Procrustean : “tending to produce uniformity by violent methods”. The ogre Procrustes kept iron beds on which he compelled his victims to lie, stretching or cutting off their legs to make them fit the bed’s length.
... from sound judgment and sure taste and a faithful critical and comparative observation, from direct seeing and often even from plainest common sense or of a constant fitting of the text into the Procrustean bed of preconceived theory, it is surely this commentary, otherwise so imposing, so useful as first crude material, so erudite and laborious, left to us by the Acharya Sayana. Nor does the reproach ...
... you please, enjoy what you can, but without violating my laws and conventions," is the dyke raised by society; but man is a universal as well as a social unit and the societies he creates are a Procrustean bed which he moulds and remoulds without ever finding his measure. He supports himself on social conventions, laws & equities, but cannot limit himself by his supports. "Desire is sinful; observe ...
... difficult to deal with what is infrarational; life is infrarational and we find that our intellectual reason applying itself to life is constantly forcing upon it a control, a measure, an artificial procrustean rule that either succeeds in killing or petrifying life or constrains it into rigid forms and conventions that lame and imprison its capacity or ends by a bungle, a revolt of life, a decay or disruption ...
... corroborate and enrich the profession of his own understanding. Teilhard appears "mentally head and shoulders above every one of his Christian commentators" but is, nevertheless, forced into a procrustean bed of past formulations. Sri Aurobindo, going beyond earlier scripture, and speaking with the magisterial authority of his own experience of Supermind, can open a path to the future without ...
... and important moral functions; Mitra and Bhaga have the same psychological aspect; the Ribhus who form things by the mind and build up immortality by works can with difficulty be crushed into the Procrustean measure of a naturalistic mythology. Still by imputing a chaotic confusion of ideas to the poets of the Vedic hymns the difficulty can be trampled upon, if not overcome. But Saraswati will submit ...
... in ineffective books, but on the tablets of man's heart. Then he needed no violence of outer law or government to restrain him from evil or to cut and force his free being into the machine-made Procrustean mould of a social ideal; for a natural divine rule in his members was the spontaneous and sufficient safeguard of his liberty. This tradition was once so universal that one might almost be tempted ...
... own value. It is the recognition of the personal worth of each individual that gives him true equality with others and not the casting of all into the same mould and pattern, fitting all on to the Procrustean bed, which indeed would mean just the negation of equality. This variability is the very basis of a living equality. Physically all men have not the same height or weight or growth, even so internally ...
... between the two. So the Japanese and those who are strictly moral, I'm afraid they don't, or very rarely, hear the voice of God, because they have adhered, all along in their life, to Procrustean laws and rules where there's no chance of the tiny whispering voice within being heard. So in order to be able to lead the spiritual life, you have to break some of the moral rules - the moral ...
... well as individual. Evolution is based upon this truth of Nature. Man is not bound to the present pattern or complex of his nature and character: he is not irrevocably fixed to the frame – a Procrustean bed – given by the parallelogram of actual forces in or around him. Always he can call down forces or forces can descend into him from otherwhere and bring about a change, even a revolution in the ...
... value. It is the recognition of the personal worth of each individual that gives him true equality with others and not the casting of all into the same mould and pattern, fitting all on to the Procrustean bed, which indeed would mean just the negation of equality. This variability is the very basis of a living equality. Physically all men have not the same height or weight or growth, even so internally ...
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.