"Cogent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... More cogent objection has been taken to the character of the 'message' as judged from a philosophic point of view. It is the expression or exposition of a vivid a priori religious faith confirmed by positive experience; and it reflects as such a ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... form, nor has he any power save that granted him by God for vengeance. This being true, the whole belief in the Devil's intercourse with witches is undermined. Such, very briefly, were the philosophic bases of Scot's skepticism. Yet the more cogent parts of his work were those in which he denied the validity of any evidence so far offered for the existence of witches. What is witchcraft? he asked; and his answer is worth quoting. "Witchcraft is in truth a cousening art, wherin the ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... of the higher controversial criticism. Its literary style is good, its controversial manner excellent, and its writer's emphasis does not escape in italics and notes of exclamation, but is all reserved for lucid and cogent reasoning. Altogether a book of an excellent spirit, written with ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... to go forth to the kings of the earth, and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty. Thus all that is revealed of them from beginning to end (and scriptures might be multiplied on the point) furnishes the most cogent reason why all should be keenly awake to their existence and their work, and be ever watchful against their influence ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... her to Gannett. This discovery had not been agreeable to her self-esteem. She had preferred to think that Tillotson had himself embodied all her reasons for leaving him; and those he represented had seemed cogent enough to stand in no need of reinforcement. Yet she had not left him till she met Gannett. It was her love for Gannett that had made life with Tillotson so poor and incomplete a business. If she ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... apparently thinking how he can declaim like a practised rhetorician in the London Cockpit, which he used to frequent. Yet you must, at the same time, imagine his declamation to be chaste and precise in its language and cogent, logical and learned in its argument, free from the artifice and affectation of his manner, and in short, opposite to what you might fairly have expected from his first appearance and tones. And when you have compounded these inconsistencies in your imagination, and united qualities ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... throw down the bars that separate them and mark off their theological bailiwicks "with little beds of flowers." The idea is a good one—and I can but wonder where Slattery stole it. Still I can see no cogent reason for getting all the children together in happy union and leaving their good old ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Nelson at seventeen married John Hathaway, she had the usual cogent reasons for so doing, with some rather more unusual ones added thereto. She was alone in the world, and her life with an uncle, her mother's only relative, was an unhappy one. No assistance in the household tasks that she had ever been able to render made ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... for their incredulity, but patiently resumes His old task of instruction, and condescends to let them have the evidence of two senses, not shrinking from their investigating touch. When even these proofs were seen by Him to be insufficient, He added the yet more cogent one of 'eating before ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... innocently expressed her concern at the dislike Lady Margaret seemed to have taken to her; a dislike which Mr Harrel naturally enough imputed to her youth and beauty, yet without suspecting any cause more cogent than a general jealousy of attractions of which she had herself so long ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... person unconnected with any of us, and (comparatively speaking) a stranger to our family, should have been amongst you at such a time. Pray write instantly, and let me understand it—unless it is, for very cogent reasons, to remain in the secrecy which Lydia seems to think necessary; and then I must endeavour to be satisfied ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Cannot an Indian suffer—cannot he die?" Here, finding me silent, he continued. "Moreover, there be very cogent reasons do urge a little risk, for look now, these rogues do go well shod—and see our poor shoes! They bear equipment very necessary to us that have so far to go and their horse should be useful to us. Nor dream ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... their language) can only be speculated on: all this reappears, takes precision and certainty. But is not this a mere creation, like that of art or of systematic metaphysics? What struck me as the only certainty among these admirable cogent arguments was that the once tank of Juturna, round whose double springs Rome must have arisen to drink and worship, this sacred and healing water where the Dioscuri watered their steeds after Lake Regillus, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... and at the two others I afterward attended. The boys often talked about the hygiene of it; and the general theory was that it was somehow physically detrimental; but I heard no arguments advanced sufficiently cogent to make me see the necessity for a real moral effort against the habit, though, as I neared puberty, I was indulging more ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... this point, the evidence is clear, connected, and cogent; but it rarely happens in cases of murder that any human eye sees the very blow struck. The penalty is too severe for such an act to be done in the presence of an eyewitness; and not one murderer in ten could be convicted without the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... cogent debaters,' Dacier assented. 'They make me wince now and then, without convincing me: I own it to you. The confession is not agreeable, though it's a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... many cases; we only indicate that they are there. What we do press is this—that when an authority comes forward to assure us that all the processes of life, including man's highest as well as his lowest attributes, can be explained on chemico-physical lines, we are entitled to ask for a more cogent proof of it than the demonstration, however complete, of the germination of an egg, caused by artificial stimulus and not by the ordinary method of syngamy, even though that germination may lead to the production of a perfect adult form. We are entitled to ask him ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... true, that in wedlock contraries attract, by how cogent a fatality must I have been drawn to my wife! While spicily impatient of present and past, like a glass of ginger-beer she overflows with her schemes; and, with like energy as she puts down her foot, ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... president's address of which an extended press notice said: "Never was there a more masterly exposition of a theme, never a more earnest or cogent argument. A distinguished Justice of the Supreme Court who was present remarked to the writer: 'I have heard many men but not one who can compare with Mrs. Catt in eloquence and logical power.' So the entire audience felt and at the close of her magnificent ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... other side are equally cogent, and so much more alluring! And they are used by the same man with reference to the same passion, and are intended by him to put himself right in his conduct in reference to the same dear girl. Only the former line ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... either because they were launched on a Friday, or that their keel was laid on a Friday, or that they were cursed when building or when about to sail, or had a Jonas on board, or for some other equally cogent reason. I always found that a bad captain and master and a careless crew was the Jonas most to be dreaded, and that to ill-fit and ill-find a ship was the worst curse which could be bestowed on her. I should have been considered ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... it," put in Mrs. Wimp. "I told Mr. Wimp it was very clever and cogent. After that quotation from the letter to the poor fellow's fiancee there could be no more doubt but that it was murder. Mr. Wimp was convinced by it too, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... standing. I was in doubt whether to wait longer or to proceed; my way lay just by him, and it might be dangerous to interrupt so substantial an apparition. However, my curiosity was excited, and my feet were half frozen, two cogent reasons for proceeding; and, to say truth, I was never very much frightened by any ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one had believed that the Red One came from out of the starry night, else why—so his argument had run—had the old and forgotten ones passed his name down as the Star-Born? Bassett could not but recognize something cogent in such argument. But Ngurn affirmed the long years of his long life, wherein he had gazed upon many starry nights, yet never had he found a star on grass land or in jungle depth—and he had looked for them. True, he had beheld shooting stars (this in reply to Bassett's contention); ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... the country, conveying them to their substantial bungalows to smoke and gamble. They have fabulous riches in diamonds, pearls, sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. They love Malacca, and take a pride in beautifying it. They have fashioned their dwellings upon the model of those in Canton, but whereas cogent reasons compel the rich Chinaman at home to conceal the evidences of his wealth, he glories in displaying it under the security of British rule. The upper class of the Chinese merchants live in immense houses within walled gardens. The wives of all are secluded, and inhabit ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... of any benefit, or have rendered any aid, to woman in her efforts to obtain her rights in either the social, the business, or the political world; and unless she is able to present stronger or more cogent reasons to justify that conclusion than any which are therein specified, I shall be compelled to adhere to my present conviction, which is, that this book always has been, and is at present, one of the greatest obstacles in the way of the emancipation ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... abeyance for maturer deliberation; but promises that, unless he sees cogent reasons to the contrary, he may grant a pardon when eighteen months of the sentence have expired. That will be the last week in August, and almost two years since she was thrown into prison. I should have made application to his ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... all, no virtue in itself in mere themal interrelation,—in particular of lesser phrases. One cogent theme may well prevail as text of the whole. As the recurring motives are multiplied, they must lose individual moment. The listener's grasp becomes more difficult, until there is at best a mystic maze, a sweet ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... places or pensions, do go back to their constituents, and upon being rejected by them, go to some borough where the people have no voice; or who, not relishing the prospect, do not go to face their former constituents, but go at once to some borough, and there take a seat, which, by cogent arguments, no doubt, some one has been prevailed on to go out of to make way for them? What will even the impudence of the most prostituted knaves of hired writers find to say in cases ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... Gospel, taken as a total, is as great for the Christians of the nineteenth century, as for those of the Apostolic age. I should not be startled if I were told it was greater. But it does not follow, that this equally holds good of each component part. An evidence of the most cogent clearness, unknown to the primitive Christians, may compensate for the evanescence of some evidence, which they enjoyed. Evidences comparatively dim have waxed into noon-day splendour; and the comparative wane of others, once effulgent, is more than indemnified ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... wrong-doing either ignorance, or temporary hallucination or blindness, and imprudence is but ignorance or delusion carried into action. Did we see clearly the certain bearings and consequences of actions, we should need no stronger dissuasive from all evil, no more cogent motive to every form of virtue. 2. There is no conceivable duty which may not be brought under the head of justice, either to God or to man; for our duties to ourselves are due to God who has ordained them, and to man whom we are the more able to benefit, the more diligent we are in self-government ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... not very cogent, and not in the least literary, but it was reassuring and lover-like, and when he turned her over to her mother she was composed, though ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... have been by a singular accident carried by the police. From scraps of information I have gained while here, I believe I am correct in asserting that we have fallen into a trap, cunningly prepared for us by an unscrupulous fellow-countryman of ours, who has cogent reasons for wishing us out of the way, and has accordingly caused me and my friends to be arrested as coiners. The person in question is named Herbert Murray, but I am unable to say under what alias he is at present known in this part of the world. I mention this that you may be able ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... his herds and flocks; and that, though you appear to be travelling for amusement, you are, in fact, a political exile. All these are grounds for a reduced ransom. At present he believes nothing that I say, because his mind has been previously impressed with contrary and more cogent representations, but what I say will begin to work when he has experienced some disappointment, and the period of re-action arrives. Re-action is the law of society; it is inevitable. All ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Nevertheless, Catherine never showed more political wisdom than in this matter, and it was the one aim of her life in which she wholly failed. We have in the Legenda Minore a racy account of a personal interview with Gregory on the subject, in which she presented cogent considerations to him. She shrewdly suggested that the mercenary troops who ravaged Italy, and were "the very cause and nourishment of war," would gladly turn their arms against the infidel, "For there are few people so wicked that they are not willing to serve God by indulging their taste: ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... survive his eccentricities of diet that long. He was an omnivorous buyer, picking up everything he could lay his hands upon. Yet he had a clearly defined motive for the acquisition of every volume. However absurd the purchase might seem to the bystander, he, at any rate, could have given six cogent reasons why he must have that ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... twenty-eight lunar stations, the Manzil, and I can see no reason why Mohammed and his Bedouins in the desert should not have made the same observation as the Vedic poets in India, though I must admit at the same time that Colebrooke has brought forward very cogent arguments to prove that, in their scientific employment at least, the Arabic Manzil were really ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... clearly stamps the character of a community than does its more open and brazen manifestations. Many causes may lead to a woman's becoming a professional harlot, but if a girl "goes wrong" without any very cogent reason for so doing, there must be something radically unsound in her composition and inherently bad in her nature to lead her to abandon her person to the other sex, who are at all times ready to take advantage of a woman's weakness and a woman's love. Seduction and clandestine prostitution ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... for two reasons—that she already had one husband somewhere or other, and the more cogent reason that though she admired Mr. Fein, found him as cooling and pleasant as lemonade on a July evening, she did not love him, did not want to mother him, as she had always wanted to mother Walter Babson, and as, now and then, when he had turned to her, she had ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... marriage after the age of twenty-five are less cogent. They extend only to the woman herself. She should know that the first labors of wives over thirty are nearly twice as fatal as those between twenty and twenty-five. Undoubtedly nature points to the period between the twentieth and twenty-fifth year as the fittest ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... your religious treatise with infinite pleasure and satisfaction. The style is fine and clear, the arguments close, cogent, and irresistible. May the King of Kings, whose glorious cause you have so well defended, reward your pious labours, and grant that I may be found worthy, through the merits of Jesus Christ, to be an eye-witness of that happiness which I don't doubt he will bountifully ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... to him late that night, advancing many cogent reasons why it should be unwise to make war at once upon the nation of Gentiles to the east. Of these reasons the one that had greatest weight with his listener was the assurance that such a course would not at present be pleasing in the sight of God. ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... impossible, since the constant reminiscence of Marlowe in the construction of the verse points to 1588 or at earliest to 1587 as the date. Mr. Fleay's suggestion of 1589-90 may be accepted as the earliest likely date[223]. To my mind it would need external proof of an unusually cogent description to render plausible the theory that the year, say, of the Shepherd's Calender saw the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... printed "according to the copies of my late dear husband." Until after Marvell's death we never hear of Mrs. Marvell, and with this signed certificate she disappears. In a series of Lives of Poets' Wives it would be hard to make much of Mrs. Andrew Marvell. For different but still cogent reasons it is hard to write a life of ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... subsequent to the war with that country, received from Mexico not merely a cession of the territory that was claimed by Texas, but much that lay beyond the asserted limits. Shall we, then, acting simply as the cogent of Texas in the settlement of this question of boundary, take from the principal for whom we act that territory which belongs to her, to which we asserted her title against Mexico, and appropriate it to ourselves? Why, sir, it would be a violation ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... A still more cogent argument in favour of the strictly speculative treatment of the problem is this. The problem of perception may be said to be a reversed problem. What are the means in every other problem, are in this problem the end—and what is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... York Review.] "is of a brilliant and showy character, running occasionally, though very rarely, into a Ciceronean declamation. In general his taste is unexceptionable; he is clear in statement, close and cogent in argument, lucid in arrangement, remarkably graphic and animated in style, and full of spirit and pleasantry, without the least appearance of emphasis or effort. He is particularly successful in description and the portraiture of character. That his powers were appreciated by his great ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... was once found by a friend walking in deep reverie in the fortress of Buda, and in reply to a question as to the subject of his meditations, he said, "I was looking at the casemates, for I fear that I shall soon be quartered there." Government finally determined to use arguments more cogent than discussion could furnish. Baron Wesselenyi, the leader of the Liberal party, was arrested, together with a number of his adherents, among whom Kossuth was of too much note ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... treated. Nothing can be more superficial than this varnish of classicality. The names of Cicero, Brutus, Augustus were in all mouths; but the real character of these men, or of any others, or of the times they lived in, was very slightly realized. The classic architecture, with its cogent adaptation and sequence of parts, is cut up into theatre-scenery: its "members" are members no longer, but scraps to be stuck about at will. The gods and heroes of the ancient world have become the pageant of a holiday; even the sacred legends ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... cling to me too closely, since I have been promoted to be peer-spiritual of your forest-court. For, indeed, I do find in myself certain indications and admonitions that my day has past its noon; and none more cogent than this: that daily of bad wine I grow more intolerant, and of good wine have a keener and more fastidious relish. There is no surer symptom of receding years. The ferryman is my faithful varlet. I send him on some pious errand, that I may meditate ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... control of the whole of the great river, whose source had been traced south of the Equator, and 2000 miles beyond the limits of the Pharaohs' dominions. Nor was the desire diminished when, without sharing the gratification of the Prince in whose name he acted, General Gordon advanced cogent reasons for establishing a line of communication from Gondokoro, across the territory of Mtesa, with the port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. As Gordon pointed out, that place was nearly 1,100 miles from Khartoum, and only 900 from Mombasa, while the advance to the Lakes ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... returning to Holland; in short, was so plausible in his arguments, so specious and pressing, pleading so eloquently the violence of his love and inutility of delay, and overruling objections with such cogent reasoning, that he achieved a complete triumph, and it was agreed that in one week Van Haubitz should lead his adored Emilie to the hymeneal altar. In the interval, he would have abundant time to obtain his father's consent and the necessary papers from Amsterdam—all of which he doubted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... did not agree either in theology or in politics. "I meant to say," Froude wrote to his wife's brother-in-law in 1851, "that the philosophical necessity of the Incarnation as a fact must have been as cogent to the earliest thinkers as to ourselves. If we may say it must have been, they might say so. And they might, and indeed must, have concluded, each at their several date, that the highest historical person known to them must have been the Incarnate ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... they are seldom negligently or implicitly received: suspicion is always watchful over the practices of interest; and whatever the hope of gain, or desire of mischief, can prompt one man to assert, another is, by reasons equally cogent, incited to refute. But vanity pleases herself with such slight gratifications, and looks forward to pleasure so remotely consequential, that her practices raise no alarm, and her stratagems are ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... for a long time; I fought off their invitation as well as I could: I couldn't bear thus to quarter myself upon utter strangers. But they both were so pressing, and brought up so many cogent arguments why I couldn't go alone to the one village saloon—a mere whisky-drinking public-house, they said, of very bad character,—that in the long run I was fain almost to acquiesce in their kind plan for my temporary housing. Besides, after ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... furnish a mathematical and final refutation. But the refutation which we draw from the consideration of real time, and which is, in our opinion, the only refutation possible, becomes the more rigorous and cogent the more frankly the evolutionist hypothesis is assumed. We must dwell a good deal more on this point. But let us first show more clearly the notion of life to which we ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... had, and had found it a difficult thing to keep from the shadowy hunting ground of dogs who have lived a conscientious life. I had wondered at first what his reason could have been for not coming forward, according to his custom, to meet that troop of robbers. But his reason, alas! was too cogent to himself, though nobody else in that dreadful time could pay any attention to him. The Rovers, well knowing poor Jowler's repute, and declining the fair mode of testing it, had sent in advance a very crafty scout, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... the principle asserted: that propositions, the negation of which is inconceivable, or in other words, which we cannot figure to ourselves as being false, must rest upon evidence of higher and more cogent description than any which experience can afford. And we have next to consider whether there is any ground ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... motive which is more cogent than all the others; the south might indeed, rigorously speaking, abolish slavery, but how should it rid its territory of the black population? Slaves and slavery are driven from the north by the same law, but this twofold result cannot be ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... measure in romance and the drama the presence, the cogent and undeniable power of those same abiding elements of mysticism and mystery, which underlie all human experience, and repeated in myriad forms find their classic expression in the queries of the "Weird Sisters," "those elemental avengers ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... Lady Lufton sat silent, collecting her thoughts. She thought that there was very great objection to Lucy Robarts, regarding her as the possible future Lady Lufton. She could hardly have stated all her reasons, but they were very cogent. Lucy Robarts had, in her eyes, neither beauty, nor style, nor manner, nor even the education which was desirable. Lady Lufton was not herself a worldly woman. She was almost as far removed from being so as a woman could be in her position. But, nevertheless, there were ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... not a single shop in Galatz kept by an Englishman—it seems doubtful whether there be one in the whole of Roumania.' And there is still a third reason, to which he only refers incidentally, but we question whether it is not the most cogent of all. Whilst continental states, and especially Austria, have shown little delicacy in exacting favourable treaties of commerce from the Roumanian Government, England has been at a disadvantage in that respect. We may be told ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... "Motives thus cogent, arising from the emergency of your unhappy condition, must excite your utmost diligence and zeal, to give all possible strength and energy to the pacific measures calculated for your relief. But we think ourselves bound in duty to observe to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... with the general doctrine of natural transformation, it appeared that the evidence of embryology was in many respects more cogent and conclusive than that derived from the comparative study of animal structures. In the case of man, as before, no one could demand any surer or more convincing proof that an organic mechanism with one structure can change into an organic mechanism with a different structure, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... and personal predestination; in defence of which indefensible notion he found himself more at a loss than he expected. Edward Burrough said not much to him upon it, though what he said was close and cogent; but James Naylor interposing, handled the subject with so much perspicuity and clear demonstration, that his reasoning seemed to be irresistible; and so I suppose my father found it, which made him willing to drop ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... daughter's hand, and speaking to her rather than my lord duke, Lady Castlewood told the story which you know already—lauding up to the skies her kinsman's behaviour. On his side Mr. Esmond explained the reasons that seemed quite sufficiently cogent with him, why the succession in the family, as at present it stood, should not be disturbed; and he should remain, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the deliberate development of the unreasoning faculties were much more cogent. But here they depart from the principles on which they justify their study of hypothetics; for they base the importance which they assign to hypothetics upon the fact of their being a preparation for the extraordinary, while their study of Unreason rests upon its developing those faculties which ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... or the other. He does not merely resign himself to the awful mystery of eternal punishment; he contends for it. Do we object, he asks, {90} to everlasting happiness? then why object to everlasting misery?—reasoning which is perhaps felt to be cogent by theologians who anticipate the everlasting happiness for themselves, and the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... is so apparent, that they are seldom negligently or implicitly received; suspicion is always watchful over the practices of interest; and whatever the hope of gain, or desire of mischief, can prompt one man to assert, another is by reasons equally cogent incited to refute. But vanity pleases herself with such slight gratifications, and looks forward to pleasure so remotely consequential, that her practices raise no alarm, and her stratagems are ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the commodore and madame, the first mate, the twins, Ramsey, and the committee of seven—who, we shall see, were not taking discomfiture meekly—were scarlet threads in the story's swiftly weaving fabric—cogent reasons, themselves, why these two ladies had helped vote Ramsey to ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... their lives in their hands and sailed out into the unknown were actuated by two motives—the love of adventure and the desire of gain. There is no doubt that the second consideration by far outweighed the first. A man of the period left Spain or Portugal for the New World for one cogent reason only, to seek his fortune. If he won fame in the achievement of this, so much the better. Indeed, as a matter of fact, it was generally impossible to achieve the one without the other, although this fame might frequently ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... modernest American ballad-monger? He was full of gay irresponsibility. Ever since, on returning to his rooms after some tedious lecture, he announced to his friends that he had lost an umbrella but preserved, thank God, his honour, they augured a brilliant future for him. So, for other but no less cogent reasons, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... It is certain that in the spring of '89, Condorcet held hereditary monarchy to be most suitable to 'the wealth, the population, the extent of France, and to the political system of Europe.'[24] Yet the reasons which he gives for thinking this are not very cogent, and he can hardly have felt them to be so. It is significant, however, of the little distance which all the most uncompromising and most thoughtful revolutionists saw in front of them, that even Condorcet should, so late ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... the capacity and ability of those in charge. To judge this, make it a point to meet the local school superintendent. If there is a parent-teachers association, a frank discussion with its leader is an excellent idea. From talks like these you can sometimes gather cogent information that neither superintendent nor member of the school association would or could put in writing. If possible observe the school while it is in session. The attitude of teachers and children should enable you to form an estimate ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... United States. The ancient Athenians, during their contest with Philip of Macedon, considered the question of the supplies from the Bosphorus etc. as one of life and death. But this can be looked upon only as a cogent proof of the small development which their commercial talents had received at the time. How easily might they not, according to our ideas, have obtained corn from Sicily ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... all—morality, as the guide of conduct. The child knows well enough that some acts meet with approbation and some with disapprobation. But it has never heard that there lies in the nature of things a reason for every moral law, as cogent and as well defined as that which underlies every physical law; that stealing and lying are just as certain to be followed by evil consequences, as putting your hand in the fire, or jumping out of a garret window. Again, though the scholar may have been made acquainted, in dogmatic ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... prove her to have been a person of position and repute. The King was long supposed to be Henry the Third of England, and this would suggest that she lived in the thirteenth century. An early scholar, the Abbe de La Rue, in fact, said that this was "undoubtedly" the case, giving cogent reasons in support of his contention. But modern scholarship, in the person of Gaston Paris, has decided that the King was Henry the Second, of pious memory; the Count, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, his natural son by Fair Rosamund; and that Marie must be placed ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... cogent argument can be derived from 1 Cor. III, 6 sq.: "I have planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the increase. Therefore, neither he that planteth is anything, nor he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase."(47) In this beautiful allegory the Apostle compares the genesis of supernatural ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... charges would be paid by the county; otherwise I should be responsible for the amount. I then went out to see the grave-diggers, and used such convincing arguments that they willingly agreed to disinter the body. My arguments were brief, but cogent, and were presented to them about in the ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... of whom during his lifetime was counted a divinely inspired general, found themselves constrained to study the Chinese classics under the guidance of Funabashi Hidekata and Fujiwara Seigwa. How much more cogent, then, was the similar necessity under which lesser men laboured. Thus, Ieyasu's love of literature may be regarded as a cause of the peace that prevailed under the Tokugawa for ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... very spot, prayed her to be reasonable? She had yielded then. Mr. Roscorla's arguments were incontrovertible, and she had shrinkingly accepted the inevitable conclusion. Now, young Trelyon's representations and pleadings were far less cogent, but how strongly her heart went ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Having arrived at years of discretion, I revolve with a sobered mind the different occupations to which my efforts and my time may be devoted, and determine at length upon that which under all the circumstances displays the most cogent recommendations. Having done so, I rouse my faculties and direct my energies to the performance of my task. By degrees however my resolution grows less vigorous, and my exertions relax. I accept any pretence to be ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Customhouse officer notified his submission to the royal will in a way which excited both merriment and compassion. "I have," he said, "fourteen reasons for obeying His Majesty's commands, a wife and thirteen young children." [353] Such reasons were indeed cogent; yet there were not a few instances in which, even against such reasons, religious and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is another, and a still more cogent, reason why the reputation of this philosopher has not continued so general as it at first was. This is his impartiality. Both the great parties which divide the world turned to his work on its first appearance with avidity, in the hope of discovering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit of this advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of Dr. Fu-Manchu rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night. The millions might sleep in peace—the millions in whose cause we labored!—but we who knew the reality of the danger knew that a veritable octopus had fastened upon England—a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... carried out. The first parliamentary intimation was given in a speech from the throne, on the 22nd of January, 1799; a pamphlet was published on the subject by Mr. Cooke, the Under-Secretary; but it required more cogent arguments than either speeches from the throne or pamphlets to effect the object of Government. Mr. Pitt had set his heart upon the Union, and Mr. Pitt had determined that the Union should be carried out at any ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the Governor was cogent. The motive that had prompted the British to hold the frontier posts for so many years after the revolution, was to secure a monopoly of the fur trade. Their traders constantly urged the tribes to bring in peltries, and this led to a ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... sufficient powers for all general and national purposes. The more attentively I consider and investigate the reasons which appear to have given birth to this opinion, the more I become convinced that they are cogent and conclusive. Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their SAFETY seems to be the first. The SAFETY of the people ...
— The Federalist Papers
... strip—as he put it—to the teeth, and immerse himself forthwith. As the Rev. Philip Stimcoe, patriot and martyr, he was obstinately, and with even more passion, refusing to do anything of the kind, and for the equally cogent reasons that he was a Protestant of the Protestants and that the water ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... adding: "If we unite our strength in the second, I think we can produce something worthy of fame, for we shall have plenty of matter to employ talent upon." A later letter, which was written from 7 Museum Street (8th January), told how he had "been obliged to decamp from Russell St. for the cogent reason of an execution having been sent into the house, and I thought myself happy ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... association demands. With that secured, many other advantages, now denied, will surely and speedily follow. I can see no valid objection to the right of suffrage being conferred, while there are many and very cogent reasons in favor of it. As has been said, you may go on election day to the most degraded elector you can find at the polls, who would sell his vote for a dollar or a dram, and ask him what he would take for his right to vote and you couldn't ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... that as such it must carry the consequences associated with charity on a large scale. It must dry up the sources of energy and undermine the independence of the individual. On the first point, I have already referred to certain cogent arguments for a contrary view. What the State is doing, what it would be doing if the whole series of contemplated changes were carried through to the end, would by no means suffice to meet the needs of the normal man. He would still have to labour to earn his own living. But ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... first adviser, it was immediately acted upon, and English agents were despatched into Germany, Italy, and France, carrying with them all means of persuasion, intellectual, moral, and material, which promised to be of most cogent potency with ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... between them. I must not forget that there are very learned men' (such as Bellarmine, lib. 3, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, c. 8, et 9, and Cameron, in Responsione ad Epistolam Viri Docti, id est Episcopii) 'who maintain with very cogent reasons that the will always of necessity follows the last practical act ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... that, or the other. The jury may believe it will be a fine day to-morrow, but that does not justify me in condemning a man to death on the assumption that it will be a fine day. The question is whether the jury are justified in coming to their verdict by cogent and decisive evidence. In this case I can see nothing of the sort. An eccentric old lady, with a mania for hoarding jewels, has disappeared in the night, carrying her jewels with her. A hand, identified ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... pinch, it enclosed an introductory draft for forty dollars. There are a thousand excellent reasons why a man, in this self-helpful epoch, should decline to be dependent on another; but the most numerous and cogent considerations all bow to a necessity as stern as mine; and the banks were scarce open ere the draft ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the accommodation of the public, but the real objects of which are too frequently the advancement of private interests. The known necessity which so many of the States will be under to impose taxes for the payment of the interest on their debts furnishes an additional and very cogent reason why the Federal Government should refrain from creating a national debt, by which the people would be exposed to double taxation for a similar object. We possess within ourselves ample resources for every emergency, and we may be quite sure that our citizens in no future exigency will ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... an exclusive doctrine would involve the virtual rejection of our right, as scientific men, to rely on the principle that the evidence afforded by logical presuppositions and logical inference is as cogent as ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the archbishop were not available, the innocence of the petitioner, no matter how strongly established, would by the cunning tactics of his inveterate foes be obscured and denied: he, the petitioner, therefore prayed that, should the foregoing reasons prove on examination to be cogent, the archbishop would be pleased to prohibit Barre, Mignon, and their partisans, whether among the secular or the regular clergy, from taking part in any future exorcisms, should such be necessary, or in the control of any persons alleged ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the support of all elements opposed to the re-election of Andrew Jackson, met at Utica on June 21, 1832. Albert H. Tracy of Buffalo became its chairman. After he had warmed the delegates into enthusiastic applause by his happy and cogent reasons for the success of the party, Francis Granger was unanimously renominated for governor, with Samuel Stevens for lieutenant-governor. The convention also announced an electoral ticket, equally divided between Anti-Masons and National ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... you are a brave man and that your destiny is connected with mine," he said at length, "for assuredly none but a brave man would venture to tell me that he had spied into my councils. I see, however, that what you say is reasonable and cogent, and that the news you have to tell may well induce Oxenstiern to lay aside the doubts which have so long kept us asunder and at once to embrace my offer. What, then, do ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... seemingly a healthy child and properly looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though other children of the same marriage do not) must certainly, in the poet's words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths are due to some law of anticipation by which organisms in which morbous germs have taken up their residence (modern science has conclusively shown ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... quickly; you've no time to lose. First let me tell you, sir, that had not reasons, and those the most cogent ones, forced me to hide my quality, I had not so long submitted to the doubts which are abroad. Still my secret is mine own and shall remain so. Who and what I am, Don Perez, you shall never know. You have not long to live; and now, sir, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Paulson thinks he at one time was, and would wish him to have remained. "Affairs" are placed fully on a level with "arts." Milton was kept from politics in his youth, not by any notion of their incompatibility with poetry; but by the more cogent arguments at their command "under whose inquisitious and tyrannical duncery no free and ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... declines now to remain on the defensive. He accuses his accusers of heresy and idolatry, and calls upon the nobles of Scotland to decide against them according to God's Word. Here, again, the appeal, so long as it is made to the conscience of all men and of nobles alike, is very cogent. Nor is it less so as addressed specially to the most representative and intelligent Scotchmen of the time, for such the Lords of the Congregation undoubtedly were. It becomes doubtful only when it insists on the right of these temporal 'Princes of the people' to reform the ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... medical practice, he strenuously contended for the superiority of a vegetable and milk diet over any other, whether for the feeble or the healthy. But his numerous works abound with the most earnest exhortations to temperance in all things, and with the most interesting facts and cogent reasonings; and—I repeat it—if there be any individual, since the days of Pythagoras, whose name ought to be handed down to posterity as the father of the vegetable system of living, it is that ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... thankless privilege to be a stamp officer in those stormy hours. Most of the stamp officers were forced to resign under pressure which they might well be excused for finding sufficiently cogent. In order to make the new law a dead letter the colonists resolved that while it was in force they would avoid using stamps by substituting arbitration for any kind of legal procedure. With a people in this temper, there were ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was before them. Mine, in particular, had conceived a moral aversion to the prairie life. One of them, christened Hendrick, an animal whose strength and hardihood were his only merits, and who yielded to nothing but the cogent arguments of the whip, looked toward us with an indignant countenance, as if he meditated avenging his wrongs with a kick. The other, Pontiac, a good horse, though of plebeian lineage, stood with his head drooping and ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... flight of the Vraibleusian Daedalus, but his friend advised their progress. This, however, was not easy; and Popanilla, animated for the moment by his natural aristocratic disposition, and emboldened by his superior size and strength, began to clear his way in a manner which was more cogent than logical. The chimney-sweeper and his comrades were soon in arms, and Popanilla would certainly have been killed or ducked by this superior man and his friends, had it not been for the mild remonstrance of his conductor and the singular appearance ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... why the presentation of the a priori internal Evidences should precede the external. When the world had been impressed with the necessity of a new religion, then the opportunity came for employing the cogent power of the external and historic evidence which ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... appears that, from whatever side we consider this question, even apart from the specially cogent evidences above cited, we cannot escape the conclusion that a current passes across or very near to the Pole into the sea ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... last. Indeed, it was not usual for him to raise his voice in council, but as he had been the first to carry the important news, and was known to be an ardent admirer and pupil of Ujarak, he felt that he was bound to back his patron; and his arguments, though not cogent, prevailed. ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... if the latter had not previously been inured to slavery. The objection to this hypothesis—that the Helots could scarcely have so hated the Spartans if they had merely changed masters, does not appear to me very cogent. Under the mild and paternal chiefs of the Homeric age [145], they might have been subjected to a much gentler servitude. Accustomed to the manners and habits of their Achaean lords, they might have half forgotten their condition; and though governed by Spartans in the same external relations, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... others believed him an inspired champion, transported in the body from some distant climate, to show us the way to safety; others, again, concluded that he was a recluse, who, either from motives of piety, or other cogent reasons, had become a dweller in the wilderness, and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... cogent reasons of a positive nature why many small refuges are preferable to a few large ones. It is said that in the vicinity of George Vanderbilt's game preserves at Biltmore, North Carolina, deer, when started by dogs even fifteen or twenty miles away, will seek shelter within ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... trivial and impertinent truth which may be uttered? "No oath," says Bishop Hopkins, "is in itself simply good, and voluntarily to be used; but only as medicines are, in case of necessity. But to use it ordinarily and indifferently, without being constrained by any cogent necessity, or called to it by any lawful authority, is such a sin as wears off all reverence and dread of the Great God: and we have very great cause to suspect that where His name is so much upon the tongue, there His fear is but little in ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... prove that God only intended Adam should be created at some future period, or that the creation of the heavens and earth was not in the beginning, but some twenty five hundred years afterwards? All this would be as cogent reasoning as it would be to argue that God did not intend this day of rest should commence until about twenty-five hundred years afterwards. ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... we both read it," put in Mrs. Wimp. "I told Mr. Wimp it was clever and cogent. After that quotation from the letter to the poor fellow's fiancee there could be no more doubt but that it was murder. Mr. Wimp was convinced by it, too, weren't ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... other reasons, some of them very cogent in his own estimation at least, for desiring my presence somewhere in the Eastern States; and the West Point "detail" was the only way in which that could be readily brought about. He had just been restored, or was about to be, to the actual command ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... shoulder, like a design for a jug-handle, while Snap on the right hand and Puss on the other put up their paws towards a morsel which she held out of the reach of both—Snap occasionally desisting in order to remonstrate with the cat by a cogent worrying growl on the greediness and futility of her conduct; till Eppie relented, caressed them both, and divided the morsel ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... still more cogent reason why old men are neither respected nor honoured in a democracy. Here is yet another efficiency formally denied and formally set aside. An interesting treatise might be written on the rise and fall of old men. Civilization has not been kind to them. In primitive times, as among ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... Then allow me to tell you that they have not denied it. And one very cogent reason why they have not, is, that they are not yet cognizant of the loss. I do not jump at conclusions as you do, Roland Yorke, and I thought it necessary to make a little private inquiry before accusing the post-office, lest the post-office might not be ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... but not even the highest talents which their warmest friends could attribute to them would account, so it seemed to me, for the outbursts of uproarious applause which greeted from time to time the one who was now speaking. In the applauded passages I failed to detect anything more cogent or pungent than the general substance of those which were passed by in silence. I could find no explanation of this perplexing fact till I realized that behind the platform was a tall, greased pole, up which successive competitors were doing their best to climb, the ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... biographical material available, and her careful and restrained estimate of Mr. Durant's character cannot be bettered, and it is a temptation to incorporate her entire pamphlet in this chapter, but we shall have to content ourselves with cogent extracts. ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... the victories of Constantine the Great, and both the fear of punishment and the desire of pleasing the Roman emperors, were cogent reasons, in the view of whole nations as well as of individuals, for embracing the Christian religion. Yet no person well informed in the history of this period will ascribe the extension of Christianity wholly to these causes. For it is manifest that the untiring ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... believe that you would, without some very cogent reason, violate all decorum by coming alone at dead of night two miles through a dreary stretch of hills and woods. Necessity sometimes sanctions an infraction of the rules of rigid propriety, and I am impatient to hear your defence of this most ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... regarded in each of these characters. The opinion, however, of Proculus, who affirmed that exchange was a species of contract apart by itself, and distinct from sale, has deservedly prevailed, as it is confirmed by other lines from Homer, and by still more cogent reasons, and this has been admitted by preceding Emperors, and is fully stated ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... Hayward's French hotel-keeper in Germany had a different, but not less cogent reason for not learning German. 'Whenever a dish attracts attention by the art displayed in its conception or preparation, apart from the material, the artist will commonly be discovered to be French. Many years ago we had the curiosity to inquire at the Hotel de France, at Dresden, to ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... drawn from bulls, twelve from lions, six from tigers.[568] None of these similes show any close observance of nature, and in any case the poetic interest of bulls, lions, and tigers is far from inexhaustible. It is less reprehensible that twenty similes should be drawn from storms, which have a more cogent interest and greater picturesque value. But even here Statius has overshot the mark. This lack of variety testifies to a real dearth of poetic imagination, and this failing is noticeable also in the execution. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... account the large percentage of myopes among the deaf, we believe there are other cogent reasons why, if found practicable, the use of the sense of touch may become an important element in our eclectic system of teaching. We should reckon it of considerable importance if it were ascertained ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... his favorite fish. But it was not a selfish desire to secure the prey which the terror of the other might cause him to drop. It was simply to punish the prowler. Poor William could not exactly tell indeed why he wished to shoot Alfred Stevens; but his cause of hostility was not less cogent because it had no name. The thousand little details which induce our prejudices in regard to persons, are, singly, worth no one's thought, and would possibly provoke the contempt of all; but like the myriad ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... civil rights and for the ballot. Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon was indefatigable in her efforts, and went before the Convention in person and plead our cause. But the majority of the members thought there were cogent reasons for not granting our petitions; but they made women eligible to all school offices—an indication that Louisiana will not be the last State in the Union to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... claim to secede from the Union; but no fair-minded man can deny that a plausible constitutional case could be made out in favour of Secession, nor that the citizens of the Southern confederacy demonstrated their wish and determination to secede by far more cogent evidence than the return of eighty-six Secessionists to Congress. The prima facie arguments which may be alleged in favour of Secession were tenfold stronger—unfounded as I hold them to have been—than ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... machines out of the windows into the streets. The inhabitants took it into their heads to consider this order as a great affront, and a direct violation of the rights of man; but the doctors were the most strenuous opposers of the measure, having no doubt very cogent reasons for wishing the continuance of the practice. They assured the inhabitants, that if human excrement was no longer to be accumulated in the streets, to attract the putrescent particles floating in the air, they would find their ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... advertence and consultation with reason, to decide whether or not it shall be won to consent. But were it not for the channel of passion, this will could never have been approached at all even by reasons the most cogent. Rhetoric often succeeds, where mere dry logic would have been thrown away. God help vast numbers of the human race, if their wills were approachable only through their reasons! They would indeed ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... emphasis; he multiplies illustrations, not important in themselves, but important for the sake of stressing his point. You do not need these illustrations in written form, however, for once the point is made you rarely need to depend upon the illustrations for its retention. A still more cogent objection is that if you occupy your attention with the task of copying the lecture verbatim, you do not have time to think, but become merely an automatic recording machine. Experienced stenographers ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... his pale green eyes beneath dropped lids and turned his head away. He would have given a great deal to go elsewhere. But to do that would be to make himself conspicuous, and there were many reasons, all more or less cogent, why he did not wish to make himself conspicuous. Peaches sat still on his chair and broke into ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... be established by the call of the house of representatives; and only deliberated on the manner in which this could be done with the least bad consequences. To effect this, three modes presented themselves. First, a denial of the papers in toto, assigning concise but cogent reasons for that denial; secondly, to grant them in whole; or, thirdly, in part; accompanied in both the last-mentioned cases with a pointed protest against the right of the house to control treaties, or to call for papers without specifying their object, and against ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... ore, for lack of skill to separate it from a base alloy. As regards the nightmare anomaly of perfect art arisen in times of moral corruption, those unconscious analogies I have spoken of, and which perhaps are our most cogent reasons, have taught us that such anomalies are but nightmares and horrid delusions. For, taking the phenomenon historically, we shall see that although art has arisen in periods of stress and change, and therefore of moral anarchy, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... they would join the States, at all events. What a horrid set those Yankees are! Canadians are too respectable to wish to sail in the same ship with them.' This truly cogent argument was followed by a series of profound whiffs. 'And if they did,' added Captain Argent presently, 'we've been building the strongest fortifications in the world, spending millions at Halifax and Quebec and other places, on fosses and casemates, and bomb-proof towers, just for the Yankees! ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... with the hard pavement, he was all for remaining where they were, at least until nightfall, when probably, if they could procure effective disguises, they might venture to sally forth and essay the attempt to get out of the city. And so cogent were his arguments that at length he succeeded in silencing Dick, if he ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... chair a little nearer; his eyes told her plainly that his language would soon become warmer still, if she gave him the smallest encouragement. This was one reason for changing the subject. But there was another reason, more cogent still. Her first painful sense of having treated him unjustly had ceased to make itself keenly felt; the lower emotions had their opportunity of asserting themselves. Curiosity, irresistible curiosity, took possession of her mind, and ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... of Handbooks presenting the proposals of a United Christendom. Dr. Ainslie writes vigorously, yet without heat or partisanship, and presents a cogent and lucid plea for the cause that ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... sounds" only, vision and hearing have been recognized as the preeminently aesthetic senses. These senses provide the basis for all the arts—music and poetry are arts of sound; painting, sculpture, and architecture are arts of vision. And there are good reasons for their special fitness. Most cogent of all is the fact that vision and hearing are the natural media of expression; sounds, be they words or musical tones, convey thoughts and feelings; so do visual sensations—the facial expression or gesture seen communicates the inner life of the speaker; and even abstract colors and space-forms, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... another 270 years, up to our own day, when they seem on the verge of some great reverse or overthrow. In this second period they have had as many as twenty-one Sultans, whose average reigns are only half the length of those who preceded them, and afford as cogent an argument of their national disorder and demoralization. Of these twenty-one, five have been strangled, three have been deposed, and three have died of excess; of the remaining ten, four only have ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... no doubt had cogent reasons for failing to apply for Navy commissions, but the fact that only one applied called attention to a phenomenon that first appeared about 1946. Black Americans were beginning to ignore the Navy. Attempts by black reserve officers to procure NROTC ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Earl of Carlisle, Lord John Russell, and his friend, Mr. Richard Cobden. Sir Robert Peel, who was at that time Prime Minister, had always adhered to the protective doctrines of Pitt and Wellington; and it was mainly due to the clear and cogent reasoning of Bright and his associates, that the illustrious statesman at the head of the Treasury finally yielded, with a magnanimity never surpassed in the annals of ministerial history, to the enlightened policy of free trade in respect to corn. The distress which had for years resulted ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I have published against Romanism seem to myself as cogent as ever, but men go by their sympathies, not by argument; and if I feel the force of this influence myself, who bow to the arguments, why may not others still more, who never have in the same degree ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... recalling. When I started out it was quite settled in the back of my mind that I must not leave Rawdon's. I simply wanted to abuse my employer to Parload. But I talked myself quite out of touch with all the cogent reasons there were for sticking to my place, and I got home that night irrevocably committed to a spirited—not to say a ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... failed to lift the discussion on to a higher plane, to waft his hearers on to the serene hill-tops of thought, to awaken sublime sensations in all present such as the spectacle of some noble mountain panorama will summon up in the meditations of the most phlegmatic. Mr. Churchill, ever lucid, ever cogent, ever earnest, ever forceful, was wont to be so convincing that he would almost cause listeners to forget for the moment that, were the particular project which just then happened to be uppermost in his mind to be carried into execution, any ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... eye of history the effort of his soul was an effort backwards, because the vision of history is focused only for a perspective of progress. On his after-dinner journey to Diderot at Vincennes, Jean-Jacques saw, with the suddenness of intuition, that that progress, amongst whose convinced and cogent prophets he had lived so long was for him an unsubstantial word. He beheld the soul of man sub specie aeternitatis. In his vision history and institutions dissolved away. His second ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... in great distress to the lord chamberlain and his majesty. A solemn declaration is drawn up, in which James I. most gravely laments that the archduke's ambassador has taken this offence; but his majesty offers these most cogent arguments in his own favour: that the Venetian had announced to his majesty that his republic had ordered his men new liveries on the occasion, an honour, he adds, not usual with princes—the Spanish ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... that an epileptic patient cannot possibly fall down in a fit so long as he carries a piece of mistletoe in his pocket or a decoction of mistletoe in his stomach. Such a train of reasoning would probably be regarded even now as cogent by a large portion of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Labour-rate Act, while the latter supplied about half the cost of the Public Works from the Treasury, the remainder being a loan. Against this Act several arguments were employed, and, for the most part, very cogent ones. 1. It was said that as the country was taxed for the whole outlay, whatever it might be, the Government had no right to apply the money to unprofitable works, thus taking from our capital (already far too small) a vast sum that could not return ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... in our literature, and may be tracked into our social life. They are the ground of the heavy moralizings by which we are outwearied, about Life as a Comedy, and Comedy as a jade, {4} when popular writers, conscious of fatigue in creativeness, desire to be cogent in a modish cynicism: perversions of the idea of life, and of the proper esteem for the society we have wrested from brutishness, and would carry higher. Stock images of this description are accepted by the timid and the sensitive, as well as by the saturnine, quite ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... produced a series of interrogations concerning the place of Ferdinand's abode in that city, and his business in England, so that he was fain to practise the science of defence, and answered with such ambiguity, as aroused the suspicion of the smuggler, who began to believe our hero had some very cogent reason for evading his curiosity; he immediately set his reflection at work, and, after various conjectures, fixed upon Fathom's being the Young Pretender. Big with this supposition, he eyed him with the most earnest attention, comparing his features with those of the Chevalier's ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... and searching point of an idea, not by any strength of words. The style is chastened, simple, calm, with the most careful avoidance of over-statement or anything rhetorical. And so in his papers, his mode of argument, forcible and cogent as it is, avoids all appearance of exaggeration or even illustrative expansion; it is all muscle and sinew; it is modelled on the argumentative style of Bishop Butler, and still more, of William Law. ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... clippings collected, wrote a little daily political bulletin for Io; even went out of his way editorially to pay an occasional handsome tribute to Judge Enderby's personal character, whilst adducing cogent reasons why, as the "Wall Street and traction candidate," he should be defeated. But his personal opinion, expressed for the behoof of his correspondents in Manzanita, was that he probably could not be defeated; that his brilliant and aggressive campaign was forcing ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams |
