Babies are seldom abandoned on doorsteps any more.
These were, more or less, the maxims with which Curzon grew up, and which he seldom abandoned in forty years' service to an empire that was, as the dedication to one of his many books put it, "under Providence the greatest instrument for good the world has ever seen".
In practice legislators and judges have seldom abandoned the traditional causal terminology in discussing the second issue, but the proposal to do so has been repeatedly revived.
At any rate, eremitism in early medieval China seldom translated into abandoning the sociopolitical world; in most cases, it signaled personal "purity" or integrity, a highly valued asset if not a precondition for admission to officialdom.
Although the bosses may create or perpetuate a culture in which those lower down the ranks feel entitled or expected to abandon morality, there is seldom a chain of e-mails or other direct instructions that actually advocates wrongdoing.
Bailey said he tried to concentrate on the classier races, and he seldom rides claimers, a strategy he will have to abandon if he wants to make it back to the top of the Saratoga standing.
"Pygmies very seldom leave their forests," said Gregory Chevrel of Solidarité, a UNICEF-supported non-governmental organization which assists people who have had to abandon their homes.
And many others have abandoned work altogether, as jobs are seldom advertised with flexible working options.
Biomorphic and invertebrate, with seldom a trace of the T-squares most architects long ago abandoned, blobs look like things you would expect to see rising from an electronic version of the primordial ooze.
Abandoning the social mission of the corporation is a management technique that's seldom openly celebrated in business books, but it has been significant.
