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Conservative   /kənsˈərvətɪv/   Listen
Conservative

adjective
1.
Resistant to change.
2.
Having social or political views favoring conservatism.
3.
Avoiding excess.  Synonym: cautious.
4.
Unimaginatively conventional.  Synonyms: button-down, buttoned-down.
5.
Conforming to the standards and conventions of the middle class.  Synonyms: bourgeois, materialistic.



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"Conservative" Quotes from Famous Books



... constitution or not was a most frivolous and baneful question, mooted only by "visionary theorists," or by those who were desirous of a change, no matter how disastrous it might be to good government. The conservative party held that, since the charter had been drawn according to the tenor of a draft submitted by Winthrop and outlining the government according to the Fundamental Orders, framed in 1639 by the "inhabitants and residents of Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield," the charter was not a grant of privileges ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... but because it has sprung from an earnest effort to relieve the Society of a reproach which was not only impairing its usefulness, but doing an injury to the cause of truth and sincerity everywhere. We have no desire to impugn the motives of those who consider themselves conservative members of the Society; we believe them to be honest in their convictions, or their want of them; but we think they have mistaken notions as to what conservatism is, and that they are wrong in supposing it to consist in refusing to wipe away the film on their spectacle-glasses which prevents ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... drunkard whenever opportunity afforded. Fortunately for him and for his squaw, Bigbeam, as she had been facetiously named by an agent of the company, the opportunities for getting drunk were rare, for the company is conservative in the distribution of that which makes bad hunters. Given an abundance of firewater and tobacco, Red Dog was the happiest Indian between the northern boundary of the United States and Lake Gary; deprived of them both he hunted vigorously, thinking all the ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... end with the ending of the war. There was lawlessness for years. Some of the Union men and Union sympathizers, in the majority in the county during hostilities, assumed to the full the new power that came to them by the war's outcome. Conservative civic leaders sought to reestablish a condition of peace, but the lawless and desperate element prepared personally to profit ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan

... the council table, and even then he must sit and listen respectfully to his elders for a while before he ventures a criticism or even a suggestion. This plan may have its defects. It may keep things on too conservative a basis; but it avoids the danger into which we as a profession have fallen,—the danger of "half-baked" theories and unmatured policies. To-day the only man that can get a respectable hearing at our great national educational meetings is ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... he assumed to be the commander. He chatted some time with him upon general topics, and soon discovered that the captain was not of the same political faith as himself. Shipmasters who take political sides are generally conservative. Up to that time he had carefully avoided making known his identity. At last he ventured to approach the object of his visit. He said, "Now, Captain, we have had a pleasant little chat; I should like to have your views ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... Empire in their original condition. And among those laws were the great statutes of 1609 and 1610, the "Majesty-Letter" and the "Compromise," granting full right of religious worship to the Protestants of the Kingdom of Bohemia. If ever a policy deserved to be called truly liberal and truly conservative, it was the policy thus steadily maintained ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... reliance upon the power of religious education through the Sunday school and other organizations of young people. When Sunday schools were first started, a century or more ago, they were bitterly opposed by many of the more conservative church people. To-day they are a recognized part of all protestant churches, but oddly enough their advancement has been due more largely to the work of the laity than to that of the clergy, although there can be no question that church membership is most largely recruited ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... Fraas, and the discovery of more complete specimens of these animals, also clear up the true relationships of these primitive dinosaurs which have mostly been referred hitherto to the Theropoda or Megalosaurians. The following classification is somewhat more conservative than the arrangement ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... views, and drifted with the current of the moment. He took part in the revolution of 1868, wrote the "Manifesto of Cadiz," took office as colonial minister, favoured the candidature of the duc de Montpensier, resigned in 1871, returned to his early Conservative principles, and was a member of Alfonso XII.'s first cabinet. Meanwhile, however divided in opinion as to his political conduct, his countrymen were practically unanimous in admiring his dramatic work; and his reputation, if it gained little by El Nuevo Don ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... Mr. C.L. Cumming Bruce. At the general election in July of the same year he stood for the borough of Southampton, and was returned at the head of the poll. His political views at this time were very much those which have since been called 'Liberal Conservative.' Speaking at a great banquet ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... great parties in the State find themselves face to face with a difficulty which, even for the most zealous aspirant to place and power, robs the honors and emoluments of office of more than half their charm. Neither Liberal nor Conservative will care to incur the displeasure of the Queen and the implacable wrath of the English aristocracy—both Whig and Tory—by consenting to the political divorcement of Ireland, and to what would be regarded ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... the Mediterranean shores. The chief of these, in its influence, was the Greek civilization, as it had developed in that famous group of free city states, fostered by the sun and air, and addicted to life. In Athens, at the time of her glory, life was not a habit, but an experiment. Even the conservative Romans were infected. They fell under the sway of Greek thought. When a practical man of business becomes intimate with an artist, he is never the same man again. The thought of that disinterested mode of life haunts his dreams. ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... were as set and conservative as were his views on medicine, and she never attempted to discuss those matters with him; the fact that she could not do so was somewhat a relief to her when she desired to get away from her ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... to go "to the east'ard of P'int Barrow" for this big whale; since that date the catch in Canadian waters has been thirteen hundred and forty-five whales. Ignoring the oil altogether and putting the "bone" (baleen) at two thousand pounds each whale and the value of it at five dollars a pound, both conservative figures, we find that thirteen and a half millions in whale-values have gone out of this Canadian sea-pasture the past twenty years, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... to the derangement and convulsion of his whole system. They constitute the combustible elements of our being: one serves as the spark to explode the other. Reason, enlightened by revelation and guided by conscience, is the great conservative principle: while that exercises the sovereign power over the fancy and the passions, we are safe; if it is dethroned, no limit can be assigned to the ruin that may follow. In the scenes we have now been called to witness, we have perceived to what lengths ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... farming is met with in Northern Africa it is a safe assertion that the Kabyles are either on the spot or not far off. Like other farmers, they are conservative and adhere to old rules or fancies, which in some cases verge upon superstition. The practice of fertilizing fig trees by hanging them with fruits of the wild fig is one of those which it is difficult to class—whether with the visionary or the practical. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... Al Solis chess, in the opinion of the Caliph, one thousand years ago far excelled the flowers in his most beautiful garden and everything that was in it. More than this, Prime Ministers and Lord Chancellors, Liberal and Conservative, come and go but there is but one first Lord in chess, ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

... strong enough to fly aloft to clearer atmospheres, and consequently they censure or ridicule what they are powerless to reach. George Sand, even to a greater extent than her contemporary, George Eliot, was a victim to ignorant social prejudices, but even the conservative world was forced to recognize the matchless genius of these two extraordinary women, each widely different in her character and method of thought and writing.... She has told much that is good which has been untold, and just what will interest ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... described with special reprobation that latest part of the Wilderness in which the cry had arisen for sheer Levelling in the State and sheer Voluntaryism in the Church; and Cromwell, starting in that key himself, addressed the Parliament, with noble earnestness, in what would now be called a highly "conservative" speech. Glancing back to the Barebones Parliament and beyond, he sketched, the proceedings of himself and the Council and the great successes of the Commonwealth during the intervening eight months and a half, and hopefully committed to the Parliament the further ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... number of his European friends, the men upon whose views he has largely, directly or indirectly, based his conclusions, are not of the socialistic or of any other revolutionary or semi-revolutionary groups, but are among the most conservative and most important figures in European political, literary, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... higher question: Is he fit for the pulpit,—for that great conservative power by which religion, and morals, and freedom, must be maintained among us? "I do not believe," he declares, in one of his sermons, "the miraculous origin of the Hebrew church, or the Buddhist church, or of the Christian ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... had been born and bred a Conservative, whereas the Duke of Omnium was well known as a consistent Whig. There is no one so devoutly resolved to admit of no superior as your Conservative, born and bred, no one so inclined to high domestic despotism as ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... accepted it as we have also accepted "The Ladies' Dinner-party," which was wholly unknown previous to the American invasion. Whether Mrs. Paget was instrumental or not in making for the last-mentioned form of entertainment a place among our conservative hostesses is not quite proven, but it is safe to say that this tall, vivacious, energetic lady, who skates as well as she dances, golfs and drives a motor car, carries almost more social power in her small right hand than any ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... of this man, Gray's great-aunt, had stood beside him on the platform when there was danger in it; and after the Negro was freed and enfranchised, she had devoted a long life to the cause of woman suffrage. The mother who bore him died young. She left him to the care of a conservative father, but the blood that came through her did not ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... entrenched everywhere in power in this Republic. Congress and Supreme Court, Commerce and Trade and Social Life alike submitted to its imperious and arrogant sway. Mr. Webster declared that there was no North, and that the South went clear up to the Canada line. The hope of many wise and conservative and, as I now believe, patriotic men, of saving this country from being rent into fragments was in leaving to slavery forever the great territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific, in the Fugitive Slave Law, a law under ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... mysticism and revolutionary ideas and "vulgar" manners, which, perhaps, he exaggerated, were an incentive to the irony of Felix Weil, with his calm, mocking temper, his distinguished manners and conservative mind. They had only one thing in common: they were both equally lacking in any profound interest in action: and if they did indulge in action, it was not from faith, but from their tenacious and mechanical vitality. But neither was prepared to admit it: they preferred to give their minds to ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... way not only to have a collection-level record but perhaps a MARC record for each state, which will then serve as an umbrella for the 100-200 documents that come under it. But that drama remains to be enacted. The AM staff is conservative and clings to cataloguing, though of course visitors tout artificial intelligence and neural networks in a manner that suggests that perhaps one need not have cataloguing or that much of ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly

... provisions, harvested crops, fuel, etc., are brought up these steep trails, and often from a distance of several miles, yet these conservative people tenaciously cling to the inconvenient situation selected by their fathers long after the necessity for so doing has passed away. At present no argument of convenience or comfort seems sufficient to induce them to abandon their homes on ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... 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 ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... send accurate stories of the awful condition of the miners and their families, are disappointed to receive copies of their respective papers with their articles revamped, and the essential points expurgated, to meet the approval of the "conservative reader." ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... nothing sacrosanct in this American tradition. Like all traditions it is stiff, it will clasp, if we allow it, the future in the dead hand of precedent. It can be used by the designing to block progress. But as traditions go it is not conservative. Radicalism, indeed, is its child. Political and religious radicalism brought the Pilgrims to New England, the Quakers to Pennsylvania; political and economic radicalism made the Revolution against the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... off on me at the office the other day. I happened in a mad moment to try to unload some of my original observations on him apropos of my getting to the office two hours late, in which it was my endeavor to prove to him that the truly safe and conservative man was always slow, and so apt to turn up late on occasions. He hopped about the office for a minute or two, and then he informed me that I was an 18-karat sciolist. I didn't know what he meant, and so I looked ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs

... suggested to Lord Melbourne in the summer as to invite the co-operation of Mr. Stanley (who, by the death of his grandfather, had recently become Lord Stanley) and Sir J. Graham, who, as has been mentioned before, had retired from Lord Grey's cabinet. A new name, that of "Conservative," had recently been invented for the more moderate section of the old Tory party; and it was one which, though Lord Grey had taunted them with it, as betraying a sense of shame at adhering to their old colors, Peel was ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... would allow madame to go anywhere on foot unaccompanied by a lackey in livery? Is not that the best style? Not to count the pleasure she takes in saying to everybody, 'I have my people here.' It has always been a conservative principle of mine that my times of exercise should coincide with those of my wife, and for two years I have proved to her that I take an ever fresh pleasure in giving her my arm. If the weather is not suitable for walking, I try to teach her how to drive with success a frisky ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... in the way of the emergence, from out the present chaos, of this social element equipped, organized, educated, conscious of itself and of distinctive aims, in the next hundred years? In the first place there is the spirit of trade unionism, the conservative contagion of the old craftsmanship. Trade Unions arose under the tradition of the old order, when in every business, employer and employed stood in marked antagonism, stood as a special instance ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... brown one, but in it he felt he presented a more self-possessed demeanor. He could use the quality. Five foot seven, slightly underweight and with an air of unhappy self-deprecation, Josip Pekic's personality didn't exactly dominate in a group. He chose a conservative tie and a white shirt, although he knew that currently some frowned upon white shirts as a bourgeois affectation. It was all the thing, these days, to ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... the well-known 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 Devil himself could persuade Daniel into a life of dissipation. All you who have made a study of the business man will agree that of all human beings he is the hardest to swerve from conservative methods. The Devil groaned and began to wonder why he had ever tied up to a ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... past the prophecy of any of our predecessors," said his father. He paused. "I am not certain," he said, as one who asks a question of his inner self, "but I would have preferred a slower, more conservative growth." ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... no hardship in such supervision; banks are subject to it, and in their case it is now accepted as a simple matter of course. Indeed, it is probable that supervision of corporations by the National Government need not go so far as is now the case with the supervision exercised over them by so conservative a State as Massachusetts, in order ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt

... in most of a young man's keen feelings, the personal element played a considerable part. I was introduced to the speaker, John Crondall, by a Cambridge man I knew, who came there on behalf of a Conservative paper, which had recently taken a new lease of life in new hands, and become the most powerful among the serious organs of the Empire party. It is a curious thing, by the way, that overwhelming as was the dominance of the anti-national ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... matter merely of economy, safety, and convenience, whether a people shall build in wood or earth or stone. But the repeal meant more than this. It was a veritable Reform Bill: it swept away old traditions, conservative customs, and those rules and motives of the past which were the buttresses of idolatry, and which had hitherto hindered all public progress. It was a sign that this young nation had entered on a new career of life and ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various

... in the Conseil General was only a stepping-stone to a seat in the Corps Legislatif, where his place ought to be, he presented himself to the electors as a candidate, and was almost unanimously elected deputy, the conservative vote being still all powerful in that part ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... have little suspected," remarked Haviland, "that the people of this section, who have shown themselves commendably conservative, for the most part, had any intention of yielding to the mob-laws of Ethan Allen, Warner, and others, who place the laws of New York at defiance on the other side of the mountains; and much less that they would heed the resolves of that self-constituted body of knaves, ignoramuses, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... 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 custodian at ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... the written word which is in all languages their conservative element. In it is the abiding witness against the mutilations or other capricious changes in their shape which affectation, folly, ignorance, and half-knowledge would introduce. It is not indeed always able to hinder the final adoption of these corrupter ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... the snubbing they would get if they once ventured into a New England garden—Hm. There is freedom there, but not license, and every opportunity for individuality. The gladiolas, canterbury bells, gillie flowers and fox gloves grow as prim as in a conservative English garden. Pansies smile in their little bed, and although the nasturtium, the wild-growing, happy-go-lucky nasturtium, goes visiting around among all his neighbors, he is never allowed to ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... (1881-1885) of the King James Bible; and aided in the preparation of Caspar Rene Gregory's Prolegomena to the revised Greek New Testament of Tischendorf. His principal single production, representing his scholarly method and conservative conclusions, was The Authorship af the Fourth Gospel: External Evidences (1880; second edition, by J. H. Thayer, with other essays, 1889), originally a lecture, and in spite of the compression due to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... with us, you should say. Giovanni is a specimen of the furious Conservative, who hates change and has a cold chill at the word 'republic' Do you call ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... interest. What Canada was to the Southern slaves under the old regime, a State with liberal divorce laws is to fugitive wives. If a dozen learned judges should get together, as is proposed, to revise the divorce laws, they would make them more stringent in liberal States instead of more lax in conservative States. When such a commission is decided upon, one-half of the members should be women, as they have an equal interest in the marriage and divorce laws; and common justice demands that they should have an equal voice in their reconstruction. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... Gladstone, a furore for church establishment came down upon the conservative squadrons between 1835 and 1838. He describes it as due especially to the activity of the presbyterian established church of Scotland before the disruption, and especially to the 'zealous and truly noble propagandism of Dr. Chalmers, a man with the energy ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the earth. The Thirst of Passion, the Cup of Pleasure, the Fountain of the Water of Life, the Blood of Murder, the Rod of Chastisement, the Iron Scepter, the Fire of Wrath, the Balance of Righteousness, the Sword of Justice, the Wheels of Providence, the Conservative Mountains, the Raging Seas of Anarchy, and the Golden, Brazen, and Iron Ages, will reflect their images in truth's mirror, and photograph their lessons on memory's tablet, while the mists of the "positive philosophy," ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... a moment on the attitude of mind in which the Greek citizen approached political problems. He was both a Conservative and a Radical; or rather, he brought to politics the best of Conservatism together with the best of Radicalism. He was a Conservative because he reverenced tradition and recognized the power and value of custom. None of our modern Conservative writers and defenders of the existing ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... conscience to do their utmost to give early success to the movement for the legal suppression of the drinking saloon, which they rightly regard as the fountain of intemperance. Some of them are rich and some of them are poor. Some of them are conservative and some of them of radical tendency as to questions concerning wealth. They belong to the industrious, intelligent, moral, and patriotic reserves of the country. With them in sympathy is the motherhood of America. I think it is only fair to say, and that all social reformers ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... survey to leap over several periods of forward and backward movement and we shall earn the thanks of none of them. What is too conservative for one will be too revolutionary for another, and the aesthete will scornfully tell us that we have no fibre. When we show that what awaits us is no fools' paradise, but the danger of a temporary reverse of humanity ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... long, long legs cased in pearl-grey trousers—legs that bent unsteadily at the knee and gave a kind of sideways wobble as he walked. Beside him, short and thick-set, stood Mr. Callamay, the venerable conservative statesman, with a face like a Roman bust, and short white hair. Young girls didn't much like going for motor drives alone with Mr. Callamay; and of old Lord Moleyn one wondered why he wasn't living in gilded exile on the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... and hunting; these men's unions therefore were the outcome of the necessary conditions of life. It is obvious that innovations and inventions of all sorts originated in these unions rather than with the temperamentally conservative women, and that we have to look upon them as the hotbed of all spiritual and social evolution. These confederations and leagues not based on a natural or blood-relationship, but on a feeling of brotherhood and friendliness, might well have ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... is entangled, mixed, and scattered, appearing to one's eyes like a picture in a dream. Thirty centuries have left their traces here. The innate laziness and the strong conservative tendencies of the Hindus, even before the European invasion, preserved all kinds of monuments from the ruinous vengeance of the fanatics, whether those memorials were Buddhist, or belonged to some other unpopular ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... a President of their own. I should like to see this so that they could satisfy themselves how little, after all, can be accomplished by legislation. The moment responsibility should touch their shoulders they would become conservative. They would find that making a living in this world is an individual affair, and that each man must look out for himself. They would soon find that the Government cannot take care of the people. The people must support the Government. Everything cannot be regulated ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... yes! The English divorce laws are very conservative. But I suppose in the end such ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... in short, of men differing fiercely and irreconcilably on every principle that goes to the root of human society and destiny; and the impossibility of keeping such a team together will force you to sell the pass again to the solid Conservative Opposition. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... case, time developed two classes: an inferior population, with a furious spirit of democracy, and a superior class, more conservative, and desirous of keeping peace with ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... and fresh air. Ready to make a treasure of each toy, Or break them all in discontented mood; Fearless of Fate, Yet strangely fearful of a comrade's laugh; Reckless and timid, hard and sensitive; In talk a rebel, full of mocking chaff, At heart devout conservative; In love with love, yet hating to be kissed; Inveterate optimist, And judge severe, In reason cloudy but in feeling clear; Keen critic, ardent hero-worshipper, Impatient of restraint in little ways, Yet ever ready to confer On chosen leaders boundless ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... at the Montague home. Twice the gathering was enlarged by other members of the film colony, a supper was served and poker played for inconsiderable stakes. In this game of chance the Montague girl proved to be conservative, not to say miserly, and was made to suffer genuinely when Merton Gill displayed a reckless spirit in the betting. That he amassed winnings of ninety-eight cents one night did not reassure her. She pointed out that he might easily ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... I am a conservative man. But I do wish Miss Moore could be chairman of our board of trustees for a year ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... namely, the tissue cells, like the worker bees in the hive, pass away the most rapidly; then, according to Haeckel, there are certain constants, certain cells that remain throughout life. "There is always a solid groundwork of conservative cells, the descendants of which secure the further regeneration." The traditions of the state are kept up by the citizen-cells that remain, so that, though all is changed in time, the genius of the state remains; the individuality of the man is not lost. "The ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... together on this deal. Your paper has considerable weight, and if that weight falls the right way you won't find me stingy. For instance, an item that this property"—he produced a slip with some legal descriptions—"has been sold for ten thousand dollars to eastern investors—very conservative investors from the East, don't forget that—might help to turn another deal that's just hanging. Sorry to keep you so long, but perhaps you can catch the press yet." And, with one of his friendly mannerisms, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... held at Albany at the instance of the Crown to provide the means for the defence against France in Canada, and it was then that Franklin submitted the first concrete form for a union of the colonies into a permanent alliance. It was in advance of the times, for, conservative as it was, it was unfortunately opposed both by the Crown and the ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... party, there was a political character, ranging from High Church and the divine right of kings, to absolute levellers in Church and State. This disintegrating process threatened not only civil war, with well-defined parties, but entire anarchy in the realm of England. It was long resisted by the conservative men of all opinions. At length the issue came: the king was a prisoner, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... leave this topic without re-emphasizing the fact that abortion is not a trifle, to be undertaken or even to be spoken of lightly. Too many women, not only in the radical ranks, but in the conservative ranks as well, are in the habit of considering abortion as a joke, a trifling annoyance, something like a cold in the head, which, while disagreeable, is sure to pass away in a day or two. They know Mrs. A ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... selfless humanity, was suited to an opposite age—such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and floods of selfishness In the time of Socrates, among men only of worn-out instincts, old conservative Athenians who let themselves go—"for the sake of happiness," as they said, for the sake of pleasure, as their conduct indicated—and who had continually on their lips the old pompous words to which they had long forfeited the right by ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... have been a hard nut for any man to crack. I've never been conspicuous for my efforts at self-obliteration. I've a temper that's as brittle as a squirrel bone. I'm too febrile and flightly, too chameleon-mooded and critical. The modern wife should be always a conservative. She should hold back her husband's impulses of nervous expenditure, conserving his tranquil-mindedness about the same as cotton-waste in a journal-box conserves oil. Heaven knows I started with theories enough—but I must be a good deal like old Schramm, that teacher of Heine's who ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... continued his way up the avenue towards the mansion. The park was beautifully kept. Remembering the native wildness and virgin seclusion of the Western forest, he could not help contrasting it with the conservative gardening of this pretty woodland, every rood of which had been patrolled by keepers and rangers, and preserved and fostered hundreds of years before he was born, until warmed for human occupancy. At times the avenue was crossed by grass drives, where the original woodland ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... seldom rash. Enthusiasm is not common in the bleak northern dales, whose inhabitants are, for the most part, conservative and slow. Wind and rain had hardened him and he had inherited a reserved strength and quietness from ancestors who had braved the storms that raged about Ashness. Yet the north is not always stern, for now and then the gray sky ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... the young Washo are still observing this taboo and ritual I was unable to determine. However, in certain conservative families it seems probable that at least ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs

... faced the rivalry of chemistry. The so-called "antimony war" in the earlier part of the century marked an important assault on Galenism, and the letters of the arch-conservative Guy Patin (who died in 1672) help us appreciate this period.[43] However, even more important was the work of van Helmont, who developed and extended the doctrines of Paracelsus and represented a major force in seventeenth-century thought. ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... at least within the temperate zones; 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 ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... as he exclaimed: "Exactly! If I have caused you to infer that I shall employ anything except legitimate means to effect my purpose, it is my error. At the same time, my proposition is not one that I could well afford to take to the ordinary, conservative type of broker. Now then, how about you, Mallow? Would you care to work ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... of the Radicals, or "Clear Grits," as they came to be called. On seeking re-election in York, he declined to give any pledge on the burning question of the Clergy Reserves and was defeated. In 1858 the Liberal-Conservative party, formed in 1854 by a coalition, attempted to bring him out as a candidate for the upper house, which was at this date elective, but though he had broken with the advanced reformers, he could not approve of the tactics of their opponents, and refused to stand. He died on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... who cut Gordian knots as a matter of course when it suited their convenience; who shrank from no conclusion in theory, nor from any want of logic in practice so long as they were illogical of malice prepense, and for what they held to be sufficient reason. The conclusions were conservative, quietistic, comforting. The arguments by which they were reached were taken from the most advanced writers of the day. All that these people contended for was granted them, but the fruits of victory were for the most part handed over ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... cogitation Matthew resolved to go to Samuel Lawson's store instead of William Blair's. To be sure, the Cuthberts always had gone to William Blair's; it was almost as much a matter of conscience with them as to attend the Presbyterian church and vote Conservative. But William Blair's two daughters frequently waited on customers there and Matthew held them in absolute dread. He could contrive to deal with them when he knew exactly what he wanted and could point it out; but in such a matter as this, requiring explanation ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... and not the least interesting of the two provinces. The object of the separation may have been to keep the Lower Province French as long as possible, to prevent the consummation devoutly anticipated by Montcalm, and the Duc de Choiseul, and to raise up a conservative English colony in the Far West, to counteract the growing power of the now United States. By the Union, constitutions very distantly related to the British constitution were conferred upon the two provinces. The 31st Act of George ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... suits are recent introductions from London, and have been worn at all the functions at which the black is required, but the latter is more conservative and in better taste. The afternoon dress is seldom worn in midsummer, morning suits being allowable at seaside and ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... two sisters. Thus before thirty the responsibility of these many thousands swept down upon him. Limited in practical contact with the world, geographically, politically, socially, having learned little of the play-side of life, he was by inheritance, training and inclination a conservative. He had never practiced law. He never tried a case, but he now opened a downtown office where he punctually arrived at ten o'clock and methodically spent the morning, carefully, personally managing all the details of the entailed estate. He was essentially conscientious and, as the years ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... can imagine 'Punch' turned Conservative, incorporated in one paper with the 'Morning Herald,' so that a column of news was printed side by side with one of a jocular character, and these two together devoted without principle to the support of a party, the attack of Whiggism, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... Leunclavius. (Boissevain's changes are, however, indicated.) The Tauchnitz text with all its inaccuracies endeavors to present a coherent and readable narrative, and this is something which the exactitude of Boissevain does not at all times permit. In the translation I have striven to follow a conservative course, and at some points a straightforward narrative interlarded with brackets will give evidence of its origin in Tauchnitz, whereas at others loose, disjointed paragraphs betray the hand of Boissevain who would not willingly let Xiphilinus ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... its historic interest and literary charm. He finds DISRAELI, after the fantastic flights of early manhood, in an assured position. He was within measurable distance of assuming the Leadership of a Party which, long dallying with the harsh appellation Protectionist, now decided to be known as Conservative, a compromise hotly resented by good Tories. A flash of the old vanity flickers over a letter written from the Carlton Club to his wife: "The Ministry have resigned. All Coningsby and Young England the general exclamation here." Alone he did it, partly ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various

... her destination in safety. Surely the difficulty of a testing trial, although with a model screw, had at length been overcome. But no! The paddle still possessed the ascendency; and a thousand interests—invested capital, use and wont, and conservative instincts—all ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... nothing harmful or indecent about an automobile, and let it live in the coach-house like a respectable dog-cart or the orthodox brougham, all would be well, and we should save our tempers and a vast lot of gray matter in attempting to show a conservative landlord how far he is behind ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... much about it as a Tory would," retorted the Story Girl. Uncle Roger was a Liberal and Uncle Alec a Conservative, and the girls held fast to the political traditions of their respective households. "But it isn't really the Enterprise editor at all who is saying it—it's a man in the States who claims to be a prophet. If he IS a prophet perhaps he has ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... problem is unquestionably of the greatest practical interest, since the fundamental importance of all the other questions which surround it depends upon the actual money value involved. A careful and conservative estimate made in 1916 placed the annual loss caused by the ticks in the United States at $40,000,000, and indicated that the ticks also lowered the assets of the South by an additional $33,000,000. The principal items in these ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... University Commission. In the end the matter was shelved, the friends of the University undertaking that the Colleges, with the approval of their Visitors, should prepare new statutes for the assent of the Crown. The change in St. John's was opposed by some ultra-conservative Fellows, who urged that as they were bound by oath to observe and uphold the statutes, and to seek no dispensation from them, they were precluded from asking for any change. The Bishop of Ely, however, gently ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott

... similar development was under rapid way, but John's effort to push forward too fast along that line was one cause of the insurrection and the charter, and of the reaction in this particular which it embodies. As a statement of feudal law the Great Charter is moderate, conservative, and carefully regardful of the real rights of the king. As a document born in civil strife it is remarkable in this respect, or would be were this not true of all its progeny in Anglo-Saxon history. Whoever framed it must have been fair-minded ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... determined to make a definite pronouncement of its South African policy, and to endeavour to arouse the country to a sense of the seriousness of the situation with which President Krueger's continued obduracy would bring it face to face. On July 27th Mr. Balfour declared, in addressing the Union of Conservative Associations, that— ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... "old hero," as Jackson came to be called. The Southern gentry who had followed Crawford, the Calhoun men, and certain remnants of ancient Federalism were now compelled to choose between the so-called radicalism of the West and John Quincy Adams, the Conservative. Two parties thus took the place of the four Republican factions which had contended for the control of the Government and especially the ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... the main features of the document. In July 1869, the vote was taken, with the expected result that the "test oath" provision was defeated while the constitution was approved. In the General Assembly elected under this constitution, the Conservative Party enjoyed a working majority over the Republicans, who had been badly split by the referendum controversy. Henry Wells resigned, and was replaced by Gilbert Walker, who served first by appointment of the army commander and later by virtue of election to a constitutional ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton

... 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

... was voted on the 30th of January, 1875, by a majority of one vote, if majority it could be called, but the great step had been taken, and the struggle began instantly between the moderate conservative Republicans and the more advanced Left. W. came home late that day. Some of his friends came in after dinner and the talk was most interesting. I was so new to it all that most of the names of the rank and file were unknown to me, and the appreciations ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... scouts and orderlies, cavalry might be dispensed with. Artillery might think that unless guns were largely used, no infantry could ever make an attack at all; while cavalry officers, who were perhaps the most conservative of all, would point to the past, and show how every battle that had ever been fought was won by cavalry, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... Huguenot, Scotch, Irish and English and Germans, with congenial Danes and Swedes, into our people's life. It was also a bond of union, North and South, too strong to be separated by civil strife. It is an element in the make-up of the South that will ever be a conservative force in behalf of theology, of law and ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various

... my replies to a letter of Herbert Spencer and to an anti-socialist book of M. Garofalo. It shows the present state of social science, and of the struggle between ultra-conservative orthodoxy, which is blinded to the sad truths of contemporary life by its traditional syllogisms and innovating heterodoxy which is ever becoming more marked among the learned, as well as strengthening its hold ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... part of 1900 saw an outbreak of religious and anti-foreign fanaticism in China which rapidly assumed alarming proportions. A sect or society known as the Boxers, founded in 1899 originally as a patriotic and ultra-conservative body, rapidly developed into a reactionary and anti-foreign, and especially anti-Christian organisation. Outrages were committed all over the country, and the perpetrators shielded by the authorities, who, while professing peace, encouraged the movement. Thousands ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... the chance of imitating him, no one judges him too severely. He is regarded not as the "exploiter," the man grown fat on the labour of others. Rather he is the type, the genius of the American people; and they point to him with pride as "one of our strong men," "one of our conservative men of business." ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... philosophy was that powerfully presented in "The Quintessence of Ibsenism." It was, in brief, that conservative ideals were bad, not because They were conservative, but because they were ideals. Every ideal prevented men from judging justly the particular case; every moral generalization oppressed the individual; the golden rule was ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... between such changes has been unduly long. This doubtless arises from the fact that an improvement of weapons is due to the energy of one or two men, while changes in tactics have to overcome the inertia of a conservative class; but it is a great evil. It can be remedied only by a candid recognition of each change, by careful study of the powers and limitations of the new ship or weapon, and by a consequent adaptation of the method of using it to the qualities it possesses, which ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... indistinct again. And then, besides gossip, which is of mild quality and in fair proportion,—what talk, casuistic and other, about the Moral Duties, the still feasible Pieties, the Constitution Unigenitus! All this alive, resonant at dinner-tables of Conservative stamp; the Miracles of Abbe Paris much a topic there:—and not a whisper of Infidel Philosophies; the very name of Voltaire not once mentioned in the Reuss ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... up our Press Bureau. We must have strong, conservative editorials this week... It's the crucial period. Our institutions are at stake... the national honor is imperilled... order must be preserved at any hazard... all that ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair

... Pro-Re-Nata of Washington, D. C., in expressing an emphatic protest against this retrograde movement; that we earnestly hope that better counsels will prevail; that, at a time when so conservative an institution as the British Medical Association has voted to open its doors to women, the stigma of retrogression will not be allowed to rest upon the foremost school in the Capitol of ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... words, and writings, to extirpate errors and heresies out of the hearts of men, and in their stead profoundly plant the true and lively faith. The second point you spoke of I commend; for, whereas the professors of the art of medicine give so good order to the prophylactic, or conservative part of their faculty, in what concerneth their proper healths, that they stand in no need of making use of the other branch, which is the curative or therapeutic, by medicaments. As for the third, I grant it to be true, for learned advocates and counsellors ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... July Revolution itself, and he was a close friend of the Marquis de Lafayette who played a major part in the Revolution and its aftermath; for Cooper and many others, the ultimate results of the Revolution were a serious disappointment, since the new King seemed rapidly to become almost as conservative as the old} ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... sufficient to explain the strange calm before the storm; but meanwhile the British nation was busy listening to the conflicting eloquence of partisan orators from a thousand platforms throughout the land, and trying to make up its mind whether it should return a Conservative or a Radical Ministry ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... this word from a recent treatise against agrarianism, and having an acquired taste for orders in one sense, at least, he flattered himself with being what is called a Conservative, in other words, he had a strong relish for that maxim of the Scotch freebooter, which is rendered into English by the comely aphorism of "keep what you've got, and get ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... of patriots, every gush of enthusiasm. The constitution could not save when it was itself lost. Never was there a more wanton and determined disregard of those great rights for which the nations had bled, than under the emperors. Every conservative influence that came from the people was hopelessly suppressed. The reign of beneficent emperors, like the Antonines, and of monsters like Nero and Caracalla, was alike fatal. The seal of political ruin was set when Augustus was most potent and most feared. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... admitted, indeed, that for the higher walks of life, such as whist and nap, he had no aptitude. Occasionally at Upper House Court, politics were introduced, and Arbuthnot, a staunch Liberal in a shire of Tories, was sometimes rallied upon his opinions by the Conservative Burton and Payne. He took it all, however, as he took everything else, good humouredly, and even made some amiable attempts to convert his opponents. "His Radicalism," says Mr. Payne, amusingly, "was entirely a matter of social position and connection. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... practice as a branch of the commercial and money-getting spirit which they are anxious to discourage; and one consequence of this was that they were, less disposed to contend strenuously for the inviolability of existing money-contracts. The conservative feeling on this point was stronger among the mass than among the philosophers. Plato even complains of it as inconveniently preponderant, and as arresting the legislator in all comprehensive projects of reform. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... was born of Jewish parentage on the 27th day of June, 1869, in the Russian province of Kovno. Surely these parents never dreamed what unique position their child would some day occupy. Like all conservative parents they, too, were quite convinced that their daughter would marry a respectable citizen, bear him children, and round out her allotted years surrounded by a flock of grandchildren, a good, religious woman. As most parents, they had no inkling what a strange, impassioned ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman



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