"Polemics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of almost any opinions,—except those of Essayists and Reviewers:—how shall the Church of England fail to adopt 'the bulwarks of the faith' for one of her current phrases? how not, many a time, deem 'dangerous to Christianity' the speculations of her sons?... Nay, polemics must prevail; if only because, in a certain place, the Divine Speaker already quoted foretells the partial, (if not the entire,) obscuration even of true Doctrine, in that pathetic exclamation of His,—"When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find the faith upon the Earth[137]?" ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... sunlight melted in upon wild birds, shy deer, and red Indians. Long may these oaks remain to remind us that, if there be utility in the new, there was beauty in the old, leafy Puseyites of Nature, calling us back to the past, but, like their Oxford brethren, calling in vain; for neither in polemics nor in art can we go backward in an age whose motto is ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... distinct vision of the benefit that would accrue to him from this change of courses. But Mr. Barton, being aware that Miss Fodge had touched on a delicate subject in alluding to the roast goose, was determined to witness no more polemics between her and Mr. Spratt, so, saying good morning to the latter, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Ogram, the return journey being often made in their hostess's carriage. In those days the baronet's wife was a vigorous adherent of the Church of England, wherein she saw the hope of the country and of mankind. But her orthodoxy discriminated; ever combative, she threw herself into the religious polemics of the time, and not only came to be on very ill terms with her own parish clergyman, but fell foul of the bishop of the diocese, who seemed to her to treat with insufficient consideration certain letters she addressed to him. Then it was that, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... Norway in July 1891, for a stay of indefinite length; but the restless wanderer over Europe was destined to leave his home no more.... He had not returned, however, to throw himself, as of old, into the battle of the passing day. Polemics are entirely absent from the poetry of his old age. He leaves the State and Society at peace. He who had departed as the creator of Falk [in Love's Comedy] now, on his return, gazes into the secret places of human nature and the wonder of his ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... maintained that the Reformation opened the way for a critical treatment of the history of dogma.[17] But even in Protestant Churches, at first, historical investigations remained under the ban of the confessional system of doctrine and were used only for polemics.[18] Church history itself up to the 18th century was not regarded as a theological discipline in the strict sense of the word, and the history of dogma existed only within the sphere of dogmatics as a collection of testimonies to the truth, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... the ardent expression which was always there when she began her sorceries. She triumphed over everything, and I complacently told myself that the woman who loses all, sacrifices the future, and makes love her only virtue, is far above Catholic polemics. ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... celibacy is calculated to promote in both sexes. The chained book is not an uncommon feature in the ancient ecclesiastical repositories, and even in certain churches; and apart from the Scriptures, it almost invariably enters into the department of early divinity or polemics. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... began to lecture, could not have been very deep, for he had only lately quitted the student's bench himself. His duties forced him to learn what he did not know. In teaching he taught himself. It was at this time that he did most of the reading which afterwards added substance to his polemics and treatises. He tells us himself that he read in those days all that he could lay hands on. He is very proud of having read by himself and understood without any assistance from a master, the Ten Categories of Aristotle, which was considered one of the most abstruse works ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... principle, change his religion, change his coat, change his master, and yet never change his nature." He never changed his nature, he was as free from cynicism as a barrister who represents successively opposing parties in suits or politics; and when he wrote polemics in prose or verse he lent his talents as a barrister lends his for a fee. His one intellectual interest was in his art, and it is in his comments on his art—the essays and prefaces in the composition of which he amused the leisure left in the ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... in theological controversy and literary productions. It was during this period that he collected his miscellaneous writings, entitled "Gleanings from Past Years." A little more than a year had elapsed when he again entered the political arena. "He threw aside polemics and criticisms, he forgot for awhile Homer and the Pope," and "rushed from his library at Hawarden, forgetting alike ancient Greece and modern Rome," as he flung himself with impassioned energy and youthful vigor into a new crusade against Turkey. A quarter of a century before ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... much a fiery defender of the faith, or a scholar to taunt the heretics in finely-pointed sarcasm with their want of learning, as a saint, demonstrating in his own life the beauty of holiness, while laying aside polemics, he expounded the philosophy of Catholic doctrine. The need for reform was patent to all; many, like the zealous Carmelite provincial, were already putting their hands to the plough. The movement had been set on foot, but it lacked an apostle to lead and govern it. Such a man was at that moment being ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... houseowners, desolation and emptiness; to the publicans the reign of puritanism; to the emancipists the ascendancy of the free, to be followed by unextinguishable persecution. All the sentiments and epithets known in Irish polemics and Irish seditions were re-arranged in the convict service, and scattered with profusion. The League was assailed with peculiar virulence, and all its distinguished adherents held up to scorn as religious and immoral men, as hateful for their covetousness ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... fairy tales. On the banks of quiet lakes, amid the woods, on the green grassy pastures, where the game sprang past me and the stork paced along on his red legs, I heard nothing of politics, nothing of polemics; I heard no one practising himself in Hagel's phraseology. Nature, which was around me and within me, preached to me of my calling. I spent many happy days at the old house of Gisselfeld, formerly a monastery, which stands in the deepest solitude of the woods, ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... cynicism. Those who were affected by the change of regime, partisans and functionaries of the Empire, hastened in many cases to trim their sails to the turn of the tide. However, there was a relative liberty of the press which permitted the honest expression of party opinion, and polemics were keen. At the Sorbonne, Guizot, Cousin, and Villemain were the orators of the day. Frayssinous lectured at Saint-Sulpice, and de Lamennais, attacking young Liberalism, denounced its tenets ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... did not therefore lay down a pen that had become in his hands a powerful weapon. He published a number of books on political, social, and philosophic subjects, in the form of stories, dramas, aphorisms, or polemics. Noteworthy among these are his fine parables, the novel 'La Sainte Vierge' (The Holy Virgin); the drama in blank, 'Vorstenschool' (School for Princes), containing many fine thoughts, and still one of the most popular plays of the day; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... basis for this question is usually not understood at all by those critics who presume to answer the question off-hand in a spasm of polemics. It is interesting, as an evidence of the shallowness of most contemporary dramatic criticism, to read over, in the course of Mr. Shaw's nimble essay on The Quintessence of Ibsenism, the collection which the author has made of the adverse notices of Ghosts which ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... miles to attend them. One of these clubs held its meetings at an old store-house in New Salem, and the first speech young Lincoln ever made was made there. He used to call the exercising "practicing polemics." As these clubs were composed principally of men of no education whatever, some of their "polemics" are remembered as the most laughable of farces. Lincoln's favorite newspaper at this time was the "Louisville Journal." He received it regularly by mail, and paid for it during ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the mere polemics sent forth a cry of his impiety; the philosopher was branded with Atheism;—one of those artful calumnies, of which, after a man has washed himself clean, the stain will be found to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... published in 1658, at "the King's Head, in the Old Bailey," a few days before Oliver Cromwell's death, Bunyan left the thorny domain of polemics, for that of Christian exhortation, in which his chief work was to be done. This work was an exposition of the parable of "the Rich Man and Lazarus," bearing the horror-striking title, "A Few Sighs from Hell, or the Groans ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... when it often means bind and gag that the strongest may work his will. It is a plea for the survival of the fittest—for the strongest male to take possession of the herd by a process of extermination. If we examine this battle cry of political polemics, we find that it is based upon the conception of the divine right of property, and the preoccupation by older or more favored or more alert or richer men or nations, of territory, of the forces of nature, of machinery, of all the functions of what we call civilization. Some of these men, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Mr. Adams's powers show best in the work which can hardly be classed as literature,—his forcible and bitter political letters, diatribes, and polemics. As in his life, his merits and defects not only lie side by side, but spring from the same source,—his vehemence, self-confidence, and impatience of obstruction. He writes impetuously because he feels impetuously. With little literary grace, he possesses ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Dr. Kuyper, who in his letter, March 28th, wrote: "The copyright of my article belongs to the Editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes, without whose permission I can do nothing. As I shall be in Paris before long I will ask him for it should your polemics seem to me to require ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... to empiricism, which has been the philosophic tradition in this country since Hobbes. We so far agree with Mr. Stephen that we believe Englishmen, in general, to practise a great deal more of empiricism than they avow. But Mill proposed to demonstrate and declare it as a weapon in polemics and an engine of action, and it was here, probably, that the main body of Englishmen deserted him. They were not ready to cut themselves off from theology and from all ideas that transcend experience, and they demurred to the paramount jurisdiction of logic in temporal affairs. To every section ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... concerning the evolution of species; the idea of species would in his eyes absolutely lose its importance if a transition from species to species under the influence of conditions of life were admitted. His disciples (Littre, Robin) continued to direct against Darwin the polemics which their master had employed against Lamarck. Stuart Mill, who, in the theory of knowledge, represented the empirical or positivistic movement in philosophy—like his English forerunners from Locke to Hume—founded his theory of knowledge and morals on the experience of the single individual. ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... Whatever be the limitations of the Dom as a newspaper—it is almost exclusively occupied with the person and programme of Mr. Radi['c]—yet that brings with it the virtue, most exceptional in Yugoslavia, of refusing to engage in polemics. This would otherwise take up a good deal of its space, as Radi['c] has become such a bogey-man that nothing is too ridiculous for his opponents to believe. A Czech newspaper not long ago informed the world that this monstrous personage had told an interviewer that not ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... be seen whose arguments I am, in form, reproducing here. I would fain lay down the truth without polemics or recrimination. But unfortunately we never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. The error is needed to set off the truth, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... "Religious polemics, indeed, have seldom formed a part of my studies; though whenever I happened accidentally to turn my thoughts to the subject of the Protestant doctrine of the Godhead, and compared it with Arian and Socinian, many doubts interfered, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... and terror-striking means to rouse and to move the masses; and so the dissensions and troubles between Paul and the nascent Church increased with the success of Paul among the Gentiles. His epistles, one and all, are polemics, not against heathenism or against Judaism, but against his colleagues in Jerusalem, whom, together with their doctrines, he treats in a most reckless manner. They could not write to counterbalance Paul—in fact, there were no writers of any note ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... clergy, in response to a short paragraph from Vuillet, who had accused the Republicans of desiring to demolish the churches. Vuillet was Aristide's bugbear. Never a week passed but these two journalists exchanged the greatest insults. In the provinces, where a periphrastic style is still cultivated, polemics are clothed in high-sounding phrases. Aristide called his adversary "brother Judas," or "slave of Saint-Anthony." Vuillet gallantly retorted by terming the Republican "a monster glutted with blood whose ignoble purveyor was ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... that it arose out of the excess of partisan zeal which Dr. Sterne developed in that year, and which his nephew very likely did not, in his opinion, sufficiently share. But this is quite consistent with the younger man's having up to that time assisted the elder in his party polemics. He certainly speaks in his "Letters" of his having "employed his brains for an ungrateful person," and the remark is made in a way and in a connexion which seems to imply that the services rendered to his uncle were mainly literary. ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... light of this friendly council I perceived my danger, and set about to avoid the fault of mixing my fiction with my polemics. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... actions, the only method is to compare the actions, firstly, with the declarations of those who performed them; secondly, with the interpretation of those who witnessed their performance. There is often a doubt remaining: this is the field of party polemics; every one attributes noble motives to the actions of his own party and discreditable motives to those of the opposite party. But actions described without any indication of ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... persuasive in discourse. Yet this Crichton of France had proved himself an associate nowise desirable. His sleepless intellect was matched with a spirit as restless, vain, unstable, and ambitious, as it was enterprising and bold. Addicted to dissent, and enamoured of polemics, he entered those forbidden fields of inquiry and controversy to which the Reform invited him. Undaunted by his monastic vows, he battled for heresy with tongue and pen, and in the ear of Protestants professed himself a Protestant. As a Commander of ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... plough-handles, and making the most of the fair weather. The cloudless sky and the auspicious forecast of fine days still to come did more to prove to the farmer the existence of an all-wise, overruling Providence than all the polemics of the world might accomplish. The furrows multiplied everywhere save in Nehemiah's own fields, where he often stood so long in the turn-row that the old horse would desist from twisting his head backward in surprise, and start at last of his own motion, ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... but partial effect. Another means by which he sought, consciously or unconsciously, to produce unity of impression was by consistently pitching his song in the minor key. This accounts for the inverted correspondence just noted, and for the fact that even the polemics have an undercurrent of regret in them. In this case the poet has undoubtedly succeeded in carrying out the prevailing mood of the central motive—the Rosalind drama—in the subsidiary scenes. Or should we not rather say that he has extracted the general mood of the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... regained his living of Woodstock, with other Church preferment, and gave up polemics and political intrigues for philosophy. He was one of the constituent members of the Royal Society, and was the person through whom Charles required of that learned body solution of their curious problem, "Why, if a vessel is filled ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Jules-Cesar Scaliger. Muret was universally admired in his day for his learning and his eloquence, and is still regarded not only as a great Latinist and a fine writer, but as a notable man, of high intelligence, and remarkable, moreover, for courtesy in polemics in an age when that quality was not too common. His portrait shows a somewhat coarse and rustic but intelligent face. He conquered honor and respect before he died in 1585, at the age of 59. In early life Muret wrote wanton erotic poems to women which seem based on ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... beneficence could not exhaust the immense sum (L1,200) contributed to make good the personal losses of a few passengers and seamen. The liberality of the hand is here unrestrained by religious antipathies. Bigotry assumes the character of ill temper and puffing. Two parrots in Philadelphia trained to polemics were set over against each other, one crying all day, "there can be no church without a prelate;" the other, "there can be a church without a prelate;" the passengers were divided in opinion, but laughing walked on. Such is ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... distance from 20 to 100 miles; so that the subjugation of Ireland would compel us to guard with ships and soldiers a new line of coast, certainly amounting, with all its sinuosities, to more than 700 miles—an addition of polemics, in our present state of hostility with all the world, which must highly gratify the vigorists and give them an ample opportunity of displaying that foolish energy upon which their claims to distinction are founded. Such ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... censorship, which does not permit the least remark to be leveled at absolute kings, does not show the least mercy toward a citizen-king. The Temps is really the shrewdest and cleverest journal in the world! It attains its object with a few mild words much more readily than others with the most blustering polemics. Its crafty hint is well understood, and I know of at least one liberal writer who no longer considers it honorable to use, under the permission of the censorship, such inimical language of a citizen-king as would not be allowed when applied ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... important, and I have talent, which is even more important. Moreover, while I am on this subject, I am a well-educated, modest, and honest fellow. I have never poked my nose into literature or politics; I have never sought popularity in polemics with the ignorant; I have never made speeches either at public dinners or at the funerals of my friends.... In fact, there is no slur on my learned name, and there is no complaint one can make against it. It ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... on the boat were almost all New Englanders, seeking their fortunes. They had brought with them their habits of calculation, their cautious manners, their love of polemics. It grieved me to hear these immigrants who were to be the fathers of a new race, all, from the old man down to the little girl, talking not of what they should do, but of what they should get in the new scene. It was to them a prospect, ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... physical world viewed religiously, whereas the word "Natural" properly comprehends man and society, and all that is involved therein, as the great Protestant writer, Dr. Butler, shows us. Nor, in the third place, do I mean by Theology polemics of any kind; for instance, what are called "the Evidences of Religion," or "the Christian Evidences;" for, though these constitute a science supplemental to Theology and are necessary in their place, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... probability to polemics. Too often he is merely the emotional controversialist. Bias and Life are with him not always welded into the harmonious whole, which one is entitled to claim ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... some length from one of his many polemics to show the absolute and fearless sincerity of the man, mistaken though he may have been in his ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse |
