"Nugatory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... listened to them as they were read by the clerk with the greatest attention. He little thought that there were about five hundred orders from the admiralty tacked on to them, which, like the numerous codicils of some wills, contained the most important matter, and to a certain degree make the will nugatory. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Capitolin. in Hist. August. p. 164, 165. We are not acquainted with the animals which he calls archeleontes; some read argoleontes others agrioleontes: both corrections are very nugatory] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... they set resolutely at work to fill them. Earth, snow, fagots, and dead bodies of men and beasts were hastily thrown into them; and across this singular bridge the whole army poured into the country, leaving the Roman camp behind, and having rendered nugatory all the laborious digging and trenching of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... sometimes done, and usually results in nothing but litigation. You see for yourself how absurd it would be to treat a paper drawn or executed after a will was made as part of it, for that would render the requirements of the statute nugatory." ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... or innocence as established by the previous enquiry; and as we have seen, the formal result of this enquiry was unfavourable to her. The Count obtained his verdict, though the subsequent treatment of the offenders made it almost nugatory; and de Archangelis rings the changes on the stock arguments of his client's outraged honour, and his natural if not legal ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... against them, and his feelings were those of the victorious party generally. The American commissioners would only agree that there should be no further confiscations and prosecutions, and that congress should recommend the several states to revise their laws concerning them. These articles were nugatory. Nothing short of a renewal of the war could have induced the Americans to forego their revenge, and if the war had gone on longer, the loyalists' fate would have been no better. Everywhere, with the exception of South ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... of the earlier witnesses. The coloured man, Harry Jones, had died in hospital, but Mr. Booth, the proprietor of the Wagtail, Baldwin Meadows, Mr. Dawes, and the man who was stabbed in the wrist, all gave evidence of a rather nugatory character. Lowes-Parlby could do nothing with it. The findings of this Special Inquiry do not concern us. It is sufficient to say that the witnesses already mentioned all returned to Wapping. The man who had received the thrust of a hatpin through his wrist did ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... desire to do all in his power to alleviate their condition. He has accomplished much in improving the morale of the town; but deep-seated, inexorable economic conditions, apparently beyond present control, render nugatory any attempts to better the financial condition of ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... line of advance was now too dangerous to retreat by. The only alternative was to make a circuit round the bigger of the two buildings—and an interminable circuit it seemed—and all the while I knew my compass-course 'south-east' was growing nugatory. I passed a padlocked door, two corners, and faced the void of fog. Out came the compass, and I steadied myself for the sum. 'South-east before—I'm farther to the eastward now—east will about do'; and off I went, with an error of four whole points, over tussocks and ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... article. If any inference beyond this can be drawn from their resolution, it is that they regarded the proviso annexed by the First Consul to his declaration of acceptance as foreign to the subject, as nugatory, or as without consequence or effect. Notwithstanding this proviso, they considered the ratification as full. If the new proviso made any change in the previous import of the convention, then it was not full; and in considering it ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... to their own scanty resources; and the distance was so great, that, had the older states been able to afford assistance, the delays and losses attendant upon its transmission across so wide a tract of wilderness, would have made it almost nugatory. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Confessionem repudio, cui pridem volens ac libens subscripsi, sicut eam auctor ipse interpretatus est." (C. R. 37, 148.) According to his own confession, therefore, Calvin's subscription to the Augustana, at least as far as the article of the Lord's Supper is concerned, was insincere and nugatory. In fact Calvin must be regarded as the real originator of the second controversy on the Lord's Supper between the Lutherans and the Reformed, even as the first conflict on this question was begun, not by Luther, but by his opponents, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... this mooted point, as it would be cutting off the future and its consequences from those whose real hopes and fears ought to be mainly concentrated in the life that is to come, it would seem to be presuming to suppose that principles like these ever can be nugatory in the control ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... from great anxiety lest the account of the gale we encountered may reach England before that of our safety shall arrive, and give you some uneasiness; but the experience you have had how nugatory all such fears are, will, I hope, make you banish ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... Company's government." If that were all, the scheme of the mover of this bill, the scheme of his learned friend, and his own scheme of reformation, (if he has any,) are all equally needless. There are, and must be, abuses in all governments. It amounts to no more than a nugatory proposition. But before I consider of what nature these abuses are, of which the gentleman speaks so very lightly, permit me to recall to your recollection the map of the country which this abused ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... opinions, cries, 'If Chatterton had had a great work to do by living, he would have lived!' Others retort on the critic, 'On the same principle, why did Keats, whom you rate so high, perish so early?' The question altogether is nugatory, seeing it can never be settled. Suffice it that these songs and rhymes of Chatterton have great beauties, apart from the age and position of their author. There may at times be madness, but there is method in it. The flight of the rhapsody is ever upheld by the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... suspended or abolished. Let even those States which have enfranchised the black man, and which now, in accordance with the deep Machiavellian principle, brazenly revealed by our American, dishonestly render his vote nugatory by a reliable inaccuracy in the counting, withdraw their spurious Christianity. A double standard of morals subtly infects the whole core of the nation. Corruption cannot be localised; it creeps and spreads through all departments ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... have been saying I have, by some highly ingenious artifice of exposition, succeeded in concealing the legally offensive features of my action; or on the other hand it may turn out that the totally nugatory character of this indictment will by this means be brought out in even more startling fashion ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... successful manoeuvre is generally a matter of good luck. So far as submarines are concerned the fact must not be over looked that movements in the sea are carried out under blind conditions: the navigator is unable to see where he is going; the optic faculty is rendered nugatory. Contrast the disability of the submarine with the privileges of its consort in the air. The latter is able to profit from vision. The aerial navigator is able to see every inch of his way, at least during daylight. When darkness falls he is condemned to the same helplessness ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... inoculated. In the first instance I had no intention of extending the disease further than my own family, but the very extensive influence which the conviction of its efficacy in resisting the smallpox has had upon the minds of the people in general has rendered that intention nugatory, as you will perceive, by the continuation of my cases enclosed in this letter, [Footnote: Doctor Marshall has detailed these cases with great accuracy, but their publication would now be deemed superfluous.—E.J.] by which it will appear that since the 22d of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... seem as if this arrangement rendered nugatory the attempt to take advantage of the rise and fall of the buoy; but it is not so when the relations of the four buoys to one another are considered. Although the frame is free to move up and down upon the uprising ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... latter possessed the hearts of the people and the confidence of the army, without which it was utterly impossible to undertake anything effective. The rest had reckoned with so much certainty upon him that his unexpected defection rendered the whole meeting nugatory. They therefore separated without coming to a determination. All who had met in Dendermonde were expected in the council of state in Brussels; but Egmont alone repaired thither. The regent wished to sift him on the subject of this ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... to impute motives, and difficult to disprove them. I thought, considering his enmity, that he let us off cheap; as there is no punishing a chancellor, and he might say what he pleased with impunity. I did not therefore roar, I only smiled. The effect will be nugatory. Not one in a thousand will read it; those who do, know it refers to a person not in this world; and of those, those who knew my father will not believe it, those who did not will care little about it, and forget the name in a week. Had he given the decision in our favour, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... with an injured air that he was not so young as he was, and that, if I wanted him to survive the summer, I had better keep my ears open, while, to judge from his behaviour, the reflection that his recent output of vigour had been rendered nugatory by my unreadiness was hurrying Mr. Dunkelsbaum into the valley of insanity. Purple in the face from the unwonted violence of his physical and mental exercise, streaming with perspiration and shaking with passion, the fellow stormed and raved like a demoniac, and, ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... substitute that which is applied to his own party. In writing to a friend, that "after the inflammatory character of the oratory of the Carlton Club, it is quite supererogatory for me to state (it being notorious) that all conciliatory measures will be rendered nugatory," he thus expressed himself:—"After the inflammawhig character of the orawhig of the nominees of the Carlton Club, it is quite supererogawhig for me to state (it being nowhigous) that all conciliawhig measures will be ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... be either totally suppressed or grievously mutilated. I can prove that this danger is not chimerical; and I am quite certain that, if the danger be real, the safeguards which my honourable and learned friend has devised are altogether nugatory. That the danger is not chimerical may easily be shown. Most of us, I am sure, have known persons who, very erroneously as I think, but from the best motives, would not choose to reprint Fielding's novels, or Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... appeal to reason in the abstract, you are attempting to settle an account by pure arithmetic without reference to the units upon which your operation is performed. Two pounds and two pounds will make four pounds whatever a pound may be; but till I know what it is, the result is nugatory. Somewhere I must come upon a basis of fact, if my whole construction ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... and the agitation created at Athens by the destruction of the Mercuries. Hence the obstinacy of the Roman statesmen of old, and of the British constituency now, against the Catholic Church; and the feeling is so far justified, that projected innovations often turn out, if not simply nugatory, nothing short of destructive; and though there is a great notion just now that the British Constitution admits of being fitted upon every people under heaven, from the Blacks to the Italians, I ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... been attained in art or nature; and that once, when the audience, late in the evening, had suddenly demanded a popular song from Mr. Nokes, he (Triplet), seeing the orchestra thinned by desertion, and nugatory by intoxication, had started from the pit, resuscitated with the whole contents of his snuff-box the bass fiddle, snatched the leader's violin, and carried Mr. Nokes triumphantly through; that thunders of applause had ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... sovereignty vests in the French people as the French state; but the imperial constitution, which is the constitution of the government, not of the state, studies, while acknowledging the sovereignty of the people, to render it nugatory, by transferring it, under various subtle disguises, to the government, and practically to the emperor as chief of the government. The senate, the council of state, the legislative body, and the emperor, are ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... the frying pan into the fire. Adj. unsuccessful, successless^; failing, tripping &c v.; at fault; unfortunate &c 735. abortive, addle, stillborn; fruitless, bootless; ineffectual, ineffective, inconsequential, trifling, nugatory; inefficient &c (impotent) 158; insufficient &c 640; unavailing &c (useless) 645; of no effect. aground, grounded, swamped, stranded, cast away, wrecked, foundered, capsized, shipwrecked, nonsuited^; foiled; defeated &c 731; struck down, borne down, broken down; downtrodden; overborne, overwhelmed; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Brannan's division, which was to come in on my left at Decherd. As soon as I learned that Davis was across I pushed on, but the delay had permitted the enemy to pull his rear-guard up on the mountain, and rendered nugatory all further efforts to hurt him materially, our only returns consisting in forcing him to relinquish a small amount of transportation and forage at the mouth of the pass just beyond Cowan, a station on the line of the ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... and Jacqueline contains the plain statement that "the reader ... may probably regard it [Lara] as a sequel to the Corsair"—an admission on the author's part which forestalls and renders nugatory any prolonged discussion on the subject. It is evident that Lara is Conrad, and that Kaled, the "darkly delicate" and mysterious page, whose "hand is femininely white," is Gulnare in ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... latter, and as pertinaciously excused by the Spaniards, who complain that the British plundered the city, and committed many other excesses, contrary to the express conditions of their engagements, by which they were virtually rendered nugatory. ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the following Saturday Lord Mount Severn intended finally to quit East Lynne. The necessary preparations for departure were in progress, but when Thursday morning dawned, it appeared a question whether they would not once more be rendered nugatory. The house was roused betimes, and Mr. Wainwright, the surgeon from West Lynne, summoned to the earl's bedside; he had experienced another and a violent attack. The peer was exceedingly annoyed and vexed, and ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... comprised in the Pittsburgh bond are still more palpably rendered nugatory by contradictions, manifold evasions and ambiguous phrases; such as "accepted manuals, our fathers' covenants," etc.; while the solemn pledge to "maintain Christian friendship with pious men of every name, and to feel and act as one ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... great extent this vice is practiced, except by observing its consequences, even among people who fear to commit the slightest sin, to such a degree is the public conscience perverted upon this point. Still, many husbands know that nature often succeeds in rendering nugatory the most subtle calculations, and reconquers the rights which they have striven to frustrate. No matter; they persevere, none the less, and by the force of habit they poison the most blissful moments of life, with no surety of averting the result that they fear. So, who knows if ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... formed from the common people, which was armed with foreign muskets and drilled in the western tactics. They went by the name of "irregular troops" (kiheitai), and played no small part in rendering nugatory the efforts of the shogun to "chastise" the daimyo of Choshu in ...
— Japan • David Murray
... his place. And, apart from the merit of style, great campaigns lose interest in a third, if not in a second generation; their historical consequence effaced through lapse of years; their policy seen to have been nugatory or mischievous; their chronicles, swallowed greedily at the birth like Saturn's progeny, returning to vex their parent; relegated finally to an honourable exile in the library upper shelves, where they hold a place eyed ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... Britain by bringing propositions founded on supposed discontents, &c.; that the judicature was given up, as far as related to appeals, by the repeal of the Declaratory Act; that writs of error were prohibited by the Irish Act; however, a Bill might be necessary to prevent here the exercise of a nugatory jurisdiction; but that if the preamble of that Bill was, as had been stated by Fitzpatrick and Lord Beauchamp, as a case to be approved of, to declare the intention, he did not conceive how it would alter the question at all, for if the repeal was ineffectual, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... with all despatch; and in the tripos next spring, you will, by carrying the prize, be able to do justice to the proficiency you can boast of. As regards the travelling expenses and the other items, the provision of everything necessary for you by my own self will again not render nugatory your mean acquaintance ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... disaster of Pavia. In effect, the whole European situation was changed completely since the death of Leo X. in 1521. His successor Adrian was a man of good intentions but limited purview; the great issues at stake were beyond his grasp, and his attempts at disciplinary reforms were made nugatory by the stolid immobility of the hierarchy. After a brief reign he was succeeded by Clement VII., a man of considerable talent and inconsiderable ability: a man shifty and fearful, not fitted to cope with the stubborn wills of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... sentence Framed upon a brother's wall, Resolution and repentance Do not flood o'er me at all As I read that nugatory Counsel written years ago, Only when one comes to borry[Footnote: Entered under the Pure License of 1906.] Do I heed ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... as the time of my going to Gloucester approaches. I made a very stout resistance a fortnight ago, notwithstanding Harris's importunate summons, and now he plainly confesses in a letter which I received from him to-day, that my coming down upon that pretended meeting would have been nugatory, as he calls it. The Devil take them; I have wished him and his Corporation in Newgate a thousand times. But there will be no trifling after the end of this next week. The Assizes begin on Monday sevennight. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... support of no advantage. It is, therefore, more from a view of preventing evils than from expectation of profit, that all other Powers plot, cabal, and bribe. The map of the Turkish Empire explains what maybe though absurd or nugatory in this assertion. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Attorney-General, declared, with all the authority of his high position, that in cases where the civil power was unable to restrain arson and outrage, it was the duty of all persons, civil as well as military, to use all means in their power to deal with the danger. The reading of the Riot Act was nugatory in such exceptional conditions, and it became the duty of the military to attack the rioters. Thus supported, the King ordered Wedderburn to write at once to Lord Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief, authorizing him to employ the military without ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... demand he could set forth with fluency. The tone of current apologetics taught him that, by men even of cultivated intellect, such a position as he was now sketching was deemed tenable; yet to himself it sounded so futile, so nugatory, that he had to harden his forehead as he spoke. Trial more severe to his conscience lay in the perceptible solicitude with which Mr Warricombe weighed these disingenuous arguments. It was a hateful thing to practise such deception on one who probably yearned for ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... without again recommending to your consideration the expediency of more adequate provision for giving energy to the laws throughout our interior frontier and for restraining the commission of outrages upon the Indians, without which all pacific plans must prove nugatory. To enable, by competent rewards, the employment of qualified and trusty persons to reside among them as agents would also contribute to the preservation of peace and good neighborhood. If in addition to these expedients an eligible plan could be devised for promoting civilization ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and now they stirred up opposition to the conservative Drusus, who paid the penalty of his life to his efforts at civil reform and the alleviation of oppression. Though he tried to please all parties, the senate first rendered his laws nugatory, and their partisans not satisfied with his civil defeat, afterwards caused him to be assassinated. [Footnote: Velleius Paterculus, the historian, relates that as Drusus was dying, he looked upon the crowd of citizens who were lamenting his fortune, and said, in conscious innocence: "My relations ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... French Government with relation to Spain, now began to excite a good deal of attention in this country; appearances being in favour of the supposition generally entertained, that the labours of Wellington in the Peninsula were about to be rendered nugatory by the presence there of a powerful French army, and the consequent return of Spain to the position she held as a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... England, and was busied in reforming the abuses in the army and navy, dismissing incapable officials, and preparing to render some efficient aid to its hard-pressed ally. The proposal that Prince Ferdinand should assume the command of the army—whose efforts had hitherto been rendered nugatory by the utter incompetence of the Duke of Cumberland who, although personally as brave as a lion, was absolutely ignorant of war—afforded ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... left; or to push (on a long holiday) so far afield as Gillane or the Bass. So, perhaps, his eye shall be opened to behold the series of the generations, and he shall weigh with surprise his momentous and nugatory gift of life. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... necessity, (however necessary it may be for the regularity and solemnity of the proceeding during the trial and until judgment, which I do not dispute,) every impeachment may, for a reason too obvious to be mentioned, be rendered ineffectual, and the judicature of the Lords in all capital cases nugatory. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... If, as above stated, the improvement in the varnish had been made only after it had been mixed with opaque color, it does not appear why the idea of so mixing it should have presented itself to Van Eyck more than to any other painter of the day, and Vasari's story of the split panel becomes nugatory. But we apprehend, from a previous passage (p. 258), that Mr. Eastlake would not have us so interpret him. We rather suppose that we are expressing his real opinion in stating our own, that Van Eyck, seeking for a varnish which would dry in the shade, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... obtained the edicts in spite of Bismarck's opposition. Bismarck, however, secretly continued his opposition, and tried to persuade Switzerland to persevere with its idea of an International Labour Conference. The attempt was rendered nugatory by the loyal attitude of the Swiss Minister in Berlin, Roth. At the very same time Bismarck was trying to influence the ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... these highly respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying,—conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels,—had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness. After exhausting life in his efforts for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... right of private judgment is violated in a much greater degree than it can be by any previous subscription. You come round again to subscription, as the best and easiest method; men must judge of his doctrine, and judge definitively: so that either his test is nugatory, or men must first or last prescribe ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the whole of Scotland, instead of over his own province of the archdiocese, so as to render nugatory the exemption granted to the king's old tutor and favourite prelate the Archbishop ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... in spite of Godoy's opposition, accepted the title of a French admiral. By the treaty of San Ildefonso an offensive alliance against Great Britain was concluded, her commerce to be excluded from Portugal; Louisiana and Florida going to France. All the clauses except this last were nugatory because of Spanish weakness, but Bonaparte put in the plea for compensation to the Spanish Bourbons by some grant of Italian territory to the house of Parma. As we have elsewhere indicated, their attack on Austria ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... frequently assisted by their male friends and acquaintances to drive a good bargain; nor does their career of debauchery finish with their unmarried state; the vows of fidelity which they make at the altar, are like the vows and oaths made upon too many other occasions, only considered as nugatory forms, which law has obliged them to take, but custom absolved them from performing. They even claim and enjoy greater liberties after marriage than before; every married woman has a cicisbey, or gallant, who attends ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... leading doctrines of his religion! The Catholic asks you to abolish some oaths which oppress him; your answer is that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaths? The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why, then, he respects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are; but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does ...
— English Satires • Various
... with them there will soon be as little of the non ego left as there is of the ego with their opponents. Both, however, are so far agreed as that we know not where to draw the line between the two, and this renders nugatory any system which is founded upon a distinction ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... ten o'clock, Gen'l Darrington was murdered. His vault was forced open, money was stolen, and most significant of all, the WILL was abstracted. Criminal jurisprudence holds that the absence of motive renders nugatory much weighty testimony. In this melancholy cause, could a more powerful motive be imagined than that which goaded the prisoner to dip her fair hands in her grandfather's blood, in order to possess and destroy that will, which stood as an everlasting ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to the nature of the contest. The only thing which threatened to render them nugatory was the presence of the fierce dogs of the Spaniards. Preparations had already been made for checking the bloodhounds in pursuit of fugitive slaves. In a narrow place, in one of the valleys at the entrance of the forest, a somewhat heavy gallery had been erected. ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty |
