery. Her brilliant eye of youth saw through the inconsistency of the beliefs he strove to reconcile. She learned his lore, read his books, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... portion of their brethren of mankind,—for 'God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth,'—it is manifestly the duty of all Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, when the inconsistency of slavery both with the dictates of humanity and religion has been demonstrated and is generally seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and unwearied endeavors to correct the errors of former times, and as speedily as possible to efface this ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... no conflict or inconsistency between the treaty and the act of the Congress last cited, it is not necessary to invoke the well-settled principle that in case of such conflict the statute ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... because they are so charmed with the happy turn of their expressions, and other elegancies of composition, that they perfer the praise which they may acquire for their style to the censure which may follow from their inconsistency. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to that? His own people who objected to gaming, when it involved the loss of their servants' liveries. But they had no such scruples when it came to their own pleasure. Therefore, for their own pleasure, careless of the inconsistency, they had established a very fine place of their own just outside the boundaries of the foreign Concession. Lawson had heard of the place before—the most famous, the most notorious on the China Coast. Kept by the son of a ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... eclipsed anything the stately beauty of the other could claim. She had large, lustrous violet eyes that seemed like wells of ever-changing color. They never looked at you with the same shade in their depths twice. They were eyes that madden by reason of their inconsistency. They dwarfed in beauty every other feature in the girl's face. She was pretty in an irregular manner, but one never noticed anything in her face when her eyes were visible. These, and her masses of golden hair, which flowed loosely about her ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... rejected Christian theism, because she could not understand how God had created the universe out of nothing. True, "with God, all things are possible"; but she could not understand this creation out of nothing, and therefore would not believe it. Yet (oh, inconsistency of human reasoning!) she had believed that the universe created laws; that matter gradually created mind. This was the inevitable result of pantheism; for, according to geology, there was a primeval period when neither vegetable nor animal life existed; when the earth was a huge mass ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... escort, had failed to resent it with the sanguinary completeness that she desired. I regret that, even in a liberal age, I may not record the exact and even picturesque language in which this was conveyed to her hearers. Enough that at the close of a fiery peroration, with feminine inconsistency she flew at the gallant Colonel, and would have visited her delayed vengeance upon his luckless head, but for the prompt interference of Culpepper. Thwarted in this, she threw herself upon the ground, and then ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States." Only in flagrant violation of these safeguards to the nation's liberty, can any religious observance be enforced by civil authority. But the inconsistency of such action is no greater than is represented in the symbol. It is the beast with lamb-like horns—in profession pure, gentle, and harmless—that ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... the Central Empires, to be followed by a mobilization, marked the end of Greek neutrality. King Alexander, as yet a novice in statecraft, expressed surprise at the inconsistency between these acts and the repeated assurances given to the Greek people. He was told that the accession of M. Venizelos could mean nothing else but war: his Majesty knew it: having accepted Venizelos, he must accept ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... exact altitude on the roll of America's illustrious men. Ardent eulogists spoke of him as beside the nation's greatest statesman, Lincoln, while his most pronounced opponents in life accorded him very high honor. During his career he had been accused of opportunism, of inconsistency, of partiality to the moneyed interests of the country. His views of great public questions underwent change. One of his altered attitudes, much remarked upon, that concerning silver, involved, as pointed out in the last chapter, no ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... sex relations and home life, he ridicules "home life as we understand it," on the ground that it is "no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo." I am not accusing him of any real inconsistency in thus alternating between conservative and revolutionary dogmas. He would doubtless hold that changes ought to have been made where there have been none, and that those which have occurred have not followed the ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... their opponents have noted this inconsistency in Gandhi's philosophy. Lewis calls Gandhi "a strange mixture of Machiavellian astuteness and personal sanctity, profound humanitarianism and paralysing conservatism."[69] Bishop McConnell has said of his non-violent coercion, "This coercion is less harmful socially ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... strict prudence he ought to have done. Generally speaking, however, on this point as well as on the other grounds on which he has been attacked, he has defended himself with great vigour and success. The night after the debate, he gave Brougham a heavy fall, and exposed his glaring inconsistency and falseness. Brougham is said to have appeared more annoyed and crestfallen than ever he did before. He certainly made a very poor ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of this work, you find that my opinion of Dr. John undergoes modification, excuse the seeming inconsistency. I give the feeling as at the time I felt it; I describe the view of character as it appeared ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... be. In the Indian Christian community there is developing a most encouraging movement toward the complete eradication of caste sentiment and observance within the Church itself. They are more sensible than ever before of the gross inconsistency of a man's taking upon himself the sacred name of Christ and at the same time submitting to the dominance of caste. Indian Christian anti-caste organizations are now at work seeking to drive out of the Church of God in India this Antichrist, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... officiated at Saint Dunstan's, and there prayed for King William and Queen Mary. The apostolical injunction, he said, was that prayers should be made for all in authority, and William and Mary were visibly in authority. His Jacobite friends loudly blamed his inconsistency. How, they asked, if you admit that the Apostle speaks in this passage of actual authority, can you maintain that, in other passages of a similar kind, he speaks only of legitimate authority? Or how can you, without ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as entertaining, she ceased to view with toleration, let alone complacency. The remembrance of them made her nervous. What if Richard came to hear of them? The effect might be disastrous. Not that he was any saint, but that she perceived that, with the fine inconsistency common to most well-bred Englishmen, he demanded from the women of his family quite other standards of conduct to those which he himself obeyed. Other women might do as they pleased. Their lapses from the stricter ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Colonel Elliot's book, as it has drawn my attention anew to Auld Maitland, a topic which I had studied "somewhat lazily," like Quintus Smyrnaeus. I supposed that there was an inconsistency in two of Scott's accounts as to how he obtained the ballad. As Colonel Elliot points out, there was no inconsistency. Scott had two copies. One was Hogg's MS.: the other was derived from the recitation ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... inconsistency in Plato's manner of conceiving the soul of man; he cannot get rid of the element of necessity which is allowed to enter. He does not, like Kant, attempt to vindicate for men a freedom out of space and time; but he acknowledges him to be subject to the ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... others which now occupy their attention. No body of men on the face of the earth deserve their charities, and prayers, and united assistance so much as the slaves of this country; and yet they are almost entirely neglected. It is true many a cheek burns with shame in view of our national inconsistency, and many a heart bleeds for the miserable African. It is true examples of disinterested benevolence and individual sacrifices are numerous, particularly in the Southern States; but no systematic, vigorous, and successful measures have been made to overthrow this fabric of oppression. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... walked composedly away, solemnly assuring himself and Mr AEsop, who overheard him, that as yet the grapes were unripe. The story, or any allusion to it, seldom fails to excite a smile. I, too, laugh when I hear it; but not so much at Reynard's inconsistency as at his wit. The faculty of discovering grave defects in that which we have failed to obtain is one for which we cannot be too thankful. It is a source of infinite comfort in this comfortless world—a principle which enables both parties in every ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... evidence of the great doctrine of brotherhood and equality. I verily believe that those who were the true lovers of liberty did all they could at that time. In their debates in the Convention they denounced slavery—they protested against the hypocrisy and inconsistency of a nation declaring such glorious truths, and then trampling them underfoot by enslaving the poor and oppressed, because he had a skin not colored like their own; as though a man's skin should make any difference in the recognition ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... inconsistency in the English oracles in this respect; for, while they cannot conceal a kind of sympathy with the Southern Rebels in what is supposed to be their war upon democratic institutions, they tell us that they would heartily espouse our cause, if we would but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Frederick William II without loss of time negotiated a separate treaty, suddenly abandoned the monarchical cause which he had formerly so zealously upheld, and offered his friendship to the revolutionary nation, against which he had so lately hurled a violent manifesto. The French, with equal inconsistency on their part, abandoned the popular cause, and, after having murdered their own sovereign and threatened every European throne with destruction, accepted the alliance of a foreign king. Both parties, notwithstanding ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... insisted upon there, only they were spoken of unctuously as sacrifices incumbent on the lesser states to the Fourteen Points. For the delegates set great store by their reputation for logic and coherency. Whatever other charges against the Conference might be tolerated, that of inconsistency was bitterly resented, especially by Mr. Wilson. For a long while he contended that he was as true to his Fourteen Points as is the needle to the pole. It was not until after his return to Washington, in the summer, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Washington's face,—saw a certain cold severity overshadowing it. With a woman's fateful persistency—a persistency which I humbly suggest might, on occasion, be honorably copied by our more politic sex—she went on to say what was in her, even if she were obliged, with a woman's honorable inconsistency, to unsay it an hour or two later; an inconsistency which I also humbly protest might be as honorably imitated ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... the Upper Canada Guardian or Freeman's Journal, edited by the Joseph Wilcocks, who was a member of the Assembly. Mr. Wilcocks grievously complained of the Messrs. Boulton and Sherwood, who were ever on the watch to prevent any questions being put that would draw forth either inaccuracy or inconsistency from the witnesses. Mr. Sherwood attacked that great blessing of the people, the freedom of the press and, being a good tory, called it, to the great horror of Mr. Wilcocks, a pestilence in the land. Indeed, Mr. Wilcocks was deeply and painfully sensible ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... all that, the Dunciad still lives; ay, in spite of seeming inconsistency, we declare it to be immortal. For, build with what materials she may, the works of genius that stand in the world of thought survive all time's mutations, cemented by a spirit she alone can interfuse. It must not be said that a poem shelved is dead ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... very well; but it involved some inconsistency, in that we had veered round to the belief that the Transvaal would never have faced the music alone, and without the aid of the neighbouring State! That is to say: war was certain from the beginning; the Free Staters were equally certain to be neutral; but since ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... been formally inaugurated in New Caledonia or British Columbia, as it was soon to be known, and Douglas's authority as governor did not extend beyond Vancouver Island. But so, for that matter, were illegal all his actions on this journey; yet by an odd inconsistency of fact against law, they restored peace and ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... the precious promises of the Declaration of Independence. It rid the Republic of its one great inconsistency, a government of the people resting upon despotism; it rescued the ship of state from the rocks of slavery and sectionalism, and set her with sails full and chart and compass true once more upon the broad ocean of humanity to lead the world to the haven of true human brotherhood. ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Church puts the significant prayer, "Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts in our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit." Inconsistency in adults is far too well recognised to need proof. In children it is even more obvious, and for this reason that, looked at aright, it is the faculty of maintaining the general health of the soul, spite of local morbid conditions—a faculty which is strongest ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... was no other trimming of the straight bodice than the line of buttons that descended from the full white ruff of swansdown at her throat, to her delicate, trim waist. Her unconscious stateliness of girlish form, and the conscious shyness of her manner, were the loveliest inconsistency in the world. ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... beauty, and this, too, made Jean think of the government—a government born more beautiful than any other, and reared in its infancy with the care of a child, yet presenting to the world, by its administration, which is a government's voice, an inconsistency appalling. ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... (V. ii. 229). There is more than fury in his cry, there is indignation. She has been false to him, she has betrayed him. Well, but why should she not, if his creed is true? And what a melancholy exhibition of human inconsistency it is that he should use as terms of reproach words which, according to him, should be quite neutral, if ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... established its rites. The Greeks brought with them a splendid god from their former home, but in his new shrine he was identified with a local god, very far from splendid; and this seems to be the most reasonable explanation of the inconsistency between the revolting and the beautiful elements in his worship. Pindar at least repudiated the relics of the poorer cult, and cried concerning such stories as were current then, "Oh, my tongue, fling this tale from thee; it is a hateful cleverness ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... playing the hypocrite, when amatory and bacchanalian choruses would not only have been more consonant with his own feelings, but doubtless more acceptable to the world? She had not yet learned what it often takes the wisest man a lifetime to discover—that every inconsistency of conduct is not hypocrisy, but that it is one of the most common idiosyncrasies of the mind to write and believe one thing, and as self-approvingly to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... but in our practice we repress thinking and exalt memory. We admonish our pupils to think, sometimes with a degree of emphasis that weakens our admonition, and then bestow our laurel wreaths upon those who think little but remember much. Our inconsistency in this respect would be amusing if the child's interests could be ignored. But seeing that the child pays the penalty, our ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... the deliberations of the theologians on the question in which articles concessions might be made in the interest of peace, saying that the unlearned and the more vehement would not hear of concessions, since the Lutherans would then be charged with inconsistency and the Emperor would only increase his demands. (C. R. 3, 292.) Evidently then, even at that time Melanchthon was not entirely cured ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... who had indeed been carrying on these various good works, alongside of many other activities, naturally resented the criticism of her son. But what she minded most was the "inconsistency" of the boy when, a few minutes later, they passed a street preacher with a crowd about him. They could not hear what the man was saying, but the wise young adolescent remarked, "I wish I had some money to help ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... astonished crew before they had time to make any resistance. No doubt they thought this was very rude treatment to receive from the hands of those who professed to be their friends; but they had discovered their mistake by this time, and it afforded a sufficient explanation of the seeming inconsistency. ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... France; peer into Prussia, Vox populi is the voice of the King, and the voice of the king is therefore vox Dei. When a king speaks for his people he must speak sooth; what he says of other peoples must be taken with a grain of salt. Bearing this in mind, the apparent inconsistency between the regal rigmarole and the Imperial improvisation (these epithets are a tribute to the Republic) which I have received by our special wire from Europe were addressed by the monarchs to their respective armies before the grand "wiring ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... book of Ezra, he tells us that we are confronted by a chronological inconsistency which no amount of ingenuity can explain away. He also acknowledges that the book of Esther "contains many exaggerations and improbabilities, and is simply founded upon one of those same historical tales of which the Persian chronicles seem to have been full." Great was the dissatisfaction of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... heat. How is it with you and your logic, you men who have been to college and discovered what you are talking about? You who discuss politics and decide affairs, are you not continually accusing each other of sophistry, inconsistency, and shying away from the point? Take up any political or religious newspaper, and see, if any faith is to be put in testimony, how deficient in logic are all these logic-mongers,—how all the learned and logical are accused by other learned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... is a class of the contemners of evangelical truth, characterized by more active zeal and decided measures. Far from the giddy thoughtlessness of those who hardly reflect upon the subject at all, and from the strange inconsistency of such, as profess to respect what they really despise and hate,—these feel and express a deep interest in religious opinions; devote time and attention to theological studies; and, as the result of their investigations, avow their utter disbelief of the peculiar doctrines ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... Michaelmas Goose.—The following little inconsistency in a commonly-received tradition has led me, at the request of a large party of well-read and literary friends, to request your solution of the difficulty in an early Number ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... a struggle for life began; and this man who had just now sought death so eagerly—with no feeling of inconsistency, with no physical fear of dissolution, with only a vague, blind, dogged determination to live for some unknown purpose—a determination as vague and dogged as his former ideas of self-destruction—summoned all his energies to reach ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... not half awake, we are not half careful enough; let us walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. Let us, whenever we have been tempted to any inconsistency, be able to take ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... the English position, Mr. Choate said: "The discharge from the vessel and landing short of the port of destination and failure to deliver at that port, constitute wrongful acts as against all owners of innocent cargoes."[38] And he pointed out the inconsistency of the position since it was not claimed that any but British subjects could be guilty of any violation of the English prohibition against trading with the enemy. He was accordingly instructed to insist that the obligation rested upon the British Government to indemnify the neutral ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... next year—the year of Vanity Fair. But the author was twenty years older than Thackeray, though she survived him by nearly a dozen; she had not begun early; and she was fifty-five when she wrote Emilia. The not unnatural consequence is that there is a great deal of inconsistency in the general texture of the book: and that any clever cub, in the 'prentice stage of reviewing, could make columns of fun out of it. The general theme is age-old, being not different from the themes of most other novels ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... never depart from him.' But I do not know what excuse he would have alleged for sending broth and vegetables to old Ralph Thompson, a rabid Independent, who had been given to abusing the Church and the vicar, from a Dissenting pulpit, as long as ever he could mount the stairs. However, that inconsistency between Dr Wilson's theories and practice was not generally known in Monkshaven, so we have nothing ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... they could not depart from the long-established precedents and course of proceeding." And in one of these debates, Mr. Pitt, while denouncing with great severity Grenville's conduct in procuring the issue of this particular warrant, was driven to a strange confession of his own inconsistency, since he was forced to admit that, while Secretary of State, he had issued more than one general warrant in exactly ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... But, with all this, there may be much incoherence and planlessness. Men can live somehow without looking far into the future, or keeping well in mind the lessons to be learned from the past. They can manage to exist in the face of no little short- sighted impulsiveness and inconsistency. But it is palpable that they cannot, under such circumstances, live as they might live were they more ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... such as the same book received from so many quarters? Nothing of the sort; nothing more than a thoroughly candid and discriminating judgment, never over-stepping the bounds of courtesy, never exaggerating a defect or concealing a beauty. A talk might be raised about the inconsistency with a former tone; but if the fact was made apparent that the later effusions of a tender and melodious, but shallow Muse, were but dilutions, ever more watery and insipid, of the first sweet and abundant flow, was the critic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... appears to have forgotten that he had placed Manto, the daughter of Tiresias, among the sorcerers. See Hell Canto XX. Vellutello endeavours, rather awkwardly, to reconcile the inconsistency, by observing, that although she was placed there as a sinner, yet, as one of famous memory, she had also a place among ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... imagine that he finds an inconsistency here when I call freedom the condition of the moral law, and hereafter maintain in the treatise itself that the moral law is the condition under which we can first become conscious of freedom, I will merely remark that freedom is the ratio essendi of the moral law, while the moral law ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... ye separate.' The very meaning of our Christian profession is separation. There is ludicrous inconsistency in saying that we are Christians and not being pilgrims. Of course, the separation is not to be worked out by mere external asceticism or withdrawal from the world. That has been so thoroughly preached and practised ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master. Not that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject them. Some difference of style, or inferiority of execution, or inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive of their spurious character. For who always does justice to himself, or who writes with equal care at all times? Certainly not Plato, who exhibits the greatest ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... consumption, or locomotor ataxy, or of suicidal melancholia among human beings, dare you refuse to inflict that pain? Now I am quite unable to say that I dare. That sort of daring would seem to me to be extreme moral cowardice, to involve gross inconsistency. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... know why I waited until Friday; it was not only unreasonable on my part, but also not quite straightforward. How is it that, even when circumstances might enable us to act according to our impulses, some unexpected inconsistency in our own selves throws a bar across the path? I begin to think that it must be an idle dream,—sincerity, self-honesty. My thoughts are fixed upon it constantly, I strive towards it with heart and soul; yet daily, ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... genial, gentlemanly fellow of thirty-eight or forty. He was in the world and of it, but was little the worse, thus far, for that. He had been singled out for favours, to a very exceptional degree, by that monster of inconsistency and injustice, the Unearned Increment, but his intentions toward society were still fairly good. If he may be capitalized (and surely he was rich enough to be), he might be described as hesitating whether to be a Plutocrat or a Good Citizen; ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... was torn from his parents by the Turks, when he was novennis, (Marinus, l. i. p. 1, 6,) that event must have happened in 1412, nine years before the accession of Amurath II., who must have inherited, not acquired the Albanian slave. Spondanus has remarked this inconsistency, A.D. 1431, No. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... therefore, we note the inconsistency of the sacramentarian theory. It insists on moral goodness in the recipients and ministers of sacraments. But if the rite works of itself, its mechanical performance should be sufficient. But no; goodness is needed to secure any benefit therefrom; and this, of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... name of horror. The mistresses trained on his system are called "Dr. Bell's sour-looking teachers in petticoats." And the instruction received in these new-fangled schools is compared to "the training that fits a boxer for victory in the ring." The reason of this apparent inconsistency is not far to seek. Wordsworth's eyes were fixed on the village life around him. Observation of that life impressed on him the imperative necessity of instruction in reading. But it was from a moral, rather than an intellectual ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... at Helen's unbelief was growing in his silence; yet he realized the inconsistency of his love in ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... incomplete notes and not finished work. This will account for a great deal that may seem sketchy and unsatisfactory in the treatment of different points, and also for repetitions and traces of inconsistency. But I can hardly think any one can read these notes to the end without agreeing with me that if I had withheld them from publication, the world would have lost the witness of a mind, both able and profoundly sincere, feeling after God ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... am I, and you are you, how can it be very different? The root of things is individuality, unity of idea, and persistence depends on it. God is the one perfect individual; and while this world is his and that world is his, there can be no inconsistency, no violent difference, between ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... and in attempting to escape that fatality by an exertion of free-will—in toiling to store up knowledge of the steward's duties for the future, and in shrinking from letting the future find him in Allan's house—were, in their turn, unsparingly exposed. To every error, to every inconsistency, he resolutely confessed, before he ventured on the last simple appeal which closed all, "Will you trust me in the future? Will you ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... il comandamanto di lui osservato d'ammazzar subito qualunque heretico gli fosse venuto alle mani." Catena, Vita di Pio V., apud White, Mass. of St. Bartholomew, 305, and De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 228. With singular inconsistency—so impossible is it generally to carry out these horrible theories of extermination—the Roman pontiff himself afterward liberated D'Acier without exacting any ransom. De Thou, ubi supra. "Si Santafiore lui avoit obei," says an annotator, "Jacques de Crussol (D'Acier) ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... accused him of inconsistency in externals. With his shaggy sandy hair, his great red face, covered with freckles, his long loose figure, clad in red French breeches a size too small, a threadbare brown coat, soiled linen and ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Lady Fareham's in the matter of an unreturned visit had rankled deep in the bosom of the King's imperious mistress. To sin more boldly than woman ever sinned, and yet to claim all the privileges and honours due to virtue was but a trifling inconsistency in a mind so fortified by pride that it scarce knew how to reckon with shame. That she, in her supremacy of beauty and splendour, a fortune sparkling in either ear, the price of a landed estate on her neck—that she, Barbara, Countess of Castlemaine, should have driven in ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... reproached him in a jesting manner, and punished him for this jealousy, she, herself, with all the inconsistency of a lover, fell into the same fault, and could not hide from him the jealous fears which the ladies from Brescia, especially the beautiful Madame de Te——, had created within her mind. Bonaparte answered this letter as general, lover, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... could give to the expression of its will, the nefarious conduct which "the party" has pursued from the beginning,—and this was a consummation not to be wished. He therefore wriggles and shuffles, with an absurd and transparent inconsistency, to defeat the popular will, and yet mouth it bravely about "the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... in hatred or contempt; the compassion which he feels for the criminal is unmixed with a desire of injuring him: he looks with an elevated and dreadless composure upon the links of the universal chain as they pass before his eyes; whilst cowardice, curiosity, and inconsistency only assail him in proportion to the feebleness and indistinctness with which he has perceived and rejected the delusions ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... he was quick to see the inconsistency of the creed he was taught with the actual facts of experience. One event in his childhood, the earthquake of Lisbon, especially struck him as a confounding commentary on the accepted belief in the goodness of God; and the impression was deepened when in ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... trifling creatures who are conscious of little else than their animality, and who stop as far short of the attainable perfections of their nature as the other attempts to go beyond them. You will discover as many silly affections, as much foppery and futility, as much inconsistency and low artifice in one as in the other. I never met the mad woman at Brentford decked out in old and new rags, and nice and fantastical in the manner of wearing them, without reflecting on many of the profound scholars and sublime philosophers ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... sometimes conflict is in regard to single beliefs, held instinctively, and held with such determination that no degree of inconsistency with other beliefs leads to their abandonment. Instinct, like all human faculties, is liable to error. Those in whom reason is weak are often unwilling to admit this as regards themselves, though all admit it in regard to others. Where instinct is least liable to error is in practical matters ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... motives; when my conduct has been blameless, men have remembered its former errors, and asserted that its present goodness only arose from some sinister intention: thus I have been termed crafty, when I was in reality rash, and that was called the inconsistency of interest which in reality was the inconsistency of passion.* I have reason, therefore, to warn you how you suffer your subjects to become your tyrants; and believe me no experience is so deep as that of one who has committed faults, and who has ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... able to feel either enduring hatred or attachment. Your life is a mere capitulation. If the Evil One himself should appear on earth in visible form, I could show him the way by which he could league with you within twenty-four hours. The true source of your inconsistency is the fact that, separated from all good and true men, and surrounded by knaves and fools, you see and hear nothing but what is ignoble and false. If you could have made up your mind to leave Berlin, you would probably have been saved. Your real guilt consists in your staying here; ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... he began to write against rent and interest there were plenty of critics ready to cite this and other investments as a damning inconsistency. He was not the man to offer explanations at any time. It was no defence to say that he took less and did more than other landlords. And so he was glad to part with the whole to Miss Hill; nor did he care to spend upon himself ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Laura, an inexplicable spirit of inconsistency besetting her, was a very different woman from the one who an instant before had spoken so gravely of the seriousness of marriage. She hesitated a moment before answering Jadwin, her head on one side, looking at the rose leaf between ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... his entire manner with the most sudden and shameless inconsistency. "You shall go back together, and woe betide the miscreant who would prevent it. What say you brothers? What shall be his fate who dares to separate our noble Queen from her ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... deep emotion is so entirely associated with the ideal, that real and particular manifestations of it are repugnant to them as something alien; and this without the least insincerity, though with a vicious and disheartening inconsistency. Rousseau belonged to this class, and loved man most when he saw men least. Bad as this was, it does not justify us in denouncing his love of man as artificial; it was one side of an ideal exaltation, which stirred the depths of his spirit with a force as genuine as that which is ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Glaring inconsistencies between faith and practice will eventually destroy any institution, however lofty its ideal or noble its foundation. God suffers long and is kind, but His forbearance is not limitless. Monasticism, as has been shown, was never free from serious inconsistency, from moral dualism. But the power of reform prolonged its existence. It was constantly producing fresh models of its ancient ideals. It had a hidden reserve-force from which it supplied shining examples of a living faith and a self-denying love, just at the time when it seemed as if the ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... dangerous. Where his star calls, let him walk sincerely. If his creed is insufficient or inconsistent, in his struggle he shall test it, and in his sincerity he must make up the insufficiency or remove the inconsistency. This is the only course for honourable men and no man should object. To repeat, it puts an equal burden on all—the onus of justifying the faith that is in them. Life is a divine adventure and he whose faith is finest, firmest and clearest will go farthest. God does not ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... thing in the score. Scudo gave expression to what was long the burden of the critical song in Germany; namely, the failure of the authors to grasp the large conception of Goethe's poem; but, with true Gallic inconsistency, he set down the soldiers' chorus as a masterpiece. The garden scene, with its sublimated mood, its ecstasy of feeling, does not seem to have moved him; he thought the third act monotonous and too long. There was no demand for the score on the part of the French publishers, but ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Emily had been irate then, and all the more when her mother tried to cover her inconsistency by alleging that everybody knew of Lord Torwood's fall, whereas no one knew or cared who Francis Dayman was, or where he came from. Henceforth Emily's shame at the usage of Fulk had been double—or rather it turned into indignation. Reports ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had refused to forgive him for feeling the annoyance which she had gone out of her way to inflict. From the purely feminine standpoint her behaviour was thoroughly consistent; a man, however, might in his ignorance have accused her of inconsistency. But men know so little ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... against the a priori scepticism of Freethinkers of the eighteenth century, who based their arguments on the inconsistency of the revealed scheme of salvation with the attributes of the Deity, consists, essentially, in conclusively proving that, from a moral point of view, Nature is at least as reprehensible as orthodoxy. If you tell me, says ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... 236, as above, and also because many of his medical opinions, as found in his works, agree with the teachings of the Methodical School, more nearly than with those of the Empiricists. Pappenheim also claims that we find no inconsistency with this view in the passage given where Sextus classes the Sceptics with the Empiricists, but considers that statement an instance of carelessness in expressing himself, on ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... indifferentist, in mutations for which he does not care; still less were they changes either of party or of opinion. Whatever he thought, Milton thought and felt intensely, and expressed emphatically; and even his enemies could not accuse him of a shadow of inconsistency or wavering in his principles. On the contrary, tenacity, or persistence of idea, amounted in him to a serious defect of character. A conviction once formed dominated him, so that, as in the controversy ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the original text as much as possible. Non-standard spelling and grammar have been mostly preserved. Changes have only been made in the case of obvious typographical errors, and where not making a correction would leave the text confusing or difficult to read. There is a fair amount of inconsistency in the author's transliteration of foreign words, especially in place and person names. Such inconsistency has been mostly preserved but in some cases names have been made more recognizable or the spelling has been standardized so that it is easier for the reader to follow the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... acceptance of new things on popular report, without scientific basis, and a lack of courage to maintain the truth for its own sake, in the face of so-called authority, and a craving to be modern. At the root of all this inconsistency and possibly its cause, is the lack of a guiding policy or aim, the lack of belief in the scientific or psychological basis of education, and consequently the want of that strong belief in absolute truth which helps the teacher to ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith |
