"Argumentative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I said, Miss Lane, but it would have been the truth if I did, and I generally speak the truth when it's equally convenient. Yes, I do know Miss Vernor very well, and I have worsted her in a great many arguments,—you know her argumentative turn, perhaps? If you will allow me, I will do myself the honor of calling upon her when she comes,—and upon yourself, if I ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... the books which are generally bound up with what is denominated the Bible; viz., Tobias, Judith, Baruch, Sabiduria, Eclesiastico, y 1o y 2o de los Machabeos. The Christian ecclesiastic, the author of the epistle, in indignation at this omission becomes suddenly argumentative, and puts a case to the heretics, which he deems in point; 'Si vieran la luz publica las obras de Lutero mutiladas en sus principales capitulos, y transformadas en cierto modo sus maximas y preceptos; ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... is the psychic nature, the web of emotions, desires, argumentative trains of thought, which cover up and obscure the truth by absorbing the entire attention and keeping the consciousness in the psychic realm. When hopes and fears are reckoned at their true worth, in comparison with lasting ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... intelligent mind, both in the free and in the slave states. They partake, of course, of the intellectual peculiarities of the different authors. Jay's "INQUIRY" and Mrs. Child's "APPEAL" abound in facts—are dispassionate, ingenious, argumentative. The "BIBLE AGAINST SLAVERY," by the most careful and laborious research, has struck from slavery the prop, which careless Annotators, (writing, unconscious of the influence, the prevailing system of slavery throughout the Christian world exercised on ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... powerful, full of character, melodious, impressive. The later writings have all these qualities, and in addition, that constant power to awaken the imagination, to carry an idea beyond its own horizon into a boundless world of imperishable literary significance, which power in argumentative prose is beauty. And how did Lincoln attain this? That he had been maturing from within the power to do this, one is compelled by the analogy of his other mental experiences to believe. At the same time, there can be no doubt who taught him the trick, who touched the secret spring ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... him to a public school, having first eliminated as much youthfulness as is compatible with continued existence. Add some flattering masters, and a distaste for games. Season with the idea that he is born for a great career. Let him be, if possible, verbose and argumentative, and inclined to contradict his elders. Eliminate more youth and transfer hot to a University. Add more verbosity, and a strong extract of priggishness. Throw in a degree, and two speeches at the Union. Set him to simmer for two years in a popular constituency, and serve him up, a chattering pedant ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... you say, SOCRATES, is very nice, and clear, and logical, and conclusive, in an argumentative sense, and your attitude is very noble and high-and-mighty—I mean highminded and all that. And we're very grateful—but deeply disappointed that you couldn't say something quite different—in view of the General ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... Surely such a power would have been specified had it been intended that it should be given. But there are axioms in politics as in mathematics, which recommend themselves to the mind at once, and require no argument for their proof. Men who are not argumentative perceive at once that they are true. A part cannot be greater than ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... in the usual manner by saying that he ought to be going, and instead of one pipe smoked three or four. The light failed and the lamp was lit, but he still stayed on until the sound of subdued but argumentative voices beyond the drawn blind apprised them of other visitors. The thin tones of Mr. Chalk came through the open window, apparently engaged in argument with a bear. A faint sound of hustling and growling, followed by a gentle bumping against the door, seemed to indicate that he—or ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... and down, his features, bearing, clothes; noticed his North-Country accent, and all the other signs of the plebeian. And presently Fenwick, placed at his ease, began for the first time to expand, became argumentative and explosive. In a few minutes he was laying down the law in his Westmoreland manner—attacking the Academy—denouncing certain pictures of the year—with a flushed, confident face and a gesticulating hand. Watson observed him ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... people were bivouacked; they had lighted the beacon on a rock about fifty feet above the level, as although some twenty or thirty fires were blazing, they had been obscured by the intervening jungle. I found both my wife and my men in an argumentative state as to the propriety of my remaining alone so late in the jungle; however, I also found dinner ready; the angareps (stretcher bedsteads) arranged by a most comfortable blazing fire, and a glance at the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... writes often in an Elegant, often in an Argumentative, and often in a Sublime Style, with equal Success; but how would it hurt the reputed Author of that Paper to own, that of the most beautiful Pieces under his Title, he is barely the Publisher? There ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... shocked by unrestrained vivacity, loud laughter, and perhaps even coarse words; that his uncompromising idealism may have been disturbed by the discordance of literary squabbles, intrigues, and business transactions; that his peaceable, non-speculative, and non-argumentative disposition may have been vexed and wearied by discussions of political, social, religious, literary, and artistic problems. Unless his own art was the subject, Chopin did not take part in discussions. And Liszt tells us that Chopin not only, like most artists, lacked a generalising mind [esprit ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... loth to say, "There is a man here who was sane until Peter hailed him as the Christ, and who then became a monomaniac." We should have pointed out that his delusion is a very common delusion among the insane, and that such insanity is quite consistent with the retention of the argumentative cunning and penetration which Jesus displayed in Jerusalem after his delusion had taken complete hold of him. We should feel horrified at the scourging and mocking and crucifixion just as we should if Ruskin had been treated in that way when he ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Mr. Amos speaks as well as Mr. Burke; but in general the speakers are more argumentative, and less rhetorical. And whereas there are with you not more than ten or a dozen tolerable speakers, here every member ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... linen manufacture. Although strikes were then unknown among the labouring classes, the spirit from which these take their rise has no doubt at all times existed. Among Mr. J——'s many workmen, one had given him constant annoyance for years, from his discontented and argumentative spirit. Insisting one day on getting something or other which his master thought most unreasonable, and refused to give in to, he at last submitted, with a bad grace, saying, "You're nae better than Pharaoh, sir, forcin' puir folk to mak' bricks without straw." "Well, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... pointed by his vigorous intonations; every argument was accentuated by his forceful personality. The report was a lawyer's brief; the speech was the flexible utterance of an accomplished debater, bent upon a personal as well as an argumentative victory. ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the result of which was the independent body known as Free Methodists, had relieved the parent flock of its principal disturbing element. The rupture came fittingly at that time when all the "isms" of the argumentative fifties were hurled violently together into the melting-pot of civil war. The great Methodist Church, South, had broken bodily off on the question of State Rights. The smaller and domestic fraction ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... the deed they would do starts up before them in complete shape, making a coercive type; the event they hunger for or dread rises into vision with a seed-like growth, feeding itself fast on unnumbered impressions. They are not always the less capable of the argumentative process, nor less sane than the commonplace calculators of the market: sometimes it may be that their natures have manifold openings, like the hundred-gated Thebes, where there may naturally be a greater and more miscellaneous inrush than through a narrow beadle-watched ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... jaunty show of spitting to one side. Haughtiness and determination were evident in his manner, and a certain very threatening assumption of argumentative calm that suggested an outburst to follow. But Pyotr Stepanovitch had no time to realise the danger, and it did not fit in with his preconceived ideas. The incidents and disasters of the day had quite turned his head. Liputin, at the top ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... examples, in any question of law where judges of the court disagree, as in the Income Tax Case, or in the Insular cases which decided the status of Porto Rico and the Philippines, both the majority opinion and the dissenting opinions of the judges are argumentative in form; though the majority opinion, at any rate, is in theory an exposition of the law. The real difference between argument and exposition lies in the difference of attitude toward the subject ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... their contract, they can surely do so only by something amounting to a supplementary convention. Writers upon international law naturally throw but little light upon questions to which the somewhat novel practice of argumentative drafting Reports has given rise; but I may cite Professor Ullmann, of ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... truth; thus also Aristotle occasionally uses the term in his works [*Cf. Prior. Anal. ii; Rhetor. i]. Taking "proof" in the first sense, Christ did not demonstrate His Resurrection to the disciples by proofs, because such argumentative proof would have to be grounded on some principles: and if these were not known to the disciples, nothing would thereby be demonstrated to them, because nothing can be known from the unknown. And if such principles were known to them, they ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... as a reply to the claims of all argumentative Sm/ri/tis. If it be said that those Sm/ri/tis also assist, by argumentation and proof, the cognition of truth, we do not object to so much, but we maintain all the same that the truth can be known from the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... visit Esneh. He would have nothing to do with El-Kab. Hassan was surprised, inclined to be argumentative, but bowed to the will of the dreamer. Nevertheless, when at last Edfou was reached, he made one more effort to rouse the spirit of the sight-seer in his strangely inert protector; and this time, almost to his surprise, Isaacson responded. He had an intense love of purity and of form ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... particular Mission for more than a quarter of a century. But the name of Sir Richard Brandon did not appear on the roll of contributors. He had not studied the "lower orders" much, except from a politico-economical-argumentative ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... members of the Archaeological Society had already arrived, and came forward to greet Miss Gibbs. There was a large stout gentleman, with a grey moustache and bushy overhanging eyebrows; also a little thin gentleman with a pointed beard and an argumentative voice; a tall lady with a high colour, who carried a guide-book, and a short-sighted younger man, who was trying to spread out an ordnance map. These seemed to be the principal members of the party, though there were a ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... of days at last arrived the city seemed full of elephants. Every compound and available walled space had been requisitioned to accommodate the brutes, and there were sufficient argumentative mahouts, all insisting that their elephants had not enough to eat, and all selling at least half of the pr-vided ration, to have formed a good-sized regiment. The elephants' daily bath in the river was a sight worth crossing India to see. There was always ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... this argument appears to have some force, but upon close reading of the provisions of the bill, and its necessary effect upon the Practical operation of a primary campaign, it must be admitted that this sole objection is largely argumentative. In the first place, as pointed out above, each ballot must be cast by the person to whom it was sent, for it is contained in an envelope bearing the elector's own known signature. Therefore none ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... his walk, with both hands in his pockets, gazed at the argumentative greenhorn, turned his quid, spat across the canal, went away whistling "Old Dan Tucker," and left the question of the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... fell flat, and when it was over Webb sat down by me in disgust, and helped himself lavishly to punch by way of consolation. I told Webb that he had taken Lambert's seat, because Lambert for some other reason had also been helping himself lavishly to punch, and had become argumentative and almost quarrelsome. Webb, however, said that he was not going to move, and when Lambert returned Dennison had to play the piano very lustily to drown the discussion which took place. Lambert was six feet two and angry, Webb was the ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... any assent or dissent to the positions therein asserted, but merely with a view of forming a judgment in respect to their merits as argumentative compositions, I have carefully perused Miss Carroll's pamphlets mentioned in the within account. The propositions are clearly stated, the authorities relied on are judiciously selected, and the reasoning is natural, direct, ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... "conversational" portion, in which free discussion was solicited. This was opened by Hon. E. Rosewater, who spoke in response to a very general call. His address of half an hour in length was marked by apparent sincerity, and was a calm and argumentative presentation of objections, theoretical and practical, which occurred to him against the extension of the franchise to women. It was replied to by Mrs. Colby, in a running comment, which abounded in womanly wisdom and wit, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... assumed a more dangerous form, especially for an artist. His optimistic faith has driven the poet into a realm into which poetry never ventured before. His battle is now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powers of darkness grown vocal and argumentative, and threatening to turn the poet's faith in good into a defence of immorality, and to justify the worst evil by what is highest of all. Having indicated in outward fact "the need," as well as the "transiency of sin and death," he seeks here to prove ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... this matter of sword in hand, there is yet another thing to be noted. Of duels we have sometimes spoken: how, in all parts of France, innumerable duels were fought; and argumentative men and messmates, flinging down the wine-cup and weapons of reason and repartee, met in the measured field; to part bleeding; or perhaps not to part, but to fall mutually skewered through with iron, their wrath and life alike ending,—and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... kind of poles, my boy—not the right kind of poles," said the professor, smiling gently, and offering Mrs. Havel a cocoanut-cup of the sparkling water. "You see what a misunderstanding of terms will do," the professor added, in his argumentative way. "A little knowledge—especially a little scientific ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... suffrage than for it. The speakers were Miss Emily P. Bissell of Delaware; Mrs. O. D. Oliphant of the New Jersey association; Mrs. James Wells of the Texas association; Miss Lucy J. Price of the Cleveland branch; Mrs. A. J. George of the Massachusetts association. The Judiciary Committee was in an argumentative mood and began with ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... "and of course childishly illegal. Your man will be soon got rid of. I expect you might have applied to him the remark of the Bishop of Cork on the Dean of Cork—'Excellent sermon!—eloquent, clever, argumentative!—and not enough gospel in ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... An argumentative person may stop us here and ask, "Are you of opinion that it is possible to abolish warfare?" Unfortunately, we can cherish no such pleasing hope. I do emphatically believe that in time men will come to see the wild folly of engaging in sanguinary struggles; but the growth of their wisdom ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... and walked along peaceably together— Stoliker silent, as usual, with the grim confidence of a man who is certain of ultimate success, who has the nation behind him, with all its machinery working in his favor; Yates talkative, argumentative, and instructive by turns, occasionally breaking forth into song when the unresponsiveness of the other rendered ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... what-je-call-'ems" and "my country too." In the little shack uptown that was home for her and her husband she began at once to set forth her new light. Jeems, who added to the family income by taking care of furnaces and doing odd jobs, was grizzled and hobbling of body, but argumentative of soul. ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Argumentative analogies are commonly chosen because they are specious rather than just; but there is one here which I cannot forbear. If a system like Mr. Jones' were adopted in teaching children to write, we should begin by collecting and comparing ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... renewal of glory in which he shone during the seventeenth century, when the Jansenists, in their inveterate obstinacy, identified him with the defence of their cause? The reputation of sour austerity and of argumentative and tiresome prolixity which attaches to the remembrance of all the writers of Port-Royal, save Pascal—has that affected too the work of Augustin, enlisted in spite of himself in the ranks of these pious schismatics? And yet, if there have ever been any beings who do not resemble ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... shaking his head more in sorrow than in anger). She's no reasonable, ye ken, John; she disna argue fair. I'm no complaining o' her mither, but it's a wee thing hard that the only twa women I've known to be really chatty an' argumentative with should ha' been just like that. An' me that fond o' ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... past, and we learn the secret which we never discovered while as yet Oxford held us in the thick of the fight. We thought then that we were the most desperate partisans; we asked no quarter, and gave none; pushed our argumentative victories to their uttermost consequences, and made short work of a fallen foe. But, when all the old battle-cries have died out of our ears, gentler voices begin to make themselves heard. All at once we realize that a great part of our old contentions was only sound and fury and ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the Supreme Court enters into a lengthened detail, yet as it is very acute and argumentative, and touches upon several other points equally anomalous to the boasted freedom of the American institutions, I wish the reader would peruse it carefully, as it will amply repay him for his trouble; and it is that ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... movement, and he was drawn into its current. Almost at once he became its Western leader. His speech against the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise which had been effected by his inveterate antagonist, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, was his first classic achievement in argumentative oratory. While in the greater aspect of artistic composition, the form of the address as a whole, his master was Euclid, in minor points the influence of Shakespeare, of whom Lincoln had become a great reader, was apparent, as indicated by a quotation ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... troubles about attempting to solve matters of dispute, and cares little to enter into argumentative discussions in reference to the supposed purposes of the curios he collects, or the different uses with which they have been associated. He does not inquire too deeply into the faiths and beliefs which may have been held and revered by his ancestors when he ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... Red became argumentative. "Look, Slim, we can't start acting suspicious or they're going to start investigating. Holy Smokes, don't you ever read any detective stories? When you're trying to work a big deal without being caught, it's practically the main thing to keep on acting ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... scattered about into different corners (Preuss, iii. 381-413; then again, ibid. 520 &c.). On the other hand, there is one Segebusch, too, a learned Doctor, of Altona, who takes the King's side,—and really is rather stupid, argumentative merely, and unilluminative, if you read him: Segebusch, Historischrechtliche Wurdigung der Einmischung Friedrich's des Grossen in die bekannte Rechtssache des Mullers Arnold, auch ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... threatening her with divine wrath; and as you know nothing about her, I regard such threats, coming from you, as impertinent, unmanly, inhuman, and blasphemous.' Mr. Caldigate had commenced this conversation, though vehemently, still in so argumentative a manner, and in his allusions to the lady's romantic and superstitious ideas had seemed to yield so much, that the terrible vigour of his last words struck the poor clergyman almost to the ground. One epithet came out after ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative manner, 'to find you taking a position so untenable. My schooling was paid for; it was a bargain; and when I came away, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... spirit of Liberty asserts itself. A throng of members—chiefly elderly gentlemen in expanded uniforms—assembles in the smoking-room, occupying all the chairs, and even overflowing on to the tables and window-sills. They are not the discursive, argumentative gathering of three years ago. They sit silent, restless, glancing ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... were adduced, we should have nearly picked the argumentative part of the essay to pieces; but Bolingbroke supplies throughout the most characteristic element. The fragments cohere by external cement, not by an internal unity of thought; and Pope too often descends to the level of mere satire, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... irrefutably argumentative, and unanswerably just, my lord," I put in; "but I must be permitted to hint that the validity of all laws is derived from the enactment; now the enactment, or, in the case of a treaty, the virtue of the stipulation, is not derived from the intention of the party who may ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a large thing to expect us to begin upon?' said Filby, an argumentative person with ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... lofty tone toward the haughty Patriarch, who thenceforward avoided all communication with them, declaring that on a matter which so seriously affected the whole Eastern Church he could take no steps without consulting the other patriarchs. Humbert now published an argumentative reply to Michael's letter to the Pope, in the form of a dialogue between two members of the Greek and Latin churches, in which the charges brought against his own communion were discussed seriatim, and especially those relating to fasting on Saturday and the use of unleavened ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... most important, influential and popular writers of that day were perhaps Anthony Collins and the Earl of Shaftsbury. These were both men of fortune, of polished education, and of great rhetorical and argumentative skill. Their influence over young minds was greatly increased by the courtesy and candor which pervaded all their writings. They ever wrote like gentlemen addressing gentlemen; and the views they urged ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Steppes. These bearded men. These Russians. They sat silent and watchful. They applauded little. The programme left them cold. The Trick Cyclist. The Dashing Soubrette and Idol of Belgravia. The Argumentative College Chums. The Swell Comedian. The Man with the Performing Canaries. None of these could rouse them. They were waiting. Waiting. Waiting tensely. Every muscle taut. Husbanding their ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... drink at a club, on an evening in June, he had been challenged promptly by one of those argumentative persons who invariably disagree with every proposition as a matter of principle, and for the sake of ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... autobiography, but also because the narrative itself seems to throw the strongest possible light on the mainly-important question how far this defection of one of her greatest sons does really tend to weaken the argumentative position of the English Church in her strife with Rome. What has been said already will suffice to prove that in our opinion no such consequence can justly follow from it. We acknowledge freely the greatness of the individual loss. But the causes of that defection are, we ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... she ain't," said her friend, in an argumentative tone of the sort adopted to carry on brilliantly a conversation of which both participants know the familiar moves. "Mariana's a real pretty woman, prettier by far than she was when she's a girl. I know she's gettin' along. She was ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... began to arrive Miss Trueman found herself regarding them even more critically than usual; an argumentative spirit rose in her, and her calm contradiction of Mrs. Ranger, who discussed with great subtlety the notable advantages—even from the artistic point of view—of the approaching spring when experienced in the city, in comparison with that be-rhymed season's vaunted country beauties, ...
— Julia The Apostate • Josephine Daskam
... emboldened by the friendliness the profession always exhibits toward any serious word in art, the writer is moved to believe that the matters herein discussed may be found worthy of the artist's attention—perhaps of his question. For that reason the tone here and there is argumentative. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... presidency was the question of railway commissions, both in national and State governments. In my professional capacity of general counsel, and in common with representatives of other railroads, I delivered argumentative addresses against them. The discussions converted me, and I became convinced of their necessity. The rapidly growing importance of railway transportation had created the public opinion that railway management should be under ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... bad days,' said Patty, looking up and shaking her head dolefully. ''Tis generally the wash-tub that does it, and Monday is our washing day. I did mean to be careful that my lips didn't offend, but 'tis no good when she's of an argumentative turn! Yes, miss, she's locked me out, and I hope she's enjoyin' herself, for on Mondays I always bakes a cake for tea. Deb never did have a light hand for such things, and she's a-messin' in there with my flour bin, and pilin' tons ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... your private explanation of the word 'hotel'?" Marion asked. She was in an argumentative mood, and it made almost no difference to her which side of the question she argued. "Webster says it is a place to entertain strangers, but you seem to attach some special importance ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... strongly fixed in his previous opinion than he was before. This result is often consequent upon the want of true courtesy. The parties to an argument, absorbed in admiration of their own opinions, seek not to become wiser through discourse, which should be the end sought in all Conversation of an argumentative or discussive character, but seek only to draw attention to their own views and opinions; until that which should be Conversation degenerates into a mere war of words, in which each party strives to talk down, rather ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... construction of the play; nor do I doubt the ability of Shakespeare to have continued his existence, though some of his sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour, but acute, argumentative, comprehensive, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... to assume that Hawthorne could not on the whole have had a high relish for the very positive personality of this accomplished and argumentative woman, in whose intellect high noon seemed ever to reign, as twilight did in his own. He must have been struck with the glare of her understanding, and, mentally speaking, have scowled and blinked a good deal in conversation ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... then,' replied Lucy; 'I am older now, and have less confidence in my argumentative powers. I love truth as well, but doubt my capacity to lift her veil, the willingness of mortals to seek her humbly, or the certainty of their yielding to conviction, even were she bodily, in unclouded radiance, to stand before them. I hope I may always have courage sufficient to ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... moderns he contrived to write an epic which stands on the same eminence as the ancient writings of the kind, and that he found time in a life, which hardly extended to old age as we know it, to write, besides noble lyrics and a series of fiercely argumentative prose treatises, two other masterpieces in the grand style, a tragedy modelled on the Greeks and a second epic on the "compact" style of the book of Job. No English poet can compare with him in ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... I told you that I desired entire silence for weeks, perhaps months. I must 'commune with my own heart and be still.' I must wrestle with this darkness alone. You assented; you forced on me no long argumentative homilies—you preached to me solely with your life, the pure beautiful life of a Christian woman. Sometimes I tried to read carefully the morality of Jesus, which I, and sceptics worse than I, must allow to be perfect of its kind, and it struck me how nearly you approached to that ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... academic jester, in cap and gown and liripipe instead of motley, which have been charged, not quite unjustly, on the Arnold that we know best. There is hardly in English a better example of the blending and conciliation of the two modes of argumentative writing referred to in Bishop Kurd's acute observation, that if your first object is to convince, you cannot use a style too soft and insinuating; if you want to confute, the rougher and more unsparing the better. And the description and ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... unyielding. Hill carried the crowd with a whirlwind of eloquence; Stephens first convinced, then moved them with accelerating force; Toombs swept them with a hurricane of thought and magnetic example. Hill's eloquence was in flights, always rising and finally sublime; Stephens' was argumentative with an elegant smoothness, often flowing in sweeping, majestic waves; Toombs' was an engulfing stream of impetuous force, with the roar of thunder. Hill was receptive, elastic, and full of the future; Stephens was philosophical, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... important subject had, of course, been adopted after studying Mr. Toad's "most luminous and convincing pamphlet," still there were a few minor points on which Vivian "was obliged to confess" that "he did not exactly see his way." Mr. Toad was astonished, but argumentative, and, of course, in due time, had made a convert of his companion; "a young man," as he afterwards remarked to Lord Mounteney, "in whom he knew not which most to admire, the soundness of his own views, or the candour ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... God's spirit, which is nothing more than a belief in the inspiration of the majority, or even a belief in the inspiration of a bureaucracy, is the prey of this delusion. The Protestant, too, with his legal creed, built up of texts and precedents, in which the argumentative dicta of Apostles and Evangelists are as weighty and important as the words of the Saviour Himself, falls under this delusion. I read the other day a passage from a printed sermon of an orthodox type, an acrid outcry against ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... burn on Wednesday? I told him a great deal about you. We had been having one of our customary argumentative conversations, principally about marriage, more especially still about the horrors of false marriages, and this led me to tell him that the best friend I have on earth is infamously bound for the whole of her dear life by a marriage contracted before she was seventeen years old. He ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... newspaper in his hand, looking very solemn; and upon my eager inquiry what had happened, he told me that Joseph Mazzini was dead. I had never even heard Mazzini's name, and after being told about him I was inclined to grow argumentative, asserting that my father did not know him, that he was not an American, and that I could not understand why we should be expected to feel badly about him. It is impossible to recall the conversation ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... century its form and direction. In its outer shape as in its inner spirit our literature obeyed the impulse he had given it from the beginning of the eighteenth century till near its close. His influence told especially on poetry. Dryden remained a poet; even in his most argumentative pieces his subject seizes him in a poetic way, and prosaic as much of his treatment may be, he is always ready to rise into sudden bursts of imagery and fancy. But he was a poet with a prosaic end; his aim was not simply to express beautiful ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... different from that of others, 'endeared me to him.' Bentham declined one offer in 1788; but in 1790 he suddenly took it into his head that Lansdowne had promised him a seat in parliament; and immediately set forth his claims in a vast argumentative letter of sixty-one pages.[239] Lansdowne replied conclusively that he had not made the supposed promise, and had had every reason to suppose that Bentham preferred retirement to politics. Bentham accepted the statement frankly, though a short coolness apparently followed. The claim, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... minutes in deep and placid thought, took the letter out of its receptacle, and read it over and over again. It was very bad Spanish and very absurd, but she thought it delightful, poetical, classical, sentimental, argumentative, convincing, incontrovertible, imaginative, and even grammatical, for if it was not good Spanish, there was no Spanish half so good. Alas! Agnes was, indeed, unsophisticated, to be in such ecstasies with a midshipman's love-letter. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... liked his humour and his style, and did not trouble himself about anything further. Gibbon speaks of 'the philosophic maze of the writings of Plato, of which the dramatic is perhaps more interesting than the argumentative part.' That is quite a legitimate opinion, provided you do not undertake to judge philosophy in the light of it. The apparently serious rejection of geometrical truth in the Hermotimus may fairly suggest that Lucian was as unphilosophic as he was unmathematical. Twice, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... rose out of combinations: and the very complete establishment which this work gives to the narrative concerning Paul in the latter half of the "Acts," appeared to me to reflect critical honour[3] on the whole New Testament. In the epistles of this great apostle, notwithstanding their argumentative difficulties, I found a moral reality and a depth of wisdom perpetually growing upon me with acquaintance: in contrast to which I was conscious that I made no progress in understanding the four gospels. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... speaker whom everybody was curious to hear, and from whom no one turned away in disappointment. On the other hand, Hamilton was an acknowledged orator, diffuse, ornate, full of metaphor, with flashes of poetical genius, revelling in exuberant strength, and endowed with a gift of argumentative eloquence which appealed to the intellect and the feelings at the same time. Erastus Root says Hamilton's words were so well chosen, and his sentences so finely formed into a swelling current, that the hearer would be captivated if not ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Nadine, in the summer of 1815, she withdrew to a lonely and picturesque estate, situated on the borders of the Gulf of Finland. Here, through the days and nights of six months, she plunged into the most laborious researches, historical and argumentative. The result was, that she became convinced of the apostolic authority of the Roman primacy, and avowed herself a Catholic. Soon after this conversion, the Jesuits were ordered to leave Russia. Indignant at an ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... He is the most nervous of parents, and spends half his time calling on his children to be careful. The young thrush hopping about on the lawn knows nothing of cats and refuses to believe that they are dangerous. He is not afraid even of human beings. His parent becomes argumentative to the point of tears, but the young one stays where he is and looks at you with a sideways jerk of his head as much as to say: "Listen to the old 'un." You, too, begin to be alarmed at such boldness. You know, like the pitiful parent, that the world is a very dangerous ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... "Argumentative contention is not what he excels in; and he is never, I think, so happy as when he has an opportunity of exhibiting a mixture of philosophy and pleasantry, and especially when he can interpose anecdotes and references to the authority of the eminent characters in the history of his own country. ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... Calcutta and the good of his State. For the twenty-four hours they had been in camp under his walls the Maharajah had taken no more notice of Colonel Starr and his three hundred Midlanders than if they represented so many jungle bushes. To all Colonel Starr's messages, diplomatic, argumentative, threatening, there had come the same unsatisfactory response—the Maharajah of Chita had no word to say to the British Raj. And still the gates were shut, and still only the pipal-trees looked over the wall, and only the cannon ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Lyell,[61] "the clear and philosophical views of Frascatero were disregarded, and the talent and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed for three centuries to be wasted in the discussion of these two simple and preliminary questions: First, whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living creatures; and, secondly, whether, if this ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... I saw how argumentative he could be, and that if he roused himself up he'd be better, "if you don't jump into your trousers ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... of conversing these French people carry to great perfection. It is not frivolous, though it is light and sparkling; it is still less argumentative, but it has the knack of bringing out different opinions and different views of them. We pity the French for their want of political liberty, but the social freedom they enjoy is some compensation.—— But what interested me still more than these brilliant salons, was the tour ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... said, her hands on her hips, her elbows wide-spread, her jaws argumentative, "I've done some blarneying with that lad, an' I've fed him some, because he was doin' things that would help an' please ye, but now I'm tellin' ye, just like I'll be tellin' ye till I die, I ain't STRONG for him. If ever the day comes when ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... ambition of supplying this desideratum. The note of prelude had been struck in Rinaldo; the subject of the Gerusalemme had been chosen. But the age in which he lived was nothing if not critical and argumentative. The time had long gone by when Dante's massive cathedral, Boccaccio's pleasure domes, Boiardo's and Ariosto's palaces of enchantment, arose as though unbidden and unreasoned from the maker's brain. It was now impossible to take a step in poetry or art ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... crisis. But her Majesty did not want firmness. "Write to England? Yes, willingly. But as to Weissenfels and Schwedt, whatever answer come from England,—Impossible!" steadily answers her Majesty. There was much discourse, suasive, argumentative; Grumkow "quoting Scripture on her Majesty, as the Devil can on occasion," says Wilhelmina. Express Scriptures, Wives, be obedient to your husbands, and the like texts: but her Majesty, on the Scripture side too, gave him as good as he brought. "Did not Bethuel the ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... faction, and, although their resolutions breathed a more liberal spirit than usual, yet the cloven foot of the party peeped out, as they contained more of an attack upon the ministers than an abhorrence of the system. Mr. Cobbett then came forward, and, in a speech at once clear, argumentative, and eloquent, which was received with raptures of applause, and appeared to carry conviction to the breast of every one present, with the exception of two or three parsons, who were in the crowd, and who sometimes expressed a sort ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... moment, is highly extolled the next, when the necessity of depreciating contrast requires the change; and as for the inconsequence of the remarks so rapidly following each other, the gossip is "thankful she has not an argumentative head." She is, therefore, privileged one moment to contradict the inevitable consequences of the assertions made ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... cases in which the operation of the mores is shown to be what is affirmed in the analysis. Any such exposition of the mores in cases, in order to be successful, must go into details. It is in details that all the graphic force and argumentative value of the cases are to be found. It has not been easy to do justice to the details and to observe the necessary limits of space. The ethnographical facts which I present are not subsequent justification of generalizations otherwise obtained. They are selections from a great array ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... vast population kept moving to and fro along that great highway there were never, I am sure, more than a hundred people gathered at the shrine of Mr. Ramsey. They laughed at his profanities, yes; but directly he dropped these, and grew argumentative, they talked, and had to be vigorously reduced to order. Gallio-like they cared for none of these things, and I am quite sure a good staff of working clergy, men like Mr. Body or Mr. Steele of St. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... round and round his object, surveys it in every light, examines it in all its parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts it, illustrates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so strictly argumentative. And having established his case, he opens upon his opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good natured that it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or, when the subject is ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... "I beg you will reconsider. Nothing could give me more pride and pleasure. Besides," adopting an argumentative tone, "you know it would be my only chance for attending the picnic, and I have a vast desire to engage in some of your St. Louis festivities, and to meet some of the young maidens I was ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... when America rescued her stranded citizens long ago, and sent them money to get home, we should be suffering like this. Nothing more about the phantom train! Our nerves are becoming wrought up, and we are developing unexpectedly irritable and argumentative natures. The weather is amazingly windy and horribly cold, one shivers in summer garments, and cannot afford to buy warmer things. A leading article in the "Frankfurter Zeitung" gives us a grain of comfort, since it is headed "Geduld und Zuversicht" ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... cautious peep through the bars. The crowd was moving off up the street. A small group remained undecided near a bonfire in the court house yard. One of these men held a long rope in his hand, and seemed argumentative. ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... the European war by Mr. G.B. Shaw in THE TIMES of Sunday appeals to me as a noteworthy specimen of what an artful literary genius can do in the way of argumentative cantankerousness. His chief grievance is British diplomacy as represented by Sir Edward Grey, upon whose devoted head he empties the ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... back—too presumptuous to be attempted, at any rate till he had better learnt his ground. How his system would have succeeded, we cannot tell. The nature of the peasantry of the county he had to deal with is, to be quick-witted, argumentative, and ready of retort; open to religious impressions, but with much of self-opinion and conceit, and not much reverence, and often less conscientious in matters of honesty and morality than denser rustics of less apparent piety. The ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so long shown that the human brain is a congenial nidus for inconsistent beliefs that we do not pause to inquire how Dr. Cumming, who attributes the conversion of the unbelieving to the Divine Spirit, can think it necessary to co-operate with that Spirit by argumentative white lies. Nor do we for a moment impugn the genuineness of his zeal for Christianity, or the sincerity of his conviction that the doctrines he preaches are necessary to salvation; on the contrary, we regard the flagrant unveracity ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... next to Char Moore still feeling on the argumentative side after their discussion of the night before. He motioned with his head at some excavation work going on next to the station. "There you are. Women ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... nod, had he to answer for, when his foot touched the debatable land of controversy. Though contrary to the keeping and dignity of his position in life, yet did honest Denny then get desperately significant, and his face amazingly argumentative. Many a pretender has he fairly annihilated by a single smile of contempt that contained more logic than a long argument from another man. In fact, the whole host of rhetorical figures seemed breaking out of his face. By a solitary glance of his eye he could look a man into a dilemma, and ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... having been, indeed, my chief inducement for the preceding inquisition. 'There neither is nor can be any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.' Such is Mr. Wordsworth's assertion. Now prose itself, at least in all argumentative and consecutive works, differs, and ought to differ, from the language of conversation; even as reading ought to differ from talking. Unless therefore the difference denied be that of the mere words, as materials common to all styles of writing, and not of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of the first basin the man had risen to serenity; at the second he was jovial; at the third, argumentative, at the fourth, the qualities signified by the shape of his face, the occasional clench of his mouth, and the fiery spark of his dark eye, began to tell in his conduct; ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... seldom in an argumentative mood, smiled blandly, and replied, "Yes, my dear Count, you are probably right as far as Holland is concerned. When we reach other parts of the world we may be compelled, against our better judgment, to change our opinion, but ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... leaders of the New Novel—of that fiction which at any given moment is chiefly attracting and stimulating the men and women under forty. There is always a New Novel, and a New Poetry, as there was once, and many times, a New Learning. The New Novel may be Romantic, or Realist, or Argumentative. In our day it appears to be a compound of the last two—at any rate, in ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... loyal States would be sufficient, others that three fourths of all the States, whether loyal or insurrectionary, was necessary. Mr. Lincoln, in a speech on Louisiana reconstruction, while expressing no opinion against the first proposition, nevertheless declared with great argumentative force that the latter "would be unquestioned and unquestionable"; and this view appears to have governed the action of ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Distrust for his Hypothesis, since for it even a Man of such Learning can bring no better Arguments. The Rhetorical part of his Discourse, though it make not the least part of it, I shall say nothing to, designing to examine only the Argumentative part, and leaving it to Philoponus to answer those passages wherein either Paracelsus or Chymists are concern'd: I shall observe to You, that in what he has said besides, he makes it his Business to do these two things. The one ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... the earth, thus spake: "O, Mohammed! of a truth thou art the Prophet of God, and I am his angel Gabriel." "This," says Carlyle, "is the soul of Islam. This is what Mohammed felt and now declared to be of infinite moment, that idols and formulas were nothing; that the jargon of argumentative Greek sects, the vague traditions of Jews, the stupid routine of Arab idolatry were a mockery and a delusion; that there is but one God; that we must let idols alone and look to Him. He alone is reality; He made us and sustains us. Our whole strength lies in submission to Him. The thing He ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... spoken of in the third person, which has caused many variations. The transcriber has also made many omissions, not only of one, but of several paragraphs at a time, frequently passing over the remarks of the several speakers. It appears to have been his object to copy chiefly the argumentative part of the manuscript. This defective transcription had belonged to Mr William Veitch, as appears from his name written on the cover and first page, with the addition "minister at Peebles, 1691." In the copy transcribed for the press, the octavo manuscript has been followed. The ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... submissiveness to trample on the elementary decencies of marriage. He gathered loose women into his house, and carried on orgies of debauchery in his wife's presence. To show what a pass things had come to, I may mention that Grigory, the gloomy, stupid, obstinate, argumentative servant, who had always hated his first mistress, Adelaida Ivanovna, took the side of his new mistress. He championed her cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a manner little befitting a servant, and on one occasion broke up the revels ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the infallibility of the Church and the pope. Calvin possessed a remarkably logical mind and a clear and admirable style. The French version of his great work is the first example of the successful use of that language in an argumentative treatise. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... "bears proportion" is in verse more accurate than most of the recent repeaters in prose. And this is not the only case of the kind in his argumentative poetry. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... now behold a once happy and prosperous man deprived of children, wealth, and health,—misfortunes so swift and dire that his friends in lengthy speeches insist he has offended God, for such trials as his can only be sent in punishment for grievous sins. The exhortations of Job's three argumentative friends, as well as of a later-comer, and of his wife, extend over a period of seven days, and cover three whole cycles; but, in spite of all they say, Job steadfastly refuses to curse God as ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... later, Eveley was called away to the telephone by Nolan, wishing to know what time he should call for her and the moment she was out of hearing, the club went into noisy conference. Upon her return, the argumentative Russian announced that the vote had been changed, and ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... said Skipper Tommy, in a mildly argumentative way, "'tis as I says. You must do as the women does, an' not as a man ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... to hear a statement of that kind, even if it were a mere argumentative flourish on the part of a selfish, unsympathetic parent who would jeopardize a person's life rather than annoy herself with a light or two burning. Mary V immediately had what her mother called a tantrum. That is, she began to cry and to declaim unreasonably that no one cared whether ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... and with a face amazingly like parchment, upon which a long, sharp nose stuck downward, morosely and ominously. This was Alexandra, the servant of old of the student bird-houses; the friend and creditor of all the students; a woman of sixty-five, argumentative, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... amenities of life must be preserved among friends. We can never feel very safe with the man whose humor tends to bitter speaking or keen sarcasm, or with the man who flares up into hasty speech at every or no provocation, or with the man who is argumentative ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... the point; stir a question, agitate a question, ventilate a question, torture a question; take up a side, take up a case. contend, take one's stand upon, insist, lay stress on; infer &c 480. follow from &c (demonstration) 478. Adj. reasoning &c v.; rationalistic; argumentative, controversial, dialectic, polemical; discursory^, discursive; disputatious; Aristotelian^, eristic^, eristical^. debatable, controvertible. logical; relevant &c 23. Adv. for, because, hence, whence, seeing that, since, sith^, then thence so; for that reason, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on Clandestine Marriages.—I have a MS. against the validity of clandestine marriages, dated from Oxford, June 23rd, 1682, signed T. Gilburt. It is a learned and argumentative treatise on this subject. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... all we have to picture him by—helped— always remember that—by the Holy Spirit of God, who helps the imagination, the poetic and dramatic faculty of men; just as much as He helps the logical and argumentative faculty to see things and men as they really are, by the spirit of love, which also is the ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... St. Leon were undoubtedly coloured faintly by those of Lewis's Monk (1794) and Mrs. Radcliffe's Italian (1798); but it is characteristic of Godwin that instead of trying to portray the terror of the shadowy hall, he chooses rather to present the argumentative speeches of St. Leon and the Inquisitor. The aged stranger, who bestows on St. Leon the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, has the piercing eye so familiar to readers of the novel of terror: "You wished to escape from its penetrating power, but you had not ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... led to the third means of recognition. The incident of help rendered by one or more of the lower animals to man is a favourite one in folk-tales; and it has furnished a large portion of the argumentative stock-in-trade of those scholars who contend for their Indian origin. We are assured that every tale which contains this incident must be referred to a Buddhist source, or at least has been subjected to Buddhist influence. This theory ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... lowered their voices abruptly as though they had been admonished, but the tones reached her, alternately threatening, argumentative, even pleading. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... up for Reuben only the cobwebbed corners, the faded roundabouts of fellow-martyrs, the dismal figures of Daboll, the shining tail-coat of Master Brummem, as he stalks up and down from hour to hour, collecting in this way his scattered thoughts for some new argumentative thrust of the quill into the sixthly or the seventhly of his next week's sermon! And the long and weary afternoons, when the sun with a mocking bounty pours through the dusty and curtainless windows to the west, lighting only again the gray and speckled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... as the condition of the times may require," met at Worcester, Mass., January 15, 1857, with Frank W. Bird in the chair, and William Lloyd Garrison among the vice-presidents. The pioneer's speech on the occasion was a characteristic and noteworthy utterance. Its tone throughout was grave and argumentative. Here is a specimen of it, and of the way in which he met the most serious objection to the Abolition movement for disunion: "The air is filled with objections to a movement of this kind. I am neither surprised nor disquieted at this. One of these is of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... to learn that the shortest distance between two points is sometimes a curve. In its eyes Patterson at Bunker Hill was exclusively the blot upon the escutcheon, and the whole game of war consisted in somehow doing away with that blot. There was great chafing at the inaction. It was hot, argumentative July weather; the encampment to the north of Winchester in the Valley of Virginia hummed with the comments of the strategists in the ranks. Patterson should have been attacked after Falling Waters. What ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... productive repose they derived from him, and whom he alone could secure from the dangerous uncertainty to which the Chamber had reduced them. Different in origin and style, but all actuated by the same spirit and tending to the same end, these argumentative essays became gradually more and more efficacious. Having at last decided, the Duke de Richelieu and M. Laine concurred with M. Decazes to bring over the King, who had already formed his resolution, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... own religion as their principle—sink into narrow asceticism. The glories of Christianity, in short, touch on no chord in the heart of the writer; his imagination remains unkindled; his words, though they maintain their stately and measured march, have become cool, argumentative, and inanimate. Who would obscure one hue of that gorgeous coloring in which Gibbon has invested the dying forms of Paganism, or darken one paragraph in his splendid view of the rise and progress of Mahometanism? ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... First, as you know, comes the long, swaying, scholastic, somewhat sophisticated argument about the evidence of resurrection; about the corn, 'that which thou sowest,' the vivification, the change in vivification, and the rest. All this, almost purely argumentative, should be read quietly, with none of the bravura which your prize reader lavishes on it. The argument works up quietly—at once tensely and sinuously, but very quietly—to conviction. Then comes the hush; and then the authoritative voice speaking out of it, awful and slow, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... profound attention by the smart-looking lasses and tall and swarthy gillies clustering about the door; but to the English part of his audience its chief features were its curiously exhortatory and argumentative character and also its interminable length. As the minister went on and on, the frown of impatience on Lord Fareborough's face deepened and deepened; he fretted and fumed and fidgeted; but, of course, he could not bring disgrace on his son-in-law's house ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... political ideology, with a solicitor or pleader, is a bad note. The positive, practical mind of the judge has taken in at a glance and penetrated to the bottom of arguments, means and valid pretensions; he submits impatiently to metaphysics and pettifoggery, to the argumentative force and mendacity of words.—This goes so far that he distrusts oratorical or literary talent; in any event when he entrusts active positions or a part in public business then he takes no note of it. According to him, "the men who write well and are eloquent ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... understanding are at their best when they go together and adorn the same mind. Modern science until lately had realised this ideal: it was an extension of common perception and common sense. We could trust it implicitly, as we do a map or a calendar; it was not true for us merely in an argumentative or visionary sense, as are religion and philosophy. Geography went hand in hand with travel, Copernican astronomy with circumnavigation of the globe: and even the theory of evolution and the historical ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... extraordinary argument was recognized by the father, who, however, contented himself by simply contending that it had not been stipulated in the bargain. The issue was, therefore, limited, and the discussion progressed slowly and deliberately, with a certain calm dignity and argumentative satisfaction on both sides that exalted the subject, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... with an argumentative expression of countenance. "It isn't there," he said firmly. ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... if judiciously taught, forms in the pupil habits of mental attention, argumentative sequence, absolute accuracy, and satisfaction in truth as a result, that do not seem to spring equally from the study of any other subject suitable to this elementary stage of instruction." (Joseph Payne, Lectures on ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... acquired by means of demonstrative reasoning. On the other hand, in God, there is a sure judgment of truth, without any discursive process, by simple intuition, as was stated in the First Part (Q. 14, A. 7); wherefore God's knowledge is not discursive, or argumentative, but absolute and simple, to which that knowledge is likened which is a gift of the Holy Ghost, since it is a participated ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... (Woman's Great Learning), that famous classic of Japanese girlhood which teaches the submission of women and the superiority of men. It was a type which was becoming rare in her own country. Little Asako had nothing in common with the argumentative heroines of Bernard Shaw or with the desperate viragos of Ibsen, to whom Sadako felt herself spiritually akin. Asako must be a fool. She exasperated her Japanese cousin, who at the same time was envious of her, envious above all of her independent wealth. As she observed to her own mother, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... room overhead. At the bottom of all this ridiculous exhibition, which drew repeated shouts of laughter from the very large and respectable audience, lay two principles upon which Mr. Freeman might have erected an imposing argumentative structure. These were, that every man has a right to do what he pleases with his own, so that he does not disturb others; and that laws punishing professional gamblers and letting citizens go ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... me most, Veronica," I replied—"I can remember it so well—was when they talked steadily for half an hour themselves, and then, when I would attempt with one sentence to put them right about the thing, turn round and bully-rag me for being argumentative." ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... Edmund again, explaining that this time it was not for untruthfulness, but for his vexatious argumentative habits. This will show you what a prejudiced and ignorant man Edmund's master was—how different from the revered Head of the nice school where your good parents are ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... amid loud cheers from both sides. A curious episode in his history, honourable both to him and House. A real good man DAVITT, with all the modesty of sterling merit. Still, inclined to be argumentative. Had scarcely taken his seat, when he came up to me, and said, "It's very well for you, Toby, to be M.P. for Barks; but I'm M.P. for Tenpence. Yes, that's the precise sum it cost me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... "Ossian." "Fingal"—which seems to have been the favorite—was again turned into heroic couplets by Ewen Cameron, in 1776, prefaced by the attestations of a number of Highland gentlemen to the genuineness of the originals; and by an argumentative introduction, in which the author quotes Dr. Blair's dictum that Ossian was the equal of Homer and Vergil "in strength of imagination, in grandeur of sentiment, and in native majesty of passion." National ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... believe it to be—even now that I am through with the book—the best way to a sort of lucid vagueness which has always been my intention in this matter. I tried over several beginnings of a Utopian book before I adopted this. I rejected from the outset the form of the argumentative essay, the form which appeals most readily to what is called the "serious" reader, the reader who is often no more than the solemnly impatient parasite of great questions. He likes everything in hard, heavy lines, black and white, yes and no, because he does not understand how much there is ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... bundle of tattered papers, marry a ridiculous, pathetic, provincial old woman. It was a proof that she did not think the idea would come to me, her having determined to suggest it herself in that practical, argumentative, heroic way, in which the timidity however had been so much more striking than the boldness that her reasons appeared to come first ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... sent it to his usual critics, Sir Thomas Bodley, Toby Matthews, and Bishop Andrewes. And he meant to follow it up with a practical exemplification of his method. But he changed his plan. He had more than once expressed his preference for the form of aphorisms over the argumentative and didactic continuity of a set discourse. He had, indeed, already twice begun a series of aphorisms on the true methods of interpreting nature, and directing the mind in the true path of knowledge, and had begun them with the same famous aphorism with which the Novum Organum opens. He ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... how quickly his secret took wing, and it annoyed him that all his acquaintances were so prompt to felicitate him. He imagined a latent mockery in their speeches, and he took them with an argumentative solemnity. He reasoned separately with his friends; to all who spoke to him of his marriage he presented elaborate proofs that it was the wisest thing he could possibly do, and tried to give the affair ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... with unbelievers. Argument kills the spirit of any religion, and the person who desires to prove his position by argument is not ready to be convinced by the spirit. If you are obliged to carry on a conversation with an argumentative person, silently deny all his statements of error, and with calm positiveness affirm for him intelligence, wisdom, and a desire to know truth. In other words, recognize his spiritual self, which is in perfect peace and harmony, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... wearied of heated political strife. If they are forced to vigorous action it will be exceedingly vigorous, perhaps unpleasantly so. Those who cause the trouble will suffer most from it. Bear that in mind, persons colored and white-skinned. We reiterate our advice to the reflective and argumentative Radical leader, to be careful how he goes, and not stir up the animals too freely; they have ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the rather early date, because if we had waited until the hay was in, we might have got wet weather. Two or three objected, but I'm satisfied I took the proper line. One must be firm with an argumentative committee." ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... question was animated, vehement, and argumentative; all the party passions were enlisted in it; and it was protracted until the 24th of March, when the resolution was carried in the affirmative by sixty-two to thirty-seven voices. The next day, the committee appointed to present it to the chief magistrate reported his answer, which was, "that he ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall |
