"Disputant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and lost his temper, Wesley was certainly irritating. But the details of the unfortunate quarrel may be found in any history of Wesley or Whitefield. It is a far pleasanter task to record that in course of time the breach was entirely healed, though neither disputant receded one jot from his opinions. No man was ever more ready to confess his faults, no man ever had a larger heart or was actuated by a truer spirit of Christian charity than George Whitefield. Never was ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... drawing-room. The controversy between the framers of the Church of England in its present state, and the hot gospellers who, with Thomas Cartwright at their head, denied the proposition (not deniable or denied now by any sane and scholarly disputant) that church discipline and government are points left to a great extent undefined in the Scriptures, had gone on for years before Martin appeared. Cartwright and Whitgift had fought, with a certain advantage of warmth ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... one or two of the assistants chorussed with a deep groan, our hero thought it unnecessary to make any reply. Whereupon Mr. Gilfillan, resolving that he should be a hearer at least, if not a disputant, proceeded ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... of witness to an altercation in which she took no part was highly displeasing, as being an unimportant secondary post—now rallying her dignity, prepared to utter a discourse which was to prove both parties in the wrong, and to make it clear to each disputant that she had reason to be ashamed of herself, and ought to submit humbly to the superior sense of the individual then addressing her. Fortunately for her audience, she had not harangued above ten minutes ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... differed at any time in opinion with a disputant, the suavity of his manners was so conciliatory that opposition, from him, was sometimes better received than agreement, and coincidence, from other people. This suavity, by the by, is a delightful art. Would it were better understood, and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... R. Pennypacker, in his Life of General Meade, speaks of Halleck and other prominent officials in Washington in these terms: "Possessing much of the skill of the lawyer and disputant, Halleck was without military ability. The Secretary of War, like many other men who exercise vast power, was not great enough to refrain from the use of his authority in matters where his knowledge and experience ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... not. And thou thy self seem'st otherwise inclin'd Then to a worldly Crown, addicted more To contemplation and profound dispute, As by that early action may be judg'd, When slipping from thy Mothers eye thou went'st Alone into the Temple; there was found Among the gravest Rabbies disputant On points and questions fitting Moses Chair, Teaching not taught; the childhood shews the man, 220 As morning shews the day. Be famous then By wisdom; as thy Empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o're all the world, In knowledge, all things in it comprehend, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... this question, in all the centuries, comprised within these well-defined bounds, it were useless to name each prominent disputant, in order merely to classify him as on the one side or on the other, or as zigzagging along the line which he fails to perceive. It were sufficient to point out a few pre-eminent mountain peaks, in the centuries between the fifth and the nineteen of the ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... scarce in Europe." Hence, naturally, he was constantly engaged upon some work of translating or commentating, and still so highly prized is some of his work that it has been reprinted during this century. He also, being a skilful disputant, wrote innumerable controversial pamphlets and books, many of which still exist. It is said that he once had a long and spirited controversy with a brother divine as to whether the ephod of Aaron were blue or green. I fear we of to-day have lost much that ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... their own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in inforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... 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 discriminated the doctrines of the Catholic church from the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... bringing me over to your Church." The Archbishop mildly said that, in his opinion, such an answer might, without much difficulty, be written, but declined the controversy on the plea of reverence for the memory of his deceased master. This plea the King considered as the subterfuge of a vanquished disputant. [47] Had he been well acquainted with the polemical literature of the preceding century and a half, he would have known that the documents to which he attached so much value might have been composed by any lad of fifteen in the college of Douay, and contained nothing which had not, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Mahavamsa[74] and the Buddhaghosuppatti, a late Burmese text of about 1550, which, while adding many anecdotes, appears not to come from an independent source.[75] The gist of their account is that he was born in a Brahman family near Gaya and early obtained renown as a disputant. He was converted to Buddhism by a monk named Revata and began to write theological treatises.[76] Revata observing his intention to compose a commentary on the Pitakas, told him that only the text (palimattam) of the scriptures was to be found in India, not the ancient commentaries, but that ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... of the majority. Right ideas will win, no matter what the opposition to them. Better change the arena of conflict. A single champion of an idea would once challenge a doubter and prove his hypothesis by the blood of the disputant; you do the same thing on a great scale. The Southern people—very good people as you and I have cause to know—think the constitution gives them the right, or rather cannot take away the right, to withdraw ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... perilepsis[obs3], a priori reasoning, reductio ad absurdum, horns of a dilemma, argumentum ad hominem [Lat.], comprehensive argument; empirema[obs3], epagoge[obs3]. [person who reasons] reasoner, logician, dialectician; disputant; controversialist, controvertist[obs3]; wrangler, arguer, debater polemic, casuist, rationalist; scientist; eristic[obs3]. logical sequence; good case; correct just reasoning, sound reasoning, valid reasoning, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... In disputing about the faith, two things must be observed: one on the part of the disputant; the other on the part of his hearers. On the part of the disputant, we must consider his intention. For if he were to dispute as though he had doubts about the faith, and did not hold the truth of faith for certain, and as though ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... God has made no written revelation of his will, than that he has revealed such a doctrine as this. Let the opinion become prevalent that it is a doctrine of the Bible, and, as the consequence, the Bible will be rejected by thousands, yea, hundreds of thousands. It is impossible for the ablest disputant to maintain a respectable argument against infidelity while standing upon this ground. He must assume the opposite ground, as the basis of his argument, or he will fail signally. The infidel objects to the ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... the logical remark of a disputant in a Socratic dialogue of the Alcibiades type, and Sec.Sec. 31-33 a Socratic mythos to escape from the dilemma; the breakdown of this ideal plus and minus righteousness due to the hardness of men's hearts and their ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... advanced with stern dignity. The hand accustomed to command, and even tyrannize, was unnerved; but its appearance convinced Sagestus, that he had oftener wielded a thought than a weapon; and that he had silenced, by irresistible conviction, the superficial disputant, and the being, who doubted because he had not strength to believe, who, wavering between different borrowed opinions, first caught at one straw, then at another, unable to settle into any consistency of character. After gazing ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Hang it man, whatever you may have been at Oxford University you are no disputant now. Your resolution to be virtuous for a week won't last a day unless you strengthen it. And what strengthens the wit more ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... a man in the field of statesmanship and in intensity of devotion, he was more idolized than any since his prototype, Henry Clay. With political erudition was blended an eloquence inspiring and fascinating; a nobility of character often displayed as the champion of the weak; a disputant adept in all the mazes of analysis, denunciation, or sarcasm, he had created antipathy as bitter as his affections were unyielding. While Speaker of the House, with his counterpart in eloquence, Roscoe Conkling, he had many tilts. One of the most noted and probably ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... "the effrontery to imply that the horrible massacres of the Revolution ... were 'a very mild story compared with the atrocities of the Jews or the crimes of Catholicism.'" No really honest and competent disputant would have hit on "effrontery" as the note of the passage referred to, if he had had its whole spirit and drift before him. The reader shall, if he pleases, judge for himself. After the words just quoted, I ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... it as remarkably convenient at such times, to prevent the pain of a total discomfiture, it being more pleasant to slip quietly and unseen from your pedestal to some perfectly remote topic, than to allow yourself to be hurled roughly therefrom by the rude hand of a more sound and successful disputant. ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... out that devil which causeth those fits." The Quakers could hardly have been as angry as they were, nor their books have been so many and their writers so voluble during twenty years and longer, if Muggleton had not been a disputant to be dreaded, and a prophet with the faculty of drawing ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... on such questions. His father, in the days of his boyhood, had subscribed, along with a neighbour, for the Voluntary Church Magazine, and the subject had often been discussed in the cottage at Dunglass. It will be remembered that during his first session at the University he was an eager disputant with his classmates on the Voluntary side, and that towards the close of his course, after a memorable debate in the Diagnostic Society, he secured a victory for the policy of severing the connection between Church and State. ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... "Matter and Force" or "The Relation of Will to Thought," than upon those of more vivid moral or religious interest, such as "What is Death?" "The Theory of a Soul," "The Ethics of Belief," or "Is God Unknowable," in which wide scope was given to the emotions as well as the intellect of each disputant. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... from disgust to admiration, but a well-balanced stable judgment which should allow full value to merits and to defects, and sum up the man as a whole. Something of the sort she tried to suggest; neither disputant would hear of it, and Marchmont went off with an unyielding assertion that the man was a cad, no more and no less than a cad. Dick looked after him with a well-satisfied air; May fancied that opposition and the failure ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... the puritans being set aside, the poet must, finally, meet the objection of his third disputant, the philosopher, the one accuser whose charges the poet is wont to treat with respect. What validity, the philosopher asks, can be claimed for apprehension of truth, of the good-beautiful, secured ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... placed on the table by way of dessert. At the close of the second day the trio dined at the baronet's table, when it appeared that, struck by the simplicity of the previous day's dinner, and rightly attributing the absence of luxuries to the narrowness of the host's purse, the wealthy disputant had resolved not to attempt to influence the umpire by giving him a superior repast. Sitting at another table the trio dined on exactly the same fare,—three fried soles, a roast leg of mutton, and vegetables; three pancakes, three pieces of cheese, three small ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... slightly to the angry disputant who was about to reply; and, turning his horse down Rue Saint Honore, called on his friends to follow him. He rode slowly, to give time to all to join him at the Barrier, and then issued his orders that those who yielded obedience to him, should rendezvous at Versailles. In the meantime he remained ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... included in the two preceding exercises or suggested by them. That is, find the issues in each question, and show what each disputant must prove and what he ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... your deadly missile burst Right on the rover, checked his speed, And made him rock like one whose thirst Has frankly caused him to exceed, You must have felt as feels a god To whom whole nations bend the knee— Whichever of the dozen odd Disputant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... and Bradford the change was a decided gain. As the site of a great university, Leyden furnished them intercourse with learned men and access to valuable libraries. Robinson was admitted a member of the university, and before long appeared as a disputant on the Calvinist side in the public discussions. Brewster taught the English language to the Dutch, and, opening a publishing house, printed many theological books. Bradford devoted himself to the study of the ancient languages, ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... in his childhood, when Jesus could still send him into the herd of swine. Or else they make him subtle as a logician of the schools, or a fault-finding lawyer. If he had been no better than this compound of beast and disputant,—if he had only lived in the mire or on fine-drawn quibbles about nothing, he would very soon ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... his hair, No power can the impenitent absolve; Nor to repent and will at once consist, By contradiction absolute forbid." Oh mis'ry! how I shook myself, when he Seiz'd me, and cried, "Thou haply thought'st me not A disputant in logic so exact." To Minos down he bore me, and the judge Twin'd eight times round his callous back the tail, Which biting with excess of rage, he spake: "This is a guilty soul, that in the fire Must vanish.' ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... first. It is in a juvenile and dry style of quotation and academic reasoning, modelled after Schaller's older Dissertation, and not worth an abstract. More interesting than itself are eleven pieces of congratulatory Latin verse prefixed to it by college friends of the disputant. In more than one of these Milton is mentioned; but the liveliest mention of him is in a set of Phalaecians signed "Christianus Keck." Phalaecians are not to be attempted in English; but, as the semi-absurd relish of the thing would be lost in prose, the first ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Image to be effaced from his mind; whilst the ideas which he had so rapidly accumulated, existed in his brain, not as a huge chaos, but in clear and well-organized systems, illustrative of every subject, and subservient to every call. It was this quality which made him so superior a disputant; for as his mind had investigated the various sentiments and hypotheses of men, so had his almost intuitive discrimination stripped them of their deceptive appendages, and separated fallacies from truth, marshalling their arguments, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... a momentary lapse into fatalism, he gained with increasing years an increasing trust in the overruling providence of God. Adhering to none of all the religions in the colonies, he yet devoutly, though without form, adhered to religion. But though famous as a disputant, and having a natural aptitude for metaphysics, he obeyed the tendency of his age, and sought by observation to win an insight into the mysteries of being. The best observers praise his method most. He so sincerely loved truth, that in his pursuit ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... little group assembled in the dining room of the Beaubien cottage to resume their interrupted discussions. Hitt and Haynerd were the last to arrive. They found Doctor Morton eagerly awaiting them. With him had come, not without some reluctance, his prickly disputant, Reverend Patterson Moore, and another friend and colleague, Doctor Siler, whose interest in these unique gatherings had ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... may be applied to disputing,—it should be always so managed as to remember that the only true end of it is peace: but generally true disputants are like true sportsmen,—their whole delight is in the pursuit; and a disputant no more cares for the truth than ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... the disputant who had stirred up the monster, his situation was as unenviable as it was comic to the bystanders. He had never before dropped a stone into the great geyser. He was therefore unprepared for the result. One likened him to an unprotected traveler in a heavy rain-storm. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... included in two, the nominative and the objective; and, the case independent or absolute being necessarily the nominative, it follows that the objective, if it occur after an interjection, must be the object of something which is capable of governing it. If any disputant, by supposing ellipses, will make objectives of what I call nominatives absolute, so be it; but I insist that interjections, in fact, never "require" or "govern" one case more than an other. So Peirce, and Kirkham, and Ingersoll, with pointed self-contradiction, may continue to make "the independent ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... he was of opinion that man does not live by science alone, and nothing came amiss to him.... Even in private the alarm of war is sometimes heard, and Mr. Huxley is not a whit less formidable as a disputant across the table than with pen in hand. Yet an angry man must be very angry indeed before he could be angry with this adversary. He disarmed his enemies with an amiable grace that made defeat endurable, if ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... the fallacy or the reasoning: and indeed many, I might say most people, are not able to do it; which makes the publication of such quibblings and refinements the more pernicious. I am no skillful casuist nor subtle disputant; and yet I would undertake to justify and qualify the profession of a highwayman, step by step, and so plausibly, as to make many ignorant people embrace the profession, as an innocent, if not even a laudable ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... mischief still for idle hands to do" and manual labour is a recognized part of the monastic life. But in India conditions and ideals were different. The resident monk grew out of the wandering teacher or disputant, who was not likely to practise any trade; it was a maxim that religious persons lived on alms, and occupations which we consider harmless, such as agriculture, were held to be unsuitable because such acts as ploughing may destroy animal life. Probably the Buddha would ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... betters." "By my troth," said the bee, "the comparison will amount to a very good jest, and you will do me a favour to let me know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful a dispute." At this the spider, having swelled himself into the size and posture of a disputant, began his argument in the true spirit of controversy, with resolution to be heartily scurrilous and angry, to urge on his own reasons without the least regard to the answers or objections of his opposite, and fully predetermined in ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... above remarks were true. Still, Dr. Berg was almost a gentleman compared with Dr. McCalla, and he was vastly more of a scholar and debater, far as he was from being a model disputant. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... an elastic bow. He takes any shape in sentiment or opinion you please to give him, with most obliging disposition. As you think, so he thinks; as you say, so he says. If you deny, he denies; if you affirm, he affirms. He is no wrangler or disputant, no dogmatist or snubber. You may always rely upon having a hearing from him, whatever you say. And observe this, what he is to you, so he is to others, however averse they may be in sentiment to yourself. He is very much of a weathercock-make ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... REFORMATION—(a subject, upon which, from a professional feeling, I thought it my duty to say something!)—but for the sake of showing how dexterously the most important events and palpable truths may be described and perverted by an artful and headstrong disputant. The work was written expressly to defame ELIZABETH, CECIL, and BACON, and to introduce the Romish religion upon the ruins of the Protestant. The ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of the so-called "Negro Problem," there is, as a rule, a great deal of the sentimental and still more of the sensational. By a series of non sequitur arguments the average disputant succeeds admirably in proving what is foreign to the subject. This is true of writers of both sections of our country—North as well as South—but especially true of those of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... great likeness: and I would have excused Hamilton for his notion if he had fairly given reference to the part of the book in which his quotation was found. For I had shown in my Formal Logic what part of Ploucquet's book I had used: and a fair disputant would either have strengthened his point by showing that I had been at his part of the book, or allowed me the advantage of it being apparent that I had not given evidence of having seen that part of the book. My good friend, though an honest man, was sometimes ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... to a third and a fourth. Some masters were, perhaps, more distinguished in human Science; others in Divinity. Columbkill studied in two or three different schools, and visited others, perhaps as disputant or lecturer—a common custom in later years. Nor should we associate the idea of under-age with the students of whom we speak. Many of them, whether as teachers or learners, or combining both characters together, reached middle life ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... to him the nature of a 'simile in multis,' Socrates himself defines figure as 'the accompaniment of colour.' But some one may object that he does not know the meaning of the word 'colour;' and if he is a candid friend, and not a mere disputant, Socrates is willing to furnish him with a simpler and more philosophical definition, into which no disputed word is allowed to intrude: 'Figure is the limit of form.' Meno imperiously insists that he must still have ...
— Meno • Plato
... Porson and Boswell encountered him in drinking matches and were both left under the table.[143] The house was thus a small centre of intellectual life, though the symposia were not altogether such as became philosophers. Horne Tooke was a keen and shrewd disputant, well able to impress weaker natures. His neighbour, Sir Francis Burdett, became his political disciple, and in later years was accepted as the radical leader. Tooke died at Wimbledon ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... a Lion which was the stronger of the two, and while they were seeking evidence on the matter in dispute, they came at last to a sepulchre, on which {the human disputant} pointed out a Lion, depicted with his jaws rent asunder by a Man—a striking proof of superior strength. The Lion made answer: "This was painted by a human hand; if Lions knew how to paint, you would see the man undermost. But I will give a more convincing proof of our valour." ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... laine)"—Delane being then unjustly suspected of having been "nobbled" during his visits to my lady's salon, at the expense of the "Times," of which he was at that time the editor. Nor would you enjoy the discomfiture of a disputant of "Master Douglas" (as Thackeray rather testily named him), who, after chaffing the great wit for the unsteadiness of hand through which he broke a glass—which, he declared, he never did—received for reply an incredulous stare, and the cutting enquiry, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... efficient striking force ready for instant action. And now the time for action had come. The force was ready. From the harbors the troopships steamed away, their decks crowded with cheery soldiers, their flags waving a proud challenge to any disputant of ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... beautiful of human races, and one of the tallest—the Paumotuan averaging a good inch shorter, and not even handsome; the Marquesan open-handed, inert, insensible to religion, childishly self-indulgent—the Paumotuan greedy, hardy, enterprising, a religious disputant, and with a trace of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that goes," commented Mr. Kirk, fortified by the entry of a new disputant into the argument, "that even Nero had his attractive ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... this: a week ago the three Chinese partners had a serious row. They quarreled, then fought. Two of the yellow partners killed the third! And now, a serious problem confronted the two survivors of that misunderstanding. What was to be done with the remains of the unsuccessful disputant?" ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... I were a more accomplished disputant, or a more learned person, perhaps I should feel its truth, its usefulness for those who are happy enough to perceive it; but if I find evidence for it which I cannot combat, I also find objections ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... right through the sophistries of Mr. Douglass; and although the latter gentleman threw bouquets at the audience, and indulged in the most exquisite word-painting, he was compelled to leave the field a vanquished disputant. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... in faith the most distantly removed from them. A long and friendly interview then took place, in which each communed with each, and by words of faith or affection helped to supply the strength which all needed for the approaching conflict. One saw no longer and heard no longer the enthusiastic disputant more bent upon victory than truth, and heedless of the wounds he gave to the heart, provided he convinced the head or silenced the tongue, but instead, those who now appeared no other than a company of neighbors and friends engaged in the promotion ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... Horace into English better than any of them.' He afterwards studied physick at Edinburgh, and upon the Continent; and I have been informed, was enabled to pursue his travels on foot[1209], partly by demanding at Universities to enter the lists as a disputant, by which, according to the custom of many of them, he was entitled to the premium of a crown, when luckily for him his challenge was not accepted; so that, as I once observed to Dr. Johnson, he disputed his passage through Europe[1210]. He ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Her only disputant on the subject was Miss Baker, and she startled that lady much by the things which she said. Now, with Miss Baker, not to be a lady was to be nothing. It was her weakness, and I may also say her strength. Her ladyhood was of that nature that it took no soil from ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... may itself be agreed upon, while the details are still objects of dispute. But in that case the large thought, having put the details in proper perspective, prevents unpleasant conflict by revealing their comparative littleness. Also, agreement on the large point convinces each disputant of the other's partial sanity, at least, and thus preserves harmony; (c) or, finally, the principle itself may become an object of dispute. Even then the largeness of the idea places the discussion on a high plane, and the disputants, impressed with the dignified, impersonal ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... upon rules of justice confessedly true—each is triumphant so long as he is not obliged to take into consideration any other maxims of justice than those he has selected, but that as soon as their several maxims are brought face to face, each disputant seems to have as much to say for himself as the others. No one can carry out his own notion of justice without trampling upon another equally binding.'[16] This view of the matter, however, can scarcely be regarded as satisfactory. ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... resist her. Her decision did not seem to have altered in the least, nor was she at all discouraged by Mrs. Tarbell's warnings; and Mrs. Tarbell found that in every conversation which took place on the subject Mrs. Tarbell began as a philosopher and ended as a disputant. All that could be done was to give Miss Stiles her own way and try to improve her taste in dress if possible. It was practically understood between them, though Mrs. Tarbell had as yet refused to commit ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... left without advocates. Some years ago, at Trinity College, Cambridge, Mr. G.E. Moore began to produce a very deep impression amongst the younger spirits by his powerful and luminous dialectic. Like Socrates, he used all the sharp arts of a disputant in the interests of common sense and of an almost archaic dogmatism. Those who heard him felt how superior his position was, both in rigour and in force, to the prevailing inversions and idealisms. The abuse ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... much more cautious disputant, thought it substantial truth to say that Rome never burnt heretics, there were things as false in his own early writings. If Moehler, in the religious wars, diverted attention from Catholic to Protestant atrocities, he took the example from his friend's book, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... far less impressive, a political theorist instead of a statesman, a student of the balance of power instead of a soldier, a casuistical disputant about culture and morals in place of a devil venturing all for empire and revenge. It is as if Alexander were exchanged for Aristotle: almost as if St. George were replaced by Mr. Worldly Wiseman. The imagination is affected ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... equalled." Even the grave and reverend Westminster Review found "after reading what the Lord Chief Justice himself characterises as Mr. Foote's very striking and able speech, that the editor of the Freethinker is very far from being the vulgar and uneducated disputant which the Spectator appears to have supposed him." Other Liberal papers, like the Pall Mall Gazette and the Referee, that had at first joined in the chorus of execration over the fallen "blasphemer," now found that my ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... A chance word was enough to set some of them by the ears, asking each other whether the soul may or can descend again into the corruptible body; and it was one day when this question was being disputed that a disputant, pressing forward, announced his belief that the soul, being alone immortal, does not attempt to regain the temple of the body. A doctrine which astonished Joseph, so simple did it seem and so reasonable; and as he stood wondering why ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... meeting with something portentous or dangerous. Nor can he defend a dogma better than he communes with men; for he knows not that which attacks it. He supposes it to be a set of book arguments, whereas it is something lying very deep in the heart of the disputant, into ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... evident to us that these, and even minuter points of accentual scansion, have been regarded by Mr. Coleridge as worthy of study and observation. We do not, of course, mean that rules of this kind were always in his mind while composing, any more than that an expert disputant is always thinking of the distinctions of mood and figure, whilst arguing; but we certainly believe that Mr. Coleridge has almost from the commencement of his poetic life looked upon versification as constituting in and by itself a much ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Scribe trembled with rage. But the throng had caught the name of Elijah, and knew to whom the disputant referred—a man in tattered furs whom a few hours before they had seen dragged away by a negro naked to the waist, and some ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... me. Drive on, coachman, and drown her replies in the clatter of hoofs. Round by the Stag, Zoe. I am uneasy till I have locked Fair Science up. I own it is a mean way of getting rid of a troublesome disputant." ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... startled up, his large eyes glittering blackly in the paleness of his face. Gnulemah, with the serenity of a victorious disputant willing to make ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... to punish any one for what he cannot help. Each is triumphant so long as he is not compelled to take into consideration any other maxims of justice than the one he has selected; but as soon as their several maxims are brought face to face, each disputant seems to have exactly as much to say for himself as the others. No one of them can carry out his own notion of justice without trampling upon another equally binding. These are difficulties; they have always been felt ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... he is more interested in the results than in the method. He has a just instinct of the presence of a master, and prefers to sit as a scholar with Plato than as a disputant. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... that in any other times would have been a man of incorruptible virtue; and yet, in our unprincipled age, he is content to barter the interests of truth and the "majesty of plain-dealing" for a brilliant paradox, or (shall I say?) for the glory of being reputed an accomplished disputant. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... held in Germany and under the auspices of its emperor. He now admitted that even a general council could err, and was soon convinced "that we are all Hussites, without knowing it; yes, Paul and St. Augustine were good Hussites." Luther's public encounter with a disputant of European reputation, and the startling admissions which he was compelled to make, first made him realize that he might become the leader in an attack on the Church. He began to see that a great change ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... property to which claim was laid by the head of a county family of wealth. Probabilities were altogether in his favour, when he gave up the contest upon the offer of a comfortable annuity from the disputant. To leave his schooling and his possible estate together, and sit down comfortably by his own fireside, with the means of buying books, and within reach of a good old library—that of King's College by preference—was to him the sum of all that was desirable. The income offered ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... egotistical; nor to be criticized for being so. It is not pleasant to reveal to high and low, young and old, what has gone on within me from my early years. It is not pleasant to be giving to every shallow or flippant disputant the advantage over me of knowing my most private thoughts, I might even say the intercourse between myself and my Maker. But I do not like to be called to my face a liar and a knave; nor should I be doing my duty to ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Theaetetus is the same as the Socrates of the earlier dialogues. He is the invincible disputant, now advanced in years, of the Protagoras and Symposium; he is still pursuing his divine mission, his 'Herculean labours,' of which he has described the origin in the Apology; and he still hears the voice of his oracle, bidding him receive or not receive the truant souls. There he ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... believed to be 1505, but of late some writers have found reason to hold that he was really b. some years later, 1510 or even 1513. At Glasgow he was the pupil of John Major (q.v.), and became distinguished as a disputant. He is believed to have been ordained a priest about 1530, after which he went to St. Andrews and taught. About this time, however, there is a gap of 12 years or more, during which almost nothing is known ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Lord Robert was for the nations to enter into a covenant to submit disputes to international investigation and to obtain a report before engaging in hostilities and also a covenant not to make war on a disputant nation which accepted a report which had been unanimously adopted. He further proposed that the members of the League should undertake to regard themselves as ipso facto at war with a member violating ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... of our understandings with theirs. The study of books is a languishing and feeble motion that heats not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises at once. If I converse with a strong mind and a rough disputant, he presses upon my flanks, and pricks me right and left; his imaginations stir up mine; jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up to something above myself; and acquiescence is a quality altogether tedious in discourse. But, as our mind fortifies ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... dear Julia, that an inaccurate use of words produces such a strange confusion in all reasoning, that in the heat of debate, the combatants, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes, fall promiscuously on both. A skilful disputant knows well how to take advantage of this confusion, and sometimes endeavours to create it. I do not know whether I am to suspect you of such a design; but I must ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... until his spiritual mission would have been forcibly swallowed up in the mission of natural philosopher; but, on the other hand, to pause resolutely at any one stage of this public examination, and to refuse all further advance, would be, in the popular opinion, to retreat as a baffled disputant from insane paradoxes which he had not been able to support. One step taken in that direction was fatal, whether the great envoy retreated from his own words to leave behind the impression that he was defeated as a rash speculator, or stood to these words, and thus fatally entangled ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... was useless arguing with so pertinacious a disputant we were compelled humbly to submit. The horse had one stall—we took possession of the other. To make ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would allow, we collected all the hay and straw and reeds, so as to form a thick layer of dry materials ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... on a subject of the highest importance. This is the best kind of service which a clear thinker who regards the subject without what a hostile disputant might call professional bias, can render to the ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... Principality for the oldest son of the last reigning Grand Prince; making sure at the same time that this Prince belonged to the Muscovite line. This was not entirely accomplished until 1431, when Vasili carried his dispute to the Horde for the Khan's decision. The other disputant, who was making a desperate stand for his rights under the old system of seniority, was the "presumptuous uncle" already mentioned, who was, it will be remembered, commanded to lead by the bridle the horse of his triumphant Muscovite nephew. The sons of the disappointed ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... the Minister after a pause, during which the Vicar drew breath. "And often, when confronted in a hurry with an argument which I dislike but see no present way to controvert, I fall back for moral support on the tone of the disputant. . . . I have a feeling at this moment that you are in the wrong, somewhere and somehow, because you are talking ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... with the university pedant, had before criticized upon in a masterly manner, and like a good Englishwoman, from the authority of her godfather Deane, concluded, that our Milton has excelled him in the sublimity of his images, this, is a controversy which I shall not enter into, with so lovely a disputant, whose eyes, whatever her lips may be, are always in the right. We are asked, would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer, of what violences, murders, depredations, have ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... is my affair,' I answered. He threw up his hands in despair; but in a moment his place was taken by an unexpected disputant. ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... See Mr. Long's introduction to these orations. "All this I admit," says Mr. Long, speaking of some possible disputant; "but he will never convince any man of sense that the first of Roman writers, a man of good understanding, and a master of eloquence, put together such tasteless, feeble, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... his realm should be decided. The points actually contested were trivial enough. Colman, Aidan's successor at Holy Island, pleaded for the Irish fashion of the tonsure, and for the Irish time of keeping Easter: Wilfrid pleaded for the Roman. The one disputant appealed to the authority of Columba, the other to that of St. Peter. "You own," cried the king at last to Colman, "that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven—has He given such power to Columba?" The bishop could but ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... lofty sense of duty, a strong conviction of the essential truths of revealed Christianity; sincere believers in the gospel, of enduring principle, of pure, consistent, blameless life and conduct. Speculative theology he cared little or nothing about. He was no disputant, no doubter, no casuist; of the heights of mysticism, of the depths of infidelity, he knew nothing. He was conservative, of course, from temperament rather than from inquiry. He took the literal, prose view of Calvinism, ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... theological peg, and to prevent him from roving. And, up to a certain point, men continually give in. They find it easier and more comfortable to lower their arms, and not always to be maintaining a barren controversy. They have not the slightest wish to convince their affectionate feminine disputant, to take from her the sincere and positive dogmas on which her happiness is built, and to substitute for these a phase of doubt and difficulty for which her past intellectual life has not fitted her. Accordingly, they indulge in a thousand little hypocrisies of a more ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... his undertaking, carefully consider these pungent words of Bishop Beveridge, "Opposite answers, and downright arguments advantage a cause; but when a disputant leaves many things untouched, as if they were too hot for his fingers; and declines the weight of other things, and alters the true state of the question: it is a shrewd sign, either that he has not weighed ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... the same time it adds to their value. Dr. Owen makes his reader feel that the point in debate is not an isolated dogma, but a part of the "whole counsel of God;" and by the positive as well as practical form in which he presents it, he does all which a disputant can to counteract the skeptical and pragmatical tendencies of religious controversy. Hence, too, it comes to pass that, with one of the commonplaces of Protestantism or Calvinism for a nucleus, his works are most of them virtual systems of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... glanced towards the window. "But I see a more formidable disputant for my conqueror to encounter is coming into the field,—one whose profession it is to substitute some other romance for that ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that he battled with a disputant who imbibed his faith from the lights of nature, eschewing all subtleties of doctrine, he willingly abandoned a controversy from which he believed neither profit nor credit was to be derived. While the scout was speaking, he had also seated himself, and producing the ready little volume and the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... vituperant factum atque in eo disputant contaminari non decere fabulas ... qui quom hunc accusant, Naevium Plautum ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... in the college of San Juan de Letran, [16] where he enjoyed the reputation of being a consummate dialectician, so much so that in the days when the sons of Guzman [17] still dared to match themselves in subtleties with laymen, the able disputant B. de Luna had never been able either to catch or to confuse him, the distinctions made by Fray Sibyla leaving his opponent in the situation of a fisherman who tries to catch eels with a lasso. The Dominican says little, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Mr. Naseby defending the Church of England in a volley of oaths, or supporting ascetic morals with an enthusiasm not entirely innocent of port wine. Dick used to wax indignant, and none the less so because, as his father was a skilful disputant, he found himself not seldom in the wrong. On these occasions, he would redouble in energy, and declare that black was white, and blue yellow, with much conviction and heat of manner; but in the morning such ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... For he is a retail trader, and his wares are either imported or home-made, like those of other retail traders; his art is thus deprived of the character of a liberal profession. But the most distinguishing characteristic of him is, that he is a disputant, and higgles over an argument. A feature of the Eristic here seems to blend with Plato's usual description of the Sophists, who in the early dialogues, and in the Republic, are frequently depicted as endeavouring to save themselves ...
— Sophist • Plato
... remark, that we recently listened to a very interesting discussion, at the 'Union' club, between an English traveler of high repute, and a warm Unionist, upon the attitude of England. The former seemed as ardent as was the latter disputant in his abhorrence of the Southern traitors; but he constructed a very fair argument for the consistency of England. Taking for his first position, that foreign nations viewed the Jeff Davis movement as a revolution, self-sustained ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... possunt: itaque ea nolui scribere, quae nec indocti intellegere possent nec docti legere curarent. 5. Vides autem—eadem enim ipse didicisti—non posse nos Amafinii aut Rabirii similis esse, qui nulla arte adhibita de rebus ante oculos positis volgari sermone disputant, nihil definiunt, nihil partiuntur, nihil apta interrogatione concludunt, nullam denique artem esse nec dicendi nec disserendi putant. Nos autem praeceptis dialecticorum et oratorum etiam, quoniam ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in University life. Melanchthon's prophecy had proved too true: "We have seen already how religion has been put in peril by the irruption of barbarism, and I am very much afraid that this will happen again." At a Disputation in the University of Wittenberg, the Chancellor addressed a disputant with such epithets as "Hear, thou hog! thou hound! thou fool! or whatever thou art, thou stolid ass!" Another prominent personage of Wittenberg, in a Disputation, became so enraged at hearing Melanchthon addressed as authority against him, that he pulled down ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... of amenity? Milton was born a humanist, but the Puritan temper, as we know, mastered him. There is nothing more unlovely and unamiable than Milton the Puritan disputant. Some one answers his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. "I mean not," rejoins Milton, "to dispute philosophy with this pork, who never read any." However, he does reply to him, and throughout the reply Milton's great joke is, that his ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... grew up and married, branched out and became owners of industries which had formerly belonged to men who had traded with Burridge. He saw his grocery trade dwindle and sink, while with age his religiosity grew, and he began to be little more than a petty disputant, one constantly arguing as to whether the interpretation of the Bible as handed down from the pulpit of what he now considered his recalcitrant church was sound or not. When those who years before had ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Lordship believes in the Trinity." "Who told you so?" said Middleton. "Not believe in the Trinity!" cried the priest in amazement. "Nay," said Middleton; "prove your religion to be true if you can; but do not catechize me about mine." As it was plain that the Secretary was not a disputant whom it was easy to take at an advantage, the controversy ended almost as soon as it began. [429] When fortune changed, Middleton adhered to the cause of hereditary monarchy with a stedfastness which was the more respectable ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... maiden's gentle hand. I did not notice her movement to her father's side. She was there when I first observed her, with one hand laid upon his temple, and lightly smoothing the hair with a caressing motion. Gradually the high tone of then disputant subsided, and his words had in them less of personal rancour. Still, the discussion went on; and I noticed that the maiden's hand, which rested on the temple when unimpassioned words were spoken, resumed its caressing motion the instant there was the smallest perceptible tone of anger ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... person.' As to wine, or any other liquor, he never drank any but at meal-time. I remember to have heard an instance of Mr. Alban's meekness, for I am not a witness of it. When he was presiding over one of his students in divinity in the public hall of Douay college, a disputant, who was probably much offended at some proposition in the thesis, as being opposite to some favorite opinion of his school or religious family, said to him with intolerable rudeness, habes mel in ore, sed fel in corde: to which he made no reply, nor showed the least resentment. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... insisted; she threatened him with the vengeance of the Company, the premier, and the nobility and gentry of the British realm. The master-at-arms, finding he had no chance in argument, doused the glim—pitiable resource of a weak disputant—then basely fled ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... dispute might have lasted, before the iron arguments of despotism achieved the inevitable victory, I know not; but it was cut short by a party whom neither disputant had deigned to consult. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... hand, or with a view to some special part of the discussion. When the turn of some other part of the matter comes, it will be convenient and often necessary to bring out into full light another side of your opinion, not contradictory, but complementary, and the great distinction of a candid disputant or of a reader of good faith, is his willingness to take pains to see the points of reconciliation among different aspects and different expressions of what ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... to have his word/Of contradiction] To have his word of contradiction is no more than, he is used to contradict; and to have his word, that is, not to be opposed. We still say of an obstinate disputant, he will have the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... see all this, and a great deal more, and will point it better than I can. Let me as an old friend entreat you not to pass this over, but to allow me to continue to think of you as I always have thought of you hitherto, namely, as the most impartial disputant in the world.—Yours, &c. ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... company street, loud language. One disputant: "I keep my feet as clean as yours!" The other. "You do? I have washed mine twice since the beginning of the hike." The first: "So have I, Monday and yesterday. You take care of your person and I'll ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... captain slipped them, kings, queens and knaves, high, low, jack and the game, without regard to rank, into the lady's work-basket. As soon as this feat was successfully performed, a sign was given to the commodore that the conspiracy was effected, and that disputant in theology gradually began to give ground, while he continued to maintain that jumping the rope was a sin, though it might be one of a nominal class. There is little doubt, had he possessed a smattering of phrases, a greater command of biblical learning, and more zeal, that the fisherman might ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... arguments. This announcement that readiness was the chief quality sought for in the solutions here given, modifies our inference from the other qualities which those solutions present; and it is but fair to presume that when the Christian disputant is not in a hurry Dr. Cumming would recommend replies less ready and more veracious. Here is an example of what in another place {74} he tells his readers is "change in their pocket . . . a little ready argument which they can employ, and therewith answer a fool ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... That type of disputant is still with us, and is still supporting his beliefs with the same tactics. And it is successful with some. There is a certain snobbishness in human nature that makes it seek the association of well-known ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... You disputant! You should not have called yourself unhappy at all then. You should have told the whole, or kept quiet. Reason and necessity commanded you to forget me? I am a great stickler for reason; I have a great respect for necessity. ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing |
