"Retractation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the loadstone doth attract iron rather than other metal? they answer, that the cause thereof is sympathia physica inter magnetem et ferrum. With such kind of etymology doth the Bishop here serve us; yet peradventure he might have given us another cause. If so, my retractation is, that if he be excused one way, he must be accused another way; and if he be blameless of ignorance, he is blameworthy for dissimulation. The true causes why those things are so ordered, we may find in Bishop ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... first movement of sympathy with the pain excited in that quarter, a retractation of this public disavowal was thought of, the impossibility of finding any creditable medium through which to convey it, must soon have suggested itself to check the intention. Some middle course, however, it ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... kinds of this critical retractation. Science may be accepted bodily, while its present results are modified by suggesting speculatively what its ultimate results might be. This is natural philosophy or legitimate metaphysics. Or science may be accepted in part, and in part subjected to control by some other alleged vehicle of knowledge. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... universally held to be the express teaching of the Bible; and when Galileo ventured to maintain the new views in Italy, the Roman Curia took up the question, and by the agency of the Inquisition wrung from him a reluctant retractation of his so-called heresy. But it was of no avail. The new doctrine was true, and it could not be crushed. Fresh evidence of its truth was continually coming forward, till at last it was universally received. Then the defenders of the Bible had recourse to the suggestion that as the ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... redeem my name before the world would be of no avail to me now, for all my English habits are broken, and all that made life valuable to me is gone. If Long and Beauchamp could reject my solemn affirmation three years ago, what would a retractation slowly wrung from them be worth to me now? It might once have been, but that is all over now. Even the desire to take care of you would no longer actuate me since you have Keith again; and in a few years I hope to make my child independent ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remarks on the second point on which my confidence rested, I repeat that here again I have no retractation to announce as to its main outline. While I am now as clear in my acceptance of the principle of dogma, as I was in 1833 and 1816, so again I am now as firm in my belief of a visible Church, of the authority ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... philosophical, as ever lit one fire. Some defenders of the papal cause have at least worded their accusations so to be understood as imputing to him villainous actions. But it is positively certain that his death was due to opinions alone, and that retractation, even after sentence, would have saved him. There exists a remarkable letter, written from Rome on the very day of the murder, by Scioppius[69] (the celebrated scholar, a waspish convert from Lutheranism, known by his hatred to Protestants and Jesuits) ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan |
