"Fallacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... harmless and tractable, and behaving pretty much the same as other idiots. The idea, therefore, of a race of men, in a healthy, natural condition, having ever existed without the possession of reason, is now deemed wholly fallacious. It is even maintained by Schlegel, and other authorities of great weight, that the civilized state is the primitive one, and that savage life is a degeneracy from it, rather than civilized society being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... this juncture the discoveries of Captain Inglefield, R. N., in Smith Sound, afforded to Kane a new route for his activities. The scheme, as far as the search for Franklin was concerned, was well-meaning, but none the less fallacious and illogical. Kane was personally cognizant of the fact that Franklin had gone into Lancaster Sound, and had wintered in 1845-46 at Beechy Island, plainly following the direct and positive orders of the Admiralty, that he should push southward from Cape Walker to the neighborhood of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... to humanity its old idol, newly carved and painted. This idol is no other than humanity itself. This mixture of atheism and sensibility was particularly dangerous, because it met preexistent tendencies, and colored them with a fallacious poesy. The art of the historian, or rather of the romance-writer [Renan], consisted in his hiding the entire absence of all belief under graceful metaphors and an unctuous style, just as the brilliant snow of the Alps covers up the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... nominal value, but that the labor which I can obtain for it expresses its real value—I reply, that the quantity of labor is no more any expression of the real value than the quantity of money; both are equally fallacious expressions, because equally equivocal. My hat, it is true, now buys me x quantity of labor, and some years ago it bought x/2 quantity of labor. But this no more proves that my hat has advanced in real value according to that proportion, than a double money ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... think; and it is, therefore, a matter of importance that they should think aright. It is of importance, that they should be guarded against fallacious Utopian promises. Henceforth, there is no security for the stability of the world but in the contentment of minds. There is no rest for mankind, unless men will understand the conditions of their destiny; ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... crossed two knives on the table in front of her. Notwithstanding this, the young woman defended herself from the charge of superstition. Thus, if the salt were upset, it meant nothing, even on a Friday; but when it came to knives, that was too much of a good thing; that had never proved fallacious. There could be no doubt that something unpleasant was going to happen to her. She yawned, and then with an air, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... departure, but which brought about a touching reconciliation and the first kiss, and then, one night, while they were traveling together, he forced open the door of her bedroom at the hotel, which she had locked, and came in like a mad man. There was the phantom of violence, and the fallacious submission of a woman, who was overcome by so much tenderness, who rebelled no longer, but who accepted the yoke of her master and lover. And then, the conquest of the body after the conquest of the heart, which forged his chain link by link, pleasures which besot and corrupt old ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... extending; to restrict it, and it was only the profits he managed to restrict. Nobody had ever made money out of that concern except the capable Scot, who retired (after his discharge) to the neighbourhood of Banff and built a castle with his profits. The memory of this fallacious Caledonian Morris would revile daily, as he sat in the private office opening his mail, with old Joseph at another table, sullenly awaiting orders, or savagely affixing signatures to he knew not what. And when the man of the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... impress them, show a wide knowledge of all sorts of things, "play up to them" in every way, until they become so impressed that they are ready to accept as truth anything he chooses to tell them. Any daily paper will provide examples of the sad results of the power of this kind of fallacious reasoning. The get-rich-quick schemes, the worthless stock deals, the patent medicine quacks, the extravagantly worded claims of new religions and faddist movements, all testify to the power this form of seemingly convincing argument has over the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... since he only re-echoes the sentiment of the whole Catholic world, which with wonderful unanimity proclaims its veneration for the august Father of the faithful, and offers itself, as a shield, to the Sovereign of Rome." He adds, that "his mind revolts from those fallacious maxims, which some persons try to insinuate into the feeble minds of the people, throwing doubts on the incontestable rights of the Church, and that he looks with contempt on such intrigues." As however both the Senator and his colleagues ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... ascribed the horse's extreme thinness to a system of rigorous training; and the owners did not question the statement in the least. He had made them believe, and they in turn had made many others believe, that Pompier de Nanterre would certainly win such and such a race; and, trusting in this fallacious promise, they risked their money on ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... and I once thought it conclusive. It now appears to me fallacious. All who are fit to influence electors are not, for that reason, fit to be themselves electors. This last is a much greater power than the former, and those may be ripe for the minor political function who could not as yet be safely trusted ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... kind of Fallacy—'Fallacious Premisses'—you will detect when, after marking them on the larger Diagram, you try to transfer the marks to the smaller. You will take its four compartments, one by one, and ask, for each in turn, "What mark can I place HERE?"; and in EVERY ...
— The Game of Logic • Lewis Carroll
... to the achievement in a derivative signification, supposed to be somewhat like the primitive one. The word, however, is just as properly two names instead of one, in this case, as in that of the most perfect ambiguity. And one of the commonest forms of fallacious reasoning arising from ambiguity, is that of arguing from a metaphorical expression as if it were literal; that is, as if a word, when applied metaphorically, were the same name as when taken in its original sense: which will be seen more particularly ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... for the better after a change in the form of the State is, if not a wicked untruth to deceive the common people, the ridiculous absurdity of a bookworm. Thus the theory that a constitutional monarchy will immediately follow, if the President consents to become a monarch, is also fallacious. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... resolved to go himself, instead of sending any one else, to bring his supposed son to the farm. It is more easy to imagine than describe Mrs Broderick's state of anxiety. Was her long-lost boy to be restored to her? or were the anticipations she had formed to be fallacious? Her daughters shared her feelings, but they were so much occupied from morning till night in their various duties, that their minds consequently dwelt less on the subject than did hers. Rupert had satisfied himself that ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... pounds: and suppose, my dear," said she, "while we have that little sum, we should think of employing it some way or other, to procure some small subsistence for ourselves and our family. As for your dependence on the colonel's friendship, it is all vain, I am afraid, and fallacious. Nor do I see any hopes you have from any other quarter, of providing for yourself again in the army. And though the sum which is now in our power is very small, yet we may possibly contrive with it to put ourselves into ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... place, anchors are not for men, but for ships; and in the second, anchorage is the characteristic not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope is aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,—the first time as the Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more beautifully, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... procedure the indignant young gentleman (thinks my Author) never forgave; continuing a hater of Friedrich all his days; and instilling the same sentiment into the Earl of Bute at a period which was very critical, as we shall see. This is my Author's, the often fallacious though not mendacious Dr. Zimmermann's, rather deliberate account; a man not given to mendacity, though filled with much vague wind, which renders ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with some terrible trials. Every one in the house was aware of and felt the minister's distress. No more magnificent or recklessly improvident reunions. Money had been the pretext assigned by Fouquet, and never was any pretext, as Gourville said, more fallacious, for there was not the slightest appearance ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... opera, the work of five or six weeks, brought him as much money as he had received for his "Emile," which had cost him twenty years of meditation, and three years of composition. This single fact represents a hundred. So fallacious are public opinion ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... could not help falling into insipidity. Beaumont and Fletcher generally couple nature with fancy; they succeed in giving an extraordinary appearance to what is common, and thus preserve a certain fallacious image of the ideal. The morality of these writers is ambiguous. Not that they failed in strong colours to contrast greatness of soul and goodness with baseness and wickedness, or did not usually conclude with the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... a man who denies first premises, and we submit the assertion that vitality is no exception to the treatment of the dead, amounts to that. We say, argument with such a man is worse than nothing; it would be fallacious as the Eolian experiment of whistling the most inspiriting jigs to an inanimate, and consequently unmusical, milestone, opposing a transatlantic thunder-storm with "a more paper than powder" "penny cracker," or setting an owl to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... seen. Between the Mogoung river and Mogoung town considerable portions of some low hills to the East, presented the appearance of clearings. It must however be observed, that the appearance of clearings is a most fallacious ground on which to form an estimate of the population; 1st, owing to the habits of a nomadic population; 2ndly, because a spot once cleared, keeps up the appearance of a clearing for a long time; and 3rdly, because some particular ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... unseen world. Only the real was real, I contended, and what one did not perceive, was not, could not be. I believed in a mechanical universe. Chemistry and physics explained everything. "Can no being be?" he demanded in reply. I said that his question was but the major promise of a fallacious Christian Science syllogism. Oh, believe me, I know my logic, too. But he was very stubborn. I never had ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... money brings to honest souls, and to young wives on whom life has hitherto smiled, and who conceal their alarms. Also Lisbeth had immediately guessed that her mother had given her no money. Adeline's delicacy had brought her so low as to use the fallacious excuses that ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the widow may have control of property while her children are minors. The right to vote, which was claimed under the idea that representation should go before taxation, he discussed with ability, taking ground against women voting. The arguments used by the other side were shown to be fallacious, or at least partaking of the aristocratic element. Women are already tried by "their peers," though not by those of their own sex. As to women holding office, this movement had proved the position ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "old fogies" who preach that, as there are two opponents and only one partner, all information is doubly advantageous to the adversary. This "moss-covered" idea was advanced concerning the play in Whist and Bridge, but experience proved it fallacious. In Auction, its folly is apparent, not only in the matter of the play, but even more surely ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... mould men's names—taking from them, adding to them, melting out all the liquid letters, torturing mutes to make them speak, and making vowels dumb,—to bring it to a fallacious homonomy at the last, that their names may be the same with those noble houses they ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... fallacious than that which authors form of the reception which their labours will find among mankind. Scarcely any man publishes a book, whatever it be, without believing that he has caught the moment when the publick attention is vacant to his call, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... not dead," the other truthfully opposed to this fallacious supposition, and turned ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... witch could not pray, and one way of testing her guilty connection with the evil one was to ascertain whether she could repeat the Lord's Prayer correctly. If she failed to do so, she was pronounced to be a witch. This test, as everyone knows, must have been a fallacious one, for there are good living illiterate people who are incapable of saying their Pader; but such was the test, and failure ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... persist, and were not put off by this discovery of a superficial flightiness of thought, but dug deeper in his mind, ended, as I ended, in something like veneration for his essential wisdom. They found again, as I did, that he was very apt to be in the right when he seemed most fallacious. After all, a house may be cool and comfortable, even if the front door is painted in flame-colour and has a knocker of rock ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... been many reasons given, first and last, why women should not vote, but I desire to say, in the full light of a ripe experience, that some of them are fallacious. I refer more particularly to the argument that it will degrade women to go to the polls and vote like a little man. While I am not and have never been a howler for female suffrage, I must admit that it is much more of a success than ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... girl's story. I felt at once that I must take charge of her, and put an end to this ill-assorted match. I imagined that I should not have much difficulty in sending her back to Venice, which she might never have quitted if it had not been for her trust in me, founded on the fallacious promises of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half-bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us. And he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... serve as a complete indication of the many forces which are at work, or as an adequate moral barometer of the general moral state. The attempt to establish such a condition too closely, seems to me to lead to a good many very edifying but not the less fallacious conclusions. ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... out with their baskets. Women and house-porters were coming out to wash pavements and entrances: the collective life of the town was waking up to another uneventful day; but they two were hastening off to long hours of sunlight and fresh air, unhampered by the passing of time, or by fallacious ideas of duty; were setting out for a new bit of world, to strange meals taken in strange places, reached by white roads, or sequestered wood-paths. In the train, they were crushed between the baskets of the marketwomen, who were journeying from one village to another. These sat with ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... nothing so fallacious as prophecies against second marriages, but I don't believe they will. She is too quietly dignified for the full brunt of reports to reach her, and too much concentrated on her children ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the more fantastically savage because of previous repression. The sole ultimate factor in human decisions is physical force. This we must learn, however repugnant the idea may seem, if we are to protect ourselves and our institutions. Reliance on anything else is fallacious and ruinous. Dangerous beyond description are the voices sometimes heard today, decrying the continuance of armament after the close of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... morning came, this anticipation proved to be fallacious. The first objects that greeted Zack's eyes when he lazily awoke about eleven o'clock, were an arm and a letter, introduced cautiously through his partially opened bedroom door. Though by no means contemptible in regard to muscular development, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... enough, however, such does not seem to be the case. So slight a place does the emotion of sexual love have in Japanese family life that some have gone to the extreme of denying it altogether. In his brilliant but fallacious volume, entitled "The Soul of the Far East," Mr. Percival Lowell states that the Japanese do not "fall in love." The correctness of this statement we shall consider in connection with the argument for Japanese impersonality. That "falling in love" is not a recognized ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... middle-aged and without any singularities, ought to have had the painful feeling that it served in a measure to deceive the public. In fact, upon the advertisement of the Batifol institution (Cours du lycee Henri IV. Preparation au baccalaureat et aux ecoles de l'Etat), one read these fallacious words, "There is a garden;" when in reality it was only a vulgar court graveled with stones from the river, with a paved gutter in which one could gather half a dozen of lost marbles, a broken top, and a certain ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... fancied plots of the aristocracy, and to save their country. The hoarse bawling of the vendors of the public journals, the patriotic chaunts of the Jacobins as they quitted their clubs, the tumultuous assemblies, the convocations to the patriotic ceremonies, fallacious fears as to the failure of provisions—kept the population of the city and faubourgs in a perpetual state of excitement, which suffered no one to remain inactive; indifference would have been considered treason; and it was necessary ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of the unchangeability of species. Even when quite different remains of animals were discovered by the advancing science of geology, they were forced into the existing narrow framework of science by Cuvier. Sir Charles Lyell completely undid the fallacious work of Cuvier, but in the meantime the zoologists themselves were moving toward the doctrine ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... virtue! Oh my country! had been the pathetic, though fallacious cry of former Oppositions; but the present he was sure acted on purer motives. They wept over their bleeding country, he had no doubt. Yet the patriot 'eye in a fine frenzy rolling' sometimes deigned to cast a wishful squint on ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... to state the real object; and affirms that in spite of these buts and ifs, the restoration of monarchy in France is the real and sole object of ministers, and that all else contained in the official notes are unmeaning words and distinctions fallacious, and perhaps meant to deceive. Is it, Sir, to be treated as a fallacious distinction, that the restoration of monarchy is not my sole or ultimate object; that my ultimate object is security, that I think no pledge for that security ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... timidly inquired if he did not think it was a waste of money, on which, in a kind way, he explained to me that "if the money were paid and put into circulation it did not signify what it had been spent upon." I knew there was something fallacious in this, but my own ideas were not clear upon the subject, and it did not become me to set up an argument with a distinguished old officer like the General. Of course the right answer is that there is always ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... even if the accumulated experience of the last ten years were not developing a conviction in his mind, that the methods hitherto adopted to ensure the tranquillity of that country were superficial and fallacious. His cabinet immediately recognized a distinction between political and predial sources of disorder. The first, they resolved into a mere system of agitation, no longer justifiable by the circumstances, and this they determined to put down. The second, they sought in the ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... that such a prize could only be defended by a husband already verging towards the decline of life, and whose heart, moreover, was believed to be in the keeping of another? The sighs of the suitors, however, all adventurous and calculating as they might be, were wasted, their hopes altogether fallacious. For six long years there was nothing more accorded to that crowd of often-renewed adorers save the smiles of an innocent coquetry. He who, during that period of honest gallantry, coming near to La Rochefoucauld, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... overturned. He remained supine, and had to be reinstated by Hadria and Hannah, and comforted with sweetmeats. Martha's logic received one of its first checks. She evidently made up her mind that logic was a fallacious mode of inference, and determined to abandon it for the future. These rebuffs in infancy, Hadria ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... undertake a defence of Mr. Newman (whose book I am as yet too slenderly acquainted with), may I be allowed, at this point, to intercept a fallacious view of that doctrine, as though essentially it proclaimed some imperfection in Christianity. The imperfection is in us, the Christians, not in Christianity. The impression given by Phil. to the hasty reader is, that, according to Newmanism, the Scriptures make a good ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... become the fashion to this day to dish up the great poets' lines more or less seasoned or to repeat, one or the other of the fabulous stories, or fallacious theories so constantly put forward in regard to the origin of chess, so it may be not amiss to state what is known or can be gathered in regard to it, concerning the claims of countries other ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... By riches? ill would they abide the test. By poverty? on poverty awaits This ill, through want it prompts to sordid deeds. Shall we pronounce by arms? but who can judge By looking on the spear the dauntless heart? Such judgment is fallacious; for this man, Nor great among the Argives, nor elate With the proud honours of his house, his rank Plebeian, hath approv'd his liberal heart. Will you not then learn wisdom, you whose minds Error with false presentments leads astray? Will you not learn by manners and by deeds ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... beautiful furniture and excellent food and fine clothes were all solid enough; but they seemed most disconcertingly unreal. One letter from old Samuel had made them tremble, and the second had reduced them to illusions, or delusions. Even George's reputation as a rising sculptor appeared utterly fallacious. What rendered him savage was the awful injustice of Samuel. Samuel had no right whatever to play him such a trick. It was, in a way, worse than if Samuel had cut off the allowance altogether, for in that case he could at any rate have gone majestically to ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... be true, the inference usually drawn is fallacious: the inference that if Great Britain were not so situated, she would not have so great ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... present Inquisitors, and thus was explained the fact that I had seen nothing of the secretary, who would otherwise have undoubtedly come to interrogate, examine, and convict me of my crimes, and finally to announce my doom. All this appeared to me unanswerable, because it seemed natural, but it was fallacious under the Leads, where nothing is done after the natural order. I imagined the Inquisitors must have discovered my innocence and the wrong they had done me, and that they only kept me in prison for form's sake, and to protect their repute from the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... relied upon victory and drew an anticipatory picture of France triumphant, entitled, "Le Passage du Rhin." But the French never crossed the Rhine, and the drawing was given to this friend with the words: "My sketch has no longer any raison d'tre. Keep it in memory of our fallacious hopes." ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Pleiades engraved their picture with their own light. He left the plate exposed for hours, and on developing it not only were the stars seen, but there were also patches of faint light due to the presence of nebulae. It could not be said that the objects on the plate were fallacious, for another photograph was taken, when the same ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... of Elizabeth, Queen of England, a sect of fanatics, known as Dissenters or Nonconformists, basing their action upon the fallacious arguments derived from the fourth commandment, and upon the plea that the Saviour was raised from the dead on the first day of the week, inaugurated what is known as the Puritan Sabbath, which having been ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... whether other minds are affected by the same causes in the same manner. Yet by this criterion we must be content to judge, because no other can be obtained; and, indeed, we have no reason to think it very fallacious, for excepting here and there an anomalous mind, which either does not feel like others, or dissembles its sensibility, we find men unanimously concur in attributing happiness or misery to particular conditions, as they agree in acknowledging the cold of winter ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Grote, Glyn, himself, and others—had successively been consulted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and they had all expressed the same opinion and given the same advice; but that he had met their conclusions with a long chain of reasoning founded upon the most fallacious premises, columns of prices of stocks and exchequer-bills in former years, and calculations and conjectures upon these data, which the keen view and sagacious foresight of these men (whose wits are sharpened by the magnitude of their ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... to speak, aghast at this catastrophe. Like a fool, indeed, I had tumbled into the pit that had been dug for me by Chatellerault for I never doubted that it was of his contriving. At last, "My masters," said I, "these conclusions may appear to you most plausible, but, believe me, they are fallacious. I am perfectly acquainted with Monsieur de Chatellerault, and he with me, and if he were to speak the truth and play the man and the gentleman for once, he would tell you that I am, indeed, Bardelys. But Monsieur le Comte has ends of his own to serve in sending me to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... possessions, is freely predicted. It has always been the robber's plea. That is what it is to-day, even when employed by a professed Christian nation. Nor is it improved by the fact that the grounds upon which it is predicated and urged are largely fallacious. The spoliation of the Philippines will never repay us for the blood—our own blood—and treasure it has cost us, apart from any moral or humanitarian consideration. There is not one aspect in this business that promises to redound to our benefit. No, I won't say that; ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... erected warehouses on Chusan, in the hope that it will ultimately be retained by Great Britain, or that the Chinese Authorities will not object to their remaining on the Island subsequently to its restoration to their Imperial Master. I hope that their expectations may not prove fallacious. ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... representation of nine nights. Johnson's profits, after the deduction of expenses, and together with the hundred pounds, which he received from Robert Dodsley, for the copy, were nearly three hundred pounds. So fallacious were the hopes cherished by Walmsley, that Johnson would "turn out a ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... under consideration, namely, its doctrine of the inherently limited duration of species. This comes, it will be noticed, as a deduction from the modern physical doctrine of the equivalence of force. The reasoning is ingenious, but, if we mistake not, fallacious. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... is fallacious!" the inventor exclaimed. "Consider what it would mean here—a steel shaft sixteen stories high, ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... suppose that the fallacious idea of a cessation of hostilities will render these States remiss in their ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... to perform my promise of giving you an account of a visit made many years since to Abbotsford. I hope, however, that you do not expect much from me, for the travelling notes taken at the time are so scanty and vague, and my memory so extremely fallacious, that I fear I shall disappoint you with the meagreness and crudeness ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... legendary. It would be hard to say what inconsistent views he had not set forth within the space of the past hour; and all this with the utmost intensity, and yet with the utmost good-humor, always ready to acknowledge a point against himself,—the more readily if entirely fallacious,—with ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... apportioning quotas on the several States. If, on the contrary, those who make this proposition, expect that the commercial States, by carrying the five per cent duty to their private account, can derive from their neighbors, the idea is as fallacious as it is unjust. The equity of Congress would lead them to relax so much in the quotas as would render the contribution of the States proportionate, or if that could not be done, the suffering State would be induced to carry on its commerce. Thus the end would be defeated, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... himself. The element of military heroism was wanting. He had written to General Sherman on the subject, and of course the General thought he could not consent to be President—for that was what it amounted to—but his reasoning was fallacious. If General Sherman had the question put to him—whether to be President himself or turn the office over to the Democratic party, with the Solid South dominant—he would see his duty and do it, though his ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... double fallacy. To say that the vote was divided, begs the question. It was not divided so long as the resolution passed by the delegation remained valid, and its validity is not denied. The other part of the proposition is equally fallacious. A State is represented when there are in the body delegates authorized to represent it, whatever be their number. The arguments of my associates seem to be, that a State could only be represented in the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... upon the 'pave' for want of employment, yet M. de Calonne either did not see, or pretended not to see, the errors he had committed. Being informed that the Comte de Vergennes had attributed the public disorders to his fallacious policy, M. de Calonne sent a friend to the Count demanding satisfaction for the charge of having caused the riots. The Count calmly replied that he was too much of a man of honour to take so great an advantage, as to avail himself ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... to me that both theories are equally fallacious. I do not see how either can be wholly satisfying. There is no reason at all why a story should not contain both form and matter, a form, I should say, suited to the matter. Among the painters Vermeer is admittedly ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Sidney Herbert, "the few, the very few, landlords murdered—only five, and a few others!" If the honourable gentleman's memory was not very fallacious, he might have greatly enlarged the list; and if those persecuted men do survive, they certainly do not owe their preservation to any extraordinary sympathy in their behalf, or any exertions made to protect them, by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... to understand how tired Eve might well become (even before the fallacious fruit was tasted) of Adam's carefully maintained superiority. On thinking, however, of the judgment that she may have to suffer, and of her own death, she resolves to draw him in, her motive being not fear, but a sudden movement of ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... and promises of returning peace and happiness which gave Prince Charles's mother so much animation and hope after the return of her husband from Scotland were all very superficial and fallacious. The real grounds of the quarrel between the king and his Parliament, and of the feelings of alienation and ill will cherished toward the queen, were all, unfortunately, as deep and extensive as ever; and the storm, which lulled treacherously for a little ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... cotton, and the stimulus given to the production of it by the cotton-gin, made the prospect of emancipation by legislative action less probable as time advanced. The American Colonization Society was formed in 1811; and the fallacious hope was entertained by many, that the negroes might be carried back to the Liberian settlement on the African coast. The extension of slavery in the territory north-west of the Ohio had been prevented by the Congressional ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... quit this subject without attempting to adduce a specific instance wherein consciousness proves fallacious. Success, however, could hardly be worse; he fails to establish his point, but succeeds in discrediting either his candor or his discrimination. "Are we not," he says, "in certain circumstances, conscious of the existence of spectres and phantoms; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of commercial monopoly which Spain adopted with respect to America immediately on the discovery of the Continent was as disastrous to the motherland as to the colonies. Employing a fallacious theory in order that the riches of the New World should pass to Spain, and that the latter country should serve as sole provider to her colonies, all the legislation was in the first instance directed to this end. Thus in America all industries ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... some prisoners and many witnesses. These institutions were established, no doubt, upon the principle that those who had so large a share in making the laws, would certainly respect them. But experience has proved this hope to be fallacious; for no men know better than the judges of America, that on the occasion of any great popular excitement the law is powerless, and cannot, for the time, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the autumn of 1816 was probably occupied with the preparation of Persuasion for the press; and, on the whole, we should gather from the evidence before us that the earlier part of the winter saw one of those fallacious instances of temporary improvement which so often deceive nurses and patients alike, in cases of internal complaints. 'I have certainly gained strength through the winter,' she says, on January 24, 1817. On ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... of military adventurism, are consciously trying to play on the demoralization in the army, brought about by the internal and international situation of the country, and to this end are inspiring the discouraged elements with the fallacious idea that the very fact of a drive can rehabilitate the army—and by this mechanical means hide the lack of a definite program for liquidating the war. At the same time, it is clear that such an advance cannot but completely disorganize the army ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... guide me, I have taken her with me in one or two recent publications, which all tend to the same object. Nor have I here lost sight of her; but I have entered on a land where she alone is not to be trusted, and may make a pleasant companion but a most fallacious guide. To drop metaphor: history informs us that such things have been done or have occurred; but when we come to inquire into motives and characters, it is the most false and partial and unsatisfactory authority we can refer to. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... slight tendency. Also, since my basic assumption can't be justified, the whole thing may be fallacious. So I'm not going to publish it." He glanced at the ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... advocate the system of slavery; I conceive it to be essentially wrong; but so far as my observation has extended, I think its influence is far less injurious to the manners and morals of the people than the fallacious ideas of equality, which are so fondly cherished by the working classes of the white population in America. That these ideas are fallacious, is obvious, for in point of fact the man possessed of dollars does command ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... liberally contributed to adorn: I have converted it into the most perfect and delightful habitation in which a mortal could desire to end her days. Nevertheless, this hope of passing my life tranquilly and happily within its sheltering bosom will prove but fallacious, if I may credit a prediction which has been verified already in part. You doubtlessly remember the young man who so obstinately pursued me to announce the high destiny to which I should attain, ere I had for one moment contemplated ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... will is commonly denounced on the ground that it subverts morality and makes of religion a mocking. Such pious objections, of course, are foreign to logic, but nevertheless it may be well to give a glance to this one. It is based upon the fallacious hypothesis that the determinist escapes, or hopes to escape, the consequences of his acts. Nothing could be more untrue. Consequences follow acts just as relentlessly if the latter be involuntary as if they be voluntary. If I rob a bank of my free choice or ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... Men gather from our Aspect. A Man, they say, wears the Picture of his Mind in his Countenance; and one Man's Eyes are Spectacles to his who looks at him to read his Heart. But tho that Way of raising an Opinion of those we behold in Publick is very fallacious, certain it is, that those, who by their Words and Actions take as much upon themselves, as they can but barely demand in the strict Scrutiny of their Deserts, will find their Account lessen every Day. A modest Man preserves his Character, as a frugal Man ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... main principle an objection has been speciously raised, which at first sight appears of subversive weight; though, when further examined, it is found to be clearly fallacious. By an able but carping critic it was alleged that the mere chemical analysis of old-fashioned Herbal Simples makes their medicinal actions no less empirical than before: and that a pedantic knowledge of their constituent parts, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Smyth was not drunk, but he had been drinking—persistently nipping, as his custom was in times of mental excitement, in the fallacious hope of keeping up courage and steadying irritable nerves. The series of moods usually resultant on such recourse to spirituous liquors, followed one another with clock-work regularity. He was alternately hysterically elated, preternaturally moral, offensively quarrelsome, maudlin to ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... government. He had left Paris before my return thither, but I had frequent occasion to speak of that famous personage to Savary, whom, for the reason above assigned, I do not always term Duc de Rovigo. Savary knew better than any one the fallacious measures of Fouche's administration, since he was his successor. Fouche, under pretence of encouraging men of letters, though well aware that the Emperor was hostile to them, intended only to bring them into contempt by making them write verses at command. It was ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... alas! a furtive pleasure, and he knew that it was not true. For, occasionally, when the woman was old or drunk and he profited by the invitation, as soon as the candle was lighted in the garret, they no longer murmured the fallacious: handsome, dark man; and when they saw him, the old women grew still older, and the drunken women got sober. And more than one, although hardened against disgust, and ready for all risks, said to him, and in spite ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... whether designed or not, and of the bias given by adding an appendix with Mr. Hastings's own remarks upon the case, without giving the reasons of the other parties for their conduct. Now, if there was nothing else than the fallacious recital, and afterwards the suppression, I believe any rational and sober man would see perfect, good, and sufficient ground for laying aside any authority that can be derived from the opinions of persons, though of the first character (and I am sure no man living ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... human tie and earthly duty has been often sacrificed on the shrine of a rapt and metaphysical piety. Whatever her opinions, her new creed, her secret desire of the cloister, fed as it was by the sublime, though fallacious notion, that in her conversion, her sacrifice, the crimes of her race might be expiated in the eyes of Him whose death had been the great atonement of a world; whatever such higher thoughts and sentiments, they gave way, at that moment, to the irresistible impulse ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the Courts in Toronto and elsewhere, besides many items of local interest. Five columns are made up of editorials and editorial briefs, the latter an interesting feature of modern journalism. The 'leader' is a column in length, and is a sarcastic commentary on the 'fallacious hopes' of the Opposition; the next article is an answer to one in the London Economist, devoted to the vexed question of protective duties in the Colonies; another refers to modern 'literary criticism,' one of the strangest literary products of this busy age of intellectual development. In all ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... the fallacious principle on which this interesting establishment was founded. Had Greece, says a judicious observer on her fate, been united by a stricter confederation, and persevered in her union, she would never have worn the chains of Macedon; and might have proved a barrier to the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... how much more correct is the contention that great social abuses will and must influence different minds and temperaments in a different way. And how utterly fallacious the stereotyped notion that the teachings of Anarchism, or certain exponents of these teachings, are responsible for ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... We are not disposed to accept the theory of the passive mind as a sufficient philosophical explanation of the Scotch novels. But Hazlitt is certainly right to make much of the store of reading and reminiscence they imply, and it is not erroneous or fallacious to think of all Scott's writings in verse or prose as peculiarly the fruits of his life and experience. His various modes of writing are suggested to him by the way, and he finds his art with no long practice when the proper time comes to use it. After all, is this not what was meant by ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... a busy memory plays, That shakes the feelings to their inmost core; Thus beams the light of Hope's fallacious ray, When simple confidence can trust ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... soever as may have been his knowledge of their manners, customs, religion and traditions, yet it must be admitted that any inquiry into these, with a view to discover their origin, would most probably prove fallacious. A knowledge of the primitive language, alone can cast much light on the subject. Whether this knowledge can ever be attained, is, to say the least, very questionable—Being an unwritten language, and subject to change for so many centuries, it can scarcely be supposed now to bear much, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... enumeration. The subjects, the sides of life, the classes of persons of whom Shakespeare treats, are so comprehensive of high and low, serious and jocose, while Milton's are confined to a range of such seriousness and dignity, that the comparison is but fallacious. Nevertheless this vast repertoire of words is in itself an amazing phenomenon. Still more amazing is the consummate tact with which he makes use of them, in sentences so terse and clear that they increasingly pass into the proverbs of everyday. And most amazing is that, with all ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... H. Seward. It made American and Canadian agriculture the most efficient in the world. The German brags that his agriculture is superior to American, quoting as proof the more bushels of wheat or potatoes he grows to an acre. But the comparison is fallacious. The real test of efficiency is, not the crops that are grown per acre, but the crops that are grown per man employed. German efficiency gets its results by impressing women as cultivators—depressing bent figures that ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... and I am extremely grateful to you. But of course you know as well as I do that the Cabala has not merely nothing to do with mathematics, but is in conflict with the very essence of mathematics. The Cabala bears to mathematics the same sort of relationship that the confused or fallacious chatter of the Sophists bore to the serene, lofty doctrines of Plato ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler |
