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Conservative   /kənsˈərvətɪv/   Listen
Conservative

noun
1.
A person who is reluctant to accept changes and new ideas.  Synonym: conservativist.
2.
A member of a Conservative Party.



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"Conservative" Quotes from Famous Books



... types by what might be termed its exaggerated freedom. It is a full, free swing with an abandoned follow through. It probably comes from the confidence which has been handed down from generations of golf-playing people. The Scotch are a conservative and deliberate people in most things, but the way they seem to hit a golf ball gives to most observers the impression of carelessness and lack of considered effort. That, I should say," he concluded, with a droll smile, "is enough for ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... Latin and Greek, from Orbilius,[52] a teacher of conservative tendencies. Ep. ii. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... Dante.[271] He did not accept the term 'Reformer,' because it implied an organic change in our institutions, and this he deemed both needless and dangerous; but he used to say that while he was a decided Conservative, he remembered that to preserve our institutions we must be ever improving them. He was, indeed, from first to last, preeminently a patriot, an impassioned as well as a thoughtful one. Yet his political sympathies were not with his ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... space. Dr. Hussey, in 1834, wrote to Sir George Biddell Airy, astronomer royal at Greenwich, suggesting that the perturbation of the orbit of Uranus might be used as the clew for the discovery of the planet beyond. But Sir George was one of those safe, conservative scholars who scorn to follow the suggestions of genius, preferring rather to explore only what is known already. He said in answer that he doubted if the irregularity in the Uranian orbit was in such a state of demonstration as to give any hope of the discovery of the disturbing cause. He doubted ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... made that dive? even for a few minutes afterwards? He would have given much to know! In theorizing about crime, he had always maintained the motive to be all in all. But now, though unable to controvert the logic of his assertion, he felt it told less than the whole truth. He recognised a divine conservative virtue in straws, and grasped at the smallest! Through the long torture of self-questioning and indecision, let us not follow him. Uncertainty is a ghastly element in such ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... this book may be considered as full of truth and fidelity as any I have ever written: and I must say, that in writing it I have changed no principle whatsoever. I am a liberal Conservative, and, I trust, a rational one; but I am not, nor ever was, an Orangeman; neither can I endure their exclusive and arrogant assumption of loyalty, nor the outrages which it has generated. In what portion of my former writings, for instance, did I ever publish a line in their favor, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... the ladies of the island he had never said a hundred words to any English person. The Neapolitan aristocracy is a very conservative body, and by no means disposed to cosmopolitanism. To the Panacci Villa at Capodimonte came only Italians, except Emilio. The Marchesino had inquired of Emilio if his mother should call upon the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... Transvaal, and invested their capital and expended their energies there upon the most positive and sacred assurances of the British Government that the Queen's authority would never be withdrawn,—assurances given in public by the Conservative Government and confirmed by Mr. Gladstone's Government, assurances published by Sir Bartle Frere and Sir Garnet Wolseley, who said that 'as long as the sun would shine the British flag would fly over ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... find no rule or custom, let alone a statute, against it), yet he is cut off from such an ambition at the very outset by his inadmissibility to a legal career. The Inns of Court are monopolist, and, like all monopolists, hopelessly conservative. They have admitted first one class and then another—though reluctantly— to their privileges, but it will be twenty or thirty years at least before they will give way in the matter of Monkeys. To be a physician, a solicitor, an engineer, ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... father, the good Massasoit, he was inclined to be conservative; that is, he did not like to change the established order of things. He was very much liked by the Indians, who felt that he tried to treat them all ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney

... Bull, whose round face was red with eager desire to hear it, that the Revolution was virtually accomplished. No wonder that the haughty slaveholders, smeared with sycophantic slime, at Newport, at Saratoga, in the "polite" and "conservative" Northern circles, believed what Mr. Hunter of Virginia told a Massachusetts delegate to the Peace Congress,—that there would be no serious trouble, and that the Montgomery Constitution would be readily adopted by the "conservative" sentiment of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... chuck-farthing seems to be going on vigorously; and, not to be behind-hand in the fun, two little fellows in the distance are standing upon their heads. The whole composition is full of life and movement, and—so conservative is childhood—might, but for the costume and scene, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... complete insight into the true conditions of working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. The International, on its breaking up in 1874, left the workers quite different men from what it had found them in 1864. Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out, and even the conservative English Trades' Unions, though most of them had long since severed their connection with the International, were gradually advancing towards that point at which, last year at Swansea, their President could say in their name, "Continental Socialism has lost its terrors for us." ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... of men, but, considered from Hardwicke's own point of view, he was a fellow with whom he had little or nothing in common—a man who quoted poetry and saw all manner of things in pictures and ruins, who went out of his way to think about politics, and was neither Conservative nor Radical when all was done—a man who rather disliked dogs and took no interest in horses. Hardwicke did not want to speak about dogs, horses or politics then, but the consciousness of their want of sympathy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... these three classes in the same schools, it being an accepted idea in the newer States that man and woman (the housekeeper) are coworkers, and are, therefore, entitled to equal and similar educational privileges. On the other hand, in the more conservative East and South, we find that the sexes are educated distinct from each other. In the East, there is generally, also, a separation of subjects. In Massachusetts, for instance, the colleges of agriculture and mechanics are separate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... confessed to being rather an old-fashioned person. Which is usually accounted to her for righteousness by men, who, so far as women are concerned, are intensely conservative—such men, at all events, whose opinion it is worth ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... were merely Chinese spies, and that instead of receiving a lavish welcome, they should be required to limit their journey to the island of Tsushima, where only a very restricted ceremonial should be performed in their honour. This shrewd, though somewhat conservative, suggestion elicited general approval, but was not carried into effect until the time of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... a kind of terror because of his hotness in matters of politics and religion, had capitulated to the enemy and was to go to church at Easter. Mr. Manners himself had something of timidity in his nature: he was conservative certainly, and practised, when he could without bringing himself into open trouble, the old religion in which he had been brought up. He, like the younger generation, had been educated at Derby Grammar School, and in his youth had sat with his ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... Parliament," exclaimed a Conservative the other day, "will never do for this country."—"No! but an unreformed would, and ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... men,—one living, the other dead,—quite opposite in talents and attainments, whose power and influence may not have been surpassed in ancient or modern times. I speak of Kossuth and Webster. Our history has no parallel for the first. Most men, young or old, gay or severe, radical or conservative, were touched by his mournful strains, and influenced by his magic words. He came from a land of which we knew little, and so laid open the history of its wrongs that he enlisted multitudes in its behalf. I speak not now of the views he presented, nor of the demands he made upon the American ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... he was shown all over the world under his assumed name. He was presented to Queen Victoria in 1844, and in the following year he was received by the Royal Family in France. His success was wonderful, and even the most conservative journals described and commented on him. He gave concerts, in which he sang in a nasal voice; but his "drawing feat" was embracing the women who visited him. It is said that in England alone he kissed a million females; he prided himself on ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... of the China Inland Mission, a countryman of my own, kindly putting me up. But Tengyueh, as one of the quartet of open ports in the province, is well known. It is only a small town, however, and one was surprised to find it as conservative a town as could be found anywhere in the province, despite the fact that foreigners have been here for many years, and at the present time there are no less than ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... enclosing,' from a bleak and barren track of country into what is now considered one of the most productive and best-cultivated districts of Yorkshire. The late Sir Tatton Sykes was the sort of man that Yorkshire folk come near to worshipping. He was of that hearty, genial, conservative type that filled the hearts of the farmers with pride. On market days all over the Riding one of the always fresh subjects of conversation was how Sir Tatton was looking. A great pillar put up to his memory by ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... these types and their developments to-day. So far, therefore, from leaving, as at present, these simple occupational types to the anthropologist, or at best giving him some scant hospitality within our city museum, we are learning to see how it is at one time the eager miner, or the conservative shepherd, or at another the adventurous fisher or hunter who comes concretely upon the first plane of national, imperial or international politics, and who awakens new strife among these. We not only begin to see, but the soldier ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... multi-millionaires who were captains in one or another form of industry and who sought this resort as a Mecca for the social uplifting of their families and protection against summer heat. At their advent prices made another jump—one which took the breath away. Several of the most conservative owners parted with their estates after naming a figure which they supposed beyond the danger point, and half a dozen second-rate situations, affording but a paltry glimpse of the ocean, were snapped up in eager competition by wealthy capitalists from Chicago, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... lectured on it to some London Irish society, and I was to lecture upon it later on in Dublin, but I never found but one interested man, an official of the Primrose League, who was also an active member of the Fenian Brotherhood. 'I am an extreme conservative apart from Ireland,' I have heard him explain; and I have no doubt that personal experience made him share the sight of any eye that saw the world in fragments. I had been put into a rage by the followers of Huxley, Tyndall, ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... very generally mentioned simply as 'The Prince.' His Royal Highness is very conservative, so to speak, about such things, so when he takes up a style we generally count on its lasting at least through one season. I can assure you, sir, the Prince has appeared in braid. You needn't be afraid ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... he knew that he was intelligent. Probably when the poor were in trouble they instinctively came to him; he administered the affairs of the village, no doubt, with scrupulous impartiality. In this ancient and conservative land it was simply a part of his inherited belief and tradition that such extremes would always exist, that the condition of these people was the condition of which they were worthy, that it was no man's business but their own. They were in Allah's ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... because the original usefulness is hid by their later usefulness. We judge of them by the present effects, not by their first. The love of law, for example, is a virtue which no one now would call martial, yet in early times it disciplined nations, and the disciplined nations won. The gift of 'conservative innovation'—the gift of MATCHING new institutions to old—is not nowadays a warlike virtue, yet the Romans owed much of their success to it. Alone among ancient nations they had the deference to usage which, combines ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... little to look in her face. She had said "young" with the tone of one whose youth is past, yet the most conservative judge could not place her age a day over twenty-five. And she was so buoyant, so vibrant. His pulses quickened. It was as though currents of her vitality were being continually transmitted through ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... Authorized Version, or "King James' Bible" (1611), followed Wiclif's language in many instances; so that he was, in truth, the first author of our biblical dialect and the founder of that great monument of noble English which has been the main conservative influence in the mother-tongue, holding it fast to many strong, pithy words and idioms that would else have been lost. In 1415; some thirty years after Wiclif's death, by decree of the Council of Constance, his bones were dug up from the soil of Lutterworth chancel and burned, and the ashes cast ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... conservative English publicist, some years ago gave a graphic description of the lot of the working class of England, a description which applies to the working class of America ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... the Rookery, and perhaps being so close to the Board of Trade Building, had given him a taste for trying a little deal in wheat now and then. As a rule, he deplored speculation. He had no fixed principles about it, like Charlie. Only he was conservative; occasionally he hazarded small operations. Somehow he had never married. There had been affairs. Oh, yes, one or two, of course. Nothing very serious, He just didn't seem to have met the right girl, that was all. He lived ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... in French, printed at Geneva, Lausanne, &c., were executed far more neatly than the others. All were of small size, and in good part devoted to spirited political discussion. Switzerland, though profoundly Republican, is almost equally divided into parties known respectively as "Radical" and "Conservative:" the Protestant Cantons being preponderantly Radical, the Catholic generally Conservative. Of the precise questions in dispute I know little and shall say nothing; but I do trust that the controversy will not enfeeble nor paralyze the Republic, now seriously menaced by the Allied ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... of singular power and beauty, great originality and rugged force. Born and bred on Cape Cod, the author, at the winter firesides of country people, very conservative of ancient English customs now gone, heard curious talk of kings, Puritan ministers, the war and precedent struggle of our Revolution, and touched a race of men and women now passed away. He also heard, chiefly from ancient women, the traditions of ghosts, witches ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... a second time to the restful city of Nagoya. It is out of the sphere of influence of Tokyo and is conservative of old ideas. People live with less display than in the capital and perhaps pride themselves on doing so. But if the houses of even the well-to-do are small and inconspicuous, the interiors are of satisfying ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... the scope of conservative probability,' said Longstreet blandly, his eyes carrying the look of a man who in spirit is far away from his physical environment, 'that, after all, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... Providence was overruling the mighty affliction,—that the patient sufferer at Washington was drawing with cords of sympathy all sections and parties nearer to each other. And now, when South and North, Democrat and Republican, Radical and Conservative, lift their voices in one unbroken accord of lamentation; when I see how, in spite of the greed of gain, the lust of office, the strifes and narrowness of party politics, the great heart of the nation proves sound and loyal, I feel a new hope for the republic, I have a firmer faith in its ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... birthplace of our own Christmas customs here in Greece, for it is an undoubted fact that all we see now in Greek islands has survived since Byzantine days. Turkish rule has in no way interfered with religious observances, and during four or five centuries of isolation from the civilised world the conservative spirit of the East has preserved intact for us customs as they were in the early days of Christianity; inasmuch as the Eastern Church was the first Christian Church, it was the parent of all Christian customs. Many of these customs were ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... ambition, his honour is moulded by the traditions of an ancient and antiquated profession, instinctively self-preserving and yet with a real desire for consistency and respect. As a profession it has been greedy and defensively conservative, but it has never been shameless nor has it ever broken faith with its own large and selfish, but quite definite, propositions. It has never for instance had the shamelessness of such a traditionless ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... his uncles and had gone abroad to study music when that was an extravagant and picturesque thing for an Ohio boy to do. His letters home were handed round among the members of his own family and of other families equally conservative. Indeed, Charley and what his mother called "his music" were the romantic expression of a considerable group of people; young cousins and old aunts and quiet-dwelling neighbours, allied by the amity of several generations. Nobody was ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... least, the Darzi caste is practically confined to the towns, and though cotton jackets are worn even by labourers and shirts by the better-to-do, these are usually bought ready-made at the more important markets. Women, more conservative in their dress than men, have only one garment prepared with the needle, the small bodice known as choli or angia. And in Chhattisgarh, a landlocked tract very backward in civilisation, the choli has hitherto not been worn and is only now being introduced. Though he first ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... exodus of the Loyalists is an event comparable only to the expulsion of the Huguenots from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Loyalists, whatever their social status (and they were not all aristocrats), represented the conservative and moderate element in the revolting states; and their removal, whether by banishment or disfranchisement, meant the elimination of a very wholesome element in the body politic. To this were due in part no doubt many of the early errors of the republic in finance, ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... and if they have it, their study of older work will almost indefinitely assist it; but, on the whole, they owe their greatness to their completer fusion and assimilation of older ideas; for nature is distinctly a fairly liberal conservative rather than a conservative liberal. All which is well said in the ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... to allay the demon spirit of sectional hatred and strife now alive in the land. This advice proceeds from the heart of an old public functionary whose service commenced in the last generation, among the wise and conservative statesmen of that day, now nearly all passed away, and whose first and dearest earthly wish is to leave his country tranquil, prosperous, united, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson

... boundless wealth to England at the expense of the commerce and manufactures of France. The Democrats were then the ruling party in most of the States; the more moderate voice and liberal policy of the Conservative Republicans were hushed and fanned down by the Democratic leaders, who seemed unable to look beyond the gratification of their resentment and avarice; they seemed to fear the residence and presence of men of intelligence, ability, and energy, who might in the future rival if not eclipse ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... is an admirable account of the spirit of the conservative reformers in the Cambridge Modern ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... Dissolution. It will be convenient, he says, "at least, for those who have youth and vigour sufficient again to submit themselves to the constituencies." Mr. G.'s face wrinkled into smile as he uttered this witticism. House spontaneously burst into cheer as hearty on the Conservative side as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various

... some night run so high as to carry off the mill altogether. Bullhampton is very quiet. There is no special trade in the place. Its interests are altogether agricultural. It has no newspaper. Its tendencies are altogether conservative. It is a good deal given to religion; and the Primitive Methodists have a very strong holding there, although in all Wiltshire there is not a clergyman more popular in his own parish than the Rev. Frank Fenwick. He himself, in his inner heart, rather likes ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... noticed very little of what was going on around him, turned to his son with a question about the politics of the day. Percival, with his nose in the air, hardly deigned at first to answer; but upon Vivian's quietly propounding some strongly Conservative views, which always acted on the younger Heron as a red rag is supposed to act upon a bull, he waxed impatient and then argumentative, until at last he talked himself into a good humour, and ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... without tasks at home. Mr. Henderson, the vicar, was a very old man, and was constantly growing more feeble and unequal to exertion. He had been appointed by the squire before last, and had the indolent conservative orthodoxy of the old school, regarding activity as a perilous innovation, and resisting all Miss Charlecote's endeavours at progress in the parish. She had had long patience, till, when his strength failed, she ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the more bent any man is upon action, the more profoundly he needs the calm lessons of Nature to preserve his equilibrium. The radical himself needs nothing so much as fresh air. The world is called conservative; but it is far easier to impress a plausible thought on the complaisance of others than to retain an unfaltering faith in it for ourselves. The most dogged reformer distrusts himself every little while, and says inwardly, like Luther, "Art thou alone wise?" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... the mangled remains in the Colosseum. The rosy thumbs of Roman vestals were potent ballots in the Eternal City, and possibly were thrown only in the scale of mercy; but having no voice in verdicts, to what conservative motive may be ascribed the presence of women at criminal trials? Are the children of Culture, the heiresses of "all the ages", really more refined than the proud old dames of the era ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... athirst for God?" the preachers say, "Accept the moral law; act exactly in distinct duty to your parents; say, 'Corban, it is a gift by whatsoever thou mayest be profited thereby'; do your duty strictly to the letter and nothing more; be conservative about your property; restrain yourself from desire of change; do not stimulate and do not satisfy your passions beyond what is exactly exprest in the moral law." But then, if you speak the truth, you say, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... strange accent and the strange face. Over and above the conveniences for exchange afforded by the bank, it will introduce to foreigners the charms of one of our newest inventions—the greenback. This humble but heterodox device, not pleasant in the eyes of the old school of conservative financiers, is yet unique and valuable as having accomplished the task of absolutely equalizing the popular currency of so large a country as the Union. That gap of twelve or thirteen per cent. between ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... the Professor maintained in regard to the doctrine and worship of the Church was a strictly conservative one, and may be best described in his own words, taken from an article included in the list of his minor works. In that article, after quoting the advice tendered by an eminent minister of the Church of England ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... arms and perhaps the taste for risks, but the havoc wrought upon industry and commerce, and above all the crushing burden of taxation, will dispose the controlling and possessing classes to seek alternatives to a return to the era of competing alliances and armaments. Mild and conservative measures will be obviously unavailing. During the years of exhaustion following the war, resolute leaders of public opinion will be setting themselves everywhere to frame schemes of international relations which shall yield adequate guarantees of peace. For the first time in history ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... lad," Terrence, with a wink to the others, answered him. "Females are conservative. They keep the type true. They fix it and hold it, and are the everlasting clog on the chariot of progress. If it wasn't for the females every blessed mother's son of us would be a sporting dominant. I refer to our distinguished breeder and practical Mendelian whom we have ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... by those who loved to say ill-natured things, (Horace Walpole among them,) that in the later years of his life he forgot his first love of Liberalism and became politically conservative. But it must be remembered that the good poet lived into the time when the glut and gore of the French Revolution made people hold their breath, and when every man who lifted a humane plaint against the incessant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... of 'em just now. The other'll keep. I'll myke it known to you if—if all goes as I 'ope." He straightened himself up. "I don't often speak o' this," he continued, "because among us butlers and valets it wouldn't be understood. Most of us is what's known as conservative, all for the big families and the old wyes. Well, so am I—to a ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... hoped that this bitter trial might be spared him. The Virginian people had taken what seemed then to be a conservative attitude; and, although he was determined to abide by the Union if it were severed by violent action, he was anxious to believe that his home might be saved to him. The Legislature of the State met early in January and recommended all the States to appoint deputies to a ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... intellect as to argue out conclusions for yourself. Accordingly the religious progress caused by the prophets did not break down that ancient code of authoritative usage. On the contrary, the two combined. In each generation the conservative influence 'built the sepulchres' and accepted the teaching of past prophets, even while it was slaying and persecuting those who were living. But discussion and custom cannot be thus combined; their 'method,' as modern philosophers would say, is antagonistic. Accordingly, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... due honour, and probably more, to Cimabue as the originator of modern painting, it is to his pupil, GIOTTO, that we are accustomed to look for the first developments of its possibilities. Had Cimabue's successors been as conservative as his instructors, we might still be not very much better off than if he had never lived. For much as there is to admire in Cimabue's painting, it is only the first flush of the dawn which it heralded, and though containing ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... to her their love affairs (which they never did to Mrs. Penniman), and young men to be fond of her without knowing why. She developed a few harmless eccentricities; her habits, once formed, were rather stiffly maintained; her opinions, on all moral and social matters, were extremely conservative; and before she was forty she was regarded as an old-fashioned person, and an authority on customs that had passed away. Mrs. Penniman, in comparison, was quite a girlish figure; she grew younger as she advanced ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... the King twenty years before, in the Declaration of Colmar. It was also at St, Ouen that project of a Constitution was presented to him by the Senate in which that body, to justify 'in extremis' its title of conservative, stipulated for the preservation of its revenues ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... and attack. All through the summer months and almost every night Ministers were invited to declare whether they would rescue their envoy or leave him to his fate. Mr. Gladstone returned evasive answers. The Conservative Press took the cue. The agitation became intense. Even among the supporters of the Government there was dissatisfaction. But the Prime Minister was obdurate and unflinching. At length, at the end of the Session, the whole matter ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... appointment in Jamaica; but, his health suffering from the climate of the West Indies, he returned in the following year. Shortly after his arrival in Britain, he was fortunate in obtaining the editorship of the Dumfries Journal, a respectable Conservative newspaper. This he conducted with distinguished ability and success for three years, when certain new arrangements, consequent on a change in the proprietary, rendered his services unnecessary. A letter of Allan ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... again in our history this phenomenon presents itself. Some men of ability and unsatisfied ambition belonging to the Liberal party become discontented with the policy of their leaders. When the first opportunity arises they make a public declaration against that policy. In the Conservative ranks there are to be found some other men, also able and also discontented, to whom the general policy of Opposition seems unsatisfactory and feeble. Each of these discontented parties fancies itself to be truly patriotic, public-spirited, and independent. The two factions at length unite for ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... Tonda, a conservative man and a firm believer in his own ancestral gods, had paid little attention to this strange, new religion. Upon arrival at Tanagor, to be sure, he had sometimes placed small offerings in the votive bowl, but more ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... wounded, and maimed be obtained, it would be difficult to settle these nice points of precedence. Should it prove that any other officer has been more meritorious and destructive than General. S., and has thereby rendered himself more worthy of the confidence and support of the conservative portion of our community, I shall cheerfully insert his name, instead of that of General S., in a future edition. It may be thought, likewise, that General S. has invalidated his claims by too much attention to the decencies of apparel, and the habits belonging ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... Sandhurst, he entered the Rifle Brigade in 1855, and was transferred to the Eighteenth Hussars in 1858. He remained in the service to the end of 1871, when he retired by the sale of his commission. At the general election of 1880, Sir William Palliser was returned as a Conservative at the head of the poll for Taunton. In the House of Commons Sir William gave his chief attention to the scientific matters on which his authority was so generally recognized. Under the many disappointments and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... that the conservative people are concerned about: the direct election of United States Senators. I have seen some thoughtful men discuss that with a sort of shiver, as if to disturb the original constitution of the United States Senate was to do something ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... the doctor, "that remark reminds me of what I have long intended to ask you if I got a chance. How is it, Mr Slick, that you, who are a republican, whenever you speak of England are so conservative? It always seemed to me as if it warn't quite natural. If I didn't know you, I should say your books were written by a colonist who had used your name for a medium for giving ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... a conservative course has been adopted. The most extensively used text-book on the subject of Botany, "Gray's Manual," has recently been rewritten. That work includes every species, native and naturalized, of the region covered by this book, and the names as given in that edition have ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar

... me," went on the young man. He certainly was good-looking. Even Cora, conservative as she always ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose

... transformed itself from a suffrage meeting to a social function that was unique. Leaders of the smart set rubbed elbows, and seemed to enjoy it, with working girls and agitators. Conservative and radical, millionaire and muckraker succumbed to the spell of the Ashton hospitality and the lure of the new dances. It was a novel experience for all, a levelling-up of society, as contrasted to some of the levelling-down ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... emphasis upon its deterrent function and upon the stimulation it has given to Chinese bankers to finance public utilities. And it is the merest justice to Mr. Stevens, the American representative, to say that he represents the conservative investment type of banker, not the "promotion" type, and that thus far his great concern has been the problem of protecting the buyer of such securities as are passed on by the banks to the ultimate investor—so much so that he has aroused criticism from ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... ultra-conservative attitude of Brahms is shown by his retention of the double bar and repeat, although this is ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... is conservative, not to say reactionary, but its attitude toward the Church and the State, and the habits engendered by two centuries of opposition and persecution, give it a revolutionary, or even an anarchical, character. A secret tie unites all the branches of public authority, and the rejection of one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... Let us consider, for a moment, what these are. They have an old-fashioned and conservative sound, but the fundamental facts of life are old-fashioned. The man is still the head of the normal family, and, as the head, still owes his best endeavor to secure for the other members of the family the means of subsistence. The wife's part ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... discredit the whole proposition as a political move of the Conservative Party. Throughout the Swan River district, the Dauphin district and all the way down to Neepawa the rumor spread ahead of the meetings; so that the speakers were asked many pertinent and impertinent questions, J. W. Robson, a Swan River farmer who was at that time a Conservative Member of the Manitoba ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... his daughter when Mannering arrived. The doctor had been a crony of the elder for many years. He was about the average of a country physician—a hard-bitten, practical man who loved his profession, loved sport, and professed conservative principles. Experience stood in place of high qualifications, but he kept in touch with medical progress, to the extent of reading about it and availing himself of improved methods and preparations when opportunity offered. He ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... man who has made his place in affairs as the spokesman of those who see abuses and demand their reformation has passed from denunciation to calm and moderate advice when he got into Parliament, and has turned veritable conservative when made a minister of the crown. Mr. Bright was a notable example. Slow and careful men had looked upon him as little better than a revolutionist so long as his voice rang free and imperious from the platforms of public meetings. They greatly feared the influence he should exercise in ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson

... waifs in no inconsiderable number, broken loose from the decencies of society—more, perhaps, in my early days than there are now. But our principles at least were sound; and not only was there thus a restorative and conservative spirit among us, but, what was of not less importance, there was a broad gulf, like that in the parable, between the two grand classes, the good and the evil—a gulf which, when it secured the better class from contamination, interposed ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... those who cannot fly Be good and dull, and please everybody Centres of polished barbarism known as aristocratic societies Clotilde fenced, which is half a confession Comparisons will thrust themselves on minds disordered Compromise is virtual death Conservative, whose astounded state paralyzes his wrath Creatures that wait for circumstances to bring the change Dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men? Empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways of women Fantastical ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger

... if not in all, a deep inborn spiritual craving, no child of philosophy, is a powerful factor in helping men Godward. Also that many find their only help in authority and the faith of others. All these the Church has to provide for. It is no easy task to be prophet and conservative ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... way, sometimes for generations, before it is accepted by the medical profession. So strong are the traditions of that profession and so difficult is it for the unconventional or heterodox individual to retain the confidence of conservative patients, that the forces of honorable medical practice tend to discourage research and invention. The man who discovers a surgical appliance is forced by the ethics of his profession either to commercialize it and ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... is trying to convince the neighbors against their better judgment that he went to Heaven, and the father's estimate of the son, on which he is trying to pass him along into a good salary, will be conservative. ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... a man of the name of Schultz; but it appeared that his name was not at all Schultz, when we referred the matter to our pasteur. It was from him, indeed, that I learned nearly all I knew of Swiss politics, and it was from his teaching that I became a conservative partisan in the question, then before the voters, of a national free-school law. The radicals, who, the pasteur said, wished Switzerland to attempt the role "grande nation," had brought forward this measure ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells

... the velocity of 60 ft. per sec., assumed at the foot of the grade, is probably higher than should be expected in practice; it insures, on the other hand, that quite enough has been allowed for momentum, and that the results are conservative. ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Beverly S. Randolph

... synagogue and was like to have been put to death, it was because of the unwelcomeness of the word He spoke, and not because He had introduced a new order of service into the sanctuary of an intensely conservative people. He preached in the synagogues of Capernaum, too, "and they were astonished at His doctrine, for the word was with power." John the Baptist was a preacher who was more than a prophet, and to his preaching doubtless the Lord Himself listened more than once. ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... from my pen or from anything to which I contribute. Within these four months I have declined being returned for a Tory borough, and almost within these four hours, to mention slight affairs, I have refused to inscribe myself a member of "The Conservative Club." I cannot believe that you will place your critic's feelings for a few erased passages ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... headed a movement for the organization of a People's Party, which had for its immediate object the defeat of Andrew for Governor and the relegation of Sumner to private life. The first they could hardly expect to accomplish, but it was hoped that a sufficient number of conservative representatives would be elected to the Legislature to replace Sumner by a Republican, who would be more to their own minds; and they would be willing to compromise on such a candidate as Honorable E. R. Hoar,—although Judge Hoar was innocent ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... went to Boston on my own hook and tackled the old gentleman—that's the only way to get anywhere. I couldn't bear to see the mill going to scrap, and I told him a thing or two,—I had the facts and the figures. Stephen Chippering was a big man, but he had a streak of obstinacy in him, he was conservative, you bet. I had to get it across to him there was a lot of dead wood in this plant, I had to wake him up to the fact that the twentieth century was here. He had to be shown—he was from Boston, you know—" Ditmar laughed—"but he was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... flippancy, there lies a very strong, a very tenacious, and a very clear-sighted man. There are times—especially when the small hours of the morning are breaking, and Labby is in his most genial mood—when he is ready to declare that, after all, he is only a Conservative in disguise, and that his Radicalism is merely put on for the purpose of amusing and catching the groundlings. As a matter of fact, Labby is by instinct one of the most thorough Radicals that ever breathed. His Radicalism, it is true, is of the antique ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... had his boast. He had finally been given charge of The Investor's Monthly, which had absorbed the La Salle Street Indicator. The policy of the papers was to be changed: they were to be conservative, but not critical, and conducted in the interests of capital which was building up the country ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... her husband's. He was not a man who often spoke of the processes of his thought. Sometimes, in the house on the Three-Notched Road, he told her, briefly, his conclusions on such and such a matter, but he rarely described the road by which he travelled. She knew the conservative, the British, the Federal side of most questions. That was the cleared country, familiar, safe, and smiling; her husband's side was the strange forest which she had entered and must travel through. She was yet ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... and to interpret the curious national beliefs in good and evil spirits and ghosts. He has also made more real than any other foreign writer the peculiar position of the Japanese wife. Hearn was a conservative, despite his lawless life, and he looked with regret upon the transformation of old Japan, wrought by the new desire to Europeanize the country. He paints with great art the idyllic life of the old Samauri and the loyalty of the ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... Mr. Winter is dedicated mainly to love and wine, to flowers and birds and dreams, to the hackneyed and never-to-be-exhausted repertory of the old singers. His instincts are strongly conservative; his confessed aim is to belong to 'that old school of English Lyrical Poetry, of which gentleness is the soul, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... and building a new one at the extremity, with a partial reconstruction of those which were decayed to connect them with it. In the renovation of both transepts blue Bath stone has been used internally, and Portland stone with flints for the exterior. The conservative nature of the work is here seen in the side walls, each of which retains a bay of the old Norman triforium, with its round-headed divisions, to which a new bay has been added, with a slightly pointed arcade, as a connection, without any violent contrast, between ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... people will only serve, if successful, to overthrow order in Society, and introduce Social anarchy in its stead. From such an attempt came the chaos of the French Revolution;—from an endeavor to inaugurate ideas essentially correct among a people noway ready to comprehend them rightly. The Conservative Element is as essential to the well-being of society as the Progressive. To eliminate either is to destroy its balanced action; and to give it over to stagnation on the one hand, or to frenzy on the other. The Thinkers of the past have done, and those of the present ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... for in these regions the sun lights his golden lamp in the east every morning, and year by year the vernal earth decks herself afresh with a rich mantle of green. Hence the practical savage, with his conservative instincts, might well turn a deaf ear to the subtleties of the theoretical doubter, the philosophic radical, who presumed to hint that sunrise and spring might not, after all, be direct consequences of the punctual performance of certain daily or yearly ceremonies, and that the sun might ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... deposited in a single hand, was found in time equally incompatible with the great ends of civil government; while it gradually accumulated to an extent, which threatened to crush the monarchy by its own weight. But the institutions derived from a Teutonic origin have been found to possess a conservative principle, unknown to the fragile despotisms of the east. The seeds of liberty, though dormant, lay deep in the heart of the nation, waiting only the good time to germinate. That time has at length arrived. Larger experience, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... the people of the cities drawing together, building walls around their towns, and defying in their turn their so-called "overlords." We see Henry the City-builder thus become champion of the lower classes, despite the strenuous warning of his conservative and not wholly disinterested barons. We see shadowy troops of armed merchants drift along the unsafe roads. And, most interesting perhaps of all, we see one Arnold of Brescia,[16] an Italian monk, advocating a democracy, actually urging a return to what he supposed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... within their grasp once they reached the Scioto. They were cheered by the report that the army would cross on the morrow. One tall Watauga boy boastfully proclaimed that all the Shawnees and Mingos beyond the Ohio wouldn't "make more'n a breakfast for us." Davis, because a man of family and more conservative, insisted it would be a "pretty ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... salient quality, economy one of their chief virtues; they must be excellent in all useful arts, sparing of diversion, simple even in their greatness; succeeding in what they undertake by dint of tenacity and a thoughtful and orderly activity; more wise than heroic; more conservative than creative; giving no great architects to the edifice of modern thought, but the ablest of workmen, a legion of patient and laborious artisans. And by virtue of these qualities of prudence, phlegmatic activity, and the spirit of conservatism, they ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... explained their plan of action. Harrington's amazement grew into settled doubt that such a march was possible, for although a remarkably fine young officer, he was decidedly conservative. ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney

... 29, older by far than the ordinary arts student, but not old for the theological course, which lasted longer than the others. To reach the first step, the Bachelor's degree, he had to attend a number of lectures; and very tedious he found them. Theologians are apt to be conservative. The method of instruction had not advanced far beyond the dictation of text and gloss and commentary, which had been current before the days of printing. Erasmus yawned and dozed, or wrote letters ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen



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