"Illogical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in a bath, so the soul disrobes in the Church to wash. But as soon as we get out, we clothe our soul in order to conceal it from the curious eye. Is it not illogical that we dare to show our imperfections to the Most Perfect, while we are ashamed to show them to those who are just as imperfect, ugly and unclean as ourselves? The Church, like a bath, ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... becoming illogical. The clod of earth had disturbed him. Brushing the dirt off his back, he returned to the book. What a curious affair was the essay on "Gaps"! Solitude, star-crowned, pacing the fields of England, has a dialogue with Seclusion. He, poor little man, lives in the choicest scenery—among rocks, forests, ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... himself, is a politician "spouting," in a perfectly illogical, broken-English stump speech, about the condition of the country and the reason why things are so bad. Never once do the various subjects stray far beyond their connection with the country's deplorable condition and always they come back to it. Furthermore, not one of the observations is about ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... was in the chair. After the speechifying was over, and the stereotyped, though rather illogical, appeal had been made for voters of the one party to cast the straight ticket, and for those of the other faction to scratch, the colonel ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... Chatty, who had already brought her basin, and who flew forth in most illogical readiness, eager to satisfy her brother, though she did not know what he wanted. Good-will, however, is often its own reward, and in this instance it was emphatically so, for Chatty almost ran into a little group advancing through the shrubbery,—Mrs. Bagley, with her best bonnet hastily ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... to explain. Our system is so illogical. Theoretically, the boys needn't show up for the next three or four years after Second Camp. They are supposed to be making their way in life. Actually, the young doctor or lawyer or engineer joins a Volunteer battalion that sticks to the minimum of camp—ten ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... indescribable and indefinable ajnana of maya, and in whatever way we may try to conceive these phenomena in themselves or in relation to one another we fail, for they are all carved out of the indefinite and are illogical and illusory, and some day will vanish for ever. The true cause is thus the pure being, the reality which is unshakable ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... it may be, but error is often popular. The work is illogical, and not altogether in harmony with facts." Benjamin's criticisms impressed Mr. Watts somewhat, though he thought he was ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... illogical to you," Wise went on, as he took the papers Crane handed to him, "that your son should materialize this paper, this note, and leave it for you, when, if he can do such things, he doesn't write a letter to ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... by logic. Truth as well as Providence is always on the side of the strongest battalions. An illogical opinion only requires ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... with a most illogical sense of being deserted; then the turnstile clicked and she had to release the clutch, letting through a pleasant-looking mother with a daughter of about seventeen, both so happy in each other's company—making a lark of coming out together to hear the band on such a wet night. Caroline's ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... observation, he closely examined their bearing and use before he adopted them or subscribed to their truth or utility. Those who question before they believe are not unfrequently pronounced unbelievers because they question; an inverted mode of reasoning equally uncharitable and illogical. My son had an undisguised dislike to any ostentatious display of religious sentiment and phraseology, particularly on the part of those who were not teachers by calling. He sometimes suspected more cant than sincerity in the practice, and thought these ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... of culture the slave-grown cotton of America. If this be so, of what use can it be to make irritating speeches in the House of Lords against a state of things by which we are content to profit? Lord Brougham and Lord Grey are not men of such illogical minds as to be incapable of understanding that it is the demand of the English manufacturers which stimulates the produce of slave-grown American cotton. They are, neither of them, we apprehend, so reckless or so wicked as to close our factories and to throw ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... "citizens" in a broad sense, unless you mean to include women as well as men, and that when you do not mean to include women you will speak of male citizens as a separate class, because the term, in its general application, is illogical and its meaning obscure if ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... illogical, he had also been slightly disingenuous. He did not believe that his companion was in love; he had argued the false to learn the true. The true was that Roderick was again, in some degree, under a charm, and that he found a healing virtue in Mary's presence, indisposed though he was ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Runnels took a sudden illogical decision. He never knew exactly what had influenced him, but his whole past knowledge of Anthony surged up in him with a force that he could not resist. He found that he could not really believe him capable of this abomination any more than he could believe ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... and catastrophe of her emotion fused into a white hot, illogical anger against this man who was suffering, and by his suffering made ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... illogical, as was demonstrated a few days later, when one of the other "alternatives" was adopted with success. This successful movement was essentially the same as that which had been previously made to dislodge the enemy ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... that he was coming over to Lonesome Cove and he had not come—why should he, on her account? Between them all was over—why should he? The question was absurd in her mind, and yet the fact that she had expected him, that she so WANTED him, was so illogical and incongruous and vividly true that it raised her to a sitting posture on the log, and she ran her fingers over her forehead and down her dazed face until her chin was in the hollow of her hand, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... an idea, which has stuck by me queerly, though all other fond things of the sort were pitched overboard long ago. I suppose one is bound to be illogical on one point, if only to prove to oneself the absolutism of one's logic on all others. Thus do I, otherwise sane and consistent realist, materialist, pessimist, cling to my one dream and ideal—take it out, dandle it, nourish and cherish it, with weakly sentimental ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... on every face, and it grew more intense every minute that Luther Ward's speech droned on, though it was only a dry, illogical rehash of political issues that could not have called that look into any face. It was as if the audience listened eagerly through it because every word of it was bringing them nearer to something that was to follow. What ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... three drivers, of whom I was the middle one, and the worst, having on my Livret the note 'conducteur mediocre'. But that is neither here nor there; the story is as follows, and the moral is that the commercial mind is illogical. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... illogical series of events and pictures passed before her. She was in a corner of the carriage, her veil raised, gazing at her husband, who had kissed her passionately. He was there beside her, looking extremely well ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... disputants, as well as the extent to which divine grace enables them to subdue their passions. The disposition occasionally evinced, to frown down discussion by invective and denunciation, is not only illogical, as it proves neither the affirmative nor negative of the disputed question; but in this free country, where we acknowledge no popes, and in the judgment of free Americans, who think for themselves, it must always reflect unfavorably on ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... been the case with other great philosophers, and with Plato and Aristotle themselves, what was really permanent and original could not be understood by the next generation, while a perverted logic carried out his chance expressions with an illogical consistency. His simple and noble thoughts, like those of the great Eleatic, soon degenerated into a mere strife of words. And when thus reduced to mere words, they seem to have exercised a far wider influence in the cities of Ionia (where the people 'were mad about them') than ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... As it is the proliferation of the myeloid tissue and not the accompanying swelling of spleen or lymph glands that is specific in the process, the nomenclature "lienomedullary or medullary-lymphatic" leukaemia must also be described as illogical and misleading. ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... then, can justify its existence as English Christianity, and in no other way. It began its separate career with a series of (doubtless) illogical compromises, in the belief that there is an underlying unity, though not uniformity, in the religion as well as in the character of the English people, which would be strong enough to hold a national Church ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Four were horribly shaken by the initial attempt at communication with the natives. Nothing in Ciriimian experience had prepared them for creatures intelligent but illogical, individually perceptive yet isolated from ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... understand you!" he burst out suddenly. "I don't understand you people! Diplomatic lies, yes. Expediency, yes! But this ... this madness, this fanatical, illogical devotion of the state in the cause of a people who will tolerate no state! This ... no, ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... Fear has a creative force which invertedly mimics that of Love; but the difference between them is that Love is eternal and Fear is not. Love as the Original Creative Motive is the only logical conclusion we can come to as to why we ourselves or any other creation exists. Fear is illogical because to regard it as having any place in the Original Creative Motive involves a ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... palates the bitter pill of the Dred Scott decision, by declaring that the people of any State or Territory might withhold that protecting legislation, those "friendly police regulations," without which slavery could not exist. But this was, indeed, a "lame, illogical, evasive answer," which enabled Lincoln to "secure an advantage in the national relations of the contest which ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... granted that they mean what they profess, and, when they propose objectionable remedies, arguing against them on their own premises. Some, of course, would rather abandon their sound premises than their illogical conclusions, when they are driven in this way to the wall; but a large number come over to the right side when they find that the consideration of their alleged grievances is approached without any prepossession against them. Of course, this is all a matter of tact, and cannot be reduced to any ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... without any of the tricks of the professional political speaker, her march through the State was a succession of triumphs which ended in a Republican victory, and, though many of her enemies called her "ignorant and illogical" as well as "noisy" in mind and spirit, the adverse criticism was of no consequence in comparison to the praise and success which ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... her position at Ridgeley, banned by its owner and patronized by his wife. I neither excuse nor blame her for thus deciding and transacting. Should I censure, a majority of my readers—nearly all of the masculine portion—would pick holes in my unpractical philosophy, scout my reasoning as illogical, brand my conclusions as pernicious—winding up their protest with the sigh of the mazed disciples, when stunned by the great Teacher's deliverance upon the subject of divorce, "If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... quite a study of biology, and all that sort of thing," said he; "and, although a good deal of a skeptic, and inclined to follow Huxley, I can't bring myself to conceive of life without organism. Such theorizing is, to my mind, on a par with the illogical search for the philosopher's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... talking so. Once before she had tasted the sweetness and the bitterness of crime. She did not stop to think about right or wrong. If she had done so her ethics would have been strangely illogical. It was enough that, short as their acquaintance had been, she felt unconsciously that there was something latent in the spirit of this man akin ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... teaching it at home, a few simple rules need to be borne in mind. The first is that the Bible must be thought of not as a series of disconnected texts and thoughts, but as a connected whole. The division of King James' Bible into verses and chapters is but poorly adapted to this purpose. The illogical, strange character of the paragraphing, as measured by the standards of modern English, is apparent at a glance, for often a verse will end in the middle of a sentence, and the sentence be concluded in the next verse. The chapters in the same way often ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... to realize the wrongs of the Race, or at any rate the illogical and therefore unjust position in which we have placed them; were the just and thoughtful men, the refined and golden-hearted ladies who are ready in this country to support every good cause when it is properly presented; were ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... frequently exhibit the same lack of logic back in the Twentieth Century? Did not the historians, the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome show themselves to be the same shrewd observers as those of succeeding centuries, the same masters of the logical and slaves of the illogical? ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... this capital of philosophy, spirits are illogical it would seem. How can Macrinus interpret the prophecy that he, who is already on the highest step attainable to us lower mortals, shall ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... most, it went step by step on the downward path with that: in more out-of-the-way places, England for instance, it still felt the influence of the life of its earlier and happy days, and in a way lived on a while; but its life was so feeble, and, so to say, illogical, that it could not resist any change in external circumstances, still less could it give birth to anything new; and before this century began, its last flicker had died out. Still, while it was living, in whatever dotage, it did imply something ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... insinuation of error on his part is deemed a blasphemy. Doubting Jesus is more impious than mocking God Almighty. Jehovah may be exposed to some extent with impunity; a God who destroyed 70,000 of his chosen people because their king took a census[1] is too illogical for any but theologians to worship. But the Son of God, or Son of man, is sacrosanct. Jesus is reverenced as the one man who has lived unspotted by the world, free from human foibles, able to redeem mankind by ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... in town are fond of consulting clergymen upon curious personal matters—matters upon which a lawyer or a doctor should rather be consulted. He himself had never encouraged such confidences. What did he keep curates for? His curates had saved him many a long hour of talk with inconsequent men and illogical women who had come to him with their stories. What were to him the stories of men whose wives were giving them trouble? What were to him the stories of wives who had difficulties with their housemaids or who could not keep their boys from reading ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... idea of the stage as a career. My mystic love and weakness for the convent came back to me more strongly than ever. I decided that I would enter the convent if I did not get the first prize. And the most foolish illogical strife imaginable was waged in my weak girl's brain. I felt a genuine vocation for the convent when distressed about losing the prize, and a genuine vocation for the theatre when I was hopeful ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... which all must hold to be illogical, and results which everybody in Ireland holds to be unjust because the greater the increase of taxation the less is the proportion that comes from Ireland, the poorer partner in the business, and so the less is the equivalent grant. As the evil increases ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... a mode of reasoning so utterly illogical, were as obvious to the mind of the young lawyer as to anybody else; and the compliance which he exhibited to a requisition which his own sense readily assured him was as foolish as it was presumptuous, was as degrading to his moral character from the hypocrisy which it declared, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... truth of his wife's speech. For the moment he would gladly have exchanged it for a more illogical and selfish affection, but he reflected that he had married this religious girl for the security of an affection which he felt was not subject to the temptations of the world—or even its own weakness—as was too often the case with the giddy maidens whom he had known through Demorest's ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... guise, like 'L'Ingenu' of Voltaire, struck, as was Huron, with all that was illogical in our social code; but she did not make, after his fashion, a too literal application of its rules, and knew where to draw the line, if she found herself on the point of making some hazardous remark, declaring frankly: "I was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... M. Vandeloup, with a touch of his old airy manner; 'you come to commit suicide and are not afraid; I wish to save you the trouble, and you are, my dear—you are illogical.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... that old house," he said. "Jamaica Pond. But see here, Youngster, your idea of ghosts is terribly illogical. It was the man who was killed, not the horses. The wrong part of the ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... already containing her husband's handwriting and had told Peabody that the signatures had been written by herself. That the sheet had been written in the officer's presence she declared to be a pure invention on his part to secure her conviction. She told her extremely illogical story with a certain winsome naivete which carried an air of semi-probability with it. From her deportment on the stand one would have taken her for a boarding school miss who in some inconsequent fashion had got mixed up in a frolic for which ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... it did, sir? You are illogical—infernally so." The little man rose and straddled on the hearth-rug, with his back to the fire and his hands under his coat-tails. "Now, sir," he said, glaring at the young man like a school-master—"what the deuce are you talking about? Out ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... possible that if he had lived a hundred years he would never have become a man; he was penetrated with modern ideas, but penetrated as a boy would be, crudely, overmuch, and with a constant tendency to the extravagant and illogical; so that I call him the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... of any kind; that the policy which prevails in the public schools of the State should be carried out in the new institution at the summit of the system. This demand was plausible, but the more I thought upon it the more illogical, fallacious, and injurious it seemed; and, in spite of some hard knocks in consequence, I have continued to dissent from it, and feel ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the most dissimilar things, the most unforeseen, the most contradictory, the most incongruous; it is merciless, without sequence or connection, full of inexplicable, illogical, and contradictory catastrophes, such as can only be classed as miscellaneous facts. This is why the artist, having chosen his subject, can only select such characteristic details as are of use to it, from this life overladen with chances and trifles, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... illogical women! I was furious. "What on earth has that to do with us?" I shouted at her. "Father's a doctor; trade won't hurt him. But you are so silly, Minnie, I can't talk to you. I only know it's very ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... squared stones, the lower one only half the width (say) of the upper one, it will be apparent that on the square capital the arch stones would leave a portion of the capital at each angle bare, and supporting nothing.[4] This looks awkward and illogical, and accordingly the pier is modified so as to suit the shape of the arch. Figs. 111, 112, 113, and 114, with the plans, B C D, accompanying them, illustrate this development of the pier. Fig. 111 is a simple cylindrical pier with a coarsely formed capital, a kind of reminiscence of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... thought——the ability to see your way through a puzzle——the habit of arranging your ideas in an orderly and get-at-able form——and, more valuable than all, the power to detect fallacies, and to tear to pieces the flimsy illogical arguments, which you will so continually encounter in books, in newspapers, in speeches, and even in sermons, and which so easily delude those who have never taken the trouble to master this fascinating Art. Try it. That is all I ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... then, but common enough now, of how minds, otherwise exceptionally able, may have a spot so encankered with creed, bigotry, and superstition as to render their judgments respecting certain classes of phenomena erroneous and illogical, puerile ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... catechisms, and the substitution for them of "simple Bible-teaching," in the schools founded under the new School Boards, which the bill set up all over England, has practically—with, of course, modifications—held its ground for nearly half a century. It was illogical; and the dissenters have never ceased to resent the perpetuation of the Church school which it achieved. But English life is illogical. It met the real situation; and it would never have taken the shape it did—in ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 159.]) had affirmed the position that if a statute required contracts of a certain kind to be put in writing, and a contract of that kind, but embracing also a different and distinct matter not touched by the statute, was made orally, it was wholly void. Such a rule was illogical and unsound, and in a later decision the same court, forgetting that it had indorsed it, said so, and said so when it was not necessary to the decision.[Footnote: Irvine v. Stone, 6 Cushing's Reports, ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... quite fair to either of us," I protested, turning away to push in a hair-pin so that he wouldn't see the tremble that I could feel in my lower lip. For an unreasonable and illogical and absurdly big wave of compassion for my poor old Dinky-Dunk was welling up through my tired body, threatening to leave me and all my make-believe dignity as wobbly as a street-procession Queen of Sheba on her circus-float. I was hearing, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Holloway Prison on this my first visit to such a place. Firstly, the outward cleanliness, and I might almost say pleasantness, of the place; and secondly, the illogical nature of the law which treats the unconvicted men, who in its eyes are consequently innocent, like convicted criminals. Nothing could be more uncomfortable and unattractive than the conditions under which the detained men are allowed to see their relatives; no privacy of any ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... them bounteous harvests, seasonable winds and the blessings of peace, harmony and long life and finally that she may lead them to the salvation which she offers to all beings in the Universe."[580] The two edicts are not consistent but such inconsistency is no reproach to a statesman nor wholly illogical. The Emperor reprimands extravagance in doctrine and ceremonial and commends Confucianism to his subjects as all that is necessary for good life and good government, but when he finds that Buddhism conduces to the same end he accords his patronage and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... ought to do all we can to limit, to restrain, to fetter the abuse of military power. Bayonets are at best illogical arguments. I am not willing, except as a case of sheerest necessity, ever to permit a military commander to exercise authority over life, liberty, and property. But, sir, it is part of the law of war; you cannot carry in the rear of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... general estimate of a religion, one's verdict will largely depend upon the point of view from which the religion in question is regarded. It is manifestly unjust and illogical to apply modern standards to an ancient religion, not that such a religion would necessarily suffer by the comparison involved, but because of the totally different conditions under which religion developed in antiquity from those ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... statesmanship to give suffrage without an educational qualification, and to deem it possible to put ignorance over intelligence. You are not, responsible for the situation, but you are none the less in an illogical position before the law. Now, would you not gain more in a rectification of your position than you would lose in other ways, by making suffrage depend upon an educational qualification? I do not mean gain party-wise, but in political morals and general prosperity. Time would certainly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the message of earnest thought and solid knowledge, and whose intellectual life ought therefore to be controlled by consistent thinking and real love for knowledge, fall back into the lowest forms of mental barbarism and really believe in the most illogical prostitution of truth. The double life of Jekyll and Hyde is more natural than this. The impulse to virtuous behaviour and the atrocities of the criminal may after all be combined in one character, but the desire to master the world by a disciplined knowledge and to think the universe ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... distinction and said that he hoped to see the day when the world would be ruled by an upper class who would see that the lower classes had all that was good for them, but would not be allowed to turn the world upside down with their clumsy illogical reforms and new religions, Saint-Simonianism, humanitarianism, or as a matter of fact with any of the old established isms. They already have several hundred forms to choose from, he would say; they should not be allowed to make any more new ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... himself as a man at what he had done, though aware of his lack of common sense, and that the deed would have amounted to the same thing if carried out by deputy. The white snow, stained with the blood of his fellow-mortal, wore an illogical look to him as a lover of justice, not to say a Christian; but he could not see how the matter was to be mended. No doubt he was, as his wife had called ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... for the torture had come to have the zest of an exhilarating sport. The cries of pain, the distortions of agony under the stones, or the lobster, or suspension, the noting of the curious changes of flesh colour and expression under these punishments, the ready assent to absurdly illogical questions, all this not only amused, but interested Shu[u]zen. The naivete and obstinacy of the fisherman was just of the kind to furnish the best material. The fellow was sturdy of frame, and under skilled hands readily submitted to this dalliance for days without ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... which, in its proper exercise, requires much care, much prudence, and not a little skill. This is a proposition which must, from its very nature, be startling to non-smokers, and surprising to many smokers. The tobacco hater (invariably an illogical creature, who hates that which he knows not) will hold up hands in amazement, and sniff with the nose in contempt, to whom reply would ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... thought illogical treatment was the best, or his patience gave out; for he answered with passionate kisses all over ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... wretched cave-dwellers, and we believe that our still earlier ancestors were possessed of tails and pointed ears. Having come so far, we are sometimes inclined to forget that not every step has been an advance and to entertain an illogical confidence that each future step must carry us still further forward; having indubitably progressed in many things, we think of ourselves as progressing in all. And as the pace of progress in science and ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... easily. It possesses the secret of some fourth mental dimension, known only to the naive and the illogical, or perhaps supralogical. He has brilliant intuitions, hunches, premonitions, the acute perceptions of some two or three extra senses that have been bred or schooled out ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... to be the Son of God with power; or Jesus Christ has not risen from the dead—and what then? Then He was either deceiver or deceived, and in either case has no right to my reverence and my love. We may be thankful that men are illogical, and that many who reject the Resurrection retain reverence, genuine and deep, for Jesus Christ. But whether they have any right to do so is another matter. I confess for myself that, if I did not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... arise, why not others? If any varieties of color, why not all the varieties we see? No attempt is made to explain this except by reference to the fact that 'purpose' and 'contrivance' are everywhere visible, and by an illogical deduction they could only have arisen by the direct action of some mind, because the direct action of our minds produce similar 'contrivances;' but it is forgotten that adaptation, however produced, must have the appearance ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... artist of the pair, knew that Tolstoy was on the wrong path with his crack-brained religious and social notions; knew that in his becoming the writer of illogical tracts and pamphlets, Russia was losing a great artist. What would he have said if he had lived to read the sad recantation and artistic suicide of Tolstoy: "I consign my own artistic productions to the category of bad art, except the story, God Sees the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... to say that bulls are like some humans, but it is a fact that they are extremely illogical animals, full of impulses and whims that have absolutely no relation to cause or effect. This bull had not moved except to roll his eyes from one to the other of the riders. If he meditated war he should, by all the bovine traditions of warfare, have bellowed a warning and sent up a whiff or two ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... wish I did." The joyous look on his face was gone now—his hand had fallen to his side. "It gets to be more of a muddle every day—" and then he added, with the illogical reasoning of youth—"all the lawyers that ever lived couldn't paint ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... good society. Personally they were rather sympathetic than not, but as the objects of education they were proofs of nearly all the evils that a bad system could give. Apparently Adams, in his rigidly illogical pursuit, had at last reached his ideal of a viciously logical education. The boys' physique showed it first, but their physique could not be wholly charged to the school. German food was bad at best, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... a mongrel one, a cross between desire not to interfere with State taxation and desire at the same time not utterly to crush out interstate commerce. It is a practical, but rather illogical, device to prevent duplication of tax burdens on vehicles in transit. It is established in our decisions and has been found more or less workable with more or less arbitrary formulae of apportionment. Nothing either in theory or in practice ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... was!—they crushed you to death. What an illogical creation of her sub-consciousness! It had been so vivid, the sensation so acute, the thing had had such solidity! Revelling in her sense of security, she lay quite still, listening to her breathing as it slowed down to normal. What had prompted the dream? Was it because she had been thinking ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... thoughts should be the order of our writing.) Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in his conversation? You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him! All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of 1917 the illogical nature of the War Staff organization became apparent, in that it had no executive functions, and as the result of discussions between Sir Edward Carson and myself the decision was taken that the duties of the Naval Staff (the term ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... traits of such love occur even in the courtship of animals, particularly birds, and implies that this upsets my theory. On the same ground a reviewer in a New York evening paper accused me of being illogical. Such criticisms illustrate the vague ideas regarding evolution that are still current. It is assumed that all the faculties are developed step by step simultaneously as we proceed from lower to higher animals, which is as illogical as it would be to assume ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... blood of three races. His father was Scotch, and his mother—Spanish on the spindle side and Irish by way of a most mercurial father—remained an unsolved problem all her days, even to her husband. Her laughter was as illogical as her tears. Her household could never tell what the next hour would bring forth, so ready were her sympathies, so instant her despairs. She lived all her life at the heights or the depths, with never a day of serene, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... had gone too far—she had outraged that curious Anglo-Saxon instinct in Cyrus which permitted him to sin against his race's integrity, yet forbade him to acknowledge, even to himself, that he bore any part in the consequences of that sin. Illogical, he might have admitted, but there are some truths so poisonous that no honest man could breathe the same air ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... is illogical," said I. And pushing him aside, I mounted and set out into the night after my cousin and ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... infinitely preferable to that of under-gardener? If the latter had been accepted, why on earth should there be hesitation regarding the former? So marvelled Nicholas, having, of course, no clue to the inner workings of Antony's mind. And even if he had had, the workings would have appeared to him illogical and unreasonable. It is truly not fully certain whether Antony understood them himself. He only knew that whereas it would be possible, though difficult, for him to remain in the neighbourhood of the Duchessa as Michael Field, gardener, to remain as ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... recognize that, in a democratic country governed as this is by the suffrage of its citizens and given over as this is to the principle and practice of educating women, a distinction based on difference of sex is artificial and illogical, and thus suspicious.... For myself, I believe that the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Mr. Newman has at last joined the Church of Rome?[116] If it is true, it will do much to prove to the most illogical minds the real character of the late movement. It will prove what the point of sight is, as by the drawing of a straight line. Miss Mitford told me that he had lately sent a message to a R. Catholic convert ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... with all her heart. She was all he had, as he was all the world to her. And so, as she gave ear to his long, illogical rigmarole of argument and defense, she slowly found that her pity and her love were making vital decisions for her. As of old, in poignant moments, her father lapsed at last into a denunciation of the Isbels and what they had brought him to. His sufferings were ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... protest against the interruption; and were the philosopher, who was determining the motion of the heavenly bodies, to be questioned about their Final or their First Cause, he too would suffer an illogical interruption. The latter asks the cause of volcanoes, and is impatient at being told it is "the divine vengeance;" the former asks the cause of the overthrow of the guilty cities, and is preposterously referred to the volcanic action ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... at all. Now let us seriously consult about this unhappy affair. Ah, duelling, duelling! how wicked, childish, illogical, despotic, bloody, and at the same time ludicrous it is! Come, you have lost your key, you say—we cannot go to your lodgings: let us find a room in the 'Raleigh,' and arrange ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... should use a pen that should be ever dedicated to an exposition of unalterable moral principle to transcribe Mrs. Tretherick's own theory of this interval and episode, with its feeble palliations, its illogical deductions, its fond excuses, and weak apologies. It would seem, however, that her experience had been hard. Her slender stock of money was soon exhausted. At Sacramento she found that the composition of verse, although appealing to the highest ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... The Protestant builds his faith on the Bible, but on what does he build his faith in the Bible? Is it not the testimony of the Holy Spirit? He has this support only through the Bible. Certain liberal theologians, like the orthodox, are extremely illogical in their conclusions concerning the word of God. The former will not accept of verbal inspiration, yet they call the Bible a divine book, which, fortunately, could be no better. Though they laugh at the story of Jonah and the whale, they accept every word of Christ, who quotes the story. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... directed toward the negroes, as it always is when an unexplained crime is committed in a Southern community. The suspicion was not entirely an illogical one. Having been, for generations, trained up to thriftlessness, theft, and immorality, against which only thirty years of very limited opportunity can be offset, during which brief period they have been denied ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... sciences have been developed more or less contemporaneously and progressively, each helping on the others. They may be pursued much in the same way, or by alternations in which each prior study favors the sequent one. They may even be taken in a seemingly illogical order without serious disadvantage, for the alternative advantages and other considerations may outweigh the force of the logical order, which is at best only partially logical. It is of prime importance to stimulate in students a habit of observing natural phenomena ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... different class of arguments—intellectual grievances. The suffragist tells us that it is unchivalrous to oppose woman's suffrage; that it is insulting to tell woman that she is unfit to exercise the fran- chise; that it is "illogical" to make in her case an exception to a general rule; that it is mere "prejudice" to withhold the vote from her; that it is indignity that the virtuous and highly intelligent woman has no vote, while the drunkard has; and that the woman of property ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... alignment of the old parties. To-day we Americans are politically shattered by sectionalism. Through the two old parties the tragedy of our history is continued; and one great geographical part of the Republic is separated from other parts of the Republic by an illogical partisan solidarity. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... having as yet no knowledge of the illogical workings of an artistically poetic and musical temperament. But I drew my own conclusions, and it was not surprising that I considered the devout father the true one, and the unbeliever perverted through evil influence. Thus, despite her absence, mother's ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... their lesson books were unget-at-ably packed up, she would certainly have suspected Ralph of a sly peep at Mrs. Markham, just on purpose "to set Sylvia down." But failing this weapon, her defence of Sylvia was, it must be confessed, somewhat illogical. ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... not at all complicated. It would not have been possible for a woman to have spent her girlhood with the cleverest mother of her day and have emerged from her training either obstinate or illogical. Lady Lothwell listened to as much of the history of Robin as her mother chose to tell her and plainly felt an amiable interest in it. She knew much more detail and gossip concerning Mrs. Gareth-Lawless than the Duchess ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lovable, or so it struck me when, upon my endeavour to talk calmly and rationally to her after hearing all that Jack Osborne had just told us, and striving to induce her to listen to reason, she remained prejudiced, illogical. ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... There are materialists, illogical and carried away by the impulses of a heart superior to their doctrines, who do both feel and act upon this worship of the ideal; but materialism denies it. Materialism, as a doctrine, only recognizes in the universe a finite and determinate quantity of matter, gifted with a definite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... and illogical about it all. Was it possible that St. Pierre Boulain was playing a huge joke on him? Even that was inconceivable. For there was Carmin Fanchet, a fitting companion for a man like Black Roger, and there ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... amendment was rejected by a majority of three hundred and forty-nine against two hundred and twenty-six. The house having thus pronounced in favour of the principle of a sliding-scale of corn-duties, it might have seemed illogical and superfluous afterwards to discuss a proposition of which the affirmative had been involved in the preceding decision; namely, whether corn should be subjected to any duties at all. Nothing daunted, however, Mr. Villiers brought forward his intended motion to that effect; a motion ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... experience of lack of confidence, because he had confidence in her, and told himself that he ought to have it. Now, though his conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he felt that he was standing face to face with something illogical and irrational, and did not know what was to be done. Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... it's sentiment. We came out because nobody wanted us and have made ourselves pretty comfortable. America's our model and we have no use for English patronage, but every now and then the pull comes and we long to go back, though we wouldn't like to stop there. It's illogical, but if there was trouble in Europe and the Old Country needed help, we'd ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... ages (which they have ransacked with a malignant and profligate industry) for every instance of oppression and persecution which has been made by that body or in its favour, in order to justify, upon very iniquitous, because very illogical, principles of retaliation, their own persecutions and their own cruelties. After destroying all other genealogies and family distinctions, they invent a sort of pedigree of crimes. It is not very ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... own immediate day is weak and weary, because it is no longer young; yet it possesses one noble attribute—it has an acute and almost universal sympathy, which does indeed often degenerate into a false and illogical sentiment, yet serves to redeem an age of egotism. We have escaped both the gem-like hardness of the Pagan, and the narrowing selfishness of the Christian and the Israelite. We are sick for the woe of creation, and we wonder why such woe is ours, and why it is entailed on the innocent dumb beasts, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... observed effect the existence, in time past, of a cause similar to that by which we know it to be produced in all cases in which we have actual experience of its origin. This, for example, is the scope of the inquiries of geology; and they are no more illogical or visionary than judicial inquiries, which also aim at discovering a past event by inference from those of its effects which still subsist. As we can ascertain whether a man was murdered or died a natural death, from the indications exhibited by the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the quadruped, greatly amazed: "Why your passion toward me do you hurtle? I'm an ornithological wonder of grace, And you're an illogical turtle,— A waddling, impossible turtle! A low-minded, grass-eating turtle! A highly ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... feared that some calamity would happen. But he reassured her and departed, surprised at her illogical moods. ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... he said, "all that you can possibly tell me about my unfaithful friend. I do not forgive, but I forget my wrong. Things having so come about that I have nearly lost my life for his sake, it would certainly be very illogical to keep a grudge against him. Still, as regards that mausoleum at Ville d'Avray, nothing would induce me to undertake it. I have already mentioned to Monsieur de l'Estorade one hindrance that is daily growing more imperative; but ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... financing him... It was illogical, but Sally could not help feeling that when—she had not the optimism to say "if"—he lost his money, she would somehow be under an obligation to him, as if the disaster had been her fault. She disliked, with a whole-hearted intensity, the thought of ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... his style—its hesitations, its vaguenesses, its obscurities? On the other hand, even when his lines leave the intellect puzzled and the desire for grammar unsatisfied, a breath of original romance blows through them and appeals to us like the illogical burden of a ballad. Here at least are the rhythms and raptures of poetry, if not always the beaten gold of speech. Sometimes Mr. de la Mare's verse reminds one of piano-music, sometimes of bird-music: it wavers so curiously between what is composed and what is unsophisticated. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... though reported by the one-sided Boswell, is a tolerable specimen of the conversations of Goldsmith and Johnson; the farmer heedless, often illogical, always on the kind-hearted side of the question, and prone to redeem himself by lucky hits; the latter closely argumentative, studiously sententious, often profound, and sometimes ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... singular gift; I found that I could see through everybody. Looking at the squire, I thought to myself, 'My father has faults, but he has been cruelly used,' and immediately I forgave the old man; his antipathy to my father seemed a craze, and to account for it I lay in wait for his numerous illogical acts and words, and smiled visibly in contemplation of his rough unreasonable nature, and of my magnanimity. He caught ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... uses. Could such a power be deflected by any human supplication? It was that or nothing,—the last court of appeal, left open to injured humanity. And so they all prayed, as lover loves, or a poet writes, from the very inside of their souls, and they rose with that singular, illogical feeling of inward peace and satisfaction ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... representative of value, but its absence operates marvellously like the want of the value itself, and the primitive people of those days, and especially that class to which the schoolmaster belonged, had a habit, however illogical, of considering it ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... however, appeared to have individual peculiarities; he differed from his brother Caucasians, who should all resemble one another to any normal girl. For one thing he was subject to illogical moods—apparently not caring whether she noticed them or not. For another, he permitted himself the liberty of long and unreasonable silences whenever he pleased. This she had accepted unquestioningly in the early days when ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... the memory of her illogical act. The doctor nodded sympathetically. It was a fatal moment, the point of decision in her life. He understood ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... strove, unhelped by Christian faith, to enter at the strait gate into the paths of virtue, that there were four characters of mind which were protective or preservative of all that was best in man, namely, Prudence, Justice, Courage, and Temperance,[142] these were afterwards, with most illogical inaccuracy, called cardinal virtues, Prudence being evidently no virtue, but an intellectual gift: but this inaccuracy arose partly from the ambiguous sense of the Latin word "virtutes," which sometimes, in mediaeval language, signifies virtues, sometimes powers ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... illogical of you, Bickley, and indeed wrong," groaned a deep voice from the other side of the cabin door, "to thank a God in Whom you do not believe, and to talk of praying for one of the worst and most inefficient of His servants when you ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me via this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the mean time he had eaten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... physical symptoms. Instead, it attacks the symptom itself, contenting itself with teaching the patient that his trouble is psychic in origin; that it is based on exaggerated suggestibility and uncontrolled emotionalism; that it is made out of false ideas about the body, illogical conclusions, and unhealthy feeling-tones; and that it may be cured by a kind of moral hygiene, which breaks up these old habits and replaces them with new and better ones. It tries to inculcate the cheerful ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... Poulton,—I was glad to see your exposure of another American Neo-Lamarckian in Nature.[24] It is astonishing how utterly illogical they all are! I was much pleased with your point of the adaptations supposed to be produced by the inorganic environment when they are related to the organic. It is I think new and very forcible. For nearly a month I have been wading through Bateson's book,[25] and writing a criticism of ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... are to be taken with the utmost reservation, as most readers will see for themselves after meeting his allusion to the massacre at Perugia in 1859 as in some sort a defensive action on the part of the papal troops. Mr. Hare's reasoning on all that relates to this subject is weak and illogical, sometimes puerile. Any one who loves what is venerable and picturesque must share the impatience and regret with which he sees so much beauty and antiquity disappearing before the besom of progress or the rage for improvement, especially ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... should know,—should know enough," said the illogical and unreasonable Mr Crawley. "Is it true that you can look over from the spot on which He stood as He came across the brow of the hill, and see the huge stones of the temple placed there by Solomon's men,—as He saw them,—right across the brook ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... weight with the proletariat. The German proletariat says that Germany is not to involve herself, even if Russia enters in. The German capitalists, on the other hand, demand that Germany step in because Austria makes war with Servia. And on the same illogical, reprehensible grounds the French capitalists are demanding war with Germany. The French proletariat is one with the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... had been looking for this question all the evening and dreading some allusion to her favorite as gifted in prayer. She had taken an instantaneous and illogical dislike to the Rev. Mr. Burch in the afternoon because he called upon Rebecca to "lead." She had seen the pallor creep into the girl's face, the hunted look in her eyes, and the trembling of the lashes ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... To begin the foundation of that extension was like setting in motion the siege of a city! It was extravagant—reckless—nevertheless assisted by a neighbor who was clever at any kind of building, I set to work in boyish, illogical enthusiasm. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... is very remarkable. His book has accordingly taken its place on the same shelf with Sprenger, Remigius, Delrio, and De Lancre, and deserves insertion only in a list which has yet to be made out, and which if accurately compiled would be a literary curiosity, of the singularly illogical books of singularly able reasoners. What was left unaccomplished by the centurions of literature came ultimately from the strangest of all possible quarters; from the study of an humble pupil of the transmuter of metals and prince of mountebanks and quacks—the expounder of ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... accused of having no musical sense because one particular tune does not cause one rhapsodies?" I asked. "The one idea of a man seems to be, if a woman does not adore him personally, it is because she is as cold as ice. Surely that is illogical." ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... structure of a human brain, we are precluded from rationally entertaining any probability that self-conscious volition belongs to the universe. Obviously, this way of presenting the case is so grossly illogical that even the exigencies of popular exposition cannot be held to justify the presentation. For aught that we can know to the contrary, not merely the highly specialized structure of the human brain, but even that of nervous matter in general, may only be one of a thousand possible ways in which ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... endowed with wider activities, and unhampered by many human limitations. The forms of expression adopted often appear to us to be almost gratuitously absurd; but when we put ourselves as nearly as may be at the primitive point of view, we realise that they were not even illogical. The marvel is that out of the seething chaos of sensations and emotions there could arise the solid structure of even the simplest ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... hear any one now. Uproar broke loose. Men shouted, stormed, cursed; the meeting was become a rabble. Above the din could be distinguished at intervals the voice of the Honorable Brett Harkins, who, in frantic but not illogical reversion to the idea of a political convention, squalled for the services of the sergeant-at-arms. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... mind—a young woman's mind. Oh, of course, sometimes they are logical, but let a woman be so once, and she will repent of it to the end of her days. The safety of the world's balance lies in woman's illogical mind. I think——" ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... letter, the one she had but just written and deposited in the tree. She chilled and stiffened under the keen edge of Kelley's contemptuous pity, then burned hot with illogical rage. ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... as a whole will then be able to do its share towards the conquest of the complex forces of nature, and there will be brought about an intellectual and spiritual quickening that will make our civilization of to-day seem as crude, as selfish and illogical as that of the dark ages seem ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... through the gate and Kit resumed his walk, struggling with an annoyance he felt was illogical. He knew something about Bell's household and imagined that Janet's life was not smooth. He was sorry for her, and it was, of course, unjust to blame her for her father's deeds. All the same, the favor she had sometimes shown him was embarrassing. He was not a ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... he remarked, "that this unfortunate attraction exists in spite of philosophical training,—that it is exerted towards the antipodes of their previous associations; that, as they have been trained to yield only to well-grounded syllogisms, it is the illogical mode of assault that vanquishes them unguarded; that their reasonable minds have nothing to say to such, perfectly unreasonable fascinations; that, in short, the enemy succeeds by supplying a vacuum, as the walls of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... the magnificent style; but authors unacquainted with Grammar and Logic are not likely to place such figures well and wisely. Indeed, common idioms, though both grammatically and rhetorically justifiable, both correct and effective, often seem illogical. 'To fall asleep,' for example, is a perfect English phrase; yet if we examine severally the words it consists of, it may seem strange that their combination should ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... was in his strength, the bitterness of his grudge against a fate that forced him to go on in this way of life, the remembrance of a life more beautiful which he had abandoned—all mingled with those other qualities of pride and comradeship, and that illogical sense of humor which made up the strange complexity ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... compulsion," said L'Isle, "as every page of Scripture testifies. There is something strangely illogical in the reasoning of those who, starting from the point, that what has been decreed by God is as good as done, and the future as fixed as the past, thence exhort us to plead, because the decree has gone forth; to run in the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... self-willed, more voluptuous than tender. On the contrary, flat-waisted women are devoted, full of finesse, inclined to melancholy." Elsewhere, he informs us that "most women who ride horseback well are not tender." "Hands like those of a Greek statue announce a mind of illogical domination; eyebrows that meet indicate a jealous tendency. In all great men the neck is short, and it is rare that a ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... evident from the first that so illogical and contentious an agreement could not possibly prove to be a final settlement, and indeed the ink of the signatures was hardly dry before an agitation was on foot for its revision. The Boers considered, and with justice, that if they were to be left as undisputed victors ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seen; and Angus, contemplating his present experience in connection with that of Robert Grant's cottage, came to the conclusion that he must be an emissary of Satan who on two such occasions had so unexpectedly rescued him. Perhaps the idea was not quite so illogical as it must seem; for how should such a man imagine any other sort of messenger taking an interest in his life? He was confirmed in the notion when he found that a yard of the line remained attached to the grate, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... did you get here? What does this mean? Is your arm quite well again? Why didn't you let us know you were coming?" were the questions rained upon him by Mrs. Marsden, immediately followed by the somewhat illogical statement that she was ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... the usual illogical contention of all religions. It is not the question whether an Almighty Being can do a given thing: the question is whether He has or has ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... began to reassert themselves in spite of the crushing weight of circumstance. She 'phoned to the office. Mr. Flint had returned, they told her. She explained her trouble to the cashier. "I'll try to be back the first of the week," she finished, in a burst of illogical hope. ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... queer because he himself was perfectly ready to become a Romanist. He seemed, however, to contemplate going over to Rome himself and yet letting his boys be educated in the religion of their immediate ancestors. This may appear illogical, but I dare say it is not so illogical as it looks. Edward, that is to say, regarded himself as having his own body and soul at his own disposal. But his loyalty to the traditions of his family would not permit him ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... selected for our comments the pamphlets of Captain Maconochie, not only because they illustrate the hasty and illogical reasonings, the utter forgetfulness of elementary principles, into which such reformers are apt to lapse; but also for the still better reason, that they contain a suggestion of real value; a contribution towards an efficient prison-discipline, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... prospects of Imperial Federation do not affect the Irish issue. It is no doubt illogical and sometimes highly inconvenient that the British Cabinet and Parliament, representing British and Irish electors only, should decide matters which deeply concern the whole Empire, including the self-governing Colonies, but it is the fact. In the meantime we are securing very ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... (I suppose you mean [** sqrt]741, which would be a little nearer the truth. But roots cannot be added in this manner. Do you think [** sqrt]9 [** sqrt]16 is 25, or even [** sqrt]25?) But AYR'S state is more perilous still: she draws illogical conclusions with a frightful calmness. After pointing out (rightly) that AC is less than BD she says, "therefore the nearest house to the other three must be A or C." And again, after pointing out (rightly) that B and D are both within ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... personality and therefore it is difficult to blame him as an individual. The fact is, gentlemen, it seems there must really exist something that is dearer to almost every man than his greatest advantages, or (not to be illogical) there is a most advantageous advantage (the very one omitted of which we spoke just now) which is more important and more advantageous than all other advantages, for the sake of which a man if necessary is ready ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... suggestive of veiled mysteries; and her lips must have looked bewitching when they pouted. I expect they often did. They do so still; but the pout of a woman of forty-six no longer fascinates. To a pretty girl of nineteen a spice of temper, an illogical unreasonableness, are added attractions: the scratch of a blue-eyed kitten only tempts us to tease her the more. Young Hubert St. Leonard—he had curly brown hair, with a pretty trick of blushing, and was going to conquer the world—found her fretfulness, ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... incorrigible doctrinaire who refuses to sympathize with the illogical processes by which the world is gradually being made better. With him it is the millennium or nothing. He will tolerate no indirect approach. He will give no credit for partial approximations. He insists on holding every one strictly to his first fault. There shall ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... with as illogical, but the feeling that led to it was beautiful beyond question; and, indeed, all her ideas on ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... our conceptions of sexual love. Love craves the flesh, and if the flesh is shameful the lover must be shameful. "Se la cosa amata e vile," as Leonardo da Vinci profoundly said, "l'amante se fa vile." However illogical it may have been, there really was a justification for the old Christian identification of the flesh with the sexual instinct. They stand or fall together; we cannot degrade the one and exalt the other. As our feelings towards nakedness are, so will ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... respects, and in the eyes of the world at large, a sovereign body. Time soon showed that the continued exercise of such powers was not compatible with the absence of the power to tax the people. In truth the situation of the Continental Congress was an illogical situation. In the effort of throwing off the sovereignty of Great Britain, the people of these states were constructing a federal union faster than they realized. Their theory of the situation did not keep pace with the ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... Wilhelm Meister; he is not above considering the art of cooking potatoes or the question of whether human beings once had tails, and in his theological moods he will expound St. John's Epistles, or the principles of Christianity. The bookman, in fact, is a quite illogical and irresponsible being, who dare not claim that he searches for accurate information in his books as for fine gold, and he has been known to say that that department of books of various kinds which come under the head of "what's what," and "why's why," and "where's where," are not literature. ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... in his power, could any earnest worshipper of the Virgin doubt for a moment that for one so favoured it would not be done? Such was the reasoning of our forefathers; and the premises granted, who shall call it illogical ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... knowledge—must be put aside, in cases of this kind. It cannot assist the inquirer. It will lead him, in the most logical progression, to what, in the eyes of artists, would be a most illogical conclusion. Thus: bad drawing, bad proportion, bad perspective, indifference to truthful detail, color which gets its merit from time, and not from the artist—these things constitute the Old Master; conclusion, the Old Master was a bad painter, the Old Master was not an Old ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "ving-cinq," she would say; the ball flew round and fell into a number; it might be ten, or twenty, or twenty- five, it did not much matter; she looked to see what it was, but right or wrong, never failed to eat the bonbon—an illogical result, which contrasted quaintly with the intense seriousness with which she made her stakes. Sometimes she would place two or three sugar-plums on one number, always naming it aloud—"trente-et-un," "douze-premier," "douze- apres." It was the ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... then he never had really been converted, but only seemed to have been. I have heard this circular form of argument urged most strongly by those who were (by constitution apparently) absolutely unable to see the illogical position which they were taking up. A further, and the most awful, part of the teaching was that however much one desired to be converted, and however earnestly one prayed for it, if one died without it damnation was certain. Lastly there was the encouraging ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle |
