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Deterrent   Listen
noun
Deterrent  n.  That which deters or prevents.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Deterrent" Quotes from Famous Books



... mental equipment of human civilized life is an absurdity. I find that the fear clement of forethought is not stimulating to those more civilized persons to whom duty and attraction are the natural motives, but is weakening and deterrent. As soon as it becomes unnecessary, fear becomes a positive deterrent, and should be entirely removed, as dead flesh is removed from living tissue. To assist in the analysis of fear and in the denunciation of its expressions, I have coined the word fearthought ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... Samoans, always nobly forward in the work, whether for friend or enemy, Knappe sought long to get a line conveyed from shore, and was for long defeated. The shore guard of fifty men stood to their arms the while upon the beach, useless themselves, and a great deterrent of Samoan usefulness. It was perhaps impossible that this mistake should be avoided. What more natural, to the mind of a European, than that the Mataafas should fall upon the Germans in this hour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... attempting his own defence. On the other hand, should the child be reasonably in doubt as to the nature of his offence we must spare no trouble in explaining it to him. Punishment will be most effective when the child is convinced that he is rightly convicted. If it is to act as a real deterrent, he must agree to be punished—a frame of mind which, if it can be produced, may be welcomed as a sure sign that training is proceeding along ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... enlistment was impractical, he told one civil rights group, because the Marine Corps was too small to form racially separate units.[4-6] And, if some Negroes persisted in trying to volunteer after Pearl Harbor, there was another deterrent, described by at least one senior recruiter: the medical examiner was cautioned to disqualify the black applicant during the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... aged parents and relations. In accordance with these principles it was laid down that outdoor relief should be either absolutely refused to the able-bodied or only granted under most exceptional circumstances; that the workhouse test, with its stringent, deterrent discipline, should be steadily maintained; that relaxations and special favours granted out of public funds should be limited, as far as possible, to cases of special calamity which it was impossible for any prudence or foresight ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... not unusual for an Australian to risk his life in stealing a woman. He does that every time he captures one from another tribe. In men who have so little imaginative faculty as these, the possibility of being killed has no more deterrent effect than it has in two dogs or stags fighting for a female. We must not judge such indifference to deadly consequences from our ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... punishing, aim at the prevention of crime? Are punishments to be "deterrent"? Under this head we must consider, not merely the criminal himself, but also those who are in more or less danger of becoming criminals, though they have, as yet, committed ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... is his unwearied industry with the pen. His official communications and his ordinary correspondence Page dictated; but his personal letters he wrote with his own hand. He himself deplored the stenographer as a deterrent to good writing; the habit of dictating, he argued, led to wordiness and general looseness of thought. Practically all the letters published in these volumes were therefore the painstaking work of Page's own pen. His handwriting was so beautiful and clear that, in his editorial days, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... remain are of such magnitude that of themselves they must serve as a further deterrent to the use of nuclear weapons. At the same time, knowledge, even fragmentary knowledge, of the broader effects of nuclear weapons underlines the extreme difficulty that strategic planners of any nation ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

... a sonnet-sequence which I had originally plagiarized from the French of Theodore Passerat in honour of Stella. I loathed sending Stella's verses to anyone else, somehow; but, after all, my one deterrent was merely a romantic notion; and there was not time to compose a new set. Moreover, "your eyes are blue, your speech is gracious, but you are not she; and I am older,—and changed how utterly!—I am no longer I, you are not you," and so on, was absolutely appropriate. And Elena most undoubtedly ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... themselves saved. "The Law is not made for a righteous man" (1 Tim. 1, 9). Christians employ the Law for the regulation of their lives, as a pattern and index of holy works which are pleasing to God and as a deterrent from evil works, but they do not seek their salvation, neither wholly nor in part, in the Law, nor do they look to the Law for strength to do the will of God. Moreover Christians, while they are still in the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... don't pretend to be able to analyze my own motives; I don't pretend even to guess how other women might have acted in my place. It is true of me, that my husband's terrible warning—all the more terrible in its mystery and its vagueness—produced no deterrent effect on my mind: it only stimulated my resolution to discover what he was hiding from me. He had not been gone two minutes before I rang the bell and ordered the carriage, to take me to Major Fitz-David's house ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... stalk down and to shoot individual wild pigs on open ground, but that is looked upon merely as a cheerful interlude of sport; it has no deterrent or scaring effect upon the bulk of the droves, and is a waste of time, so far as regards the clearance of a district. A grand and well-organized drive, such as that we are about to see, will often result in not a single wild pig ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... quest of thrushes. "A poacher," my host said, shrugging his shoulders. "Mais que voulez-vous; il y en a tant." Poaching is carried on so largely that very little game is to be had; the severe penalties inflicted by the law having little deterrent effect. ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... though an adept of the Scribe school, has done so much strong and original work that I apologize for exhuming a play in which he almost burlesqued his own method; but for that very reason it is difficult to find a more convincing or more deterrent example of misdirected ingenuity. The details of the plot need not be recited. It is sufficient to say that the curtain has not been raised ten minutes before our attention has been drawn to the fact that a certain Lady Saumarez ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... the dear lady not choose to be run over? Surely she can please herself? It would be an appropriate ending to a brief and merry career. It would be more than this. We spoke, just now, of her example as a deterrent to others. Well, this example, so far as we spectators are concerned, would lose its point and pungency if she died as you propose—a half-reclaimed inebriate in some home. She must be run over, or otherwise violently destroyed, if we are to have the full benefit of the example. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... during his two years' residence in Scotland; but it is equally clear that next to none of it came through the regular channels of academic education. Indeed, the influence of the Edinburgh professoriate appears to have been mainly negative, and in some cases deterrent; creating in his mind, not only a very low estimate of the value of lectures, but an antipathy to the subjects which had been the occasion of the boredom inflicted upon him by their instrumentality. With the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... animals and reptiles, as well as millions of even more ferocious natives. And during a journey of a thousand miles through such a country almost anything was possible. But the spice of danger attaching to the journey appealed to me as an attraction rather than a deterrent; I should enjoy some of the finest sport that the world had to offer, and, with luck, might return a wealthy man. These alone were sufficient inducements; but there was another and still stronger one, which was—Nell ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... have been unable to say with strict truth that it was or was not a novel, for it isn't and it is; third, and best, they couldn't, as honest men, have avoided mentioning that it is in a way a sermon on alcoholism, and that, being said, might have acted as a deterrent, unless they had explained (as they wouldn't have had room to do) how and why, when they said "sermon," they didn't really mean "sermon." So they lay low and said nothing, and I almost wish I had done the same, for no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... The deterrent power of active and dexterous operations from such a position was well known to our old tradition. The device was used several times, particularly in our home waters, to prevent a fleet, which for the time we were locally too weak to destroy, from carrying out the work assigned to it. ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... equally. Sophia, staring at the text, "Thou God seest me," framed in straw over the chest of drawers, did not stir. She was defeated, and so profoundly moved in her defeat that she did not even reflect upon the obvious inefficacy of illuminated texts as a deterrent from evil-doing. Not that she eared a fig for the fragment of Mr. Povey! It was the moral aspect of the affair, and the astounding, inexplicable development in Constance's character, that staggered her into silent ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... assistance. The Boy Scout movement may be extended, or a substitute found for it, but some such organization is needed for the immigrant boy and the native American who is compelled to rely on his own resources. The fear of the law is undoubtedly a deterrent from crime, but it is inferior to the inspiration that comes ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... or parent can, somehow, cause the boy of to-day to visualize his own grandson, in the years to come, pointing the finger of scorn at him and calling down maledictions upon him because of a taint in the family blood, that picture will persist in his consciousness, and will prove a deterrent factor in his life. The desire for immortality is innate in every human breast, we are taught, but certainly no boy will wish to achieve that sort of immortality. He will not consider with complacency the possibility of his becoming ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... will be. But these days the thought of death does not strike on the mind with any severity, and, should the European war continue much longer, the fear of death will entirely depart from man, as it has departed many times in history. With that great deterrent gone our rulers will be gravely at a loss in dealing with strikers and other such discontented people. Possibly they will have to resurrect the ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens

... in approaching the Queen lacked a proper deference, and the Queen's manner of receiving him a proper circumspection. Therefore the King's long face became longer, his gloomy eyes gloomier, as he looked on. Far, however, from acting as a deterrent, the royal scowl was mere incense to the vanity of Buckingham, a spur to goad him on ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... Syrian troops—and its Muslims and their Palestinian allies. The cease-fire established in October 1976 between the domestic political groups generally held for about six years, despite occasional fighting. Syrian troops constituted as the Arab Deterrent Force by the Arab League have remained in Lebanon. Syria's move toward supporting the Lebanese Muslims and the Palestinians and Israel's growing support for Lebanese Christians brought the two sides into rough equilibrium, but no progress was made toward national reconciliation or political reforms—the ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... and, though so much self-abnegation, courage, constancy, and heroism, well or ill displayed, may obtain some share of pardon for errors it would be wrong to palliate or condone, their example, it is to be hoped, will prove deterrent rather than contagious. La Rochefoucauld—a moralist, though by no means a moral man—who well knew the sex, had seen at work these political women of the time of the Fronde. That opportunity does not appear to have inspired him with an unbounded admiration for ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... no one in higher position answered, the "trapper," providing always that his emendation was accepted, was instantly promoted to the place of the "trapped." The master's "taws" were a wholesome deterrent of persistent or mistaken trapping; and, in addition, the trapped boys sometimes rectified matters at the back of the school at the play-hour, when fists became a high court of ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... moderately, versed in the secular arts of twig-liming, such flashes would have acted as an effective warning and deterrent. Not so upon Theresa. She barely noticed them, as blindly heroic, she pounded along leading her piteous forlorn hope. Her chance—her unique chance, in nowise to be missed—and, still more, those obscure hungers, fed by the excitement of this midnight tete-a-tete, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... many, actual instances of capital punishment for disregard of the edicts against duelling, and imprisonment was common. But the deterrent effect was very small. Montmorency-Bouteville was the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... she had been an example, poor woman, she had been an awful one; she had been, she would have supposed, of more use as a deterrent than a hundred blameless mothers as incentives. For how could any one who had seen anything of her life in the last eighteen years have had the courage to repeat ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... the town knew but little less about his business there than he himself. That night he asked many questions of Shade Hawn, the proprietor, and all were answered freely, except where they bore on the feud of half a century, and then Gray encountered a silence that was puzzling but significant and deterrent. Next morning everybody who spoke to him called him by name, and as he rode up the river there was the look of recognition in every face he saw, for the news of him had gone ahead the night before. ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... The rain had stopped and he anticipated adventure. The idea of getting across the river in a goufa flashed across his mind, but a glance at the foaming, tearing water was sufficient deterrent even to an optimist like Brown. It might be done in daylight, but at night it would ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell

... when I now at last made up my mind to recall myself to her it was present to me that she might ask me to lend her money. More than anything else, however, at this time of day, I was sorry for her, so that such an idea didn't operate as a deterrent. ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James

... spirit of Valley Forge had not been lost. Five times the number could have been secured, he said, to preserve the peace of the country. He also hazarded a prediction that the failure of the insurrection would have a deterrent effect on the political clubs, which he blamed almost entirely for the inception of the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... frantic—coat, waistcoat, trousers, boots—so that every clergyman should present to the world a smooth facade, unbroken by stud, button, or lace. The enforcement of such a livery would act as a wholesome deterrent to those intending to enter the Church. At the same time it would enormously enhance, what Archbishop Laud so rightly insisted on, the 'beauty of holiness' in the few incorrigibles who could ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... furthering the claim of the self-governing Colonies to the status of nationhood as an essential step in the furtherance of Imperial unity. The word "nation," therefore, as applied to Ireland, has lost some of its virtue as a deterrent to Home Rule. Even the word "Colony" is becoming harmless; for every year that has passed since 1893 has made it more abundantly clear that colonial freedom means colonial friendship; and, after all, friendship is more important than legal ties. ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... introduced just at this time. Emotions and liaisons of this character can, of course, occasionally be broken up and destroyed. The characters of the individuals can be modified or changed to a certain extent, but the force must be quite sufficient. Fear is a great deterrent—fear of material loss where there is no spiritual dread—but wealth and position so often tend to destroy this dread. It is so easy to scheme with means. Aileen had no spiritual dread whatever. Cowperwood was without spiritual or religious feeling. He looked at this girl, and his one thought ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... and with their friends formed in military columns—the outside files well armed with knobby sticks as a deterrent to possible Parnellite enterprise. An extemporised arch of Union Jacks canopied Mr. Balfour in his carriage, which was drawn by hundreds of willing hands linked in long line. The column, properly marshalled, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... this anger, he cannot subsequently think of committing one of these acts without thinking of the resulting anger, and feeling more or less of the resulting dread. He has no thought of the utility or inutility of the act itself: the deterrent is the mainly vague, but partially definite, fear of evil that may follow. So understood, the deterring emotion is one which has grown out of experiences of utility, using that word in its ethical sense; and if we ask why this dreaded anger is called forth from others, we shall habitually ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... structure, and therefore liable to contain various waste products of the plant. Suppose one of these waste products in the ancestors of the nettle to be at first slightly pungent, by accident, as it were, then it would exercise a slightly deterrent effect upon nettle-eating animals. The more stinging it grew, the more effectual would the protection be; and as in each generation the least protected plants would get eaten down, while the more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... usual in these institutions, all knives, forks, and other articles that might be used by a patient for a dangerous purpose were counted by the attendants after each meal. This I knew, and the knowledge had a deterrent effect. I dared not take one. Though I might at any time during the night have hanged myself, that method did not appeal to me, and I kept it in mind only as a last resort. To get possession of some sharp dagger-like instrument ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... signs that it will accomplish his absolute reform, is carefully investigated to see whether it provides for a sufficient degree of penal suffering. Suffering which is of an entirely penal nature, has very little deterrent value and absolutely no reformative value whatever. And yet our refined and educated men and women will read the accounts of crimes and, in their own minds, sentence the actors to five, ten, fourteen or twenty years; even death, as if criminals were so used to this sort of thing ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... somebody who needs food bad enough to rob for it, even though it means a sure arrest. Murder's a little less common." Hawkes fed the requisition slip into the slot. "You'd be surprised what a deterrent the televector registry system is. It's not so easy to run off to South America and hide when anybody at all can come in here and find out exactly where ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg

... though not oftener, I venture to say, than among more highly cultured peoples in other parts of the world. The custom of carrying weapons on all occasions where others than relatives are present has a deterrent effect on quarreling, yet there are occasions when daggers or bolos terminate an argument that wild shouts and frantic gestures ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... planted by American vessels. The barrage when completed gave an enemy submarine about one chance in ten of getting through. According to reliable records, it accomplished the destruction or serious injury of 17 German submarines, and by its deterrent effect, must have practically closed the northern exit to ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... his seat, crying that in Normandy alone was this inhuman decree allowed, that Rome herself had never dared to stain the statute book with such a penalty. The extension of the punishment to the children, far from proving a deterrent, actually encouraged these hopeless and destitute orphans to exist by crime, since every avenue of honest livelihood was barred to them. Deprived of all their father had possessed, they saw their relations ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... it was the New England widow, Mrs. Peck, who looked like a spinster school-ma'am, but who had a married son with a nice wife who lived in Harlem and drank heavily. She used to consult with Little Ann as to the possible wisdom of putting a drink deterrent privately in his tea. Sometimes it was Mr. Jakes, a depressed little man whose wife had left him, for no special reason he could discover. Oftenest perhaps it was Julius Steinberger or Jim Bowles who did their ingenuous best to present themselves to her as energetic, if not successful, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... have dreamed of Anglo-American alliances awake to find themselves deceived by the very intensity of their desires. The bloodship between the nations is itself the surest deterrent of alliance. Just as in the Church marriage between nigh kinsmen is forbidden, so political marriage between the British and American nations can never be. The United States is possessed of a single idea—the consolidation and enrichment of the United States. No interest is permitted to ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... yielding to an uncontrolled, an uncontrollable impulse of love, and, though her brain was active with the cunning of the slums, had not the least idea of combatting it, or letting anything less strong than actual death would be in its deterrent force, prevent her from obeying the swift impulse to the very end. She had not taken any of her mistress' money, when she fled. Her only sin, she told herself, was leaving without notice. She had only made a little bundle of her own worn, scanty, extra clothes, which, now, was tied about ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... the arsenical should be added; or, better yet, Bordeaux mixture should be employed as a diluent instead of water. This mixture has some insecticidal value, is a most valuable fungicide, and is also a powerful deterrent of flea-beetle attack, acting to a less degree against other insects which are apt to be found on the tomato. In applying any spray a sprayer costing not less than $7 ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... With primitive peoples and in early times the first impulse is to "get even" or to "strike back." "An eye for an eye"—nothing less would do. Then comes a stage in which punishment is used to frighten people from wrong-doing and as a warning—a deterrent for others. Gradually, very, very slowly, as we become more civilized and develop moral insight—develop a love for humanity—we come to recognize that the only legitimate purpose of punishment in the treatment ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... in the Sixties, and then it started to climb again. No wars, no disease to cut it down. The development of synthetic foods, the use of algae and fungi, rules out famine as a limiting factor. Increased harnessing of atomic power has done away with widespread poverty, so there's no economic deterrent to propagation. Neither church nor state dares set up a legal prohibition. So here we are, at the millennium. In place of international tension we've substituted internal tension. In place of thermonuclear explosion, we have a ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch

... white, and that when a wrong has been done, it should be paid for by an equivalent suffering. It seems to the Philistine majority a matter of course that this compensating suffering should be inflicted on the wrongdoer for the sake of its deterrent effect on other would-be wrongdoers; but a moment's reflection will show that this utilitarian application corrupts the whole transaction. For example, the shedding of innocent blood cannot be balanced by the shedding of guilty blood. Sacrificing a criminal to ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... should have thought the example of Berlin a great deterrent. The enlargement and embellishment of the Prussian capital, after the war of 1870, was attended by far greater roguery and wholesale swindling than even the previous transformation of Paris. Thousands of people too were ruined, and instead of an increase of prosperity ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... that they were prepared to submit themselves to the law, we should have been disposed to deal with them in the most indulgent manner; but as we understood that they did not intend this, we have meted out to them such a punishment as we hope, when undergone, will have a deterrent effect upon them, and may prevent other people offending in like manner. We have nothing to do with what may happen after the defendants obtain a judgment in their favor, if they do so, or after the sentence is carried out, if they do not. Our sentence ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... resentment when his children are neglected or wronged, or when his lands or goods are appropriated by persons who have no claim to them. And this fear of the wrath of the ghost, Dr. Haddon tells us, no doubt in past times acted as a wholesome deterrent on evil-doers and helped to keep the people from crime, though now-a-days they look rather to the law than to ghosts for the protection of their rights and the avenging of their wrongs.[287] Yet here, as in so many ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... comprehend. The doubt of the success of the Great Experiment was such a doubt as exists in all enterprises which have great possibilities. To me, whose life was passed in a series of intellectual struggles, this form of doubt was a stimulus, rather than deterrent. What then was it that made for me a trouble, which became an anguish when my thoughts ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... told that the author of A Midsummer's Dream wrote a number of other plays of considerable merit. This I challenge, the more especially as those who swear by Mr. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE candidly admit that his name is a deterrent rather than an attraction on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various

... then, has helped France to be what she is; and next, perhaps, one of its corollaries, expression. The French are the first to laugh at themselves for running to words: they seem to regard their gift for expression as a weakness, a possible deterrent to action. The last year has not confirmed that view. It has rather shown that eloquence is a supplementary weapon. By "eloquence" I naturally do not mean public speaking, nor yet the rhetorical writing too often associated with the word. Rhetoric is the dressing-up of conventional ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... spread of population they offer a resistance which long serves to exclude settlers. The difficulty of making roads up steep, rocky slopes and through the forests usually covering their rain-drenched sides, is deterrent enough; but in addition to this, general infertility, paucity of arable land, harsh climatic conditions, and the practical lack of communication with the outside world offer scant basis for subsistence. Hence, as a rule, only when pressure of population in the lowlands becomes ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... are uplifting; but their shortcomings, too, have a virtue. We fight the better for appreciating that victors have known defeat. The supreme gift of biography to mankind is personality; not what the man thought or did, but what he was. Herein is inspiration and reproof; motive force, inspiring or deterrent. If nothing better, mere recognition, or exultation in an excellence to which we do not attain, has a saving grace of ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... is relaxed. Here and there stores were opened nakedly to the street, their contents spilled about. But such scenes were surprisingly rare, the hopelessness of transporting stolen or any other possessions acting as a greater deterrent than morality. One way or another, as the saying has it, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... 'deterrent' theory of punishment is utterly unsatisfactory. We should punish not simply to prevent crime, but to show our hatred of crime. Criminal law is 'in the nature of a persecution of the grosser forms of vice, and an emphatic assertion of the principle that the feeling of hatred and the desire ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... anywhere else, and would then have married Ophelia, put his mother in a nunnery, and lived happily ever after.[162] And to that edifying assumption, Mr. Feis adds the fantasy that Shakspere dreaded the influence of Montaigne as a deterrent from the retributive slaughter of guilty uncles by ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... Another deterrent lay in the inexperience of our carpenters and masons, not one of whom had even built a chimney. Everybody had fireplaces in pioneer days, in the days of the Kentucky rifle, the broad-axe and the tallow-dip; but as the era of frame houses came on, the arches had been ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... whatsoever. We've burned our bridges. We can't do anything about those scoopships now, so it's no use trying to scare us or arrest us or whatever else may occur to you. What we've done is establish an automatic deterrent." ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson

... walking slowly with a young girl in the dark of a winter afternoon in a section of the city as removed from his as sunlight is removed from shadow. In his nature was nothing that could make such association imaginable. If no higher deterrent prevented, pride would protect him from doubtful situations. He was sensitive to higher deterrents, however, as sensitive ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... stereotyped phrase. Our language, to B. L. T., was an honest, living growth: deadwood, whether in thought or in the expression of thought, never got by, but was marked for the burning. The "Cannery," with its numbered shelves and jars, was a deterrent indeed, and anyone who ventured to relieve himself as "Vox Populi" or as a conventional versifier, did ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... be accused of harshness or injustice. The execution of Hokwan restored some of his ill-gotten wealth to the state, and served as a warning to other officials; but as none could hope to enjoy his opportunities, it did not act as a serious deterrent upon the mass of the Chinese civil service. If arraigned, they might have justified their conduct by the example of their sovereign, who, instead of devoting the millions of Hokwan to the necessities of the state, employed them on his own pleasure, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... in finally deciding, in certain cases, to undertake criminal proceedings was justifiable; and though there have been some conspicuous failures in these cases, we have had many successes, which have undoubtedly had a deterrent effect upon evil-doers, whether the penalty inflicted was in the shape of fine or imprisonment—and penalties of both kinds have already been inflicted by the courts. Of course, where the judge can see his way to inflict the penalty of imprisonment the deterrent ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... be so unpalatably cloying is not clear to my mind. They tell me the sugar is needed to preserve the milk. I never could make out that it preserved anything but the sugar. Simply to see the stuff ooze out of the hole in the can is deterrent. It is enough to make one think seriously at times of adding a good milch cow to his already ample trip encumberment, at the certain cost of delaying the march, and the not improbable chance of being taken for an escaped lunatic. ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... indifference vanished and she raced along in the dark shadow with all the speed she could summon. The silence, the heavy, depressing atmosphere, the labyrinth of trees so dark and confusing; these things were no deterrent to her. Her object was distinct in her mind and she gave heed to nothing else. She ran on over the snow with the silent movements of some ghostly spirit, and with a swiftness which told of the Indian blood in her veins. Her dilating eyes flashed about her with the searching gaze of one who ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... thing, but the word has a deterrent sound. It breathes pedantry and dogmatism, and "all that is at enmity with joy." To people of my age it recalls the dread spirits of Pinnock and Colenso and Hamblin Smith, and that even more terrible Smith who edited Dictionaries ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... church, and the antithetical attitudes of hindrance and help continued to exist. As valuable as was the spirit instilled into the hearts of His followers by the tenderness of the Master, it was never sufficient to counterbalance the deterrent effects of the religion which they espoused. The retardation was caused by two related beliefs which permeated the church: The first was the doctrine of the power of demons in the lives of men, especially in the production ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... Rankin, beating the table, "that's just what I've been trying to tell you. You ought not to care so much for punishing as for deterring. Don't you know that it's a commonplace that it isn't the terrifying quality of the penalty that acts as a deterrent to crime, but it's the certainty of the penalty! If a horse thief knows that there's merely a chance the community will get mad enough to hang him, he'll take that chance in hopes this may not be the time. If, on the other hand, he knows ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... Off. ii. 22. 76 (Paullus) tantum in aerarium pecuniae invexit, ut unius imperatoris praeda finem attulerit tributorum. A deterrent to luxury could still have been created by imposing heavy harbour-dues on articles of value; but this would have required legislation. Nothing is known about the Republican tariff at Italian ports. The percentage may have ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... compliments he announced to him that the suspicions which had arisen of my participation in the plots of the rebels had been proved to be but too well founded, adding that condign punishment as a deterrent should have overtaken me, but that the Tzarina, through consideration for the loyal service and white hairs of my father, had condescended to pardon the criminal son, and, remitting the disgrace-fraught execution, had condemned him to exile for ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... withdrawal from the international Non-Proliferation Treaty. In mid-2003 Pyongyang announced it had completed the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods (to extract weapons-grade plutonium) and was developing a "nuclear deterrent." Since August 2003 North Korea has participated in six-party talks with the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia to resolve the stalemate over ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... his progress marked by the great yellow eyes that wake the dark. Sometimes he walks quickly; sometimes he loiters on the bridge to chat, or stare at the dark water; but he always comes, leaving his watchful deterrent train behind ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... far as practical interference was concerned, though the pretence of jurisdiction might be preserved. Thus, Masakado was acquitted after the formality of investigation had been satisfied. Naturally this judgment did not prove a deterrent; on the contrary, it amounted ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... le gouffre entend," and the strenuous mood awakens at the sound. It saith among the trumpets, ha, ha! it smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting. Its blood is up; and cruelty to the lesser claims, so far from being a deterrent element, does but add to the stern joy with which it leaps to answer to the greater. All through history, in the periodical conflicts of puritanism with the don't-care temper, we see the antagonism of the strenuous and ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... may be said that in moral matters, like does not cure like, that to permit killing is a strange manner of discouraging the same. But this measure acts as a deterrent; it is not a cure for the offender, or rather it is, and a radical one; it is intended to instil a salutary dread into the hearts of those who may be inclined to play too freely with human life. This is the only argument assassins understand; ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... the said laws were properly observed. This led, in cases where there was a suspicion that the cargo was not intended for the given port of destination, but for Germany, to an exhaustive inquiry. This measure could not fail to act as a deterrent, and even Herr Albert was seriously hampered in his enterprises. The whole system amounted to a complement of the English blockade. When Herr Albert finally succeeded in coming to an agreement with the ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... of peace. When the northern savages, impelled by fanaticism or allured by plunder, descended from the mountains and invaded the plains, they were met by equal courage and superior discipline, and driven in disorder to their confines. But this was found to be an inadequate deterrent, and the purely defensive principle had to be modified in favor of that system of punitive expeditions which has been derided as the policy ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... scheme. The presence of United States troops, which had been moved north from various military stations to support Gen. Meade in his efforts to prevent another breach of the Neutrality Act, also had a deterrent effect on the ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... of this poet's more than honeyed eloquence, which even his enemies allow him, proved stronger than the deterrent of these great examples and the many difficulties of the work, so that I have been bold to attack a task never before attempted, in the hope that, even if I failed, my honest readers would consider even this poor effort of ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... salvation may be found through any device, however perfect, but because this itself, by reason of its excellence on the one hand or its depravity on the other, is, under the law of life, contributory to the operation of the divine spirit (which is the sole effective energy) or a deterrent. I have tried at long last to gather up this diffuse argument for the supremacy of spiritual force as it works through the individual, and to place it before you in this concluding lecture. Perhaps I can ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... "Hamlet" that the undecided state of opinion upon this subject is most clearly reflected; and hardly enough influence has been allowed to the doubts arising from this conflict of belief, as urgent or deterrent motives in the play, because this temporary condition of thought has been lost sight of. It is exceedingly interesting to note how frequently the characters who have to do with the apparition of ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... Franklin met about the time that he opened his printing office, whose course it will be interesting to follow. Almost every young man sometimes meets a man of this type and character. He is certain to be found, as are any of the deterrent people in the Pilgrim's Progress. He is the man in whose eyes there is ruin lurking in every form of prosperity, who sees only the dark side of things—to whom, as we now say, everything ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... philosophers, who openly declare that the oath has a direct tendency to create perjury. Anyone, with a true sense of morality will understand the reason of this. Fear is not a moral motive; and when the threatened punishment is very remote or very uncertain, it has next to no deterrent effect. Cupidity is matched against fear, and the odds of the game being in its favor, it wins. But if a moral motive is appealed to, the case is different. Many a man will tell a lie in the witness-box who would ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... The deterrent was, the giving himself over into the power of other men, and into the power of the mob-spirit of a democratic army. Should he give himself over? Should he make over his own life and body to the control of something which he knew was ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... is left, and this leads one to regret that Tschaikowski should have served as a deterrent instead of an inspiration. The suite has an inelaborate prelude, which begins strongly and ends gracefully, showing unusual handling throughout. A minuet, taken scherzando, is also most original and happy. There is a quaint sarabande, and a gavotte written on simple lines, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... colouring; and it is equally clear that some legends derive their origin from nature myths. But the theory in the hands of its more enthusiastic adherents goes further than that. For them a complete absence of astrological colouring is no deterrent from an astrological interpretation; and, where such colouring does occur, the possibility of later embellishment is discounted, and it is treated without further proof as the base on which the original story rests. One such ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... unless most carefully guarded by treaties, will belong wholly to the belligerent which controls the sea by its naval power. In case of war, the United States will unquestionably command the Canadian Railroad, despite the deterrent force of operations by the hostile navy upon our seaboard; but no less unquestionably will she be impotent, as against any of the great maritime powers, to control the Central American canal. Militarily speaking, and having reference to European complications only, the piercing of the Isthmus ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... the writer says, "that women, being less rational and more emotional than men, should not be held accountable in the same degree. To this it may be answered that punishment for crime is not intended to be retaliatory, but admonitory and deterrent. It is, therefore, peculiarly necessary to those not easily reached by other forms of warning and dissuasion. Control of the wayward is not to be sought in reduction of restraints, but in their multiplication. One ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... circumstances were available about the ante-natal period or the mother's condition would be noted (but who would expect a mother to note that she laced tight up to such and such a month? Perhaps the keeping of a log like this might act as a deterrent). Similarly, under diet and regimen, year by year, the assumption of breast-feeding—provision of columns for the various incidents of it—weight before and after feeding, etc., would have ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... good education by his parents, he forsook his trade of a silk weaver, and became a gambler and burglar. He was well known to the other gangs which infested Dublin, but his death did not act as a deterrent. Swift, in composing Elliston's pretended dying speech, gave it the flavour and character of authenticity in order to impose on the members of other gangs, and so successful was he in his intention, that the speech was accepted ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... for criminals he would similarly devote his efforts not to the abrogation of punishments, but to the relinquishment of any that are not reformatory, or really deterrent. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... through the crew, and added to their anxiety to cut the Spaniard out; for although the prize money would be less than if she had been a richly laden merchantman, the honour and glory was proportionately greater. The undertaking would be a serious one, but the prospect of danger is never deterrent to ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... not one of the children we have described with I Q above 130 has ever had any unusual amount or kind of home instruction. In most cases the parents were not aware of their very great superiority. Nor can we give the credit to the school or its methods. The school has in most cases been a deterrent to their progress, rather than a help. These children have been taught in classes with average and inferior children, like those described in the first part of this chapter. Their high I Q is only an index of their extraordinary cerebral endowment. This endowment is for life. ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... destruction of character can only result in public calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price. As an instance in point, I may mention that one serious difficulty encountered in getting the right type of men to dig the Panama Canal is the certainty that they ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... that it be delivered. This amounts in our judgment to an unconstitutional abridgment of the addressee's First Amendment rights. The addressee carries an affirmative obligation which we do not think the Government may impose on him. This requirement is almost certain to have a deterrent effect, especially as respects those who have sensitive positions. ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

... settlement that will make their recurrence impossible can best be brought about under an authority which the Chinese nation reverences and obeys. While so doing we forego no jot of our undoubted right to exact exemplary and deterrent punishment of the responsible authors and abettors of the criminal acts whereby we and other nations have suffered ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... little room—one of the St. James' Club's private writing rooms—and came back to the paper again. The failure of that night, the Pippin's death, the stir and publicity, the stimulus given to police activity, had, it seemed, in no way acted as a deterrent upon the sinister ingenuity which, he made no doubt, was likewise the author of the mysterious crime that to-night was upon every tongue in the city—the murder of one of New York's most prominent bankers under ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... of endless suffering was the parent of a monstrous and ghastly brood of imaginations. How far the dread thus inspired acted as a wholesome deterrent we can only guess. Too well we know the torture it wrought in sensitive and apprehensive natures, the pangs of fear which mothers suffered, the sense of a curse overhanging a part of mankind, which even in our own day darkens many a life, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... the struggle took place, in the hope of finding one. The inherent, morbid love of the horrible the mass of humanity possesses was well illustrated in the scenes witnessed. The heavy rain which fell nearly all afternoon was not deterrent ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown

... of moral evil." This apprehension of the rising immorality of the world, against which the only rampart was the education of "a thorough English gentleman, Christian, manly and enlightened" was dominant in no spirit more than in that of Mr. Thomas Arnold, of whom Mr. Strachey gives a somewhat deterrent portrait. It is deterrent, because we have passed, in three-quarters of a century, completely out of the atmosphere in which Dr. Arnold moved and breathed. We are not sure that Mr. Strachey acted very wisely in selecting Dr. Arnold for one of his four subjects, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... got beyond their reach. He, at all events, seems to have been under the spell of no pleasing illusion as to the supposed tranquillity and the reign of order. On the contrary, he is alleged to have stated that more outrages than ever are committed, and that but for the deterrent force employed by the Government, there would be no living in the country, ... This is the opinion of the majority of Englishmen. They are not all satisfied that the spirit of lawlessness and disorder is rooted out; and they will find only too strong confirmation of their doubts ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... dancing to the sound of drums or gongs, are further inducements brought to bear on the friendly antohs, which are attracted thereby. According to the belief which prevails in their primitive minds, the music and dancing also have a deterrent effect upon the malicious ones. Both evil and good antohs are believed to congregate on such occasions, but the dancing and music have a terrifying effect on the former, while on the latter they act ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... influence among us is, 'It is wrong.' A stronger deterrent influence is, 'Heaven will punish you.' The strongest deterrent influence of all is, 'Everybody ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... after much opposition, has gone overland from Tientsin, accompanied by a suitable Chinese escort, and by its demonstration of the readiness and ability of our Government to protect its citizens will act, it is believed, as a most influential deterrent of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... Where a fungous disease is attacking the leaves, fruit, or twigs, spraying with Bordeaux mixture may prove effective. The application of Bordeaux mixture is deterrent rather than remedial, and should therefore be made immediately before the disease appears. The nature of the disease and the time of treatment can be determined without cost, by submitting specimens of affected portions of the plant for analysis and advice to the ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... improbis nunc tristia nunc optata proueniunt, ex eisdem ducitur causis; ac de tristibus quidem nemo miratur, quod eos male meritos omnes existimant. Quorum quidem supplicia tum ceteros ab sceleribus deterrent, tum ipsos quibus inuehuntur emendant; laeta uero magnum bonis argumentum loquuntur, quid de huiusmodi felicitate debeant iudicare quam famulari saepe improbis cernant. In qua re illud etiam dispensari credo, quod est forsitan alicuius tam praeceps atque inportuna natura ut eum ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... committed in past lives." Even the human idea of Justice revolts at this kind of "punishment," and, in fact, the highest human justice and human law eliminates the idea of "punishment" altogether, so far as reprisal or revenge is concerned, the penalty being regarded merely as a deterrent of others, and a warning to the criminal against further infractions of the law, and as a reformatory agent—this at least is the theory of Human Law—no matter how imperfectly it works out in practice—and we cannot think ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... neither she nor her sister-in-law were made to suit one another. With liberty her spirit and audacity revived, and she showed so much attraction towards the Salvation Army, that her brother declared their music to have been the chief deterrent from her becoming a "Hallelujah lass." However, in a brief visit to London, she so much pleased Mr. Grinstead that he invited her to partake in the winter's journey to Italy. Poor man, he little knew what he undertook. Music, art, Roman Catholic services, and novelty conspired to ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the indeterminate sentence. This strikes directly at the criminal class. It puts that class beyond the power of continuing its depredations upon society. It is truly deterrent, because it is a notification to any one intending to enter upon that method of living that his career ends with his first felony. As to the general effects of the indeterminate sentence, I will repeat here what I recently wrote ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger

... by the use of what are called 'diacritical' marks, but here the universal prejudice against accents in English is forbidding, and it is true that even if printers did not rebel against them, they are yet distasteful and deterrent to readers out of all proportion ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... very thing which serves as a deterrent, rather than an incentive. If machines can be handled in such a remarkable manner, they must be, indeed, perfect! Nothing more is needed! They must represent the highest structural type ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***

... prosopopoeia. But in the main we can regard John Bull without too much misgiving, because we cannot regard him seriously. His worship will always be seasoned with the saving grace of humor. He can do service in two capacities—sometimes as an ideal, often as a deterrent. Whatever religious revolutions may await us, we are not likely to see St. Paul's Cathedral solemnly re-dedicated to the worship of John Bull. He and his sister divinity, Mrs. Grundy, have never lacked adorers in that basilica; but their cult is ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... a boy or girl who was worried over, who was not annoyed, fretted, injured, and cursed by it, instead of being benefited. The benefit received from the love of the parent was in spite of the worry, and not because of it. Worry is a hindrance, a deterrent, a restraint; it is always putting a curbing hand upon the natural exuberance and enthusiasm of youth. It says, "Don't, don't," with such fierce persistence, that it kills initiative, destroys endeavor, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... of reaction of the violent, instinctive, and attractive type. The feud was originally of defensive value to the individual and to the tribe, since in the absence of criminal law the feeling that retaliation would follow was a deterrent from acts of aggression. But it was an expensive method of obtaining order in early society, since response to stimulus reinstated the stimulus, and every death called for another death; so, finally, after many experiments and devices, the state has forbidden the individual to take justice into ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... made acquaintance with the titular hero in the pages of "Vingt Ans Apres," perhaps the name may act as a deterrent. A man might well stand back if he supposed he were to follow, for six volumes, so well-conducted, so fine-spoken, and withal so dreary a cavalier as Bragelonne. But the fear is idle. I may be said to have passed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... accept such excuses as passion and revenge as adequate motives for destruction. The point which perplexed Colwyn in this particular case was whether the incitement of jealousy was sufficient to impel a young girl, brought up in good social environment, which is ever a conventional deterrent to violent crime, to murder her rival in a sudden ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... would do harm. But it is a mistake to imagine that social damnation is an incentive to Thrift. It operates least where its force ought to be most felt. There is no fear that any Scheme that we can devise will appreciably diminish the deterrent influences which dispose a man to save. But it is idle wasting time upon a plea that is only brought forward as an excuse for inaction. Thrift is a great virtue, the inculcation of which must be constantly kept in view by all those who ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... naturally ardent imagination, that I was with difficulty dissuaded from entering the arena as a circus manager. Considerations of age or sex had no weight with me, and lack of capital eventually proved the deterrent force. On the shelf above were "Kenilworth," "The Lady of the Lake," and half of "Rob Roy." I have always hesitated to read the other half, for fear that it should not end precisely as I made it end when I was forced, by necessity, to supplement Sir Walter Scott. Then there was "Gulliver's Travels," ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... voyage, as I said before, we had a host in Mr. Edward Lloyd, but he was under contract not to warble until a certain day which had been fixed in New York, and no doubt his presence had a deterrent effect upon the amateur talent, with the exception of one lady, who came up to Mr. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... ancestors of such people—people whose minds are not attuned to the civilisation around them; people, perhaps, whose minds have been to an extent stunted and kept back by the civilisation around them. There can be no doubt that civilisation and all it demands of mankind acts as a deterrent upon the minds of some living within the civilisation zone, and belonging apparently to the civilised society. This is the root cause of some of the lunacy and much of the crime which apparently exists as a necessary adjunct of civilisation, and it leads to various forms of thought inconsistent ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... the early history of the Union, and later the experience of the Union with the death and disability benefit, had made the membership reluctant to sanction the establishment of any new benefit. A further deterrent influence was the almost total failure of sick benefits ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy

... Springs at a slow jog trot, thinking things over. Old Man Hooper's warning sobered, but did not act as a deterrent of my intention to continue with the adventure. But how? I could hardly storm the fort single handed and carry off the damsel in distress. On the evidence I possessed I could not even get together ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... doctors, and the pedantic indecencies of casuist fathers; and, along with all these temptations to an enterprise of the kind upon which he entered, he had been experiencing a steady relaxation of deterrent restraints. He had fallen out with his uncle some years since,[2] and the quarrel had freed him from at least one influence making for clerical propriety of behaviour. His incorrigible levities had probably lost him the countenance of most of his more serious acquaintances; his satirical humour ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... coarse-minded age, which thought that unemployment was usually a man's own fault, which saw a malingerer in every recipient of relief, which was obsessed by the bad psychology of pains and penalties and looked instinctively for a deterrent as the ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... people should be moral because that sort of conduct is pleasing to the Supreme Being and that He will, in the life beyond physical existence, in some way punish those who have broken the moral laws. It is belief in an external authority that threatens punishment as a deterrent to law breaking, as a state devises penalties commensurate with offenses. But the immanence of God represents a condition in which not punishments, but consequences, automatically follow all violations of natural law. Under such a state of affairs it would ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... without that. I had been sure that if she hadn't got it she wouldn't have been restrained from the endeavour to sound him personally by those superior reflexions, more conceivable on a man's part than on a woman's, which in my case had served an a deterrent. It wasn't however, I hasten to add, that my case, in spite of this invidious comparison, wasn't ambiguous enough. At the thought that Vereker was perhaps at that moment dying there rolled over me a wave of anguish—a poignant ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James

... about the jail was in itself a deterrent to mob action. Meyers had brought twenty or more men from camp, armed and alert, who with those already about the building constituted a force to make any crowd of Mexicans, however angry, think twice before seeking to rescue prisoners. But the wish and the spirit were not lacking. Employees ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... development of the race, which led to the fortitude, precision, and courage exhibited. At the same time, a realization of the seriousness of war on the part of all men, because they knew before this war began the punishing effect of rifle or machine-gun and artillery fire, is a powerful deterrent to making war in any ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... been very popular with the other sex, and in the early years of the eighteenth century, when girls could do little more than read and write—and not always so much—wit such as hers and the readiness of reply with which she was gifted must have been a deterrent. What could the ordinary social butterfly think of a Lady Mary who had as a friend Mary Ansell, the author of a Serious Proposal to Ladies— what, though perhaps not one of them ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... Head, Maryland, are the government proving-grounds, where the racket of great guns and splintering of targets are a deterrent to the miscellaneous visitations of picnics. Trouble has been frequently associated with this neighborhood, as it is now suggested in the noisy symbolry of war. In prehistoric days it was the site of an aboriginal town, whose ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... face. She had got what she wanted without that. I had been sure that if she hadn't got it she wouldn't have been restrained from the endeavour to sound him personally by those superior reflections, more conceivable on a man's part than on a woman's, which in my case had served as a deterrent. It wasn't however, I hasten to add, that my case, in spite of this invidious comparison, wasn't ambiguous enough. At the thought that Vereker was perhaps at that moment dying there rolled over me a ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... Ago.—Rural life, as it existed a quarter of a century or more ago, was extremely severe and indeed to our mind quite repellent. In those days—and no doubt they are so even yet in many places—the conditions were too often forbidding and deterrent. Otherwise how can we explain the very general tendency among the younger people to move from the country ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... Lighter-than-air craft, mainly for reasons of cost and vulnerability, did not receive such an impetus from the war as did the aeroplane, but the modern airship has claims for use over distances exceeding 1,000 miles. It can fly by night with even greater ease than by day; fog is no deterrent; engine trouble does not bring it down; and it can take advantage of prevailing winds. It would reduce the sea journey from England to Karachi from 22 to 5 days; from England to Johannesburg from 21 to 7 days; and from England to Perth from 32 to 10-1/2 days. Its achievements have already been considerable. ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

... The genius of the Anglo-Saxon—I, who am a Celt, admit it—is for the orderly administration of the law, and much of the evil noted comes from the introduction within our borders {246} of an imperfectly assimilated foreign element which cherishes different views on the subject. Another deterrent cause is a cool common sense which has recognized the futility of trying to settle with blade or bullet differences which belong to the courts; to this may be added a keen sense of humor which has seen the absurdity and laughed ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... so with every other nationality. They would make no discrimination between aliens of different nationality, for, if there is to be such discrimination, there must be the machinery of disclosure, involving a deterrent effect and acting prejudicially in the case of all investors. But, if any such discrimination were adopted, the Committee thinks that at any rate it should be limited to some short period, say, three or five years after the ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... or any similar one, fails to supply the clear and obvious index to pitch supplied by the old system. Old Rameau pointed this out to Rousseau when the scheme was laid before him, and Rousseau admitted that the objection was decisive,[330] though his admission was not practically deterrent. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... not drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer. "Then it is not deterrent," mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather pelted the hangman. Well, as to that, the law which is to accomplish more than a part of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder proves that hanging is not altogether deterrent; every hanging that it is somewhat ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... serious contingency indeed; but whatever deterrent effect the fatal issue of this affair, as of many similar ones, may have had upon the sailor's use of lethal weapons when attacked by the gang, that effect was largely, if not altogether, neutralised by the upshot of the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... demand upon their energies. They came fresh to their work, and suffered during its continuance from no distraction except that caused by the fire of the fleet itself. While, therefore, Fort Gaines could not be considered to support Morgan by any deterrent or injurious influence upon the United States fleet, the latter work was by itself superior in offensive power to the two ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... made up her mind to do the fact that she was planning for herself an unnecessary measure of sacrifice was no deterrent. She was in a mood in which self-immolation seemed the natural penalty of her mistakes. She was not without the knowledge that money could buy the help she purposed to obtain by direct intervention; but her inherited instincts, scornful of roundabout methods, urged her to pay ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... Egede spoke of spiritual gifts, they asked for good health and blubber: "Our Angekoks give us that." Hell-fire was much in theological evidence in those days, but among the Eskimos it was a failure as a deterrent. They listened to the account of it eagerly and liked the prospect. When at length they became convinced that Egede knew more than their Angekoks, they came to him with the request that he would abolish winter. Very likely they thought that one who had such knowledge ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... salutary penance to those who sought it, like a father-confessor with his penitent. Its sentences, therefore, were not like those of an earthly judge, the retaliation of society on the wrongdoer, or deterrent examples to prevent the spread of crime; they were simply imposed for the benefit of the erring soul, to wash away its sin. The Inquisitors themselves habitually speak of ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... throughout the world. Had she frankly done so, had she made it plain that she recognised the indissoluble unity and the common interests of the whole world, it is possible that her influence might have eased the troubles of the next period, and exercised a deterrent influence upon the forces of disturbance which were working towards the great catastrophe. But her traditions were too strong; and after the brief imperialist excitement of the 'nineties, she gradually relapsed once more into something ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... round them there have grown up two schools of criticism. The one maintains that form is everything, that not only is perfect form essential, and interesting material non-essential, but that actually interesting material is a deterrent to perfect expression, inasmuch as material from life, inherently imaginative, fantastic or romantic, is likely to make an author lazy and negligent and cause him to throw his whole dependence on objective facts rather than on ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... isolated innocent infringement, and it offers adequate insulation to users, such as broadcasters and newspaper publishers, who are particularly vulnerable to this type of infringement suit. On the other hand, by establishing a realistic floor for liability, the provision preserves its intended deterrent effect; and it would not allow an infringer to escape simply because the plaintiff failed to disprove ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... feeling and duty may also operate powerfully. Fear of venereal disease impels many a man to continence who otherwise would follow his desire. And fear of the bad opinion of others is the most powerful deterrent force in the world. "What will people say" is, at bottom, fear that they will say bad things, and though it keeps men from the "bad" conduct, it inhibits the finer nobler actions as well. There is a great deal of unconventional untrammeled belief in the world that ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson



Words linked to "Deterrent" :   drag, impediment, straitjacket, hinderance, obstacle, albatross, millstone, hindrance, deterrence, check, bind, difficulty, deterrent example, obstruction, preventative, balk, handicap



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