"Contradiction in terms" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it has continued the same," said Mrs. Corey, again expressing the fact by a contradiction in terms. "I think I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... some object or other,—I move my limbs; I strike my enemy. The presence of a transitive verb implies also the presence of a noun; which noun is the name of the object affected. A transitive verb, unaccompanied by a noun, either expressed or understood, is a contradiction in terms. The absence of the nouns, in and of itself, makes it intransitive. I move means, simply, I am in a state of moving. I strike means, simply, I am in the act of striking. Verbs like move and strike are ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... happen to a good man in this life, and therefore presumably misfortunes may also overtake him in any other life that there may be. The only evil that can never befall him is vice, because that would be a contradiction in terms. Unless therefore Socrates was uttering idle words on the most solemn occasion of his life, he must be taken to have meant that there is no evil but vice, which implies that there is no good but virtue. Thus we are landed at ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... it necessarily loses in the discipline of experience with its possible fruits of wisdom and self-control. Association is a condition of individuality. International relations are a condition of nationality. A universal nation is as much a contradiction in terms as a universal individual. A nation seeking to destroy other nations is analogous to a man who seeks to destroy the society in which he was born. Little by little European history has been teaching this lesson; and in the course of time the correlation ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... is in direct logical contradiction to the phrase "particular one." To say, of anything, that it has not "individual existence," and yet that it is a "particular one," involves the logical fallacy called a "contradiction in terms." ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... was one peculiarly susceptible to {238} the treatment likely to be proposed by these radical and unconventional spirits. It was difficult to describe the constitutional position of Canada without establishing a contradiction in terms, and neither abstract and logical minds like that of Cornewall Lewis, nor bureaucratic intelligences like Stephen's, could do more than intensify the difficulty and emphasize it. The deus ex machina must ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... Before the civil wars the House of Commons had enjoyed the fullest confidence of the nation. A House of Commons, distrusted, despised, hated by the Commons, was a thing unknown. The very words would, to Sir Peter Wentworth or Sir Edward Coke, have sounded like a contradiction in terms. But by degrees a change took place. The Parliament elected in 1661, during that fit of joy and fondness which followed the return of the royal family, represented, not the deliberate sense, but the momentary caprice of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... increased to certainty.' BOSWELL. 'When it is increased to certainty, freedom ceases, because that cannot be certainly foreknown, which is not certain at the time; but if it be certain at the time, it is a contradiction in terms to maintain that there can be afterwards any contingency dependent upon the exercise of will or any thing else.' JOHNSON. 'All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it[850].'—I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... august, ancient, learned, famous, and authoritative censorship in Europe. Is it more enlightened, more liberal, more tolerant that the comparatively infinitesimal office of the Lord Chamberlain? On the contrary, it has reduced itself to a degree of absurdity which makes a Catholic university a contradiction in terms. All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current concepts, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... conception appears even more unmistakable. For love is the prerogative of personality alone. Apart from personality we cannot conceive of love. And we cannot conceive of personality without the struggle between love and malice. "Absolute love" is a contradiction in terms; for it is the nature of love to be perpetually overcoming malignant opposition; and, in this overcoming, to be perpetually approximating to a far-off ideal which can never ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States," and then to say that they shall not be permitted to proceed and frame a constitution in their own way without an express authority from Congress, appears to be almost a contradiction in terms. It would be much more plausible to contend that Congress had no power to pass such an enabling act than to argue that the people of a Territory might be kept out of the Union for an indefinite period, and until it might ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... register, wrote in the margin, "Pax, pax, inquit Propheta, et non est pax."[26] Charles was soon after allied with the abominable Bernard d'Armagnac, even betrothed or married to a daughter of his, called by a name that sounds like a contradiction in terms, Bonne d'Armagnac. From that time forth, throughout all this monstrous period—a very nightmare in the history of France—he is no more than a stalking-horse for the ambitious Gascon. Sometimes the smoke lifts, and you can see ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tried and condemned one of its clergy for heresy, for the publication of a book in which the principles of Evolution are frankly adopted and applied to Christianity. For a man to call himself a Christian Evolutionist is (we have been told by high Orthodox authority) a contradiction in terms. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... for a moment what can be meant by a sensation of Space. Does it not look very like a contradiction in terms? Pure Space, if it means anything, means absolute material emptiness and vacuity. How, then, by any possibility can it give rise to a sensation? What sensory organ can it be conceived as affecting? How and in what way ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... and in name Shah Soojah was an independent monarch; it was, indeed, only in virtue of his proving himself able to rule independently that he could justify his claim to rule at all. But that he was independent was a contradiction in terms while British troops studded the country, and while the real powers of sovereignty were exercised by Macnaghten. Certain functions, it is true, the latter did permit the nominal monarch to exercise. While debarred from a voice in measures of external policy, and ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... sufficient. Just as there is personality behind every government, so there should be a definite set of personal convictions behind literary criticism, which is not a science, though science may aid it. Sterilized, dehumanized criticism is almost a contradiction in terms, except in those rare cases where the weighing of evidential facts is all that is required. But these cases are most rare. Even a study of the text of Beowulf, or a history of Norman law, will ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... and Burton were; and probably what they would have liked best would have been a National Church on the Congregationalist principle, like that of New England. For, though Congregationalism and a National Establishment of Religion may seem radically a contradiction in terms, yet in fact the case had not been quite so in America. There may be a State Church without public endowments, or rather there may be endowments and privileges that are not pecuniary. The New England Church, though consisting of a few scores ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... reconcile this apparent contradiction in terms, take the following instance of a friendly propensity. You walk into your house at dusky twilight, at that particular hour of evening at which your own brother, if he be a reasonable being, would not expect you to recognize him; one of your family extends ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... to go on in my old way of scribbling, as long as I am convinced that it is agreeable to you. But a line now and then is comfortable, for, as Lady Macbeth says, "the feast grows cold that is not often cheered," or something of that sort; so a correspondence is awkwardly maintained, and is a contradiction in terms when it is ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms. ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... for every moral sentiment by the principle of self-love. We must adopt a more public affection, and allow, that the interests of society are not, even on their own account, entirely indifferent to us. Usefulness is only a tendency to a certain end; and it is a contradiction in terms, that anything pleases as means to an end, where the end itself no wise affects us. If usefulness, therefore, be a source of moral sentiment, and if this usefulness be not always considered with a reference to self; it follows, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the Jews, although with them the idea of purification is involved as well as of thanksgiving, as it is in the Eastern Church at the present day. In some country places there is an idea that a woman can be "Churched" at home, which is a contradiction in terms. ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... in the phrase "absolute knowledge'' to imply knowledge per se. It has been held, however, that, since all knowledge implies a knowing subject and a known object, absolute knowledge is a contradiction in terms (see RELATIVITY.) So also Herbert Spencer spoke of "absolute ethics,'' as opposed to systems of conduct based on particular local or temporary laws and conventions ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... my friends,' he at length resumed, 'of the hope of immortality, of the strength it yields, and of its descent from God. But think not that this hope can exist but in the strictest alliance with virtue. The hope of immortality without virtue is a contradiction in terms. The perpetuation of vice, or of any vicious affections or desires, can be contemplated only with horror. If the soul be without virtue, it is better that it should perish. And if deep stained with vice, it is to be feared that the very principle of life may be ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... very naturally suggests itself: Why did not God create us so that we could not think negative or destructive thoughts? And the answer is: Because He could not. There are some things which even God cannot do. He cannot do anything that involves a contradiction in terms. Even God could not make twice two either more or less than four. Now I want the student to see clearly why making us incapable of wrong-thinking would involve a contradiction in terms, and would therefore be an impossibility. ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... importance in the community is enhanced by an imaginary connection with a discovery or discoverer of the Nile sources, and are only too happy to figure, if only in a minor part, as theoretical discoverers—a theoretical discovery being a contradiction in terms. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... schools," where some elements of psychical hygiene have penetrated, attempts are made to help the pupils by diminishing their exhausting effort and leading them on gradually to composition. Composition (we must pass over the contradiction in terms for the moment) is "taught." The teacher gives collective lessons in composition, just as she would explain arithmetic: this is called "collective ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... world of matter. The transfer of matter, or physical energy, or anything else that is quantitatively measurable, into such an unseen world, may be set down as impossible, by reason of the very definition of such a world. Any hypothesis which should assume such a transfer would involve a contradiction in terms. But the hypothesis of a survival of present psychical phenomena in such a world, after being denuded of material conditions, is not in itself absurd or self-contradictory, though it may be impossible to support it by any arguments drawn from the domain of human experience. Such ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... to a description of desperation and muddle. When we speak of men at once ignorant of each other and frustrated by each other, we say they are at cross-purposes. Away with the thing! The very shape of it is a contradiction in terms." ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... execute the law, and of the House of Lords, who are bound as its guardians not to suffer the words "arbitrary power" to be mentioned before them. For I am not again to tell your Lordships, that arbitrary power is treason in the law,—that to mention it with law is to commit a contradiction in terms. They cannot exist in concert; they cannot hold together ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... is a value, that is, it is not a perception of a matter of fact or of a relation: it is an emotion, an affection of our volitional and appreciative nature. An object cannot be beautiful if it can give pleasure to nobody: a beauty to which all men were forever indifferent is a contradiction in terms. ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... dictatorship was conferred on Caesar, this time for ten years and apparently as a yearly office, so that he became Dictator IV. in May 45 B.C. Finally, before the 15th of February 44 B.C., this was exchanged for a life-dictatorship. Not only was this a contradiction in terms, since the dictatorship was by tradition a makeshift justified only when the state had to be carried through a serious crisis, but it involved military rule in Italy and the permanent suspension of the constitutional guarantees, such as intercessio and provocatio, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... attributes. The affirmance of attributes with respect to the Soul directly leads to the inference of its destructibility, and hence the assertion of its permanency or indestructibility under such conditions is a contradiction in terms, according to what is urged ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the question is simply to know whether this observation of fact should be generalised or not. We may, it seems to me, decline to generalise it without falling into a contradiction in terms. It may be conceived that the objects which we are looking at continue to exist, without change, during the moments when we have lost sight of them. This seems reasonable enough, and is the opinion ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... limitation considered with relation to some standard of measurement, and finitude is limitation considered simply in itself. The sphere of quantity, therefore, is absolutely identical with the sphere of the finite; and the phrase infinite quantity, if strictly construed, is a contradiction in terms. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... from the political agitation, but almost from the world. He was seldom seen upon the street, but to those who had access to him he did not fail to express all the contempt and distrust he felt. "A liberal Pope! a liberal Pope!" he said, with a scornful enjoyment of that contradiction in terms. He was thoroughly Florentine and Tuscan in his anti-papal spirit, and he was faithful in it to the tradition of Dante, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Alfieri, who all doubted and combated the papal influence as necessarily fatal to Italian hopes. In ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... Government horses and carbines. Nor was it an unknown thing for them to creep past the sentries on very black nights into the station itself; and for all her courage, Frank Olliver was by no means fearless. The two are a contradiction in terms. Only the unimaginative are fearless, and only the keenly imaginative, capable of feeling fear in every fibre, ever scale the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... in a voice that even Brenda hardly recognised, "like yourself, I have been unable to find any actual error in the lecturer's demonstrations of which I will take permission to call the possibility of the impossible; in other words, that a contradiction in terms can be true and false at one and the same time. That, my Lord, and ladies, and gentlemen," he went on, raising his voice almost to a shout, "is still, and, I hope, in the interests of true science, and not adroit jugglery with figures and formulae, will ever remain, another impossibility. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... vain to look for them in children and the ignorant. Perhaps, however, these possess such principles unconsciously; perhaps they are imprinted on the understanding, without being attended to? This would be a contradiction in terms. To be in the mind or the understanding simply means "to be understood" or to be known; no one can have an idea without being conscious of it. Finally, if the attempt be made to explain "originally in the mind" in so wide a sense that it would include all truths which man ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... if they cannot be connected. It need hardly be said that this scepticism forbidding thought necessarily forbids speech; a man cannot open his mouth without contradicting it. Thus when Mr. Wells says (as he did somewhere), "All chairs are quite different," he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... unconscious selection—it is for him a contradiction in terms. Did M. Flourens ever visit one of the prettiest watering-places of "la belle France," the Baie d'Arcachon? If so, he will probably have passed through the district of the Landes, and will have had an opportunity of observing the formation of "dunes" ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... 14. And then Happiness would at once be shown not to be the Chief Good. It is a contradiction in terms to speak of adding to the Chief Good. See Book X. chap. 11. [Greek: delon os oud allo ouden tagathon an eiae o meta tenos ton kath' ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... right,' said the repressed young painter, struck by her seriousness. 'Blame me; I ought to have known better. But perhaps a man—well, I will say it—a lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms. I saw that, and hoped that I might speak without ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... beginning of the inscription, the thought of the triad—Anu, Bel, Ea—evidently underlies this interesting invocation, but at the same time the association of a consort with Anu brings the god into closer relationship with his fellows. He takes on—if the contradiction in terms be permitted—a more human shape. His consort bears a name that is simply the feminine form to Anu, just as Belit is the feminine to Bel. 'Anu,' signifying 'the one on high,'—a feminine to it was formed, manifestly under the influence of the notion that every god must have a consort ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... to a man, 'Faith, Faith, Faith!' unless you preach along with it,'Break off your iniquities.' 'Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him turn unto the Lord.' The nature of the case forbids it. It is a clear contradiction in terms, and an absolute impossibility in fact, that God should save a man with the salvation which consists in the deliverance from sin, whilst that man is holding to his sin. Unless, therefore, you have not merely sorrow, but repentance, which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... enforced by Christianity working through secular life; it presupposed the small social and industrial unit and becomes meaningless if conceived in the gigantic and comprehensive scale of modern institutions. "National guilds" is a contradiction in terms: it takes on the same element of error that inheres in the idea of "one big union." In certain respects the Christian guild resembled the modern trade union, but it differed from it in more ways, and it seems to be true that wherever this difference exists the guild was right and the union is wrong. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... distinctness, which gives us a false one. The distance of Poussin, having no indication of trees, nor of meadows, nor of character of any kind, may be fifty miles off, or may be five; we cannot tell—we have no measure, and in consequence, no vivid impression. But a middle distance of Hobbima's involves a contradiction in terms; it states a distance by perspective, which it contradicts by ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... which was a contradiction in terms. She fanatically cleaned house all April. She knitted a sweater for Hugh. She was diligent at Red Cross work. She was silent when Vida raved that though America hated war as much as ever, we must invade ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... there is a God. If otherwise, there is no God, or none, at any rate, so far as we can know, none with whom we need concern ourselves. No conscious personality, no God. An impersonal God is as much a contradiction in terms as an ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... of air and water. So again, there are large numbers of highly intelligent persons who rather pride themselves on their fixed belief that our volitions have no cause; or that the will causes itself, which is either the same thing, or a contradiction in terms. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... European Greeks was now at heart Macedonian; not on account of isolated unrighteous acts on the part of the Roman deliverers, but because the restoration of Hellenic nationality by a foreign power involved a contradiction in terms, and now, when it was in truth too late, every one perceived that the most detestable form of Macedonian rule was less fraught with evil for Greece than a free constitution springing from the noblest intentions of honourable foreigners. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... loc. cit., he finds fault with gird as being employed in rather an unusual manner; or, if taken in its common meaning of taunt or reproof, then that kindly is said ironically; because there seems to be a contradiction in terms. (Monck Mason's rank distortion of the words, there cited, I will not pain the reader's sight with.) MR. COLLIER'S note concludes with a supposition that gird may possibly be a misprint. This is the misery! Men will sooner suspect the text than their own understanding or researches. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... eye-piece, that small lens or combination of lenses, which the eye looks directly into, being kept in line with it by means of a string and manoeuvred about near the ground (Plate III., p. 112). The idea of a telescope without a tube may appear a contradiction in terms; but it is not really so, for the tube adds nothing to the magnifying power of the instrument, and is, in fact, no more than a mere device for keeping the object-glass and eye-piece in a straight line, and ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... course of this conversation, lieutenant Lismahago dropt some hints by which it appeared he himself was a free-thinker. Our aunt seemed to be startled at certain sarcasms he threw out against the creed of saint Athanasius — He dwelt much upon the words, reason, philosophy, and contradiction in terms — he bid defiance to the eternity of hell-fire; and even threw such squibs at the immortality of the soul, as singed a little the whiskers of Mrs Tabitha's faith; for, by this time she began to look ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the old symbolism always will have a beauty of antiquity that can never belong to the new; but it was not this beauty—the beauty of death, of autumn leaves, that made them once popular, but the beauty of fresh green life and flexibility. The effort to make antiquity popular is almost a contradiction in terms. What we may hope for at most is an improvement in the aesthetic tastes of the Catholic public which comes from freer and healthier surroundings, from saner ideas and wider opportunities of education and liberal culture. When ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... and altercation. I shall not insist upon the hardship of a worthy man's being obliged to devote himself to death, because it is his misfortune to be insulted by a brute, a bully, a drunkard, or a madman: neither will I enlarge upon this side of the absurdity, which indeed amounts to a contradiction in terms; I mean the dilemma to which a gentleman in the army is reduced, when he receives an affront: if he does not challenge and fight his antagonist, he is broke with infamy by a court-martial; if he fights and kills him, he is tried by the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... gives us back, as a mirror does, the reflection of our own faces; and merciful men generally get what they give. But that is a law with many exceptions, and Jesus means more than that. Merciful men get mercy from God—not, of course, that we deserve mercy by being merciful. That is a contradiction in terms; for mercy is precisely that which we do not deserve. The place of mercy in this series shows that Jesus regarded it as the consequence, not the cause, of our experience of God's mercy. But He teaches over and over again that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... exists by the consent of the governed. It recognizes the existence of the Monroe Doctrine. In a word, it recognizes every principle and precedent, whether natural or historical, which has from the beginning lain at the foundation of our American polity. It does not attempt the hypocritical contradiction in terms, of pretending to elevate a people into a self-sustaining condition through the leading-string process of "tutelage." It appeals to our historical experience, applying to present conditions the lessons of Hayti, Mexico, and Venezuela. In dealing with those cases, we did not find ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... contradiction in terms have we not here. What a reversal, is it not, of all this world's canons, that we should hold even the best of all that we can know or feel in this life to be a poor thing as compared with hopes the fulfilment ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... they have clean sheets? In the first place, all petty prejudices and provincial aspirations must be set aside; and though the world must be firmly founded upon the principle of nationality it must also act as one great people. This, my fellow-countrymen, is no mere contradiction in terms, for though in their new solidarities each nation will be prouder of itself, and more jealous of its good name and independence than ever, that will not prevent its' sacrificing its inalienable rights for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
