"Debatable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... here an invitation to the superficial and, above all, there is everywhere here a tendency toward the creation of a type of character by no means so admirable in the actual outcome of it as it seems to be in the glowing pages of these prophets of success. Self-assertion is after all a very debatable creed, for self-assertion is all too likely to bring us into rather violent collisions with the self-assertions of others and to give us, after all, a world of egoists whose egotism is none the less mischievous, though it wear the garment of sunny cheerfulness ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... things that are sacred," says a writer in The Moving Picture World, "even from the hand of the most circumspect of picture makers." It is a source of regret that even a shadow of reproach should be cast upon distinguished men, particularly when the question of blame is debatable, as when, for instance, a picture portraying the love affair between Sir John Millais, the artist, and Ruskin's wife, was actually ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... from boyhood to hate. As long as Ibraheim Omair remained within his own territory Ahmed Ben Hassan held his hand and kept in check his fierce followers, whose eyes were turned longingly towards the debatable land, but once let the robber Sheik step an inch over the border, and it was war, and war until one or both of the chiefs were dead. And if he died who had no son to succeed him; the huge tribe would split up in numerous little families for want of a leader to keep ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... now in Washington, or on their way thither, to be kept by the President of the Senate until their seals are broken in February. The certificates and the votes of thirty-four of the States are undisputed. The remaining four are debatable, and questions respecting them have arisen, upon the decision of which depends the election of the incoming President. These questions are: Who are to count the votes; what votes are to be counted; and what is the remedy ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field
... to identify Mr. Moore with 'George's friend from the army'? Mr. Moore remembers he was on debatable ground last summer.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... could argue it out with her. She so believed in eugenics, you see—a very radical, compared with Ferguson. It was she who had had no doubt about tow-head. And the love-part of it seemed to him fixed: it didn't occur to him that that was debatable. So he stuck to something that could be discussed. Then—and this was his moment of exceeding folly—he caught at the old episode of the Argentina. That had nothing to do with her present state of shock. She had seen tow-head; but she hadn't seen the sprinkled ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... can take out that interest shortly. The road runs through debatable ground from St. Resa to de la Pama. Not an inch of it but what is being hotly contested. But it isn't the regulars that make the trouble, for at present the territory belongs to Peru, though how soon she will lose it is not for me to say. It's ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... fortified city, occupying a commanding hill overlooking the Danube; it is a rare old town, battle-scarred and rugged; having been a frontier position of importance in a country that has been debatable ground between Turk and Christian for centuries, it has been a coveted prize to be won and lost on the diplomatic chess-board, or, worse still, the foot-ball of contending armies and wrangling monarchs. Long before the Ottoman Turks first appeared, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... so far as possible to remove them from the domain of partisan politics. It would be a most desirable thing to put the fourth-class postmasters in the classified service. It is possible that this might be done without Congressional action, but, as the matter is debatable, I earnestly recommend that the Congress enact a law providing that they be included under the civil-service law and put ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was not a debatable question; undeniably he did need to be brought up with a sharp turn. It was in her mind that perhaps she had said enough; but she wished to ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... squire, his daughter, and Reilly. The old man, on reflecting that he was now safe, felt his spirits revive apace. His habits of life were jolly and convivial, but not actually intemperate, although it must be admitted that on some occasions he got into the debatable ground. To those who did not know him, and who were acquainted through common report only with his unmitigated abuse of Popery, he was looked upon as an oppressive and overbearing tyrant, who would enforce, to the furthest ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... and the Chumesh or Five Books of Moses, with all their explanations and commentaries; after that they came under the tuition of Reb Moshe and were introduced to the Talmud, with all its chapters, paragraphs, debatable ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... ambuscades, bales of silks from Valencia, travelling gangs of Moorish artisans, heavy armed Templars on their way to the Sepulchre, wandering minstrels, sneakthieves, bawds, rowdy strings of knights and foot-soldiers setting out with wine-skins at their saddlebows to cross the passes towards the debatable lands of Extremadura, where there were infidels to kill and cattle to drive off and village girls to rape, all when the gate was as new and crisply cut out of clean stone as the blocks we were sitting on. Down in the valley a donkey brayed ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... portions of softer materials, even lath and plaster, which may be frescoed, covered with some rich colored plain paper, or hung with violet velvet, according to your taste and means. The old-fashioned chair-rail seems to me a sensible institution It occupies the debatable ground between use and beauty, and may therefore be somewhat enriched. The plastering beneath it may be given a different tint from that above, and when the walls are high its effect is good. It is really carrying out the idea ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... 1848—and the concurrent return of the Mexican soldiers—seems but yesterday. We were in Nashville, where the camp fires of the two parties burned fiercely day and night, Tennessee a debatable, even a pivotal state. I was an enthusiastic politician on the Cass and Butler side, and was correspondingly disappointed when the election went against us for Taylor and Fillmore, though a little mollified ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... spirit and the flesh made Cecil's heart an odd sort of debatable land; if she could not always insure success and supremacy to the right side, she certainly did endeavor to preserve the balance of power. Personally she rather disliked Mr. Fullarton, but she seemed to look upon him as the embodiment of a principle, and ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... but a few years since this valley was a place choked with jungle, the debatable land and battle-ground of cannibals. Two clans laid claim to it—neither could substantiate the claim, and the roads lay desert, or were only visited by men in arms. It is for this very reason that it wears now so smiling an appearance: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... paper, rather dusty, as though it had lain by for some time. But it was the label that was attracting Poirot's attention. At the top, it bore the printed stamp of Messrs. Parkson's, the well-known theatrical costumiers, and it was addressed to "—(the debatable initial) Cavendish, Esq., Styles ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... he said, "they tells me times are better now, but I can't see it;" and it was plain enough that he thought our present times the worse. So far as this valley is concerned I incline to agree with him, although in general it is a debatable question. On the one hand, it may be that the things a labourer can buy at a shop for fifteen shillings a week are more in quantity and variety, if not better in quality, than those which his forefathers could produce by their own industry; and to that extent the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... discomfiture that even when forced into an argument, he is loath to push it to the bitter end. Yet when he does engage in argument, he drives things home with very telling force, especially when writing on debatable points. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Pilgrims sought. Wherever these rights, so fundamental to human happiness, are impugned, "Liberty!" is still the fitting rallying-cry.[Footnote: The exact limits within which freedom of speech must be allowed are debatable, (a) Speech which incites to crime, to lawbreaking, to sexual and other vice, must be prevented; and (b) slander, the public utterance of grossly disparaging statements concerning any person, without reasonable evidence of their truth. May we attempt to stifle the utterance ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... increase in numbers until they were able to work such devastation on British commerce as marked the course of the War of 1812. The period allowed the new nation to acquire the strategic mouth of the Mississippi, and to make such inroads of settlers in the debatable land of the Floridas that Britain was unable to secure a permanent footing in them during hostilities. Twenty years carried forward the Old World struggle to a point so near its close that the Americans were able in the end to make surprisingly good terms in the general ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... knowledge among the obsolescent accumulations of a public library, or it may for a moment be touched upon by some veteran teacher. But the time when social and economic science had to choose between debatable and inexpressive technicalities on the one hand or the stigma of empiricism on the ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... strangers; the fishermen were murdered. Instead of suing for pardon, the Genoese demanded satisfaction; required, in a haughty strain, that the Greeks should renounce the exercise of navigation; and encountered with regular arms the first sallies of the popular indignation. They instantly occupied the debatable land; and by the labor of a whole people, of either sex and of every age, the wall was raised, and the ditch was sunk, with incredible speed. At the same time, they attacked and burnt two Byzantine galleys; while the three others, the remainder of the Imperial navy, escaped ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... has been to point out the controlling forces, the spiritual issues that lurk behind these problems. In debatable matters we always have tried to find that higher level which lies undisturbed by the cross-currents of opinions. Naturally there are conclusions we draw or forms of action we propose which may ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... took on a national aspect. It began to be commented on by outside newspapers. Publications close to the administration and thoroughly in sympathy with its forest policies, began gravely to doubt the advisability of pushing these debatable claims at present. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the Ambassador's plea, made in the name of his master, for immediate and unguaranteed evacuation of the debatable land by the arguments already so often stated in the Advocate's instructions to Caron. They had been put to great trouble and expense already in their campaigning and subsequent fortification of important places in the duchies. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... place to go is another of those debatable questions and I feel that the same conclusion holds good. A book is the wisest passport to Russia at present. Marooned in Moscow, by Marguerite E. Harrison, is not a new book—in the sense of having been published last week. It remains about the best single book published ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... there were in medieval Europe two groups of states with separate interests and types of polity. They were divided from one another by a broad belt of debatable territory, extending from Holland to the coast of Provence—the northern lands of ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... tactical value decreased when the great wall was built that stretched with its lines of mound, ditch, stone-rampart, and road, and its series of camps and forts, from near the mouth of the Tyne to Solway Firth. Henceforth the wall marked the debatable frontier, but York never lost its strategic value. It was thus used by the Romans, William I., Edward I., Edward II., and Edward III. in their occupation of and their expeditions against the North. It has served as a base ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... debatable land where the artistic and the convenient meet at the fire-side and the tea-table, English invention, enterprise and solicitude for the comfort and presentability of home shone conspicuous. Domestic art finds in the island a congenial home, and helps to make one for the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... which the Amir made towards the close of the meeting the Viceroy agreed to, which was that we should call Persia to account for her alleged encroachments on the debatable ground of Sistan. This, which seemed but an unimportant matter at the time, was one of the chief causes of Sher Ali's subsequent estrangement; for the committee of arbitration which inquired into it decided against the Amir, who never forgave what he considered our unfriendly ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... morning when they lay on the shore they saw two French boats on the lake, and Robert was confirmed in his opinion that the prevision of the French leaders would enable them to strike the first blow. Already their armed forces were far down in the debatable country, and they controlled the ancient water route between ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... French, however, disputed their claim to this country; and constant quarrels arose between the rival settlers about their right to land, of which, in reality, the poor Indians were the proprietors. In virtue of a grant of parliament in 1750, a large body of English took possession of this "debatable ground;" but scarcely had they done so, when a superior force of French and Indians attacked them, and killing some, made prisoners of others, and drove the rest back. Many vigorous but unsuccessful efforts were made on the part of the colonists and their ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... man. Nor was this to be wondered at; for when before, in all history, do we find a general in command of half a million of men, and in presence of an enemy inferior in numbers and no better disciplined than his own troops, leaving it still debatable, after the better part of a year, whether he is a soldier or no? The question would seem to answer itself in the very asking. Nevertheless, being most profoundly ignorant of the art of war, like the majority ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... do not govern. It is much the same now. The peoples of European civilization, after a period of comparative repose, are again advancing all along the line, to occupy not only the desert places of the earth, but the debatable grounds, the buffer territories, which hitherto have separated them from those ancient nations, with whom they now soon must stand face to face and border to border. But who will say that this vast general movement represents the thought, even the unconscious thought, of any one ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... her waiting for him, and, after being duly cautioned by her mother to "be careful," though whether that was of any value or not is possibly debatable, the small, speedy craft again took ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... has always seemed to me mainly to consist." Most lovers of the sonnet would differ here with these masters of the art. Whether the weight of thought and feeling can properly be shifted to a final couplet is another debatable question, and critics will always differ as to the artistic value of the "big" line or "big" word which marks the culmination of emotion in many a sonnet. The strange or violent or sonorous word, however splendid in itself, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... with further indefinite promises, but he dared not. Accordingly he devised the plea that the aggrandizement of the Eastern and Western empires must keep equal pace, not in the West, for that was his by right, but in those debatable lands wherewith Russia hoped to secure a permanent seat in the councils of Europe. He was confirmed in his desire to postpone the partition of Turkey by finding that Mustapha, the Sultan who had overthrown Selim in defiance of France, was now ready in turn to make friends with her and perform her ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of criminals under a treaty on the demand of a foreign government presents a debatable ground in respect to the subject now under consideration. The surrender is an executive proceeding and a political act. But the laws may provide for a preliminary inquiry before a court into the propriety of complying with the demand. They certainly provide ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... of the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers the landscape became varied with open groves of woodland, with flower-strewn glades and great barrens or prairies of long grass. This region, one of the fairest in the world, was the debatable ground between the northern and the southern Indians. Neither dared dwell therein,[1] but both used it as their hunting-grounds; and it was traversed from end to end by the well marked war traces[2] which they ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... expanded, spread, gaping, yawning, unfolded, dehiscent; frank, unreserved, candid, ingenuous, guileless, overt, undisguised; generous, liberal, bounteous, open-handed; revealed, patent, manifest; unsettled, undetermined, debatable, undecided, controvertible; mild, clement; free, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... has given us to check his statements do not wholly encourage us to accept them. It will be seen therefore that the knowledge of Palladian Masonry was first brought to light under circumstances of a debatable kind. ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... little difficulty attainable by those who are worthy and will adventure. Let us now return to the wayfarer, whom we have left in that wildest region of the then little-settled state of Georgia—doubly wild as forming the debatable land between the savage and the civilized—partaking of the ferocity of the one and the skill, cunning, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... at all. They subsided. They subsided slowly back to 1—so slowly that you could hardly observe them going. A week later they were 63/64, which, of course, is practically the same as 1. A month afterwards they were 31/32, and it is a debatable point whether that is less or more than 63/64. Anyhow, by the time I had worked it out and decided that it was slightly less, they were at 61/64, and one had the same trouble all over again. At 61/64 I left them for a time; and when I next read the financial ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... to wander over all the debatable ground of the Cabot voyages, where every circumstance bristles with conflicting theories. The original authorities are few and scanty, but mountains of hypotheses have been built upon them, and too often the suppositions of one writer have been the facts of a succeeding ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... room, slowly and with knitted brows. "If you mean the world-wide order,—the order of gentlemen,"—he said, coming to a pause with the breadth of the table between him and Haward, "we may have that ground in common. The rest is debatable land. I do not take you for a sentimentalist or a redresser of wrongs. I am your storekeeper, purchased with that same yellow metal of which you so busily rid yourself; and your storekeeper I shall ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... with the fiction of an advantageous opening for him abroad, only requiring a sum of ready money, which, on being communicated to Deronda in private, might immediately draw from him a question as to the amount of the required sum: and it was this part of his forecast that Lapidoth found the most debatable, there being a danger in asking too much, and a prospective regret in asking too little. His own desire gave him no limit, and he was quite without guidance as to the limit of Deronda's willingness. But now, in the midst of these airy conditions preparatory ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... chose Bosambo, paramount and magnificent chief of the Ochori, as arbitrator. Now, it was singularly unfortunate that the question was ever debatable. And yet it was, for the fishing ground in question was off one of the many Middle Islands. In this case the island was occupied by Akasava fishermen on the one shore and by the intruding Isisi on the other. If you can imagine a big "Y" and over it a little "o" and over that again an inverted "Y" ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... the day of restoration until it saw in the South what its majority believed to be loyal governments. Its majority could not believe that any party but its own was loyal, and was thus led to a policy much more debatable than that of actual reconstruction. Step by step it moved. The abolition of slavery, in the Thirteenth Amendment (effective December 18, 1865), was expected by all and accepted without a fight. The next amendment, inspired by a fear that the freedmen would ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... who sat opposite Kirby, was an older man—a safe guess would have placed him somewhere in the debatable ground between forty and fifty; of a good height, as could be seen even from the seated figure, the upper part of which was held erect with the unconscious ease which one associates with military training. His closely cropped brown hair had the slightest ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... cecidere. And I would premise, that, although I can no longer resist the evidence of my own senses from the stone before me to the ante-Columbian discovery of this continent by the Northmen, gens inclytissima, as they are called in Palermitan inscription, written fortunately in a less debatable character than that which I am about to decypher, yet I would by no means be understood as wishing to vilipend the merits of the great Genoese, whose name will never be forgotten so long as the inspiring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... for the more liberally minded of the clergy, have now reached an interesting stage, both for those without the Church as well as for those within it. Although he does not feel called upon to state his own private conclusions on such debatable questions, he no longer regards the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Bodily Resurrection as essential prerequisites of Christianity and would consider fit for ordination any candidate who rejected them, provided such a person still acknowledged the divine nature of Jesus Christ—that ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... and mocked at the sharpness and futility of the grief which that farewell brought with it. For this was a grown woman who pleaded with him surely, acting as advocate? A child, compelled to treat such controversial, such debatable matters at all, would have done so to a different rhythm, in a ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... we all felt it in the air. There was a subdued, almost stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman, when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the formal courtesy, and careful avoidance of debatable topics, one could see sidelong glances cast, and hear muttered sneers. We bowed low to one another, but with anxious faces, knowing that we stood upon the thin crust over the crater, likely at any moment ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... contrarieties, and a character so strange as to be almost mysterious, sufficiently show the difficulties of the task I have undertaken. But the course I intend to pursue will relieve me from the necessity of entering, in any particular manner, upon those debatable points of his personal conduct which have been so much discussed. I shall consider him, if I can, as his character will be estimated when contemporary surmises are forgotten, and when the monument he has raised to himself is contemplated for its beauty and magnificence, without suggesting ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... this list relate to that aspect of the study of graphology which is supposed to bear upon the manifestations of character. But there is not one which the student of handwriting can afford to ignore, since, apart from the debatable question of character reading, they all contain numerous hints and observations of extreme value to the student whose objective is the acquisition of aptitude in the more ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... tucked away in Long Island, in the Debatable Land where the generous boundary of New York City zigzags in a sporting way just to permit horse racing at Belmont Park. It is the most rustic corner of the City. To most New Yorkers it is as remote as Helgoland and as little known. It has no movie theatre, no news-stand, ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... have passed the fortifications. The stuccoed houses of the suburbs, the factories, taverns, and gloomy hovels in the debatable land round Paris are so many points of sunshine in the far distance. The train is going at full speed. The fields of green or gold are being unrolled like ribbons before my eyes. Now and again a metallic sound and a glimpse of columns ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... flung him once more, helpless, against the dripping precipice. With what life was left in him, he clutched with both hands the bare serpentine edge. Good luck befriended him. The great wave had lifted him up on its towering crest to the level of vegetation, beyond the debatable zone. He clung to the hard root of woody sea-aster in the clefts. The waves dashed back in tumultuous little cataracts, ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... social to the political changes of this period, we are on far less debatable ground. Although there may be some doubt as to the intention with which each reform was brought into existence by Caius Gracchus, its character as illustrated by its place in the economy of the commonwealth is so clearly stamped upon it and so potently manifested in the immediately following years, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... was not in nature that a man of Shelburne's energetic and practical temperament should long be content to remain in his tent when a Grenville was afield with such (to say the least) debatable measures as the taxation of the colonies and the Regency Bill inscribed upon his banner. His marriage happening to occur just at the time when the famous Stamp Act was in the House of Lords kept Shelburne away from the debates on that measure, to which we may be sure he would, if present, have offered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... minister directly to my narrative at all. I want to set out my own queer love experiences too, such as they are, for they troubled and distressed and swayed me hugely, and they still seem to me to contain all sorts of irrational and debatable elements that I shall be the clearer-headed for getting on paper. And possibly I may even flow into descriptions of people who are really no more than people seen in transit, just because it amuses me to recall what they said and did to us, and more particularly how they ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... half grown lad, with a rosy face, and laughing blue eyes. Larry Densmore expected to become a lawyer some fine day, and in evidence of his fitness for the business he was constantly asking questions, and finding debatable points in such matters ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... digest cooked food; all animals do better fed on what they can digest. A lot of people have taken Pottenger's data and mistakenly concluded that humans also should eat only raw food. This idea is debatable. However, the most important result of the cat experiments took years to reveal itself and is not paid much attention to, probably because its implications are very depressing. Dr. Pottenger continued his experiments for several generations. It was the transgenerational changes that showed the ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... brought on respiratory diseases, or bad beer dietary, is debatable, but the critics of the Company used the dreadful winter of 1622-23 to discredit its administration. They pointed out that the Company had sent large numbers of immigrants to Virginia without proper provisions, and to a colony without adequate means of providing food and shelter for them. ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... such a geographical division of the kingdom into four provinces, as did not correspond with any ancient division, and still less with the modern, by which the number was multiplied to twelve. [3] The central portion, comprehending the Capitanate, the Basilicate, and the Principality, became debatable ground between the parties, each of whom insisted on these as forming an integral part of its own moiety. The French had no ground whatever for contesting the possession of the Capitanate, the first of these provinces, and by far the most important, on account of the tolls paid by the numerous ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... nationalisation. Speaking as an owner and not as a miner (I have at the present moment at least six coals and a pound or two of assorted mineral rubbish), I want to consider some of the pros and cons of this debatable proposition. I take it, first of all, that we shall pay for our coal along with our taxes and in proportion to our income. This will come rather hard, of course, on the kind of people who insist on warming their rooms with three ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... de Virieu would have found it very difficult to give an honest answer to the question. He was in a strange, debatable state of mind about Sylvia—beautiful, simple, ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... careful not to reopen debatable matters, and they returned to London joyously. The terminus stopped Dick in the midst of an eloquent harangue on the beauties of exercise. He would buy Maisie a horse,—such a horse as never yet bowed head to bit,—would stable it, with a companion, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... grew faint with hunger. In two or three days they reached a happier region. They shot deer, bears, and turkeys in the forest, and fared sumptuously. But the reports of their guns fell on hostile ears. This was a debatable ground, infested with war- parties of several adverse tribes, and none could venture here without risk of life. On the evening of the twenty-eighth, as they lay around their fire under the shelter of a forest by the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... clay is "properly prepared" forms the debatable ground, and has already furnished a convenient basis for the charge that it is never "properly prepared" for women-artists until it is ready for the caster. I affirm, from personal knowledge, that this charge is utterly without foundation,—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... into the Union in 1848 that brought about the organization of the Territory of Minnesota. The peculiar situation in which all the people residing west of the St. Croix found themselves set them to devising ways and means to obtain some kind of government to live under. It was a debatable question whether the remnant of Wisconsin which was left over when the state was admitted carried with it the territorial government, or whether it was a "no man's land," and different views were entertained on the subject. The question was somewhat embarrassed by the fact that the territorial ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... to the gradual reduction process, that is, how far they can utilize their present plan of milling machinery in making the change. Of course the cleaning machinery is the same In both cases, so are the elevators, conveyors, bolting chests, etc. But to use the millstone is a debatable question. After carefully considering the matter I have come to the conclusion that it has its place, and an important one at that, under the new regime, viz., that of reducing the finer purified middlings to flour. The reason for this ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... That's debatable. Some come from bad fermentations, due to dirty fermentaries, abnormal temperatures, or unripe cacao.[7] Some come from smoky or imperfect artificial drying. Some come from mould. Unfermented cacao is liable to go mouldy, ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... For a while he forgot the evening's adventure, but eventually found himself listening to a discussion—carried on over steaming tumblers of toddy—in regard to certain predispositions of the always debatable sex. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... controversy does not belong to it; it only demands from speculative reason $hat it should put an end to the discord in which it entangles itself in theoretical questions, so that practical reason may have rest and security from external attacks which might make the ground debatable on ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... could not exercise too much caution in this debatable land, and his right hand dropped cautiously to the butt of his pistol in such a manner that it was concealed by his heavy overcoat. His left hand rested lightly on the reins as he rode forward at an even pace. But he did not fail to take careful ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... apologising at this point for getting on that old debatable ground—but the secret was out. It was the essence of my forming ideas on educating the children, as it is the essence of everything else—all writing, all craftsmanship, labour ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... what had been the debatable ground, as much the enemy's as ours, and had not gone far before we were suddenly aware of a group of Spanish horsemen over the hedge of cactus to the left of the road, brightly dressed young fellows wearing the blue linen and red facings ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... justification of the argument two cases in which scrub fowl (MEGAPODIUS DUPERREYI TUMULUS) are concerned may be cited. Being a previously recorded fact, the first is excusable only on the grounds of its applicability to a debatable point. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... was a bare rock, low and flat, without water, and without any natural soil. The iron coast was surrounded on three sides, the north, the west, and the south, by a number of rocks and small islets, which fringed it like the trimming of a shawl. Its Phoenician occupiers early converted this debatable territory, half sea half shore, into solid land, by filling up the interstices between the rocks with squared stones and a solid cement as hard as the rock itself, which remains to this day.[436] The north-eastern portion, which ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Grand Canyon of the Colorado. But few persons have seen the Canyon, and far fewer ever have proven its existence by descending to its bottom; but none the less Reason admonishes all of us that the great chasm exists, and is not a debatable question. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... I justify the most debatable assertions, as for instance: that we are converted only through the [62] prevenient grace of God and that we cannot do good except with his aid; that God wills the salvation of all men and that he condemns only those whose will is evil; that he gives to all ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... historian accounts for the sailing of Pinzon and Vespucci in company, on that "debatable voyage" described in chapter VI. In the year 1499 both Pinzon and Vespucci were to sail—though in separate fleets—for the coasts of the continent which Columbus had accidentally revealed in his voyage of 1498. Vespucci was to coast its northern shores, while ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... ceremony and further presents, the Aztec Emperor's reply may be condensed as "Get thee hence!" And, as if to bear out some royal mandate, the natives disappeared from the vicinity, the supplies were cut off, leaving the Spaniards halting upon this debatable ground, in ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... illustrations, of comments teeming with humour, and of historic weight. The general introduction gives us a general survey of the graphic pictures of Border quarrels, their simple violence and simple cunning. It enters, for instance, with grave humour into the strong distinction taken in the debatable land between a "freebooter" and a "thief," and the difficulty which the inland counties had in grasping it, and paints for us, with great vivacity, the various Border superstitions. Another commentary on a very amusing ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... These were doubtful and debatable questions, pending the settlement of which matters could not be expected to take a definite shape. With the incorporation of the blacks into the body politic of the country,—which would have the effect of destroying the ability of the ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... for his five weeks' march, or to the consideration of two or three alternative lines of action which would open before him as soon as he should find himself within the boundaries of Mokembe. Some five years before, the government of the day had sent a small expedition to this Debatable Land, which had failed disastrously, both from the diplomatic and the military points of view. He went backward and forward to the shelves of the fine "Service" library which surrounded him, taking down the books and reports ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... surely the subject became a debatable one. Where, when Bok began, the leading prophylactic society in New York could not secure five speaking dates for its single lecturer during a session, it was now put to it to find open dates for over ten speakers. Mothers' clubs, women's ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... to reach just the same sort of approximations to truth which are possible in our own lives. The study of biology presents a superb opportunity to prepare for living by forming the habits of mind and of life that facilitate right choices in the presence of highly debatable situations. In this it much surpasses the more "exact" sciences. We may conclude, then, by positing the belief that the most important mental habit which human beings can form is that of using and applying consciously the scientific ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Here is the version of Apollodorus. "Pandion" (an early king of Athens) "married Zeuxippe, his mother's sister, by whom he had two daughters, Procne and Philomela, and two sons, Erechtheus and Butes. A war broke out with Labdas about some debatable land, and Erechtheus invited the alliance of Tereus of Thrace, the son of Ares. Having brought the war, with the aid of Tereus, to a happy end, he gave him his daughter Procne to wife. By Procne, Tereus had a son, Itys, and thereafter fell in ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the one position in Flanders held by the United Provinces, with a very mixed garrison. The archduke besieged Ostend (1601). Maurice did not attack him, but captured the keys of the debatable land of Cleves and Juliers. The siege of Ostend developed into a tremendous affair, and a school in the art of war. Maurice, instead of aiming at a direct relief, continued his operations so as to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... an early moment, and upon his own judgment, brought into full accord with the Republican Party upon the two debatable and most earnestly debated questions during Mr. Lincoln's administration—the prosecution of the war and the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... do not know yet. According to the principle, fiat justitia, pereat mundus, I ought to do so, no doubt. But the pereat mundus is, after all, a debatable point. Probably war is imminent, and I am afraid the Viceroy would not be grateful to me were I to add fresh cares to all his other anxieties. At present these Indian princes are indispensable to us. ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... the true answer to the serious question with which we opened this chapter. Whether or not reliable analyses can be made by the observation of physical characteristics is no longer debatable. ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... personal property has value is undeniable; whether it be worth what it costs us, in the long run, and from all points of view, may be left to the judgment of generations to come. Law in its origins is Divine; whether our human derivations from it partake of its high nature is debatable. Medicine and psychology, professing much, have not explained to us what or why we are, or what is our degree of responsibility for what we are and do. Politics sits on the bench and argues through the ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... is given him, indirectly, but as surely as if expressly granted, to be used in times of actual war, by the clause of the Constitution which we have just quoted, making him commander-in-chief of the national military force. Whenever the States, or any of them, cease to be debatable ground—that is, when the military force of the rebellion is put down, the military necessity ceases, and with it the authority of the President to appoint military governors. Nor is there danger of encroaching upon the liberties of the nation; for, as the power attaches to the President, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... debatable land was interposed a paved high road, twice as broad as it needed to have been, and furnished with a stone gutter down the centre, into which flowed, from every side, streams not Castalian; while five or six ducks, belonging to the master of the shop, acted as the only town ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... Henry V., he was too kingly as Hamlet, and Booth is the princeliest Hamlet that ever trod the stage. If Kean and the elder Booth were more supernal in their lightnings of passion and scorn,—and there are points in "Richelieu" which leave this a debatable question,—Edwin Booth is more equal throughout, has every resource of taste and study at his command; his action is finished to the last, his stage-business perfect, his reading distinct and musical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... this sweet bank your head thrice sweet and dear I lay, and spread your hair on either side, And see the new-born woodflowers bashful-eyed Look through the golden tresses here and there. On these debatable borders of the year Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow; And through her bowers the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... study of the relations existing between phenomena apparently of very different orders that there can be any hope of reaching the goal; and it is this which justifies the peculiar interest accorded to researches effected in the debatable land between domains hitherto ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... person who has been in Europe since the war began the question of the importance of fats is no longer debatable. Having practically gone without them, he knows they are important. In Germany it is the lack of fat that is the cause, perhaps, of the most discomfort and makes the German most dissatisfied with his rations. Even when the diet was sufficient, it was not ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... reliance on fallacious beliefs which will not bear examination. Such, at least, is the feeling or motive which has prompted me to devote much time and thought to a difficult but important inquiry in a debatable region of inference and conjecture, where (I am afraid) evidence on either side can never be absolutely conclusive, and where, especially, the absolute demonstration of a universal negative cannot ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... statement, however, proves that it came from Persia, and not from Arabia, for Assyria formed an important portion of the Persian Empire under the Sassassian dynasty, and in fact was for some centuries a kind of debatable land, and alternately occupied by the Persians and Romans, according as victory swayed to one side or the other. The term Assyria, then, denoting Persia in general, is used here in a well known figurative sense "per synecdechen," a part taken for the whole, just ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... combination of players ever served a club so well, and had such pleasure in their hard work, as the Buchanans, Gourlays, and Smiths. They were more feared than admired by the members of the clubs twenty miles around, than the Elliots, and Armstrongs, or, shall I say, the Graemes, of the "debatable land" long ago. Both Mr. James and Mr. John Buchanan were famous players in their way, but the back was decidedly the best man, and was selected to play against Wales ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... Trans-Mississippi Confederate States were included in the same Department with the States of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. Missouri on the Western side of the Mississippi, and Kentucky on the Eastern—respectively the Northernmost of the Western and Middle Slaveholding States—were debatable ground, and were already occupied, the former by both, the latter by one ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Anthology required years of accumulated experience; a mordant power of analysis; a gift of shrewd speech, a command of hard words that will cut like a diamond; a mental vigour analogous to, though naturally not so powerful, as that displayed by Browning in The Ring and the Book. It is still a debatable proposition whether or not this is high-class poetry; but it is mixed with brains. Imagine the range of knowledge and power necessary to create two hundred and forty-six distinct characters, with a revealing epitaph for each one! The miracle of personal ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... mark for the present those parts which we are willing to accept as our own standards of action. If there are portions which do not seem practicable, let us post them in our minds as debatable propositions, as points to be tested by the experience of coming years, or as working hypotheses in the science ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... be a new disease, not known in her day, and deserving investigation. She was happy to compare sensations with him, but hers were not of the complex order, and a potion soon righted her. In fact, her system appeared to be a debatable ground for aliment and medicine, on which the battle was fought, and, when over, she was none the worse, as she joyfully told Hippias. Never looked ploughman on prince, or village belle on Court Beauty, with half the envy poor nineteenth-century ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... discussions with the people. It cost him, however, some trouble to overcome his early tendencies; nor, after all, can it be affirmed that he altogether succeeded in eradicating them. Many a grave shrug, and solemn wink, and formal nod, had he to answer for, when his foot touched the debatable land of controversy. Though contrary to the keeping and dignity of his position in life, yet did honest Denny then get desperately significant, and his face amazingly argumentative. Many a pretender has he fairly annihilated by a single smile ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... FRIEND: Last post brought me your letter of the 29th past. I suppose C——-T——-let off his speech upon the Princess's portion, chiefly to show that he was of the opposition; for otherwise, the point was not debatable, unless as to the quantum, against which something might be said; for the late Princess of Orange (who was the eldest daughter of a king) had no more, and her two sisters but half, if ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Gwynedd, prince of Wales, discover America? Stimulated by the importance of the question, and accustomed to admire the spirit of maritime enterprise, at whatever period it may have been called into action, I have sometimes reflected on this debatable point—but can neither ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... since she knew it was there, to keep silence altogether would only increase her pain. So from time to time he skimmed the surface just to let her show him where he was wrong and think she won the day. It remained a debatable land of compromise. He listened with patience to her criticisms, her excursions and alarms, knowing that while it gave her satisfaction, it could not change himself. The thing lay in him too deep and true for change. But, for peace' sake, some meeting-place ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... present promising proportions—holds the solution of at least one equation of the problem. To have made cooking and industrial training the fashion is to have cleared away at a leap the thorny underbrush and tangled growth on that Debatable Ground, the best education for the poor, and to find one's feet firmly set in a way leading to a Promised Land to which every believer in the new system is an accredited guide. That cooking-schools and the knowledge of cheap and savory preparation of food must soon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... unpromising efforts, and he has the knack of so handling his own early experience as to make it an encouragement and a stimulus, and not (as the manner of some is) a burden and a bogey. Mr. Morley never obtrudes his own opinions, never introduces debatable matter, never dogmatizes. But he is always ready to pick up the gauntlet, especially if a Tory flings it down; is merciless towards ill-formed assertion, and is the alert and unsparing enemy of what Mr. Ruskin calls "the obscene ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... to claim but little credit for a discovery which must in all likelihood have been forestalled by the common insight of some hundred or more students in time past. The difficulty begins with the really debatable question of subdivisions. There are certain plays which may be said to hang on the borderland between one period and the next, with one foot lingering and one advanced; and these must be classed according to the dominant note of their ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the states where his side was sure to win. In this way he was free to give his entire thoughts to the twelve states that were debatable, and upon whose votes the election would turn. He divided each of these states into units containing five thousand voters, and, at the national headquarters, he placed one man in charge of each unit. Of the five thousand, he roughly calculated there would be two thousand ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... contained in these articles. This is the author's duty to write in such a fashion as to seem impartial. It is needless to suggest that he ought to be impartial, since no one ever takes a real interest in any debatable matter without ceasing to be impartial, and nobody will ever write a play worth seeing unless he takes a ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... belonging to Bolivia, and also in the provinces of Tacna, Arica, and Tarapaca, still farther to the northward, belonging to Peru. Because boundary lines were not altogether clear and because the three countries were all eager to exploit these deposits, controversies over this debatable ground were sure to rise. For the privilege of developing portions of this region, individuals and companies had obtained concessions from the various governments concerned; elsewhere, industrial free lances dug away without reference to ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd |
