"Law of nature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soul is thus vouchsafed a deeper vision, discerns a remoter, serener, mightier ideal which henceforth it pursues unalterably, undeviatingly, as if swept on by a law of Nature itself. Sorrow, thus conceived, is the divinest thought within the Divine mind, and when manifested in that most complex of unities, the consciousness of a State, the soul of a race, it assumes proportions that ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... against the severe exactions which they imposed upon their vassal allies. They avowed that their empire was a tyranny, and frankly stated that they solely trusted to force and terror to uphold it. They appealed to what they called "the eternal law of nature, that the weak should be coerced by the strong." Sometimes they stated, and not without some truth, that the unjust hatred of Sparta against themselves forced them to be unjust to others in self-defence. To be safe, they must be powerful; and to be powerful, they must plunder and coerce their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... phenomena of life are not only widely different, in their superficial characters and in their practical importance, from other natural events, but that they do not follow in that definite order which characterises the succession of all other occurrences, and the statement of which we call a law of nature. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... a glance that this is the central and vital question in the Theistic argument. If the order and arrangement of the universe is eternal, then that order is an inherent law of nature, and, as eternal, does not imply a cause ab extra: if it is not eternal, then the ultimate cause of that order must be a power above and beyond nature. In the former case the minor premise of the Theistic syllogism is utterly invalidated; in the latter case ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... things to worry him and to keep him from forgetting that the law of nature, which he had before defined to his own satisfaction, still governed the game. Storm followed storm with a monotonous regularity that was, to say the least, depressing, though to be sure there had been other winters ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... now—here, or nowhere: as Wilhelm Meister finds out one day, just not too late, after so long looking vaguely across the ocean for the opportunity of the development of his capacities. It was as if, recognising in perpetual motion the law of nature, Marius identified his own way of life cordially with it, "throwing himself into the stream," so to speak. He too must maintain a harmony with that soul of motion in things, by constantly ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... gone on from century to century: some have been advising others how to act, and some have been teaching the advisers how to advise; yet very little alteration has been made in the world. As we must all by the law of nature enter life in ignorance, we must all make our way through it by the light of our own experience; and for any security that advice has been yet able to afford, must endeavour after success at the hazard of miscarriage, and learn to do right ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Dr. Johnson, as pronouncing the study of law "the last effort of human intelligence acting upon human experience." We allude to the eloquent and excellent Sir James Mackintosh's Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations, p. 58. Lord Bacon, in his two books on the Advancement of Learning, has affirmed, that professed lawyers are not the best law authors; and the comprehensive and lucid opinions which Dr. Johnson has here given, and which, in many instances, have been subsequently ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... between natural law and positive law without demanding the realization of the former through the latter. A passage from Ulpian is drawn upon in the Digests, which declares all men to be equal according to the law of nature, but slavery to be an institution of the civil law.[65] The Romans, however, in spite of all mitigation of slave laws, never thought of such a thing as the abolition of slavery. The natural freedom of man was set forth by many writers during the eighteenth century as compatible with lawful servitude. ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... doth not equal the original, so my neighbour cannot think it hard, if I prefer myself, who am the original, before him, who is only the copy. Thus, if any matter equally concern the life, the reputation, the profit of my neighbour, and my own; the law of nature, which is the law of God, obligeth me to take care of myself first, and afterwards of him. And this I need not be at much pains in persuading you to; for the want of self-love, with regard to things of this world, is not among the faults of mankind. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... round at it all when everything was in place, and I realized that if the disaster had come, I should have found it easy to reconcile myself to it in an epoch where millions were facing it with me. It is the law of Nature. Material things, like the friends we have lost, may be eternally regretted. They cannot be eternally grieved for. We must "—be up and doing, With a heart ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... atonement or exceptions made in answer to supplications to a higher source. But he particularly states that this action of the law must not be confused with ordinary reward and punishment for "good deed or bad," but that the law acts just as does any other law of Nature, just as if we put our hand in the fire we shall be burned as a natural consequence, and not as a punishment. In his statement of this view he says: "We hold that sorrow and suffering flow from sin just precisely in that way, under the direct working of natural law. It may be said, perhaps, that, ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... sciences have been peopled in the same manner. The female element introduces into a community taste, ornament, and grace. Look at California previous to the emigration of women to that land! Misrule and misery reigned. It is a law of nature that men and women should be united. In the present form of civilization, a large proportion of women are compelled to remain single, and their usefulness to community and humanity is dissipated. The Mormon system ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... fallacious employment of the names of scientific conceptions which pervades the preacher's utterance, brings me back to the proper topic of the present essay. It is the use of the word "law" as if it denoted a thing—as if a "law of nature," as science understands it, were a being endowed with certain powers, in virtue of which the phenomena expressed by that law are brought about. The preacher asks, "Might not there be a suspension of a lower law by the intervention of ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... your daughter, will be an example to all. ... May you live long and happily, and you will find your reward when you wish to take it. My God! what a horrible idea that I should have done violence to a law of nature, and in spite of the father have carried off from his house my beloved! And thou, the life of my heart, who wert to have been the sweetness of all my life, little Tekla, forgive me for not finding fitting ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... refer not to small-change, reader, but to physical, material change. Everything is given to change; men, and things, and place, and circumstances, all change, more or less, as time rolls on in its endless course. Following, then, this inevitable law of nature, we, too, will change the scene, and convey our reader deeper in among the plains and mountains ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... people of Manchester, and of other northern towns, have done it, and have saved many a human life thereby already. But it must be done, some day, all over England and Wales, and great part of Scotland. For the mountain tops and moors, my boy, by a beautiful law of nature, compensate for their own poverty by yielding a wealth which the rich lowlands cannot yield. You do not understand? Then see. Yon moor above can grow neither corn nor grass. But one thing it can grow, and does grow, without ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... not treating me with due respect and 'self-preservation is the first law of nature,' you know. I am so little accustomed to being—snubbed, that I don't ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... expect, even at best, and with all our efforts, perhaps backslidings, and certainly much continual imperfection all through our lives, in all we do. But this should create in us a horror of disobedience, not a despair at overcoming ourselves. We are not under the law of nature, but under grace; we are not bid do a thing above our strength, because, though our hearts are naturally weak, we are not left to ourselves. According to the command, so is the gift. God's grace is sufficient ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... call nature, they would form a class on another ground. In those cases of disease, the miracles are for the setting right of what has gone wrong, the restoration of the order of things,—namely, of the original condition of humanity. No doubt it is a law of nature that where there is sin there should be suffering; but even its cure helps to restore that righteousness which is highest nature; for the cure of suffering must not be confounded with the absence of suffering. But the miracles of which I have now to speak, show themselves ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... lawns in cities, of having every grass-blade in every door-yard like every other grass-blade, is considered by many persons as an artificial custom—a violation of the law of nature. It is contended that the free-swinging, wind-blown grasses of the fields are more beautiful and that they give more various and infinite delight in colour and line and movement. If a piece of this ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Power and Godhead were known from the things that do appear, and alike from the voice of conscience and the voice of nature they derived a true, although a partial and inadequate, knowledge. To them "the voice of nature was the voice of God." Their revelation was the law of nature, which was confirmed, strengthened, and extended, but not suspended, by the ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... should somewhere show how much better a treatise Butler might have written had he known about evolution as the general law of nature. ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... that Texas had been sought as a slave State. He would not admit that the whole of Texas was bound to be a slave Territory. By the very terms of annexation, provision had been made for admitting free States out of Texas. As for Webster's "law of nature, of physical geography,—the law of the formation of the earth," from which the Senator from Massachusetts derived so much comfort, it was a pity that he could not have discovered that law earlier. The "law of nature" ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... was designed to continue the chain of being from one plant to another. For the life of me I can't see how mere organic or inorganic matter can produce life. It can only sustain and nourish the life which exists in it or is placed in it, and which by a law of nature develops when the conditions are favorable. I am quite sure that there is not an instance on record of the spontaneous production of life, even down to the smallest animalcule in liquids, or the minutest plant ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... indeed? This man held to no altruistic creed. His doctrines, had he expounded them quite coolly, would have claimed that self-preservation was the first law of Nature, and that Nature was the best guide. But now, with no time for reason, by the flashlight of instinct, intuition, inheritance,—call it what you will,—he found himself absolutely physically unable to let his load slip. With this stranger ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... to wander in mere lawlessness." Her marriage, after the initial act, had in it nothing whatever of lawlessness. She believed there exists a higher rule than that of Parliament, and to this higher law she submitted. To her this was not a law of self-will and personal inclination, but the law of nature and social obligation. That she was not overcome by the German individualistic and social tendencies may be seen in the article on "Weimar and its Celebrities," in the Westminster Review, where, in writing of Wieland as an educator, she says that the tone of his books was not "immaculate," ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... ladies gather'd there, Still of this earth, with grace and honour crown'd, To mark if ever Death remorseful were. This gentle company thus throng'd around, In her contemplating the awful end All once must make, by law of nature bound; Each was a neighbour, each a sorrowing friend. Then Death stretch'd forth his hand, in that dread hour, From her bright head a golden hair to rend, Thus culling of this earth the fairest flower; Nor hate impell'd the deed, but pride, to dare Assert o'er highest ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... religions man's life is full of discipline and self-restraint. The man of business is entirely subject to system and rule. The happiest home is that where the discipline is the most perfect, and yet where it is the least felt. We at length become subject to it as to a law of Nature, and while it binds us firmly, yet we feel it not. The force of Habit is ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Whatever is contrary to a natural inclination is a sin, because it is contrary to a law of nature. Now everything has a natural inclination to accomplish an action that is commensurate with its power: as is evident in all natural things, whether animate or inanimate. Now just as presumption makes a man exceed what is proportionate to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... taken upon them to lay down the law of nature as a thing already searched out and understood, whether they have spoken in simple assurance or professional affectation, have therein done philosophy and the sciences great injury. For as they have been successful in inducing belief, so they have ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... single obstacle in her way; but she was going from him, and the very, very dear relations they had so long sustained would never be exactly the same again. It was the destiny of a woman to cleave to her husband. He found no fault with the law of nature, but he had clung to Daisy so devotedly that he could not welcome very sincerely the hour that was to ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... owing to his poise and self-control those about him did not realize wholly his power until such moments when justice was violated. Then the latent force within him asserted itself and he became as inexorable as a law of nature in his demands. An intense spirit of democracy oddly combined with fastidiousness made an unusual and attractive personality in which the mundane and the spiritual were strangely blended. Outwardly ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... the sun was feminine? Can they see no other way of accounting for such alleged variations of gender, and number, and case, than by forgery, when the very forger himself must have seen them? Or do they seriously prefer some letter of the Gaelic alphabet to a law of nature? Will they forego the facts of an epoch, for the orthography of a syllable? If so, then the friends of Ossian, who is one great mass of facts, must turn once more to the common sense of the public, and leave his etymological detractors ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... not as it ought to be. Slavery is sanctioned by the laws of this State, and the right to hold slaves under our municipal regulations is unquestionable. But we view this as a right existing by positive law of a municipal character, without foundation in the law of nature, or the ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... sufferings, or have been singularly rebellious and unreasonable. Some lose the sense of the anguish in the subsequent happiness; and there are not a few who, from constitution of mind, forget altogether 'the things that are behind.' When you remember, too, that it is the law of nature and providence that each should bear his and her own burden, and that no warning would be of any avail, it seems no longer so strange that while girls hear endlessly of marriage, they are kept wholly in the dark ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... thirteenth century, combined so much chastity with promiscuous nakedness that orthodox Catholics believed they were assisted by the Devil. The French Picards, at a much later date, insisted on public nakedness, believing that God had sent their leader into the world as a new Adam to reestablish the law of Nature; they were persecuted and were finally exterminated by ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... myself against a misapprehension. It is evident that the current doctrine of matter enshrines some fundamental law of nature. Any simple illustration will exemplify what I mean. For example, in a museum some specimen is locked securely in a glass case. It stays there for years: it loses its colour, and perhaps falls to pieces. But it is the same specimen; and the same chemical elements and the same quantities ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... therefore, a universal law of Nature, and the instinct of self-preservation which leads to struggle is acknowledged to be a natural condition of existence. "Man is a fighter." Self-sacrifice is a renunciation of life, whether in the existence of the ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... sister's expression, she continued: "You dear virtuous people are a little narrow in your ideas; you can't understand that there's room for the greatest difference of opinion even in a harmonious family, and that it's very silly to drive the nonconformer into rebellion. Variety's a law of nature ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... English constitution into a government for the Commonwealth of Virginia men like Jefferson, Henry, Mason, and even the more conservative Bland and Pendleton had produced a truly radical doctrine of popular sovereignty, an appeal to a higher law—the law of nature and Nature's God, the replacement of virtual representation with direct representation, and the substitution of a balance of interests within the Virginia society for the old English theory of a balanced government ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... Eve returned towards her friends. As she approached, the whole party compared her quiet, simple, feminine, and yet dignified air, with the restless, beau-catching, and worldly look of the belle, and wondered by what law of nature, or of fashion, the one could possibly become the subject of the other's comments. Eve never appeared better than that evening. Her dress had all the accuracy and finish of a Parisian toilette, being equally ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... an action of the first kind, none will deny. But it is contended by the old systems that there is no object on which the action terminates. If that be true then there is nothing run, no effect produced, and the first law of nature is outraged, in the very onset; for there is a cause, but no effect; an action, but no object. How is the fact? Have you run nothing? conveyed nothing, moved nothing from one place to another? ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... 24., and quoted by Our Lord, with the significant addition of the word twain: "They twain shall be one flesh" (Matt. xix. 5.). Twain, i.e. two; not twenty, nor any indefinite number. Moreover, the law of nature speaks, in the nearly equal numbers of men and women that are born, or, as in this parish, by making ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... of her whole consciousness, was hers and hers alone! Love asserts an innate and irreversible right of profoundest property in the person loved. It is an instinct—but how wrongly, undivinely, falsely interpreted! Hence so many tears! Hence a law of nature, deep written in the young heart, seems often set ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... the surest law of nature, that broken-down animal had been forgotten as soon as he was done with. He would have given his four legs—if he could legally dispose of them—for a single draught of sweet delicious rapturous ecstatic water; but his bloodshot eyes sought vainly, and his welted tongue ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... particularly where the intellect is a pilgrim and strange, and the sense is more domesticated and at home. I am forced by you, my thoughts, to remain at home in charge of the house, while others may wander wherever they will. This is a law of Nature, and therefore a law of the author and originator of Nature. Sin on then, now that all of you, seduced by the charm of the intellect, leave the other part of me to the peril of death. How have you gotten this melancholy and perverse ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... 'Inductio per enumerationem simplicem, ubi non reperitur instantia contradictoria'—unless, as in a few cases, we must have known of the contradictory instances if existing. The scientific theory of induction alone can show why a general law of nature may sometimes, as when the chemist first discovers the existence and properties of a before unknown substance, be inferred from a single instance, and sometimes (e.g. the blackness of all crows) ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... some period of exceptional growth and prosperity to pretend to a hegemony among the churches—Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist—would meet with some set-back as inexorable as "the law of nature that prevents the trees from growing up into ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... surely grounded. Often, indeed, when absorbed in the unsophisticated and genuine utterances of this great man, it seems as if these peculiarities and strange asperities were the results of some mysterious law of Nature, so that we are inclined to adopt the paradox by which a wit once described the singular groundwork of our nature,—"The faults of man are the night in which ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... course, for a while, these jealousies were concealed, but soon they began to be expressed. It was useless to remind all parties that the common labor of all ministered to the prosperity of the Community. Individual happiness was the law of Nature and it could not be obliterated. And before a single year had passed, this law had scattered the members of that society which had come together so earnestly and under such favorable circumstances, and driven them back into the selfish ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... to be assured that nature is not decaying or man degenerating. But was the doctrine that the end of the world does not "depend upon the law of nature," and that the growth of human civilisation may be cut off at any moment by a fiat of the Deity, less calculated to "quail the hopes and blunt the edge of men's endeavours?" Hakewill asserted with confidence that the universe will be suddenly wrecked by fire. Una dies dabit exitio. Was ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... This virtue must prevail among Christians everywhere. They are to manifest toward one another the love and faithfulness of brothers according to the flesh. It is a law of nature that brothers have a peculiar confidence in one another, being of the same blood and flesh and having a common inheritance. Particularly is this true when in distress. Although they may not be united in other respects, yet when stranger blood ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... unknown to the modern scientists. They say "non-existence can never become existence and existence can never become non-existence;" or, in other words, that which did not exist can never exist, and conversely that which exists in any form can never become non-existent. This is the law of nature. As such, the impressions or ideas which we now have, together with the powers which we possess, will not be destroyed but will remain with us in some form or other. Our bodies may change, but the powers, Karma, Samskaras or impressions and the ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... to all this remedy, is its want of universality; forasmuch as the shaving part of it, upon which so much stress is laid, by an unalterable law of nature excludes one half of the species entirely from its use: all I can say is, that female writers, whether of England, or of France, must e'en ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... out her very heart to find the truth. And the truth she found was that she had never allowed Blair to meet the negations of life—to meet those No's, which teach the eternal affirmations of character. He had had everything; he had done nothing. The result was as inevitable as the action of a law of nature! In the illuminating misery of this terrible night, she saw that she had given her son, as Robert Ferguson had said to her once, "fullness of bread and abundance of idleness." And now she was learning what bread and idleness together must always ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... must not be taken without qualification; for "the first and highest philosophy" has many principles which even a child may understand. These several suggestions, the first of which the Baron de Puffendorf thought not unworthy to introduce his great work on the Law of Nature and of Nations, the reader, if he please, may bear in mind, as he peruses the following digest of the laws ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... are pleased to call their minds, they appear to have arrived at the conviction that Paris never will be taken, because they are unable to realise the possibility of an event which they seem to consider is contrary to that law of nature, which, has made her the capital and the mistress of the world. A victorious army is at their gates; they do not dare even to make a formidable sortie; there is no regular army in the field outside; their provisions have a limit; they can only communicate with the rest of the world by an ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... opposition to it. Such a proceeding on the part of a plant must seem to a stone a pure miracle. If a piece of granite should write a book of theology, it would probably say that the plant, in growing up, had violated or suspended a law of nature. But it has not. The force of gravitation has worked on according to its own law; it has been dragging the plant downward all the time, only the vital power in the plant has overcome its force, and modified the result. And, again, a tree, seeing a dog run to and ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... most in the matter was that Freeman had been for years attentive to a cousin of mine, Clare Hazard, almost my sister, indeed, since she had been brought up in my father's house; and I knew that from a child she had adored him. However, these things seldom work out according to the law of Nature, and so I chewed the cud of dissatisfaction and kept the thing from my cousin as long as I could. About the time matters seemed at a crisis I was taken ill, and was ordered south. My mother and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sort of union among the nations of Europe appears impossible if it is meant to include Russia. Russia represents eastern mentality, which implies an unadmissible spirit of aggression and of conquest. It seems to be a law of nature on the old Continent that eastern nations should wish to expand to the west as long as they are powerful. Not to mention the great migration of nations which gave birth to mediaeval organizations, you may follow this law in the history of the Tartars, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Seagrave, but still you see it is the law of nature. When it is a question of life, it is every one for himself, for life is sweet: they are not more unkind than they would be to each other, if there were too many for the boat to hold. I've seen all this before in my ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... upon bread to do it.' Of her possible marriage I could not bear to think, for it seemed like a death that she should cleave to another man, and grow to think his house her home rather than mine. But I saw it was the law of nature that this should be, and that it was for the maid's happiness that she should have a home when I was gone; and I made up my mind without a murmur to help it on for her sake. In my youth I had wronged my dead friend, and to make amends I determined to give her, my most precious possession, to my friend's ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... is utterly false in its first principles. From the beginning of the world to the present day, no man has ever observed an instance of the spontaneous generation of life. There is no law of nature, whether electric, magnetic, odylic, or any other, which can produce a living plant or animal, save from the germ or seed of some previous plant or animal of the same species. Nor has a single instance of the transmutation of species ever been ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the car—they were at their destination. Tarzan's mind returned to the affairs of the moment. He knew that he was about to die, but there was no fear of death in him. To a denizen of the cruel jungle death is a commonplace. The first law of nature compels them to cling tenaciously to life—to fight for it; but it does not teach ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... smiled; it was impossible to suppress the risible faculties. The poor invalid is overpowered with disappointment. His imagination had betrayed him into one of those desperate, fearful, and indubitable brinks of death, upon which it seems the first law of nature reminds us what is necessary to die by. They laughed, and laughed, and laughed, till Mr. M'Fadden suddenly changed countenance, and said it was no laughing affair,—such things were not to be trifled with; men should be thinking of more important matters. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... his personality, who had always sought his happiness in the unrestricted exercise of his individuality, now felt his ego shrivel until it was imperceptible. He was only a tiny stone in a piece of mosaic, which formed a noble masterpiece only as a whole. A mighty power, call it a law of nature or the will, whose manifestation is the history of the world, had entered into and taken complete possession of him. It was not he who now directed his fate, it was decided by some unknown being outside ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... food and drink. The Teuton wife is ashamed of barrenness and considers it proper for women to be fully sexed in feeling. Sexuality is not something to be shrunk from, discouraged or denied, but is a candid, copious law of Nature to be recognized. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... my crime, not thine. Dost thou belong To thine own self? Art thou thine own commander? Stand'st thou, like me, a freeman in the world, That in thy actions thou shouldst plead free agency? On me thou'rt planted, I am thy Emperor; To obey me, to belong to me, this is Thy honor, this a law of nature to thee! And if the planet, on the which thou livest And hast thy dwelling, from its orbit starts, It is not in thy choice whether or no Thou'lt follow it. Unfelt it whirls thee onward Together with his ring, and all his moons. With little guilt stepp'st thou ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... made the greatest progress in the study of the law of nature and nations, of any one I know. He had perfectly mastered, and even improved, the notions of Grotius, and the more refined ones of Puffendorf. He could refute Hobbes with as much solidity as some of greater name, and expose him with ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... it somewhat differently: Baius and Jansenius hold that fallen man can perform no morally good works because of physical or moral impotence on the part of the will. This assumption is false. Man is physically able to perform good works because they are enjoined by the moral law of nature under pain of sin; he is morally able because, in spite of numerous evil tendencies, not a few gentiles and unbelievers have led upright lives and thereby proved that man can perform good works without the aid of grace.(168) ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... the lower gloom, an investiture with spiritual bodies, and an admission into the kingdom of God. According to Paul, then, physical death is not the retributive consequence of Adam's sin, but is the will of the Creator in the law of nature, the sowing of terrestrial bodies for the gathering of celestial bodies, the putting off of the image of the earthy for the putting on of the image of the heavenly. The specialty of the marring and punitive interference of sin in the economy is, in addition ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... nonsense they have spoken of late—but every true woman kens well that her right sphere is a home of her own, and that her mission is to find her happiness in the happiness of her husband and children. There are exceptional cases, no doubt, but that is the law of nature. Though why I should be saying all this to you, Miss Graeme, my dear, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... government bound by no written rules, and coerced by no controlling magistracies or well-settled orders in the state. But if it has no written law, it neither does nor can cancel the primeval, indefeasible, unalterable law of Nature and of nations; and if no magistracies control its exertions, those exertions must derive their limitation and direction either from the equity and moderation of the ruler, or from downright revolt on the part of the subject by rebellion, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... probable temperature. This is in great measure due to the acquisition of a workable formula by which to connect temperature with radiation. Stefan's rule of a fourth-power relation, if not actually a law of nature, is a colourable imitation of one; and its employment has afforded a practical certainty that the sun's temperature, so far as it is definable, neither exceeds 12,000 deg. C., nor falls ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Mr Sadler, an instance of presumption unparalleled in literature, heathen or Christian, to trace an evil to "the laws of nature, which are those of God," as its source. Is not hydrophobia an evil? And is it not a law of nature that hydrophobia should be communicated by the bite of a mad dog? Is not malaria an evil? And is it not a law of nature that in particular situations the human frame should be liable to malaria? We know that there is evil in the world. If it is not to be traced to the laws of nature, how did it come ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him as she did Cap'n Tom. No—she'll never love again. But life is one thing an' love is another, an' it ain't often they meet in the same person. Youth mus' live even if it don't love, an' the law of nature is ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... a compound ratio to the volume and the density of those fluids, which they displace. It is from that law of nature, that a ship sinks 20 feet in fresh water, while it sinks only about 18 feet in sea water, which has more density on account of the ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie
... bad as they were—solemnly replied that, on the contrary, the poorer they were, the more children they had. That too, he explained, was a law of nature: "Reproduction is in inverse proportion ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... a course of Lectures on the Law of Nature, the Law of Nations; the Jewish, the Grecian, the Roman, and the Canon Law; and then on the Feudal Law; and on the several forms of Municipal Jurisprudence established in Modern Europe. I printed a Syllabus of these Lectures, which was approved. They were intended as introductory to the professional ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... and the working thus of our passions. Wherefore our love, as we are natural, is weak, unorderly, fails and miscarries, either by being too much or too little; yea, though the thing which is beloved be allowed for an object of love, both by the law of nature and grace. We therefore must put a vast difference betwixt love, as found in us, and love as found in Christ, and that, both as to the nature, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... increasing, by the said religious sect, we deem it expedient and of the highest importance to form ourselves into a company for the better and easier accomplishment of our purpose—a purpose, which we deem it almost superfluous to say, is justified as well by the law of nature, as by the law ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... law of nature, that air always comes in to fill a vacuum. You can produce a draught at any time, by heating the air until it ascends, and then the cold air rushes in to supply its place. And so we can always be filled with the Holy Spirit by providing a vacuum. This breath is dependent ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... other of the doctrine of transmutation was inevitable, from the time when the truth enunciated by William Smith that successive strata are characterised by different kinds of fossil remains, became a firmly established law of nature. No one has set forth the speculative consequences of this generalisation better than the historian ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... duties of parents and children differ extremely from ours. For, since the conjunction of male and female is founded upon the great law of nature, in order to propagate and continue the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men and women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the like natural ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... social organisms, where community competes with community and nation with nation, no form of social organization has yet been developed where the individual contest carried on by the members of one community has been done away with. It is an inexorable law of nature that all living things must fight daily and hourly for their very lives, because so many are brought into the world with each new generation that there is not sufficient room for all. No organism can escape the struggle for existence except by an unconditional surrender that results in death. ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... of their bondage had passed beyond the degree which subdues the spirit to that which arouses, and that neither the habit of years, nor the swords of the fiercest warriors, nor the spies of the keenest government of Greece had been able utterly to extirpate from human hearts that law of nature which, when injury passes an allotted, yet rarely visible, extreme, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on the eve of, or in battle, or at its close. It is no use denying it, all soldiers feel as other people do, and when a soldier tells as a fact that he "went into battle without fear," he simply tells "what George Washington never told." It is human, and "self-preservation is the first law of nature." No one wants to die. Of course ambition, love of glory, the plaudits of your comrades and countrymen, will cause many a blade to flash where otherwise it would not. But every soldier who reads this will say that this is honest and the whole truth. I am writing a truthful ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... publication, the condition of the science it was designed to illustrate. Mr. Malthus had taught that population tended to increase faster than food, and that so irresistible was this tendency, that all human efforts to restrain the number of men within the limits of subsistence were vain. It was a great "law of nature," and it was of little consequence, therefore, how fast food might be increased, since the only effect must be to stimulate population, which, in the end, was sure to outrun the means of living. The impression which this work produced has been briefly noticed in what we have written in connection ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... weak woman! I understand better now what you have suffered." Then almost repeating the words of her own cruel subconscious self—"But there's all the difference between the weak and the strong. I am the stronger, and the stronger must win; that's written, and it's no use struggling against the law of nature." ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... that a really great poet can be a bad man. Be assured that the fruits of genius have never grown, and will never grow, in such a soil. Of all great poets Byron might seem at first glance to constitute an exception to this—I venture to call it—law of Nature. Yet hear what Walter Scott, a sufficient ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... first thinker in music; for at last the art is brought into correlation with man's other powers and becomes a living reflex of the tendencies and activities of the period. Notwithstanding the prodigious vitality of Bach's work, we feel that his musical sense operated abstractly like a law of Nature and that he was an unconscious embodiment, as it were, of the deep religious sentiment of his time and of the sturdy independence of his race. At any period and in any place Bach would have been Bach. Beethoven's music, however, in its intense personality ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... time that such atrocities had been attempted and actually committed. Isn't it peculiar that, out of many similar raids, you only heard of the one where the men defended themselves? Self-preservation is the first law of nature, but the preservation of its holy profits is the first law of the lumber trust. The organized lumber workers were considered a menace to the super-prosperity of a few profiteers—hence the attempted ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... (?), are in a boat pushing off from shore, with Burke looking over a wall with a large bag in his hand. He says, "D——me, Charley, don't leave me in the lurch;" who replies, "Self-preservation is the first law of nature." His companions joining with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... precipitous sides were clothed with the most enchanting variety of plantation; whilst, like a stream of liquid light, the silver Ovoca shone sparkling to the sun, as it followed, by the harmonious law of nature, that graceful line of beauty which characterizes the windings of this unrivalled valley. The cottage which commanded this rich prospect we have partially described. It was white as snow, and had about it all those traits of neatness and good taste which are, we regret! to say, so rare among, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... colours of the budding wood, the very dandelions on the untrimmed bank, contrived their hues to accord and rejoice with the laughing water, and the birds swelled out its song. In the rapture of spring and of morning there was no echo of grief; for the unswerving law of nature, moving through the years, had set each thing in its right home. It is only the perplexed soul that is forced to choose its own way and suffer from the choice, and the song of our life is but set to the accompaniment of a sad creed if we may not trust that, above our human wills, there is ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... felt curiously flurried and put about; near cursing himself moreover for having helped to break up her high serenity thus. The whole thing was manifestly impossible as he told himself, outside every recognized law of Nature and sound science. Even during the mistrustful phantasy-breeding watches of the night, when reason inclines to drag anchor setting mind and soul rather wildly adrift, he had refused credence to the apparent evidence of his own senses. Now in broad daylight, the generous sunshine flooding ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... deer, and harmless sheep, When love into their veins doth creep, That law of Nature cease ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... from the drains is warmer than the open ditch, and the poor frogs, reluctant to submit to the law of Nature which requires them to seek refuge in mud and oblivious sleep, in Winter, gather round the outfalls, as they do about springs, to bask in the warmth of the running water. If the flow is small, they leap up into the pipe, and follow its course upward. In Summer, the drains furnish for them ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... UNION of the sexes in holy Matrimony is a law of nature, finding sanction in both morals and legislation. Even some of the lower animals unite in this union for life and instinctively observe the law of conjugal fidelity with a consistency which might put to blush other animals more highly endowed. It seems important to discuss this ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... esteemed as teachers of law. We shall hereafter have occasion to mention the valuable work of the latter on this subject. The Roman law, both civil and criminal, was studied in the universities, as well as the law of nature and nations; which latter, in the case of this unhappy country, has been for more than seventy years ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... and luggage, wended through our Village: northwards, truly, in the dead of night; yet southwards visibly at eventide. Not till my eighth year did I reflect that this Postwagen could be other than some terrestrial Moon, rising and setting by mere Law of Nature, like the heavenly one; that it came on made highways, from far cities towards far cities; weaving them like a monstrous shuttle into closer and closer union. It was then that, independently of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, I made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true also in ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... themselves to reconcile them to God. Yea, if through some common convictions their understandings should be swayed to a consenting to that, that justification is of grace by Christ, and not of works by men; yet conscience, reason, and the law of nature, not being as yet subdued by the power and glory of grace unto the obedience of Christ, will rise up in rebellion against this doctrine, and will over-rule and bow down the soul again to the law and ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... in a book of which I was guilty, I wrote the following: "There is implied in all Socialistic writing the doctrine that organized man can override, and as applied to himself, repeal the fundamental law of Nature, that no species can endure except by the production of more individuals than can be supported, of whom the weakest must die, with the corollary of misery before death. Competitive Society tends to the death of the weakest, Socialistic Society would tend ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... condescend to carry at all the vain imposter, who, with but equal intellect, was trying to impose on his equal rights and equally independent spirit? But happily for us, he has no consciousness of imposition, no thought of disobedience except by impulse caused by the violation of the law of nature. Consequently when disobedient it is the fault ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... general passions by which all minds are agitated," whose "drama is the mirror of life," in which his readers may find "human sentiments in human language," whose practices are to be judged not by appeal to the rules of criticism, but by reference to the author's design and the great law of nature and reason. ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... organizing, universalizing energy. This, again, is both spiritual and physical—it has an outer and an inner aspect. It is a fundamental love-principle in the inner world—the {181} foundation, as Boehme says, of sweetness and warmth and mercy[26]—and at the same time is a structural, organizing law of nature, which tends out of many parts to ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... and the extermination of sailing ships was the cessation of this Phoenician emigration to America. The colonists, having no longer any communication with the mother country, soon dwindled away and perished, in accordance with a well-known law of Nature. "Extinction is the doom of every immigrant population in an uncongenial climate (habitat) when migration ceases to keep up and renew the original stock." The same fate is impending over us. "In our own country various causes have been assigned for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... this poor Versailles Court, as the chief or central Solecism, finds all the other Solecisms arrayed against it. Most natural! For your human Solecism, be it Person or Combination of Persons, is ever, by law of Nature, uneasy; if verging towards bankruptcy, it is even miserable:—and when would the meanest Solecism consent to blame or amend itself, while there remained another ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... God; usually called instinct, that guides these wild animals; doubtless it is the law of nature ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... went, to be good waitresses and made pastry that moved Paul, usually little preoccupied about his food provided there was plenty of meat, to lyric raptures. The difference she made in Lydia's life was inconceivable. It was as though some burdensome law of nature had been miraculously suspended for her benefit. She gauged her past discomfort ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Confederation, which stands in the solemn form of a compact among the States, can be superseded without the unanimous consent of the parties to it?" He answers this question "by recurring to the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed." He proceeds, however, to give other ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... 554. "A law of nature means nothing to Mr. Browning if it does not mean the immanence of power, and will, and love. He can pass with ready sympathy into the mystical feeling of the East, where in the unclouded sky, in the torrent of noonday ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... standing in the sun!" [Footnote: Revelation, chap, xix., 17.] Moreover, he also knew that what Humanity calls "miracles" ARE possible, and DO happen,— and that instead of being violations of the Law of Nature as we understand it, they are but confirmations of that Law in its DEEPER DEPTHS,—depths which, controlled by Spiritual Force alone, have not as yet been sounded by the most searching scientists. And what is Material Force but the visible manifestation ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... when a patient voluntarily submits to the operator, any attempt to make suggestions against the interests of the patient can invariably be frustrated by the patient. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and some of the best known operators who have recorded their experiments assert that suggestions not in accord with the best interest of the patient could not be carried out. No one was ever induced to commit any crime under hypnosis, that ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... From him; and thus he greets your majesty. He wills you, in the awful name of Heaven, That you divest yourself, and lay apart The borrow'd glories, that, by gift of heaven, By law of nature and of nations, 'long To him and to his heirs; namely, the crown, And all wide-stretched honours that pertain, By custom and the ordinance of times Unto the crown of France. That you may know 'Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim, Pick'd from the worm-holes ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... these peoples had proven belligerent in the extreme. In common with the rest of the fauna of Caprona the first law of nature as they seemed to understand it was to kill—kill—kill. And so it was that Bradley had no desire to follow up the little stream toward the pool near which were sure to be the caves of some savage tribe, but fortune played him ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... asking you to follow me in an attempt to trace the path which has been followed by a scientific idea, in its long and slow progress from the position of a probable hypothesis to that of an established law of nature. Our survey has not taken us into very attractive regions; it has lain, chiefly, in a land flowing with the abominable, and peopled with mere grubs and mouldiness. And it may be imagined with what ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and the wounded anxiously looked around for some humane friend to help them, but their cries were lost in the air. No one had leisure to attend to his dearest friend—self-preservation, the first law of nature, absorbed ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... of anybody else—that it was a physical impossibility for them to have anything but easterly winds where they were. But, he asserted, there was a good time coming; they had had easterly winds ever since they had started; this, by an unalterable law of nature, had been gradually creating a vacuum away there in the easterly quarter, which vacuum must now necessarily soon become so perfect that, by another unalterable law of nature, the wind would come careering back from the westward with a force sufficient to more than enable them to make ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... guidance, attains no noble ends, but resembles rather a copious spring conveyed in a falling aqueduct, where the waters continually escape through the frequent crevices, and waste themselves ineffectually on their passage. The law of nature is here, as elsewhere, binding, and no powerful results ever ensue from the trivial exercise of high endowments. The finest mind, when thus destitute of a fixed purpose, passes away without leaving permanent traces of its existence; losing its energy by ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... is partly this: You employ your mind and your body and they need more nourishment. Then—well, I think it is the restraining law of nature, else we should all be giants. In very hot countries and very cold countries they do not grow ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... with their security in this place, was upon the subject of the mysterious visitant. It was incomprehensible by any known law of nature. ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... the first law of nature, my dear," replied Uncle John. "I'm sorry for Maurie, but he alone is responsible. Henderson," he added, turning to the sailor, "put this woman ashore as soon as possible. We've had enough ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... absolute principles of jurisprudence which might be applied to the legislation of all countries; when, therefore, they turned their minds to questions of politics, they looked for absolute principles of constitutional government, on which, as on a law of nature, their own institutions might be built up. To find these they analysed the English Constitution, for England was the classical land of representative government; they read its rules as they would the institutions of a Roman Jurisconsult and used them to cast light on the dark ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... Nevertheless, with no great difficulty the senate was bullied into approving the new conscription, and the volatile people soon listened without alarm to the siren voice of their Emperor, which said these boys would be only a national guard, children obeying the law of nature, the objects of his own paternal care. Louis, who was governing Holland with reference to its own best interests, and ordering the affairs of his family rigidly but admirably, received a severe and passionate reprimand ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... eminently successful in the coasting trade, it can not possibly be so in the transatlantic freighting business; and that the rapid transit of the mails, and the slower and more deliberate transport of freight is the law of nature: ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... of man revolts against it, morally, intellectually and organically. Every law of nature in man is against it. Pain and suffering are its protest. To say that it is as natural as birth is to be guilty of pure bathos; even the worm crushed and quivering denies the sentiment. Schwann, the author ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... through space. Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Father's notice; not a soul yearns, or sorrows, or rejoices, but He knoweth it. He hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell together on the face of the earth. We are bound to each other by indissoluble ties. It is a law of nature that we must all work for each other. Though ten thousand miles apart; though oceans roll between us and continents divide us, we labor not for ourselves alone. You plow the furrow in California and sow the wheat for your brother in Louisiana, while he plants the cane and cotton for you. The ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... to know, too, by what mysterious law of nature it is that before you have left your watch "to be repaired" half an hour, some one is sure to stop you in the street and conspicuously ask you the time. Nobody even feels the slightest curiosity on the subject ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... entitled to the advantages due them; but where laws such as you describe are carried out, a good man's evidence being black, the intention could not be made white. Now, according to my idea of the law of nature, a man's merits are in his moral integrity and behaviour; therefore I should establish the rule that a good black man was better than a bad white man, and was as much entitled to the ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... lamentation of the multitude, from what happened to the legislator himself; for although he was always persuaded that he ought not to be cast down at the approach of death, since the undergoing it was agreeable to the will of God and the law of nature, yet what the people did so overbore him, that he wept himself. Now as he went thence to the place where he was to vanish out of their sight, they all followed after him weeping; but Moses beckoned with his hand to those that were ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... of the love of the dead which fondly we imagine to be unchangeable. For the rest passion, however exalted, passes or at least becomes dull with years; the most cherished children grow up, and in so doing, by the law of Nature, grow away; friends are estranged and lost in ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... great care and caution at times. The human body is, so to speak, the most delicate and intricate piece of machinery that could possibly be conceived of, and to keep this in perfect order requires constant care. It is a fixed law of nature that every violation thereof shall be punished; and so we find that he who neglects to care for his body by protecting it from sudden changes of weather, or draughts of cold air upon unprotected parts of the body, suffers ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... speech was given them, and they might satirise those vices of their lords to which, on other days, they had to minister. Rome on this day, by a strange negation of logic, which we might almost call a prompting of blind conscience, negatived the philosophic dictum that barbarians were by law of nature slaves, and acknowledged the higher principle of equality. The Saturnalia stood out from the whole year as a protest in favour of universal brotherhood, and the right that all men share alike to enjoy life ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... then bayonetted to death. That query was most easily answered. His crime was that he was not strong enough or big enough to compete against more sanguinary men, his disappearance being consequently in obedience to an universal law of nature. Yuan Shih-kai was determined to assert his mastery by any and every means; and as this man had ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... have observed that those of St. Helena, which have been brought from another hemisphere, are very irregular in their annual progress; many of them, in the development of their foliage, have adopted the law of nature peculiar to the country into which they have been transplanted. Others, more obstinate, remain faithful to their own habits, and continue to follow the stated changes to which they had been accustomed. They all appear to maintain a struggle either before they adopt the habits which belong ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... or why displayed, is from its very essence, moral. Strictly speaking, how can there be any courage except moral courage? If a man braves death or physical suffering, the quality that enables him to brave it is certainly not physical; certainly it does not pertain to the physical body. The "first law of nature" impels him to escape or yield; and it impels him with a powerful force. If this force be not successfully resisted, the man ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... law of nature that however much one may grieve over the death of a dear one, at the end of a year consolation finds its way to the heart of the mourner. But the disappearance of a living man can never be wiped out of one's memory. Therefore the fact that he was inconsolable made ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... already, long ago, in his rummagings, have seen himself—and only not to think a quarter good enough; this, however, was an old story, and one could not have had any fun with him but for his sweet theory that the individual gift, the friendship's offering, was, by a rigorous law of nature, a foredoomed aberration, and that the more it was so the more it showed, and the more one cherished it for showing, how friendly it had been. The infirmity of art was the candour of affection, the grossness of pedigree the refinement of sympathy; the ugliest objects, in ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... they might have said, "but mutability." Thus the law of change became a permanent thread in mortal affairs, and, with the knowledge that all the old round would be gone over again by others, grew the sense that in the acceptance of this law of nature there was involved a conquest of nature, an overcoming ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... For like a law of nature in my blood, America, I feel thy sovereignty, And woven through my soul thy vital sign. My life is but a wave and thou the flood; I am a leaf and thou the mother-tree; Nor should I be at all, were I ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... the cold that she could not take the basket of fish from her head. As a widow, she had lived for a while with a married son, but the young woman soon turned the old one out. Poor Suzette told the story without bitterness; she recognised the law of nature in this expulsion of the mother when she was of no further use to her children, and accepted thankfully the ten francs a month which her son allowed her. She managed to live by fetching and carrying for anyone who would give her two or three sous for an hour's trudging. She used to take my letters ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... account for the return of the seasons, and the variety of scenes which each season displays to the discerning eye. Numberless worlds are around us, all framed by the same Divine Artist, which roll through the vast expanse, and are all conducted by the same unerring law of Nature. ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... conduct, must be the increase of human happiness. The province of government is limited by another consideration. It has to deal with one class of happiness, that is, with the pains and pleasures 'which men derive from one another.' By a 'law of nature' labour is requisite for procuring the means of happiness. Now, if 'nature' produced all that any man desired, there would be no need of government, for there would be no conflict of interest. But, as the material produced is finite, and can be appropriated ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... but the dialect of them true; and very strange to us. Like that of an Arab Sheik among his tribesmen; like that of a man whose authority needs no keeping up, but is a Law of Nature to himself and everybody. He permits a little bantering even; a rough joke against himself, if it spring sincerely from the complexion of the fact. The poor men are terribly tired of this work: such bivouacking, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... instincts can be, not to speak of her reason, her love, her conscience, her pride. Pleasure and self-indulgence have indeed gained tremendous power, in these later days, when they can thus break down the force of the strongest law of nature, a law stronger even than that ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... two last lines seems to be addressing Death, or Fate, which he designates as "the strong pillar of the living law," or the law of nature, just as the Latins called it "dura necessitas," "mortis dura lex," "fatalis Parcarum lex," &c. The expressions "heb vawr drydar," and "arwar," indicative of the effects of death, are introduced by way of contrast to the noisy mirth which characterised the warriors' march to the field of ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... and became the foundation of the famous essay on Civil Government, from which popular leaders in our own country drew all their weapons down to the outbreak of the French Revolution. Grotius (1625) starting from the principle that the law of nature enjoins that we should stand by our agreements, then proceeded to assume either an express, or at any rate a tacit and implied, promise on the part of all who become members of a community, to obey the majority of the body, or a majority of those to whom authority has been delegated.[217] ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... unrestrained freedom of the village, whose sole product seemed to be buffalo hides. Every man in the place wore the regulation six-shooter in his belt, and quite a number wore two. The primitive law of nature known as self-preservation, was very evident in August of '82 at Frenchman's Ford. It reminded me of the early days at home in Texas, where, on arising in the morning, one buckled on his six-shooter ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... throughout the time when all he sees or learns will be most clear in his memory until he dies, is more with the woman parent than with the man, who is afield; or, it may be, there is some criss-cross law of nature which makes the man ordinarily transmit his qualities to the daughter and the woman transmit hers to the son. About that we do not know yet. But it is certain that Ab was more like his mother than his father, and that ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo |
