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Disputation   /dɪspjˈutˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Disputation

noun
1.
The formal presentation of a stated proposition and the opposition to it (usually followed by a vote).  Synonyms: debate, public debate.
2.
A contentious speech act; a dispute where there is strong disagreement.  Synonyms: arguing, argument, contention, contestation, controversy, disceptation, tilt.






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"Disputation" Quotes from Famous Books



... deal of the weight. And who would take upon him to give a reason that Arius and his Pope Leo, the principal heads of the Arian heresy, should die, at several times, of so like and strange deaths (for being withdrawn from the disputation by a griping in the bowels, they both of them suddenly gave up the ghost upon the stool), and would aggravate this divine vengeance by the circumstances of the place, might as well add the death of Heliogabalus, who was also slain in a house of office. And, indeed, Irenaeus was involved ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... utter no opinion, would pronounce no decision, but what they believed the quintessence of' truth; that they always acted without prejudice and respect of persons. Indeed, we know that the ancient philosophers were a ridiculous composition of arrogance, disputation, and contradictions; that some of them acted against all ideas of decency; that others affected to doubt of their own senses; that some, for venting unintelligible nonsense, pretended to think themselves superior to kings; that they gave themselves airs of accounting for ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... no; he knew full well that with his scanty stock of English ammunition scattered over the sterile floor of his literary magazine, he could not have the effrontery, impudence, or presumption to enter the list of philosophical and scientific disputation with one who has traversed the thorny paths of literature, explored its mazy windings, and who is thoroughly and radically fortified, as being encompassed with the impenetrable shield of genuine science. This red, hot, fiery, unguarded locust, in ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... and hospitable roof. Ardent as he was in political discussions, prone as he was to enter into controversy, the feelings of animosity which he expressed died in their utterance. The adversary of to-day was the welcome guest of the morrow. The hand which had distilled the gall of disputation at one moment, was readily extended in kind fellowship the next. Mr. Brock was probably not exempt from failings, but he had certainly nothing of littleness about him. He respected an honorable and open adversary, more than a flattering and servile friend. His hostility was strong, but it was ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... thus the text expressly declareth, that "certain men which came down from Judea, taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved; when therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question," Acts xv. 1, 2, compared with ver. 5—"But there rose up certain of the sect of the ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... hands, and still confute; He'd undertake to prove by force Of argument, a man's no horse; He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a lord may be an owl; A calf an alderman, a goose a justice, And rooks committee-men and trustees, He'd run in debt by disputation, And pay with ratiocination: All this by syllogism, true In mood and figure, he would do. For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope; And when he happened to break off I' th' middle of his speech, or cough, H' had hard words, ready to show why, ...
— English Satires • Various

... demand the hand of Basileia (Dominion), the handmaid of Zeus. Next an embassy from the Olympians appears on the scene, consisting of Heracles, Posidon and a god from the savage regions of the Triballians. After some disputation, it is agreed that all reasonable demands of the birds are to be granted, while Pisthetaerus is to have Basileia as his bride. The comedy winds up with the epithalamium in honour of ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes

... by himself, for he had a nature ever inclined to this. In the scene, then, wherein Faith has taken Infidelity captive, there are all the heretics and infidels. Hope has likewise overcome Despair, and so, too, there are many other Virtues that have subjugated the Vice that is their opposite. In a disputation is S. Thomas defending the Church "ex cathedra" against a school of heretics, and holding vanquished beneath him Sabellius, Arius, Averroes, and others, all clothed in graceful garments; of which scene we have in our book of drawings the original design ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... ready to go: lamenting to himself that his son would be taken away. Stating, moreover, that he would never suffer his son to be a stonemason, it was useless for Granacci to explain how great was the difference between a sculptor and a mason. After all this long disputation he ultimately was ushered into the presence of the Magnificent, who asked him if he would deliver his son over to his care, for he would not neglect him; "Even so," he replied, "not only Michael Angelo, ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... liberty. Those on the other side generally concealed their names; but their arguments were not suffered to rest long without an answer. The controversy began about the year 1766, and was renewed at various times till 1773, when it was warmly agitated, and became a subject of forensic disputation at the public commencement at Harvard College." ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole

... Gotwar, who used to paralyse the most eloquent and fluent men by her glib and extraordinary insolence; for she was potent in wrangling, and full of resource in all kinds of disputation. Words were her weapons; and she not only trusted in questions, but was armed with stubborn answers. No man could subdue this woman, who could not fight, but who found darts in her tongue instead. Some she would argue down with a flood ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... to waste in idle disputation," said the sheriff testily; but he sat down, nevertheless, at his prisoner's bidding, as meekly as if ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... to be a favourite subject for scholastic disputation: WHETHER HERCULES IS IN THE MARBLE. The image is that of the sculptor, who sees the statue lie, so to speak, imbedded in the marble block, and whose duty is so to carve it, neither cutting too deep or too shallow, so that the perfect form is revealed. The idea of the disputation is the root-idea ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... exhibitions, in which the good scholiast sees treasures of wisdom, where a modern is obliged to take them in their literal dulness. Thus in III. 132. 18, a boy of twelve or ten (133. 16), who is divinely precocious, defeats the wise men in disputation at a sacrifice, and in the following section (134. 7 ff.) silences a disputant who is regarded as one of the cleverest priests. The conversation is recorded in full. In what does it consist? The opponent mentions a number of things which are one; the boy replies with a verse that ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... other party. Then the emperor ordained two Paynims, Gentiles, to be their judges, of whom that one was named Crato, and that other Zenophilus, which were proved wise and expert, and they to give the sentence, and be judge of the disputation. Then began one of the masters of the Jews for to maintain and dispute his law, and St. Silvester and his clerks answered to his disputation, and to them all, always concluding them by Scripture. The judges which were true and just, held more of ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... This brought in the Syllogism, and allied matters. There was also a selection from the work known as the Topics, not now included in Logical teaching, yet one of the most remarkable and distinctive of Aristotle's writings. It is a highly laboured account of the whole art of Disputation, laid out under his scheme of the Predicables. The selection fell chiefly on two books—the second, comprising what Aristotle had to say on Induction, and the sixth, on Definition; together with the "Logical Captions" or Fallacies. Disputation was one of the products of the ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... Great Revolution families." Of his qualities in council we have no record; there is reason to believe that his administrative ability was conspicuous: his speeches prove that, if not supreme, he was eminent, in the art of parliamentary disputation, while they show on all the questions discussed a richness and variety of information with which the speeches of no statesman of that age except Mr Burke ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... that he was purely and simply a man of the doctrine. He had no emotions, his sermons were never matters of feeling; but he insisted so strongly upon the constant presentation of the tenets of his creed that his presence in a town was always marked by the enthusiasm and joy of religious disputation. ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... his life we find connected the name of the most brilliant Frenchman of that time, the celebrated Prince de Conde,—famous already by many victories, though hardly twenty-six years of age,—who attended the disputation and had allowed the young theologian to dedicate his thesis to him. Thirty-nine years later, after a long period of close friendship, their names were again associated when the illustrious Bishop of Meaux delivered the funeral oration of the great warrior, and announced, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... its temporary interruption. Many things we should connive at, others we should pass by with an unprovoked mind, and in all things most carefully avoid even what at first may seem to be an innocent disputation." ...
— The Wedding Day - The Service—The Marriage Certificate—Words of Counsel • John Fletcher Hurst

... The men who debated the Stamp Act were, with a few striking exceptions, men trained in Latin and Greek, familiar with the great outlines of human history, accustomed to the discipline of academic disputation. They knew the ideas and the vocabulary of cultivated Europe and were conscious of no provincial inferiority. In the study of the physical sciences, likewise, the colonials were but little behind the mother country. The Royal Society had its distinguished members here. The Mathers, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... prescriptive religions. They have all stood long enough to make prescription and its chain of legitimate prejudices their main stay. The people who compose the four grand divisions of Christianity have now their religion as an habit, and upon authority, and not on disputation,—as all men who have their religion derived from their parents and the fruits of education must have it, however the one more than the other may be able to reconcile his faith to his own reason or to that of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... grandeur of nature, the flowers of spring and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide and the revolutions of the sky, and praise his Maker in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the description is not God, but the works of God. Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Reedemer, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... Sir Leon was Jehiel ben Joseph, or Sir Vives, of Meaux. At this time the school is said to have counted three hundred pupils. In the disputation of 1240,[142] Jehiel ben Joseph together with Moses of Coucy, Samuel of Falaise, and another less well-known rabbi, Judah ben David, of Melun, represented the Jews. A Christian source calls Jehiel "the cleverest and most celebrated ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... either as its precursor, or as its accompaniment and necessary condition, a corresponding improvement in the notions and principles of logic received among the most advanced thinkers. And if several of the more difficult sciences are still in so defective a state; if not only so little is proved, but disputation has not terminated even about the little which seemed to be so; the reason perhaps is, that men's logical notions have not yet acquired the degree of extension, or of accuracy, requisite for the estimation of the evidence proper to those ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... from Copenhagen only a day, and I miss it already. If I didn't have my good books with me, I couldn't exist in the country. Studia secundas res ornant, adversis solatium praebent. I feel as if I had lost something, after going three days without a disputation. I don't know whether there are any learned folk in the village, but if there are, I shall set them to work, for I can't live without disputation. I can't talk much to my poor parents, for they are simple folk and know hardly anything beyond their catechism; so I can't find much comfort in their ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg

... something which adds to the comforts or alleviates the calamities of the human race, we are forced to own ourselves disappointed. We are forced to say with Bacon that this celebrated philosophy ended in nothing but disputation, that it was neither a vineyard nor an olive-ground, but an intricate wood of briars and thistles, from which those who lost themselves in it brought back many scratches and no food. [Novum Organum, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... in which the insurrectionary States should be dealt with at the close of hostilities had been the object of solicitous inquiry throughout the war. It was indeed often a question of angry disputation in Congress, in the press, and among the people. The tentative and somewhat speculative efforts in this field, which had been made or at least encouraged by Mr. Lincoln, had confused rather than solved the problem, and yet his action could not fail to ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... cleverer than Audrey; her masters and governesses would have acknowledged that fact. And yet her cousin Michael was giving the divine gift of genius to her more scantily endowed sister; genius! but, of course, it was only Michael's nonsense: he would say anything when he was in the humour for disputation. Even her own Percival had these contentious moods. The masculine mind liked to play with moral ninepins, to send all kinds of exploded theories rolling with their little ball of wit; it sharpened their argumentative faculties, and kept them bright ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... assisted the growing intimacy between Mr. Lyon and Felix Holt, for though neither possessed votes in that memorable year 1832, they shared the same liberal sympathies. Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking; and the advent of the public-spirited, contradictory, yet affectionate Felix, into Treby life had made a welcome ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... Much of the disputation between James and the House of Commons concerned the privileges of Parliament, and might be suspected of being largely the natural jealousy of its own rights felt and asserted by an ancient corporation. But Parliament was waging war for ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... same crudeness in style and content as his previous achievement—a typical specimen of a degraded back-yard literature. The editor of the Hebrew journal ha-Melitz, Alexander Zederbaum, demonstrated clearly that Lutostanski had forged his quotations, and summoned him to a public disputation, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... Edith, who was walking, attended by her maid. On such occasions Edith would stop him, he said, and question him about his studies, his grammar, his logic, and his verses; and she would often draw him into an argument on those subtle points of disputation which attracted so much attention in those days. Then she would commend him for his attention and progress, and order her woman to make him a present of some money. In a word, Edith was so gentle and kind, and took so cordial an interest in whatever concerned the welfare ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... by some new topics. Gardiner entered the lists as a support to Cranmner: Tonstal took up the argument after Gardiner: Stokesley brought fresh aid to Tonstal; six bishops more appeared successively in the field after Stokesley. And the disputation, if it deserve the name, was prolonged for five hours; till Lambert, fatigued, confounded, browbeaten, and abashed, was at last reduced to silence. The king, then returning to the charge, asked him whether he were convinced; and he proposed, as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... his ideas which he had undergone was too recent for his soul at once to regain its equilibrium. From time to time it seemed to wish to go back, and he discussed with himself in order to set it at rest. He spent himself in disputation, came to doubt the reality of his conversion, and said: "After all I am united to the church only on the side of art. I only go there to see or hear and not to pray; I do not seek the Lord, but my ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... our faith, there is but little difference among those classes of Christians who acknowledge the attributes of the Saviour, and depend on his mediation. But heresies have polluted every church, and schisms are the fruit of disputation. In order to arrest these dangers, and to insure the union of his followers, it would seem that Christ had established his visible church. and delegated the ministry. Wise and holy men, the fathers of our religion, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... a tendency towards disputation were far more harshly dealt with than those who abjured at once. The red-hot iron, the badge of shame, the servitude which might be lifelong were imposed upon them. So a sense of despair fell upon the little ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Proem. And therefore it says "severe," with reference to the sound of the style, which to such a subject must not be sweet and pleasing; and it says "subtle," with regard to the meaning of the words, which proceed with subtle argument and disputation. ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... philosophers—Aristotle became the rival of Plato. Literary disputes long subsisted betwixt them. The disciple ridiculed his master, and the master treated contemptuously his disciple. To make his superiority manifest, Aristotle wished for a regular disputation before an audience, where erudition and reason might prevail; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... mottled with stinging-nettles and scratched with thistles; he found his master's house a smouldering ruin, and a thick pall of smoke lay over the town of Senlis like a fog. Somewhere a woman shrieked and then was still. About the hour of nine in the evening the concierge heard voices in disputation outside the lodge-gates, and as he hid himself among the shrubberies more men entered, and, being dissatisfied with their work, threw hand-grenades into the mansion and applied a lighted torch to the concierge's humble dwelling. They were very merry and sang ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... fright lest he should be the victim of a sneer of the world he contemned. Recollecting his remarks, her mind was afflicted by the "something illogical" in him that we readily discover when our natures are no longer running free, and then at once we yearn for a disputation. She resolved that she would one day, one distant day, provoke it—upon what? The special point eluded her. The world is too huge a client, and too pervious, too spotty, for a girl to defend against a man. That "something illogical" had stirred her feelings more ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... knew too decisive for her contending with, and now she heard it. Like a wise woman, she made up her mind to say no more, and she was saved an awkward pause by an uproar in the fosse. Up to the window where those two elderly lovers had their kindly disputation came the sound of cries. Out into the dusk of the evening Argyll thrust his ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... very fond of disputation; but as he generally terminated the discussion by collaring his antagonist and kicking his shins, few of his guests were disposed to enter the arena against him. One day, when he was particularly disposed for an argument, he asked one of his suite why he did not venture to ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... reasoning had been raised to such a pitch of perfection that it entirely dominated the schools. Its exponents were so proud of it that its bounds were continually extended; and it became impossible to obtain a university degree without a high level of proficiency in disputation. For his examination a candidate was required to dispute with all comers—in practice this came to be a small number of appointed examiners, three or four—on questions which had been announced beforehand. It was not a hasty affair—time was allowed for reflection, and ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... this host contained but few of the people; the greater part of those who formed it were either already in the church, or soon, in various capacities, about to be. And the discussions raised at the meetings corresponded with the persons attending them; there was the disputation of the schools; there was no founding of sects; the lessons of Abelard and the questions he handled were scientifico-religious; it was to expound and propagate what they regarded as the philosophy of Christianity, that masters and pupils ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Then will we blazon it abroad that Barlaam hath been caught; but we shall exhibit Nachor, who, calling himself Barlaam, shall feign that he is pleading the cause of the Christians and standing forth as their champion. Then, after much disputation, he shall be worsted and utterly discomfited. The prince, seeing Barlaam worsted, and our side victorious, will doubtless join the victors; the more so that he counteth it a great duty to reverence thy majesty, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... that any learned men Within my house fall to disputation, I drawe the curtaynes to shewe my bokes then, That they of my cunning should make probation: I kepe not to fall in alterication, And while they comment, my bookes I turne and winde, For all is in them, and ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... field which burneth not the leaues of shadie trees that growe directly ouer it. These things being thus, it is strange that men should accompt that a wonder in Hecla onely (for I will graunt it to be, for disputation sake, when indeede there is no such matter so farre foorth as euer I could learne of any man) which is common to manie other parts or places in the world, both hilly and plaine, as ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... infallible word of God, it has proved their pleasure and delight—their fountain of consolation—their guide to peace: while the self-righteous and unbelieving have transformed it into a subject of perplexity and disputation—a cause of deeper guilt and more aggravated ruin. The Gospel has appeared transcendently beautiful and glorious to all who have been savingly enlightened by the Holy Spirit—while, to the impenitent and skeptical, it seems obscure, ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin

... with the lad, Prince Karl," said the Chancellor, firmly. "In my youth I had some practice as a leech. I am acquainted with the art of healing. I could travel either as a doctor of healing, as a travelling philosopher seeking disputation with the scholars of each country, or, perhaps best of all, in mine own quality of a doctor of law. And in any case this young man might with all safety be my pupil or servant, whichever best ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... The youth, on that occasion, dispute, some in the demonstrative way, and some logically. These produce their enthymemes, and those the more perfect syllogisms. Some, the better to shew their parts, are exercised in disputation, contending with one another, whilst others are put upon establishing some truth by way of illustration. Some sophists endeavour to apply, on feigned topics, avast heap and flow of words, others to impose upon you with false conclusions. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... doubtless are past all computation, but generally as a point of hospitality. For I am of the same opinion as M——, a very able friend of mine in Liverpool, who looks upon it as criminal to concede anything a man says in the process of a disputation: the nefarious habit of assenting (as he justly says) being the pest of conversation, by causing it to stagnate. On this account he often calls aside the talking men of the party before dinner, and conjures them with a pathetic earnestness not to agree with him in anything he ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... disputation this! while the Jewish disputant, knowing that he could not properly prove out of the Pentateuch, that "the place which the Lord their God shall choose to place his name there," so often referred to in the Book of Deuteronomy, was Jerusalem any more than Gerizzim, that being not determined ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... decision. Perhaps, she forced herself to unusual firmness lest her great love for the girl should make her weak in discipline. She expected that Hester, having once made so strong an affirmation, would cling to it and perhaps be inclined to disputation. On the ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird

... what saith the Scripture? "Christ died for all." It was the pinch of this argument which brought New England theologians, beginning with Smalley and the second Edwards, to the acceptance of the rectoral theory of the atonement, and so prepared the way for much disputation among the doctors of the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... purpose of amicable discussion. Our members—alas! how few remain—were of all parties and persuasions, and some of them of very distinguished attainments. A society thus constituted was in those days as pleasant as it was instructive. The most eager disputation was never found to endanger the most perfect goodwill, nor did any bitter feuds arise from this entire freedom of opinion till the prolific period of the French Revolution. On this subject our controversies became very impassioned. The present Sir Astley Cooper, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... further add: A wise and a just Magistrate, may so far give way to a common Stream of Dissatisfaction, as to forbear acting up to the heighth of his own Perswasion, about what may be judged convictive of a Crime, whose Nature shall be so abstruse and obscure, as to raise much Disputation. Tho' he may not do what he should leave undone, yet he may leave undone something that else he could do, when the Publick ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... newspaper, from the witty courtier down to his philosophic lackey, each one revises Montesquieu with the self-sufficiency of a child which, because it is learning to read, deems itself wise; where self-esteem, in disputation, caviling and sophistication, destroys all sensible conversation; where no one utters a word, but to teach, never imagining that to learn one must keep quiet; where the triumphs of a few lunatics entice every crackbrain from his den; where, with two nonsensical ideas put together out of a book ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... and made the bread, cake and some of the pastry. He also assisted the "kitchen group" in domestic cookery. Beyond this he was particularly fond of three things—disputation, the newspapers and a cigar. He was thoroughly devoted to the doctrines of "United industry" and to Brook Farm. He was among the first up in the morning and last at night, attending to his ovens and ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... comes John Tetzel with his pagan processions, supplying salvation for silver! Martin Luther, the strenuous, the impulsive, the bold, quickly writes a challenge in wrath to public disputation. "If God wills," said Martin to a friend, "I'll surely kick a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... characters, 'The description of the Towre of vertue and honour, into which the noble Howarde contended to enter by worthy actes of chivalry,' a stanzaic composition in honour of Sir Edward Howard, who died in 1513. The fifth eclogue, 'of the disputation of Citizens and men of the Countrey,' or the Cytezen and Uplondyshman, as it was originally styled, again presents us with a familiar theme treated in the conventional manner, and closes the series. These poems are ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... constant desire that his heart's blood might be shed in defence of the gospel. His polemical and friendly letters are lasting monuments of his integrity and talents. It has been before said, that public disputation took place in April, 1554, new examinations took place in Oct. 1555, previous to the degradation and condemnation of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer. We now draw to the conclusion of the lives of the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... emphatic, eight years later, was another eminent divine, Dr. William Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity and Master of St. John's College at Cambridge. In his Disputation on Holy Scripture, first printed in 1588, he says: "The Hebrew is the most ancient of all languages, and was that which alone prevailed in the world before the Deluge and the erection of the Tower of Babel. For it was this which Adam used and all men before the Flood, as is ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... superior persons. From this "Universal Characteristic," as he called it, he hoped for a solution of all problems, and an end to all disputes. "If controversies were to arise," he says, "there would be no more need of disputation between two philosophers than between two accountants. For it would suffice to take their pens in their hands, to sit down to their desks, and to say to each other (with a friend as witness, if ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... vnderstand thy Kisses, and thou mine, And that's a feeling disputation: But I will neuer be a Truant, Loue, Till I haue learn'd thy Language: for thy tongue Makes Welsh as sweet as Ditties highly penn'd, Sung by a faire Queene in a Summers Bowre, With ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... University and in the Church Hus protested against this shameless business. On June 7, 1412, there was a great disputation on the subject in the large hall of the Carolinum. Hus held no pope or bishop had the right to draw the sword in the name of the Church, he must pray for his enemies and bless them that curse him. Man gets forgiveness of sins through real sorrow and repentance, ...
— John Hus - A brief story of the life of a martyr • William Dallmann

... are our days, our republican lands—and most in their rapid shiftings, their changes, all in the interest of the cause. As I write this particular passage, (November, 1868,) the din of disputation rages around me. Acrid the temper of the parties, vital the pending questions. Congress convenes; the President sends his message; reconstruction is still in abeyance; the nomination and the contest for the twenty-first Presidentiad draw close, with loudest threat and bustle. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... a porch, used as a school or place for disputation. The parvise mentioned in the Oxford "Little-Go" (Responsions) Testamur is alluded to in Bishop Cooper's book against Private Mass (published by the Parker Society). He ridicules his opponent's arguments as worthy of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various

... it well to introduce this quotation just here because it is associated at once with my earliest recollections of Lady Russell, and at the same time with a subject of controversy which may almost be said to have passed out of the realms of disputation since that day. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... of three from each side was appointed, and after months of disputation, a treaty of peace was drawn up and signed. By the terms of this treaty the Western ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... given to those that urge the Scripture in like manner against the opinion of the motion of the Earth. The Scripture was written to shew unto men the kingdome of God; and to prepare their mindes to become his obedient subjects; leaving the world, and the Philosophy thereof, to the disputation of men, for the exercising of their naturall Reason. Whether the Earths, or Suns motion make the day, and night; or whether the Exorbitant actions of men, proceed from Passion, or from the Divell, (so we worship him not) ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... prince Jantu; and how king Somaka by offering up his only son (Jantu) in sacrifice obtained a hundred others; then the excellent history of the hawk and the pigeon; then the examination of king Sivi by Indra, Agni, and Dharma; then the story of Ashtavakra, in which occurs the disputation, at the sacrifice of Janaka, between that Rishi and the first of logicians, Vandi, the son of Varuna; the defeat of Vandi by the great Ashtavakra, and the release by the Rishi of his father from the depths of the ocean. Then the story of Yavakrita, and then ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... River Cam, running by the walls of these colleges, which are particularly famous for their skill in disputation.—P. W. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... of being the head waters of that river belonged to Tanganyika and its affluents. The subject excited considerable public interest and it was arranged that at the approaching Bath meeting of the British Association, Speke and Burton should hold a public disputation upon the great question. Speke's attitude towards Burton in respect to their various discoveries had all along been incapable of defence, while Burton throughout had exhibited noble magnanimity. For example, he had written ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... all geniuses had a prerogative right to rank and wealth, and all the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, could we be sure that none but genuine geniuses would claim them, and that there would be no margin for disputation with "solemn shams"? Milton's fifteen pounds are often referred to by him who finds how hard it is to climb, &c.; but we have no "return," as the blue-books call it, of all the good opportunities afforded to intellects ambitious of arising as meteors but only showing ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... William suspected of infidelitie.] Moreouer, to increase the suspicion which men had of his infidelitie, it is written, that he caused a disputation to be kept betwixt the Jewes & the christians, promising that if the Jewes ouercame the christians in argument, he would be a Jew: but the Jewes being ouercome, and receiuing the foile, would not confess their errors, but alledged, that by ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed

... did not so confer with the apostles that they taught me anything. What could they possibly teach me since Christ by His revelation had taught me all things? It was but a conference, and no disputation. I learned nothing, neither did I defend my cause. I only stated what I had done, that I had preached to the Gentiles faith in Christ, without the Law, and that in response to my preaching the Holy Ghost came down upon the Gentiles. When the apostles heard this, they were glad ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... Francais, vol. iii. p. 174.] So also in all chivalric feelings, in enthusiastic religious zeal, in almost idolatrous respect to females of gentle birth, in generous fondness for the nascent poetry of the time, in a keen intellectual relish for subtle thought and disputation, in a taste for architectural magnificence, and all courtly refinement and pageantry, the Normans were the Paladins of the world. Their brilliant qualities were sullied by many darker traits of pride, of merciless cruelty, and of brutal contempt for ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... — N. {ant. 477} reasoning, ratiocination, rationalism; dialectics, induction, generalization. discussion, comment; ventilation; inquiry &c. 461. argumentation, controversy, debate; polemics, wrangling; contention &c. 720 logomachy[obs3]; disputation, disceptation[obs3]; paper war. art of reasoning, logic. process of reasoning, train of reasoning, chain of reasoning; deduction, induction, abduction; synthesis, analysis. argument; case, plaidoyer[obs3], opening; lemma, proposition, terms, premises, postulate, data, starting point, principle; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... of truth (as if, like virtue, it were valuable for itself) that all truth becomes equally valuable, whether the proposition that contains it be new or old, disputed, or such as is impossible to become a subject of disputation. I was present not long since at a party of North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected; and happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British way), that I wished it were the father instead of the son—when four of them ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... of the gallows away from him as long as may be: eats, and sleeps and even jokes. Man's soul grows pachydermoid. But the children! Their sensitive brains exposed to every cruel breath. No philosophic doubt permitted to them. No learned disputation on the relationship between the literal and the allegorical for the easing of their frenzied fears. How many million tiny white-faced figures scattered over Christian Europe and America, stared out each night into a vision of black horror; how many million tiny ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... government—for New York had been controlled by a governor and council only—made extremely uncertain his success in New England, where affairs had been managed by the easy-going, dilatory method of debate and discussion. As a disciplinarian, he could not appreciate the New Englander's fondness for disputation and argument; as a soldier, he was certain to obey to the full the letter of his instructions; and, as an Anglican, he was likely to favor the church and churchmen of his choice. He was not a diplomat, nor was he gifted with the silver tongue of oratory or the spirit ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... was Cosmo landed at a door of deep question. For now EVIL took the place of SHADOW in his SOLO disputation, and the law and the light and the shadow and the sin went thinking about with each other in his mind; and he saw how the Jews came to attribute evil to the hand of God as well as good, and how St. Paul said that the law gave life to ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... the plain which Oriana had pointed out on the preceding day. The sun, which had been tinging the western sky with gorgeous hues, was peering from among masses of purple and golden clouds, within an hour's space of the horizon. Captain Haralson, interested and excited by his disputation, had been riding leisurely along by the side of his prisoner, taking but little note of the route or ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... imprudently fostered by James,—the ardour of a conscious increase of power in the commons, and the greater austerity of manners and maxims, the natural product and most formidable weapon of religious disputation, not merely in conjunction, but in closest combination, with newly awakened political and republican zeal, these perhaps account for the character ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... advised to insert this passage, which (if there were no more) lets the world see that free reasoning was denied; for his Majesty's authority did both exeem the affirmers from the pains of probation (contrary to the laws of disputation), and state the question, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... by a strong effort, kept back the words that she would have uttered. Still angry and crushed with the sense of being deceived, and yet conscious that it was not a noble or dignified thing to be in disputation with her own slave, and that there was, moreover, the remote possibility that the girl was not her enemy, and might really dread returning to a desolated and devastated home, what could she say or do? And while she pondered the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... kinds of determinism are sometimes distinguished as "hard" and "soft" determinism. The controversy between determinism and libertarianism hinges largely on the significance of the word "motive"; indeed in no other philosophical controversy has so much difficulty been caused by purely verbal disputation and ambiguity of expression. How far, and in what sense, can action which is determined by motives be said to be free? For a long time the advocates of free-will, in their eagerness to preserve moral responsibility, went so far as to deny all motives as influencing moral action. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... Rousseau could give no quarter to any doctrine which could not be fitted into a symmetrical edifice of abstract reasoning. He carried into actual warfare the weapons which his English teachers had kept for purposes of mere scholastic disputation. A monarchy, an order of privileged nobility, a hierarchy claiming supernatural authority, were not logically justifiable on the accepted principles. Never mind, was the English answer, they work very well in practice; let us leave them alone. Down with them to the ground! ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... necessary, and bent over the anvil solicitously. Even the self-complacency of Sherwood Branciforte could not fail to note his utter indifference to the presence and opinions of his companion. Branciforte was accustomed to disputation at times—even to enmity; but not to indifference. He blinked. "My dear fellow, do you realize what it is that statement might seem to imply?" he ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... thou beest not able to finish thy direct journey." "There is no fear of that," quoth I, "for it will be a great ease to me to understand those things in which I take great delight, and withal, when thy disputation is fenced in on every side with sure conviction, there can be no doubt made of anything thou shalt infer." "I will," quoth she, "do as thou wouldst me have," and withal began in this manner. "If any shall define chance to be an event produced by a confused motion, and ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... bind books nor draw patterns. We are your equals—if we were not distinctively modest, we might say something more than your equals—in acquirement and information. We have our smattering of physical-science humbug, as you have; we are read up in theological disputation, and are as ready as you to stand by Colenso against Moses; in modern languages we are more than your match. What have you to offer us if we are too proud, or too poor, or too anything else, to stand ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... ye enj'yed the honor of our coompany night before last, ye kipt guard all the night; Frederick and mesilf will now return the coompliment and take charge of the honors oursilves. If ye have any disputation that ye want to inter into, we'll sittle it by ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... very little guide to the contents of the play, which is crowded with characters. There are, in addition to the three leading persons, four Warriors to discuss the condition of the army, seven Philosophers to puzzle each other with disputation and metaphysical conundrums, three Servants to deride their masters behind their backs, a General to act as Alexander's confidant and counsellor, beside some nine others and a company of citizens. One of the chief ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... time, either attracted by the stately flow of Sir Thomas's speech, or by the tone of our disputation, the two girls had ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... that hero Dhrishtadyumna as their ally, they will fight against you. With that personage of virtuous soul, who never forsaketh truth through anger or fear, temptation, or for the sake of wealth, of disputation; and who is, O King, a very authority in matters of religion, himself being the best of those that practise virtue;—with him, who hath never made an enemy, the sons of Pandu will fight against you. He unto whom no one on earth is equal in might of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... the Bull o' Bashun." From his printing office at Auchinleck, besides his poetical tales and pasquinades, he issued many curious and interesting works, chiefly reprints of scarce tracts on different subjects, preserved in the Auchinleck Library. Of these the most remarkable was the disputation between John Knox and Quentin Kennedy, at Maybole, in 1562, of which the only copy then known to exist was deposited ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... the prebendary Fleischmann, having attended the Council at Costnitz, whither he was sent by the town elders with divers errands to the Emperor Sigismund, who was engaged in a disputation with John Huss the Bohemian schismatic, brought to my cousin's knowledge a governor whose name was Peter Pihringer, a native of Nuremberg. He it was who brought the Greek tongue, which was not yet taught in the Latin schools of our city, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... substitution for God for it. There is no doubt that the writer of this treatise is deeply impressed with the belief that the root of sin is self-will, and that the new birth must be a complete transformation; but it must be remembered that the language of piety is less guarded than that of dogmatic disputation, and that the theology of such a book must be judged by its whole tendency. My own judgment is that, taken as a whole, it is safer than Tauler or Ruysbroek, and much safer than Eckhart. The strongly-marked ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... prepared the way for him.[5] Our young men, since newspapers have become so common, are apt to think themselves thoroughly versed in law, politics, divinity, &c.; and are not backward to exhibit their talents. But who is abler at disputation than HE who at twelve years of age proved a match for the learned doctors of law at Jerusalem? Did he, whose mind was so mature at twelve, enter upon the duties of his ministry (a task more arduous than has ever fallen to the lot of any human being) at ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... filthy, to a degree I had never before witnessed. There was apparently but little discipline on board, but a great deal of disputation and a continual jabbering. A ruffianly-looking fellow, with a swarthy complexion and big black whiskers, who proved to be the commander, beckoned Captain Moncrieff to the quarter-deck, where he examined ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... and then released, by the Queen's own command. On the 12th of March, the Archbishop, Dr Ridley, and Mr Latimer, set out for Oxford, where they were—ostensibly, to maintain their theories in a public disputation; really, to be martyred. Dr Hooper went part of the way with them. He was going to Gloucester—to the same end. For a week, Thekla flitted backwards and forwards between her parents; generally spending her mornings ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... to extenuate them. In such a manner easily, without uttering; any logical untruth, one may yet grievously calumniate. Thus, suppose a man speaketh a thing upon supposition, or with exception, or in way of objection, or merely for disputation's sake, in order to the discussion or clearing of truth; he that should report him asserting it absolutely, unlimitedly, positively, and peremptorily, as his own settled judgment, would notoriously calumniate. If one should be inveigled by ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... others,—in all cases to be chiefly solicitous to discover truth, and, in statements of a mixed character, containing perhaps much error and fallacy, anxiously to discover and separate what is true. It has accordingly been remarked, that a turn for acute disputation, and minute and rigid criticism, is often the characteristic of a contracted and prejudiced mind; and that the most enlarged understandings are always the most indulgent to the statements of others,—their leading ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie

... important discovery, that if his nephew was a fool in other points, he was certainly no fool at his knife and fork. In a short time his messmates found out that he was no fool at his fists, and his knock-down arguments ended each disputation. Indeed, as the French would say, Jack was perfection in the physique, although so ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... Pyrenees of Spain; but whether these, as well as the others, are all mere varieties of the common wolf, or whether there are two or three distinct species of European wolf, are questions to be left to the disputation ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid

... pudding-time, and was invited to dinner; and the Admiral made the important discovery, that if his nephew was a fool in other points, he was certainly no fool at his knife and fork. In a short time his messmates found out that he was no fool at his fists, and his knock-down arguments ended much disputation. Indeed, as the French would say, Jack was perfection in the physique, although so very ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... inquiry," Harry replied; "but methinks it will soon drop. They are three preachers of London, who are on their way to dispute concerning points of religion with the divines in Scotland. The result of their disputation may perchance be that an accord may be arrived at between the divines of London and Edinburgh; and in that case, I doubt not that the army now lying at Dundee would move south, and that the civil war would therefore become more ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... to my well known increase in personal strength, I acquired a still greater superiority over my companions by the advantage of education; and this I took great care to make them feel on every occasion. I was appealed to in all cases of literary disputation, and was, by general consent, the umpire of the steerage. I was termed "good company,"—not always to the advantage of the possessor of such a talent; for it often tends, as it did with me, to lead into very bad company. I had a fine voice, and played on one or two instruments. This frequently ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... erroneousness of the ideas which he had adopted; but I was aware of all that he would have urged in reply, and as the believer has no carnal arguments to address to carnal reason upon this subject, I thought it best to avoid disputation, which I felt sure would lead to no profitable result. Faith is the free gift of God, and I do not believe that ever yet was an infidel converted by means of after-dinner polemics. This was the last evening of my ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... by reasons of Stackpole stubbornness on the one hand and Tatum malignity on the other. By yet a third account the lawsuit and the line-fence matter were confusingly twisted together to form a cause for disputation. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Synagogue on their Sabbath, because they were open for worship on that day, &c., but he did not always preach in their Synagogues. He says that he preached the Kingdom of God, and labored in his own hired house for two years. He also established a daily meeting for disputation in the school of Tyranus. Acts xix: 9. Again he says, I have "kept back NOTHING that was PROFITABLE unto you. (Now if the Sabbath had been changed or abolished, would it not have been profitable to have ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates

... lit up the scene as if at noon-day. The Shawanoes instinctively drew back, so as to leave the principal figures not only in prominent view, but apart from the others. No one presumed to take any part in the disputation, but in the stillness and general hush the words of both were ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... both wines the morning of the dinner, and in decanting, hold the decanter in your left hand, and let the wine first pour against the inside of the neck of the decanter, so as to break its fall." Doubtless, t'other side of Styx, his spirit has found congenial companions. I see his shade in dignified disputation with other shades. He argues with Brummel about the tying of a cravat, with Nash about a minuet, the proper composition of a sauce is the subject of a weighty dialogue with ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... CHAPTER V. A disputation on schools held on the road between Mr Abraham Adams and Joseph; and a discovery not unwelcome to ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... night, or at cock-crowing, or in the blaze of noon, is one to him. He is ready for the life his Arctura knows. "God is," he says, "and all is well." He never disputes, rarely seeks to convince. "I will let what light I have shine; but disputation is smoke. It is to no profit!—And I do like," he says, "to give and to ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... an inborn taste for theology and the controversies which have arisen concerning religious dogma. "From my childhood," he says, "I had been fond of religious disputation: my poor aunt has often been puzzled by the mysteries which she strove to believe." How he carried the taste into mature life, his great chapters on the heresies and controversies of the Early Church are there to show. ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... theme of disputation, sir, and, since critics are so divided in their verdicts, I may well be pardoned an opinion which so many passages seem to sanction. If Quakerism is belief in 'immediate inspiration,' which you will scarcely deny, then throughout the 'Excursion' ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... Herr; you buried yourself in your own solitude, and kept yourself apart from the honor you might have earned by your learning in the world? You chose to be silent?" "Yes," he echoed, mournfully, "I chose to be silent. Why should I have wasted my breath in idle disputation, or to what end should I have laboured to get a string of empty letters tacked to my name, like the flypapers of a boy's kite? I do not seek to be dragged back to the ground, I prefer to mount without a string. Everything we attempt to do ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... Nebuchadnezzar when he was turned out to grass; he could not find in this great variety of useful action, and vast field of comprehensive thought, modes of filling up his time that accorded with his Caledonian instinct. The inborn love of disputation, which the excitements and engagements of a life of business had smothered, burst forth through the calmer surface of a rural life. He grew as fain as Captain Jamy, "to hear some argument betwixt ony tway," and being very ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... of whom the most noted were Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus, were a class of philosophers or teachers who gave instruction in rhetoric and the art of disputation. They travelled about from city to city, and contrary to the usual custom of the Greek philosophers, took fees from their pupils. They were shallow but brilliant men, caring more for the dress in which the thought was arrayed than for the thought itself, more for ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... were held in the open air. The St. Paul's boys meeting St. Antony's boys would derisively call them St. Antony's pigs, that saint being generally represented with a pig following him, and challenge them to a disputation; the latter would retaliate by styling their rivals "pigeons of St. Paul's," from the bird which then, as now, frequented St. Paul's Churchyard. From questions of grammar, writes Stow,(1050) they usually ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... trust his monastic biographer, he was aiming at nothing less than the tyranny of Siena. But in that year, when he was forty, a change, which can only be described as conversion, came over him. He had advertised a public disputation, in which he proposed before all comers to solve the most arduous problems of scholastic science. The concourse was great, the assembly brilliant; but the hero of the day, who had designed it for his glory, was stricken with sudden blindness. In one moment he comprehended ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... his treatise On the Truth of the Christian Religion, and his Commentary on the Old and New Testament. As to Philosophy, he can scarce be compared with the moderately skilled. If we consider him with regard to the art of Disputation, I have never seen a person reason with less force, as is evident from his pieces which Rivetus and Desmarets have answered. There are several who may be ranked with him as to knowledge of polite learning, and even a great number who excel him: not a few have had as much Greek and Latin, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... to secular students.[1] To some extent the catechetic method of the theologians was forced to give place to the dialectic method, equally dogmatic, but more exciting and stimulating. Hence was compiled such a book as Peter Lombard's Sentences (1145-50), a cyclopaedia of disputation, wherein theological questions were collected under heads, together with Scriptural passages and statements of the Fathers bearing on these questions. By the thirteenth century Lombard was the standard text-book of the schools: a work of such reputation that it was studied in ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... which had to be reproduced; a fourth would set problems in versification which required the composition of verses in proper meter on a given subject, each line to end in a specified word, a fifth man would carry on with a sixth a theological disputation, the exact language of which had to be quoted in the precise order in which the disputants conducted it, and a seventh man was all the while turning a wheel, the number of revolutions of which had to be counted. The memory ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... such healing salves as he can concoct out of his pastoral charities. Mr. Johns had neither art nor eloquence, as commonly understood; yet he effected a blending of all interests by the simple, earnest gravity of his character. He ignored all angry disputation; he ignored its results. He came as a shepherd to a deserted sheepfold; he came to preach the Bible doctrines in their literalness. He had no reproofs, save for those who refused the offers of God's mercy,—no commendation, save for those who sought His grace whose favor is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... changed surroundings. To this date is assigned the Portrait of a Young Man, at Hampton Court. At Rome in 1509 he was painting with Raphael in the Vatican, and in his next dated work, the Entombment, at Jesi, the echoes of Raphael's Disputation and the School of Athens are clear. The Dresden Madonna and Child with S. John was probably painted at Bergamo in 1518, and the Madonna and Saints, lately bequeathed to the ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... taking part in them. At the end of the fifteenth century the Venetian, Cassandra Fedeli, the wonder of her age, was as well versed in philosophy and theology as a learned man. She once engaged in a public disputation before the Doge Agostino Barbarigo, and also several times in the audience hall of Padua, and always showed the utmost modesty in spite of the applause of her hearers. The beautiful wife of Alessandro Sforza of Pesaro, Costanza Varano, was a ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... quarrelled with the clergy. By their means his position became so disagreeable that he was glad to accept an offer made him by the magistracy of Metz, to become their syndic and advocate-general. Here, again, his love of disputation made him enemies: the theological wiseacres of that city asserted that St. Ann had three husbands, in which opinion they were confirmed by the popular belief of the day. Agrippa needlessly ran foul of this opinion, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... word read, of the Lord Christ, I would not take the trouble to convince him concerning the most obnoxious doctrines that they were false as hell. It is those who would fain believe, but who by such doctrines are hindered, whom I would help. Disputation about things but hides the living Christ who alone can teach the truth, who is the truth, and the knowledge of whom is life; I write for the sake of those whom the false teaching that claims before all to be true has driven away ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... itinerants came to Bedford, and in the parish church, called 'the steeple-house,' in Bedford town, on the 23d of May, 1656, they met John Bunyan, probably after he had been ministering there. With him they held a public disputation or controversy, to which allusions are made by both parties,[2] and in Bunyan they met a master spirit who confounded them. The subjects in dispute were of the deepest importance—the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion—the authority of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of the church. He says to the pope: "Save or slay, kill or recall, approve or disapprove, as it shall please you, I will acknowledge you even as the voice of Christ {383} presiding and speaking in you." In writing to Spalatine, he says that he may err in disputation, but that he is never to be a heretic, that he wishes to decide no doctrine, "only I am not willing to be the slave of the opinions ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... the Woodwardian den of wild beasts, immediately after Prince Albert's degree; and enjoining me to clear a passage by the side entrance through the old divinity schools. This threw me off my balance, for since the building of the new library this place of ancient theological disputation has been converted into a kind of lumber-room, and was filled from end to end with every kind of unclean things—mops, slop-pails, chimney-pots, ladders, broken benches, rejected broken cabinets, two long ladders, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... small and isolated tribe, for there was among them a pervading tone of contentment and goodwill, which was one of Unaco's most obvious characteristics. Truthfulness, also, and justice were more or less manifested by them. Even the children seemed to be free from disputation; for, although there were of course differences of opinion during games, these differences were usually settled without quarrelling, and the noise, of which there was abundance, was the result of gleeful ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... which contains in itself any controversy existing either in language or in disputation, contains a question either about a fact, or about a name, or about a class, or about an action. Therefore, that investigation out of which a cause arises we call a stating of a case. A stating of a case is the first conflict of ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... How minute was the inquiry into character can be seen in the case of a certain Robert Smith (of Magdalen) in 1582, who was refused his B.A., because he had brought scandalous charges against the fellows of his College, had called an M.A. 'to his face "arrant knave", had been at a disputation in the Divinity School' in the open assembly of Doctors and Masters 'with his hat on his head', and had 'taken the wall of M.A.s without ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells

... best is not a dogmatic despotism, nor is reason a merely critical and destructive faculty. If reason is loyal to the truth of religion on which it is exercised, it will reach beneath all the conflict and clamour of disputation, to the principle of unity, on which, as we have seen, both ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... things" (says Sa'di in the Gulistan) "lack permanency, Wealth without trading, Learning without disputation, Government without justice." (chap. viii. max. 8). The Bakhtiyar-nameh adds that "Government is a tree whose root is legal punishment (Siyasat); its root-end is justice; its bough, mercy; its flower, wisdom; its leaf, liberality; and its fruit, kindness and benevolence. The foliage of every ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... was an expert in the art of borrowing, so much so that no sound of disputation on that subject reached my ears. It seemed as if the neighbours came, delighted, of their own accord to lend us pots and pans and other necessaries. He also did the cooking and the marketing without a hitch, giving a taste of home to the small whitewashed chamber, which we had rented ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... the three Athenian philosophers who had come to Rome on an embassy from their native city; and hence the inflexible determination with which Cato procured their dismissal, through fear, as Plutarch tells us,[135] lest their arts of disputation should corrupt the Roman youth. And when at length, by the authority of Scipio,[136] the literary treasures of Sylla, and the patronage of Lucullus, philosophical studies had gradually received the countenance of the higher classes of ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... has all this to do with the question under discussion?" interrupted Barbican, desirous to keep his friends from losing their tempers in idle disputation. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... estimation of deities, concerning whom such stories could be told and believed, was, of course, of no deep or respectful character. The Icelanders abandoned Odin, Freya, Thor, and their whole pagan mythology, in consideration of a single disputation between the heathen priests and the Christian missionaries. The priests threatened the island with a desolating eruption of the volcano called Hecla, as the necessary consequence of the vengeance of their deities. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... most part smoked cigars. Behind a polished counter on which rested a nickeled cash register and a huge book, stood a white-haired man with a smooth Irish face and a pair of gold eyeglasses hanging by a black cord. The air was heavy with disputation; long-tailed words boomed sonorously; red-faced and earnest, one of the occupants of the chairs assailed the man behind the counter; with soft, sweeping, eloquent gestures the latter ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... Thwackum scarce ever met without a disputation; for their tenets were indeed diametrically opposite to each other. Square held human nature to be the perfection of all virtue, and that vice was a deviation from our nature, in the same manner as deformity of body is. Thwackum, on the contrary, maintained that the human ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... the latter a blind submission; the Catholic must content himself with the decisions of others, the Protestant must learn to decide for himself; they were not ignorant of this, but neither my age nor appearance promised much difficulty to men so accustomed to disputation. They knew, likewise, that I had not received my first communion, nor the instructions which accompany it; but, on the other hand, they had no idea of the information I received at M. Lambercier's, or that ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... to be an account of a disputation held in the reign of the Emperor Probus (276-282) by Archelaus, Bishop of Kaskar in Mesopotamia, with Mani, the founder of Manichaeanism. The work is of uncertain authorship; it belongs to the first part of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... a work in which I have wished to avoid disputation, I have felt compelled to touch upon religious duties at all. But they have played, and still play, so significant a role in the history of mankind, that the omission could scarcely have been made. You are free to take ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... what seemed to us an extravagant admiration of Hazlitt, and perhaps even in part for that very glitter which we are denouncing—at least he did so in a conversation with ourselves. But, on the other hand, as this conversation travelled a little into the tone of a disputation, and our frost on this point might seem to justify some undue fervor by way of balance, it is very possible that Lamb did not speak his absolute and most dispassionate judgment. And yet again, if he did, may we, with all reverence ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... It is a question, at least, of kindness; and it is not kind to set good people on an uneasy edge of curiosity; it is not kind to bring down upon the care-bowed heads of editors storms of communications, couched in terms of angry disputation; it is not kind to establish a perennial root of bitterness, to give an unhealthy flavor to the literary waters of unborn generations, as "Junius" did, and Scott would have done, had he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... told what was in store for them. They did not appear averse to the arrangement, for a slight pout of the young woman's hardly counted; there was no doubt that a journey a deux would offer infinite opportunities for religious disputation. ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... principle does it stand? This famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate, as a description of revenue not as yet known in all the comprehensive (but too comprehensive!) vocabulary of finance,—a preambulary tax. It is, indeed, a tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a tax of war and rebellion, a tax for anything but benefit to the imposers or satisfaction ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the Rev. James Adams, "I attended a public disputation in a foreign university, when at least 400 Frenchmen literally hissed a grave and learned English doctor, not by way of insult, but irresistibly provoked by the quaintness of the repetition of sh. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... The disputation continued. Wilhelm was in one of his eloquent moods. The doctor regarded the "Letters of the Wandering Ghost" as one of the most perfect books in the Danish literature. Once Sophie had been of the same opinion, now she preferred Cooper's novels ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... learners, because they spoke the words only, without the music, which they could not rehearse. One would imagine this check might have damped the North Briton; but it served only to agitate his humour for disputation. — He said, if every nation had its own recitative or music, the Scots had theirs, and the Scotchman who had not yet acquired the cadence of the English, would naturally use his own in speaking their language; therefore, if ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... book called "Speculative and Moral Theology." In vol. 3, tract 23, disputation 8, sec. 5, no. 63, p. 448, are found the following sentences: "Licet procurare abortum, ne puella infametur." That doctrine is admitted, "to evade personal disgrace, and to conceal the infamy of Monks and Nuns." no. 67, p. 429. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... quick or too slow in conceiving plurality in unity. Having no method, they make their one and many anyhow, and from unity pass at once to infinity; the intermediate steps never occur to them. And this, I repeat, is what makes the difference between the mere art of disputation ...
— Philebus • Plato

... somewhere else: that the actions attributed to them have not really taken place; certain we are that they are more worthy of credence than Ralph, who may or may not have been circumstantial; who may or may not even have existed, a point unworthy of disputation. As for Miss Reid, we will take an affidavit that neither in miniature nor at large did she excel the celebrated Rosalba; and with regard to Mrs. Lennox, we consider her to be a mere figment, like Narcissa, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... which makes things appear good and evil, like and unlike, as the speaker pleases. Its use is not confined, as people commonly suppose, to arguments in the law courts and speeches in the assembly; it is rather a part of the art of disputation, under which are included both the rules of Gorgias and the eristic of Zeno. But it is not wholly devoid of truth. Superior knowledge enables us to deceive another by the help of resemblances, and to escape from such a deception when employed against ourselves. We see therefore ...
— Phaedrus • Plato

... tea, but for the linguist, the geometrician, the astronomer, or the poet. The queen of the Amazons was only to be gained by the hero who could conquer her in single combat; and Misothea's heart was only to bless the scholar who could overpower her by disputation. Amidst the fondest transports of courtship she could call for a definition of terms, and treated every argument with contempt that could not be reduced to regular syllogism. You may easily imagine, that I wished this courtship at an end; but when I desired her to shorten my ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... water the moment she arrived. She had ceased to wear hats, and had by now a very doubtful reputation for sanity about the countryside. This was the period when Watts was on every painter's tongue, and he seldom saw Alicia without a disputation concerning that famous symbolist. Personally, he had no use for Watts, resenting his faulty drawing and crude allegories, but Alicia always maintained with her extravagant fervour that he was great because he tried to paint the soul of things. She especially ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... being established for a plain conclusion, which you must needs grant if you have faith—and if you be gone from that ground of faith already, then is all our disputation, you know, at an end. For how should you then rather lose your goods than forsake your faith, if you have lost your faith and let it go already? This point, I say, therefore, being put first for a ground, between us both twain agreed, that you have yet the faith still and intend ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... arguments are opposed to the Union than those of Mr. Wild, we shall have at least the victory in disputation, though in point of violence and inflammation he will, to be sure, not be easily surpassed. The part which you say the Catholics are disposed to take is undoubtedly very important; but does this mean only their leaders, who do not lead them, or has this ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... Newnham but her father had met and argued with a Somerville girl at a friend's dinner-table and he thought that sort of thing unsexed a woman. He said simply that he wanted her to live at home. There was a certain amount of disputation, and meanwhile she went on at school. They compromised at length on the science course at the Tredgold Women's College—she had already matriculated into London University from school—she came of age, and she bickered with her aunt for latch-key privileges on ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... preserving of peace and brotherly unity, in the mean while, till the Directorie by universall consent of the whole Kirk be framed, finished, and concluded, The Assembly forbiddeth under the pain of the censures of the Kirk, all disputation by word or writing, in private or publick, about different practices in such things, as have not been formerly determined by this Kirk, And all condemning one of another in such lawfull things as have been universally ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... and German, and recently his Bohemian writings have been edited by K. J. Erben, Prague (1865). His plain speaking aroused the fury of his adversaries, and he knew his danger. On one occasion he made a strange challenge, offering to maintain his opinions in disputation, and consenting to be burnt if his conclusions were proved to be wrong, on condition that his opponents should submit to the same fate in case of defeat. But as they would only sacrifice one out of the company of his foes, he declared that the conditions were ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield



Words linked to "Disputation" :   difference, polemic, argle-bargle, public speaking, sparring, argy-bargy, speechmaking, conflict, dispute, fight, firestorm, oral presentation, difference of opinion, speaking



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