"Nullity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not remarkable for that spirit of charity or toleration upon which he afterwards founded his own government, and which now, in after ages, constitutes his brightest title to renown. The first of these opinions was that the royal charter to the Colony of Massachusetts was a nullity, because the King of England had no right to grant lands in foreign countries, which belonged of right to their native inhabitants. This opinion struck directly at all right of property held under the authority of the royal charter, and, followed to its logical conclusions, would ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... without reference to any system. In these debates, he combined what is most dangerous in democracy, with all that is most degrading in the old superstitions of monarchy; and taught an inherency of the office in the person, in order to make the office itself a nullity, and the Premiership, with its accompanying majority, the sole and permanent power of the State. And now came the French Revolution. This was a new event; the old routine of reasoning, the common trade of politics were to become ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... all to be recognized is the danger of idealism. It is the one besetting sin of the human race. It means the fall into automatism, mechanism, and nullity. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... came over Skrebensky a sort of nullity, which more and more terrified Ursula. She felt there was something hopeless which she had to submit to. She felt a great sense of disaster impending. Day after day was made inert with a sense of disaster. She became morbidly ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... its political nullity, Italy was not in a state of decline. Its worst days had ended before the middle of the eighteenth century. The fifty years preceding the French Revolution, if they had brought nothing of the spirit of liberty, had in all other respects been years of progress ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... [See "The Nullity of the Pretended Assembly at Saint Andrews and Dundee," &c., p. 312. Printed in the year 1652. As many had been under age when the Solemn League and Covenant was first sworn the Commission of the General Assembly ordained it to be renewed ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... as we know, was the affianced husband of Isabella Wardle, and to the scenes of their marriage, the festivities, &c., we owe some pleasing incidents. Trundle was a good specimen of the cypher or nullity; naturally, he is a figure at Manor Farm, but does nothing, and practically says nothing. He was clearly a neighbouring squire of limited ideas, or plain country gentlemen, that could do no more than love his Isabella. ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... than that, he is in a sense an artificial man, a creature of technicalities and specialties, removed alike from the broad truth of nature and from the healthy influence of human converse. In society, the most accomplished man of mere professional skill is often a nullity; he has sunk his ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... become the master of all, to change his suzerainty into sovereignty. Thus, in spite of the servitude into which the people had sunk at the end of the tenth century, from this moment the enfranchisement of the people makes way. In spite of the weakness, or rather nullity, of the regal power at the same epoch, from this moment the regal power begins to gain ground. That monarchical system which the genius of Charlemagne could not found, kings far inferior to Charlemagne will little by little make triumphant. Those liberties ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... ever submitted the protocol to the Congress, or ever treated or regarded it as in any sense a new negotiation, or as operating any modification or change of the amended treaty. If such had been its effect, it was a nullity until approved by the Mexican Congress; and such approval was never made or intimated to the United States. In the final consummation of the ratification of the treaty by the President of Mexico no reference is made to it. On the contrary, this ratification, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... precisely how narrow his mind was, how empty his thoughts, and how cold his heart. She had long since found out that the brilliant man of the world, whom everybody considered so clever, was in reality an absolute nullity, incapable of any thought that was not suggested to him by others, and at the same time full of overweening ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... mild as a sheep.' (Eustacie set her teeth.) 'Every one will be in the same story, that her marriage was a nullity; she cannot choose but believe, and can only be thankful that we overlook ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had looked out upon life in my Kunstwerk der Zukunft. As a matter of fact, it was Herwegh who at last, by a well-timed explanation, brought me to a calmer frame of mind about my own sensitive feelings. It is from this perception of the nullity of the visible world—so he said—that all tragedy is derived, and such a perception must necessarily have dwelt as an intuition in every great poet, and even in every great man. On looking afresh into my Nibelungen poem I recognised with surprise that the very things that now so embarrassed ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... passed in this black nullity—he never could compute it—moments, doubtless, but it seemed hours, tried to the utmost the nerve of the entrapped trader, albeit inured by twenty years' experience to the capricious temper of the Cherokee Indians. He felt he could better endure ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... quackery now appears, so great at one time was its power, that persons every way qualified for the generative act, have been seen suddenly reduced to a humiliating nullity, in consequence of an impudent charlatan, a village sorcerer or a fortune-teller having threatened them with point-tying. Saint André, a French physician, gives an account of a poor weaver, who having disappointed Madame André in not bringing home some work was threatened ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... at first imitated, this style of poetry retained an essentially German originality; the hero of the modern idyl, unlike his ancient model, was a fop tricked out with wig and cane, and the domestic hero of the tale, unlike his English counterpart, was a mere political nullity. It is perhaps well when domestic comforts replace the want of public life, but these poets hugged the chain they had decked with flowers, and forgot the reality. They forgot that it is a misfortune ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... have received our trunk. Hartley is quite well, and my talkativeness is his, without diminution on my side. 'Tis strange but certainly many things go in the blood, beside gout and scrophula. Yesterday I dined at Longman's and met Pratt, and that honest piece of prolix dullity and nullity, young Towers, who desired to be remembered to you. To-morrow Sara and I dine at Mister Gobwin's, as Hartley calls him, who gave the philosopher such a rap on the shins with a ninepin that Gobwin in huge pain lectured Sara on his boisterousness. I was not at home. Est modus in ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... times to fierce invective, and even to the frenzy of passion when his mother is the theme, relapsing again to trance-like meditations on the depravity of the world, the littleness of man and the nullity of appearance; and when his mind does revert to this "great action," this "dread command," which is supposed to haunt it, and to keep it in a whirl of doubt and irresolution, it is because it is forcibly recalled to it, because some incident startles him to recollection, proves to ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... were made in such manner as the Legislature had directed, but not made by the State, it would be equally invalid. Indeed, the Legislature may itself have given a direction in contravention of the State constitution, and thus the direction prove a nullity. So, too, the Legislature may have acted in contravention of the Federal Constitution, and for that reason its direction may have been void. The appointing power is the State, the manner of its action is prescribed by the Legislature; the valid authority and the valid manner of its exercise ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field
... amendment as this. It is well known to the Conference that great difficulties have been found to exist in carrying into effect this provision of the Constitution. So far as the slave States are concerned, it is a perfect nullity. Unless it is amended it may as well be stricken from the instrument. I believe the tenor of the decisions at the North has been to permit the executive upon whom the requisition is made, to determine whether the offence charged is a crime under the law of the State to which ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition which had the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future nullity, than the beating of our heart, or the irritability ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... over in silence this imputation of nullity; she was not so closely related, after all, that she need allow herself to be disturbed by it. But sister Alice took up the cudgel with all the ardor of an immediate connection and all the sensitiveness of a suburban resident. She even forgot the real, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... and the snowy ground Into nullity. There is silence, only the silence, never a sound Nor a verity To assist us; ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... in the days of the Revolution, voted God from his throne. They abolished the Sabbath, and declared that Christianity was a nullity. They set apart one day in ten, not for religion, but for idleness and licentiousness. History informs us that the goddess of Reason, personified by a naked prostitute, was drawn in triumph through the streets of Paris, and that the municipal officers of the city, and the members of ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... and gentlemen, the head of the wolf: combativeness enormously developed, alimentiveness large, while conscientiousness is entirely wanting. On the other hand, look at this cranium. Here combativeness is a nullity—absolutely wanting—while the fullness of the sentimental organs indicate at once the mild and peaceful disposition of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... and, again, than his style. A man's style, as Buffon long since said, is the man himself. By style, I do not, of course, mean grammar or rhetoric, but that style of which Buffon again said that it is like happiness, and vient de la douceur de l'ame. When we find a man concealing worse than nullity of meaning under sentences that sound plausibly enough, we should distrust him much as we should a fellow-traveller whom we caught trying to steal our watch. We often cannot judge of the truth or falsehood of facts for ourselves, but we most of us ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... the way they put it now among themselves, Mabel's shortcoming. She had never done anything to deserve this misery. Lying on her couch in the square, solid house in Augustus Road, Wimbledon, Mabel covered her nullity with the imperial purple of her doom. In the family she was supreme ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... 'The Congress shall have power to lay excises.' They say, 'The Congress shall not have this power;' or, what is equivalent, they shall not exercise it, for a power that may not be exercised is a nullity. Your representatives have said, and four times repeated it, 'An excise on distilled spirits shall be collected;' they say, 'It shall not be collected. We will punish, expel, and banish the officers who ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... emerge from this state of nullity. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to me, you owe it to your country, you owe it to the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... in the treaty to the effect that Congress would recommend to the legislatures of the several States measures of restitution—a provision which turned out, as Franklin intimated at the time, a perfect nullity. The English Government subsequently {292} indemnified these people in a measure for their self-sacrifice, and among other things gave a large number of them valuable tracts of land in the provinces of British North America. Many of them settled ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... {85} be captain, in undisputed command. Theoretically, if he were to be guided solely by the advice of the local ministry, he would be 'responsible' to them instead of to his sovereign; his office would be a nullity, and the difference between a colony and an independent state would have disappeared. Theoretically Metcalfe and the Tory pamphleteers who supported him were right in their contentions. Complete freedom to manage its own affairs should, if logic were strictly followed, ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... who is a retired mustard-maker with some money and no brains, a mother who is a nonentity, and a daughter Clodora,[48] a not bad-looking and not unamiable girl, unfortunately dowered with the silliness of her father and the nullity of her mother combined and intensified. There is some pretty bad stock farce about M. Bringuesingue and his valet, whom he pays to scratch his nose when his master is committing solecisms; and about Edmond's adroitness in saving the situations. The result is that ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... crisis, the girl eventually died as the result of Tyrrel's cruelty. As she was the victim of tyranny, Falkland felt it his duty at a public assembly to denounce Tyrrel as her murderer. The squire retaliated by making a personal assault on his antagonist. As Falkland "had perceived the nullity of all expostulation with Mr. Tyrrel," and as duelling according to the Godwinian principles was "the vilest of all egotism," he was deprived of the natural satisfaction of meeting his assailant in physical or even mental combat. Yet "he was too deeply pervaded with the idle ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... political liberties. Like his ancestor Charles the Bold, he was desirous of constructing a kingdom out of the provinces. He was disposed to place all their separate and individual charters on a procrustean bed, and shape them all into uniformity simply by reducing the whole to a nullity. The difficulties in the way, the stout opposition offered by burghers, whose fathers had gained these charters with their blood, and his want of leisure during the vast labors which devolved upon him as the autocrat of so large ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... distinguished merely as one of those who have no aptitude for writing. And so, utterly despondent, I renounced literature for ever, despite the encouragements that had been given me by Bloch. This intimate, spontaneous feeling, this sense of the nullity of my intellect, prevailed against all the flattering speeches that might be lavished upon me, as a wicked man, when everyone is loud in the praise of his good deeds, is gnawed by the secret remorse ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Roger Ducos, and Moulin; the first, an elderly respectable advocate; the second, a Girondin by early associations, but a trimmer by instinct, and therefore easily gained over by Sieyes; while the recommendation of the third, Moulin, seem to have been his political nullity and some third-rate military services in the Vendean war. Yet the Directory of Prairial was not devoid of a spasmodic energy, which served to throw back the invaders of France. Bernadotte, the fiery Gascon, remarkable for his ardent gaze, his encircling masses of coal-black hair, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... her own hearth, she looked so gentle, sweet, and lovely. No longer wild and shy, or gayly mischievous and watchful, but calm-eyed, firm-lipped, gravely courteous; intent upon her father's face, and banishing not into shadow so much as absolute nullity any one who dreamed that he ever filled a pitcher for her, or fed her with grouse and partridge, and committed the incredible atrocity of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... patience, making exercises of piety her chief occupation and comfort. Her husband coming to the crown of France in 1498, under the name of Louis XII., having in view an advantageous match with Anne, the heiress of Brittany, and the late king's widow, alleging also the nullity of his marriage with Jane, chiefly on account of his being forced to it by Louis XI., applied to pope Alexander VI. for commissaries to examine the matter according to law. These having taken cognizance of the affair, declared the marriage void; nor did Jane make any opposition ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... convicts, the increasing immigration of French, Irish, Scotch, and German settlers, have not only failed to overwhelm this compact and thoroughly alive minority, but have been formed and moulded into shape by it. In protesting against New England, the Vallandighams and Coxes are only proving the nullity of 'expunging resolutions.' 'Can they make that not to be which has been?' Until they can recall the past, annihilate the past inhabitants of these States, and from stones raise up some other progenitors for the present generation, they ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which we before condemned—that damnable which we had previously so much admired. It follows from all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or absolute effect of even the best epic under the sun is a nullity;—and this is ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... necessarily follow, either that justice is not the same thing in America as in Britain, or else that the British Parliament pay less regard to it here than there. But, that we do not point out to his Majesty the injustice of these acts, with intent to rest on that principle the cause of their nullity; but to show that experience confirms the propriety of those political principles, which exempt us from the jurisdiction of the British Parliament. The true ground on which we declare these acts void, is, that the British Parliament has no right to exercise authority ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... day left little time for spiritual tillage either at home or abroad. Not only the bishops had to confirm, ordain to all orders, consecrate, anoint, impose penance, and excommunicate, but they had to decide land questions concerning lands in frank almoin, all probate and nullity of marriage cases, and to do all the legal work of a king's baron besides. The judicial duties lay heavily upon him. He used to say that a bishop's case was harder than a lord warden's or a mayor's, for he had to ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... such shadows, and entangle ourselves into fantastical passions which alter both our mind and body?... Enquire of yourself, where is the object of this alteration? Is there anything but us in nature, except subsisting nullity? over whom it hath any power?... Aristodemus, king of the Messenians, killed himself upon a conceit he took of some ill presage by I know not what howling of dogs.... It is the right way to prize one's life at the right worth of it, to ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... democracy surrenders itself to politicians, but from its own point of view, a point of view which it cannot avoid taking up, it is absolutely right. What is a politician? He is a man who, in respect of his personal opinions, is a nullity, in respect of education, a mediocrity, he shares the general sentiments and passions of the crowd, his sole occupation is politics, and if that career were closed to him, he would die ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... of the Roman empire, the other supplies the energy and the principles which already once, between the Seven Years' War and the assembly of the States General, saved human progress in face of the political fatuity of England and the political nullity of France; and they are now, amid the distraction of the various representatives of an obsolete ordering, the only forces to be trusted at once for multiplying the achievements of human intelligence stimulated by human sympathy, and for diffusing ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... to Lord Holland when I came home to call his attention to the Hickson Nullity of Marriage Bill. I cannot take a part; but he must do so if he wishes to preserve his ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... the means of a reformation of the calendar, enabled him to discover many of what were then called the Secrets of Nature. The popular belief that he was the inventor of gunpowder had its origin in two passages in his treatise "On the Secret Works of Art and Nature, and on the Nullity of Magic,"[37] in one of which he describes some of its qualities, while in the other he apparently conceals its composition under an enigma.[38] He had made experiments with Greek fire and the magnet; he had constructed burning-glasses, and lenses of various power; and had practised ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... Bayne found the fire newly alight in the hall, burning with that spare, clear brilliancy that the recent removal of ashes imparts to a wood fire. All the world was still beclouded with mists, and the windows and doors looked forth on a blank white nullity—as inexpressive, as enigmatical, as the unwritten page of the unformulated future itself. The present seemed eliminated; he stood as it were in the atmosphere of other days. But whither had blown the incense of that happy ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of the Union are by force of the Constitution coequal in domestic legislative power. Congress can not change a law of domestic relation in the State of Maine; no more can it in the State of Missouri. Any statute which proposes to do this is a mere nullity; it takes away no right, it confers none. If it remains on the statute book unrepealed, it remains there only as a monument of error and a beacon of warning to the legislator and the statesman. To repeal it will be only to remove ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Natalie without a penny. Such a treasure bestowed upon him might surely release her from a guardianship account. How many men had bought the women they loved by greater sacrifices? Why should a man do less for a wife than for a mistress? Besides, Paul was a nullity, a man of no force, incapable; she would spend the best resources of her mind upon him and open to him a fine career; he should owe his future power and position to her influence; in that way she could pay her debt. He would indeed be a fool to refuse such a future; and for ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... was that which Pitt recommended. He held that the British Parliament was not constitutionally competent to pass a law for taxing the colonies. He therefore considered the Stamp Act as a nullity, as a document of no more validity than Charles's writ of ship-money, or James's proclamation dispensing with the penal laws. This doctrine seems to us, we must ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "general" who issued a manifesto demanding an observance of the constitution and the laws! After Santa Anna, who was playing the role of a Mexican Warwick, had disposed of this aspirant, he switched blithely over to the Escoceses, reduced the federal system almost to a nullity, and in 1836 marched away to conquer the revolting Texans. But, instead, they conquered him and gained their independence, so that his ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... shall best bring out the force of these words by dealing first with that emphatic threefold proclamation of the nullity of all externalism; and then with the singular variations in the triple statement of what is essential, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... scandalous licentiousness: the tie of marriage was less sacred in that Catholic country, than among those nations where the laws and religion admit of its being dissolved. Because they could not break the contract, they feigned that it had not existed; and the ground of nullity, immodestly alleged by the married pair, was admitted with equal facility by priests and magistrates, alike corrupt. These divorces, veiled under another name, became so frequent, that the most important act of civil society was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... of inferior, even if technically expert and realistically learned draughtsmen, of artists whose work may charm at first glance by some vivid likeness or poetic suggestion, but reveal with every additional day their complete insignificance as movement, their utter empathic nullity. Indeed, if we analyse the censure ostensibly based upon engineering considerations of material instability, or on wrong perspective or anatomical "out of drawing" we shall find that much of this hostile criticism is really that of empathic un-satisfactoriness, ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... conversations. You need concord, union, and peace. Why then do you retain among you men who excite rivalries and jealousies; why permit great and violent controversy and ambitious pretensions? How do your own words and acts agree? If your Masonry is a nullity, how can you exercise any influence ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... busines, the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, the great scandal of the reign. Robert Ker, or Carr, created Viscount Rochester 1611 and Earl of Somerset 1613, had cast his eye on the Countess of Essex, and, after a decree of nullity of marriage with Essex had been procured, married her in December 1613. Overbury, who had been Somerset's friend, opposed the projected marriage. On a trumped up charge of disobedience to the king he was in April 1613 committed to the Tower, where he was slowly poisoned, and died in September. ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... matter, person, title or investiture. A legitimacy in each of these must go to the making of a moral power; and an illegitimacy in any of these is an illegitimacy in the very being and constitution, and so a nullity to the power as moral, a making it of no authority. As the text speaks only of this moral power, so it excludes every unlawful power (see Mr. Gee on magistracy, on this text). 2. That the being of God, or the ordination God here spoke of, is not a being ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... In no shop was he refused, so that by the time he got to the end of the village, he was carrying two dozen large concert placards, while the tout, merrily whistling, and all unconscious of the nullity of his labours, was on his way back to Aberdeen. "Lead us not into temptation," said the minister, as he thrust the garish announcements into his study stove. None of Mr. Pollock's flock were at the concert that night. Perhaps, if any had gone, little harm would have been done. The ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... to the people. But, acting in an official character, neither myself nor any human authority had the power to rejudge the proceedings of the convention and declare the constitution which it had framed to be a nullity. To have done this would have been a violation of the Kansas and Nebraska act, which left the people of the Territory "perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... stock; officials who regard the colony as a mine to be worked, not a trust to be administered; forced dependence upon the mother country for manufactures, even for produce, so far as duties can effect it; self-government stifled; representation in the Cortes denied or a nullity; a civil service unprogressive, ignorant, sometimes corrupt—compare these handicaps with the growth, the prosperity, the independence, above all, the decent and orderly administration, of the colonies of England. One of the wonderful things in this half century is ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... brother's widow? It would be a very similar case if she were to marry her sister's husband. Besides she would have needed the Pope's dispensation for such a union—as Philip had already explained to her—while her birth and crown were the results of a Papal dispensation being declared a nullity. She would thus have fallen into a self-contradiction, to which she must have succumbed in course of time. When told that Philip II had done her some service, she acknowledged it: but when she meditated on it further, she found that neither this sovereign ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... bets; and the literary man cannot hope to escape the usual fate of those who narrow their horizon. When a man once settles down as "literary" and nothing else, he does not take long in reaching complete nullity. His power of emitting strings of grammatical sentences remains; but the sentences are only exudations from an awful blankness—he is written out. The rush after money has latterly brought some of our most exquisite writers of fiction into a condition which is truly lamentable; ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... if they could get things right, they could marry; but he would not marry unless he could feel strong in the joy of it—never. He could not have faced his mother. It seemed to him that to sacrifice himself in a marriage he did not want would be degrading, and would undo all his life, make it a nullity. He would ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... exaggerations may become accepted as beautiful and natural by an imitative public devoid of personal judgment, by the aid of suggestion. These deplorable effects of suggestion may last a long time till their nullity or their absurdity causes them gradually to disappear. But they are usually ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... though more often implicitly than in any direct or logical form, (this statement being one it is not easy to make definitely without its reducing itself to nullity!) that woman should seek no fields of labour in the new world of social conditions that is arising about us, as she has still her function as child-bearer: a labour which, by her own showing, is arduous and dangerous, though she may love it as a soldier loves his battlefield; ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... revenues; if it must depend on the voluntary contributions of its members, its existence must be precarious. A government that relies on thirteen independent sovereignties for the means of its existence, is a solecism in theory, and a mere nullity in practice. Is it consistent with reason, that such a government can promote the happiness of any people? It is subversive of every principle of sound policy, to trust the safety of a community with a government totally destitute of the means ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... he was still a married man, having wedded Lord Huntly's sister fourteen months before. And now in May, came in the new consistorial jurisdiction of the Archbishop, for the only act which that prelate ever performed under it was to confirm a sentence of nullity of this very marriage, and that on the ground that Bothwell and his wife being too nearly related, had not procured a Papal dispensation (the Papal dispensation having not only been procured before the marriage, ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... innuendo repeated in nearly every note from the Legation. As time went on, Russell was compelled, though slowly, to treat the American Minister as serious. He admitted nothing so unwillingly, for the nullity or fatuity of the Washington Government was his idee fixe; but after the failure of his last effort for joint intervention on November 12, 1862, only one week elapsed before he received a note from Minister ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... of his preaching," writes another contemporary,[3183] "rarely culminated in any specific measure or legal provision. He combated everything and proposed nothing; the secret of his policy happily accorded with his intellectual impotence and with the nullity of his legislative conceptions." Once he has rattled his revolutionary pedantry off, he no longer knows what to say.—As to financial matters and military art, he knows nothing and risks nothing, except to underrate or calumniate Carnot and Cambon ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of his soul in ranging through the universe and through space shall have kindled hope after hope, wonderment and aspiration after aspiration and wonderment, then indeed will he need to keep his heart light, lest it make him sink at the contemplation of his own nullity. ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... Pullet had bought the box, to begin with, and he understood winding it up, and knew which tune it was going to play beforehand; altogether the possession of this unique "piece of music" was a proof that Mr. Pullet's character was not of that entire nullity which might otherwise have been attributed to it. But uncle Pullet, when entreated to exhibit his accomplishment, never depreciated it by a too-ready consent. "We'll see about it," was the answer he always gave, carefully abstaining from any sign of compliance till a suitable ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... was no flaw in any link of the chain. I had traced the secret to its ultimate result,—and that result was the nail. It had, I say, in every respect, the appearance of its fellow in the other window; but this fact was an absolute nullity (conclusive us it might seem to be) when compared with the consideration that here, at this point, terminated the clew. 'There must be something wrong,' I said, 'about the nail.' I touched it; and the head, with about a quarter of an inch of the shank, came off in my fingers. The rest of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that the Marriage-bill has not only lasted till now-in the committee, but has produced, or at least disclosed, extreme heats. Mr. Fox and Mr. Pelham have had very high words on every clause, and the former has renewed his attacks on the Chancellor under the name of Dr. Gally. Yesterday on the nullity clause they sat till half an hour after three in the morning, having just then had a division On adjournment, which was rejected by the ministry by above 80 to 70. The Speaker, who had spoken well against the clause, was so misrepresented by ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... General Jackson was appointed chairman. On the 22d of January the committee reported not only that the act was unconstitutional, but that fraud had been practiced to secure its passage. On these grounds they declared that the act was a nullity, and not binding on the ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... was no longer an individual struggle, but a party contest between the ins and outs. The question was, whether the withering influence of the overseers, the domination of the churchwardens, and the blighting despotism of the vestry-clerk, should be allowed to render the election of beadle a form—a nullity: whether they should impose a vestry-elected beadle on the parish, to do their bidding and forward their views, or whether the parishioners, fearlessly asserting their undoubted rights, should elect an ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Their government may be good for priests, nobles, and old fashioned countesses: it is good for nothing for the present generation. The revolution has taught the people to know their rank in the state. They will never consent to fall back into their former nullity, and to be tied up by the nobility and the clergy. The army can never belong to the Bourbons. Our victories and our misfortunes have established an indissoluble tie between the army and myself. It is only through me that the soldiers can earn vengeance, power, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... of tea contains no more than the one-tenth of a grain of theine, still, if it contribute in point of fact to the formation of bile, the action even of such a quantity cannot be looked upon as a nullity. Neither can it be denied, that in the case of an excess of non-azotised food, and a deficiency of motion, which is required to cause the change of matter of the tissues, and thus to yield the nitrogenised product ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Complaint of } Nullity promoted by Philip Y Banes Master } For Sentence of the Spanish Ship La Virgin del Rosario } on the Second Y el Santo Christo de Buen Viage } Assignation against Richard Haddon Commander of } and ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... deprived of a constitutional right is immaterial. The test of its constitutionality is, whether it operates to deprive any person of a right guaranteed or given to him by the Constitution. If it does, it is a nullity, whatever may be its form. Surely a law which deprives a person of a right, by requiring him to take an oath which he can not take, is no less objectionable than one depriving him of such right ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... publicity in the Press that it does in England. Its unseemly details are left in the obscurity of private life elsewhere, and not brought forward for public consideration as in England. One arrives in London just in time to hear the Lord Chief Justice make a grand summing-up of a nullity suit, and to hear two other judges court the public eye with detailed remarks in levity of moral conduct and the immodesty of women. We sometimes in England refer to the poisonous daily Press of Paris, but Paris, with all its men-and-women troubles, has no salacious columns in its ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... resolution declaring Don John to be no longer governor or stadtholder of the Netherlands. The Prince of Orange was appointed lieutenant general for Mathias, and the actual power of the latter was reduced to a nullity, but he was installed at Brussels with the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... on a level with the great enemy of man? This brings out the idea that whilst God is possessed of infinite power, in the exercise of that power He has respect to the constitution of man in the production of virtue. He does not override the constitution, and treat it as if it were a nullity. To do so would be absurd, for forced virtue is not virtue at all. God is all-powerful, but He is ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... naturally be drawn to the recent debate in the Assembly involving the principle of the Higher Law. The subject was a bill reorganizing the National Guard, with the intent of sifting it as clean as possible of the popular element, and thus rendering it either a nullity, or an accomplice in the execution of the Monarchical conspiracies now brewing. It is but a few days since Gen. Changarnier solemnly informed the Assembly, in reply to President Bonaparte's covert menaces at Dijon, that the army ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... has ever resisted a people who fight for their liberty and who defend their sacred rights. Your heroic endeavours have already reduced our unjust aggressors almost to complete nullity. Without infantry to cover their parapets, without artillery to fire their pieces, without money, without credit, and without support, they already make their last useless efforts. On our side, on the contrary, all is in abundance (sobra), ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... torn between an affectionate conviction that she was really a good woman and an inability to believe that the King could be misled, much less do her a deliberate and conscious wrong. But some sort of admission which she made before him was interpreted by the Archbishop as involving the nullity of the marriage. Anne was executed: next day, the King married Jane Seymour; the marriage with Anne was officially declared to have been invalid; Elizabeth being of course de-legitimatised, and so occupying precisely the same position as Mary. Thus Henry ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... book at once. She liked exercise and fresh air, and always walked with pleasure by the lake. Sam was to her such a nullity that she enjoyed his company almost as much as being alone. She was ready in a moment, and a short walk brought them to the little open place reserved for public use, overlooking the great fresh-water sea. There were a few lines ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... except the possible inconvenience of changing from one creamery to another. The straight and honorable patron is powerless; the owner of the creamery is powerless; and the co-operative element is rendered a nullity. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... struggle as we may. The only escape from faith is mental nullity. What we enjoy most in a Huxley or a Clifford is not the professor with his learning, but the human personality ready to go in for what it feels to be right, in spite of all appearances. The concrete man has but one interest,—to be right. That ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... minutes, pointing out the various beauties in the architecture of the church to her guests, not that these individuals were very much interested in such matters, for they were of that particular social type which considers that the highest form of good breeding is to show a polite nullity of feeling concerning everything and everybody. They were eminently 'cultured,' which nowadays means pre-eminently dull. Had they been asked, they would have said that it is dangerous to express any opinion on any subject,—even on the ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Maintenon. She caused Orry to be reinstated in his former functions, at the same time that one of her most dangerous enemies, the father Daubenton, received an order to quit Madrid, where his restless nullity had lost itself in a maze of intrigues. Authorised in a manner to form her ministry, she nominated the President Amelot as Ambassador for Spain, a diplomatist although very high minded, yet of somewhat subaltern ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Hurons, and soon to be incorporated with them. The travellers visited seven of their towns, and then passed westward to those of the people whom Champlain calls the Cheveax Releves, and whom he commends for neatness and ingenuity no less than he condemns them for the nullity of their summer attire. As the strangers passed from town to town, their arrival was everywhere the signal of festivity. Champlain exchanged pledges of amity with his hosts, and urged them to come down with the Hurons to the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... after the abdication of Napoleon, was merely a superfetation. The departure of those peers, who formed part of the army, completed its reduction to an absolute nullity. Without patriotism, without energy, it confined itself to sanctioning with an ill grace the measures adopted by the representatives. M. Thibaudeau, M. de Segur, M. de Bassano, and a few others, alone raised themselves to a level with the state ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... remarkable,' he continued, 'that women whose influence is generally greatest under despotisms, have none now. They have lost it, partly in consequence of the gross vulgarity of our dominant passions, and partly from their own nullity. They are like London houses, all built and furnished on exactly the same model, and that a most uninteresting one. Whether a girl is bred up at home or in a convent, she has the same masters, gets a smattering of the same accomplishments, reads the ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... they thought they were progressing Everywhere was feverish excitement, dissipation, and nullity It was a relief when they rose from the table Money troubles are not mortal One amuses one's self at the risk of dying Scarcely was one scheme launched when another idea occurred Talk with me sometimes. You will not chatter trivialities They had only one aim, one passion—to enjoy themselves ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... manages the war well, it is owing to his being himself an educated officer and to maintaining in their positions d'Arcon, d'Obenheim, de Grimoard, de Montalembert and Marescot, all eminent men bequeathed to him by the ancient regime.[4160] Reduced, before the 9th of Thermidor, to perfect nullity, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not again to become useful and active until the professional diplomats, Miot, Colchen, Otto and Reinhart,[4161] resume their ascendancy and influence. It is a professional diplomat, Barthelemy, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... vagrants as almost "incredible." In that report he says—"The offspring of always careless, generally intemperate, and oftentimes dishonest parents, they never see the inside of a school-room, and so far as our excellent system of public education is concerned, it is to them a nullity." It appears that, at that time, in 12 wards of the city, there were 2,955 of these children, of whom two-thirds were females between the ages of 8 and 16. I am informed, also, by the Chief of Police, that 100 per cent. should now be added to ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... See the supplementary chapter in the late John A. Goodwin's "Pilgrim Republic," soon to be published. Perhaps the case of Wade was rather a decree of nullity ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... surely were work enough; yet this is not all. In fact, the Ministry, and Necker himself whom a brass inscription 'fastened by the people over his door-lintel' testifies to be the 'Ministre adore,' are dwindling into clearer and clearer nullity. Execution or legislation, arrangement or detail, from their nerveless fingers all drops undone; all lights at last on the toiled shoulders of an august Representative Body. Heavy-laden National Assembly! It has to hear of innumerable fresh ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... but her beauty, her distinction, and her modest charm won the day with every one, and Marie Lloyd was cheered. She passed me on her return, and kissed me affectionately. We were great friends, and I liked her very much, but I considered her a nullity as a pupil. I do not remember whether she had received any prize the previous year, but certainly no one expected her to have one now. I was ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... vain; the prisoner knew nothing. The seven hundred Pyrotists could not subvert the proofs of the accusation because they could not know what they were, and they could not know what they were because there were none. Pyrot's guilt was indefeasible through its very nullity. And it was with a legitimate pride that Greatauk, expressing himself as a true artist, said one day to General Panther: "This case is a master-piece: it is made out of nothing." The seven hundred Pyrotists despaired of ever clearing up this dark business, when suddenly they discovered, from ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... a Manifesto, but an anonymous memoir published in the Newspapers, explaining to impartial mankind, in a legible brief manner, what the old and recent History of Herstal, and the Troubles of Herstal, have been, and how chimerical and "null to the extreme of nullity (NULLES DE TOUT NULLITE)" this poor Bishop's pretensions upon it are. Voltaire expressly piques himself on this Piece; [Letter to Friedrich: dateless, datable "soon after 17th September;" which the rash dark Editors have by guess misdated "August; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was the wife's duty to follow him. If she refused to accompany him, no matter upon what ground she based her refusal, she was guilty of desertion. A promise by the husband before marriage as to the establishment of the place of residence of the family, created a moral obligation only and was a mere nullity in law. Whenever there was a difference of opinion between husband and wife in regard to the location of the common home, the will of the wife had to yield to that of the husband. This law of domicile was based upon the grounds of the "identity of the husband and wife, the subjection of the wife ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... not a mood, not a glance of the eye, can we revoke; it is all gone, past conjuring. And yet conceive us robbed of it, conceive that little thread of memory that we trail behind us broken at the pocket's edge; and in what naked nullity should we be left! for we only guide ourselves, and only know ourselves, by these air-painted pictures ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... joyned with him in a new Baptism, that he was out of the way himself, and had mis-led them, for he did not finde that there was any upon earth that could administer Baptism, and therefore their last Baptism was a nullity, as well as their first; and therefore they must lay down all, and wait for the coming of new Apostles: and so they dissolved themselves, and turned Seekers, keeping that one Principle, That every one should ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... in saying that the several particulars he has enumerated did not exist in America, and neglecting to point out the particular period in which the means they did not exist, reduces thereby his declaration to a nullity, by taking away ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... they may commit in their cruizes or voyages, as well as for the contraventions of their captains and officers against the present treaty, and against the ordinances and edicts which shall be published in consequence of and conformity to it, under pain of forfeiture and nullity ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... the jackdaws nesting in the belfries. The region is a desert of stones, a solitude with a character of its own, an arid spot, which could only be inhabited by beings who had either attained to absolute nullity, or were gifted with some abnormal strength of soul. The house in question had always been occupied by abbes, and it belonged to an old maid named Mademoiselle Gamard. Though the property had been bought from the national ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... thinks that Government will probably be under the necessity of adopting strong coercive measures there; but whether they are adopted, or a temporary policy of expedients persisted in, nobody is there fit to advise what is requisite. The Duke of Northumberland is an absolute nullity, a bore beyond all bores, and, in spite of his desire to spend money and be affable, very unpopular. The Duchess complains of it and can't imagine why, for they do all they can to be liked, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... who shared in some measure the beauty so profusely showered upon the family, was one of those feeble men who enjoy their own nullity, and grow on to old age inapt alike for good and evil, unless some nature of a stronger stamp lays hold on them and drags them like faint and pallid satellites in its wake. This was what befell the chevalier in respect of his brother: submitted to an ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the troupe nor mollified himself. Indeed, his consciousness of the mockery of it but increased his bitterness. But at least it saved his face and rescued him from nullity—he who ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... Who persecutes whom? The Jews held that their God was the only real God. The gods of other nations were "vanity," that is, nullity. They held that their religion was the only true one. When about the time of the birth of Christ they stepped before the Greco-Roman world with this claim, it cost them great hatred and abuse. In the history of religion it counts as a great fact of advance in religious ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... long studied canonical interdictions; he consulted neither his ministers nor his doctors; it was a personal reply he addressed to the emperor. "It is out of our power." said he, "to pronounce the judgment of nullity; if we were to usurp such an authority that we have not, we should render ourselves culpable of an abominable abuse before the tribunal of God; and your Majesty yourself, in your justice, would blame us for pronouncing a sentence contrary to the testimony of our ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... found herself a nullity at the court of Francois I. Her young husband was in love with Diane de Poitiers, who certainly, in the matter of birth, could rival Catherine, and was far more of a great lady than the little Florentine. The daughter of the Medici was also outdone by Queen Eleonore, sister ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... although they proved that they could work the same miracles with pieces of wood and tobacco-pipe. It takes time for truth to operate as well as Homoeopathic globules. Many persons thought the results of these trials were decisive enough of the nullity of the treatment; those who wish to see the kind of special pleading and evasion by which it is attempted to cover results which, stated by the "Homoeopathic Examiner" itself, look exceedingly like a miserable ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... its bosom all these weaknesses, all this egotism, all these vices. Mirabeau was venal, Barnave jealous, Robespierre fanatic, the Jacobin Club blood-thirsty, the National Guard selfish, La Fayette a waverer, the government a nullity. No one desired the Revolution but for his own purpose, and according to his own scheme; and it must have been wrecked on these shoals a hundred times, if there were not in human crises something even stronger than ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... seemingly so fantastic doctrine was sincerely in service. By its destructive criticism, its dissipation of the very conceivability of the central and most incisive of sensible phenomena, it was a real support to Parmenides in his assertion of the nullity of all that is but phenomenal, leaving open and unoccupied space (emptiness, we might say) to that which really is. That which is, so purely, or absolutely, that it is nothing at all to our mixed powers of apprehension:—Parmenides and the Eleatic School were ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... respectful private life as well as they can, do not concern themselves as to the course of public affairs, help the bourgeoisie to forge the chains of the workers yet more securely, and stand upon the plane of intellectual nullity that prevailed before the industrial period began; or they are tossed about by fate, lose their moral hold upon themselves as they have already lost their economic hold, live along from day to day, drink ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... depicting the misery of the masses, he hastily reviews the growth of the labor movement that ended with the Chartist agitation. Although from 1848 to 1864 was a period when the English working class seemed, he says, "thoroughly reconciled to a state of political nullity,"[25] nevertheless two encouraging developments had taken place. One was the victory won by the working classes in carrying the Ten Hours Bill. It was "not only a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... whom such exertions could be used with good hope of success. He was intelligent enough to be fully conscious of the fact and the significance of the popular request for a constitution, and, though of course personally disinclined to reduce his power to a nullity, he had yet not a strong will, and had no wish to involve himself in a conflict with his subjects. Accordingly, in 1841, he convoked a diet in each province, and proposed the appointment of committees from the estates, who should act ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... shock the haughty claims of the pontiff, he resolved not to found the application on any general doubts concerning the papal power to permit marriage in the nearer degrees of consanguinity; but only to insist on particular grounds of nullity in the bull which Julius had granted for the marriage of Henry and Catharine. It was a maxim in the court of Rome, that if the pope be surprised into any concession, or grant any indulgence upon false suggestions, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... the life-blood seemed to ebb away from Ursula, and within the emptiness a heavy despair gathered. Her passion seemed to bleed to death, and there was nothing. She sat suspended in a state of complete nullity, harder ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... base and slavish eternity. It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... masters to employ their men a less number of hours in the day: this cry gathered volume quickly, and the masters had to yield to it. But it was, of course, clear that unless this meant a higher price for work per hour, it would be a mere nullity, and that the masters, unless forced, would reduce it to that. Therefore after a long struggle another law was passed fixing a minimum price for labour in the most important industries; which again had to be supplemented by a law fixing the maximum price on the chief wares then ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... Why give unnatural prominence to a cipher? Do you think I hold my poor mother to blame for any wrong that is done to me, or to others, in this house? No, Captain Winstanley, I have no resentment against my mother. She is a blameless nullity, dressed in the ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... broke out at Sunderland a few days ago. To meet the exigency Government has formed another Board of Health, but without dissolving the first, though the second is intended to swallow up the first and leave it a mere nullity. Lord Lansdowne, who is President of the Council, an office which for once promises not to be a sinecure, has taken the opportunity to go to Bowood, and having come up (sent for express) on account of the cholera the day it was officially declared really to be that disease, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... obliged me with a sight of your letter to him of the 22d Dec. last. I think I am not so clearly of opinion as you seem to be, that "the declaratory act is a mere nullity," and that therefore "if we can obtain a repeal of the revenue acts from 1764, without their pernicious appendages, it will be enough." Should they retract the exercise of their assumed power, you ask when will they be able to renew it? I know not when, but I fear they will soon ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... thinker a mere appearance is scarcely a presumption in favor of a conclusion in accordance with it. Science and experience are full of examples exposing the nullity or the falsity of appearances. The sun seems to move around the earth; but truth contradicts it. We seem to discern distances and the forms of bodies by direct sight; but the truth is we see nothing ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... unto philosophy, and generation not only founded on contrarieties, but also creation. God, being all things, is contrary unto nothing; out of which were made all things, and so nothing became something, and omneity informed nullity into an essence. ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... translation to Heaven, is a common occasion for ecstasy. These formulations of the death idea may occur as tentative solutions of the patient's problems leading to temporary manic episodes while the psychosis is incubating. It seems that stupor as such appears only when death and nullity ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... Hussars and a battalion of infantry on board had gone ashore at St. Helena, some 180 miles from Cape Town. Fortunately the men were rescued from the transport, but their chargers were all lost. This was a terrible blow, for at the time cavalry was almost a nullity, and operations were somewhat suspended, if not entirely crippled, owing to the lack of that arm. Indeed, Lord Methuen's brilliant operations on the Orange River had all been heavily handicapped owing to the impossibility of pushing his victories home, and at this time the one cry of ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... on account of the vexation and grief which the Marquis de Montespan has caused you. If you will confide in me,—that is, if you will let me represent your interests with the Cardinals and the Holy Father,—I heartily offer you my services as mediator and advocate with regard to the question of nullity. At an early age I studied theology and ecclesiastical law. Your marriage may be considered null and void, according to this or that point of view. You know that upon the death of the Princesse de Nemours, Mademoiselle de Nemours and Mademoiselle d'Aumale, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... assumed rights of the States! North Carolina was one of these creations; and North Carolina, through the lips of its Chief Justice, has already decided that Mr. Johnson was an unauthorized intruder, and his work a nullity, and even Mr. Johnson's "people" of North Carolina have rejected the constitution framed by Mr. Johnson's Convention. Other Rebel communities will doubtless repudiate his work, as soon as they can dispense with his assistance. But whatever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... country to rot in slavery for another generation. White men do not thus argue concerning their own rights. They know too well the value of ideals. Southern white men see too clearly the latent power of these unexercised rights. If the political power of the Negro was a nullity because of his ignorance and lack of leadership, why were they not content to leave it so, with the pleasing assurance that if it ever became effective, it would be because the Negroes had grown fit for its exercise? On the contrary, they have not rested until ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... material or immaterial, made fraudulently or innocently, avoids a note in the hands of one who made the alteration. But in a later Missouri case, it is held, that the addition of the signature of a married woman without a separate estate to a note already issued was a nullity and without legal effect and therefore to be considered as no alteration and not ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... same with humanity; here, too (in suffering), he must show his strength, i.e. endure without knowing or feeling his nullity, and reach his perfection again for which the Most High wishes to ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... itself, besides being inconsistent in its provisions in conferring power upon a person unknown to the laws and who may never have a legal existence, is so framed as to render its execution almost impossible. It is, indeed, a question whether it is not in itself a nullity. To say the least, it is of exceedingly doubtful propriety to confer the power proposed in this bill upon the "governor elect," for as by its own terms the constitution is not to take effect until after the admission of the State, he in the meantime has no more authority than any ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... inferior authority of her husband. The consequence was that the situation of the Roman female, whether married or unmarried, became one of great personal and proprietary independence, for the tendency of the later law, as I have already hinted, was to reduce the power of the guardian to a nullity, while the form of marriage in fashion conferred on the husband no compensating superiority. But Christianity tended somewhat from the very first to narrow this remarkable liberty. Led at first by justifiable disrelish for the loose practices of the decaying heathen world, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... though he may have given valuable advice on purely legal points, when these arose, it soon became plain that Luis de Leon was the brain of the defence and that he meant to conduct that defence in his own way. Ortiz de Funes became a nullity or, at least, a mere figure-head whose main duty consisted in signing papers which the prisoner had drawn up. A time came when, according to the practice of the Inquisition, it became necessary for Luis de Leon to nominate patronos, and in this matter Ortiz de Funes intervened somewhat ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... nonexistence, nonsubsistence; nonentity, nil; negativeness &c adj.; nullity; nihility^, nihilism; tabula rasa [Lat.], blank; abeyance; absence &c 187; no such thing &c 4; nonbeing, nothingness, oblivion. annihilation; extinction &c (destruction) 162; extinguishment, extirpation, Nirvana, obliteration. V. not exist &c 1; have no existence &c 1; be null and void; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... evil. Indeed, nowhere is such a harmonizing view more pressingly demanded than in universal history; and it can be attained only by recognizing the positive existence, in which that negative element is a subordinate and vanquished nullity. On the one hand, the ultimate design of the world must be perceived, and, on the other, the fact that this design has been actually realized in it, and that evil has not been able permanently to establish a rival position. But this conviction involves much more ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... of possession made. But in some cases this was a mere conventional statement, and both payment and delivery were delayed. There was to be no return of the goods, no turning back from the bargain; the pleading of a suit of nullity of sale is expressly barred. It is of interest to notice who were regarded as competent, or likely to take action to recover the property. Sons, grandsons, brothers, brothers' sons, are all named. The enumeration clearly ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... from the Council, Las Casas wrote his treatise entitled, The Liberty of the Enslaved Indians (De la libertad de los Indios que han sido reducidos a la esclavitud) which, for greater convenience, he divided into three parts. The first part treated of the nullity of the title on which such slavery was based; the second dealt with the duties of the Spanish sovereign towards the Indians, and the third was devoted to the obligations of the bishops of ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the succeeding centuries, the political nullity of the German nation, the absence of any strong popular element to make head against the petty despotism of the princes, and launch Germany in the career of progress. Hence the backwardness and torpor of the Teutonic race in its original seat, while elsewhere it led the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... have seen, had never been able to understand the real force of the reform movement, and his leading idea was that the demand for reform might be satisfied by a moderate reform bill, which the house of lords would not reject or reduce to nullity. Wellington shared this impression, and, though an implacable opponent of reform, was willing to undertake office for the purpose of carrying, not merely a mild substitute for the whig reform bill, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Henry's conscience was convenient and skilful. He believed in the "ordinance of inseparable matrimony," so, when he wished to divorce a wife, his conscience warned him that he had never really been married to her. Hence his nullity suits with Catherine of Aragon, with Anne Boleyn and with Anne of Cleves. Moreover, if he had never been married to Catherine, his relations with Mary Boleyn and Elizabeth Blount were obviously not adultery, and he was free to denounce that sin in ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... in the instance before us, appended it to teaching which, from its parabolic form, required attention to disentangle the spiritual truth implied. He sometimes used it to commend some strange, new revolutionary teaching to men's investigation—as, for instance, after that great declaration of the nullity of ceremonial worship, how that nothing could defile a man except what came from his heart. In other connections, which I need not now enumerate, we find it. Like printing a sentence in italics, or underscoring ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... letters, and he was distinctly cautioned against letting the enemy get to the westward of him. He might have consoled himself for indecisive action, which procrastinated disaster and covered failure with the veil of nullity, as did a former commander of his in a gazetted letter, by the reflection that, so far as the anticipations of the ministry went, the designs of the enemy were for the time frustrated, by the presence of his squadron between them and the points ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... be done legally, of course. I believe the proper method is a nullity suit, declaring our marriage null and—er—void. It would, so to speak, wipe out ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne |
