"Casuist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do you say to that! Ah, you casuist! He must have been with the Jesuits, somewhere, Ivan. Oh, you stinking Jesuit, who taught you? But you're talking nonsense, you casuist, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Don't cry, Grigory, we'll reduce ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... not justify as a grammarian that which he constantly practices as a man! What a scholar is he, who can be led by a false criticism or a false custom, to condemn his own usage and that of every body else! What a casuist is he, who dares pretend conscience for practising that which he knows and acknowledges to be wrong! If to speak in the second person singular without inflecting our preterits and auxiliaries, is a ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... be the worse for a ghostly adviser at hand,' my father said to me with his quaintest air of gravity and humour mixed, which was not insincerely grave, for the humour was unconscious. 'An accredited casuist may frequently be a treasure. And I avow it, I like to travel ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bring on the stage, and who could be perpetually before the scene, as a protagonist should be. He is particularly suited, by our received ideas of his energy and restlessness, for the principal character. The devil of the German patriarch's Faust is, after all, but a profligate casuist; and the high poetical tone of sublimity of Milton's Satan is no less to be avoided in a delineation that has truth and nature for its inspiration. In short, the devil, the true romantic devil, must speak, as the devil would naturally speak, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... very bad casuist; and the pleasure I take in writing to you, who are the only one to whom I can disburden my mind, may make me, as I have hinted, very partial to my own wishes: else, if it were not an artful evasion beneath an open and frank heart to wish ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... they argued, but Nehemiah still went about repeating his rival prophecies. The more zealous of the Sabbatians, angry at the pertinacious and pugnacious casuist, would have done him a mischief, but the Prophet of Lemberg thought it prudent to escape to Adrianople. Here in revenge he ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... service, assuredly bountiful Nature left them in ignorance of the fact. And it is to the sportsman and the colt-breaker that we must apply, if we wish to know whose victims are the most willing. Not to the cockney casuist, whose knowledge of the stag is confined to his venison, and who never trusts himself on the horse till it has been "long trained, in shackles, to procession pace." If he did, he would find that the unfettered ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... they gladly accept the indulgence, without desiring to detect the fallacy or the reasoning: and indeed many, I might say most people, are not able to do it; which makes the publication of such quibblings and refinements the more pernicious. I am no skillful casuist nor subtle disputant; and yet I would undertake to justify and qualify the profession of a highwayman, step by step, and so plausibly, as to make many ignorant people embrace the profession, as an innocent, if not even a laudable one; and puzzle people of some degree of knowledge, to ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... between courage and rashness, between prudence and cowardice, between frugality and avarice, between liberality and prodigality? Who has ever been able to say how far mercy to offenders ought to be carried, and where it ceases to deserve the name of mercy and becomes a pernicious weakness? What casuist, what lawyer, has ever been able nicely to mark the limits of the right of selfdefence? All our jurists bold that a certain quantity of risk to life or limb justifies a man in shooting or stabbing an assailant: ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had felt himself once; he did not blame them. Wee Jennie even came up with her slate one day and asked him to set her a sum in multiplication; he did so; but he knew that she would rub it out as soon as she could get out of sight, and he laughed quietly to himself at this tiny casuist, who was trying so hard to ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... He comes to confession with a humbly threatening air, in order to wrest from his doctor permission to sin with a good conscience. Some day will be told, by him who may have the courage to tell it, an astounding tale of the cowardly things done, and the shameful tricks so basely ventured by the casuist who wished to keep his penitent. From Navarro to Escobar the strangest bargains were continually made at the wife's expense, and some little wrangling went on after that. But all this would not do. The casuist was conquered, was altogether a coward. From ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... author. Day after day I am examining into your destiny, and day after day I believe more and more that you are not fated for the tedious drudgery to which you doom your youth. I would have you great, but in the senate, not a wretched casuist at the Bar. Appear in public as an individual authority, not one of that nameless troop of shadows contemned while dreaded as the Press. Write for renown. Go into the world, and make friends. Soften your rugged bearing. Lift yourself above that herd whom you call ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for it. He scrupled & scrupled about it, and at last (to use his own words) "tampered" with Godwin to know whether the thing was honest or not. Godwin said nay to it, & Allen rejected the living! Could the blindest Poor Papish have bowed more servilely to his Priest or Casuist? Why sleep the Watchman's answers to that Godwin? I beg you will not delay to alter, if you mean to keep, those last lines I sent you. Do that, & read ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... closer home to himself, our divinity student puts this acute difficulty to his spiritual casuist: Whether a man of God, and especially a minister of Christ, can be right who does not love God for Himself, for His nature and for His character solely and purely, and apart altogether from all His benefactions both in nature and in grace. ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... good place; reminded him of the needs of his old father and his sister, poor peasants, one of them now too old and the other too infirm to gain their livelihood by working. And Satan finally turned casuist and sought to prove that, without betraying the secret, he could still send away the servant on some pretext, or even with none. But at this suggestion of profiting by the confession Don Rocco raised such a frightful frown that the devil fled without waiting for more. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... casuist. I am glad you like her. It shows that you are human. There are strange creatures in the woods and wilds of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... not a casuist ... but I know by instinct when I'm up against the wrong thing to do; and if he can't be cleared on that point I won't lift a finger ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... spoke of Jethro. Ephraim was not a casuist, and his sense of right and wrong came largely through his affections. It is safe to say that he never made an analysis of the sorrow which he knew was afflicting the girl, but he had had a general and most sympathetic understanding ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... No casuist observer could have thought that the nine apparently light-headed and careless party who now wended their way to Blackheath Station, looking as if they were not up to anything in particular, were really an Antiquarian Society of the deepest dye. We got an empty carriage to ourselves, and halfway ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... disrespectful to the Lieutenant-Governor, received 600 lashes, and six months in irons![129] Such atrocious neglect of the first principles of equity, is a sad set-off against the license of indiscriminate pardons. The Roman judge was a far better casuist: "For it seemeth to me unreasonable, to send a prisoner, and not withal to signify the crimes laid ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... towards the practice of chivalry, there is something more required than the virtues of courage and generosity. A knight-errant ought to understand the sciences, to be master of ethics or morality, to be well versed in theology, a complete casuist, and minutely acquainted with the laws of his country. He should not only be patient of cold, hunger, and fatigue, righteous, just, and valiant, but also chaste, religious, temperate, polite, and conversable; and have all his passions under the rein, except love, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... feeling against Captain Moray on his account; and as for spying—well, it is only a painful epithet for what is done here and everywhere all the time.' 'Dear me, dear me,' he remarked lightly, 'what a mind you have for argument!—a born casuist; and yet, like all women, you would let your sympathy rule you in matters of state. But come,' he added, 'where do you think I have been?' It was hard to answer him gaily, and yet it must be done, and so I said, 'You have probably put yourself in prison, that you should ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... my dear, because he has no taste for social companionable life, has he therefore a right to damp the spirit of it in those that have? I intend to consult some learned casuist on this head. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... worst casuist out. She was seldom certain about her facts, and when she happened to be so, had not sufficient pertinacity or confidence to push her advantage. Her favorite argument was ever ad misericordiam. "I wish I could quite believe you," she ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... unsusceptible of misinterpretation. None can doubt what the condition of servitude is north of that line. It is a clear cut; it is prohibited, and prohibited forever. No interpretation can mistake it; no casuist can doubt upon it; it is a work well done. North of that line involuntary servitude, except for crime, is prohibited. How is it south? My honorable colleague, I think, has well said that, south of that line, for our rights, at best ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... you know," demanded Hamlin savagely, bending his black eyes on the astonished casuist, "how do you know that the gal hezn't ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... slender results.[1] Burchard, the papal prothonotary, states that he was put to the torture seven times. It made very little difference whether these tortures were inflicted per modum continuationis or per modum iterationis, as the casuist of the Inquisition put it. At any rate, it ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... word should all at once change its meaning; why that should now be a crime, which was formerly a virtue; why he, who had so often been desired to go and play, should now be reviled for his obedience, the young casuist is unable to discover. He hears that he is no longer a child: this he is willing to believe; but the consequence is alarming. Of the new duties incumbent upon his situation, he has but yet a confused idea. In his manly character, he is not yet thoroughly ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... potteries. It is his homage to the artisans who contrived those strange forms and imagined those gorgeous glazes. In the end he will have a catalogue illustrated from his own designs. Meanwhile, he knows his potteries as the shepherd knows his flock. What casuist will find the heart to deny him so innocent a pleasure? And he merely represents in a very high degree the sort of priestliness that the true collector feels towards ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... after I had finished speaking lost in thought. Then he said, "I see that yours is no common case. Honour, Religion, and Love make a strong partnership and hard taskmasters to a young journeyman. Perhaps I am too little of a casuist to maintain that the lady will not be gratified by your efforts to gain her esteem. My experiences have been few, and I am no lady's man, but I own I should have thought that she would have preferred a more dashing return to her feet—something ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Council to scathing criticism. The Rumanians asked their Entente friends in private to outline the policy which they were accused of countering, and were told in reply that it was beyond the power of the most ingenious hair-splitting casuist to define or describe. "As for us," wrote one of the stanchest supporters of the Entente in French journalism, "who have followed with attention the labors and the utterances, written and oral, of the Four, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... la Bleterie, (Hist. de Jovien, tom. i. p. 212-227.) though a severe casuist, has pronounced that Jovian was not bound to execute his promise; since he could not dismember the empire, nor alienate, without their consent, the allegiance of his people. I have never found much delight or instruction in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... have irritated the good father confessor; she took those keys only that belonged to her, if ever keys did; for they were the keys that locked her out from her natural birthright of liberty. 'Show me,' says the Romish Casuist, 'her right in law to let herself out of that nunnery.' 'Show us,' we reply, 'your right ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey |
