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More "Contradiction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... advantage of the statistical method. It establishes beyond all possibility of contradiction the thing you want to establish. But if you do not want to establish anything, if you merely want to find out something, statistics are no use at all. You are driven to other ways of getting at the truth, ways much less ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... if God has ever abrogated the law of the Sabbath? If he has it can easily be found. We undertake to say without fear of contradiction, he has not made any such record in the bible; but to the contrary, he calls it a perpetual covenant, a "sign between me and the children of Israel forever," for the reason that he rested on the seventh day. Exo. xxxi: 16, 17. Says ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates
... nobody, not even a genius, can be simultaneously vulgar and distinguished, or beautiful and ugly, or precise and vague, or tender and harsh. And common-sense will therefore tell you that to try to set up vital contradictions between matter and style is absurd. When there is a superficial contradiction, one of the two mutually-contradicting qualities is of far less importance than the other. If you refer literature to the standards of life, common-sense will at once decide which quality should count heaviest in your esteem. You will be in no ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... poverty and turn the fool into a man of sense. I hear thou governest with all discretion; and that, nevertheless, thou retainest the humility of the meanest creature. But I would observe to thee, Sancho, that it is often expedient and necessary, for the due support of authority, to act in contradiction to the humility of the heart. The personal adornments of one that is raised to a high situation must correspond with his present greatness, and not with his former lowliness. Let thy apparel, therefore, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... self-elected corporations, whatever might be their defects in other respects, care was taken to elect persons of wealth and respectability. In opposing the amendment, Lord John Russell, Sir J. C. Hobhouse, Mr. Blackburne, and other members, argued, that it was in contradiction to the spirit of the bill, not agreeable to the provisions of the original charters, incapable of being generally and fitly applied, and not productive of any practical benefit. It was lost by a majority of two hundred and sixty-seven against two hundred and four. On the same day Lord Stanley ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... house; but it was only within his own family circle, and to his most familiar friends, that he was wont to open his heart, and complain of his ill-fortune, at being the first childless father of his race—for so, in his contempt for the poor girls, whom he still, strange contradiction! loved fondly and affectionately, he was accustomed in his dark hours to style himself; as if forsooth an heir male were the only offspring worthy to be called the child of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... be shown immediately, this course of events seems to be in contradiction with the facts of savage society at the present day and with all probability. Apart from that however, how does Mr Morgan suppose his eugenic diathesis to be transmitted? It can hardly be maintained that this was the result of the different social conditions of the ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... always look well at a ball but are not especially appropriate (unless universally in fashion) on other occasions. A lady in a ball dress with nothing added to the head, looks a little like being hatless in the street. This sounds like a contradiction of the criticism of the vulgarian. But because a tiara is beautiful at a ball, or a spray of feathers, or a high comb, or another ornament, does not mean that all of these should be put on together and worn in a restaurant; which is just what the vulgarian would do. Whether, to wear a head-dress, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... an emotion of pity for myself of wild regret; of sorrow, Oh, infinite for a fate so desolate, a doom so dreary, so heart-sickening! You may laugh at the contradiction if you will, sir, but I felt that I could sacrifice my own life on the instant, to redeem another fellow-creature from such a place of horror, from an end so piteous. My soul and my vital spirit seemed in that desperate moment to be separating; while one in parting grieved over the deplorable ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman
... the study of words, would be to lay bare the secrets of religion and life—it is beyond human competence. Nevertheless a brief and diffident consideration of the matter may bring thus much comfort, that the seeming contradiction is no discredit cast on letters, but takes its origin rather from too narrow and pedantic a view of the scope ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... king-crabs, or the inductive process, or any other topic which cannot possibly affect you one atom. Then is the time to drop all these merely selfish interests, and to champion the cause of truth. Fall upon him in a fine glow of indignation, and bring your contradiction across his face—whack!—so that all the table may hear. Tell him, with his pardon, that the king-crab is no more a crab than you are a jelly-fish, or that Mill has been superseded these ten years. Ask: "How can you say ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... mediumship was the result of illness, it is strange that her recovery should have favoured the development and perfecting of this same mediumship. There appears to be a contradiction here. I am not competent regarding the question, but, on examining the facts, I can hardly believe that mediumship is a mere neurosis. After all, are there not famous men of science who declare that genius itself is only a neurosis? In their eyes the bandit ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... he owes me the Hint of his Ballad, or that I am obliged to his Friendship and Learning for Communications of a much more important Nature. — I am, Sir, your's etc. OLIVER GOLDSMITH.' ('St. James's Chronicle', July 23-5, 1767.) No contradiction of this statement appears to have been offered by Percy; but in re-editing his 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry' in 1775, shortly after Goldsmith's death, he affixed this note to 'The Friar of Orders Gray:— 'As the foregoing song has been thought to have suggested to our late ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... this quarrel arose as they sat at breakfast. The lady very innocently observed, she believed the tea was made with Thames water. The husband, in mere contradiction, insisted upon it that the tea-kettle was filled out of the ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... come to get something for the Colonel's breakfast," said I, pushing past the slave, through the open doorway. Swein Poulsson followed, and here I struck another contradiction in his strange nature. He helped me light the fire in the great stone chimney-place, and we soon had a pot of hominy on the crane, and turning on the spit a piece of buffalo steak which we found ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the contradiction between that liberty which they enjoyed and the slavery which existed around them, they did not see a means whereby the ideal that all men were created equal could become a practical reality. Unlike later generations, however, ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... difficult to realize that Sir Charles is a young man of twenty-six, as it is to feel that his antithesis, the adorable Pepys of the "Diary," was of that precise age. Sir Charles might be borne with good-naturedly for a short time as an old gentleman who had become garrulous from want of contradiction, but in any other aspect he would be shunned conscientiously. Yet Richardson is not content with putting into his mouth lengthy discourses tending chiefly, though expressed with mock humility, to his own glorification; but he keeps all the other characters ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... Nokes. But he had no one with whom he could converse freely—none whom he had not been accustomed to treat as the mere ministers of his will— except his wife and his wife's sister; and now he was disjoined from them by their sympathy with Medlicot! He had chosen to manage every thing himself without contradiction and almost without counsel; but, like other such imperious masters, he now found that when trouble came the privilege of dictatorship brought with it an ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... the title of a proselytizing religion. The Brahmanic Scriptures have not a word of welcome for converts, quite the contrary; and as long as these Scriptures are recognized as the highest authority by the Hindus themselves, we have no right to ascribe to Brahmanism what is in direct contradiction with their teaching. The burning of widows was not enjoined in the Vedas, and hence, in order to gain a sanction for it, apassage in the Veda was falsified. No such necessity was ever felt with regard to gaining converts for the Brahmanic faith, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... seems a curious contradiction, at first glance, to place the return of Charles II at the beginning of modern England, as our historians are wont to do; for there was never a time when the progress of liberty, which history records, was more plainly turned backwards. The Puritan regime had been too severe; ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... only "cut off" from natural sources, as Ruskin says of Oriental design—the plaid is not only cut off from nature, and cut off from nature by the yard, for it is to be measured off in inorganic quantity; but it is even a kind of intentional contradiction of all natural or vital forms. And it is equally defiant of vital tone and of vital colour. Everywhere in nature tone is gradual, and between the fainting of a tone and the failing of a curve there is a charming analogy. But the tartan insists that its tone shall be ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... debasing of all the acts of the Bureau, in the eyes of those who love to term themselves "the South," was the fact that its officers and agents, first of all, allowed the colored man to be sworn in opposition to and in contradiction of the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... actual mood, which is really too vacant of import to parade such importance, is often a fault of natures whose native means of expression is the thin line, the geometer's precision, the architect's foresight in measurement. And by allowing for it I think we can explain the contradiction apparent between the critics' continual insistence on what they call Duerer's great thoughts, and the sparsity of intellectual creativeness which strikes one in turning over his engravings, so many are there of which ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... lists, the Germans declare, to defend western ideals and western democracy. Yet Russian government is Prussian in its organization, and it is on the side of the ideal of western democracy that she is explicitly aligned. The contradiction is striking, and it is still more striking when we recall that in her armies are over a quarter of a million of Jews, and that in the other armies there are half as many more. For the Jews the war is more than civil; it is fratricide. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... And by miracle I do not merely mean something new, strange, and not very easy of comprehension—I mean something which violates every canon of thought which in the palpable world we are accustomed to respect; something as alien to, and inconceivable by, us as contradiction in terms, the destructibility of force or matter, or the creation of something out of nothing. This, which when writ large maddens and kills, writ small is our meat and drink; it attends each minutest and most impalpable detail of the ceaseless fusion and diffusion in which change appears ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... explicit upon this point, obviously referring to a middle state of suffering and expiation, and thus refuting by anticipation the objections of those who claim that the primitive Christians prayed indeed for the dead, but knew nothing of Purgatory: a contradiction, it would seem, as prayer for the dead, to be available, supposes a place or state of probation. But, even where the mention made by the Fathers of prayer for the dead does not refer expressly to a place of purgation, it is no more a proof ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... felt sin, Christie; but I reckon He knew as well as any of us what it is to be wearied and troubled, when matters went not to His comfort. 'The contradiction of sinners' covereth ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... miss a single change of feature, and, swiftly understanding her mute contradiction, went on gaily: "Look! look! So, fairest of the fair, you refuse to acknowledge our glorious victory? That bears witness to a specially independent comprehension of things. But we, how are we to explain such a denial of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is done yet. The advice of the Admiralty proposed today to the States of Holland is in contradiction with itself. They annul in truth their famous resolution of the 18th of November, as to the restriction of convoy, (from which they wished then to exclude ship timber) but would suspend the adoption of the resolution as to the extension of these convoys, until the time when they would assign ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... teach the following five Tropes 164 of [Greek: epoche]: first, the one based upon contradiction; second, the regressus in infinitum; third, relation; fourth, the hypothetical; fifth, the circulus in probando. The one 165 based upon contradiction is the one from which we find, that in reference to the thing put before us for investigation, ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... what does 'thing' mean? Itself, that is, the 'ing', or inclosure, that which is contained within an outline, or circumscribed. So likewise to 'think' is to inclose, to determine, confine and define. To think an infinite is a contradiction in terms equal to a boundless bound. So in German 'Ding, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... has not the spirit to regain; the other seems only to regret that he had ever been king, and is glad to be rid of the power, with the trouble; the effeminacy of the one is that of a voluptuary, proud, revengeful, impatient of contradiction, and inconsolable in his misfortunes; the effeminacy of the other is that of an indolent, good-natured mind, naturally averse to the turmoils of ambition and the cares of greatness, and who wishes to pass his time in monkish indolence and contemplation.—Richard ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... lens or combination of lenses, which the eye looks directly into, being kept in line with it by means of a string and manoeuvred about near the ground (Plate III., p. 112). The idea of a telescope without a tube may appear a contradiction in terms; but it is not really so, for the tube adds nothing to the magnifying power of the instrument, and is, in fact, no more than a mere device for keeping the object-glass and eye-piece in a straight line, and for preventing the observer ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... grounds were very large; the gardens on either side extending from the first houses of Montreuil to the thatched cottages near the barrier, so that the owner could enjoy all the pleasures of solitude with the city almost at his gates. By an odd piece of contradiction, the whole front of the house itself, with the principal entrance, gave directly upon the street. Perhaps in time past it was a tolerably lonely road, and indeed this theory looks all the more probable when one comes to think of it; for not so very far away, on this same road, Louis Quinze built ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... which these reflections suggest is that the uncritical application of biological principles to social progress results in an insuperable contradiction. The factors which determine the survival of physical organism, if applied as rules for the furtherance of social progress, appear to conflict with all that social progress means. A sense of this conflict is no doubt responsible for the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the prerogative, that they must be often sent for to Court, that the king may hear them argue those points in which he is concerned; since how unjust soever any of his pretensions may be, yet still some one or other of them, either out of contradiction to others, or the pride of singularity, or to make their court, would find out some pretence or other to give the king a fair colour to carry the point: for if the judges but differ in opinion, the clearest thing in the world ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... contradiction. There was no doubt about it, for she was perfectly truthful. But she might be mistaken; she ought to make quite sure. This suggestion, too, shocked him; but he agreed that she should come and talk things over with ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... and criticism. Mistakes will be made and mischief done, but in the long run the effect of a keen competition, and an advancing public taste will tell. I don't hesitate to assert, without fear of contradiction, that critical art has improved rapidly during the last twenty years in this country, where a man is free to start a critical review, and to write about anybody, or anything, and in any manner, provided he keeps within ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... melodies in which he sought to improvise his warm affection. The absurdity of the proceeding was manifest, but it needed yet another point of emphasis. There was a grand wedding in Venice in 1595, at which the music consisted of madrigals, all in slow time and minor key. The contradiction between the doleful music and the festive occasion was too plain to be ignored, and led, presently, to the invention of a totally different style of song of which later there ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... eternal, immutable, and independent of all attributes. The affirmance of attributes with respect to the Soul directly leads to the inference of its destructibility, and hence the assertion of its permanency or indestructibility under such conditions is a contradiction in terms, according to what is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... towards proving that other organs and other seemingly less explicit adaptations in Nature must also have been designed, and clinches our belief, from manifold considerations, that all Nature is a preconcerted arrangement, a manifested design. A strange contradiction would it be to insist that the shape and markings of certain rude pieces of flint, lately found in drift deposits, prove design, but that nicer and thousand-fold more complex adaptations to use in animals and vegetables do not a fortiori ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... upright, and that the delicate ornamentation, of which some traces survive, would never have been lavished on marble doomed to gradual destruction. No general rule can be laid down, but undoubtedly most of these slabs were meant to be recumbent. There are few cases where some contradiction of emplacement with pose cannot be detected. But two examples may be noted where the slabs were clearly intended to be placed in walls. An unnamed bishop at Bologna lies down, while at either end of the slab an angel stands, at right angles to the recumbent ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... factor in the durability of the commutator. Besides this, the commutator is sustained by supports carried in flanges upon the shaft, which flanges, as an additional safeguard, are coated all over with hard rubber, one of the finest known insulators. It may be stated, without fear of contradiction, that no other commutator made is so thoroughly insulated and protected. The three commutator segments virtually constitute a single copper ring, mounted in free air, and cut into three equal pieces by slots across ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... for his Church; as indeed there was, though not according to their construction. For 4thly, contrary to their expectation, that railing spirit did not only not further, but extremely disgrace and prejudice their cause, when it was once perceived from how low degrees of contradiction, at first, to what outrage of contumely and slander, they were at length proceeded; and were ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... part that she thought the meeting accidental; and though in her heart she had a fear of the man and knew how bitter an enemy he was of Michel's, his urbane power, his skilful diplomacy of courtesy had its way. These complicated lives, instinct with contradiction, have the interest of forbidden knowledge. The dark experiences of life leave their mark and give such natures that touch of mystery which allures even those who have high instincts and true feelings, as one peeps over a hidden depth and wonders ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this article, the Catholic Primate contradicted Mr. O'Connell's assertion respecting the rescript, and laid rescript and contradiction before the public. "I was surprised and sorry," he writes, "to find that you had ventured to assert that a letter sent to me some time past from the Propaganda was not a canonical document." He adds that he laid the document before the assembled prelates, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... a breakfast of philosophers to-morrow at ten punctually; muffins and metaphysics, crumpets and contradiction. Will you come?" ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... members uttering very unguarded opinions, and reflecting injuriously upon the navy itself, as though upon it depended having more or fewer ships." The Minister of Marine, replying in the Cortes, paraphrased as follows, without contradiction, the words of this critic, which voiced, as it would appear, a popular clamor: "You ask, 'Why, after reaching Santiago, has the squadron not gone out, and why does it not now go out?' Why do four ships not go out to fight twenty? You ask again: 'If it does not go out, if it does not ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... functions of the consul, whose institution is for those two objects only, nor within the powers of a commissioner, authorized to treat and conclude a convention, solely for regulating the powers, privileges, and duties of consuls. The arrest and detention of passengers, moreover, would often be in contradiction to our bills of rights, which, being fundamental, cannot be obstructed in their operation by any law or ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... not that we may plunge into the crucial controversy of a science that is not identical with ours, but in order to make my drift clear by the defining aid of express contradiction. No political dogma is as serviceable to my purpose here as the historian's maxim to do the best he can for the other side, and to avoid pertinacity or emphasis on his own. Like the economic precept Laissez-faire[38] which the eighteenth ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... no contradiction between romanticism and Heimatkunst; for it was romanticism that in its time aroused the Germans to a real sense of what their native heath meant for them; neither is Heimatkunst opposed to naturalism. In both Heimatkunst and naturalism nature is the watchword, but with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... elated by his success; and early in 1752 he wrote to the Governor and Intendant: "It is a great miracle that, in spite of envy, contradiction, and opposition from nearly all the Indian villages, I have formed in less than three years one of the most flourishing missions in Canada. I find myself in a position to extend the empire of my good masters, Jesus Christ and the King, even to the extremities of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... times a lofty idea of his own dignity as an artist, and never would stoop either to flatter a patron or to conciliate a rival. Julius II., though now seventy-four, was as impatient of contradiction as fiery in temper, as full of magnificent and ambitious projects as if he had been in the prime of life; in his service was the famous architect, Bramante, who beheld with jealousy and alarm the increasing fame of Michael Angelo, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... talking seriously at intervals, for the periodic workings of her conscience were ever open to view. But whatever special seriousness of purpose was now perturbing her, this matter-of-fact return to the roof they shared seemed to give it contradiction,—did not at least suggest that any immediate breach in their present relations was to ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... are no dreams we shall try to show gradually, in detail, and as clearly as possible, we shall call attention particularly to a contradiction in which the moderns are often involved. They call the ancients their teachers, they acknowledge in their works an unattainable excellence, yet they depart both in theory and practice far from the maxims which the ancients continually observed. In starting from ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... subtleties, we may perhaps suggest a cause for this apparent contradiction. But the more we admire the wise dispositions of the author of nature, in the laws he has prescribed to the industry of animals, the greater reserve is necessary in admitting any theory adverse to this beautiful system, and the ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... and his partisans were at least as resourceful as their opponents. The Cretan had never been able to bear contradiction. If his greatness had created him {45} many enemies, his pettiness had created him more. His tone of prophetic and impeccable omniscience was vexatious at all times, but particularly galling at this agitated period. It was now his constant cry that the situation called ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... On the other hand, in a communication from a writer and scholar of high intellectual distinction occurs the statement: "I affirm that, of all sexual acts, fellatio is most an affair of imagination and sympathy." It must be pointed out that there is no contradiction in these two statements, and that each is justified, according as we take the point of view of the ordinary onlooker or of the impassioned lover eager to give a final proof of his or her devotion. It must be added that from a scientific point of view we are not ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... arch expression on her face just bordering on a mocking smile, will say, "What a sophisticated child to be sure!" He would be quite wrong unless we can say that the female child is born sophisticated, which sounds rather like a contradiction in terms. That appearance of sophistication, common in little girls even in a remote rustic village hidden away among the Wiltshire downs, is implicit in, and a quality of the child's mind—the female ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... affairs any longer, but were plainly lords of the nation, and had thrust him out of his authority; that this was the case when Herod slew so many men without his giving him any command to do it, either by word of mouth, or by his letter, and this in contradiction to the law of the Jews; who therefore, in case he be not a king, but a private man, still ought to come to his trial, and answer it to him, and to the laws of his country, which do not permit any one to be killed till he ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... bring sad news to your Majesty. There can be no doubt that the prince has completely lost his senses. He declares that he saw a lady sleeping on his couch last night, and the state you see me in proves how violent contradiction makes him." He then gave a minute account of all the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... rattled plenty To suffice for mornings twenty; And I must not toss you longer On this torrent waxing stronger. Other things, past contradiction, Here would prove I spoke no fiction, Did I lead them up, choragic, To reveal their nature magic. There is that machine, glass-masked, With continual questions tasked, Ticking with untiring rock: It is called an eight-day clock. But to me the thing appears ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... say that there are no fatal accidents except those from a spin, but, like all general statements, that is open to contradiction. A nose-high side-slip may be fatal, but generally the pilot pulls himself out of it. There may have been men killed in landing accidents, but one seldom hears of them. Men have been killed trying to loop off the ground, and Vernon Castle was killed doing an Immelmann turn at fifty feet to avoid ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... it were moral, still more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness. His intellect spurned the subtleties by which men attempt to blind themselves to this open contradiction. The Sabaean, or Manichaean theory of a Good and an Evil Principle, struggling against each other for the government of the universe, he would not have equally condemned; and I have heard him express surprise, that no one ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... Phillips argued that the time was ripe for striking the word "white" out of the New York constitution, at its coming convention, but not for striking out "male." Mr. Tilton supported him, in direct contradiction to all he had so warmly advocated only a few weeks before, and said what the women should do was to canvass the State with speeches and petitions for the enfranchisement of the negro, leaving that of the women to come afterward, presumably ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... but that they might avail themselves of every engine in their favor, they united fraud to force, and set up an idol which they called Divine Right, and which, in imitation of the Pope, who affects to be spiritual and temporal, and in contradiction to the Founder of the Christian religion, twisted itself afterwards into an idol of another shape, called Church and State. The key of St. Peter and the key of the Treasury became quartered on one another, and the wondering ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Point, making it necessary to transmit messages a part of the way by boat. It took from twenty-four to thirty-six hours to get dispatches through and return answers would be received showing a different state of facts from those on which they were based, causing confusion and apparent contradiction of orders that must have considerably embarrassed those who had to execute them, and rendered operations against the enemy less effective than they otherwise would have been. To remedy this evil, it was evident to my mind that some person should have the supreme command of all the forces ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... superlinita lucida fit et decora, ac omnino durabilis."—"Every picture smeared over with this gluten becomes lucid and beautiful, and altogether durable." It might be thought almost impossible to mistranslate this. But the varnishing over, or smearing over, being a direct contradiction to the mixing with the pigments, with the view of rendering it according to the writer's prejudice, the passage is thus translated—"Pictures prepared with this varnish are brilliant, and remain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... felt towards the Court began to abate as soon as the Court was manifestly unable to offer any resistance. The panic which Godfrey's death had excited gradually subsided. Every day brought to light some new falsehood or contradiction in the stories of Oates and Bedloe. The people were glutted with the blood of Papists, as they had, twenty years before, been glutted with the blood of regicides. When the first sufferers in the plot were brought to the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... savage, who fears to send the praying murderer to heaven. There is no solution of these anomalies: the very state of Shakspere's consciousness, working in his subjective way on the old material, made inevitable a moral anachronism and contradiction, analogous in its kind to the narrative anachronisms of his historical plays. But none the less, this tragedy, the first of the great group which above all his other work make him immortal, remains perpetually ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... might appear to resemble it, but which would, in fact, be essentially different; I mean where the exercise of a concurrent jurisdiction might be productive of occasional interferences in the POLICY of any branch of administration, but would not imply any direct contradiction or repugnancy in point of constitutional authority. These three cases of exclusive jurisdiction in the federal government may be exemplified by the following instances: The last clause but one in the eighth section of the first article provides ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... really cannot justify it to my conscience to carry about my person any such loose and reckless document as a blank check. There's a total disregard of the first claims of prudence and economy implied in this small slip of paper which is nothing less than a flat contradiction of the principles that have governed my whole life. I can't submit to flat ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... vehicle for industriously circulating said maniac calumny. Why did not this base Plebeian, anterior to his giving publicity to the tartaric nausea that rankled at his gloomy heart, forward the corroding philippic, and bid defiance to my contradiction? No, no; he knew full well that with his scanty stock of English ammunition scattered over the sterile floor of his literary magazine, he could not have the effrontery, impudence, or presumption to enter the list of philosophical and scientific disputation with one who has traversed ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... in Provence and he died in Paris; he began as a poet and he ended as a veritist; and in each case there was logical evolution and not contradiction. The Parisian did not cease to be a Provencal; and the novelist was a lyrist still. Poet though he was, he had an intense liking for the actual, the visible, the tangible. He so hungered after truth that he was ready ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... every affliction should be attributed to the anger of some offended god, and restoration to health most certainly procured by conciliating his power. So far, then, as such interests were concerned, any contradiction of those doctrines, any substitution of the material for the supernatural, must needs have met with reprehension. Yet such opposition seems in no respect to have weighed with this great physician, who developed his theory and pursued his practice without giving himself any concern ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... at London in 1608. Among Smith's other books, the most important is perhaps his General History of Virginia (London, 1624), a compilation of various narratives by different hands, but passing under his name. Smith was a man of a restless and daring spirit, full of resource, impatient of contradiction, and of a somewhat vainglorious nature, with an appetite for the marvelous and a disposition to draw the long bow. He had seen service in many parts of the world, and his wonderful adventures lost nothing in the telling. It was alleged against him that the evidence of his prowess ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... had I room to explain it, an immense furtherance. [Preuss, iii. 75; OEuvres de Frederic, vi. 84.] Friedrich, many tell us, was as great in Peace as in War: and truly, in the economic and material provinces, my own impression, gathered painfully in darkness, and contradiction of the Dismal-Science Doctors, is much to that effect. A first-rate Husbandman (as his Father had been); who not only defended his Nation, but made it rich beyond what seemed possible; and diligently sowed annuals into it, and perennials which ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... that as a society we cannot be too careful how we minimise the fact itself. To us, as a society, it is the fact itself that matters, and not what Mrs. Coombe said about it. That, to a certain extent, may be her own affair. But I hold, and I say it without fear of successful contradiction, that no member of a community can disregard the Sabbath in a public way without affecting the community at large. That is why I feel justified in criticising Mrs. Coombe's behaviour. And I hope," here she raised a piercing eye and let it range triumphantly over ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... to the conclusion that she was in love with my uncle; and perhaps the sense that he was indifferent to her save after a brotherly fashion, combined with the fear of betraying herself and the consciousness of her unattractive appearance, to produce the contradiction between her looks ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... labor—benevolence—is so out of their line of thought, that many look upon us as having some ulterior object in view. But He who died for us, and whom we ought to copy, did more for us than we can do for any one else. He endured the contradiction of sinners. May we have grace to follow ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... dowager in a tone, admitting of no contradiction; "the women who live alone from choice are cold and selfish; or have hurts to hide and are heart-sick of a world in which their illusions have been destroyed; or else they have never known companionship, and so never feel the lack of it. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... accentuated. Her face, with its tightly, almost rigidly closed lips, would have been quite in keeping with the impression of conscious calm which her entire presence suggested, had it not been that when she raised her eyes a strange contradiction to this idea was afforded. They were large gray eyes, unusually bright and rather startling in effect, for they seemed the only live thing about her. Gleaming from her still, set face, there was something almost ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... singular contradiction of terms, brother Ned gave Tim Linkinwater a slap on the back, which made him look, for the moment, almost as apoplectic as the butler: and tossed off the contents of his glass in ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the light and power of Christ is indispensably necessary for all true ministry, and that this holy influence is not at our command, or to be procured by study, but is the free gift of God to chosen and devoted servants. Hence arises our testimony against preaching for hire, in contradiction to Christ's positive command, 'Freely ye have received, freely give;' and hence our conscientious refusal to support such ministry ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... perverse opening of arenas for the humiliation and disgrace of British gentlemen, nay, even of those titled members of the "black sheep" family—bankrupt peers! As we have seen, however, ample contradiction and refutation have been considerately furnished by the same objector in this same volume, as in his praises of the governor ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... ploughshare breaks the reluctant clod. Hold not Thy hand till the work be fully accomplished, and the earth be ready for the sowing which makes for harvest. Give me back the beloved of my youth, the beloved of my life, if only for an hour. Teach me to submit. Show me, beyond all dread of contradiction that vows, truly made, hold good even in that mysterious world beyond the grave. Show me that though the body—dear home and vehicle of love—may die, yet love in its essence remains everlastingly ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the greatest and most useful Minister that ever filled the same situations in England, the acts and registers of the Admiralty proving this beyond contradiction. The principal rules and establishments in present use in these offices are well known to have been of his introducing, and most of the officers serving therein since the Restoration, of his bringing- up. He was a most studious promoter and strenuous ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... himself near the new-found shrine, and mechanically took up a book, like one who watches by a sick-bed. But his eyes gathered no thoughts from the page before him. His intellect had been stunned by the bold contradiction, to its face, of all its experience, and now lay passive, without assertion, or speculation, or even conscious astonishment; while his imagination sent one wild dream of blessedness after another coursing through his soul. How long he sat he knew not; but at length ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... sitting-room for the first time, there is one feature in the arrangement of the furniture that impresses itself upon him at once, and it may be stated without fear of serious contradiction that this same peculiar feature in its arrangement will continue to face him, as he enters different homes, about as certainly as he ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... imagine, that early sufferings, that a number of small inconveniences, habitual severity of reproof, and frequent contradiction and disappointment, inure children to pain, and consequently improve their temper. Early sufferings, which are necessary and inevitable, may improve children in fortitude; but the contradictions and disappointments, which arise ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... his coffee vigorously and puffed at his cigar until it glowed red again. When he resumed he spoke in brief decisive sentences as though forbidding question or contradiction until he ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... our canes and discussing philosophy. Rare jargon we made of it; talking of cosmothetie idealism or hypothetical dualism, of noetic and dianoetic principles, of hylozoism and hypostasis, and demonstrating the most undemonstrable propositions by appeals to the law of contradiction or of excluded middle. I fancied then that I was growing very learned—wondered whether Beulah here would be able to keep up with me, and really thought I understood what ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... sad, that in this republic of redskins, and so-called savages, should exist the same political contradiction as among some other republican communities, having the name of civilised. For although themselves individually free, the Tovas Indians do not believe in the doctrine that all men should be so; or, at all events, they do not act up to it. Instead, their practice is the very opposite, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... there is a chivalric deference to women far exceeding that usually paid to the sex at the North, and her appearance, temperament, and position evoked that element to the utmost. He knows little of human nature who cannot guess the result. Yet, by a common contradiction, the one among her many suitors who won such love as she could give was a Northern man as proud as herself. He stood alone in his manner of approach, made himself the object of her thoughts by piquing her pride, and met her varying moods by a quiet, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... of our experimental knowledge. But as soon as we presume to reason of infinite substance, of spiritual generation; as often as we deduce any positive conclusions from a negative idea, we are involved in darkness, perplexity, and inevitable contradiction. As these difficulties arise from the nature of the subject, they oppress, with the same insuperable weight, the philosophic and the theological disputant; but we may observe two essential and peculiar circumstances, which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Dartmouth College, to recite badly; to make a poor recitation. From the substantive bull, a blunder or contradiction, or from the use of the word as a ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... The contradiction started to give him a headache. He hurried from the scanning room, overtaxed eyes blinking at the ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... palsied beldame Angela—these and a thousand quaintnesses of phrase moved him to a gush of glorious mirth. It was not that he did not appreciate the poet, but the unearthly strangeness of it all, the delicate contradiction of laws and behaviours known to freshmen, tickled his keen wits and emotions until they brimmed into puzzled laughter. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... practically all Northerners were—his weakening two years later could not point to an unwillingness to do injustice, but only to the operation of fear or fatigue as deterrents from action believed to be just. Moreover, the ordinary "Copperhead" position was so plainly in contradiction of known facts that it must be pronounced either imbecile or dishonest. If these men had urged the acceptance of disunion as an accomplished fact, a case might be made out for them. But they generally professed the strongest desire to restore the Union, ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... cannel-coal, and a salad of gun-cotton, with a mayonnaise dressing of alcohol and a pinch of powder, topped off with a demi-tasse of benzine and a box of matches to keep the fires of his spirit going, is one of the most moving things I have ever read, and yet it may be said without fear of contradiction that until this guide-book was prepared very few of the Stygian tourists have imagined that there was such a sight to be seen. I have gone carefully over Dante, Virgil, and the works of Andrew Lang, and have found no reference whatsoever in the pages of any of these talented persons to this marvellous ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... mood which was not amiable. And Muller knew also the cause of the mood. It was his own last remark, the words he addressed to Bormann. Muller himself recognised the fact that this remark was out of place, that it was almost an impertinence, because it was in direct contradiction to a statement made a few moments before by his superior officer. Also he realised that his remark had been quite unnecessary, because it was a matter of indifference to the young man, who was only obeying his employer's orders in reporting what he had seen, whether his report ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... in England to confute this report; and by accounts lately received, it appeared that no such public collection had ever been made; at Mr. Johnson's request, therefore, the governor published a contradiction of the above report in the general orders of the settlement. The convicts had hitherto imagined that they had a right to the articles which had from time to time been distributed among them; but Mr. Johnson now thought it necessary that they ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... ruler. And it is seriously true to say of a woman, in education and domesticity, that the freedom of the autocrat appears to be necessary to her. She is never responsible until she is irresponsible. In case this sounds like an idle contradiction, I confidently appeal to the cold facts of history. Almost every despotic or oligarchic state has admitted women to its privileges. Scarcely one democratic state has ever admitted them to its rights The reason is very simple: that something female is endangered much ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... naturally impatient, and piqued a little at the princess's contradiction, as soon as he saw Mesrour, "Vile slave," said he, "is this a time to laugh? Why do not you tell me which is dead, the husband or ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... then no other master from whom he received instructions than Jesus Christ; nevertheless, an author quoted by Wading, assures us that he sometimes consulted the Bishop of Assisi. We may here say, in order that there may be no seeming contradiction between the two, that he received instructions from Jesus Christ only because he was inspired by Him, but that he communicated with the bishop on the points on which he had been inspired; and we ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... of no use to oppose her. For my part, I think her papa has acted wisely in permitting the engagement. Contradiction would embellish her hero; while, left to him, she will soon find him out. I do not concern myself, for Miss Martindale can get over a little ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rising of 1381, and the heresy of Wyclif, that later on will give birth to the Cavaliers and Puritans, is contained in essence in Langland's work; we divine, we foresee her. Chaucer's book is, undoubtedly, not in contradiction to that England, but it screens and allows her to be forgotten. In their anger Chaucer's people exchange blows on the highway; Langland's crowds in their anger sack the palace of the Savoy, and take the Tower ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... people who were at the livery-stable were too seductive, I suppose—he denies he ever did the horse injustice—would rather have wanted his own dinner, he says. In this I believe him, as Roan Robin's ribs and coat show no marks of contradiction. However, as he will meet with no saints in the inns we frequent, and as oats are sometimes as speedily converted into ale as John Barleycorn himself, I shall keep a look-out after Master Sam. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... impossible to see it; and what Joseph T. Maston had seen, or thought he saw, could not have been the projectile of the Columbiad. Second, errors of theory on the fate in store for the said projectile; for in making it a satellite of the moon, it was putting it in direct contradiction of all mechanical laws. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... this singular contradiction between the actions of men alike animated by a strong and disinterested desire to promote the welfare of their ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... forthcoming to people whom he was not likely to see again. But he was particularly pleased to find himself next to the ship's doctor, Dr. Heinrich Stahl, for the man both attracted and antagonized him, and they had crossed swords pleasantly on more voyages than one. There was a fundamental contradiction in his character due—O'Malley divined—to the fact that his experiences did not tally as he wished them to do with his beliefs, or vice versa. Affecting to believe in nothing, he occasionally dropped remarks ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... society into which she was born had not smiled on propositions of marriage from a sickly man to a girl less than half his own age—on modes of education which make a woman's knowledge another name for motley ignorance—on rules of conduct which are in flat contradiction with its own loudly asserted beliefs. While this is the social air in which mortals begin to breathe, there will be collisions such as those in Dorothea's life, where great feelings take the aspect of error, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... write to the minister of marine, protesting against it and demanding a new trial. The minister, acknowledging his protest, replied in the name of the king. After commenting upon the pamphlets that had been so widely issued, and the entire contradiction of their statements by the testimony before the Court, he concluded with ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... servants to the Romans, nor to any other than to God himself, who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind, the time is now come that obliges us to make that resolution true in practice. And let us not at this time bring a reproach upon ourselves for self-contradiction, while we formerly would not undergo slavery, though it were then without danger, but must now, together with slavery, choose such punishments also as are intolerable; I mean this, upon the supposition ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... manuscript play, but denied that he had mentioned Earl Sheerwit's name. When I informed him of the circumstances of the affair, he said, he had no engagement with any author; that he would read my tragedy forthwith; and did not believe he should venture to reject it in contradiction to his lordship's opinion, for which he had the utmost veneration, but put it into rehearsal without loss of time. I was so much intoxicated with this encouragement, that I overlooked the mysterious conduct of Mr. Marmozet, and attended the manager at the time appointed, when, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... first place, it purports to be signed and sealed by Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, (though the Earl at that time was in Northumberland,) Henry Percy, his first-born son, and Thomas Earl of Worcester, styling themselves Procurators and Protectors of the kingdom. Should this apparent contradiction be thought to be reconciled with the truth by what Hardyng mentions, that the document was made by good advice (p. 161) of the Archbishop of York, and divers other holy men and lords; it must be answered that it could not have been drawn up for the purpose of being used whenever an opportunity ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... given the Reader, of this seeming contradiction, to offer that to the World which I dislike myself: and, in all things, I have no greater an ambition than to be believed [to be] a Person, that would rather be unkind to ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... felt he was the friend I wanted. We soon became intimate. Our tastes were not the same, and we constantly disputed. Both opinionated, we never could agree about anything. Nevertheless we could not separate; and, notwithstanding our reciprocal and incessant contradiction, we neither of us wished the other to be ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... satisfied either him or the students. For himself he was clear that the fault lay in the system, which could lead only to inertia. Such little knowledge of himself as he possessed warranted him in affirming that his mind required conflict, competition, contradiction even more than that of the student. He too wanted a rank-list to set his name upon. His reform of the system would have begun in the lecture-room at his own desk. He would have seated a rival assistant professor opposite him, whose business should be strictly limited to expressing ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... term of the ultimatum would render nugatory the proposals made by the Austro-Hungarian Government to the powers, and would be in contradiction to the very bases of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... government of the United States to the arming of French vessels must be an attempt on the rights of man, upon which repose the independence and laws of the United States; a violation of the ties which unite France and America; and even a manifest contradiction of the system of neutrality of the president; for, in fact, if our merchant-vessels or others are not allowed to arm themselves, when the French alone are resisting the league of all the tyrants against the liberty of the people, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Malone said. "A static explosion is a contradiction in terms. If something is static, it doesn't move— whoever heard ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... lilies. Thus saith also St. Peter, I. Peter iv, "Forasmuch as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind." [1 Pet. 4:1] And St. Paul, Hebrews xii, "Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... he spoke with great pride. The young Onondaga did not believe his religion resembled the white man's but that the white man's resembled his. Robert respected him though, and knowing the reasons for his pride, said nothing in contradiction. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... you will see, was in open contradiction of my former statements that I had seen an unknown party, thus attired, driving away through the upper gateway just as I entered by the lower. But it was a contradiction which while noted by Mr. Moffat, failed to injure me with the jury, and much less with ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... the flat contradiction given to Buckhurst's proceedings in the matter of peace, that statement could scarcely deceive any one who had seen her Majesty's letters and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... suggestions from Blake, cross-questioned the witness searchingly, ever more searchingly, pursued him in and out, in and out, till at length, snap!—Katherine's heart stood still, and the crowd leaned forward breathless—snap, and he had caught the engineer in a contradiction! ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... good deal nettled at the minister's attitude, for, instead of seconding his propositions, Dr. Morrison had sat with a faraway, indifferent look, as if the pending discussion was entirely out of his range of interest. John could have borne contradiction better. An argument would have gratified him. But to have the speech and statistics which he had so carefully prepared fall on the minister's ear without provoking any response was a great trial ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... one and many originated in the restless dialectic of Zeno, who sought to prove the absolute existence of the one by showing the contradictions that are involved in admitting the existence of the many (compare Parm.). Zeno illustrated the contradiction by well-known examples taken from outward objects. But Socrates seems to intimate that the time had arrived for discarding these hackneyed illustrations; such difficulties had long been solved by common sense ('solvitur ambulando'); the fact of the co-existence of opposites ...
— Philebus • Plato
... it, set it down to be a trick of rumour such as we are well used to in the islands. But others were not so sure. Others considered that the rumour (even if unfounded) was of an ill example, might bear deplorable fruit, and, from all points of view of morality and policy, required a public contradiction. Eleven of these last entered accordingly into the annexed correspondence with the President. It will be seen in the crevice of what quibble that gentleman sought refuge and sits inexpugnable. In a question affecting his humanity, his honour, and the wellbeing of the kingdom which he serves, he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mr Ponsonby, stopping, and turning to his nephew, after a rapid walk up and down the room with his hands behind him under his coat, so as to allow the tails to drop their perpendicular about three inches clear of his body, 'I may say, without contradiction, be the finest property in the country—five ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... usual progress of pretty women, particularly coquettish women; she passed from caprice to contradiction;—the gallant had undergone the caprice, the courtier must bend beneath the contradictory humor. Buckingham bowed, but ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and that it would be in vain to urge any thing in contradiction to an inclination she found she was resolved to indulge; but she secretly trembled for the consequence, the count having said many amorous things to herself before he pretended any passion for Melanthe; and tho' he had of late desisted on finding ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... were thrown in mainly for the edification of the Court, but Queen Selina had almost brought herself to believe them, and, in any case, none of her own family was at hand just then, so she was safe from contradiction. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... "Insolent beggar! contradiction always confirms my half-formed resolutions. Years ago I swore to possess that woman, and I will do it, if it be only to keep my oath and humble her insolence. She is very handsome still; she ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... continuing and carrying out their thought. Otherwise, with the purest moral intentions, they will still be drawn down again by their understanding, and their whole being will remain a continued and insoluble contradiction. For such, that philosophy, which I now first entirely understand, is the power by which Psyche first strips off her chrysalis, unfolds the wings on which she then hovers above herself, and casts one glance on the slough she has dropped, thenceforth ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... toward emancipation. And they think themselves able to give unanswerable reasons for the bitterness with which they note everything which is expressed by the word 'abolitionism.' They assume it for a fact, which admits no contradiction, that the natural increase of the negro race in this country is more rapid than that of the white man. So far as my observation extends, the great majority of the people believe this with an undoubting faith. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and theistic evolution, as the latter is subject to the fundamental objections urged against evolution in general, and is, like atheistic evolution, without a single fact to support it and in direct contradiction of all that is known of the laws in operation now, and as far back as knowledge penetrates. Moreover, so-called "theistic" evolution is universally approved by infidels and skeptics and is used by them as a favorite means of assault on ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... closing his eyes and giving his head a most vehement toss. The word being, according to its Genoese emphasis, a confirmation, a contradiction, an assertion, a denial, a taunt, a compliment, a joke, and fifty other things, became in the present instance, with a significance beyond all power of written expression, our ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... very pertinent question (seeing the force of this), whether she had transactions with the prisoner after this alleged stealing. You will remember for yourselves, gentlemen, and I point to it without fear of contradiction, that at first she stated the ear-rings were taken on the 19th of October, but, seeing, with a woman's keen perception, the fatal error she had made in stating that admission, seeing that you, as common-sense men, would have ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... our own personal property. There is something inconsistent, isn't there, in educating a girl in high thinking and fine ideals, if she is willing to live in a room that for uncleanliness many a woman in some crowded quarter of a city would consider a disgrace? Such contradiction in mind and surrounding is out of harmony with all one's ideal ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... Massa Nadgel," said the negro, the edge of whose flat contradiction was taken off by the extreme ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... told you, Meno, just now that you were a rogue, and now you ask whether I can teach you, when I am saying that there is no teaching, but only recollection; and thus you imagine that you will involve me in a contradiction. ...
— Meno • Plato
... and joys of the world, so that I may hear and have altogether the message of salvation sent by Christ." You must hold fast to it and know that it alone gives eternal peace and joy; that it must receive your faith in spite of all apparent contradiction; that you must not be governed by your reason or your feelings, but must regard that as divine, unchangeable and eternal truth which God has spoken and commands to be proclaimed. Such is Paul's exhortation addressed primarily to the Jews to accept this message ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... more barbarous or unnatural than to ask a woman to sacrifice the man she loves to the man she does not love? Religious beliefs may be in contradiction with one another, but they all agree upon the same ethics, that marriage is based upon love. What then is matrimony? It is either something inviolable and essentially holy when resting upon such a basis, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... for me to give a formal contradiction to the silly fiction, which is assiduously circulated by the fanatics who not only ought to know, but do know, that their assertions are untrue, that I have advocated the introduction of that experimental discipline which is absolutely ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the face of the man who was the possessor of twenty million dollars. He was a tall, spare man, with a fringe of reddish-brown hair encircling a bald spot. His blue eyes, fixed just now in a steady gaze upon a row of ponderous law books across the room, were friendly and benevolent in direct contradiction to the bulldog, never-let-go fighting qualities of the square jaw below ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... any broad human basis is to destroy the caste spirit, and this the club has done for women more than any other influence that as yet has come into existence. A club that is narrowed to a clique, a class, or a single object, is a contradiction in terms. It may be a society, or a congregation of societies, but it is not a club. The essence of a club is its many-sided character, its freedom in gathering together and expressing all shades of difference, its ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... her and grinned. She was cute as a pixie, and there were no two ways about that. He wondered for a moment what kind of a wife she'd make. And then shuddered inwardly. Life would be one big contradiction of anything he'd managed to get out ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... or took slaves from them. Slaves were taken from Portuguese alone. I never hunted the Ajawa, or took the part of Manganja against Ajawa. In this I believe every member of the Mission will support my assertion." Livingstone declined to write a contradiction to the public prints, because he knew the harm that would be done by a charge against a clergyman. In this he showed the same magnanimity and high Christian self-denial which he had shown when he left Mabotsa. It was only when the Portuguese claimed the benefit of Rowley's testimony ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... but they were forbidden to work for or among the peasants. The adventure was not ended when this story was told. Whether the students were satisfied with the permission to work I do not know. Probably not; their fellow-disciple would not have scorned them as the peasants did, and contradiction, that spice of life to enthusiastic worshipers of impracticable ideas, would have been lacking. In my opinion, the authorities committed an error in judgment. They should have shown more faith in the peasants, the toil, and the girls' unhardened frames. All three elements combined ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... internal evidence in this essay which points so infallibly to Nietzsche's real but still subconscious opinion of his hero, may even be content to regard his later attitude as the result of a complete volte-face, and at any rate a flat contradiction of the one revealed in this paper. Let us, however, examine the internal evidence we speak of, and let us also discuss the purpose and spirit of ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... an astonishing state of things then appears! Self-development involves a kind of contradiction in terms. How can I build if at present there is no I? Why should I build if at present there is an I? Whichever alternative we take, we fall into what looks like absurdity. Yet on that absurdity personal life is based. ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... the statement that Germany has a highly trained army she has not used for nearly half a century and that her people are so obsessed with admiration for it that they longed to test it on their neighbours, is to accept as an explanation a stultifying contradiction. It is of course much easier to put the blame on the Kaiser. This line of thought is highly popular: it accords, too, with a fine ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... numerous, and on various subjects. His first composition, addressed to Novacus, is on Anger, and continued through three books. After giving a lively description of this passion, the author discusses a variety of questions concerning it: he argues strongly against its utility, in contradiction to the peripatetics, and recommends its restraint, by many just and excellent considerations. This treatise may be regarded, in its general outlines, as a philosophical amplification of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... of exile, is called Etzel, it is because many German heroes had really taken refuge in the camp of Attila. That Attila died two years before Theodoric of Verona was born, is no difficulty to a popular poet, nor even the still more glaring contradiction between the daring and ferocious character of the real Attila and the cowardice of his namesake Etzel, as represented in the poem of the Nibelunge. Thus ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... traditions of centuries namely, to its bumptiousness, in a word. But chiefly, I think, the reason is to be found in its lack of anything properly to be called a philosophy. This is surely a fatal flaw in any system, because it involves a contradiction in terms; and to say that to have no philosophy is the philosophy of the impressionists, is merely a word-juggling bit of question-begging. A theory of technic is not a philosophy, however systematic it may be. It is a mechanical, not an intellectual, point of view. ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... reverence for authority: "I say ... that he who denies there are such busy Spirits and such poor passive Creatures upon whom they work, which commonly are call'd Witches ... shews that he himself hath a Spirit of Contradiction in him."[58] There are, he says, laws against witches, laws by Parliament and laws in the ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... toward dispelling the feeling of loneliness that might overcome her in the midst of people with whom she could not converse. But in reality he remained as a spy, to cross-examine in a covert way. Shotaye was wary, and not one contradiction, not one misstatement, could he detect during their talk. Then he went where the council had gathered, reporting that according to his conviction the woman was not only sincere, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... understand this, especially when compared with what follows. "If, on the contrary, they are soluble, one part is absorbed and another is expelled, either by urine or by the anus; such are sugar, gum, &c." This seems to us like a contradiction. ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... morning is consumed in debating whether or not he will buy a certain Indian walking-stick: "Torn by avarice and the ambition of having it, I go away without deciding whether I will buy it or not, yet I know full well that before two days are out I shall have bought it. Seeking to understand this contradiction, I discover a thousand ridiculous dirtinesses in my character (mille ridicole porcherie)." Another day he notes down, after describing the mean envy with which he has listened to the praises of another member of his little club of dilettante authors: ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... used against sexual precocity, he did not tell them. He admonished them not to go to dances, to shun theatres and gaming-houses, and above all things, to avoid women; that is to say to act in exact contradiction to their inclinations. That this vice contradicts and utterly confounds he pronouncement of the community that a man is not mature until he is twenty-one, was passed over in silence. Whether it could be prevented by early marriages ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... she was in England, and of her circumstances in England, which were bad enough, the daughter-in-law began to be very much surprised and uneasy; and, in short, examining further into things, it appeared past all contradiction that the old gentlewoman was her own mother, and that consequently that son was his wife's own brother, which struck the whole family with horror, and put them into such confusion that it had almost ruined them all. The young woman would not live with ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... errors, I should be no more ashamed, than of my change of body, natural to increase of age; but in that first edition, there was inserted (without my consent!) a Sonnet to Lord Stanhope, in direct contradiction, equally, to my then, as to my present principles. A Sonnet written by me in ridicule and mockery of the bloated style of French Jacobinical declamation, and inserted by Biggs, (the fool of a printer,) in order forsooth, that he might send the book, and a letter to Earl Stanhope; who, to prove ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... differed; and this difference led to an acrimonious contest, quite disgraceful to Luther, and the greatest blot on his character, inasmuch as it developed, to an extraordinary degree, both obstinacy and dogmatism, and showed that he could not bear contradiction or opposition. The quarrel arose from a difference of views respecting the Lord's supper, Luther maintaining not exactly the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, but something approximating to it—even the omnipresence of Christ's body in the sacred elements. He ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... tragedy of Antigonus, so long that the action of his lungs ceased—an event not at all probable. Another (Lucian) says he was choked by a grape-stone. These various rumours destroying each other, not only by their contradiction but by their improbability, leaves the cause of his death in that uncertainty in which it might hitherto, and may forever remain, without any injury to the subject. Men of ninety-five are likely enough to go off suddenly, without violent joy—violent exertion, or even grape-stones. The ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... altogether by the calamity, she overcame her feelings; but it is comic to see her struggling between her indignation at your mother's irresponsible talk and her consciousness that it is necessary to abstain from exciting her by contradiction." ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... proposed that Prexaspes should address them from a neighboring tower. Prexaspes was a man of high rank and of great influence, and the magi thought that his public espousal of their cause, and his open and decided contradiction of the rumor that he had killed Cambyses's brother, would fully convince the Persians that it was really the rightful monarch that had taken possession ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... are ruined? No. We will suppose the business-house is old and reputable: the banks are obliging and creditors prudently liberal, and by and by the firm resumes its old career. As for the colonel, the reader sees that to ruin him would be an absolute contradiction of nature. His friends or relations give him assistance, or he sells his diamonds, and soon you meet him at the St. Charles, as blooming, sanguine and splendiferous as ever. No, he cannot be ruined, but his is not an infrequent episode in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... to produce such accusations with such violence before such a judge, to bring forward frivolous and self-contradictory accusations, and then in the same breath to blame me on both charges at once? Is it not a sheer contradiction to object to my wallet and staff on the ground of austerity, to my poems and mirror on the ground of undue levity; to accuse me of parsimony for having only one slave, and of extravagance in having three; to denounce me for ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... however, that my decided contradiction of the paragraph will put a stop to further surmise and ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... family who owned the farm where she was born, and she had visited every sunny knoll and shady field corner; but when she said that it might be for the last time, I detected in her tone something expectant of the contradiction which Mrs. Todd ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... The same duality and contradiction were proclaimed in the hands—strong, tenacious, virile hands; small, fine, delicate hands; hands with the powerful and purposeful thumb of the West; hands with the supple artistic fingers and delicate finger-nails ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... seeing that her cousin was in a graver mood this evening, 'do not you think that perhaps if you could be a little more companionable to Kate, and not say things so evidently for the sake of contradiction, you might ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and irritate Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between men's opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him an ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... disturbed him somewhat. There seemed to be much truth in it, but also some things which did not agree with what he had been taught to be true. In this he realized his lack of knowledge. More knowledge must clear up any seeming contradiction, he reasoned. Ingersol was more readable, snappy, witty, hitting the Bible in a fearless way. Dorian had no doubt that all of Ingersol's points could be answered, as he himself could refute many ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... the dowager in a tone, admitting of no contradiction; "the women who live alone from choice are cold and selfish; or have hurts to hide and are heart-sick of a world in which their illusions have been destroyed; or else they have never known companionship, and so ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... which has given such an important advantage to their adversaries. Mr. Powell's explanation was extremely unsatisfactory, and in his examination yesterday they elicited from him what is tantamount to a contradiction of what he had said the day before. It is not possible to doubt what is the real state of the case. Rastelli is an active, useful agent, and they had occasion for his services; consequently they sent him off, and trusted that he would be back here before he could possibly ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... religious question simply by ignoring it. Her morality as inculcated in every school in the country, is a purely secular morality. I know that there are some persons who will deem secular morality a contradiction in terms. Indeed there are many eminent Japanese who do not approve of the present system. Count Okuma, for example, one of the ablest men in the country, bewails the lack of a moral standard. The upper classes have, he remarks, Chinese philosophy, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... be possible to reduce the art of detecting them to definite rules. Only one general principle can be laid down, and that is, that when the literal sense is absurd, incoherent, or obscure, or in contradiction with the ideas of the author or the facts known to him, then we ought to ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... requested to note a seeming contradiction in the two views which have been given of Graham Bretton—the public and private —the out-door and the in-door view. In the first, the public, he is shown oblivious of self; as modest in the display of his energies, as earnest in their exercise. In the second, the fireside picture, there ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... position, and that leader was a great believer in the adage that "if Brag is a good dog, Holdfast is a better." He was well aware of his numerical inferiority, and in consequence refused to listen to the frenzied appeals of the excited Moslems to be led against the Christian dogs. It may seem a contradiction in terms to speak of the moral courage of a pirate; but if ever that quality were displayed to its fullest extent it was exhibited by Barbarossa in the Prevesa campaign. In his intellectual outlook on all that ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... accurate balance of statements in remote parts of the work; and we have sometimes to correct and modify opinions, formed from one chapter by those of another. Yet, on the other hand, it is astonishing how rarely we detect contradiction; the mind of the author has already harmonized the whole result to truth and probability; the general impression is almost invariably the same. The quotations of Gibbon have likewise been called in question;—I have, in general, been ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... observations and discoveries which compel me, greatly to my regret, to give a direct contradiction to the gallant Admiral's version of what took place in the North Sea on the night of ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... sense was now nearing its zenith. The 'Dramatic Lyrics' were published in 1842, possibly about the time that Dickens was returning from his triumphant American tour. These showed, Chesterton thinks, the two qualities most often denied to Browning, passion and beauty. They are the contradiction to critics, other than ours, who regard Browning as wholly a philosophic poet, which is to say a poet who wrote poetry not for its own sake but for purely utilitarian purpose; not that poetry of the emotions is not useful—it ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... his inaccuracy, his disposition to draw inferences from facts which they directly contradict, and to rely on evidence which has nothing to do with the case in hand. He argues at great length upon the assumption, that Burr's correspondence with women was unfit for publication, and then, in contradiction to Burr's own positive declaration, asserts that there were "no letters necessarily criminating ladies." To prove this, he publishes two letters, one of which is an apology, written by Burr in his seventy-fourth year, for having addressed a young woman in an improper ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... for thee, O Feshnavat, to speed to the presence of the King in his majesty, and thou wilt find means of coming to him by a disguise. Once in the Hall of Council, challenge the tongue of contradiction to affirm Shagpat other than a bald-pate bewigged. This ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the evening of the 3d of June that I was slowly wending my way back towards my hotel. Latterly I had refused all invitations to dine at the mess. And by a strange spirit of contradiction, while I avoided society, could yet not tear myself away from the spot where every remembrance of my past life was daily embittered by the scenes around me. But so it was; the movement of the troops, their reviews, their arrivals, and departures, possessed ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Robin, the outlaw ennobled (by a contradiction in terms) as the Earl of Huntingdon, Robert Fitzooth, etc., and the ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... fixed it at 122,399 English yards. The attention of the world thus once awakened, Huygens and Cassini applied themselves to ascertain the figure of the earth. The first experiments of the French savans were in contradiction to Newton's theory of the flattening of the poles; but the controversy was the means of exciting new interest. The eyes of the scientific world were turned more intently on the subject. New experiments were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... English-French materialism of the preceding century. This was embarrassing for followers of Hegel, who had been taught to regard the material as the mere expression of the Idea. Feuerbach relieved them from the contradiction. He grasped the question boldly and threw the Hegelian abstraction completely to one side. His book, "Wesen des Christenthums," in which his ideas were set forth, became immediately popular, and an English translation, which was widely read, was made of it by George Eliot under the title ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... call. I cannot unite, therefore, in the resolutions declaring the proceedings of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society 'arbitrary and despotic;' or the act of the London Conference, excluding the female delegates of the American Society appointed in contradiction to the terms of the invitation, as 'highly disrespectful to the delegates, and to us, their constituents, tyrannical in its nature, mischievous in its tendencies, and unworthy of men claiming ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... exaggeration of whatever they adopted. This fine fellow, with ardent but rather heavy voice and look, with his regular features as if marked with a stamp imposed, was more pronounced in his convictions than was needful, and violent in contradiction. According to him, all that was necessary was a crusade made by the democracies to deliver the nations and extinguish war. Four years of the philanthropic slaughterhouse had not convinced him. He was one of those who will never accept the flat contradiction of facts. He had a twofold pride, the ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... rest of the world. Always plunged in reveries, realities displeased him. As a child, he could never touch a sharp instrument without injuring himself with it; as a man, he never found himself face to face with a being different from himself without being wounded by the living contradiction.... ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at large he was a recluse. His abrupt manner, his Johnsonian utterances, would have made him a disconcerting element in Victorian tea-parties. When provoked by foolish utterances, he was, no less than Johnson, downright in contradiction. There was nothing that he disliked so much as being lionized; and there was much to annoy him when he stepped outside his own home and circle. His last public speech was made on the abuses of public advertisement; and in the last year of his life we hear him growling in Ruskinian ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... appear to my poor thoughts to be properly brought forth as a preliminary to justify a resolution of persevering in the very same kind of conduct, towards the very same sort of person, and on the very same principles. We state our experience, and then we come to the manly resolution of acting in contradiction to it. All that has passed at Paris, to the moment of our being shamefully hissed off that stage, has been nothing but a more solemn representation on the theatre of the nation of what had been before in rehearsal at Basle. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... not from himself, but from another quarter. He was ill while I was at Manchester and Brookroyd. He uttered no complaint to me, dropped no hint on the subject. Alas! he was hoping he had got the better of it, and I know how this contradiction of his hopes will sadden him. For unselfish reasons he did so earnestly wish this complaint might not become chronic. I fear, I fear. But, however, I mean to stand by him now, whether in weal or woe. This liability to rheumatic pain was one of the strong arguments used against the marriage. It ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... hand, has ever heard of a renegade Wagnerite? Such an animal does not exist, and if a specimen could be found, it would pay to exhibit him in a dime museum. The very expression seems a contradiction in terms. Wagner frequently asserted that no one could understand his music unless he admired it; and there is truth in this, for only enthusiasm can sharpen the mental faculties sufficiently to enable us to perceive the countless subtle beauties in Wagner's and ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... unlearnable technique of reaction to experience, once grooved, thus prove the great gift and the eternal curse of protoplasm. Making it possible for it to be and become what it is and has, they have also made it forever impossible for it to be or become its own contradiction. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... a heart-rending sob, as she pressed the knees of Jacques against her heaving bosom. By a strange contradiction, more common than is generally thought—this man, degraded by intoxication and debauchery, who, since he came out of prison, had plunged in every excess, and tamely yielded to all the fatal incitements of Morok, yet received a fearful blow, when he ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... hope will not be impaired, and I shall, if God spare my Billy, be useful in his first education, and be helpful to dear Miss Goodwin—or to any babies—with all my heart—he may make me an humble nurse too!—How peevish, sinfully so, I doubt, does this accident, and their affectionate contradiction, make one! ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... told what was said or done in the court chamber after the charter disappeared. The stories of that night are full of mystery and contradiction. Perhaps, after all, no very serious search was made for it. Perhaps its loss brought about a compromise between the two parties. For Governor Andros had already gained his object; he had taken over the government of Connecticut, ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... has; it has continued the same," said Mrs. Corey, again expressing the fact by a contradiction in terms. "I think I must ask ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... liberty and fraternity. But, as in many religions, we can observe a complete contradiction between doctrine and action. In practice no liberty was tolerated, and fraternity was quickly replaced by ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... judge of instruction and Plantat were far from being of the same opinion; they knew it before speaking a word. But M. Domini, whose opinion rested on material and palpable facts, which appeared to him indisputable, was not disposed to provoke contradiction. Plantat, on the contrary, whose system seemed to rest on impressions, on a series of logical deductions, would not clearly express himself, without a positive and pressing invitation. His last speech, impressively uttered, had not ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... entertain feelings of the greatest hatred towards each other, is an interesting study, and the display of mutual courtesy unrivalled. I need scarcely say that horseplay and practical joking are unknown, contradiction is rarely resorted to and "chaff" is only known in its mildest form. The lowest Malay will never pass in front of you if it can be avoided, nor hand anything to another across you. Unless in case of necessity, a Malay will not arouse his ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... sin, Christie; but I reckon He knew as well as any of us what it is to be wearied and troubled, when matters went not to His comfort. 'The contradiction of ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... is what I mean when I speak of the anomalous condition of women in these days. I would point out, as a primary source of incalculable mischief, the contradiction between her assumed and her real position; between what is called her proper sphere by the laws of God and Nature, and what has become her real sphere by the laws of necessity, and through the complex relations of artificial existence. In the strong language of Carlyle, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... turned round with a fierce little gesture of contradiction, but restrained herself, and did not speak ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of every question, and her correction of everything that was said to which she was opposed, Miss Dartle insinuated in the same way: sometimes, I could not conceal from myself, with great power, though in contradiction even of Steerforth. An instance happened before dinner was done. Mrs. Steerforth speaking to me about my intention of going down into Suffolk, I said at hazard how glad I should be, if Steerforth would only go there with ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... this:—'So act, that the rule on which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law by all rational beings.' But when he begins to deduce from this precept any of the actual duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely, to show that there would be any contradiction, any logical (not to say physical) impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously immoral rules of conduct. All he shows is that the consequences of their universal adoption would be such as no one would ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... by the whites and started on our return to our village on Rock river. When we arrived we found that the troops had come to build a fort on Rock Island. This, in our opinion, was a contradiction to what we had done—"to prepare for war in time of peace." We did not object, however, to their building their fort on the island, but were very sorry, as this was the best one on the Mississippi, and had long been the ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... should have a difficult time indeed determining just how much is biographical and how much belongs to the stock in trade of Elizabethan sonneteers. Brettville Jensen points out that if the sonnets are the expression of grief at the loss of his beloved, it is a queer contradiction that Sonnet 144, which voices his most poignant sorrow, should date from 1599, the year, according to Brandes, when Shakespeare's ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... philosopher might to a school of disciples gathered together to be taught by his wisdom, not to dispute it. He feared chiefly not a counter creed but the materialising effects of the industrial movement of his own day. Expecting no contradiction, Wordsworth did not care to quit his own standpoint in order that he might see how things appear from the opposing side. He did not argue but let his utterance fall into a half soliloquy spoken in presence of an audience but not always directly addressed to them. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the fatal mistake of Catholic and Protestant philosophy by assuming an impersonal deity in three modes of manifestation, while Christian thinkers have played around the logical contradiction of one personality in three equal persons for fifteen hundred years. We must utterly break with the idea of a personal God, and accept that of one impersonal essence behind all phenomena." ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... his attitude and tone came too late. Captain Lote's temper was boiling now, contradiction was ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... desire to be with Him and to see Him face to face; and though it is quite possible to have been misled or untaught in regard to the conditions of His coming, the contemplation of such a promise from Him can but kindle a glowing hope in a truly devoted heart. It is a direct contradiction to claim supreme affection for Him, and yet be careless of His promised return, or wholly contented while separated from Him. The world, that cannot comprehend such devotion to Christ, will easily chide ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... laughter from his odd peculiarities. On the latter occasions he used abruptly to withdraw from the ridicule he had provoked; for notwithstanding the general mildness of his character, his solitary habits had engendered a testy impatience of contradiction, and a keener sense of pain arising from the satire of others, than was natural to his unassuming disposition. As for his parishioners, they enjoyed, as may reasonably be supposed, many a hearty laugh at their pastor's expense, and were sometimes, as Mrs. Dods hinted, more astonished than ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... register, wrote in the margin, "PAX, PAX, INQUIT PROPHETA, ET NON EST PAX." (2) Charles was soon after allied with the abominable Bernard d'Armagnac, even betrothed or married to a daughter of his, called by a name that sounds like a contradiction in terms, Bonne d'Armagnac. From that time forth, throughout all this monstrous period - a very nightmare in the history of France - he is no more than a stalking-horse for the ambitious Gascon. Sometimes the smoke ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Europe has been sedulously and malignantly employed to prejudice the public against me, I owe it to myself, to my children and family, to the myriads of my fellow countrymen who have honoured me with their confidence; I owe it to them, to show, past all contradiction, that my accusers are slanderers; that my conduct deserves to be otherwise spoken of than it has been; and this duty I can perform only by speaking candidly and boldly of such facts as may tell in my favour; ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... foods—so necessary a preparation in case of any adverse event—or that tackle, lines, and other supplies be made (for which the Indians are well paid for their work thereon), neither can this be done, because the Indians are deprived of food, and it is a great affliction. In short, there is contradiction and opposition to everything, and moreover, called by a name so serious as charge of conscience and salvation or condemnation of the soul. This, at the very least, however necessary may be the things ordained, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... or Mac-Dingawaies, of Ellangowan, had sunk into subordinate accomplices. Their most fatal exhibitions in this capacity took place in the seventeenth century, when the foul fiend possessed them with a spirit of contradiction, which uniformly involved them in controversy with the ruling powers. They reversed the conduct of the celebrated Vicar of Bray, and adhered as tenaciously to the weaker side, as that worthy divine to the stronger. And truly, like him, they ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... never remonstrated. But she raised her eyebrows a little over this expression of Sir Philip's opinion. If he were going to try to tutor Margaret Adair, whose slightest wish had never yet known contradiction, she thought it probable that the much-wished for marriage would never ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that would leave the North prostrate at her feet. Day after day they waited and—the wish being father to the thought—day after day the sun rose on fresh stories of an advance—a bloody fight—a splendid victory—or the capture of Washington. But the sun always set on an authoritative contradiction of them; and at last the excitement was forced to settle down on the news that General Johnston had extended his pickets as far as Mason's and Munson's hills, and the army had gone into camp on the field it had so ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... for the property of nature the most clearly perceived, the easiest to define and analyse, and the most apt to lend itself to measurement and calculation, it has chosen motion. Consequently all the properties of matter have been reduced to this one, and in spite of the apparent contradiction of our senses, it has been supposed that the most varied phenomena are produced, in the last resort, by the displacement of material particles. Thus, sound, light, heat, electricity, and even the nervous influx would be due to vibratory movements, varying only by their direction and ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... documents and sources! Well attested as they might be, they were all subject to revision, even to contradiction by others exhumed later which were no less authentic than the first and which also but waited their turn to ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... here with Captain Barker, started in a direction to Swan Port (Swan River) with a party of men, and in eleven days went over at least two hundred miles of ground. He says, without fear of contradiction in future, that there is far greater proportion of good land in this direction than in any other part of Australia that he had been in, and also wood of large growth, with innumerable rivers. He ascended a very high mountain, which he called Mount ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... generalization, are not adequately developed. So the subject-matter is evacuated of its logical value, and, though it is what it is only from the logical standpoint, is presented as stuff only for "memory." This is the contradiction: the child gets the advantage neither of the adult logical formulation, nor of his own native competencies of apprehension and response. Hence the logic of the child is hampered and mortified, and we are almost fortunate ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... again more strongly than before his haggard face, his wandering manner, his restless anxious looks. His affection for the child might not be inconsistent with villany of the worst kind; even that very affection was in itself an extraordinary contradiction, or how could he leave her thus? Disposed as I was to think badly of him, I never doubted that his love for her was real. I could not admit the thought, remembering what had passed between us, and the tone of voice in which he had called ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Ethnography, gives the number of the Russians proper at 38,400,000. We follow him, as the most diligent and most consistent investigator of this matter; but we also feel bound to remark, that his statistical assertions have occasioned surprise, and met with contradiction. ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... of it." He did not run divine sovereignty into blank fatalism as so many do. He saw that God must be sovereign in His gifts, and yet man must be free in his reception and rejection of them. He admitted the mystery without attempting to reconcile the apparent contradiction. He confesses also that the same book, Philip's Life of Whitefield, which had been used of God to kindle such new fires on the altar of his heart, had been also used of Satan to tempt him to neglect for its sake the systematic study of ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... be found in both parties in the church. The South owes a debt of gratitude to the Biblical Repertory, for the fearless argument in behalf of the position, that slavery is not forbidden by the Bible. The writer of that article is said, without contradiction, to be Professor Hodge, of Princeton—HIS NAME OUGHT TO BE KNOWN AND REVERED AMONG YOU, my brethren, for in a land of anti-slavery men, he is the ONLY ONE who has dared to vindicate your character ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... will not fear him away, but rather engage him the more to help and succour. Much of Thomas his weakness and corruption appeared in what he said; yet the same being honestly and ingenuously laid open to Christ, not out of a spirit of contradiction, but out of a desire to learn, Christ is so far from thrusting him away, that he rather condescendeth the more, out of love and tenderness, to instruct him better, and clear the way more fully. And that, because, 1. He knoweth our mould and fashion, how feckless ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... white thing, and to approach to a black thing, are contraries; whereas contrary relations to contrary things, implies a certain likeness, e.g. to recede from something white, and to approach to something black. This is most evident in the case of contradiction, which is the principle of opposition: because opposition consists in affirming and denying the same thing, e.g. "white" and "non-white"; while there is fittingness and likeness in the affirmation of one contrary and the denial of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... "No, Nettie; I behaved rudely to HIM. Yes! Besides, if he behaved rudely, he was no gentleman. It's a contradiction in terms, don't you see? But I'll tell you what I'm going to do if he comes. I'm going to show a proper spirit for once in my life. I'm going to refuse to see him. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... opened, was naturally prolonged by the relation of incidents which had come through various sources to Mrs. Rawdon's ears, all of them indicating an almost incredible system of petty tyranny and cruel contradiction. Ethel was amazed, and finally angry at what she heard. Dora was her countrywoman and her friend; she instantly began to express her sympathy and ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... persons whose feelings and actions are congruous with themselves and with the feelings and actions of others. And, on the contrary, it is in the worthless, in the degenerate creature, that we note moods which are destructive to one another's object, ideas which are in flagrant contradiction; and it is in the idiot, the maniac, the criminal, that we see thoughts disconnected among themselves, perceptions disconnected with surrounding objects, and instincts and habits incompatible with those of other human beings. Nay, if we look ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... gain or reputation, had bewildered her half-formed reason, and filled her imagination with unreal pictures. All her ideas were false or exaggerated. She was a woman, with the mind of an inexperienced child; if to say this does not savor of contradiction. Without dreaming that there might be thorns to pierce her naked feet in the way she was about to enter, she moved forward with a ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... supposed, unless I mistake—the assembled members of our family will correct me if I do, which is very likely (here the poor relation looked mildly about him for contradiction); that I am nobody's enemy but my own. That I never met with any particular success in anything. That I failed in business because I was unbusiness-like and credulous—in not being prepared for the interested designs of my partner. That I failed in love, because I was ridiculously trustful—in ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... "Cross and Self Fertilisation," for it is difficult to believe that the pollen of the purple anthers has become, by adaptation, less effective than that of the yellow anthers. In the letters here given there is some contradiction between the statements as to the position of the two sets of stamens in relation to the sepals. According to Eichler ("Bluthendiagramme, II., page 482) the longer stamens may be either epipetalous or episepalous in ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... through anew I found that it nevertheless contained a great deal which I could still acknowledge, particularly if it be remembered that it is my first undertaking. Much, around which my later writings center, the contradiction between ability and desire, between will and possibility, the intermingled tragedy and comedy in humanity and in the individual,—appeared already here in vague foreshadowings, and I conceived therefore the ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... attention to the fact that, as M. Henri Martin says, by an apparent contradiction, the fall of the Communes declared itself in inverse ratio to the progress of the Tiers Etat. By degrees, as the government became more settled from the great fiefs being absorbed by the Crown, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... was the idea with which my editorial heart used to thrill. It literally beat faster often, of an evening, when I had been out, as I stopped with my candle in the re-echoing hall on my way up to bed. It was as if at such a moment as that, in the stillness, after the long contradiction of the day, Miss Bordereau's secrets were in the air, the wonder of her survival more palpable. These were the acute impressions. I had them in another form, with more of a certain sort of reciprocity, during ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... for excluding women from political affairs; for women are at once the best and the worst Americans: the best because their hearts are the purest, the worst because their heads are the idlest. "Another contradiction!" you will say, and I cannot deny it; for, with all their cultivation, the American women have no real intellectual interests, but only intellectual fads; and while they certainly think a great deal, ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... Thus the apparent contradiction in the practice of these tribes, who venerate and almost deify the animals which they habitually hunt, kill, and eat, is not so flagrant as at first sight it appears to us: the people have reasons, and some very practical reasons, for acting as they do. For the savage is by no means so illogical ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... men and women mechanisms, while yet acknowledging their intense vitality, may seem a contradiction; but nothing less than this antinomy is adequate to indicate the fatality of Balzac's creatures. None of them ever appear to be free agents. Planet-like they revolve in an orbit, or meteor-like they rush headlong, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... property of a master, and possessing within himself no civil nor political rights or capacities, cannot be a CITIZEN. For who, it may be asked, is a citizen? What do the character and status of citizen import? Without fear of contradiction, it does not import the condition of being private property, the subject of individual power and ownership. Upon a principle of etymology alone, the term citizen, as derived from civitas, conveys the ideas of connection or identification with 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
... the expressions in books vulgarly reputed before the conquest are at least doubtful. From this time forward (from the fifth century B.C.), says a German demonologist, as the Jews lived among the admirers of Zoroaster, and thus became acquainted with their doctrines, are found, partly in contradiction to the earlier views of their religion, many tenets prevailing amongst them the origin of which it is impossible to explain except by the operation of the doctrines of Zoroaster: to these belongs the general acceptance of the theory of Satan, as well as of good and bad angels.[11] Under Roman government ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... developments of our knowledge stand uncondemned. Within their own sphere the results of Mr. Herbert Spencer are far from sterile—the application of Biology to Political Economy is already revolutionizing the Science. If the introduction of Natural Law into the Social sphere is no violent contradiction but a genuine and permanent contribution, shall its further extension to the Spiritual sphere be counted an extravagance? Does not the Principle of Continuity demand its application in every direction? To ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the fact that Protestantism is not exempt from sin, as we are well aware that we will find sinners of all degrees in the Protestant ranks, but we make the assertion, without fear of contradiction, that the characters in general of the followers of Protestantism are many times superior to the characters in general of ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... frequently happen that, while he was amusing himself in the circle of his playmates, the most trifling contradiction would ruffle his temper, and fill him with the highest degree of rage and fury, little short ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... in favour of this glacial period are too apparent to allow of any contradiction; but although geologists agree as to its existence, they do not find it easy to absolutely determine its ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... from such commerce are ordinarily property within the jurisdiction of some State or other, the task before the Court in drawing the line between the immunity claimed by interstate business on the one hand and the prerogatives claimed by local power on the other has at times involved it in self-contradiction, as successive developments have brought into prominence novel aspects of its complex problem or have altered the perspective in which the interests competing for its protection have appeared. In this field words of the late Justice Rutledge, ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... absolutely repellent to Occidental minds. Though Christian doctrine, holding each soul specially created out of nothing to fit each new body, permitted no avowed beliefs in pre-existence, popular common-sense recognized a contradiction of dogma in the phenomena of heredity. In the same way, while theology decided animals to be mere automata, moved by a sort of incomprehensible machinery called instinct, the people generally recognized ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... established view, until the recent cuneiform discoveries. It was, from the first, a theory full of difficulty. The mention of the Chaldaeans in Job, and even in Genesis, as a well-known people, was in contradiction to the supposed recent origin of the race. The explanation of the obscure passage in the 23d chapter of Isaiah, on which the theory was mainly based, was at variance with other clearer passages of the same prophet. Babylon is called by Isaiah the "daughter ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... beyond words, the hate was so pure and gemlike. It was as if he were a beam of essential enmity, a beam of light that did not only destroy her, but denied her altogether, revoked her whole world. She saw him as a clear stroke of uttermost contradiction, a strange gem-like being whose existence defined her own non-existence. When she heard he was ill again, her hatred only intensified itself a few degrees, if that were possible. It stunned her and annihilated her, but she could not escape it. She could not escape this ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... enough of hay; instead of old Barney's attending to the horse, he had very improperly left it to his son." To all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never a word. Colonel Lloyd could not brook any contradiction from a slave. When he spoke, a slave must stand, listen, and tremble; and such was literally the case. I have seen Colonel Lloyd make old Barney, a man between fifty and sixty years of age, uncover his bald head, kneel down upon the cold, ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... host and the guests, which distinction it is the chief effort of good breeding to remove. To perform faultlessly the honours of the table, is one of the most difficult things in society: it might indeed be asserted without much fear of contradiction, that no man has as yet ever reached exact propriety in his office as host, has hit the mean between exerting himself too much and too little. His great business is to put every one entirely at his ease, to gratify all his ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... "But contradiction, can that have place In any soul? Plato affirms ideas; But Aristotle, with his pugnacious race, As idle figments stiffly ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... affirming or denying relations (cf. Sec. 5) between matters-of-fact in the widest sense; not only physical facts, but ideas, social and moral relations; it consists, in short, in attending to the meaning of propositions. It treats the first principles of Contradiction and Causation as true of things so far as they are known to us, and not merely as conditions or tendencies of thought; and it takes these principles as conditions of right thinking, because they seem to hold good of Nature ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... is not imposed upon us by another power, but by our own enlightened will." (p. 35.) In this, the last stage of the Colossal Man's progress, Dr. Temple gives him four avenues of learning: (1) Experience, (2) Reflection, (3) Mistakes, (4) Contradiction. By withholding from this enumeration the Revealed Will of GOD, and the known sanctions of the Divine Law, he thrusts out GOD from every part of his scheme; denies that He is even one of the present teachers of the Human Race,—explaining that the time has even ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... some supposed advantages attributed to the New, over the Old, testament; and whether the doctrine of a Resurrection and a Life to Come, is not taught by the Old testament, in contradiction the assertion, that "life and immorality were brought ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... as Laache first observed, and as has since been generally confirmed. On the contrary in all other severe or moderate anaemic conditions, the red corpuscles shew a diminution in volume, and in their amount of haemoglobin. This contradiction, which Laache first mentioned, but was unable to explain, has found a satisfactory solution in Ehrlich's researches on the nucleated precursors of the myelocytes and ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... sprung up and developed in his brain, as ideas develop while the intellect is yet unjaded and the sap is rising; and thoroughly did he enjoy the projection of this new article. He threw himself into it with enthusiasm. At the summons of the spirit of contradiction, new charms met beneath his pen. He was witty and satirical, he rose to yet new views of sentiment, of ideas and imagery in literature. With subtle ingenuity, he went back to his own first impressions of Nathan's work, when ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... a democracy based on a republicanism which proscribes and disfranchises one part of the citizens for their sex, and another for their color, is a contradiction in terms more offensive and harder to be borne than despotism itself, under its true name, and vastly more dangerous by its seductive influence ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... men,—there is none of us exempted from it; the most noble, and the most base. Sin is the catholic king, the universal king, or rather Satan, who is the prince of this world, and he rules the world, by this law of sin, which is even the contradiction of the law of God. Who of you believes this, that Satan's kingdom is so spacious,—that it is even over the most part of the visible church? This is the emperor of the world. The Turk vainly arrogates this title to himself, but the devil is truly so, and we have God's ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... way, sir Rowland—and but one way. Human words at least, however it may be with some high heavenly language, can never say the best things but by a kind of stumbling, wherein one contradiction keepeth another from falling. No man, as thou sayest, truly, can rid him of himself and live, for that involveth an impossibility. But he can rid himself of that: haunting shadow of his own self, which he hath pampered and fed upon shadowy lies, until it is bloated and black ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... giving them, and therefore a proviso was added at the end of the ground-brief, and it was signed anew; which proviso directly conflicts with the ground-brief, so that in one and the same ground-brief is a contradiction without chance of agreement, for it reads thus in the old briefs: "and take in possession the land and the valleys appertaining of old thereto," and the proviso says, "no valley to be used before the Company," all which could ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... today is probably better and broader than some of these glorious ancestors to whom so many take off their hats. Some of our forefathers in Europe were little less than pirates and buccaneers. Their descendants today knowing that they can make great claims with little fear of contradiction, extol the virtue of their forefathers and complacently take on a superior air. They have thought over the matter of birth so much that they really ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... word "bull," for a verbal blunder, involving a contradiction in terms, is of doubtful origin. In this sense it is used with a possible punning reference to papal bulls in Milton's True Religion, "and whereas the Papist boasts himself to be a Roman Catholick, it is a mere ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of the great revolutionary religious and moral reformers has not been sufficiently recognised. It is remarkable that, unlike other reformers, he has not contradicted error by an exaggeration, which itself very soon stands in need of contradiction, but by simple sanity which requires no correction. One reason for this peculiarity is that the Ethic was the result of long meditation. It was published posthumously and was discussed in draft for many years before ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... chopping off flowers with our canes and discussing philosophy. Rare jargon we made of it; talking of cosmothetie idealism or hypothetical dualism, of noetic and dianoetic principles, of hylozoism and hypostasis, and demonstrating the most undemonstrable propositions by appeals to the law of contradiction or of excluded middle. I fancied then that I was growing very learned—wondered whether Beulah here would be able to keep up with me, and really thought I understood what ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... to assert, or, we have little hesitation in declaring, or, we may be pardoned for thinking, or, we may say without fear of contradiction, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... inquisitive Men commonly at forty or fifty at the most, have fixed and settled their judgments in most Points, and as it were made their last understanding, supposing they have thought, or read, or heard what can be said on all sides of things, and after that they grow positive and impatient of Contradiction, thinking it a disparagement to them ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... Harrington looked through those eyes—there was no comparison. Fitz carried all before him. All except Agatha. The girl was puzzled. Luke could not be compared with Fitz, and the whole world did not compare with Luke. She was fully awake to the contradiction, and she could not reconcile her facts. She had been very properly brought up at the Brighton Boarding School, receiving a good, practical, modern, nineteenth-century education—a curriculum of solid facts culled from the latest school books, ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... never tried with before, yet have borne my testimony for the Lord before the King unto whom I was sent, and he was very noble unto me, and so were all they that were about him: he and all that were about him received the word of truth without contradiction. They do dread the name of God, many of them, and eyes His messengers. There is a royal seed amongst them which in time God will raise. They are more near truth than many Nations, there is a love begot in me towards them which is endless, but this is my hope concerning them, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... may and do happen to a good man in this life, and therefore presumably misfortunes may also overtake him in any other life that there may be. The only evil that can never befall him is vice, because that would be a contradiction in terms. Unless therefore Socrates was uttering idle words on the most solemn occasion of his life, he must be taken to have meant that there is no evil but vice, which implies that there is no good but virtue. ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... back into the building before contradiction was possible. After a moment, Gerard went on down the ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... her youthful and pliable disposition. At first Teresa was severe and stony-hearted towards the child; her obstinacy, like a thorny hedge, had to be broken down. The smallest fault was chastised, every moment of her time had its allotted task, of which she had to give an account, not a single contradiction, not the slightest sulkiness was put up with. Then, too, she was never able to escape detection, a far-seeing, austere pair of eyes was ever upon her, making falsehood impossible, looking through her very soul, seizing and pruning down every thought as it arose. The weeds had to be extirpated ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... never read a line of her husband's works; but this was regarded as an affectation. Madame de Chateaubriand was not an amiable person, but very frank and sincere. She often reproached herself for her faults and love of contradiction. Though she appears to have loved her husband, she was not blind to his weaknesses, and he was afraid of her sallies. So vain and sensitive a man could not feel comfortable in the society of a woman of her keen penetration, and her wit was not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... not only accompanied them to the door, but down-stairs to the street, where he stood for a moment watching them drive down the thoroughfare. Then he slowly returned, breathing heavily—invidious contradiction of his youthful assumption!—and shaking his head, as he mounted to ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... that in Lambeth people were gossiping evil of him. Such gossip, he understood too well, would have its lasting effect. No contradiction could avail against it. Even if Thyrza returned, it would be impossible for her to resume her life in the old places; the truth could never be so spread as to counteract the harm already done. Lambeth had lost its free library. How long would it wait before another man ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... unavoidably reasonable. He would telephone Fanny again in the morning and explain. Fanny, his wife! Well, he continued, as though he were angrily retorting to a criticism from without, no man ever better realized the splendid qualities of his wife. That was beyond contradiction; and he sharply added that not Fanny, but the role of a wife, a housewife, was under observation. Mrs. Grove was married, but that didn't keep her from the Malmaison, at what Eastlake disapprovingly called all hours of the night. She had no aspect ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... he saw there, and said, solemnly, "You are a murderer!" It was by no means a tragic accent in which this thrilling apostrophe was spoken. It was very much in the tone that a woman employs when she looks hastily in the mirror and utters a soft "What a fright I am!" apparently receiving comforting contradiction enough from the mirror to make ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... to lunch My steps are languid, once so speedy; E'en though, like the old gent in PUNCH, "Not hungry, but, thank goodness! greedy." I gaze upon the well-spread board, And have to own—oh, contradiction! Though every dainty it afford, There's nothing like ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... compulsory education, as the saying is, of all and sundry, as far as this is possible; and the pupils shall be regarded as belonging to the state rather than to their parents. My law would apply to females as well as males; they shall both go through the same exercises. I assert without fear of contradiction that gymnastic and horsemanship are as suitable to women as to men. Of the truth of this I am persuaded from ancient tradition, and at the present day there are said to be countless myriads of women in the neighbourhood of the ...
— Laws • Plato
... excels. In the History of India, which brought to James Mill reputation and pecuniary independence, he could apply his deductive theories to a remote and little known country without much risk of contradiction from actual circumstances or of checks from the misapprehension of facts. In England the Utilitarian doctrines, as propounded in Mill's writings, raised up opposition and hostile criticism from various quarters. The general current of ideas and feelings had ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... conditional form; that is, "such compensation was due, if the wrong be proved," and the wrong had to be proved or disclaimed by six or twelve persons confirming or denying the fact by oath; ordeal being resorted to in case of contradiction between the two sets of jurors. Such procedure, which remained in force for more than two thousand years in succession, speaks volumes for itself; it shows how close were the bonds between all members of ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... Seraglio soon after the Turkish conquest, it was converted into an armoury, probably because it stood in the court occupied by the body of Janissaries who formed the palace guard, and it has served that military purpose, in contradiction to its name, for the most part ever since. For several years it contained the first collection of antiquities made by the Turkish Government, and some of the objects in that collection still remain to recall the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... Albemarle, told them her determination, and in their presence had these papers burnt; she assured them that everything was destroyed, and if after her death any pretended letters or documents were produced, they might give the most authoritative contradiction to their authenticity. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... how she labored in the cause, and what a world of contradiction and trouble she had to go through. First, there was Mr. St. Leger himself, to be persuaded to be happy upon her plan, the only possible plan under the circumstances; then there was Lettice to persuade that Mr. St. Leger's happiness ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... as to the apparent contradiction between Chemistry, which says that peat is not equal to stable dung as a fertilizer, and Practice, which in these cases affirms that it is equal to our ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... expulsion of the assassin from the Count's house; but that he would take care, nevertheless, that neither this ruffian nor any other, should accomplish his purpose. A few weeks afterwards, expressing his joy at the contradiction of a report that Philip had himself been assassinated, Granvelle added; "I too, who am but a worm in comparison, am threatened on so many sides, that many must consider me already dead. Nevertheless, I will endeavor, with God's help, to live as long as I can, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... pious fervor in this florid sentiment. But as she was honest and clear-sighted, she could not accept a statement which seemed so plainly in contradiction with his common teachings, without bringing his flattering assertion to the test of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... long held as well-founded, is absolutely and radically false." Even Oskar Hertwig, perhaps the best known of Haeckel's former pupils, finds it necessary to change Haeckel's expression of the biogenetic law so that "a contradiction contained in it may be removed." Professor Morgan, finally, rejects Haeckel's boasted "Law of Biogenesis" as "in principle, false." And he furthermore seems to imply that Fleischmann merits the reproach of ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... elder Rothschild was one, all apparent paradox: "Be cautious and bold." This seems to be a contradiction in terms, but it is not, and there is great wisdom in the maxim. It is, in fact, a condensed statement of what I have already said. It is to say; "you must exercise your caution in laying your plans, ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... munition for their defence, and two hundred mariners English men to guide and sayle in the same four shippes at all times during the sayde twelue yeeres shall quietly bee permitted and suffered to depart and goe in the sayde voyages, according to the purport of these presents, without any stay or contradiction by vs, our heyres and successors, or by the Lorde high Admirall or any other officer or subject of vs, our heires or successours in any wise: Any restraint, lawe, statute, vsage or matter ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... witness to go on as far as he pleased with his story, in the expectation that some exaggeration and contradiction would appear; but the judge now interrupted the old man, observing that this was nothing to the purpose—that he must not take up the time of the court with idle tales, but that if he had any thing ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... found the tension unbearable, sought relief in contradiction. "You're an unscientific brute, McGuffog," he told his henchman. "It's a disgrace that a gamekeeper should be such a rotten naturalist. What would whaups be doin' on the shore at this ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... handle given him by Bishop Robinson's Letter to the Clergy of his Diocess about New Doxologies borrow'd from Old Hereticks, takes the advantage of the Bishop's (supposed) Ignorance, Dulness, Stupidity, and Contradiction to himself, and writes and prints, like a Tom Brown or Swift, a most bantering and drolling Letter, under the sneering Title of a Letter of Thanks to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London, for his late Letter, &c. whom, one would think, ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... disabled or sleeping man when pressed by hunger; and when driven to desperation no animal is too small or too feeble to make a show of resistance. In such a case "even the armadillo defends itself," as the gaucho proverb says. Besides, the conclusion is in contradiction to many other well-known facts. Putting-aside the puma's passivity in the presence of man, it is a bold hunter that invariably prefers large to small game; in desert places killing peccary, tapir, ostrich, deer, huanaco, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... other, "I don't deny it; for, though I'm teaching philosophy, knowledge, and mathematics every day in my life, yet I'm learning patience myself both night and day. No, Neal; I have forgotten to deny anything. I have not been guilty of a contradiction, out of my own school, for the last fourteen years. I once expressed the shadow of a doubt about twelve years ago, but ever since I have abandoned even doubting. That doubt was the last expiring effort at maintaining my domestic authority—but ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... master the Gardener sped, I knew not, but the gentle souldier, who was well beaten for his cowardise, lead me to his lodging without the contradiction of any man: Where hee laded me well, and garnished my body (as seemed to me) like an Asse of armes. For on the one side I bare an helmet that shined exceedingly: On the other side a Target that glistered more ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... immediately, this course of events seems to be in contradiction with the facts of savage society at the present day and with all probability. Apart from that however, how does Mr Morgan suppose his eugenic diathesis to be transmitted? It can hardly be maintained that this was the result of the different ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... a contradiction. Striking anachronisms occur from the confusion of Malayan, Asiatic, European, and American traditions. Heavy escort-wagons, drawn by towering army mules, crowd to the wall the fragile quilez and the carromata( two-wheeled gigs), with their tough native ponies. Tall East ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... barbarous Vandyke: he looked so awkwardly alarmed and puzzled by the epithet I had given him! The identity of this spot (like all other places here) has been vehemently disputed. At every step to-day we encountered doubt, and contradiction, and cavilling: authorities are marshalled against each other in puzzling array, and the modern unwillingness to be cheated by fine sounds and great names has become a general scepticism. I have no objection to the "shadows, doubts, and darkness" which rest upon all around us; it ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... is that tribes in the intellectual condition of those I am dealing with rest their religion on a worship of external phenomena. In contradiction to this, I advance various arguments to show that their chief god was not identified with any objective natural process, but was human in nature, benignant in character, loved rather than feared, and that his worship carried with it ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
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