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Categorical   /kˌætəgˈɑrɪkəl/  /kˌætəgˈɔrɪkəl/   Listen
Categorical

adjective
1.
Relating to or included in a category or categories.  Synonym: categoric.
2.
Not modified or restricted by reservations.  Synonyms: categoric, flat, unconditional.  "A flat refusal"



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"Categorical" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Politik," i., p 2.] 54 The man whose high and responsible lot is to steer the fortunes of a great State must be able to disregard the verdict of his contemporaries; but he must be all the clearer as to the motives of his own policy, and keep before his eyes, with the full weight of the categorical imperative, the teaching of Kant: "Act so that the maxim of thy will can at the same time hold good as a principle of universal ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... challenger, opened the debate, and proposed that the question be met in a categorical form, thus:—Were the laws of the different states which make gambling a Penitentiary offence unjust and impolitic? Were they formed in good ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... played by the theory of evolution in this view of ethics? So far as I can discern, the ethical system of the Stoics, which is essentially intuitive, and reverences the categorical imperative as strongly as that of any later moralists, might have been just what it was if they had held any other theory; whether that of special creation, on the one side, or that of the eternal ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... insult, and frequently allowed Greek subjects to treat them with wanton and unprovoked injury. The remonstrances of the English minister were unavailing, the wrongs of English citizens were unredressed. At last, the British foreign minister determined to make a categorical demand for justice, and in case of refusal to take reprisals. The demands made by Lord Palmerston were for satisfaction ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Aristotle's Organon. He wrote a double commentary on the [Greek: Eisagogae] and commentaries on the Categories and the De Interpretatione of Aristotle, and on the Topica of Cicero. He also composed original treatises on the categorical and hypothetical syllogism, on Division and on Topical Differences. He adapted the arithmetic of Nicomachus, and his textbook on music, founded on various Greek authorities, was in use at Oxford and Cambridge until modern times. His five theological Tractates ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... stating it. Thought, like melodies, should run on the line of the least resistance. In the following pages I have eschewed all mystifying polysyllabic verbiage, and as Mark Twain once said, have "confined myself to a categorical statement of facts unincumbered by an obscuring accumulation of ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger

... loves collusiveness: nothing short of the categorical will satisfy us! What I said to Mr. Purdy evidently appeased him, for he seized my hand and ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... find it impossible to go on without remarking to you how direct this Empire literature is, going to the point without any details, a characteristic, as it seems to me, of a primitive time. The literature of that period holds a place between the summaries of chapters in Telemaque and the categorical reports of a public office. It had ideas, but refrained from expressing them, it was so scornful! It was observant, but would not communicate its observations to any one, it was so miserly! Nobody but Fouche ever mentioned what he had observed. 'At that time,' to quote the words of one of the most ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... fatigue, but from intoxication. To get rid of him was no easy matter, and the employment of stratagem became necessary. What the stratagem was, I shall pass over; I will only say that it was not in accordance with any recognised form of the categorical imperative. However, the ruse succeeded, and now, as I have said, the car was empty. Thus were concluded the prolegomena to that great act of altruism which was ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... should triumphe againe on the Stage, and have his bones newe embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at severall times) who, in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding!' There is no categorical record of the production of a second piece in continuation of the theme, but such a play quickly followed; for a third piece, treating of the concluding incidents of Henry VI's reign, attracted much attention on the stage early ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... necessarily implies a supernatural agent to bring it about, is impossible, and the entire controversy as to whether miracles have ever been actually performed is a foregone conclusion. Modern Atheism, while it does not venture in categorical terms to affirm that no God exists, definitely asserts that there is no evidence that there is one. It follows that, if there is no evidence that there is a God, there can be no evidence that a miracle ever has been performed, for the very idea of a miracle implies ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... dear erratic master has managed for years and years to cultivate the farm of La Haye and to bring up my godson in the fear of the Lord and the practice of land surveying is a proof that the late Mr. Matthew Arnold was hopelessly wrong in his categorical declaration that ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... inspiration of the Bible and the Divinity of Christ." "Destroy these and they think the world will become vulgar and materialized, losing not only the surest sanction of morals, but ... the spiritual aspiration and tendencies," &c. [7] "To these gloomy forebodings I venture to return a positive and categorical denial ... Scepticism has been the great sweetener of modern life." [8] How he justifies his denial by maintaining that morality can hold its own when reduced to a physical science; that the "result of advancing civilization" and of the materialistic ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... teachings, but this agreement is restricted to some principles of vital significance in their doctrine, which have reference almost exclusively to a definite practice; probably to a complete setting to work of the consciousness of duty, which is what Kant claims to do with his categorical imperative: "An unreasoning, though not unreasonable, obedience to an experienced, imperious sense of duty, leaving the result to God; and this I am disposed to ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... objection to giving a categorical answer occurred, as I have been assured, in regard to a more profound question. A party travelling on a railway got into deep discussion on theological questions. Like Milton's spirits in Pandemonium, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... is affirmed or understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same. This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me; in other words a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative; that the maxim (regula maxima, or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... objectively as possible, avoiding metaphysical cobwebs and giving the ego and non-ego a wide berth. I shall content myself in most cases with merely pointing out the doctrine apparently preached by Goethe (reminding you now and then that even his own seemingly categorical dogmas were to him merely temporary forms of thought) and shall prefer to let much justify its existence as an integral part of the living whole rather than to expel the life by dissection and to examine the dead parts through ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... reconciled, in appearance, to a Church whose truth, once acknowledged by him, convicted him of sacrilege and of dishonour. This ticklish job could best be performed, not by a staid priest of the old Gallican school, who might have insisted upon a categorical retractation of errors, upon his making amends and upon his doing penance; not by a young Ultramontane of the new school, against whom M. de Talleyrand would at once have been very prejudiced, but by a priest who was a man of the world, well-read, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... interests of all concerned, and soon afterward I made my first appearance in Pianura. My success was greater than we had foreseen; for I threw myself into the part with such zest that every one was taken in, and even Don Serafino required the most categorical demonstration to convince him that I was not my own brother. The illusion I produced was, however, not without its inconveniences; for, among the ladies who thronged to see the young Mirandolino, were several who desired a closer acquaintance with him; and one of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... knowledge of it, since whatever we can find out about it is based on the Criticism exercised by Pure Reason and not on experience; and the information which Pure Reason gives us about the soul is not categorical but antinomial; and by the time medicine gets into these transcendental regions, consciously or unconsciously, it ceases to be of much practical use in curing 'pernicious anaemia' or any similarly ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... as this brought back a roar. The British envoy was ordered to demand an explicit and categorical reply to the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... do not demand more than your training gives you a right to expect. Often, instead of the direct categorical question as to guilt, we must gradually draw out a narrative of the events in question; we must patiently help the child to state the facts and to see the values of exactitudes. Without preaching or posing we must bring the events ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... not ask you for a categorical explanation of your movements, Mr. Lorimer," she says lightly—"I'm sure I hope you ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... man, but as an authour[1023]; and I give his opinions of men and books, faithfully, whether they agree with my own or not. I do admit, that there always appeared to me something of affectation in Mr. Harris's manner of writing; something of a habit of clothing plain thoughts in analytick and categorical formality. But all his writings are imbued with learning; and all breathe that philanthropy and amiable disposition, which ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... forwarded the addresses of the ship's matron and of other persons who had been engaged on board at the date. To these Alwyn went in the course of time. A categorical description of the clothes of the dead truant, the colour of her hair, and other things, extinguished for ever all hope of a mistake ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... perhaps in its implications. And yet it could hardly have been more perilous than the Roman orthodox religion which insisted only upon formal correctness, seldom upon ethical decorum, or than Stoicism with its categorical imperative, which could restrain only those who were already convinced. The Stoic pretence of appealing to a natural law could be proved illogical at first examination, when driven to admit that "nature" must be explained by ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... that was wanted was to show them the means by which their ends could be reached." ("English literature and society in the eighteenth century", London, 1904, page 187.) And Kant supposed that every man would find the "categorical imperative" in his consciousness, when he came to sober reflexion, and that all would have the same qualifications to follow it. But if continual variations, great or small, are going on in human nature, it is the duty of ethics to make allowance ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... majesty the King of Prussia in an autograph letter to accept my resignation," said Mueller, evasively; "I want, above all, a categorical reply whether I must remain ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... is impossible to say, for I never before heard of such a thing as that any public body should "ajourn." They do commonly adjourn; and if, perchance, this should be what you mean, and you shall write me so, I will do my best to give you a categorical answer. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... this emergency arises (provoking most likely an European war), and which will arise very probably when we shall be at Balmoral and Lord John in another part of Scotland? The Queen expects from your foresight that you have contemplated this possibility, and requires a categorical answer as to what you would do in the event supposed." Strangely enough, to this pointblank question, the Foreign Secretary appeared to be unable to reply. The whole matter, he said, was extremely complicated, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... to this day the question who is the chief discoverer of the law of the conservation of energy is not susceptible of a categorical answer that would satisfy all philosophers. It is generally held that the first choice lies between Joule and Mayer. Professor Tyndall has expressed the belief that in future each of these men will be equally remembered in connection with this ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... von Rosen, 'O, much to say! Much to say that I would rather not, and much to leave unsaid that I would rather say. For I am like St. Paul, your Highness, and always wish to do the things I should not. Well! to be categorical - that is the word? - I took the Prince your order. He could not credit his senses. "Ah," he cried "dear Madame von Rosen, it is not possible - it cannot be I must hear it from your lips. My wife is a poor girl misled, she is only silly, she is not cruel." "MON PRINCE," said I, "a girl - and therefore ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer—and I have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear, simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative (having explained beforehand the meaning of the words), she would have said, "The Sermon ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... excursions, any infraction of the national integrity or any abatement of the national prestige has come to figure as an insufferable infringement on his personal liberty and on those principles of humanity that make up the categorical articles of the secular creed of Christendom. The fact may be patent on reflection that the common man's substantial interest in the national integrity is slight and elusive, and that in sober common sense the national prestige has something ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... not may be considered to be an adverb, nor a conjunction, and none a noun, these two words, the direct categorical affirmative, and the direct categorical negative, are referable to none of the current parts of speech. Accurate grammar places them ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... eyes in hopes that my visual organs had deceived me, but with as little success. On looking to the other side of the road, I observed a mason at work repairing the opposite wall with some very suspicious-looking stones, and I immediately crossed over, and commenced a categorical examination of the supposed delinquent. I inquired whether he could explain to me the cause of the removal of the ancient cross, which used to be in the field exactly opposite to where we were then standing; but he said that, although ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... time subsequently to his contemplated action. Hence there is no obligatory force in this ethic. Prudential motives, suggestions of expediency, abundance of counsel, if you will; but we miss the note of authority, the commanding voice, the categorical imperative, the solemn injunction, "Thou canst, therefore thou must". Indeed, it seems difficult to see how one could convince a man on hedonistic or utilitarian grounds that a course of conduct on which ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... questions was about the so-called spurious books; had he written them or not? He said that they were all genuine: so I now knew what to think of the critics Zenodotus and Aristarchus and all their lucubrations. Having got a categorical answer on that point, I tried him next on his reason for starting the "Iliad" with the wrath of Achilles. He said he had no exquisite reason; it just came into ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... reference to the effect and the means of attaining it; or they determine the will only, whether it is adequate to the effect or not. The former would be hypothetical imperatives, and contain mere precepts of skill; the latter, on the contrary, would be categorical, and would alone be practical laws. Thus maxims are principles, but not imperatives. Imperatives themselves, however, when they are conditional (i.e., do not determine the will simply as will, but only in respect to a desired effect, that is, when they are hypothetical ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant

... Madame. But since you ask the question and require a categorical answer, I will make my confession. I have never been loved. But you will observe, as an extenuating circumstance, that I am young. I do not give ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... grave refutations are very amusing. It is astonishing to see how crank-proof sundry minds are. Everything seems to them on a dead level of categorical proposition. They walk up to every statue with their measuring-line of Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque Prioris, and measure them off with equal solemnity, telling you severely that this nose is far longer than the classic rule admits, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... treats everything that belongs to his native soil. The splendid practice afforded by translating from one language into another, which so improves and fertilises one's artistic feeling for one's own tongue, is, in the case of German, never conducted with that fitting categorical strictness and dignity which would be above all necessary in dealing with an undisciplined language. Of late, exercises of this kind have tended to decrease ever more and more: people are satisfied to know the foreign classical ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... aspiring brain For Study still there lies a craving, And what is won against the grain Is never really worth the having; This boasted Categorical Imperative is clearly vicious,— Pastors and masters, one and all, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... entertained that the success of Don Carlos would lead to the re-assertion of clerical preponderance, would destroy liberty of conscience as understood in most European nations, and would set up a political priesthood. The manifesto of Don Carlos does not deal with those points in the full and categorical manner desirable. I was told there were two parties in the Carlist camp, the clerical and—for want of a better name, let it be called—the non-clerical The former, the Basques, and those who gave Carlism its great primary impulsion, were as zealously ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... subjected to the usual onslaught from the strong-minded. A small but formidable committee entered my office one morning and demanded a categorical declaration of my principles. What my views on the subject were, I knew very well; they were clear and decided; and yet, I hesitated to declare them! It wasn't a temptation of Saint Anthony—that is, turned the other way—and the belligerent attitude ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... at him with sudden critical interest, missing an emanation from him. It was his enthusiasm. A cheerfulness had come upon him instead. Also what he said had something categorical in it, something crisp and arranged. He himself received benefit from the consideration of it, and she was aware that if this result followed, her own "conversion" was of ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... social questions, with morals in the usual sense and the more rigid principles enacted into the spoken and printed law, but they have also become closely connected with religion and theological elements. Especially is this true in the ethics of barbarous and savage peoples, who accredit the "categorical imperative" to some supernatural power, as we are to see in a later section. The one point that comes out clearly is that the systems of conduct and duties have evolved so as to be very different among various races, and that ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... mere framework, a skeleton of belief such as the Apostles' Creed was capable of no such reconstruction. One either believed it, or one did not. Unless—Did anybody ever believe any one thing in its unmodified entirety? Did anybody ever give a categorical denial to any clause of any creed? That was the worst of the whole matter. Half-doubts and half-beliefs crisscrossed and interlaced at every point. One day's doctrine was the next day's error. It was well-nigh impossible to draw a straight line, no matter ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... object whatsoever. They may be said to condition the object in general. Their principles condition the process of making something out of the manifold of sensation. But similarly, every moral experience recognizes what Kant calls the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative is the law of reasonableness or impartiality in conduct, requiring the individual to act on a maxim which he can "will to be law universal." No state of desire or situation ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... evident that a large proportion of the Assistant Inquisitors were inclined to jib at the word "responsible"; but the young Captain insisted upon each man giving a categorical reply to the question; and in the end, stimulated further by the stern looks of the Grand Inquisitor, they ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... had to take a brother in as a partner. General Twiggs resented this, but the merchant again affirmed it, and gave names. As soon as General Twiggs reached his office, he instructed his adjutant-general, Colonel Bliss—who told me this—to address a categorical note of inquiry to Major Waggaman. The major very frankly stated the facts as they had arisen, and insisted that the firm of Perry Seawell & Co. had enjoyed a large patronage, but deserved it richly ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... capital, but the Russian Minister at Vienna, as already stated, succeeded in submitting this most reasonable request verbally to the Acting Foreign Minister, who simply said that he would submit it to Count Berchtold, but that he could predict with assurance a categorical refusal. Later on that day (July 25) Russia was definitely advised that no ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... Roger and I were concerned, our belief was based after all chiefly on supposition; and so craftily had the whole scheme been phrased and manoeuvred that, if you got down to categorical testimony, even Blodgett and Davie Paine would have been hard put to it to prove anything culpable against the other party. Actually we were guilty of ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... Church is built," and "Awake, thou that sleepest." On these considerations it may become intelligible that to some hearers Mr. Paine's cadences have seemed unsatisfactory, their ears having missed the positive categorical assertion of finality which the 6/4 cadence alone can give. To go further into this subject would take us far ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... made no categorical reply. They glanced at the wrecked pantry window, and they looked with more intentness at the long sliding footprints which led away, down the half-bare sand-slope. Then ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... corn-fields and meadows, not pretermitting phatie-fields in full blossom—a part of rural landscape which, to my utter astonishment, has escaped the pen of poet, and the brush of painter; although I will risk my reputation as a man of pure and categorical taste, if a finer ingredient in the composition of a landscape could be found than a field of Cork-fed phaties or Moroky blacks in full bloom, allowing a man to judge by the pleasure they confer upon the eye, and therefore ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... Press? Let the alien toff take his pick. When the Dollar dictates shall mere patriots kick? Our hills and our forests? If Oil-kings appear, And want them—for cash—as preserves for their deer. Down, down with mere pride—so they're down with the dust! Mammon's word is the great categorical Must! The Dollar's Almighty, the Millionnaire's King! Sell, sell anyone who'll bid high—anything. What offers for—London? Who bids for—the Thames? Cracks go, Cliveden follows. What Briton condemns? Cash rules. For the Dollar-King ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various

... needs must be, you shall be in this manner, and not in that other. The desire for beauty, with its more potent negative, the aversion to ugliness, has, like the sense of right and wrong, the force of a categorical imperative. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... Christian Science begins—and, for the matter of that, ends—with the categorical statement that the one and only Reality is Mind, Goodness, God, all three of which terms it uses synonymously and interchangeably. So much being granted, the rest follows "in a concatenation according"; the {125} possible permutations are many—the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... o'clock on the evening of July 23d, Austria sent an ultimatum to Serbia, presenting eleven demands and stipulating that categorical replies must be delivered before six o'clock on the evening of July 25th. Although the language in which the ultimatum was couched was humiliating to Serbia, the answer was duly ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... and women. She enters marriage unprepared for the realities of conjugal life, and hence incapable of understanding either herself or her husband. When pregnancy comes to such a wife, the old seclusion taboos fall upon her like a categorical imperative. She is overwhelmed with embarrassment at a normal and natural biological process which can hardly be classified as "romantic." Such an attitude is neither conducive to the eugenic choice ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... am the very pattern of a modern Major-Gineral. I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral; I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical; I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical, About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news, With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse. I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert

... when Robbins found him. This vague and unsubstantial rumour, which Paterson had not even taken the trouble to report officially to the Governor when he heard it, was the only incident with which Baudin was connected that gave King any cause to doubt his perfect good faith; and Baudin's categorical denial of the allegation is fully confirmed by his diary and correspondence—now available for study—which contain no particle of evidence to suggest that the planting of a settlement, or the choice of a site for one, was a purpose ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... intransigence, when in the introduction to his bibliography for the Library of Congress in 1903 he wrote that Medina's affirmation that printing took place in 1593 "loses all validity in the face of the categorical statement of F. Alonso Fernandez." [51] Medina did not comment further in his Adiciones y Ampliaciones [52] of 1904, yet when the same year Perez and Gueemes [53] published their additions to and continuation of Medina, bringing his bibliography down to 1850, they ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous

... riddle to Leigh's mind. On the contrary, he had met his type before and knew it well; but with Miss Wycliffe the case was different. He recognized now the reason of Cardington's inability to describe her, for a categorical account of her features, or of what is commonly called her "good points," would have left the essential quality untouched. Yet this quality was the woman herself, and had fired Leigh's blood with a fever of longing that made him reckless of his judgment. In fact, he was ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... should begin to ask for explanations, we might receive forced replies, and our surrejoinders would also have to be forced. That is a dangerous path which I do not like to tread. Allocations of troops are things for which one does not take the other country to task, asking for categorical explanations, but against which one takes counter precautions with equal reserve and circumspection. I cannot, therefore, give an authentic declaration concerning the motives of this Russian allocation, but, having been familiar through a generation with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... fire in the Temple of Vesta was looked upon as a categorical warning that the behavior of the Romans or of some part of them or the conduct of the government was so displeasing to the gods that the Empire would come to a sudden end unless matters were at once corrected. All Romans believed that as implicitly as they believed that food would keep ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... virtues' CATalogue along; No CATaplasm could lengthen out her years, Though mourning friends shed CATaracts of tears. Once loud and strong her CATachist-like voice It dwindled to a CATcall's squeaking noise; Most CATegorical her virtues shone, By CATenation join'd each one to one;— But a vile CATchpoll dog, with cruel bite, Like CATling's cut, her strength disabled quite; Her CATerwauling pierced the heavy air, As CATaphracts their arms through legions bear; 'Tis vain! as CATerpillars drag away Their lengths, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... mildly and impartially, and sent a telegraphic dispatch to the viceroy at Milan to inquire what was to be done with Andreas Hofer, inasmuch as the sentence of the court-martial had not been passed unanimously. An answer was returned very soon. It contained the categorical order that Andreas Hofer should be ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... the lady, "is this language to a clergyman? Mr Supple is a man of sense, and gives you the best advice; and the whole world, I believe, will concur in his opinion; but I must tell you I expect an immediate answer to my categorical proposals. Either cede your daughter to my disposal, or take her wholly to your own surprizing discretion, and then I here, before Mr Supple, evacuate the garrison, and renounce you ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... to himself, placidly. 'This girl's quite too unreservedly categorical! She eliminates modality with a vengeance!' 'Well, Selah,' he said in his calmest and most deliberate manner, 'we must take a great many points into consideration before deciding on that matter.' And then he went on to tell her ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... this omission, and again demanding from him a distinct and categorical answer, he, after a brief consultation with his people, replied that his talk was made and concluded, and he did not comprehend why it was that I wanted to open the subject anew. But, as I continued to press him for an answer, ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... behaviour of his lordship, who, though jealous of most people, had left him alone with me in my bedchamber, observing, that he must neither have great confidence in his virtue, or a very bad opinion of him otherwise. In short, I found means to defer the categorical answer till next day, and invited the duke and his lordship to dine with me to-morrow. My wise yoke-fellow seemed to doubt the sincerity of this invitation, and was very much disposed to keep possession of my house. But, by the persuasion of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... unwilling to believe," he wrote, "that her Majesty's government will press for a categorical answer upon what appears to him to be only a partial record, in the making up of which he has been allowed no part. He is reluctant to volunteer his view of the case, with no assurance that her Majesty's government will consent to hear him; yet this much he directs ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... assertion "(4) is true" is equivalent to "No xy exist." Hence the Contradictory to "All xy are z" may be expressed as the Alternative Proposition "Either some xy are not-z, or no xy exist," but not as the Categorical Proposition "Some y ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll

... Modern German Emperor, Omniscient and omnipotent, I ne'er give way to temper, or If now and then I run a-muck in a Malay-like fashion, As there's method in my madness, so there's purpose in my passion. 'Tis my aim to manage everything in order categorical— My fame as Cosmos-maker I intend shall be historical. I know they call me Paul Pry, say I'm fussy and pragmatical— But that's because sheer moonshine always hates the mathematical. I'm not content to "play the King" with an imperial pose in it— Whatever is marked "Private" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various

... made by Walt Whitman, and in a few of his finest lyrics, such as Out of the Cradle endlessly rocking, one gets the perfection of structure and form. But he spoilt his vehicle by a careless diffuseness, by a violent categorical tendency, and by other faults which may be called faults of breeding rather than faults of art—a ghastly volubility, an indiscretion, a lust for description rather than suggestion; and thus he has numbered no followers, and ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Washington on 'leave' for two or three days. One night, at a party, I became utterly bewildered in an attempt to converse, after long desuetude, with a fascinating woman. I went stumbling on, amazing her more and more, until finally I covered myself with glory by the categorical statement that in my opinion General McClellan could 'never get across the Peninsula without a fattle; I beg pardon, Madam! what I mean to say is, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... argument two systems of incompatible notations, idealism and realism, that we succeed in enunciating the parallelist thesis. This reasoning went home, all the more as it was adapted to the usual form of discussions between philosophers. But a more positive and more categorical proof is to be found all through "Matter and Memory". From the precise example of recollection analysed to its lowest depths, Mr Bergson completely grasps and measures the divergence between soul and body, between mind and matter. Then, putting into practice ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... showing: for if that critical portal of pure reason had indeed been sufficient, as it gave itself out to be, for all the purposes of a human philosophy, what need was there of the "practical back-door" which, at the categorical command of conscience, was afterwards laid open to all men in the "Metaphysic of Ethics?" As little will you allow your philosophical need to be satisfied with any thing you can get from SCHELLING; for however well it sounds to "throw yourself from the transcendental ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... thoughts to the subject of idolatry, which was severely censured at the missionary meeting. I cross- examined my Father very closely as to the nature of this sin, and pinned him down to the categorical statement that idolatry consisted in praying to anyone or anything but God himself. Wood and stone, in the words of the hymn, were peculiarly liable to be bowed down to by the heathen in their blindness. I pressed my Father further on this subject, and he ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... to clearness, the above statement is made categorical. It requires, however, to be qualified. It is not quite certain, that, at the formation of the confederacy, there were eight clans, though there is positive proof of the existence of seven. Neither is it certain, that, at ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... knowledge of French and Italian literature too; but the philosophy of Kant and the writings of Goethe and Schiller roused him to greater enthusiasm. From Kant he learnt that the guiding principle of conduct was not happiness, but the 'categorical imperative' of duty; from Goethe he drew such hopefulness as gleams occasionally through his despondent utterances on the progress of the human race. He translated Goethe's novel, Wilhelm Meister, in 1823, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... in the same formal, argumentative manner. But Mr. Allgood was getting jaded; the stretch of attention required by the reasoning of Mr. Goose was telling upon his patience; so he slided away to talk with one who spoke in less categorical style: not so ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... a categorical answer," I remarked. "Come, Emily, tell me, is there no one for whom you have more regard than for those unhappy gentlemen whom you refused?" I saw a gentle blush rise to her cheek. "Well," I said, "I shall ask Oliver Farwell to come and stay here. He keeps away far ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... conversation of 1911, the Belgian officer said to the British officer: 'You could only land in our country with our consent'; and in 1913 Sir Edward Grey gave the Belgian Government a categorical assurance that no British Government would violate the neutrality of Belgium and that 'so long as it was not violated by any other power we should certainly not send troops ourselves into ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... problem, therefore, exclusively regards the intuitive perception of the qualities of matter. Now, says Hamilton, "if we interrogate consciousness concerning the point in question, the response is categorical and clear. In the simplest act of perception I am conscious of myself as a perceiving subject, and of an external reality as the object perceived; and I am conscious of both existences in the same indivisible amount of intuition."[288] Again he says, "I have frequently ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... Mrs. J. G. Phelps Stokes for having said, at Barnard College, that the present government would probably be overturned by the ballot. In answer to this, the Federation's organ said, "Mrs. Stokes is a woman of intelligence and doubtless knows that States are not overturned by ballots." Here is a categorical denial on the part of an organ representing the most powerful privileged element in the country, of the possibility of peaceful political revolution, which can only mean that if a majority desires such a peaceful revolutionary change, the minority ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... not overrate the value of this feminine worldliness in judging the Germans. This effeminate categorical imperative of etiquette has not influenced them greatly as yet. But on the other hand, one must claim for the amenities of life that they have their value, that they are, after all, the external decorations of an inward discipline. It is not necessarily a fine disdain of material things, but rather ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... of appearances by means of intellectual intuitions, mystical visions, feeling, or faith, i.e., through the emotional and instinctive parts of our nature. It is the presence of the moral law or categorical imperative within us that points to a spiritual world beyond the phenomenal causal order and assures us of our freedom, immortality, and God. It is because we possess this deeper source of truth in practical reason that freedom and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions. Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heard to the categorical question which ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... only an expression of the decay, the last collapse of life, the Chinese spirit of Koenigsberg. Quite the contrary is demanded by the most profound laws of self-preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man find his own virtue, his own categorical imperative. A nation goes to pieces when it confounds its duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing works a more complete and penetrating disaster than every "impersonal" duty, every sacrifice before the ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... state, produces nothing but an unlimited desire and an absolute want. The first fruits, therefore, that he reaps in the world of spirits, are cares and fear—both operations of the reason; not of sensuousness, but of a reason that mistakes its object and applies its categorical imperative to matter. All unconditional systems of happiness are fruits of this tree, whether they have for their object the present day or the whole of life, or what does not make them any more respectable, the whole of eternity, for their object. An unlimited duration of existence ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... never felt sufficient authority to form, even in my inmost conscience, a categorical judgment on so complex a phenomenon as the French Revolution. To-day I find it even more difficult to form a brief judgement. Causes, facts, and consequences seem to me to ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... repeated Madame von Rosen. "O, much to say! Much to say that I would rather not, and much to leave unsaid that I would rather say. For I am like St. Paul, your Highness, and always wish to do the things I should not. Well! to be categorical—that is the word?—I took the Prince your order. He could not credit his senses. 'Ah,' he cried, 'dear Madame von Rosen, it is not possible—it cannot be—I must hear it from your lips. My wife is a poor girl misled, she is only silly, she is not cruel.' 'Mon Prince,' said I, 'a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... public opinion derived from the vital contact of ideas and interests, and taking shape in a healthy and normal distribution of parties? Is thought free? Has merit its reward? Is there any unity of national purpose, transcending party divisions? If it were necessary to give a categorical "Yes" or "No" to these questions, the answer would be "No." Sane energizing politics, and the sovereign ascendancy of a sane public opinion, are absolutely unattainable in Ireland or anywhere else without Home Rule. It is all the more to the credit of Irishmen that, in the face of ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... that every risk of telepathy is done away with? It would perhaps be rash to make a categorical assertion. The power and extent of telepathy are as yet, we cannot too often repeat, indefinite, indiscernible, untraceable and unlimited. We have but quite lately discovered it, we know only that its existence can no longer be denied; but, as ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... conductor. For some of our quaintly vicious contemporaries, we have the decline of the Roman Empire and the reign of Henry III. of France. But there are others not quite so vicious, who yet cannot look upon the world with perfect gravity, who have never taken the categorical imperative to wife, and have more taste for what is comfortable than for what is magnanimous and high; and I can imagine some of these casting their lot in the court of Blois during the last twenty years of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... way of proving the falsity of it (which he says is demonstrable), he bids Dr. Latham "resolve this sentence: All men are either two-legged, one-legged, or no-legged:" and adds, "It cannot be done." I may inform him that the three categorical propositions, "A man is two-legged, or he is {630} one-legged, or he is no-legged," connected by their several copulas, are equivalent to and co-extensive with the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various

... greatest inconvenience. I have forgotten or lost my spectacles. Now, in this twilight, with the very poor eyesight that years of labor have left me, it will be absolutely impossible for me to read this most important letter—and an immediate answer is expected—most simple and categorical—a yes or a no. Times presses; it is really most annoying. If," added Rodin, laying great stress on his words, without looking at Djalma, but so as the prince might remark it; "if only some ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... of Arsene Lupin was not doubted by anyone. He announced it himself, in categorical terms, in a reply to Mon. Bouvier on the day following his attempted escape. The judge having made a jest about the affair, Arsene was annoyed, and, firmly eyeing the judge, ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... convinced of the ultimate success of its highest ideals of full independence and liberty. Our silenced and oppressed nation has no other answer to all attempts at a change of the constitution than a cool and categorical refusal, because we know that these attempts are nothing except products of an ever-increasing strain, helplessness and ruin. We do not believe to-day in any more promises given and not kept, for experience has taught us to judge ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... upon the highway, which ought to be sacred to the peace of God and the king, and to noble ladies and inoffensive pilgrims. It is one of a list of many questions which, my vow accomplished, I will not fail to put to him; ay, and expecting an answer, as they say, prompt and categorical." ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... trouble against which he had struggled for several days with all the energy of an independent artist, and which for some time systematized his celibacy, again oppressed him. He thought it time to put between "folly" and him the irreparability of his categorical resolution. So he replied to his little friend with his habitual gentleness, but in a tone of firmness, which already announced ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... the categories are. They are conceptions of an object in general, by means of which its intuition is contemplated as determined in relation to one of the logical functions of judgement. The following will make this plain. The function of the categorical judgement is that of the relation of subject to predicate; for example, in the proposition: "All bodies are divisible." But in regard to the merely logical use of the understanding, it still remains undetermined to which Of these two conceptions belongs the function Of subject ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... he built up the case against the accused man, classifying the points of evidence against him in categorical order for the benefit of the jury. The most important witness for the prosecution was a man known as James Hill, who had been in Sir Horace Fewbanks's employ as a butler. Hill's connection with the prisoner was in some aspects unfortunate, for himself, and ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... under certain conditions, to announce to Mrs. Prettyman her coming ejection from the cottage at Wittisham, was unprofessional enough, as he himself felt; but it was final and categorical. Conveying as it did a sort of tacit remonstrance, this refusal had an unfortunate effect, for it only served to rouse Mrs. de Tracy's formidable obstinacy. She had seized upon one point only in their numberless ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... categorical, to say the least. So on we went, past the charred ruins of one-time ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... of names is preferable. 'Categorical' properly means 'predicable' and 'hypothetical' is a mere ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... upon its mind that made it sullenly thoughtful; but the stars are coming out one after another overhead, and the sky will be all awake soon. A strange thing the life that goes on all night, is it not? The life of owlets, and mice, and beasts of prey, and bats, and stars," I said, with no very categorical arrangement, "and dreams, and flowers that don't go to sleep like the rest, but send out their scent all night long. Only those are gone now. There are no scents abroad, not even of the earth in ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... teste the farmyard and the fowl-run; and again, whatever force is connoted by those words must have been set agoing—by what? By Nature? Oh, most emphatically No! Nature has no law against immorality; there is no Categorical Imperative in Nature commanding us to be chaste or kindly or considerate or even just. We must go elsewhere if we are to look for teaching in the virtues. That is the fact that we must keep clearly before our minds when endeavouring to estimate at their proper value ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... Roman Catholics the abolition of their past grievances, and full security for the future exercise of their religion. They addressed this demand, which was moreover couched in threatening language, to the Duke of Bavaria, as the head of the Roman Catholics, and they insisted on an immediate and categorical answer. Maximilian might decide for or against them, still their point was gained; his concession, if he yielded, would deprive the Roman Catholic party of its most powerful protector; his refusal would arm ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... opposition should prevail, it would embark in it a very respectable proportion of the legislative body, whose influence would be united with his in supporting the propriety of his conduct in the public opinion. A direct and categorical negative has something in the appearance of it more harsh, and more apt to irritate, than the mere suggestion of argumentative objections to be approved or disapproved by those to whom they are addressed. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... this with the accounts in any one of the Four, he will find that it gives the fullest list of our Lord's appearances which has come down to us, and this, be it remembered, forming part of the most categorical declaration of what the Gospel is, to be found in the New ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... very well have answered me with a categorical 'No.' But since you do me the honour, Vera Vassilievna, of bestowing your particular friendship on me, you might have gilded your 'No' by saying that you loved another. That would have been sufficient for me, for I should never have asked you who, and your secret ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... given humanity so many glorious pages, which has but now, thanks to the humanists, added a new page, is it destined in very truth to be born anew, and become once more the language of the national culture of the whole of the Jewish people? It would be rash to reply with a categorical affirmative. ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... upon the Scripture parable; when an insufficient number of spectators presented themselves at the French comedy, she forthwith dispatched mounted messengers to numerous persons of rank and distinction, with a categorical demand to know why they had absented themselves, and a warning that henceforth a fine of fifty rubles would be exacted ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... occasion." This time he behaved more creditably, told "Belinda" that it was necessary for him to go to England, explained the inevitable delays and told how he should conduct himself until his return. He says that he asked no questions which would admit of a categorical answer—there was something of the lawyer in this wooing! He assured Miss Rebecca that such a question would one day be asked. In this letter she is called "Adinleb" and spoken of ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed

... then; promises came to him in single phrases lost in empty gossip. He collected what he wanted grain by grain from bushels of chaff. The whole sum of his new knowledge could have been expressed in a paragraph, took him a week to get, but was just what he wanted. If he had asked categorical questions, he would have received lies. If he had attempted to hurry matters, he would have ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... has notified the Upper House that no exemplification of the categorical plebiscitum will be favorably ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various

... all this, following the Palestinian Exemplar, he had from accurate copies furnished his own work with the Twelve Verses in dispute;—which is a categorical refutation of the statement frequently met with that the work of Victor of Antioch ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... the Categorical Imperative is correct and valuable so far as it goes. But then it does not go far enough. The full notion of what a man ought, is what he must do under pain of sin. Sin is more than folly, more than a breach of reason. It is mild reproach to a great criminal to tell him that he is a very foolish ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... The rich coal mines of Pinghsiang, being conveniently near, supplied the great Chinese Government arsenal of Hanyang with fuel; and since Japan had very little coal or iron of her own, she decided that it would be best to embrace as soon as possible the whole area of interests in one categorical demand—that is to claim a dominant share in the Hanyang arsenal, the Tayeh iron-mines and the Ping-hsiang collieries. [Footnote: The reader will observe, that the expression "Hanyehping enterprises" ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... Schleiermacher was bred among the devoted followers of Zinzendorf. Even the radicalism of Kant retained from the teaching of his pietistic youth the stringency of its ethic, the sense of the radical evil of human nature and of the categorical imperative of duty. It would be hard to find anything to surpass his testimony to the purity of character and spirit of his parents, or the beauty of the home life in which he was bred. Such facts as these made themselves felt both in ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... that my two compatriots Bignio and Fraulein Rabatinsky (now in Vienna) sang splendidly in the parts of the Landgrave Ludwig and the spiteful Landgravine Sophie, at the first performances of the Oratorio in Pest. Hence, if no categorical objections are raised against them by the worthy theatrical potentates, it would seem advisable and well to secure these singers for parts for which they have ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... put his grand council to the rout, and delivered himself from a multitude of impertinent advisers, despatched a categorical reply to the commanders of the invading squadron, wherein he asserted the right and title of their High Mightinesses the Lords States General to the province of New Netherlands, and trusting in the righteousness of his cause, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... helped him, and then ..." Here Miles looked down at his aunt, who looked up at him apprehensively. "I caught up with Miss Morton and the children, and walked back to Wren's End with them. There, Aunt Mary, that's a categorical history of my ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... written or read. The conversation, although earnest and free, was calm and courteous and kind on both sides. The Richmond party approached the subject rather indirectly, and at no time did they either make categorical demands or tender formal stipulations or absolute refusals. Nevertheless, during the conference, which lasted four hours, the several points at issue between the Government and the insurgents were distinctly raised and discussed, fully, intelligently, and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... whole inquiry, which it was almost impossible for me to conceal from men who saw me day by day, who heard my familiar conversation, who came perhaps for the express purpose of pumping me, and having a categorical yes or no to their questions,—how could I expect to say any thing about my actual, positive, present belief, which would be sustaining or consoling to such persons as were haunted already by doubts of their ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... was so pleased with this phrase that I repeated it lovingly. 'I stand to you, dear, in loco parentis. Now, I can't let you endanger your precious health by returning to town and Miss Latimer this winter. Let us be categorical. I go to Florence; you go ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... brave, and I do not care for dogs. Besides, I do not often walk so far as this; but I felt the valley stifling to-day," answered Leam, in her matter-of-fact, categorical way. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... at once accepted it. In direct contradiction to Lord Mansfield he maintained that his doctrine was not the law of England. He had considered the noble lord's "paper," and had not found it very intelligible. He begged to propose four questions to the noble and learned lord, to which he required categorical answers, that their lordships might know precisely the points they had to discuss. The questions were submitted, and Lord Mansfield, instead of meeting them, "with most abject soothings," as Horace Walpole gleefully says, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... could hardly expect a categorical 'yes' or 'no.' We understand that your position requires you to be non-committal; and you, of course, understand that we newspaper men interpret a refusal to speak as an answer in the affirmative. Thank you very much for the interview you have given us. And I ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott

... the harmony of Shelley's circle; but it is possible that there were deeper reasons for the abrupt departure which he made from York with his wife and her sister in November, 1811. One of his biographers asserts with categorical precision that Shelley had good cause to resent Hogg's undue familiarity with Harriet, and refers to a curious composition, published by Hogg as a continuation of Goethe's "Werther", but believed by Mr. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... are to describe correctly the natural course and logical evolution of myth. Even with respect to the special evolution of myth in a separate people, unmixed with others, while it is normal in what may be termed its general form and categorical phases, yet like all natural objects and phenomena, and much more in all which concerns the human mind, there are variations in its forms, and it attains ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... very idle assertion that "the species of bears are not numerous," every idea put forth in the above categorical declaration is the very reverse of ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... Leibnitz's qualifying praeter ipsum intellectum, and in the same sense, in which the position was understood by Hartley and Condillac: and then what Hume had demonstratively deduced from this concession concerning cause and effect, will apply with equal and crushing force to all the other eleven categorical forms [27], and the logical functions corresponding to them. How can we make bricks without straw;—or build without cement? We learn all things indeed by occasion of experience; but the very facts so learned force us inward on the antecedents, that must be presupposed ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... continue to oppose obstacles by perseverance and patience, and my recall should rather be the result of cool policy than of resentment. I am somewhat inclined to think, that it may become politic to suspend it on the reply of the Court to a demand of a categorical answer. Unless the Minister's system should change, (for they still give me hopes) it might perhaps also be proper for me to consult with Dr Franklin and Mr Adams on the subject, and send Congress the result. For this purpose, I submit to Congress the propriety of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... normal. For the deserted bride, alone in the desolate best sitting-room, laid her head upon her arms and laughed and laughed. She had made one cautious descent to the ground floor in search of diversion, and meeting Jimmie, she found it. After a conversation strictly categorical upon his side and widely misleading upon hers, she had gone up stairs again and halted in the upper hall just long ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... Lord Suckfist in manner as followeth. My lord, and you my masters, if the iniquity of men were as easily seen in categorical judgment as we can discern flies in a milkpot, the world's four oxen had not been so eaten up with rats, nor had so many ears upon the earth been nibbled away so scurvily. For although all that my adversary hath spoken be of a very soft and downy truth, in so much as concerns ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... note lies in the last half dozen words and proceeds. It remains to be seen what answer will be made to this categorical demand. The general opinion in the United States appears to be that it will not be a refusal. Germany, it is thought, will begin by making concessions enough to prevent the abrupt conclusion of conversations, and will finally ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... no light upon the future movements of Gallia, and Rosette was disposed apparently to evade, or at least to postpone, the subject. When, therefore, Lieutenant Procope was about to press his inquiries in a more categorical form, Servadac, thinking it advisable not prematurely to press the little savant too far, interrupted him by asking the professor how he accounted for the earth having suffered so little from such ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... enjoyed, of judging them by other standards, and in other surroundings than those amidst which they came into existence. In the same way, Emerson's "English Traits" is an American thing, and it gives categorical reasons why American things should be. And what is an American novel except a novel treating of persons, places, and ideas from an American point of view? The point of view is the point, not the thing ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... at least, that it should be mentioned here rather than elsewhere, in that the work does not pretend to be a categorical guide to even the more important sights of London, but merely that it makes mention of those sights and scenes, places and peoples, more or less intimately associated with the ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... to sail on the 15th of August, and on the eve of that day I had no reason to think that Captain Len Guy had repented him of his categorical refusal. Indeed, I had made up my mind to the disappointment, and had no longer any angry feeling about it. When Captain Len Guy and myself met on the quay, we took no notice of each other; nevertheless, ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... book is to be sought in the point of view of the writer rather than in a sequence of chapters developing a single theme and arriving at categorical conclusions. Literature in a civilization like ours, which is trying to be both sophisticated and democratic at the same moment of time, has so many sources and so many manifestations, is so much involved with our social background, and is ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... legalist—with his conception of God as the righteous Judge dispensing rewards and punishments, the "Great Taskmaster" in whose vineyard we are ordered to labour; of the Gospel as "the new law," and of the sanction of duty as a "categorical imperative"—will never find it easy to sympathise with those whose favourite words are St. John's triad—light, life, and love, and who find these the most suitable names to express what they know ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... he gave the Entente Powers "most categorical assurances of a steady determination to carry on the policy of neutrality in the form of most sincere benevolence towards them. The new Ministry," he added, "adopts M. Zaimis's repeated declarations of Greece's friendly attitude ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... cases; whereas two cases never were, since the beginning of the world, exactly alike; and he would be capable, where he thought spirit and vigor necessary, to draw a circle round the persons he treated with, and to insist upon a categorical answer before they went out of it, because he had read, in the Roman history, that once upon a time some Roman ambassador, did so. No; a certain degree of learning may help, but no degree of learning will ever make ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... were, indeed, fully aware, from a very early age, of his feelings, and could not but be continuously conscious that we were under the eye of a father governed by the loftiest and purest motives, and devoting himself without stint to what he regarded as his duty. He was a living 'categorical imperative.' 'Did you ever know your father do a thing because it was pleasant?' was a question put to my brother, when he was a small boy, by his mother. She has apparently recorded it for the sake of the childish answer: 'Yes, once—when he married you.' But we were ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... afield; moreover, since the most glaring differences of opinion usually crop up precisely on this subject, I could not avoid the dangerous ground on which, according to Goethe's profound saying, the categorical imperative and the authority of the man who pronounces it, form the last court of appeal. Or if some one, with a liking for gaudy paint and iridescent rags, should prefer a puppet show to the living figures of the piece, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... set out to make a categorical list of the things that existed or were made for our amusement in Palestine, it would, I think, consist of no more than four items, viz.: sea-bathing, military sports, sight-seeing, and concert parties; and I am not sure that the last-named ought to be included, for it ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... general conversation, it was evident that Mr Percy Marvale, by dint of downright categorical questions, had acquired an intimate knowledge of poor old Harry Lambert's and Williams's domestic affairs; and it is useless to say he had bound himself in the most solemn manner to visit both them and Mr Smith, though neither of them, as far as I could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... Neither did Kant when he devised the Categorical Imperative. You have thrown aside a creed, but you have preserved the ethic which was based upon it. To all intents you are a Christian still, and if there is a God in Heaven you will undoubtedly receive ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... which he writes, whether he can distinguish original elements from those that are derived, whether he has a thorough acquaintance with his material, whether he is conscious of the limits of historical knowledge, and whether he is truthful. These requirements constitute the categorical imperative for the historian: but they can only be fulfilled by an unwearied self-discipline. Hence every historical study is an ethical task. The historian ought to be faithful in every sense of the word; whether he has been so or not is the question on which his readers ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... categorical response I ought to have concluded that the misfortune had been consummated, but a certain hesitation in the intonation of his voice warned me that implicit reliance was not to be ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... January 5, 1917, the Neue Freie Presse acknowledged that Austria provoked the war with the intention of crushing Serbia. It is a formal and categorical confession. And it obliges us to consider seriously the thesis put forward by Jules Chopin in Le Complot de Sarajevo (Paris, 1918), according to which the plot was hatched at Konopi[vs]t[ve] between ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... was categorical. Madame de Montgeron bent her head; her jesting vein was quenched ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... proceed to Prussia. But General York had not yet made up his mind. Toward nightfall another messenger from General Diebitsch arrived at his headquarters. This messenger was Lieutenant-Colonel Clausewitz, whom Diebitsch had sent to insist again on a categorical reply. York received him sullenly, and said to him: 'Keep aloof from me. I do not wish to have any thing to do with you. Your accursed Cossacks have allowed a messenger from Macdonald to pass through your lines, and he has brought me orders to march upon Piktupohnen, and there ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... Speaking of that mysterious individual Hunter, Baron Duvillard's recruiter and go-between, he declared that the police had allowed him to flee from France, much preferring to spend its time in shadowing Socialist deputies. Then, hammering the tribune with his fist, he summoned Barroux to give a categorical denial to the charges brought against him, and to make it absolutely clear that he had never received a single copper of the two hundred thousand francs specified in Hunter's list. Forthwith certain members shouted ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Cenis on New Year's Day 1714, complained that he was "put out of humour by the most horrible precipices." There is huge comfort to be drawn from Stephen's pages descriptive of the "simple-minded abhorrence of mountains," and from his categorical declaration that love of the sublime shapes of the Alps springs from "a delicate and cultivated taste." But we are puzzled by the presence outside the pale of some who cannot rightly be called "pachydermatous." ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... head and threw wide open his thin coat. After the heavy days of anxiety he felt a nimbleness of heart and spirit which set him in tune with the glory of that night. Suspicions, vague and elusive, had for so long clustered about Jose Medina, and then had come the two categorical statements, dates and hours, chapter and verse! He was still not sure, he declared to himself in warning. But he was sure enough to risk the great move—the move which he alone could make! He should no doubt have been dreaming of Joan ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... be for categorical interrogations. Never having an idea of spontaneously telling the whole truth, the sense that he was undertaking a narrative gave him such emotions as a bad swimmer upon deep seas may have; while, on the other hand, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of this there is room for an infinite variety of "categorical imperatives." The conscience of one personality is able to accept as its "good" the very same thing that another personality is compelled to regard as its "evil." Indeed it is conceivable that a moment might arise in the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... displayed on the balcony of the French embassy by a staff-officer, the ambassador consents to remain in Vienna. Let Baron Thugut remember that these are precious moments, and that he owes the ambassador an immediate and categorical reply to his inquiries." [Footnote: "Memoires d'un Homme d'Etat," ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... Wren tells us that his grandfather intended his great building to be adorned with mosaic work, and that one of his numerous disappointments was his inability, thanks to the ignorant opposition of the Commission, to carry out this intention. The categorical statement of the grandson is corroborated by (a) the text of various Acts of Parliaments, (b) other Renaissance Churches and notably St. Peter's, (c) the use of material softer than Portland stone for various surfaces.[103] ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... concerning morality have generally been nobler than can be accounted for by environment, and by the subjective life of the individual. Why this ultimate consistency in the moral aspirations of the ages, why a categorical imperative, and why does conscience exist in the human being?—these facts cannot be accounted for if there is no deeper basis for life than the life of humanity at ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones

... understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same. This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me;—in other words, a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative;—that the maxim ('regula maxima' or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge



Words linked to "Categorical" :   categorical imperative, unconditional, categoric, flat, unqualified, category



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