"Onus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 56: Descendant of Tantalus.—Ver. 626. Agamemnon was the son of Atreus, grandson of Pelops, and great-grandson of Tantalus. He wisely refused to take upon himself alone the onus of deciding the contention between ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of justice, as I saw them adjusted in heaven, the claim against the parents weighed the heaviest," said the man. "You suckled her at your breasts; but you brought her there to suckle. In your bringing her there, lies the onus of her claim." ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... England are very strict about entering a man's house. Of course, were the pursuers to go before a magistrate and swear that the pursued were a dangerous lunatic, then a right of search and entry might be obtained, but on the pursuers would lie the onus of proof. Now pauper lunatics are very easily dealt with: the Relieving Officer, on the strength of a certificate of lunacy, can go to the poor man's cottage or tenement, and take him away, for, you see, the man possessing ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Haycroft at a party was, like so many Englishmen, as the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin. The man Vida had rescued from Mrs. Graham Townley was, when in the society of women, so accustomed to seeing them take on themselves the onus of entertainment, was himself so unused to being at the smallest trouble, that when the 'Order' was exhausted, had Vida not invented another topic, there would have been an absolute cessation of all converse till Mrs. Graham Townley had again caught him up like a big reluctant fish on ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... was no help for it. If they caught him while feeding, they might have thought him a lower animal and shot him. He couldn't put an onus like ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "The onus of explanation," I declared, "appears to me to rest with you, Prince. I offered the hospitality of my room, presumably to a gentleman—not to a person who would seize that opportunity to examine my ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The onus of the prisoners' condition cannot be said to rest upon our shoulders. Mr. Herrick or Mr. Bliss has made demarches in the ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... arduous duties enough to discharge as it is without their finding obstacles in their way in the partisan actions of club officials who control club managers and captains. When this class supports the umpires against the club teams it will be time enough to lay the whole onus of hoodlumism in the ranks ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... he were guilty, of course he ought to receive the death-penalty for the crime of treason. Justice could allow of no middle course. But Pilate is not thinking of Justice. He only wants to escape the onus of killing an innocent man. Then he has Jesus brought forth, bleeding, in agony, His lacerated flesh exposed to the view of that heartless multitude. "Behold the man," says Pilate. "Look at your victim; is not this enough?" If Pilate thought his appeal ad misericordiam ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... scheme before the Committee of Ten, had seen the eagerness with which they grasped it—"In this way," she had said, in her scornful, incisive tones, "the onus of the boy is not on you, but on them. Even those who have no sympathy with your movement will burn at such a rumor. The better the citizen, the more a lover of home and order, the more outraged he will be. Every ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ANTIG'ONUS, a Sicilian lord, commanded by king Leontes to take his infant daughter to a desert shore and leave her to perish. Antigonus was driven by a storm to the coast of Bohemia, where he left the babe; but on his way back to the ship, he ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... mother, as he knew by Mary's letters written long ago, courted and sought after, loved and admired! If he had made a resolution—a promise he might say—when a mere child that he would take the onus of the deed upon his own shoulders, to protect his father, then a poacher and in humble life, how much more was it his duty, now that his father would so feel any degradation—now that, being raised so high, his fall would be so bitter, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... Gregorio's; and with wine to give them a start, they'll be pretty sure to have a cruise, as they call it, through the town. There, you may meet your man; and can insult him, by giving him a cuff, spitting in his face—anything to put the onus of challenging ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... mind would clear; and now Kate sat staring back into his unblinking eyes asking herself if it was possible that his crime was to be buried with him and she must go on the rest of her life bearing the onus of his guilt? The answer to every question she wanted to know was locked in the breast of the emaciated man lying on ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... that it is known to so few. Let it be understood by such as are aware of what has been, that I bear the onus of the rupture. No more need be known than that the break was on my side. We both were mistaken. She will not be blamed, and some day'—but he could not speak calmly—' she will meet one who will feel for her as I do, and will work a cure of all these foibles. You will ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... those who have written of the causes of terrorism have a partisan bias. There are those among the Catholic clergy, for instance, who have sought to place the entire onus on the doctrines of modern socialism. This has, in turn, led August Bebel to point out that the teachings of certain famous men in the Church have condoned assassination. He reminds us of Mariana, the Jesuit, who taught under what circumstances ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... reply, a waiting visitor was announced for the second time, and Barker, with another hand-shake and a reassuring smile to his old partner, passed into the hall, as if the onus of any infelicity in the interview was upon himself alone. But Stacy did not seem to be in a particularly accessible mood to the new caller, who in his turn appeared to be slightly irritated by having been kept ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... authority, may take another into custody, on the mere suspicion that he is a convict illegally at large: if it appear to the magistrate that he had a just or probable cause for suspicion, he is justified in doing so. The onus of proving that he is not a convict illegally at large, is thrown upon the suspected person, and if that is not established to the satisfaction of the magistrate, he is liable to be retained in custody, or sent to Sydney to be examined and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... German fighting machine is so organized that in all probability decisive battles would be fought in the enemy's country, in which case the onus of feeding the troops would fall on the enemy, called in military parlance "requisitioning and commandeering." In this, German, and especially Prussian, quartermasters are in no way behind their English confrères of whose activity in the Boer War ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... affection. Not that I believe my father did this consciously; still, he so greatly hated scolding that I dare say we might often have got off scot free when we really deserved reproof had not my mother undertaken the onus of scolding us herself. We therefore naturally feared her more than my father, and fearing more we loved less. For as love casteth ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... was essentially the fitting man for the service that lay before him, characterised as he was by strong sense, shrewd sagacity, calm firmness, and self-command. When his superior devolved on him an undue onus of responsibility he was to prove himself thoroughly equal to the occasion, and the sedate, balanced man murmured not, but probably was rather amused when he saw a maker of phrases essaying to deck himself in his laurels. There were many things in Lord Auckland's Indian ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... "he has been acquitted." O'Connell is said to have smiled meaningly on the occasion, as if he had anticipated the effect of the ruse; for it was a ruse he had recourse to, in order to save the unfortunate culprit's life. He knew that flinging the onus on a young and a raw judge could be the only chance for his client. The judge did take up the case O'Connell had ostensibly, in a pet, abandoned. The witnesses were successively cross-examined by the judge himself. ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... right, she did take it herself, and it was a suicide; but who terrified her into this act of self-destruction? Why, the one who had the most reason to fear her testimony, of course. But the proof, you say. Well, sir, this girl left a confession behind her, throwing the onus of the whole crime on a certain party believed to be innocent; this confession was a forged one, known from three facts; first, that the paper upon which it was written was unobtainable by the girl in the ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... real determination on both sides to make Egyptian independence a success and no disposition on either to give merely a reluctant consent to the conditions agreed upon by them and then to throw the onus of failure ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... the phrase means much; on all others it is a deliberate lie. Noticeable, too," she said, dropping in an instant from the passionate into a low, mocking tone, "when people are married, though they should have sixty children, they throw the whole onus on God. When they are not, we hear nothing about God's having sent them. When there has been no legal contract between the parents, who sends the little children then? The devil perhaps!" She laughed her little silvery, mocking laugh. "Odd that some men should come from ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... way of looking at things, Sir David. The world is made up of people who take their own pleasure at any cost to others, and then throw the onus of their misdoings upon Providence. I have long ago forgiven the girl who jilted me, and have sworn to be her faithful and watchful friend in all the days to come. I want to be sure that her future is a bright one—much brighter than it seemed when I saw her ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... cousins, the Yankees, would say," answered Mildmay, cheerfully; "only, remember this, we must take the whole onus and responsibility of the act upon our own shoulders; we must show no colours—unless you feel disposed to sport a 'Jolly Roger' for this occasion only. What I particularly mean is, that we must take care not to betray our nationality, and so involve Great Britain ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... sensational account of the affair appeared in the next issue of the paper, headed by a half-tone picture of the tent and the church. Public sentiment ran strongly against Bascom, to whom rumor quickly awarded the onus of the incident. In reply to offers of hospitality, Maxwell and Mrs. Betty insisted that they were very comfortable for the time being, and were not going to move or make any plans for the immediate future. The morning of the fourth day, Maxwell announced to Mrs. Betty that he had a strong ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... respite. But the Church still dominated the civil courts, and a transfer of the case meant that the Church would throw the onus of executing sentence on those lay figures who were the puppets of a ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Great healing properties are attributed to this extract in the shed. And if a shearer slice off a piece of flesh from his own person, as occasionally happens, he gravely anoints it with the universal remedy, and considers that the onus then lies with Providence, there being no more that man can do. Though little time is lost, the men are by no means up to the speed which they will attain in a few days, when in full practice and training. Their nerve, muscle, eye, endurance, will ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... immediately issued to a Commando to attack Johannesburg. I at once replied that the ultimatum required the surrender of guns and ammunition for which no permit of importation had been obtained, and that onus rested with the Transvaal Government to show that guns and ammunition were concealed for which no permit had been issued. If before this was done any hostile step were taken against Johannesburg I should consider it a violation of the undertaking for which I had made myself personally ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... circumstances by an assize or jury of twelve sworn men under the presidency of the Justices. In the case of an appeal—that is, where there was a private prosecutor, who was bound to have some interest in the matter, e.g., as a blood-relation—this was not allowed, and the onus of proving his innocence was thrown ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... agreed with Kassim who said that he would take the full onus upon himself for not slaying the murderer, that if there were blame let it be upon his head. Then he spoke to Hunsa: "This has been decided upon, dog, that if thou confess, reveal to us information that is of value to our people, ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... assure you, my dear fellow, it's all right," he only threw the onus of suspicion on me by replying suavely, "My dear fellow, I assure you I never said ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair |
