"Contradiction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... The contradiction involved in this exemplary remark, combined with the absurdity of repentance taking the form of interest in mining speculations, was almost too much for Richard's sense of humor; but he only nodded with gravity, as became a man who was imbibing information, and inquired further, whether, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... 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
... 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
... 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 |
