"Doctrinaire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... acted with the Girondists, and strongly opposed and voted against the murder of the King. His notion of a revolution was one by pamphlet, and he shrank from deeds of blood. His whole position was false and ridiculous. He really counted for nothing. The members of the Convention grew tired of his doctrinaire harangues, which, in fact, bored them not a little; but they respected his enthusiasm and the part he had played in America, whither they would gladly he had returned. Who put him in prison is a mystery. Mr. Conway thinks it was the American Minister in Paris, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... been imposed on it with profit. But to expect that a city dominated by ancient prejudices, connected by a thousand subtle ties not only with the rest of Italy but also with the states of Europe, and rotten to the core in many of its most important members, could be restored to pristine vigor by a doctrinaire however able, was chimerical. The course of events contradicted this vain expectation. Meanwhile a few clear-headed and positive observers were dimly conscious of the instability of merely speculative constitution-making. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... died, for a Strafford who would never have been attainted; a saving, calculating North-country man, fat, impassive, who lived on eightpence a day. What have these people to do with an enjoying English gentleman? It is easy for a doctrinaire to bear a post-mortem examination,—it is much the same whether he be alive or dead; but not so with those who live during their life, whose essence is existence, whose being is in animation. There seem to be some characters who are not made for history, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... future of Henry, Prince of Wales, had he lived to fulfil the bright promise of his boyhood. To a singularly well-balanced mind, he appears to have joined an amiability of character that endeared him to all save the crotchety doctrinaire who sat upon the throne. He loved hunting and hawking and all healthy open-air pursuits no less than he loved books, and the society of men, who were the history-makers of his day. He would visit Sir Walter Raleigh in his ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... II, 144. Cf. Dennis's similar remark in The Impartial Critick, Hooker, I, 31. Racine, in his preface to Esther, said nothing doctrinaire about the use of the chorus. He merely mentioned that it had occurred to him to introduce the chorus in order to imitate the ancients and to sing the praises of ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... flaming into the light and heat of prophecy, invective, derision, or a simple splendour of eloquence, is the characteristic of his work. Against cold-blooded argument his passionate nature rose in fierce rebellion; he had no patience with the formalist or the doctrinaire. Nor had he the faculty of analysis; his historical works are a series of pictures or tableaux, splendidly and vividly conceived, and with enormous colour and a fine illusion of reality, but one-sided ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... state, and that, in social conditions generally, the reign of this sovereign marks more largely than that of any other the transition in the Hapsburg dominions from mediaeval to modern times. Unlike her doctrinaire son and successor, Joseph, Maria Theresa was of an eminently practical turn of mind. She introduced innovations, but she clothed them with the vestments of ancient institutions. She made the government more than ever autocratic, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... advent of my spiritual life I gravitated toward the church. There I added to my faith a theology. A theologian is a fighter—a doctrinaire. Every item of knowledge I got I sharpened into a weapon to confound ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... conditions which would permit to the toiler but a bare sustenance, the bare means of a livelihood, would be a hindrance to human progress, a hindrance not to be removed by all of the maxims of the philosopher or the theories of the doctrinaire. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... will be a society not of liberty but of regulation. It is here that we join issue not only with doctrinaire liberals, but with that large body of ordinary common-sense Englishmen who feel a general and instinctive distrust of all state interference. That distrust, I would point out, is really an anachronism. It dates from a time when the state was at once incompetent and unpopular, from the ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... one of their sources in the idea that societies are capable of infinite and immediate modifications, without reference to the deep-rooted conditions that have worked themselves into every part of the social structure. The same opposition of the positive to the doctrinaire spirit is to be observed in the remarkable vindication of Party, which fills the last dozen pages of the pamphlet, and which is one of the most courageous of all Burke's deliverances. Party combination is ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Mancha more convinced of his imaginary mission to redress the wrongs of the world than Mr. James Anthony Froude seems to be of his ability to alter the course of events, especially those bearing on the destinies of the Negro in the British West Indies. The doctrinaire style of his utterances, his sublime indifference as to what Negro opinion and feelings may be, on account of his revelations, are uniquely charming. In that portion of his book headed "Social Revolution" our author, with that mixture of frankness and cynicism ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... very much amused at the irritable, peevish yet cringing attitude of Pichereau, the Genevan doctrinaire, who sought consolation in the greenroom of the ballet, whilst his five or six daughters sat at home, probably reading some chaste English romance, or practising sacred music within the range of the green ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... by this time recovered his temper, and said, "It was rather crude, I admit. But what I meant was that if a man feels that all opinions are of equal value, he must give full weight to all opinions. The doctrinaire Liberal seems to me to be just as much inclined to tyrannise as the doctrinaire Tory, and to use his authority on the side of suppression when it is convenient to do so, and against all his ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... given to Slang by superficial minds is undeserved. In other days, before the language was crystallized into the idiom and verbiage of the doctrinaire, prose, too, was untrammeled. Indeed, a cursory glance at the Elizabethan poets discloses a kinship with the rebellious fancies of our modern colloquial talk. Mr. Irwin's sonnets may be taken as an indication of this revolt, and how nearly they approach the incisive phrases of the seventeenth century ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin |
