"Fallacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... comparison between certainty of the Inconceivability Argument as applied to Theism and to mathematics shown to contain a virtual though not a formal fallacy. ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... imagination soaring far above such a pettiness! Hope is very beautiful; and even fallacious hope, in such a Friedrich. The one hope that did not deceive him, was hope in his own best exertion to the very death; and no fallacy ever for a moment slackened him in that. Stand to thyself: in the wide domain of Imagination, there is no other certainty of help. No other certainty;—and yet who knows through what pettinesses Heaven ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... an American Minister by Great Britain.—The Count declines delivering these objections in writing.—Mr Dana replies to these objections.—Is advised to send a memorial to the Vice Chancellor, showing the fallacy of his ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... explanation lies, I think, in this, that Dickens was so wonderfully sensitive to that change that has come over our society, that he noticed the type of the oriental and cosmopolitan financier without even knowing that it was oriental or cosmopolitan. He had, in fact, fallen a victim to a very simple fallacy affecting this problem. Somebody said, with great wit and truth, that treason cannot prosper, because when it prospers it cannot be called treason. The same argument soothed all possible Anti-Semitism in men like Dickens. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... last professors of which had been burnt (generally by each other) precisely 1,119 years previously. They were really very plausible and thoughtful heresies, and it was really a creditable or even glorious circumstance, that the old monk had been intellectual enough to detect their fallacy; the only misfortune was that nobody in the modern world was intellectual enough even to understand their argument. The old monk, one of whose names was Michael, and the other a name quite impossible to remember or repeat in our Western civilization, ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... international relations will be brought about by insisting on the contrary interpretation—that our highest self-development and interest is to be attained by respecting the interests and encouraging the development of others. The root fallacy to be eradicated of course, is that one Power's gain is another's loss; a fallacy which has dominated diplomacy and is the negation of law. I think we are perceptibly breaking away from it: the great obstacle to better thinking ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... true import of the Constitution, in relation to slavery and the fallacy and wickedness of the doctrine of Secession, we are now prepared to deduce, from what has been said, the following reflections: First, the war in which the nation is now plunged should have strictly for its great end, the restoration of the Constitution and the Union to its original integrity; ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... logic and psychology, which have supplied so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are based upon the analyses of Socrates and Plato. The principles of definition, the law of contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the distinction between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion, between means and ends, between causes and conditions; also the division of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible elements, or of pleasures and desires ...
— The Republic • Plato
... impulses over which he has no control. There is real meaning in "strong will" and "weak will" will being a tendency to deliberate before and be steadfast in action, a tendency which varies immensely in different people. The fallacy of "free will" lies in assuming that every one has this tendency equally developed, making character a mere matter of saying "Yes!" and "No!" without reference to the ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... the use of what is commonly called the philosophy of language, is evidently misapplied by those who make it the test of grammatical certainty, it may not be amiss to offer a few considerations with a view to expose the fallacy of so ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... their town and Manchester. They had no sooner stated their errand than Mr. Huskisson, angrily throwing down his pen, in very few words refused their request, winding up his reply with these memorable words—remarkable not only for the fallacy of his then opinions, but also in connection with the calamitous event of the next day—"Gentlemen, I supported the scheme of the railway between Liverpool and Manchester as an experiment, but as long as I have the honour to hold a seat in parliament, I will never consent ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... the passage at length in order to give the critic's argument its widest scope. But, alas, who does not see the argument's fallacy? Who does not perceive that this reenforced skyscraper is a cardboard column liable to fall with the first push that is ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... that they derived their entire supplies of that element from ammonia, or the soluble nitrogenous constituents of the soil or manure. Boussingault has since re-examined this question, and by a most elaborate series of experiments, in which the utmost care was taken to avoid every source of fallacy, he was led to the conclusion, that when haricots, oats, lupins, and cresses were grown in calcined pumice-stone, mixed with the ash of plants, and supplied with air deprived of ammonia and nitric acid, their nitrogen underwent no increase. It has been objected to ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... excellence of Americans—an excellence they must be content to share with contemporary nations, however much it may cost them to abandon we know not what bounding ambitions which they have never succeeded in definitely describing in words. Mr. Lowell was a refutation of the fallacy that an American can never be American enough. He ranked with the students and the critics among all nations, and nothing marks his transatlantic conditions except, perhaps, that his scholarliness is a little anxious and would not seem so; he enriches his phrases busily, and ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... but an adventurous traveller can know the luxury of sleep. There is not a greater fallacy in the world than the common creed that sweet sleep is labour's guerdon. Mere regular, corporeal labour may certainly procure us a good, sound, refreshing slumber, disturbed often by the consciousness of the monotonous duties of the morrow; but how sleep the other great ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... attempted to puzzle you with this sort of question: 'If taxes be the cause of the people's misery, how comes it that they were not so miserable before the taxes were reduced as they are now?' Here is a fallacy which you will be careful to detect. I know that the taxes have been reduced; that is to say, nominally reduced, but not so in fact; on the contrary, they have, in reality, been greatly augmented. This has been done by the sleight-of-hand of paper ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... because the forbidden action entails a real, not an imaginary evil. In short, those negative precepts which we call taboo are just as vain and futile as those positive precepts which we call sorcery. The two things are merely opposite sides or poles of one great disastrous fallacy, a mistaken conception of the association of ideas. Of that fallacy, sorcery is the positive, and taboo the negative pole. If we give the general name of magic to the whole erroneous system, both theoretical ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Snowden case is universally acknowledged by lawyers to have been masterly, and reminiscent of the great names of the profession in the past. Mr. Erwin is not dramatic. He appears to carry all before him by the sheer force of intellect, and by a kind of Lincolnian ability to expose a fallacy: He is still a young man, self-made, and studied law under Judge Brice of St. Louis, once President of the National Bar Association, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... defames and disregards. His great power is the veto; but the perverse use of this could easily be checked by the perverse use of many a legislative power which a mere majority of Congress can effectively use. The fallacy of the argument of "the President's friends," in their proposition that Congress should settle the dispute by the easy method of allowing Mr. Johnson to have his own way, consists in its entire oversight of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... article on strikes you have very neatly and tersely expressed the primal fallacy of modern political economy—to wit, that 'the value of any piece of labor cannot be defined'—and that 'all that can be ascertained is simply whether any man can be got to do it for a certain sum.' Now, sir, the 'value' of any piece of ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... harbors, not colonies. The colonizing idea is a fallacy. Germany is, first and last, a manufacturing country. It never was and never will be, for a long time to come, a successful colonizer. At present all that Germany wants is markets, and facilities for extending her markets. These markets Germany will always be able ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... their own will for the ordered procedure of a tribunal, but no tyrant before ever went through the atrocious farce of deliberately making a tribunal the organised negation of security for justice. Couthon laid its theoretic base in a fallacy that must always be full of seduction to shallow persons in authority: 'He who would subordinate the public safety to the inventions of jurisconsults, to the formulas of the Court, is either an imbecile or a scoundrel.' As if public safety could mean anything but the safety of the public. The ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... fallacy lurking in the libertarian view arises from the fact that it also makes a hard and fast distinction between the self and the will. The indeterminists speak as if the self had amongst its several faculties a will which is free in the sense of being able to ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... opposition by endeavouring to make it appear that, because he opposed these claims and ignored these pretensions, he was hostile to the Church of England as a great spiritual power in the land.[114] He had himself often pointed out the fallacy of this reasoning, and drawn so clear a distinction between men and things in the controversy—the Church and her representatives—that I cannot add any thing to what he has written on the subject. In one ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... his men so long on salt-provisions, with a scanty allowance of corrupted water, or what he could procure by distillation The melted ice of the sea was not only fresh but soft, and so wholesome, as to show the fallacy of human reason unsupported by experiments. An ancient of great authority had assigned, from theory, bad qualities to melted snow; and from that period to the present times, this prejudice extended to ice had not been ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... to have lightning rods on houses, especially in the country. But it was found to be a good deal of a fallacy. I guess, after all, Mrs. Grimsby has it partly right. Human beings cannot easily command the ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... the fallacy of this spirit. It was supposed that the girl was practised in the art of ventriloquism, an art better known now than formerly; but it was soon after discovered that there was not so much ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... the fallacy of strict construction laid bare by the Louisiana question. The remedy of an amendment to the Constitution to bestow needed powers had been the one frequently suggested. Here was an early opportunity to test this ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... those several modes of union should now be considered as a mere league that may be dissolved at pleasure? It is from an abuse of terms. Compact is used as synonymous with league, although the true term is not employed, because it would at once show the fallacy of the reasoning. It would not do to say that our Constitution was only a league, but it is labored to prove it a compact (which in one sense it is) and then to argue that as a league is a compact every compact between nations must of course be a league, and that ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... I do not see just now some fallacy in the theory to invalidate the practise, for in Spain, the mother country, this corps is displaying, and has ever ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and how many rows in an equal length of the ribbon, on the most moderate computation there were six hundred thousand eggs. Yet this Doris was certainly not very common; although I was often searching under the stones, I saw only seven individuals. No fallacy is more common with naturalists, than that the numbers of an individual species depend on its ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the worst thing that can happen to a man, or to an idea—some wretched fallacy, perhaps, that has governed the minds of men, some gross superstition, ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... expresses fully and forcibly the meaning for which eight not very euphonious English words are required. The notion that the existence of these comprehensive words in an Indian language, or any other, is an evidence of deficiency in analytic power, is a fallacy which was long ago exposed by the clear and penetrative reasoning of Duponceau, the true father of American philology. [Footnote: See the admirable Preface to his translation of Zeisberger's Delaware Grammar, p. 94.] As he has ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... surprising to notice how often in political debates this fallacy is committed. It is human nature to believe for the time being that the other side will do the worst thing that the circumstances make possible. Fortunately, human nature just as constantly ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... community is not, as mathematicians would say, always of the same sign. To ignore this is the essential fallacy of the cult called Individualism. But in truth, a general prohibition in a state may increase the sum of liberty, and a general permission may diminish it. It does not follow, as these people would have us believe, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... This is the profound fallacy underlying the present-day economic peace propagandism, whose heaviest underwriter, Mr. Carnegie, is, by the way, an agnostic. While there is faith there will be fighting. Do away with either and society would crumble. What the Puritans did for us, the Prussians have done for Germany. They ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... all other engines, military or political, used by his rivals or foes for his destruction. He is aware of the fatal consequences all former factions suffered from the public exposure of their past crimes and future views; of the reality of their guilt, and of the fallacy of their boasts and promises. He does not doubt but that a faithful account of all the actions and intrigues of his Government, its imposition, fraud, duplicity, and tyranny, would make a sensible alteration in the public opinion; and that even those who, from motives of patriotism, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... general be effected until it has in some sort been sanctioned by popular approval. But to attribute every advance, or even most advances, along the path of progress to the masses by whom a step forward is finally sanctioned, is hardly a more patent fallacy than the notion that because every statute is passed with the assent of the Crown, to the Queen may be ascribed the glory of every beneficial Act passed in her name. To maintain, as every man versed ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... dream of idle romance, which can never bear the test of reality," said Mad. de la Tour; "and I hope you will detect its fallacy before you are taught it by the bitter lessons ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... are often assured that the colleges at the two older universities are the only relics of the monastic system, and are themselves monastic in their origin. A greater fallacy could hardly be propounded. It would be nearer the truth to say that the founding of the colleges was at once a protest against the monasteries and an attempt to ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no farther state to come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise made in vain. Without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and desire of such a state were but a fallacy in nature. Unsatisfied considerators would quarrel at the justice of their constitutions, and rest content that Adam had fallen lower; whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper ignorance of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... with him. This set her heart a little to rights, and she grew calm with a belief, that if so it was, as now she doubted not, a sight of her, or a future hope from her, would calm all his discontent, and beget a right understanding; she therefore resolves to write to him, and own her little fallacy: but before she did so, Octavio, whose passion was violent as ever in his soul, though it was oppressed with a thousand torments, and languished under as many feeble resolutions, burst at last into all its former softness, and he resolves to write to the false ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... govern themselves; that there is greater safety in a numerous representative body than in the single Executive created by the Constitution, and that the Executive veto is a "one-man power," despotic in its character. To expose the fallacy of this objection it is only necessary to consider the frame and true character of our system. Ours is not a consolidated empire, but a confederated union. The States before the adoption of the Constitution ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... a place well down town that we chose. It was a second floor, open in the rear, and there was sunlight most of the day. The rooms were really better than the ones we had. They could not be worse, we decided—a fallacy, for I have never seen a flat so bad that there could not be a worse one—and the price was not much higher. Also, there was a straight fireplace in the dining-room, which the Precious Ones described as being "lovelly," and the janitress was a humble creature who ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... last bottle, those feelings that seemed inevitably connected with whatever is last appeared to steal over him,—a tinge of sadness for pleasures fast passing and nearly passed, a kind of retrospective glance at the fallacy of all our earthly enjoyments, insensibly suggesting moral and edifying reflections, led him by degrees to confess that he was not quite satisfied with himself, though "not very bad for a commissary;" and finally, as the decanter waxed low, he would interlard ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... own, if there be no secret error or oversight in our proceedings hitherto, that all sensible qualities are alike to be denied existence without the mind. But, my fear is that I have been too liberal in my former concessions, or overlooked some fallacy or other. In short, I did ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... a temporary excess like getting drunk—squalid, if you like—but not touching your real relationships. Women bluff a lot on the subject and many are fools. They believe in the same law for both sexes. It is a ridiculous fallacy. Only Edmond was different. He loved women—psychologically. He was therefore inconstant, which is the real sin against marriage. He was a great lover, an artist. Every woman was to him what a canvas is to a painter, a violin to a violinist. The colours and the sounds he got ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... music-criticism, he might have amplified the meaning of his once-famous phrase, the "pathetic fallacy," for I consider it a pathetic fallacy—though not in the Ruskinian sense—in criticism to be over-shadowed by the fear that, because some of our critical predecessors misjudged Wagner or Manet or Ibsen, we should be too merciful in criticising our contemporaries. Here is the "pathos ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... their day's excursion, composed themselves to rest as usual. Observing them to be asleep, I tried various ways to see whether it was a scheme to prove my intentions or not, but, after making a noise, and walking about, sometimes touching them with my feet, I found there was no fallacy. My heart then exulted with joy at seeing a time come that I might, in all probability be delivered from my captivity; but this joy was soon dampened by the dread of being discovered by them, or taken by any ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... hate is terribly common in sexual matters: it may be that hate turned to love is not uncommon in the rivalries of race or class. But any philosophy about the sexes that begins with anything but the mutual attraction of the sexes, begins with a fallacy; and all its historical comparisons are as ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavor of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more homebred, social, and joyous than at present. I regret to say that they are daily growing more and more faint, being gradually worn away by time, but still more obliterated by modern ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... from more regular states, not even the protection usually extended by a neutral port, and that in consequence he should be permitted to seize for Great Britain the vessels in Tunis. The Turk may possibly have overlooked the fallacy in this argument, which assumed that the protection extended by neutral governments was rather for the benefit of the belligerent than for the quiet and safety of its own waters; but he was perfectly clear-sighted as to his personal advantage ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... and linger. The Boyles go to England from the press of panic, Lady Boyle being old and infirm. Ah, but your talking friend would interest you, and you might accept the talk in infinitesimal doses, you know. Lamartine has surely acted down the fallacy of the impractical tendencies of imaginative men. I am full of France just now. Are you all prepared for an outbreak in Ireland? I hope so. My husband has the second edition of his collected poems[174] in the press by this time, by grace of Chapman and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... discovering the fallacy of our own judgment; to be ashamed of what we love, yet still to love, are feelings most unpleasant; and though they assume not the dignity of deep distress, yet philosophy has scarce any power to soothe their worrying, incessant annoyance. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... do not know much of life. Pooh! I, Puck, who have dwelt for many of my days on their boudoir cushions, and eaten of their dainty little dinners, and been smuggled under their robes even into operas, balls, and churches, tell you that is an utter fallacy. They do not choose you to know that they know it, very probably; but there is nothing that is hidden from them, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... nationality to suppress insurrection. That the insurgents should be put upon a par with the Government, that they should enjoy the benefits of an established system, that they should have every right and every immunity as if the quarrel were between equal powers, has seemed to us a fallacy tinctured with deep prejudice. That feeling has been courteously, but firmly represented by our ministers. Since it pleased the European courts to proclaim their neutrality, we have borne the injustice temperately, and have confined our demands to our rights under that status. When the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he had been alive—making allowances for temperamental variations. Degas knew that to grasp the true meaning of the nude it must be represented in postures, movements which are natural, not studio attitudes. As Monet exposed the fallacy of studio lighting, so Degas revealed the inanity of its poses. Ibsen said the stage should be a room with the fourth wall removed; Degas preferred the key-hole through which we seem to peep upon the privacy ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... so," said he, sadly. "But really, sir, it isn't. You may think that love rules all things nowadays, but that is a fallacy. Of late years a rival concern has sprung up. I have found my office subjected to a most annoying competition which has attracted away from me a large number of my closest followers. In the days when we acknowledged ourselves to be purely heathen, love was regarded with respect, ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... these arguments appeared reasonable, and she pursued their dictates; but in the practice of the life in which she plunged she proved the fallacy of the system, and at times tore her hair with frantic sorrow, that she had not continued in the mid-way of guilt, and so preserved some portion of self-approbation, to recompense her in a small degree, for the total loss of the esteem of ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that "Clytie" was a consolation and model for Mliss. Following this fallacy, Mrs. Morpher threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was "bad," and set her up before the child for adoration in her penitential moments. It was not, therefore, surprising to the master to hear that Clytie was coming to school, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... at first you don't succeed,' you know follow out the inestimable Watts's advice, and 'try again.' There's nothing like it: it gets to be quite a game in the long run. I thank my stars," laughing, "I have never been a slave to the 'pathetic fallacy' called love; yet it has its ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... is on the surface. Let us bore a little deeper toward the core of the subject. It is a fundamental fallacy of Socialism that all gain is the result of Labor and that therefore all gain belongs to Labor—the term "Labor" in practice meaning the great majority of laborers ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... fallacy, Wingate," he pronounced. "Phipps, as a matter of fact, is offering you considerably more than the shares are worth, because with their help he means to bring off a ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... into the fallacy of over-estimating the advantages of military training—with its fine air of set-up manliness and restrained yet vitalised discipline—because we are mostly compelled to compare such training with the lack of training fostered by that tame, dull sedentary routine of which there is ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... of three or four millions of men are not suddenly endowed with faculties and habits which render them capable of diverting one-third of their energies to work which is new, disproportionate, gratuitous, and supererogatory.—A fallacy of monstrous duplicity lies at the basis of the political theories of the day and of those which were invented during the following ten years. Arbitrarily, and without any examination, a certain weight ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... by these views would justify a fuller discussion and disproof of them here, did space permit. It must suffice to indicate merely that they have the same taint of illogicalness as the "fallacy of waste," and the "fallacy of luxury."[9] They overlook the fact that an income, either of money or of other goods, coming even to the wealthiest, will be used in some way. It may be used either for immediate ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... used to pay the public debt, though depreciated far below the standard of coin. "The same currency for the bond-holder and the plough-holder" was a favorite cry in the mouths of many. This plausible and poisonous fallacy quickly took root in Ohio, whose political soil has often nourished rank and luxuriant outgrowth of Democratic heresies, and it came to be known distinctively as "The Ohio Idea." The apt response of the Republicans was, the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... See Letters and Horne Tooke his poetry his twin volumes his many "veins" his critical preface and the epic on Shakespeare his phrenesis his fallacy his Poems and Burnett his hunger-madness as the hero of a novel and the Earl of Buchan his autobiography his annuity his disappearance and Earl Stanhope and Lord Stanhope on other people's poetry his "Poetic Sympathies" his immersion his novel way ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... about proving the existence of God, and a masterly effort it was.* But in his later great work, the "Critique of the Pure Reason," he saw its fallacy, and said of it—that if the existence could he proved at all, it must be on the grounds ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... old fallacy of Premise A. "They are only doing it for themselves," we say. "They are paid for what they do. They wouldn't do it if they weren't paid for it!" That is the vital core of the real opposition to Socialism, this ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... good. It is a splendid thing to belong to a noble family, whose name serves as a card of admission to the highest circles. Nobility is a distinction; it is a gold coin that bears the stamp of its own value. It is the fallacy of the time, and many poets express it, to say that all that is noble is bad and stupid, and that, on the contrary, the lower one goes among the poor, the more brilliant virtues one finds. I do not share this opinion, for it is wrong. In the upper ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Fallacy has its short triumphs and the persuasive critic or the creator of art values may effect real value but for a day. The limit of the credulity of the public, which Lincoln has immortalized, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... to a master switch controlling the power that fed Hot Rod, and blessing as he did it the fallacy of engineering that had required external power to ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... is no particular need of my commenting upon the fallacy of this reasoning, since it is not likely that any of my young readers will sufficiently admire his character to be in any danger of being led ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... and long applause, perhaps, that the Professor was relieved from the explanation of this rather astounding phenomenon of the idealistic workings of a purely practical brain—or, as my impious friend scoffed the incongruity later, in a particularly withering allusion, as the "blank- blanked fallacy, don't you know, of staying the hunger of a howling mob by feeding 'em on ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... the Cyclops, in a palace and yet in hell, all at once, with the shifting mutations of the most rambling dream, and our judgment yet all the time awake, and neither able nor willing to detect the fallacy,—is a proof of that hidden sanity which still guides the poet in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... he conquered by deserting his ground, and not meeting the argument as I had put it. The assiduity of the Scottish clergy is certainly greater than that of the English. His taking up the topick of their not having so much learning, was, though ingenious, yet a fallacy in logick. It was as if there should be a dispute whether a man's hair is well dressed, and Dr Johnson should say, 'Sir, his hair cannot be well dressed; for he has a dirty shirt. No man who has not clean linen has his hair well dressed.' ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... he may have about him the melody of birds, although he hear them not. Here the mind knowingly passes a fiction upon herself, first substituting her own feeling for the Beggar's, and in the same breath detecting the fallacy, will not part with the wish. The "Poet's Epitaph" is disfigured, to my taste, by the common satire upon parsons and lawyers in the beginning, and the coarse epithet of "pin-point," in the sixth stanza. All the ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... England, much liker a greedy Ostrich intent on provender and a whole skin mainly, stands with its other extremity Sunward; with its Ostrich-head stuck into the readiest bush, of old Church-tippets, King-cloaks, or what other "sheltering Fallacy" there may be, and so awaits the issue. The issue has been slow; but it is now seen to have been inevitable. No Ostrich, intent on gross terrene provender, and sticking its head into Fallacies, but will be awakened one day,—in a terrible a-posteriori manner, if not ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Fairly juste. Fairy feino. Faith fido. Faithful fidela. Falcon falko. Fall fali. Fall falo. Fall (in price) malplikarigxo. Fall off, away defali. Fall out (disagree) malpaci. Fall (in ruins) ruinigxi. Fallacy sofismo. Fallow senkulturega. False falsa. Falsehood mensogo. Falsify falsi. Falsification falsado. Falsifier falsinto. Fame famo. Familiar kutima. Familiarize kutimigi. Familiarity kutimeto. Family familio. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Professor Mivart's denunciations of natural selection, I have only one fault to find with them, namely, that they do not speak out with sufficient bluntness. The difficulty of showing the fallacy of Mr. Darwin's position, is the difficulty of grasping a will-o'-the-wisp. A concluding example will put this clearly before the reader, and at the same time serve to illustrate the most tangible feature of difference between Mr. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... last great lesson of our motley teacher—the gallows! that accursed tree which has its root in injuries. How clearly PUNCH exposes the fallacy of that dreadful law which authorises the destruction of life! PUNCH sometimes destroys the hangman: and why not? Where is the divine injunction against the shedder of man's blood to rest? None can answer! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... Pitt admitted that "state necessity" might occasionally be allowed as a valid reason for the abrogation of a charter, he affirmed that nothing short of such absolute necessity could excuse such a measure, and he relied on the previous history of the Company to prove the fallacy of an observation that had sometimes been made, that commercial companies could not govern empires. There were three interests to be considered: that of the native Indians, that of the Company, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... put forward proposals of this nature are labouring under the dominion of a fundamental fallacy. They overlook the fact I have explained in the foregoing section, that Cavalry by its very nature can never be other than a highly-specialized Arm, and hence that the system adopted by the Infantry of raising ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... fun of curious phenomena. I don't know that there is anything more noticeable than what we may call CONVENTIONAL REPUTATIONS. There is a tacit understanding in every community of men of letters that they will not disturb the popular fallacy respecting this or that electro-gilded celebrity. There are various reasons for this forbearance: one is old; one is rich; one is good-natured; one is such a favorite with the pit that it would not be safe to hiss him from the manager's box. The ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... no wish here to enter largely into a subject so wide and so full of difficulties; but I may remark, that the explanations usually suggested where life takes its rise without apparent generative means, always appear to me to partake much of the fallacy of the petitio principii. When, for instance, lime is laid down upon a piece of waste moss ground, and a crop of white clover for which no seeds were sown is the consequence, the explanation that the seeds have been ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... demonstrated by successive experiments that the weight of the engine would of itself produce sufficient adhesion to enable it to draw upon a smooth railroad the requisite number of waggons in all kinds of weather. And thus was the fallacy which had heretofore prevailed on this subject completely exploded, and it was satisfactorily proved that rack-rails, toothed wheels, endless chains, and legs, were alike unnecessary for the efficient traction of loaded waggons ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... politics during the last five years. The Whigs have been at war with the English constitution. First of all they captured the King; then they vanquished the House of Commons; now they have laid siege to the House of Lords. But here the fallacy of their grand scheme of political mystification begins to develop itself. Had, indeed, their new constituency, as they have long impudently pretended, really been 'the people,' a struggle between such a body and ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... dilatory suspicion that Liszt influenced Chopin in the production of his masterpieces. Lina Ramann, in her exhaustive biography of Franz Liszt, openly declares that Nos. 9 and 12 of op. 10 and Nos. 11 and 12 of op. 25 reveal the influence of the Hungarian virtuoso. Figures prove the fallacy of her assertion. The influence was the other way, as Liszt's three concert studies show—not to mention other compositions. When Chopin arrived in Paris his style had been formed, he was the creator ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... "to expend compassion on a man who, etc., were surely a pathetic fallacy." Al. "Is not the man who has it in his power, ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... is that children will learn many truths in the Sunday School which they will not put into practice then, perhaps, but which they will find useful in later life. This fallacy underlies, of course, almost all conventional education and has only been overthrown by the dictum of modern psychology, that there is but small storage accommodation in the brain for facts which have no immediate relation to life. What may be termed the saturating power of the ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... about 10. minutes after, as exactly representing what I saw through the Glass, as I could, I drew the Scheme B. This I was sufficiently satisfied (by very often observing it through the Tube, and changing my Eye into various positions, that so there might be no kind of Fallacy in it) could be nothing else, but some more Dusky and Spotted parts of the ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... appearance; while specious means having the appearance of truth, plausible. Hence we see that the very essence of a fallacy is its speciousness. We may very properly say that a fallacy is more or less specious, but we can not properly say that a fallacy is specious, since without speciousness we ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... Moreover, I knew my subject thoroughly, and understood what points to dwell upon and what to gloze over, how to twist and turn the statistics, and how to marshal my facts in such fashion as would make it very difficult to expose their fallacy. Then, when I had done with general arguments, I went on to particular cases, describing as a doctor can do the most dreadful which had ever come under my notice, with such power and pathos that women in ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... our pleasant afternoon. While you are consuming the supper you will hang over some water to heat for the dish-washing, and the dish-washing you will attend to the moment you have finished eating. Do not commit the fallacy of sitting down for a little rest. Better finish the job completely while you are about it. You will appreciate leisure so much more later. In lack of a wash-rag you will find that a bunch of tall grass bent ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... children with her, and could not brook the idea of leaving them in the hands of the savage monster. She even trusted to the hope that he would withdraw, as soon as he could, without molesting any of them. A few minutes served to convince her of the fallacy of this expectation. When the opening had been made sufficiently large, he raised his tomahawk, sunk it deep into the brains of one of the children, and throwing the scarcely lifeless body into the back yard, ordered ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... by military experts as an axiom that trained troops armed with the present breech-loading and rapid-firing arm cannot be successfully assailed by any troops who simply assault. Of course you can make the regular approaches and dig up to them. The fallacy of that proposition was made very manifest that day when the men composing the advance marched as deliberately over those breastworks as they ever did when they fought with arms that you could only load about twice in a minute and of the range of only 200 ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... to these great spokesmen of the Hellenic people, we cannot deny something of like honour to the race among whom they were reared. Let us apportion our debt of gratitude to our forerunners as it is justly due. There would seem to be much of fallacy and of the injustice of a shallow judgment in the contrast as popularly drawn between 'Hellenism' and 'Hebraism,' according to which the former is spoken of as exclusively proclaiming to the world the value of Beauty, the latter the value of Righteousness. In this there is surely much ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... said Reginald. There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically, through the ears, as it were, of a sceptic. Reginald, seeing Northcote's keen eyes gleam at the sound of the Rector's voice, instinctively fell into sympathy with him, and heard the ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... darts of its own will in a curious way. Thus, the unconsciousness of muscular action on the part of savages engaged in the experiment with sticks would lead them to believe that spirits were animating the wood. The same fallacy beset the table-turners of 1855-65, and was, to some extent, exposed by Faraday. Of course, savages would be even more convinced by the dancing spoon of Mr. Darwin's tale, by the dancing sticks of the Zulus, and the rest, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... young American of the period, who found some features of it not altogether to his liking. Chief among these was that essential part of discipline, subordination. To one imbued from infancy with the fascinating fallacy that all men are born equal, unquestioning submission to authority is not easily mastered, and the American volunteer soldier in his "green and salad days" is among the worst known. That is how it happened that one of Buell's men, Private ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... their antagonism is the most notable characteristic of the modern scientific mind; and I believe no credulity or fallacy admitted by the weakness (or it may sometimes rather have been the strength) of early imagination, indicates so strange a depression beneath the due scale of human intellect, as the failure of the sense of beauty in form, and loss of faith in heroism of conduct, which have become the curses ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... by the exact weight of the fish." "Thou art right," said the sapient king; "I did not think there had been so much sense among you." Now, although I do not mean to say that A SKATER propounds for elucidation what he knows to be a fallacy, yet I do assert that he is mistaken as to the fact alleged. He recommends any one who is "incredulous" to make the trial—in which case, the experimenter would undoubtedly find himself in the water! I advise an appeal to common sense and philosophy: the former will show that a person in skates ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... out by two letters which Lincoln had written during the year; one declaring his opposition to the waning fallacy of know-nothingism, in which he also defined his position on "fusion." Referring to a provision lately adopted by Massachusetts to restrict naturalization, he wrote: "Massachusetts is a sovereign and independent State; and it is no privilege of mine to scold her ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay |
