Defalcation

“ The despot may plead he lights up the conflagration of empires, and encreases the miseries of human nature to the most horrible climax of anguish, by the command of this necessity. The priest may deceive, the lawyer defraud, and the physician poison, by the same impulse of necessity. ”

“ And ye have been told by certain men, if ye will but take into your hands a cunning device called Nullification, ye will thereby be enabled to overthrow the power of the King, without peril to your lives or to the realm. ”

“ Death and Devastation are the certain Consequences of Delay; every Moment is infinitely precious; an Hour lost may deluge your Country in Blood, and entail perpetual Slavery upon the few of your Posterity who may survive the Carnage. ”

“ The man who in the hour of danger speaks of abdication is, for me, a venomous animal. I speak with the bluntness of gravity, madam; this is no hour for mincing. The coward, in a station of authority, is more dangerous than fire. ”

“ But the distinguishing characteristic of all defectives, within or without our public institutions, is defective inhibition,—they are unable to control the spontaneous impulses that continually arise, and which may indeed be normal. ”

“ The idea of failure in the face of the world and that society he had so lately entered and meant to rule, of leaving the chariot of the countess and becoming once more a muddied pedestrian, was more than he could bear. ”

“ The Flopper halted and turned himself about, while his left hand swept his livid face, brushing from it the spurting drops, sweeping back the damp, tangled hair from his eyes—faced them till they saw an agony on human countenance that struck, stabbing, to their souls—faced them while his eyes traversed the long, long line of ghastly white faces before him, out of which eyes everywhere, row on row of them, straining, fixed, fascinated, seemed to burn like living fires as they held him in their focus. ”

“ The decay, corruption, and dissolution of nature, is an event rendered probable by so many analogies, that any phenomenon, which seems to have a tendency towards that catastrophe, comes within the reach of human testimony, if that testimony be very extensive and uniform. ”

“ The strict procedural default rule is designed in part to protect the State's interest-unique in the context of procedural default-in correcting error in the first instance. Sykes, supra, 433 U.S., at 88-90, 97 S.Ct., at 2507-2508. ”

“ But James, who is surnamed "the deluded," and Robert the Nullifier, feared much, lest the eyes of William the just, should alight upon the graven image, Nullification, for they knew he would expose it to all the people. ”

“ In such a combination of circumstances, one is impatient to discover the specific causes of discontent which could inflame an entire population into all the fury of revolt, and to the expulsion by blood and the sword of a King, under whose sway they acknowledge themselves to be debtors for so many blessings. ”

“ One flogging, without the slightest stigma attaching to it, or reprimand, is the certain penalty of failure in his task. With hardihood or without it, I then had no chance, though, at all events, I acquired it, and that too, to such a degree, and I deemed the penalty so trivial, that I henceforth enjoyed a delightful sense of freedom and independence in its way. ”

“ For wedlock is a chief institution ordained of God, and that thou hast promised to defy as we do all, and that thou hast not only done, but, moreover, thou hast confirmed it with thy blood. Persuade thyself that what thou hast done in contempt of wedlock, it is all to thine own delight. ”

“ The like also occurs in generations and corruptions, as, if to build is to energize, to have built is to have energized, and if to learn is to remember, to have learned is to have remembered, and if to be dissolved is to be corrupted, to have been dissolved is to have been corrupted, and dissolution is a certain corruption. ”

“ And its name is called Nullification; and behold it has great power and dominion over the hearts of men, for when it shall speak unto Andrew the King, he shall tremble with dread, and the ordinance, even the Tariff, shall straightway become null and void. ”

“ The policy of drift, which we seem to favour, is bound to lead us to disaster, and when we couple with it inefficacious resistance and bigoted obstruction we cannot be surprised if, in the end, it only yields us bitter disappointment, extensive losses, enmity and derision. ”

“ One would think that if obliged to pronounce such a doom upon any, he would do it with tears—that he would retire into his closet, and throw ashes upon his head, and come forth in sackcloth, overwhelmed at the hard necessity which compelled the stern decree. ”

“ A daily growing despotism, the fear we all felt of it—a fear which consisted simply in our dread of receiving a rebuke for the smallest fault—and the silence we observed on every subject, placed the various inhabitants of the Tuileries on the same level. ”

“ From a state of collapse the laws of his being bring the bird into normal behavior as quickly and completely as the collapsed rubber ball is rounded by the laws of its being. The memory of the fright seems to be an impression exactly like the dent in the rubber ball—as if it had never been. ”

“ That done, their occult power, vast in action and in intensity, against which the social order would be helpless, would cast down all obstacles, blast all other wills, and give to each the devilish power of all. ”

“ Is it inherent strength in the vice, or inherent weakness in human nature? Are there certain tastes that should be regarded as verging on insanity? For myself, I cannot help laughing at the moralists who try to expel such diseases by fine phrases.—Well, it so fell out that the steward refused a demand for money; and the Duke taking fright at this, called for an audit. Sheer imbecility! Nothing easier than to make out a balance-sheet; the difficulty never lies there. The steward gave his secretary all the necessary documents for compiling a schedule of the civil list of Courland. ”

“ As it was, such declamation only described, in language as accurate as it was violent and stinging, the real position of the country. In the urgency of a present material distress, men were not over-careful that the basis of the indictment should be laid in the principles of a sound historical philosophy of society. ”

“ But that day will show many men and things also in a different state from what they may now appear in. Some that now appear clear and fair will then be seen to be black and foul, and some that are now thought black and foul will then be approved and accepted; and thither I cheerfully appeal, concluding this part in the words of the prophet, I heard the defaming of many; fear on every side ”

“ Or again, take these premisses—
Some men are fallible,
All Popes are men.
Here it is possible that 'All Popes' may agree with precisely that part of the term 'man,' of which it is not known whether it agrees with 'fallible' or not.
§ 586. The violation of Rule 4 is known as the Fallacy of Illicit Process. If the major term is distributed in the conclusion, not having been distributed in the premiss, we have what is called Illicit Process of the Major; if the same is the case with the minor term, we have Illicit Process of the Minor. ”

“ I have seen many private disasters develop, which I could have checked with five grains of despotic power.—We shall be regretted by the very men who have crippled us when they, like you, stand face to face with some moral monstrosities, which ought to be swept away as we sweep away mud! ”

“ The great despoliation over, the same spirit of heedless, callous unconcern, although in lesser degree, has shewn itself as largely existent through the succeeding centuries, down to these later times of pseudo-ecclesiastical revival, which in too many instances continues to exhibit in a still more exaggerated form, all the latent traits of thoughtless destruction, that had its place in days of old. ”

“ One of the features of a revolutionary era is the prevalence of a feeble facility of abdication. The holders of power, however natural and legitimate it may be, are too ready to resign it on the first demand.... The nerves of authority are shaken by the failure of conviction. ”

“ Even temporary defaults by some handlers may work unfairness to others, encourage wider non-compliance, and engender those subtle forces of doubt and distruct which so readily dislocate delicate economic arrangements. ”

“ But they are not the questions with which I am at present concerned. The decadence respecting which I wish to put questions is not literary or artistic, it is political and national. It is the decadence which attacks, or is alleged to attack, great communities and historic civilisations: which [Pg 7] is to societies of men what senility is to man, and is often, like senility, the precursor and the cause of final dissolution. ”

“ Without passing a more definite judgment on those who invented and profited by this scheme, it may be said that there has scarcely been a century which has produced one more mysterious, more daring, better arranged, and resulting in an oppression so enduring, so sure, so cruel. ”

“ These were the weapons by which his power became annihilated, and which, in the end, will be the destruction of all potentates who presume to follow his fallacious plan of forming individuals to a system instead of accommodating systems to individuals. ”

“ With these fragments of authority, the slaves of Flattery and Malevolence marched out, at the command of their mistresses, to confer immortality, or condemn to oblivion. But the sceptre had now lost its power; and Time passes his sentence at leisure, without any regard to their determinations. ”

“ The rising circumflex begins with the falling, and ends with the rising inflection; the falling circumflex begins with the rising, and ends with the falling inflection.
Positive assertions of irony, raillery, etc., have the falling circumflex, and all negative assertions of doubled meaning will have the rising. Doubt, pity, contrast, grief, supposition, comparison, irony, implication, sneering, raillery, scorn, reproach, and contempt, are all expressed by the use of the wave of the circumflex. ”

“ If it is fatalism to assume that, given a certain chain of social or political antecedents, they will inevitably be followed by a certain chain of consequences, then every sensible observer of any series of events is a fatalist. ”

“ But in order to lose nothing, a power must grow or remain indefinite, for a power which remains stationary is nullified. If it retrogrades, it is under the control of something else, and loses its independent existence. ”

“ The political incident of the deposition is sketched with extraordinary knowledge of the world;—the ebb of fortune, on the one hand, and on the other, the swelling tide, which carries every thing along with it. ”

“ No persons, under the antient Law, inflicted on themselves, with their own hands, voluntary flagellations, or received them from the hands of other persons.
FLAGELLATION, there is no doubt, is a method of coercive punishment very antiently used among Men. ”

“ And if it does collapse, this is one of those things that carries consequences. It would beseem man to bethink himself that to give in to an unjustified and doubtfully honest claim is to minister to the demoralisation of the claimant. ”

“ The principle of modern defences, therefore, is necessarily no longer a complete enceinte, as in old days, by which the place to be protected was surrounded by a cunningly devised system of ramparts and ditches, so arranged as that the various parts mutually supported each other ”

“ As the essential conditions of the series of events, as the machinery by which everything is brought about, these defects are of the utmost importance to the story. It is the accused system that awards to Tyrrel and Falkland their immense preponderance in society, and enables them to use the power of the law for the most nefarious ends. ”

“ This Fable concerns those that think to Deceive God with Fallacies of Words, Equivocations, Mental Reservations, and Double Meanings; but though Frauds and Perjuries may pass upon Men for a Season, they are as Open as the Light yet to Him that Searches the Heart. ”

“ Certain alarmists will exclaim that such an alteration in our manners would bring about a public dissoluteness which would be frightful; that the laws, and the customs which prompt the laws, could not after all authorize scandal and immorality; and if certain unavoidable abuses do exist, at least society ought not to sanction them. ”

“ Beyond the question of certainty is the question of detachment. The process by which principles are discovered and appropriated is other than that by which, in practice, they are applied; and our most sacred and disinterested convictions ought to take shape in the tranquil regions of the air, above the tumult and the tempest of active life #4. ”

“ The fallacy of accident, we have learned, occurs when one reasons from a general truth to an accidental case; whereas the fallacy of division obtains when one reasons from a collective use of a term to a distributive use; in both cases the procedure is from a larger unit to a smaller unit. Moreover, with converse accident and composition, the movement is from the smaller unit to the larger. ”

“ The country is going through the horrors of decomposition while still alive; its counterfeit head is rotting and its members falling off. And there is no silence in our distracting grief; the great decay is accompanied by revolting continuous applause. ”

“ When I knew him best, in the nineties, the virtues and at least one curious defect were exceedingly impressive upon one in general sympathy with his rationalism in all fields of its application, The defect was an excessive combativeness which was apt to pursue every detected falsehood or fallacy to its remotest origins and a related failure to assign the proper scale of importance to the several errors of his “enemies.” ”