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Bias   Listen
verb
Bias  v. t.  (past & past part. biased; pres. part. biasing)  To incline to one side; to give a particular direction to; to influence; to prejudice; to prepossess. "Me it had not biased in the one direction, nor should it have biased any just critic in the counter direction."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bias" Quotes from Famous Books



... series of notable books. They were all similar in that they bore the stamp of the romanticism of the thirties and forties, interpreting history in terms of the {4} individual; but they differed in their political bias. These works were written by Carlyle, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... an end, and that therefore sex was no longer a necessity. Christianity, because it began under these conditions, made sexlessness and Communism the two main practical articles of its propaganda; and it has never quite lost its original bias in these directions. In spite of the putting off of the Second Coming from the lifetime of the apostles to the millennium, and of the great disappointment of the year 1000 A.D., in which multitudes of Christians seriously prepared for the end of the world, the ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... fellows, not a few, Who, turn'd by Nature with a gloomy bias, Renounce black devils to adopt the blue, And think when they are ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... naturally tried to make capital of a paper so little calculated to please Roman Catholics, emanating from a son of the "Most Christian king." And Francis thought himself compelled to clear himself from the charge of lukewarmness in the faith, if not of actual heretical bias, by exercising fresh severities upon the devoted Protestants of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... few persons, observes Mr Hume, is to be ascribed to chance; what arises from a great number, may often be accounted for by known and determinate causes; and he illustrates this position by the instance of a loaded die, the bias of which, however it may for a short time escape detection, will certainly in a great number of instances become predominant. The issue of a battle may be decided by a sunbeam or a cloud of dust. Had an heir been born to Charles II. of Spain—had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... Thumble has recommended himself to me strongly either by his outward symbols of manhood or by such manifestation of his inward mental gifts as I have succeeded in obtaining. But my knowledge of him has been so slight, and has been acquired in a manner so likely to bias me prejudicially against him, that I am inclined to think my opinion should go for nothing. It is, however, the fact that the bishop has nominated him to this duty; and that, as I have myself simply notified my desire to be relieved from the care of the parish, on account of certain unfitness ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... what is best fitted for its growth and improvement, by laws akin to those which make the sunflower turn to the sun, or the willow to the stream. Ladies of this disposition, permanently thwarted in their affectionate bias, gradually languish away into intellectual inanition, or sprout out into those abnormal eccentricities which are classed under the general name of "oddity" or "character." But once admitted to their proper soil, it is ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... sort of things they are which I understand by Things Slowly Learnt. Some are facts, some are moral truths, some are practical lessons; but the great characteristic of all those which are to be thought of in this essay is, that we have to learn them and act upon them in the face of a strong bias to think or act in an opposite way. It is not that they are so difficult in themselves, not that they are hard to be understood, or that they are supported by arguments whose force is not apparent to every mind. On the contrary, the things which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... by the keen analysis and profound learning of Dr. Reitzenstein: the Poimandres revelation printed in the Corpus Hermeticum, and the sermon of the Naassenes in Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, which is combined with Attis-worship.[162:2] The violent anti-Jewish bias of most of the sects—they speak of 'the accursed God of the Jews' and identify him with Saturn and the Devil—points on the whole to pre-Christian conditions: and a completely non-Christian standpoint is still visible in ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... absence of legal justice, which restored to the loser the amount of his loss, and frequently with no inconsiderable addition for the temporary use of his property. In short, the law was momentarily extinct in that particular district, and justice was administered subject to the bias of personal interests and ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... It was with some bias and suspicion, therefore, that I took up Das gefaehrliche Alter. When I started to read the book, nothing could have been further from my mind than to write, a French version and to present it myself to the public. This is all the more reason why justice should ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us, He knows each chord—its various tone, Each spring—its various bias: Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know not ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... to Mount Ida, where the beautiful shepherd Paris was tending his flocks, and to him was committed the decision. The goddesses accordingly appeared before him. Juno promised him power and riches, Minerva glory and renown in war, and Venus the fairest of women for his wife, each attempting to bias his decision in her own favor. Paris decided in favor of Venus and gave her the golden apple, thus making the two other goddesses his enemies. Under the protection of Venus, Paris sailed to Greece, and was hospitably received by Menelaus, king of Sparta. Now Helen, the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... though as adverse as his Danish majesty to any participation in the war, did not, however, so scrupulously observe the neutrality they professed; at least, the traders of that republic, either from an inordinate thirst of lucre, or a secret bias in favour of the enemies of Great Britain, assisted the French commerce with all the appearance of the most flagrant partiality. We have, in the beginning of this year's transactions, observed, that a great number of their ships were taken by the English ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... publications which the home and the world would be better without. Every great city has more of the rightly made and rightly sold papers than of the other sort, and the business man, the working man, the professional man, the family, no matter of what taste, or political faith, or economic bias, or social status, or financial plenty or paucity, can have the daily visits of newspapers which are able, brilliant, comprehensive, clean and honest. But all the time, these men and families will have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... happen to be partial, but which is quite irrelevant to the question. Any one who belongs to a particular "school," whether of style or thought; any one who approaches literature with a spirit overweighted by political bias, scientific bias, or religious bias, is disqualified. He cannot hope to stand equally away from, or equally near to, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, and, after setting aside their elements of disagreement, distinguish and admire ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... ventilating these crude ideas, Mr. Kennedy. I went in myself, after taking my degree, for a course of general reading. Goethe and Schiller, you know. Yes, how fine that all is, though I sometimes feel it is a little Teutonic? One needs to correct the Teutonic bias, and it is just there that the gymnastic of the classics comes in; it gives one a standard—a criterion in fact. One must have a criterion, mustn't one, or it is all loose, and indeed, so to speak, illusive? ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of age with extraordinary good cheer. His hearing became very imperfect. "I remind myself sometimes," he said, "of those verses I wrote some years ago. I wonder if you would remember them! I called the poem 'The Archbishop and Gil Bias: A Modernized Version.'" He then repeated with great humor and pathos a ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... master of his own fate. Publishers are his humble servants—waiting eagerly to snatch up his work that they may get all they can for themselves out of it,—and the public—the great public which, apart from all 'interested' critical bias, delivers its own verdict, is always ready to hearken and to applaud the writer of its choice. There is no more splendid and enviable life!—if I could only make a hundred pounds a year by it, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... he leads science on to greater victories. Copernicus, great as he was, could not disentangle scientific reasoning entirely from the theological bias: the doctrines of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as to the necessary superiority of the circle had vitiated the minor features of his system, and left breaches in it through which the enemy was not slow to enter; but Kepler sees these errors, and by wonderful ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... this work the author shows not only the reactionary character of anarchism, but he exposes its class bias and its empty philosophic idealism and utopian program. He shows anarchism to be just the opposite of scientific socialism or communism. It aims at a society dominated by individualism, which is simply a capitalist ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... a summons that the council should assemble, and the chiefs, already risen from the banquet, prepared to give him audience. With a proud and firm step he approached the table; and though, from habit, he repressed the natural feelings and bias of the temper, yet there was an evident expression of hostility against the intruders, accompanied with a glance of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... published as the first plate in the third livraison of the ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES of Vienna—accompanied by French and German letter-press. I have no hesitation in saying that, without the least national bias or individual partiality, the performance of Mr. Lewis—although much smaller, is by far the most faithful; nor is the engraving less superior, than the drawing, to the production of the Vienna ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... MARRY DOWNWARD.—It is hard enough to advance in the quality of life without being loaded with clay heavier than your own. It will be sufficiently difficult to keep your children up to your best level without having to correct a bias in ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... watched Barney closely, nor that Barney watched him with as keen a vigilance. Whatever Woodward may have actually felt upon the subject of the apparition, Barney was certainly undecided as to its reality; or if there existed any bias at all, it was in favor of that reality. Why did Woodward's arm tremble, and why did the man, who was supposed ignorant of fear, exhibit so much terror and agitation on the occasion? Still, on the other hand, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... every cramped or tremulous writing as a forgery. The varieties in a man's writing, caused by his writing with his glove on or off, with a quill or a bad steel pen, drunk or sober, calm or agitated, in full daylight or dusk, etc., etc., all this is a dead letter to them, and they have a bias toward suspicion of forgery; and a banker's clerk, with his mere general impression, is better evidence than they are. But I am an artist of a very different stamp. I never reason a priori. I compare; and I have no bias. I never will have. The judges know this and the pains ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... or two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or take no notice of it. I was not conscious of the slightest mysterious bias, influence, or attraction, one way or other. Of that I am as strictly sure as of every other statement that I make here. Ultimately I decided, as a break in the monotony of my life, that I ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens

... question like this, to observe the greatest caution and to maintain a strictly detached position. The astronomer, archaeologist, geologist, and anthropologist have each their share in the solution of the problem, but each also has the bias due to his own special science. The mineralogist solves the problem of the Foreign Stones by suggesting a "glacial drift" without reference to the geologist, who will tell him that the local gravels contain no pebbles ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens

... gift, considered as a gift, brings the receiver under obligations to the benefactor, and has a natural tendency to draw the obliged into a party with the giver. To prevent difficulties of this kind, and to preserve the minds of judges from any bias, was the Divine prohibition: 'Thou shalt not receive any gift; for a gift bindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.'" ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... certainly difficult," said Mr. van Koppen, "for an Anglo-Saxon to appraise this book objectively. His mind has been saturated with it in childhood to such an extent as to take on a definite bias." ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... was perfectly truthful; nevertheless it had passed through Deronda's mind that under other circumstances he should have given way to the interest this girl had raised in him, and tried to know more of her. But his history had given him a stronger bias in another direction. He felt himself in no ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... since consistently maintained. Its prospectus is before me in his handwriting, but it bears upon itself sufficiently the character of his hand and mind. The paper would be kept free, it said, from personal influence or party bias; and would be devoted to the advocacy of all rational and honest means by which wrong might be redressed, just rights maintained, and the happiness ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... appeal to their cupidity,—reminding them that the merchant, "for God's sake bias," would pay a far higher price for ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... with a bias against rather than for the worker, and the determination to do strictest justice to employer as well as employed. Long experience had taught what was to be expected from untrained, unskilled laborers, with no ambition or power to rise. ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... that he was particularly fascinated by Hogarth's work, and that he copied and imitated it; and his father's well-stocked library, and his father's encouragement, had quickened his imagination and given it its enduring bias for literary activity.' Like Defoe, Smollett, Sterne, Borrow, Dickens, Eliot, 'G.C.' is, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... larceny on the part of the Republican party. It is not the part of an historian, who is absolutely destitute of political principles, to pass judgment. Facts have crept into this history, it is true, but no one could regret it more than the author; yet there has been no bias or political prejudice shown, other than that reflected from the historical sources whence information ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... more confusing than the pattern itself was the explanation which accompanied it. Peggy tossed the separate pieces to and fro, the while she groaned over the mysterious phrases. "'Place the perforated edge on the bias of the cloth!' Which is the perforated edge? Which is the bias? 'Be careful to see that the nicked holes come exactly in the middle of—' I don't know in the least which they call the 'nicked holes!' I can't think what is the use of half ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... exclude the possibility of malingering; it is essential that the patient should be examined with scrupulous accuracy at regular intervals and careful notes made for purposes of comparison, and also that the doctor should retain an impartial attitude and not develop a bias either in favour of or against the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League." These two Articles together go some way to destroy the conception of the League as an instrument of progress, and to equip it from the outset with an almost fatal bias towards the status quo. It is these Articles which have reconciled to the League some of its original opponents, who now hope to make of it another Holy Alliance for the perpetuation of the economic ruin ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... some beggar's daughter, a Gagaian, or a maiden of Hanirabbat or Ugarit whom my messengers saw?" Then Nimmuria took up the tale, and complained that Kadashman-Bel sent only ambassadors who had never frequented his father's Court, and were moreover of adverse bias. "Send a kamiru" (evidently a eunuch is meant) "who knows thy sister." Further misunderstandings come under discussion, from which it is evident that the general situation between the two princes was ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr

... with some clearness of vision—my only gift; not very clever, with a natural bad temper, and a strong sexual bias, doing what I can to get a broader handling of the fuel question—as a common interest for all mankind. And I find myself up against a lot of men, subtle men, sharp men, obstinate men, prejudiced men, able to get round me, able to get over me, able to blockade me.... Clever ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... that same 'goose-pen' which he speaks of as such a safe instrument for unfolding practical doctrines, with such patient energy, is not now occupied with the statistics of Noah's Ark, grave as he looks; though that, too, is a subject which his nautical experience and the indomitable bias of his genius as a western man towards calculation in general, together with his notion that the affairs of the world generally, past as well as future, belong properly to his sphere as a man, will require him to take up and examine and report upon, before he will think that his work is ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... comfortably away, threaded over at advantageous points by leafless lines of woodbine and bitter-sweet and murmured over by a great grove of pines at the west: his roots of life were here, he recognized, with a renewed pang of surprise. He was not used to thinking about himself. Now that the changed bias of his mind had bred new habits, he ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... Bias of. In a Siemens' polarized relay the pole pieces are adjustable so that they may be brought nearer to or withdrawn from the tongue. One of the poles is adjusted so as to be nearer the tongue. This one-sided ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... conscious aristocrat so free from the hereditary delusion. Good parents, he was convinced, are only an advantage in so far as they have made you good stuff, and bad parents are no discredit to a son or daughter of good quality. Conceivably he had a bias against too close an examination of origins, and he held that the honour of the children should atone for the sins of the fathers and the questionable achievements of any intervening testator. Not half a dozen rich and ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... and some pictures by Watts, he would one day push his head out of the grey waters and see the universe. He believed in sudden conversion, a belief which may be right, but which is peculiarly attractive to a half-baked mind. It is the bias of much popular religion: in the domain of business it dominates the Stock Exchange, and becomes that "bit of luck" by which all successes and failures are explained. "If only I had a bit of luck, the whole thing would come straight. . . . He's got ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... express themselves at length in the pages of the literary monthlies; that the reader of the weekly should be content with the anonymous (and less expensive) review written by the staff-critic. Whatever the personal bias, it is at least certain that under present conditions the Academy appeals more generally to the popular taste. Its recent absorption of a younger periodical is indicated in the compounding of its title into the Academy and Literature—a change ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... likely-looking bottle from the shelf, and tries a dose of the contents on this Mrs. Goochy—and awaits results. If nothing untoward transpires, he then passes the medicine on to the patient. Mrs. Goochy has a strong acquisitive bias, and raises no objections to this vicarious proceeding. She argues: "I doesn't need 'un now, but there be's no tellin'. I may need 'un ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... as tastes, of these young writers being mostly on the side of established models, their authority, as long as it influenced him, would, to a certain degree, interfere with his striking confidently into any new or original path. That some remains of this bias, with a little leaning, perhaps, towards school recollections[6], may have had a share in prompting his preference of the Horatian Paraphrase, is by no means improbable;—at least, that it was enough to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... the other and sometimes caused feuds and bad feelings, and were always liable to be suspected of being tinged with partiality; whereas the judges being strangers in the district would give their decisions without bias ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... triumph of his maturity ("Bible in Spain"), or of a vacation tour during the autumn of a disappointed life ("Wild Wales"), Borrow was always working upon the same model, with the same desperate and conscientious zeal, with the same extraordinary gust and vigour, with the same genius, the same bias, the same limitations. ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe

... for the effects of bias must be found in a rigorous and searching criticism. If misleading statements and unsound arguments are allowed to pass unchallenged the fault will not lie only ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... public criticism of its institutions and policies. Without this, there can be no change, no progress. But intelligent criticism implies scientific criticism, that is, criticism based upon adequate scientific knowledge and without personal bias. This means the scientific study of institutions and social organization. If the American people are to perfect their institutions, they must maintain and develop their moral freedom; and to maintain true moral freedom, they must encourage the scientific ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... entered the Liverpool police force, that I might have a look at the various unlawful traps which are every night set for Jack. As my term of service in that distinguished corps was short, and as my personal bias in the capacity of one of its members has ceased, no suspicion will attach to my evidence that it is an admirable force. Besides that it is composed, without favour, of the best men that can be picked, it is directed by an unusual intelligence. Its organisation against Fires, I take to be much ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... foreign investors, raising doubts about Vietnam's ability to maintain the inflow of foreign capital. While government officials are leading an effort to accelerate reform, their continuing ideological bias in favor of state intervention and control of the economy may slow progress toward a more liberalized investment environment. Even with the strong growth of the economy, unemployment at 25% ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... I loved her I am not able to express. She was as gay and gentle in her mood as I was serious. When I married, she accompanied me to my house. But there was no good luck.—The fortune which my sister possessed placed her in a condition to follow her own heart's bias, and she gave her hand to a poor but amiable young man, a Lieutenant Wolf, and lived with him some months of the highest earthly felicity. But brief was the happiness to be. Wolf perished on a sea-voyage, and his inconsolable wife sunk under her sorrow. She died some hours after she had given ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer

... friends, the young mimic filled the hearts of his listeners with fervent hopes of his coming success in the fold of their beloved church. These hopes were destined to be met with disappointment. The bias of the future leader of the American stage was only faintly outlined as yet; his hour of development was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... myself as expressing a personal conviction so much as interpreting a general feeling, shared I know by almost all who speak our tongue, Americans, Australians, Canadians, Irish, New Zealanders, and Scotch, whom I range alphabetically lest I should be thought to show prejudice or bias in any direction. But this is beyond the present purpose, which is merely to exhibit the tendency which this so-called ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... people to form their judgment, to say the best, harshly, and but too often, incorrectly. It is for posterity to calmly weigh the evidence handed down, and to examine into the merits of a case divested of party bias. Actuated by these feelings, we do not hesitate to assert, that, in the point at question, Mr Vanslyperken had great cause for being displeased; and that the conduct of Moggy Salisbury, in cutting off the tail of Snarleyyow was, in our opinion, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... yet so little has labor to do with knowledge that these bare playgrounds of the lecture system turned into green and verdurous virgin forests merely through the medium of younger eyes and fresher minds. His German bias must have given his youth a terrible twist, for the Lodges saw at a glance what he had thought unessential because un-German. They breathed native air in the Normandy of 1200, a compliment which ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... chose to admit: all this is fairly open to question. But within the limits which he laid down, and within which he confined his reasonings, he used his materials with skill and force; and even those who least agreed with him and were most sensible of the strong and hardly disguised bias which so greatly affected the value of his judgments, could not deny the frankness and the desire to be fair and candid, with which, as far as intention went, he conducted his argument. His first appearance as a writer was in the controversy, as ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... further novels from the pen of Chesterton we shall expect them to have a Roman bias, but we shall hope that they will not bear any signs that Rome has dictated the policy that has made many of her best priests mere puppets, afraid, not of the Church, but of the Pope, who often enough in history has been a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... no less for the solidity of his literary attainments than for the liberality of opinion and the patriotism which condemns him to the penalty of exile in a "dear country's cause," who therefore will not be suspected of undue bias in favour of Russian systems, had written and published in an able article on Russia, treating inter alia of the rise and progress of her manufactures and commerce, to the following effect:—"The manufacturers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... information, derived from such a variety of sources, should sometimes seem to bear the character of party-spirit. Should this appear on the face of the record, I can only say that I have avoided entering into politics, in order that no bias of that sort might lead me to discolour or distort the truths I have had occasion to state; and I have totally rejected those communications which, from their tone of bitterness, personality, and virulence, might be incompatible with the general ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... escaped being a genius! That is precisely what I was about proposing to do, and now, dear, be sure you bid adieu to all bias. Elise, I received a letter two days since, which annoyed me ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... their feet. Let us speak like politicians; there is a nobility without heraldry, a natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with another, another filed before him, according to the quality of his desert, and pre-eminence of his good parts. Though the corruption of these times, and the bias of present practice, wheel another way, thus it was in the first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in the in- tegrity and cradle of well ordered polities: till corrup- tion getteth ground;—ruder desires labouring after that which wiser considerations contemn;—every ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... aware that I have been influenced by any more bias in regard to the Gadarene story than I have been in dealing with other cases of like kind the investigation of which has interested me. I was brought up in the strictest school of evangelical orthodoxy; and when I was old enough to think ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... speculation pious; For music, we can shortly find 580 A barrel-organ that will grind Psalm-tunes—an instrument designed For the New England tour—refined From secular drosses, and inclined To an unworldly turn, (combined With no sectarian bias;) Then, travelling by stages slow, Under the style of Knott & Co., I would accompany the show As moral lecturer, the foe 590 Of Rationalism; while you could throw The rappings in, and make them go Strict Puritan principles, you know, (How do you make ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... over the books, and formed my own opinion. "Is it, on the whole, for, or against?" says he. "For," says I. "Then," says he, "you may now, my good friend, give Mr Clennam the means of forming his opinion. To enable him to do which, without bias and with perfect freedom, I shall go out of town for a week." And he's gone,' said Mr Meagles; that's the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... meritorious; that Nature had marked her disapproval of it in the case of Sir John Franklin and many of his imitators; that it served them very well right; that this enterprise should be undertaken as a protest against the spirit of undue bias; and, finally, that no part of the responsibility or expense should devolve upon the society in its corporate character, but any individual member might contribute to the fund if he were fool enough. It is only common justice to say that none of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... progressed. Now this, which no ordinary and unprepared mind and body can do, is possible sometimes for the will and the frame of one who has been specially prepared. There are fewer of the grosser particles present to feel the hereditary bias—there is the assistance of the reinforced "interior men" (whose normal duration is always greater even in natural death) to the visible outer shell, and there is the drilled and indomitable Will to direct and wield ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... for this task of self-inspection either by a selfish bias which is unwilling to recognize a fault, or by the fault itself which biases the judgment. The faculty, or passion, which misleads one becomes a part of his judging faculty, and cannot condemn itself. The miser cannot realize the baseness of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... especially interested in the account given of Dr. Kane's boyhood and early life. As a boy, he had too much force, originality, and decided bias of nature to be what is called a "good boy,"—one of those unfortunate children whose weakness of individuality passes for moral excellence, and who give their guardians so little trouble in the early development and so much trouble in the maturity of their mediocrity. He would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... commends them to esteem and sympathy, love of liberty and hatred of slavery; that they cannot at once adjust themselves to "constitutional duties" which in South Carolina and Georgia are reserved for trained bloodhounds? Surely, in view of what Massachusetts has been, and her strong bias in favor of human freedom, derived from her great- hearted founders, it is to be hoped that the Executive and Cabinet at Washington will grant her some little respite, some space for turning, some opportunity for conquering her prejudices, before ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... after her lost and mutilated provinces! On the whole, and speaking as a naive amateur, I should say that no country in the world could show a grander military spectacle. Enthusiasm reigned amongst all beholders, but there was no display of political bias or any discordant note. Cries of "Vive la France!" were as frequent as those of ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... remainder of your company equally so. No one guest should be too conspicuous. A harmonious blending of tastes and qualities should be the object in view. Persons moving in one circle of society should not, as a general rule, be invited to meet those who move in another circle. A man of strong political bias in one direction, should not be invited to meet a party opposed to his views; persons of known and marked differences in religious matters should not be invited to meet each other, and above all, ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... ascetic, and lived in a realm of reverie and dreams; his wife had a strong bias toward the voluptuous, reveling in a world of sense, and demanding attention as her right. Milton began diving into his theories and books, and forgot the poor child who had no abstract world into which to withdraw. Suddenly bereft of the gay companionship that her father's house supplied, she ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... northern provinces of the colony of New South Wales describe as existing there usages nearly identical with those which regulate the proceedings of the natives occupying the west of the continent. And these testimonies cannot be doubted for they are incidentally introduced without any theoretical bias and in ignorance of the conformity they tend to prove. Natives from the country about the Murrumbidgee have described to me Australian customs as being in force there which exhibit the same accordance with those I found ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... 1846, I described the geological position of the bones, and discussed their probable age, with a stronger bias, I must confess, as to the antecedent improbability of the contemporaneous entombment of Man and the mastodon than any geologist would ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... taken place were greatly exaggerated by the Eastern papers, and lost nothing in transition. The news came by the pony express across the Plains to San Francisco, where it was still further magnified in republishing, and gained somewhat in Southern bias. I remember well that when the first reports reached us of, the battle of Bull Run—that sanguinary engagement—it was stated that each side had lost forty thousand men in killed and wounded, and none were reported missing nor as having run away. Week ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... in them something noble;—assuredly the child was born of high rank. Such was her conclusion, and she acted upon it accordingly. The domestics around her, less jealous, or less scrupulous than Lilias, acted as servants usually do, following the bias, and flattering, for their own purposes, the humour of the Lady; and the boy soon took on him those airs of superiority, which the sight of habitual deference seldom fails to inspire. It seemed, in truth, as if to command were his natural ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... and Paul Lanier may merit some criticism. Perhaps summary justice should have been meted out; but in view of all "extenuating circumstances," may not judgment be suspended? Since "Eternity is so long," and in deference to that "bias for saving," can we not allow an "appeal ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy—if they are not in the dependence of absolute beggary, in the name of common sense, are they not equals? And if the bias, the instinctive bias of their souls run the same way, why may they not ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... novel The Lake and the short stories of The Unfilled Field, and for a largely autobiographic and entirely indiscreet trilogy entitled Hail and Farewell, the separate volumes appearing as Ave, Salve, Vale, and the last of them as late as 1914. George Moore's anti-Catholic bias is strong, but his is the pen of an accomplished artist. He has the story-teller's beguiling gift, and he bristles with ideas which his books cleverly embody and to which the dramatic moments of his novels give ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... they have scanned the proposed Constitution, not only with a predisposition to censure, but with a predetermination to condemn; as the language held by others betrays an opposite predetermination or bias, which must render their opinions also of little moment in the question. In placing, however, these different characters on a level, with respect to the weight of their opinions, I wish not to insinuate that there may not be a material difference in the purity of ...
— The Federalist Papers

... should be unjustly touched. The life of a human being is at stake; we should be guilty ourselves of a crime which on our deathbeds we should tremble to recall, were we to suffer any consideration, whether of interest or of prejudice, or of undue fear for our own properties and lives, to bias us even to the turning of a straw against the unfortunate prisoner. Gentlemen, if you find me travelling a single inch from my case,—if you find me saying a single word calculated to harm the prisoner in your eyes, and unsupported by the evidence I shall call,—then ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... predicted, like a true fortuneteller, that he was born to marry an heiress, and Peter himself (who had no mind to forego his freedom even on such terms) that he was destined to find a pot of gold. Upon one point both agreed, that being unfitted by the peculiar bias of his genius for work, he was to acquire the immense fortune to which his merits entitled him by means of a pure run of good luck. This solution of Peter's future had the double effect of reconciling ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... vulgar error. The law of reaction extends to all that human beings can ever feel the disposition to think or do. There are, doubtless, minds of great fixity of opinion and motive: and there are certain things, in the case of almost all men, as regards which their belief and their active bias never vary through life: but with most human beings, with nations, with humankind, as regards very many and very important matters, as surely and as far as the pendulum has swung to the right, so surely and so far will it swing ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... he builds. His education as an engineer should have fortified him against just such a contingency. It should have left him with the ideal of craftsmanship supreme in his life. And if his technical education failed to do this, his general education ought, at least, to have given him a bias in the ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... profession, too, has not been without some influence upon his poetical work. A physician facing humanity daily not in strength and health, but in weakness and disease, cannot divest himself of a certain pessimistic bias. Brought up and practising in a city like Vienna, he cannot escape the cynicism which belongs alike to the man of the world as to the doctor before whom all veils and pretenses are discarded. It is difficult, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... into contempt. He arose in a terrible passion, slouched his funnel down over his eyes, swore a vast oath, uttered a threat of some character, which I did not precisely comprehend, and finally made me a low bow and departed, wishing me, in the language of the archbishop in "Gil Bias," beaucoup de bonheur et un peu plus ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... would be a farce, did I not? How could it be otherwise, when a man like Hubbard was the presiding magistrate? His sympathies were entirely with those who had violated the law; and though he made an effort to conceal his bias, the ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... disparagement of Oxford? By no means. Among the undergraduates of higher standing, and occasionally, perhaps, of my own, I have since learned that many might have been found eminently accomplished in this particular. But seniors do not seek after juniors; they must be sought; and, with my previous bias to solitude, a bias equally composed of impulses and motives, I had no disposition to take trouble in seeking ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Christian Library. All the Christian writings antecedent to the Nicene Council have been put into the hands of competent translators. These will make it their first and principal aim to produce translations as faithful as possible, uncoloured by any bias, dogmatic or ecclesiastical. They will also endeavour, in brief notes, to place the English reader in the position of those acquainted with the original languages. They will indicate important variations ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... to," declared the other, with gleeful emphasis. "An', say, I don't believe even YOU can explain this—I don't! Well, you know Streeter—ev'ry one does, so I ain't sayin' nothin' sland'rous. He was cut on a bias, an' that bias runs ter money every time. You know as well as I do that he won't lift his finger unless there's a dollar stickin' to it, an' that he hain't no use fur anythin' nor anybody unless there's money in it for him. I'm blamed if I don't ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter

... vulnerable. The contention, at any rate, of persons in my position is: That to the man who has had the special training required, and in whom this training has not been neutralised by any overwhelming bias of temperament, it can be as clearly demonstrated that the miraculous Christian story rests on a tissue of mistake, as it can be demonstrated that the Isidorian Decretals were a forgery, or the correspondence of Paul and Seneca a pious fraud, or ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... interested greatly by the novel, and Daudet deserved the fame and money it brought him. His next book, Jack, was not so popular. Still, it showed artistic improvement, although, as in its predecessor, that bias towards the sentimental, which was to be Daudet's besetting weakness, was too plainly visible. Its author took to his heart a book which the general reader found too long and perhaps overpathetic. Some of us, while recognising its faults, will share in part Daudet's predilection ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... says I, 'is a rattlesnake who travels on the bias, as I've heard my wife remark about her clothes—he's a kind of Freemason; he lets you in on the level ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips

... and the contrast between his work and that of his successors, TAINE and RENAN, is typical of the new departure. The great history of Michelet, with its strange, convulsive style, its capricious and imaginative treatment of facts, and its undisguised bias, shows us the spectacle of the past in a series of lurid lightning-flashes—a spectacle at once intensely vivid and singularly contorted; it is the history of a poet rather than of a man of science. With Taine and Renan the personal element which forms the very foundation ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... fool, Puritan," Halfman shouted, "or Heaven would not have wasted its time in gracing you with such skill at sports. So great with the rapier, so wise on the bias. No, no; you are no fool. I am almost sad to think you quit us so ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... schools. Even in a school responsive to the spirit of the age like Dulwich, which has Modern, Science, and Engineering sides, the primacy still belongs to Classics, and the captaincy of the school is rigidly confined to boys on the Classical side. My son believed that this bias for Classics was bad educationally. He thought the prestige given to Greek and Latin as compared with English Literature, Science, Modern Languages and History was simply the outcome of a pedantic ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motives to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a former and not dissimilar occasion. Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... since its creation; the uses which have been made of it by priests and politicians; by poets, orators, and flatterers; by controversialists and designing historians;—how commonly has it been perverted to abuse the very senses of mankind, and to give a bias to their thoughts and feelings, only to mislead and to betray! Let the evidence be well compared, and a view taken of the respective amounts of doubt and certainty which appertain to human history as ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... to him with a heart as unbiassed as I can prevail on it to be; as free, I mean, from its customary bias; for I strive to call up feelings and ideas similar to his. I know how pure to him would be the satisfaction of leaving the world with the belief of a thorough ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... mistaken my direction, and crossed the island diagonally. On getting clear of the trees I could again see the goal of my walk, the clump, this time a good deal nearer; and now resolutely plunging into the wood, and keeping always slightly to the right, for I saw that my bias was to the left, I came at last to a place where I could see the sides of a mound ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... published by George Munro (N.Y.) in 1878 and reprinted many times in the U.S. This is a different translation from that of Ellen E. Frewer who translated the book for Sampson and Low in London entitled Dick Sands, the Boy Captain. American translations were often free of the religious and colonial bias inserted by the ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... four and four make nine.'" It is the fashion to say Lafayette wanted esprit. This was much the cleverest thing the writer ever heard in the French Chambers, and, generally, he knew few men who said more witty things in a neat and unpretending manner than General Lafayette. Indeed this was the bias of his mind, which was little given to profound reflections, though distinguished for a ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... popular mind, by his systematic commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud. On the other hand, the Tossafists, the school of commentators succeeding him, by their petty quibbling and hairsplitting casuistry made the Talmudic books more intricate and less intelligible. Such being the intellectual bias of the age, a sober, rationalistic philosophy could not assert itself. In lieu of an Ibn Ezra or a Maimonides, we have Jehuda Hachassid and Eliezer of Worms, with their mystical books of devotion, Sefer Chassidim, Rokeach, etc., filled with pietistic reflections on the other world, ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... preferred before the master's; but yet it is a greater extreme, when a little good of the servant, shall carry things against a great good of the master's. And yet that is the case of bad officers, treasurers, ambassadors, generals, and other false and corrupt servants; which set a bias upon their bowl, of their own petty ends and envies, to the overthrow of their master's great and important affairs. And for the most part, the good such servants receive, is after the model of their own fortune; ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... life it is well to remember that of it St. Bernard may be assumed to have had full and first-hand information. The main facts were probably communicated to him by Malachy himself, though some particulars were no doubt added by other Irish informants. It is true, we must also allow for bias on St. Bernard's part in favour of his friend. Such bias in fact displays itself in Secs. 25, 26. But bias, apart from sheer dishonesty, could not distort the whole narrative, as it certainly must have been distorted in the ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... moment, gave up the idea of the connection. There might be those who would suspect Nancy of a selfish bias in the advice she gave; but Jane knew that no such feeling influenced her pure soul. For one long year the two sisters traversed the hills between Cressbrook and Tideswell. But they had companions, and it was pleasant in the summer months. But winter came, and then it was a severe trial. To rise ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... assiduous and exact. The naturalist of D'Entrecasteaux's expedition, he saw mankind with the eye of a philosopher. He was pleased to examine the passions of a race, least of all indebted to art; yet the prevailing notions of Citizen Frenchmen, perhaps, gave him a bias, when estimating an uncivilised people. He left Europe when the dreams of Rousseau were the toys of the speculative, and before they became the phantoms of the populace. His observations were, doubtlessly, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... differences of character and outlook. As good fortune arranged it, however, each came to occupy precisely that political station in which he could do his best work and from which he could best correct the bias of the other. Marshall's nationalism rescued American democracy from the vaguer horizons to which Jefferson's cosmopolitanism beckoned, and gave to it a secure abode with plenty of elbowroom. Jefferson's emphasis ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... as the rain-pools, drifting in all danger to a lie, incapable of loyalty, insatiably curious, still as a friend and ill as a foe, kissing like Judas, denying like Peter, impure of thought, even where by physical bias or political prudence still pure in act, the woman of modern society is too often at once the feeblest and the foulest outcome of a false civilisation. Useless as a butterfly, corrupt as a canker, untrue to even lovers and friends because mentally incapable of comprehending what truth means, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... extended, if not misplaced; but if the present occasion of referring to Mr. Hall, had been neglected, no other might have occurred. The man whose name is recorded on high stands in no need of human praise; yet survivors have a debt to pay, and whilst I disclaim every undue bias on my mind in estimating the character of one who so ennobled human nature, none can feel surprise that I should take a favorable retrospect of Mr. H. after an intercourse and friendship of more than forty years. Inadequate as is the present offering, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... no understanding him, he was so particular; if he had come himself it would have been all right, but letters always were and always will be more puzzling than they are worth. Dixon had not much to tell about the Higginses. Her memory had an aristocratic bias, and was very treacherous whenever she tried to recall any circumstance connected with those below her in life. Nicholas was very well she believed. He had been several times at the house asking for news of Miss Margaret—the only person who ever did ask, except once ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... negotiated in time of profound peace, and not with reference to any particular controversy. Its judges should be selected in time of peace and their terms of office should be permanent. In order that they might be removed from, and uninfluenced by, any bias or prejudice they should be appointed for life, and while holding this great international commission they should be prohibited from accepting or holding any other office ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... Senator William Maclay's Journal (1890). William Sullivan, Familiar Letters on Public Characters (1834), gives some lively sketches of notable figures, but he writes with a strong Federalist bias. ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... one person concerning any man of genius, or any product of art, is absolutely valueless. Whim, prejudice, personal bias, and physical condition color our view and tint our opinions, and when we cease to love a man personally, to condemn his art is an easy and natural step. What was before pleasing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... away, too, personal bias and prejudices, enabling me to see clearer and with wider sympathies. The glamour of modern science and discoveries faded away, for I found them no more than the first potter's wheel. Erasure and ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... leper, would send for Keating and dictate to him whatever it was they wanted the people of the United States to believe, for when they talked to Keating they talked to many millions of readers. Keating, in turn, wrote out what they had said to him and transmitted it, without color or bias, to the clearinghouse of the Consolidated Press. His "stories," as all newspaper writings are called by men who write them, were as picturesque reading as the quotations of a stock- ticker. The personal equation appeared no more offensively than it does in a page of typewriting ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... sweep the floor with a slumberous sound when the sea breeze breathes in. Some of my visitors might say that this room was too empty. I should promptly disagree with them. To a person of correct taste, not to speak of a philanthropic bias, it must be painful to see, in warm weather, anything which calls up a vision of warm handmaidens, laborious with their brooms and dusters. Therefore I must persist in admitting here little furniture besides the oriental bamboo couches and porcelain barrels that flank the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... got his fleet, Napoleon's imagination—which had a strong predatory bias—hesitated betwixt two uses to which it could be turned. One was to make a dash on Lisbon, and require, under threat of an instant bombardment, the delivery of all British ships and goods lying there. This ingenious ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... had often seen connexions of that sort, which having been planted in the infancy of the adherent, had grown up to a surprising pitch of fidelity and friendship, that no temptation could bias, and no danger dissolve. He therefore rejoiced in the hope of seeing his own son accommodated with such a faithful attendant, in the person of young Fathom, on whom he resolved to bestow the same education he had planned for the other, though conveyed in such a manner as should be suitable ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... have observed and reflected, the more limited seems to me the field of action of the human will. Every act of choice involves a special relation between the ego and the conditions before it. But no man knows what forces are at work in the determination of his ego. The bias which decides his choice between two or more motives may come from some unsuspected ancestral source, of which he knows nothing at all. He is automatic in virtue of that hidden spring of reflex action, all the time having the feeling that he is self-determining. The Story of Elsie Yenner, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... I'll explain. If he were angry now, Merely that Chremes has refus'd his daughter, He'd think himself in fault; and justly too, Before the bias of your mind is known. But granting you refuse her for a wife, Then all the blame devolves on you, and then Comes all ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer

... concerted action as was proposed by the different members was improbable, and although the proposals may have been dictated by the usual French bias in situations where English interests are at stake, these opinions indicate pretty well the real sentiment in Europe at ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell

... and says their conversation, "besides the usual subjects with young men, turned principally on literary topics, religion, morality, belles-lettres, etc., and to this conversation my mind owed its first bias towards such subjects in which they were all my superiors, I never having attended a college, and being then but a mechanic."[74] According to this account religion was not proscribed, but Professor Traill's assertion is so explicit that probably Watt's recollection ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... biographies of Jesus suggest that they also represent, the one this tendency, the other that. We have no cause to assert that this trait of which we speak implies conscious distortion of the facts which the author would relate. The simple-minded are generally those least aware of the bias in the working of their own minds. It is obvious that until we have reckoned with such elements as these, we cannot truly judge of that which the Gospels say. To the elaboration of the principles of this historical criticism Baur gave the labour of his life. His biblical work alone would ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... friend of Lord Bute, who was the favourite of the King; and surely the most outrageous Whig will not maintain, that, whatever ought to be the principle in the disposal of offices, a pension ought never to be granted from any bias of court connection. Mr. Macklin[1142], indeed, shared with Mr. Sheridan the honour of instructing Mr. Wedderburne; and though it was too late in life for a Caledonian to acquire the genuine English cadence, yet so successful ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... Pending this, no adequate or permanent reorganization can be made of the freight-rate structure. Meantime, both agriculture and industry are compelled to wait for needed relief. This is purely a business question, which should be stripped of all local and partisan bias and decided on broad principles and its merits in order to promote the public welfare. A large amount of new construction and equipment, which will furnish employment for labor and markets for commodities ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge

... spirits which are not supposed ever to have been incarnate in human bodies. Both groups of islanders, the Western and the Eastern, recognise indeed both classes of spirits, namely ghosts that once were men and spirits who never were men; but the religious bias of the one group is towards ghosts rather than towards pure spirits, and the religious bias of the other group is towards pure spirits rather than towards ghosts. It is not a little remarkable that the islanders whose bent is towards ghosts have carried the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... the Study of Northern Antiquities prefixed to her Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue is an answer of a very different kind. It did not appear until 1715; it exhibits no political bias; it agrees with Swift's denunciation of certain current linguistic habits; and it does not reject the very idea of regulating the language as repugnant to the sturdy independence of the Briton. Elizabeth Elstob speaks not for a party but for the group of antiquarian scholars, led by Dr. Hickes, who ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob

... possible opponent. She has all to gain, and nothing to lose by such procedure. Unless I greatly mistake the Rincon character, the lad will yield to our inducements and his mother's prayers, the charm of the Church and the bias of her tutelage, and ultimately take the oath of ordination. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... what those Scriptures mean that I may obey them. Save me from the bias of self-interest. Help me to live by the understanding I had with Thee at the outset of our walk together. What may I do to please Thee? My time and my energies are Thine, for I am bought with a price. Thou seest my possessions. What ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... amusing to listen to the diversity of opinions entertained by our party relative to Rousseau, as we wandered through the scenes which he so often frequented; each individual censuring or defending him, according to the bias of his or her disposition. On one point all agreed; which was, that, if judged by his actions, little could be said in mitigation of the conduct of him who, while writing sentiments fraught with passion and tenderness, could consign his offspring to ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... which the governors have an interest in the least separated from that of the governed; for in all cases which involve the ascendency of the existing authorities, the instinct of self-preservation is as certain to bias their decision as that of life is to cause man to shun danger. If such is the fact in countries of milder sway, the reader will easily believe in its existence in a state like that of Venice. As may have been anticipated, those who sat in judgment on Jacopo had their instructions, and ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... an Australian journalist, I found that her work, though good enough, was essentially woman's work, dress, fashions, functions, with educational and social outlooks from the feminine point of view. My work might show the bias of sex, but it dealt with the larger questions which were common to humanity; and when I recall the causes which I furthered, and which in some instances I started, I feel inclined to magnify the office of the anonymous contributor ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... Bias Supersede Sly Aversion Capital Meerschaum Extravagant Travel Alley Concur Travail Fee Attention Apprehend Superb Magnanimity Lewd Adroit Altruism Instigation Quite Benevolence Complexion Urchin Charity Bishop Thoroughfare ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... the French Parnassus," that the world has always known Boileau, Before him the art of criticism had hardly existed. Authors had received indiscriminate praise or blame, usually founded upon interested motives or personal bias; but there had been little comparison with an acknowledged standard. This "slashing reviewer in verse," as Saintsbury calls him, was a severe pedagogue, but his public did learn their lesson. He made mistakes, was neither broad-minded ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... corner of my room on the bias and the cats keep up a Thomas Concert beneath my windows all night long. No wonder I have nightmares. Last night I dreamed that I was a saint with an apple pie for a halo—this boarding house pie habit will eventually tell on the ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr

... are not often remarkable for solidity of judgement. They have strong passions to bias it, and are led far away from their proper road, in pursuit of petty phantoms of their ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... black and white, twenty-seven inches wide—a stiff, thin, open-meshed material, used to make soft hat frames, to cover wire frames, and in bias strips to cover edge wire after it is sewed on ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin

... judgment of the historian and the philologist, that critical acumen, required for classification and interpretation; nor should that habitual suspicion which must ever attend the scrutiny and precede the warranty of evidence, give too sceptical a bias to his mind." Such authorities have been interrogated on each part ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... and active assembly, and its executive officers, without such a council: without something to which foreign states might connect themselves,—something to which, in the ordinary detail of government, the people could look up,—something which might give a bias and steadiness, and preserve something like consistency in the proceedings of state. Such a body kings generally have as a council. A monarchy may exist without it; but it seems to be in the very ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... instincts connected with it. I say 'the Christian Church,' because there is nothing to show that Jesus himself (if we admit his figure as historical) adopted any such extreme or doctrinaire attitude; and the quite early Christian teachers (with the chief exception of Paul) do not exhibit this bias to any great degree. In fact, as is well known, strong currents of pagan usage and belief ran through the Christian assemblies of the first three or four centuries. "The Christian art of this period remained delightfully pagan. In the catacombs we see the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... did not reply for a moment. He appeared to be laying the question before himself as an impartial judge, as who should say: 'Now tell me candidly, are you hurt? Speak freely and without bias.' ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... political bias of the members of the Cabinet, and especially their opinions respecting the policy which the President had indicated, became therefore a matter of controlling importance. The Cabinet had undergone many changes since its original organization ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... circumstance has led to the hypothesis that the origin of the Vatican manuscript might, after all, have been Italian, and not Alexandrian as is commonly supposed. The Codex has also been accused of theological bias; for in John i. 18, "only begotten God" is substituted for "only begotten Son." This is considered by some to be a reference to the polemics of the fourth century regarding the Arian doctrines; although this supposition would make it of later ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... of culpability. Richey was directed not to interfere with the elections as Government agent. How was it possible for an official known to be connected with the Government to divest himself of the influence inseparable from such a connection, more especially when his strong political bias was well known, and when he presented himself at the poll as a distributor of deeds among the voters? The mere fact of a conference on such a subject between the head of the Government and a subordinate is ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... on and very soothing to the palate. Then came the fowl, roasted, of course—the roast fowl is the national bird of France—and along with the fowl something exceedingly appetizing in the way of hearts of lettuce garnished with breasts of hothouse tomatoes cut on the bias. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... descriptions: and this sympathetic attraction discovers, beyond a possibility of mistake, our mental affinities and elective affections. It is a much surer proof than the strongest declaration of a real connection and of an overruling bias in the mind. I am told that the active sympathies of this party have been chiefly, if not wholly, attracted to the sufferings of the patriarchal rebels who were amongst the promulgators of the maxims of the French Revolution, and who have suffered ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... judgment and conscience, the responsibility of action may well be startling; even a wise and experienced man will often pause at such moments, doubtful of the course he shall pursue. It is an easy matter to settle a question, when passion, feeling, interest, or prejudice gives the bias; but where these are all silent, and cool judgment is left alone to decide, the greatest men feel, to a painful degree, how limited are their powers; the high responsibility which is attached to free-will rises before them, and they shrink from the idea of trusting their own welfare to their own ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... with reference to the particular tenet before us, analyze it, discriminate the appropriate in it from the inappropriate, the true from the false, maybe difficult; but it is necessary for a satisfactory conclusion. To this task let us therefore now address ourselves, putting away all bias and prejudice, invoking in equal degree ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger



Words linked to "Bias" :   Islamophobia, irrational hostility, tabu, straight line, prejudice, tendentiousness, oblique, weight, experimenter bias, homophobia, partisanship, angle, partiality, taboo, prepossess, handicap, slant, racism, preconception



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