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Contradictory   /kˌɑntrədˈɪktəri/   Listen
Contradictory

noun
(pl. contradictories)
1.
Two propositions are contradictories if both cannot be true (or both cannot be false) at the same time.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Contradictory" Quotes from Famous Books



... feelings which, I believe, he, in fact, never felt, and threw in wantonly and de gaiete de coeur, and which he would have omitted, advisedly and de bonte de coeur, if he had not been goaded by indiscreet, contradictory, and urgent criticisms, which, in some cases, were dark enough to be called calumnies. But these are blowing over, if not blown over; and I cannot but think that if Mr. Gifford, or some friend in whose taste and disinterestedness Lord Byron could rely, were to point out to him the ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... and delude themselves with faith in some supernatural force. The clergy state that the physician cures disease through the mediation of God, the physician merely playing the part of the agent of God, through whom the real cure is effected. Is anything more ridiculous and at the same time more contradictory, than to suppose that an all-powerful god should have to appoint an intermediary to perform his work? And if it is only by God's will and aid that a cure takes place, then it follows that God must be willing for the individual to be cured; why in the name of reason, did He not prevent the initial ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... party, save the little invalid and Smart, the gamekeeper. He sat silent and amazed between his two dogs, and, could we have analyzed his feelings, I have no doubt we should have been privy to most curious and contradictory ideas. Qualms were coming over him of various kinds, equally foreign to his nature. Probably, for the first time, he was experiencing fear and sickness at the same moment, and quite unable to understand the symptoms of either. The boys had not yet found out what made their dear Smart so dull and ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... question of sheriff alone. Clausen, the German saloon-keeper, and his gang were coming down on us like a pack of wolves on a sheepfold. Clausen, naturally enough, was considerably put out, simply because I was forced through the contradictory nature of conflicting circumstances to arbitrarily stand him up for the refreshments and smokes, and he appeared desirous of getting square. Fortunately for us, the high wind that had threatened to blow over ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... so humble, her color was still heightened, and her eyes had a threatening, defiant sparkle in them, so contradictory, so piquant and fascinating in contrast with the little, fragile, graceful, helpless form, that his head was almost turned. It was with difficulty he could keep from snatching the fluttering, half-defiant, half-frightened, bird-like ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... Amalgamated was fairly out in the world on its own feet. It was not listed on any of the exchanges yet, but it was very much in the mouths of people, and in the papers. And every day grew the ominous feeling that something was wrong. It was a contradictory situation and no one could put a finger on the trouble. Rumors one heard, but no definite derogatory statements. The truth was that those who knew what was wrong had good reasons for saying nothing, while all who had ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... reporters were as much at sea in regard to the Stirling-sixth-ward incident, as had been the rank-and-file in the convention. Three took their views from Maguire, and called it "shameful treason," and the like. Two called it "unprincipled and contradictory conduct." One alone said that "Mr. Stirling seemed to be acting conscientiously, if erratically." Just what effect it had had on the candidates none of the papers agreed in. One said it had killed Porter. Another, that "it was a purely personal matter without influence on the main question." The ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... must guard against the error of carrying our sense of independence too far. Wordsworth hit the truth when he said: "These two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together,—manly dependence and manly independence,—manly reliance ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... that even the complete appearance of depth such as the stereoscope offers would be in no way contradictory to the idea of moving pictures. Then the photoplay would give the same plastic impression which the real stage offers. All that would be needed is this. When the actors play the scenes, not a single ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... fearful mistakes and criminal neglect of an individual to whom the grand project of the redemption of Ireland from the yoke of the oppressor was, in its strictly military aspect, entrusted in this country—although badly provisioned, uniformed and equipped—although perplexed with mysterious, contradictory and imperfect orders, and although, at the very moment of their destiny, left without the leader whom they were led to expect should command them, they never lost heart for a moment; feeling that ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... brought them into so awkward and so mortifying a position, the pilot endeavoured to conceal his own vexation, by the number and vociferousness of his orders. From blustering, he soon passed into confusion, until the men themselves stood idle, not knowing which of the uncertain and contradictory mandates they received ought to be first obeyed. In the mean time, Wilder had folded his arms with an appearance of entire composure, and taken his station near his female passengers. Mrs Wyllys closely studied ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... ancient historians, whose records contain nearly all the particulars of the early life of Caesar which are now known, give somewhat contradictory accounts of the adventures which befell him during his subsequent wanderings. They relate, in general, the same incidents, but in such different connections, that the precise chronological order of the events which occurred can not now be ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott

... conventional anecdotes, which prove that Pope consulted various friends, whose classical attainments were sounder than his own, during the undertaking; but it is probable that these examinations were the result rather of the contradictory versions already existing, than of a desire to make a perfect transcript of the original. And in those days, what is called literal translation was less cultivated than at present. If something like the general sense could be decorated ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... many abortive projects for the advancement of trade, of so many crude proposals in letters sent me from unknown hands, of so many contradictory speculations about raising or sinking the value of gold and silver: I am not in the least sorry to hear of the great numbers going to America, though very much so for the causes that drive them from us, since ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... to offer a contradictory opinion; for my sense of the saneness of things, would not allow me to take the story literally; then I shut them again, without saying anything. Somehow, the certainty in Tonnison's voice affected my doubts. I felt, all at once, less assured; though I was by no means convinced ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... lost, through his obstinate objection to the presence of a medical man at his bedside. Generally speaking, he appeared to be in a delicate state of health. His nervous system was out of order—he was at once timid and contradictory. When I spoke to him in English, he answered in Italian; and when I tried him in Italian, he went back to English. It mattered little—the malady had already made such progress that he could only speak a few words at a time, and those ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... fabric of religious dogma, and I may add of the higher metaphysics, must depend. "One of the principal retarding causes of philosophy," remarks Professor Ferrier, "has been the want of a clear and developed doctrine of the contradictory."[28-1] The want is as old as the days of Heraclitus of Ephesus, and lent to his subtle paradoxes that obscurity which has not yet been ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... the Council could do was to heap honors and emoluments on the family of Nuncomar; and this they did. In the meantime the assizes commenced; a true bill was found; and Nuncomar was brought before Sir Elijah Impey and a jury composed of Englishmen. A great quantity of contradictory swearing, and the necessity of having every word of the evidence interpreted, protracted the trial to a most unusual length. At last a verdict of guilty was returned, and the Chief Justice pronounced sentence of death on ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... their legs at the same time; men hitherto quiet, composed, and good-natured, began to raise cries hoarse with rage, and finally four or five hundred voices were united in producing the deafening and discordant din of angry and contradictory voices. Nor was this all. In some parts of the House men began directly to assail each other—to exchange language of taunt, and insult, and defiance; and, in more than one corner, there were the signs of impending physical conflict. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... the difference, the distinction between the two. But sound knowledge and normal feeling rest upon observing and reckoning with both aspects of this law of kinship and contrast. All human experience becomes known to us through the interplay of what appear to be contradictory needs and opposing truths within our being. Thus, man is a social animal and can only find himself in a series of relationships as producer, lover, husband, father and friend. He is a part of and like unto his kind, his spirit immanent in his race. But man is also a solitary ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... Saturday last, states that on the morning of the day previous, (the 9th) a dispute arose between Mr. Robert Smith and Mr. Alexander Eanes, both of Aberdeen, which resulted in the death of Mr. Smith, who kept a boarding house, and was an amiable man and a good citizen. In the course of the contradictory words of the disputants, the lie was given by Eanes, upon which Smith gathered up a piece of iron and threw it at Eanes, but which missed him and lodged in the walls of the house. At this Eanes drew a large dirk knife, and stabbed Smith in ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... therefore gave the formula HO to water, and HN to ammonia. When more than two compounds were known he assumed that the most familiar or the most stable one had the simple formula. He then determined the atomic weight as explained above. The results he obtained were contradictory and very far from satisfactory, and it was soon seen that some other method, resting on much more scientific grounds, must be found to decide what compounds, if any, have a single atom of each ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... logic in dealing with the Bible so superior! On the contrary, I am all for your Ranter. He is your logical Protestant. Historically, you Anglican parsons are where you are and what you are, because Englishmen, as a whole, like attempting the contradictory—like, above all, to eat their cake and have it. The nation has made you and maintains you for its own purposes. But ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her magnificent spirit, her royal pride, the gorgeous eastern coloring of the character; all these contradictory elements has Shakspeare seized, mingled them in their extremes, and fused them into one brilliant impersonation of classical elegance, Oriental voluptuousness, and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... is speech. The work actually develops out of the quavering first few bars. The vast resonant peroration only gathers into a single, furious, tragic pronouncement the material deployed in the body of the work. Scarcely ever has the binary form, the combat between two contradictory themes, been more essentialized. Scarcely ever has the prelude-form been reduced to simpler terms than in the preludes of Scriabine. These works are indeed radical. For they give us a fresh glimpse of the archetype ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... beginning to turn; everybody appreciates pluck. The spectators, however, knew him to be a novice, and many supposed that he had lost his head; so when he passed the grandstand on the first lap, any amount of contradictory advice ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... Mr Farquharson," Mrs Crow turned to him. "An' how reely BE ye? We've heard better, an' worse, an' middlin'—there's ben such contradictory reports." ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... limitations of the fifteenth amendment to the United States constitution. To the second restriction, indicated by the word "male" we beg leave to call the attention of the legislature, as we deem it unjust and arbitrary, as well as contradictory to the spirit of the constitution, as expressed in the first article. It is also contrary to the precedent established by the founders of political liberty in New Jersey. On the second of July, 1776, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... for the moment I was out of her books, and while I did not understand in what way I had displeased her, for we always had met amicably before, I seized upon this sign of displeasure on her part as explanatory, perhaps, of the curtness and show of contradictory feelings on the part of her dependent niece. Yet why should the old woman frown on me? I had been told more than once that she regarded me with great favour. Had I unwittingly done something to displease her, or had the game of cards she had just left gone against ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... 1623. Ben did not weave the amazing tissue of involved and contradictory falsities attributed to him by Baconians. Beaumont died in the same year as Shakspere, who died in the depths of the country, weary of London. Has Mr. Greenwood found obituary poems dropped on the grave of the famous Beaumont? Did Fletcher, did Jonson, produce one melodious ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... importance in the affairs of the country and the world, it is perhaps more than a matter of merely personal interest to underline his salient traits. Let it be premised that a logical and satisfactory analysis is well-nigh impossible, for his nature is self-contradictory, subject to gusts of temperament, and he himself has pictured the struggle that has gone on between the impulsive Irish and the cautious Scotch elements in him. Thus it is that he has handled similar problems in different ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... testament, the imperial policy was completely changed. The declaration of Orsini is as the dividing point between the two portions of the Emperor's reign, the former openly, reasonably conservative and glorious, the latter sometimes decidedly revolutionary, sometimes vacillating, contradictory, or unwillingly conservative, and finally terminated by a catastrophe unexampled in ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... conception of the order of those changes, and to understand how they may have resulted in the actual distribution of animal life in these countries; a distribution which often presents phenomena so strange and contradictory, that without taking such changes into consideration we are unable even to imagine how they could ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... everybody. Even the Bear King was now puzzled by the contradictory statements of ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... one particular talent, unless it was an untrained and birdlike voice; she was always more or less in hot water about her lessons, always behindhand in her tasks, always leaving undone what she should do, and doing what she should not do. She was a contradictory, erratic creature—jealous of no one, envious of no one—dearly loving a joke, and many times inflicting pain from sheer thoughtlessness, but always ready to say she was sorry, always ready to ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... public, and I even had the experience of one of my pieces, the march from Tannhauser, being interrupted by storms of applause. The pleasure thus expressed was aroused, it seems, because the audience was surprised to find that my music, of which there had been so many contradictory reports, contained such long phrases of connected melody. Well satisfied as I was, both with the way in which the concert had been carried out and its enthusiastic reception, I had on the following days to overcome contrary impressions caused by the papers giving ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... hold two inconsistent and seemingly contradictory views about the human attitude which is the psychological pre-condition for this epoch-making experience. In his own autobiographical {204} accounts, he always refers to the part that earnest resolution has played in bringing ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... critical ingenuity in the explanation of this passage. His interpretation, however, seems to me much too recondite. The meaning of the passage may be certain enough; but surely the expression is confused, and one part of it contradictory to the other. BOSWELL. This note is first given in the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... nor any other aloofness contradictory to the best American traditions or loftiest human purposes. Our fortunate capacity for comparative self-containment affords the firm foundation on which to build for our own security, and a like foundation ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding

... am not a bit curious,' was the contradictory answer. 'But all the same I intend to know. So you may as well make a clean breast ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... innocent of all moral or intentional guilt, Corneille has endeavoured to counterbalance the obvious conclusion, by a long tirade upon free-will, which I have subjoined, as it contains some striking ideas.[4] But the doctrine, which it expresses, is contradictory of the whole tenor of the story; and the correct deduction is much more justly summed up by Seneca, in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... barrel-organ's one leg, as Giuseppe, above, moved from room to room after his rebel slave. Now and again a floor shook a little under the combined rushes of Lord Lundie and Sir Christopher Tomling, who gave many and contradictory orders. But when they could they cursed Jimmy ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... pousse, i.e., into what a self-contradictory position my double nature has forced me. ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve

... mystery of it all, Matilda, is the mystery of love—warm, contradictory, cruel, human love that the Almighty puts in the heart of a man to draw the unreasoning heart of a woman; sometimes to bruise and crush it, seldom to kill it outright. Mary Caroline only followed her call," answered the major, responding ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... curious mixture, Clavering reflected, and not the least contradictory thing about her was the way in which her rather sullen face could light up: exactly as if some inner flame leapt suddenly behind those uncanny eyes and shed its light over the very muscles of her cheeks and ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... and decrees, often more or less contradictory but still embodying ideas advanced by Condorcet and Talleyrand, now appeared. Whereas the preceding legislative bodies had considered the subject carefully, but without taking action, the Convention now acted. The nation, though, was so engrossed by the internal ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... and a Boatswain] In this naval dialogue, perhaps the first example of sailor's language exhibited on the stage, there are, as I have been told by a skilful narrator, some inaccuracies and contradictory orders. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... so much a magnification of the object as a simplification of it. Confusing details are stripped away. Contradictory facts are eliminated, until heart answers to heart across ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... honour of resembling the portraits of Shakespeare in this respect—compared with one another, it is not possible to discover that they present the same person. As for the evidence offered by the loving memory of her friends, it is sure to be contradictory in the last degree. She had a charming face, a commonplace face, an intelligent face—a poor complexion, a delicate complexion, no complexion at all—eyes that were expressive of a hot temper, of a bright intellect, of a firm character, of an affectionate disposition, ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... without finding the woman who now exercised so mighty an influence on his fate. He entered an empty boudoir where card-tables were placed awaiting players; and sitting down on a divan he gave himself up to the most contradictory thoughts about her. A man presently took the young officer by the arm, and looking up the baron was stupefied to behold the pauper of the rue Coquilliere, the Ferragus of Ida, the lodger in the rue Soly, the Bourignard of Justin, the convict of the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... "Yf the angler take fyshe, surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte!!" Yet Isaac Walton called this art, "The Contemplative Man's Recreation." But a book-fisherman, like myself, must not presume to reconcile such great and contradictory authorities.] ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... unfortunate passengers was very great— the more so that it was undefined. They saw the captain, however, every now and then come into the cabin and toss off a tumbler of strong rum-and-water, and then return on deck, and shout out with oaths often contradictory orders. The gale all this time was increasing, until it threatened to become as violent as the hurricane from which we had escaped. I could not help wishing that we had not left our leaky little schooner. We might have reached some land ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... process by which information is acquired, converted into intelligence, and made available to policymakers. Information is raw data from any source, data that may be fragmentary, contradictory, unreliable, ambiguous, deceptive, or wrong. Intelligence is information that has been collected, integrated, evaluated, analyzed, and interpreted. Finished intelligence is the final product of the Intelligence Cycle ready to ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... broken relations; he cannot remain in Asia and continue a true Greek. Such is his conflict; in maintaining Family and State, he has been forced to sacrifice Family and State. Then when he has accomplished the deed of sacrifice, he must restore himself to what he has immolated. A hard task, a deeply contradictory process, whose end is, however, harmony; many will not be able to reach the latter stage, but will perish by the way. The Return is this great process of restoration ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... to him occupied by something which was not himself, like a woman constrained equally by remorse and passion. Perhaps she had in her heart another love which she alternately remembered and forgot. In a moment Henri was assailed by a thousand contradictory thoughts. This girl became a mystery for him; but as he contemplated her with the scientific attention of the blase man, famished for new pleasures, like that Eastern king who asked that a pleasure should be created for him,—a horrible thirst with which great souls ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... disciples of Shamai and Hillel increased in Israel, contention increased along with them, so much so, that the one law became as two laws (and these contradictory). ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... thing. For not only (as I understood) had Christianity the most flaming vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent for combining vices which seemed inconsistent with each other. It was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons. No sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too far to the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it was much too far to the west. No sooner had my indignation died down at its angular and aggressive squareness than I was ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... were in Vevey, rendered him moody. As is usual with the headstrong and selfish when they possess the power, others were made to pay for the fault that he alone had committed. His men were vexed with contradictory and useless orders; the inferior passengers were accused of constant neglect of his instructions, a fault which he did not hesitate to affirm had caused the bark to sail less swiftly than usual, and ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... of feral men, in the absence of contradictory evidence, seem adequate in support of Aristotle's point that social contacts are indispensable for human development. The story by Helen Keller, the talented and celebrated blind deaf-mute, of her emergence from the imprisonment of sense deprivation into the free ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... unusually excited and quarrelsome condition, and that Francois, the chief mate, was rapidly approaching a similar condition as he gulped down tumbler after tumbler of liquor. They were always argumentative and contradictory when drinking together, but to-night they were unusually so. At length Francois made some remark as to the extraordinary good fortune they had met with on this particular voyage, in having come so far without falling ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... that it was no easy matter to deceive them. He soon fell into despair, which he was careful to hide from such stern mentors as he imagined them to be; and the Southern temper that runs so easily through the whole gamut of mental dispositions, set him making the most contradictory resolutions. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... out of the fabulous era of Grecian history, we now enter upon a period when the crude fictions of more than mortal heroes begin to give place to the realities of human existence; but still the vague, disputed, and often contradictory annals on which we are obliged to rely shed only an uncertain light around us; and even what we can gather as the most reliable cannot be taken wholly ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... self-contradictory statement, arrests the attention in the initial sentence of an article. Although not always easy to frame, and hence not so often employed as it might be, a paradoxical expression is an excellent device for a writer ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... the means of obtaining information; for, no matter how imperfect and contradictory they may be, the truth may ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... dissensions arisen within her own ranks. Dominicans and Franciscans entering the field denounced their forerunners for having tolerated heathen rites and accepted heathen names for God. After prolonged discussions and contradictory decrees the final verdict went against the Jesuits. In this decision the Holy See seems not to have been ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... yards south of the centre of the Oxfords' objective. Here they waited for information and orders. It was still twilight and no certain information could be gained. Shots were now heard intermittently, and wounded men came back, telling, as wounded men will, contradictory stories. Some said that the Oxfords were wiped out; others that they had captured the trench. Two men were sent forward to reconnoitre, and came back to report that the position was critical. It was now 3.55 a.m.; the day was coming and the ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

... once "like a bird," is the genuine article. I happened to discover that it is of earlier date than Sir Boyle's day, having found, when rummaging in an old house among some Jacobite manuscripts, one from Robertson of Strowan, the warrior poet, in which he says about two contradictory military instructions, "It seems a difficult point for me to put both orders in execution, unless, as the man said, I can be in two places at once, like a bird." A few copies of these letters were printed for the use of the Abbotsford Club. This letter ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... the Seat of Government— that the Commissioners of the Customs and their numerous Retinue are to remove to the Town of Marblehead a Town contiguous to Salem and that this if the General shall think proper is to be a Garrisond Town. Reports are various and contradictory. ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... contradictory thoughts and emotions rushed madly through her mind. Absorbed in them, she had allowed time to slip by; perhaps, tired out with long excitement, she had actually closed her eyes and sunk into a troubled sleep, wherein quickly fleeting dreams seemed ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... of extension whatever was involved. However, as Mr Bailey further remarks that, "although Berkeley's doctrine about visible figures being neither plane not solid, is thus consistent with his assertion that they are internal feelings, it is in itself contradictory,"[34] we shall contribute a few remarks to show that while, on the one hand, the negation of extension is not required to vindicate the consistency of Berkeley's assertion, that visible objects are internal feelings, neither, on the other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... that she had to watch, poor thing! And, for that matter, Rose would probably have to do some watching on her own account. And, if the fact was there, why bother to keep up a contradictory fiction. So Rose asked ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... sleeping seven boys, the whole number masturbated frequently. The act was performed in bed, in the closets, and sometimes in the classrooms during lessons. Inquiry among my friends as to onanism in the boarding-schools to which they were sent, elicited somewhat contradictory answers concerning the frequency of the habit. Dr. ——, who went to a French school, told me that all the older boys had younger accomplices in mutual masturbation. He also spoke with experience of the prevalence of the practice in a well-known public school in the west of England. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... themselves to us in "antinomies," apparently contradictory pairs, pairs of poles, which, however, do not really contradict, or even limit, each other, but are only correlatives, the existence of the one making the existence of the other necessary, explaining each other, and giving ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... the Town Hall. When the tocsin rings, said a member of the Commune, the Convention ceases to exist. In other words, when the principal chooses to interfere, he supersedes his agent. The two notions of government are contradictory, and the bodies that incorporated them were naturally hostile. But their antagonism was ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... could have been guilty. The critics repose, I venture to think, mainly on a fallacy. We may style it the fallacy of "the analytical reader." The poet is expected to satisfy a minutely critical reader, a personage whom he could not foresee, and whom he did not address. Nor are "contradictory instances" examined—that is, as Blass has recently reminded his countrymen, Homer is put to a test which Goethe could not endure. No long fictitious narrative can ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... deeper impress on the character of their pupils. Others have had the courage to cling closely to hallowed methods built up on the wisdom and experience of the past, and have united with them all that was not contradictory in recent educational requirements. They may, thereby, have seemed to some waiting in sympathy with the present, and attaching too great value to the past. The test of time will probably show that they have ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... is demolished, by the declaration of M. d'Abbadie, who has just returned from Abyssinia, that certain tribes of Arabs and Abyssinians who do not use coffee can support greater fatigue than those who do. In presence of such very contradictory facts, who shall say which of the learned ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... ever, hardly knew how to act. At last he bowed to Philip, and begged that he would consider himself at liberty; "and," continued he to Krantz, "I shall be most happy at an immediate explanation of this affair, for everything appears so contradictory." ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... us? In order to persuade me that a being exists, or can exist, he must begin by telling me what this being is; in order to make me believe the existence or the possibility of such a being, he must tell me things about him which are not contradictory, and which do not destroy one another; finally, in order to convince me fully of the existence of this being, he must tell me things about him which I can comprehend, and prove to me that it is impossible that the being to whom he attributes ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... a king. Odd and preposterous notions, no doubt, and capable of much controversy, so far as the doctrine of race (if that be any way tenable) is concerned; but then the plain fact is that my Uncle Roland was as eccentric and contradictory a gentleman—as—as—why, as you and I are, if we once venture to think ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... would thus interpret Lord Roberts's delay and his contradictory orders to Lord Methuen, but it was rather galling not to be able ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... found the following despatches in some Northern paper, and I record them to show what contradictory reports will often find their way into the public ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... fleeing criminal, the search was wild and disorderly, so that if the Malay had left any trail beyond the ruins it would have been obliterated by trampling feet. Only one policeman was in the crowd, but others, summoned by telephone, were rapidly approaching from all directions. Unintelligent and contradictory rumors bewildered the police for a time, but they formed a long picket line covering an arc which stretched from North Beach to the new gas-works far ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... His eyes were opened to see things now as never before, for not as a skillful hunter, but as a seeker after peace, was he out in nature's solitudes. Everything around him seemed mysterious and contradictory. This teacher, nature, whose lessons he had come to learn, seemed to be in a very perverse mood, as if to impart just the reverse of what he would learn, and seemed herself to be destitute of the very things he had hoped she ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... to destroy others, unable to save themselves, the members of the two parties oppressed and were oppressed, murdered and were murdered, in their turn. No lucid interval occurred between the frantic paroxysms of two contradictory illusions. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... overcame him, the book fell from his hand, and he sighed aloud! Mr. Beckendorff started, and the Prince awoke. Vivian, confounded, and unable to overpower his emotions, uttered some hasty words, explanatory, apologetical, and contradictory, and retired. In his walk to the summer-house a man passed him. In spite of a great cloak, Vivian recognised him as their messenger and guide; and his ample mantle did not conceal his riding boots and the spurs which glistened ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... in question, but the reality of the miracles, and the sufficiency of the witnesses to establish them. What such objectors urge practically amounts to this: that we should believe in the actual occurrence of certain miracles contradictory to all experience, out of a mass of false miracles which are reported but never really took place, because some unknown persons in an ignorant and superstitious age, who give no evidence of personal knowledge, or of careful investigation, have written an account of them, ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... well-remembered winter of the King's execution, and the long frost, when he, Reuben, was last in London. His evidence was confused and confusing; and he drew upon himself much good-natured ridicule from the junior who opened the case. Out of various muddle-headed answers and contradictory statements the facts of Lord Fareham's unexpected appearance at the Manor Moat, his account of his lady's illness, and his hurried departure, carrying the young madam with him on horseback, were elicited, and the story of the ruse by which Mrs. Angela ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... more at hand; and pending the coming up of reinforcements Wellington, with rather a sanguine reliance on Ney's maintenance of inactivity, rode over to Brye and had a conversation with Bluecher. There are contradictory accounts of its tenor, and Gneisenau certainly seems to have formed the impression that the Duke gave a positive pledge of support. Mr. Ropes considers that, misled by the erroneous "Disposition," Wellington honestly ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... a dozen rounds of cartridges, to defend the court and jail. Some even had heard that a cannon had been placed in front of the court house, and trained on the Stockbridge road. On the other hand, it was asserted that the court would not try to sit at all. As now one, and now another, of these contradictory reports prevailed, ebullitions of courage and symptoms of panic alternated among the people. It was easy to see that they contemplated the undertaking, on which they were embarking, not without a good deal of nervousness. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... this, Babbalanja thus spoke:—"Doubtless, my lord Media, besides these petitions we hear, there are ten thousand contradictory prayers ascending to these idols. But methinks the gods will not jar the eternal progression of things, by any hints from below; even were it possible to satisfy ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... the deck engines became harder and harder. I got steam up in a boiler on deck, and another little engine starts hauling at the grapnel. I wonder if there ever was such a scene of confusion; Mr. Liddell and W—— and the captain all giving orders contradictory, etc., on the forecastle; D——, the foreman of our men, the mates, etc., following the example of our superiors; the ship's engine and boilers below, a 50-horse engine on deck, a boiler 14 feet long on deck beside ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... brother obeyed these contradictory commands in the way he judged most seemly—he removed the carcass of the half-sacked capon, and placed two goblets beside the stoup of Bourdeaux. At the same instant entered ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... When such self-contradictory "information" is placed before the public as the fruit of investigation, the question arises whether the Department of Labor is not one more link in that chain of appliances for confusing the voter which embraces a dozen State bureaus of irrelevant reformation created chiefly within ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... we could not endure this slavery, nor would I stay longer in the country, as the prince gave us one day a phirmaund for our good usage, with a grant of privileges, and countermand all the next by contradictory orders, in which proceedings there was neither honour nor good faith, and I could not answer for my continuing to reside among them. Asaph Khan said, he would speak to the king at night on the subject, in the presence of the prince, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... be altered to the dimensions of the bullocks; and, having to use the new ones for breaking in, they were much injured, even before we left Mr. Campbell's to commence our journey. The statements of what a bullock was able to carry were very contradictory; but in putting 250 lbs. upon them the animals were overloaded; and my experience has since shown me that they cannot, continually day after day, carry more than 150 lbs. for any distance. The difficulties which we met with for the first three weeks, were indeed ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... plain than it became after Mr. Lincoln's accession; for Buchanan had not the courage either to order a surrender, or to provoke real warfare by reinforcing the place. In vain did the unfortunate Major Anderson seek distinct instructions; the replies which he received were contradictory and more obscure than Delphic oracles. This unfair, vacillating, and contemptible conduct indicated the desire to lay upon him alone the whole responsibility of the situation, with a politic and selfish reservation ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... However contradictory this may appear, Mr Dennis and Gildon, in the character last cited, make it all plain, by assuring us, 'That he is a creature that reconciles all contradictions; he is a beast, and a man; a Whig, and ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... the fire a little, lost in many contradictory feelings. There was in her a strange sense as of some long strain slowly giving way, the quiet melting of some old hardness. Ever since that autumn time when, after their return from Benet's Park, her husband's chivalry and delicacy of feeling had given back ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... when Indian deities are most personal, as in the Vishnuite sects, it will be generally found that their relations to the world and the soul are not those of the Christian God. It is because the conception of superhuman existence is so different in Europe and Asia that Asiatic religions often seem contradictory or corrupt: Buddhism and Jainism, which we describe as atheistic, and the colourless respectable religion of educated Chinese, become in ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... absentee landlord,—was a shrewd, hard-bitten, choleric old fellow, of the shape, colour, and consistence of a red brick; one of those English types which Mr. Emerson has so well hit off in his rather confused and contradictory "Traits:"— ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... of Mishinimackinawgoes by Seneca Indians of New York happened probably more than five or six hundred years ago. I could say much more which would be contradictory of other writers of the history of the Indians in this country. Even in the history of the United States I think there are some mistakes concerning the accounts of the Indians, particularly the accounts of our brave Tecumseh, as it is claimed that he was killed by a soldier named ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird

... pronouncing upon that supposed lie of Raleigh's, had not taken the trouble to find out what the words mean. In their virtuous haste to prove him a liar, they have overlooked the fact that the words, as they stand, are unintelligible, and the argument self-contradictory. He wants to prove, we suppose, that he does not go to sea for fear of being forced to marry Miss Throgmorton. It is, at least, an unexpected method of so doing in a shrewd man like Raleigh, to say that he wishes to marry no one at all. 'Don't think that I run away for fear of ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... dollars, and she had not as many hundreds. All this strangely conflicted with Betts' preconceived opinion of a French woman's selfishness, and, while he was disposed to believe his adored perfection, he almost feared it was a trick. Of such contradictory materials is the ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... on this subject are not only improbable, but they are contradictory to the little historical testimony we possess. Herodotus informs us in Euterpe that except the province of Thebes, all Egypt, that is to say, the whole of the Delta and of middle Egypt extending to Hemopolis Magna in N. L. 27 degrees 45 minutes, was originally a morass. This morass was doubtless ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... the duties is deemed to be the most worthy of being performed? The diverse modes of duty, we see, are contradictory. Some say that (it remains) after the body (is destroyed). Others say that it does not exist. Some say that everything is doubtful. Others have no doubts.[146] Some say that the eternal (principle) is not eternal. Some say that it exists, and some that it exists not. Some say it is of one form, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... derived from the charts and journals of the persons who have been employed at various times in ascertaining the limits of that empire; and these are for the most part so imperfect, so confused, and contradictory, that it is not easy to form any distinct idea of their pretended, much less to collect the amount of their real discoveries. It is on this account, that the extent and form of the peninsula, inhabited by the Tschutski, still remains a point on which the Russian ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... spending a few hours, after the daily toil was over, in pleasant conversation with women, but this was really too much. And moreover, he had to agree to everything they said, for whenever he attempted to express a contradictory opinion, they were down on him ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... bitterness, others Susans all humility and self-reproach. Any spectator would have been puzzled by this shifting of personality. Susan herself was completely confused. She sought for her real self among this multitude so contradictory. Each successive one seemed the reality; yet none persisted. When we look in at our own souls, it is like looking into a many-sided room lined with mirrors. We see reflections—re-reflections—views at all angles—but ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... compelled to render opposite judgment in a case brought before them, declaring the citizen of Massachusetts bound to oppose, and of Virginia to support either of these laws, as their respective States had pronounced contradictory judgments upon them? Suppose Massachusetts had not only declared the last war unconstitutional, but had passed an ordinance requiring her citizens to resist the war, to prostrate and oppose the armies of the Republic, and to aid a tyrant's myrmidons ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... labour of the Gospel ministry, it does not follow that you are compelled to construe that conception in the same way wherever it occurs, although the circumstances manifestly render the application incongruous and contradictory. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... immediately returned and rode most part of the night on our way back. We slept a few hours at Brookhill and had interviews next morning with men who, on the previous day, were in high heart and hopes. We at once saw the effect that delay and indecision had produced on their minds. Reports, the most contradictory and false, respecting what Mr. O'Brien proposed and stated, had found their way among them, and it took hours to reassure them. They again promised us to be ready, however, and we proceeded across Slievenamon. On our journey we had interviews with ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... in what aspect she would appear, she whose nature seemed to him so varied and contradictory, and whose face was the index to these changing phases. She came in quietly, a young girl, pale, inquiring, yet saying no word; but there was a sparkle in her gaze that made the blood leap for a ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... education given to the sentiments, by laying the foundation of domestic existence upon a relation contradictory to the first principles of social justice, must, from the very nature of man, have a perverting influence of such magnitude, that it is hardly possible with our present experience to raise our imaginations to the conception of so great a change ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... the door with a letter to the commons. The loudest acclamations were excited by this intelligence. Granville was called in; the letter, accompanied with a declaration, greedily read: without one moment's delay, and without a contradictory vote, a committee was appointed to prepare an answer: and in order to spread the same satisfaction throughout the kingdom, it was voted that the letter and declaration should immediately ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... of a contradictory relation of science to faith. But the statement is a misnomer. True faith is the lushest science, even the knowledge of God. Putting fishes or birds, shells or flowers, stones or stars, in a circle or a row is a lower science than the sublime intercommunication ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... now that the nights on the moon would always be intensely cold, and I should like to know whether there is any really reliable information respecting the temperature of the lunar days and nights. I have seen so many contradictory theories on the subject that I scarcely know ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... been half-past eleven when Miss Leigh had professed herself to Lord Bromley as too ill and tired to dream of dancing. Looking the consternation she felt at this contradictory piece of evidence, she remained silent, not ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... rather mixed in English politics, what with Asquith's contradictory statements about conscription, Carson resigning and Winston flinging up politics for the Army. His resignation is creditable to Winston, and at a moment like this he would naturally want to do his bit at the Front. Everybody in the cavalry that ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... opposites can coexist, we are told that many different qualities inhere in a flower or a tree or in any other concrete object, and that any conception of space or matter or time involves the two contradictory attributes of divisibility and continuousness. We may ponder over the thought of number, reminding ourselves that every unit both implies and denies the existence of every other, and that the one is many—a sum of fractions, and the many one—a sum of units. We may be reminded that in nature there ...
— Sophist • Plato

... half tempted, by the wild and excited eye of her companion, not withstanding all the contradictory evidence which surrounded him, to believe she was addressing one of the very rovers in question. "The book was lent me by a brave seaman, who holds himself in readiness to repress their depredations; and while reading of so much wickedness, I endeavor to recall the devotion of those who risk their ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... insanity, are generally the most innocent and harmless people; who are then liable to accuse themselves of the greatest imaginary crimes, and have so much intellectual cowardice, that they dare not reason about those things, which they are directed by their priests to believe, however contradictory to human apprehension, or derogatory to the great Creator of all things. The maniacal hallucination at length becomes so painful, that the poor insane flies from life to ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... was in the North, and amid the contradictory intelligence which daily came in, we find some people who, according to Pepys, spread reports that Lambert was gaining ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... had elapsed before Constable F 18, the point policeman at the corner of Marylebone Road, arrived on the scene, and, having first of all whistled for any of his comrades on the beat, began to grope his way about in the fog, more confused than effectually assisted by contradictory directions from the inhabitants of the houses close by, who were nearly falling out of the upper windows as they ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... territory lying between New Spain and Newfoundland, which newly acquired territory was thenceforth designated Norumbega or New France. All such original annexations, whether pretended or real, were in the circumstances extremely ill-defined; and maps of the time were frequently vague, confusing, and contradictory. Cartier, on his way to sow the seeds of a French Empire in North America, sailed past the coast (1534), and on his second voyage (1535) foregathered with Roberval in the roadstead of St. John's. Still earlier, in 1527, a voyage was made to the island by John Rut, with ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... fifteen of them at a stretch—which I can compass also—then he will talk Iliads of adventures even better than his printed ones. He cannot abide those amateur pedestrians who saunter, and in his chair he is given to groan and be contradictory. But on Newmarket Heath, in Rougham Woods, he is at home, and specially when he meets with a thorough vagabond like your ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... against the river, until he was a bare few miles north of the railroad and thirty miles south of the point farthest north he had been able to reach. Here he seems to have held fast, for further reports of fighting on the Danube front become vague and contradictory. At any rate, the Russo-Rumanian advance stopped short of victory, as the recapture of the Cernavoda-Constanza railroad would have been. That Mackensen's retreat may have been voluntary, to encourage the enemy to advance ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... ornamented for ornament's sake. His pictures gave beauty, but they were employed not to give beauty but clearness. He was thus saved from mixed metaphors, the common fault of imaginative writings which are directed to no end, and thus are liable to become first lawless, then false, finally self-contradictory and absurd. The massive Norman pillars of Durham Cathedral are marred by the attempt which some architect has made to give them grace and beauty by adding ornamentation. Rarely if ever did Mr. Beecher fall into the error of thus mixing in an incongruous ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... have succeeded tolerably in his legal lucubrations; for, in 1792, he was called to the bar as an advocate. He established himself in good style in Edinburgh, but had little practice; though the accounts of his progress are somewhat contradictory. That he passed much of his time in acquiring other than professional knowledge is more certain, though he rarely attempted composition. Mr. Chambers, with all his diligence and advantages for research, (and they are very meritorious and considerable,) "has not been able to detect any fugitive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various

... noble Roman, that if they chance at any time to be without company they are like a becalmed ship; they never move but by the wind of other men's breath, and have no oars of their own to steer withal. It is very fantastical and contradictory in human nature, that men should love themselves above all the rest of the world, and yet never endure to be with themselves. When they are in love with a mistress, all other persons are importunate and burdensome to them. "Tecum ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... which the situation was greatly confused through the vagueness and contradictory character of the official statements, but in December, 1916, the British stormed El Arish and a few days later severely defeated the Turks at Maghdabah, about sixty miles to the south on the same ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... present themselves in any attempt to describe the architecture still continue to beset us; such earlier drawings as we have are contradictory and rude to a degree.[38] The NAVE was Norman, rebuilt to a great extent after the fire of 1137. The aisles had the usual round-headed windows, with the unusual (for England) circular windows above. There were flat buttresses; but I must reject the flying-buttresses of some restorers. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... sound again!' The 'complainant' did not even return thanks for this medical counsel, but sipped his toddy in silence, and soon after left the room, 'uttering never a word.' . . . THERE have been various surmises, and sundry contradictory statements, in relation to the work superscribed 'Count D'Orsay on Etiquette,' which we noticed at some length in our December issue. Mr. WILLIS, of the 'New Mirror' weekly journal, seems to question its having been written ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... man to think of the Tannhauser, after hearing these five contradictory opinions? For my own part I rather thought the cigars were a trifle ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various

... supreme skill and valour of the Germans in repelling such an attack. Somehow it must be made a common and obvious collapse for England; and yet a daring and unexpected triumph for Germany. In trying to express these contradictory conceptions simultaneously, he got rather mixed. Therefore he bade Germania fill all her vales and mountains with the dying agonies of this almost invisible earwig; and let the impure blood of this cockroach redden the Rhine down to ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton

... conception of it, some of the profoundest thinkers, and some of the holiest spirits among mankind, have believed in this doctrine—have clung to it as a matter of life or death. Let them be assured of this, that whether the doctrine be true or false, it is not necessarily a doctrine self-contradictory. Let them be assured of this, in all modesty, that such men never could have held it unless there was latent in the doctrine a deep ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... chilling displeasure. Then Barbara rode on with the two envoys, in advance of the procession, at the swiftest trot. Her tongue, just now so voluble, seemed paralyzed. The violent throbbing of her heart fairly stopped her breath. A throng of contradictory thoughts and feelings filled her soul and mind. She was conscious of one thing only. A great, decisive event was imminent, and the most ardent wish her heart had ever cherished was approaching ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... information is unfortunately fragmentary and sometimes contradictory. We learn from Dr Howitt, for example, that a pirrauru is always a brother's wife or a wife's sister (they are usually the same), and the relation arises through the exchange by brothers of their wives[161]. But on the next page we learn that ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... metallic salts; the mud of which being brought up from the bottom, has been serviceable in many diseases. Wherefore they say, it is not just to have recourse to a supernatural power for effects, which may be produced by the ordinary course of nature. But as far as I am able to judge of these contradictory opinions, a middle way between them seems to me to ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead

... for protection and adornment. That of a book involves two other demands mutually so contradictory that bookbinding has always offered a most attractive challenge to the skill of the handicraftsman. The first demand is that the book when closed shall form a well-squared and virtually solid block, like the rectangle of wood from which its first predecessors ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... conduct of our priests in many other points, makes freethinking unavoidable; for some of them own, that the doctrines of the Church are contradictory to one another, as well as to reason; which I thus prove: Dr. Sacheverell says in his speech at his trial, That by abandoning passive obedience we must render ourselves the most inconsistent Church in the world: Now 'tis plain, that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... that flashed through Justine's mind as she reached the landing; but the next moment it gave way to a contradictory feeling. Westy Gaines was not alone in the hall. From under the stairway rose the voices of a group ensconced in that popular retreat about a chess-board; and as Justine reached the last turn of the stairs she perceived ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... follow from God's failure to overcome any "inexorable laws and indestructible properties of matter," but is implied in the inexorable laws of thought—in that eternal right reason which makes it impossible for Deity to do what is self-contradictory or absurd. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... There are endless diversities in the opinions of men. We often see not only different courts but the judges of the came court differing from each other. To avoid the confusion which would unavoidably result from the contradictory decisions of a number of independent judicatories, all nations have found it necessary to establish one court paramount to the rest, possessing a general superintendence, and authorized to settle and declare in the last resort a uniform ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... languid, evasive, for moments recalcitrant to Russian suggestions; a lost imbecile,—forget him, with or without a tear. He has still a good deal of so-called gallantry on his hands; flies to his harem when outside things go contradictory. [Hermann, v. 402, &c.] Think of malign Journalists printing this bit of Letter at one time, to do him ill in a certain quarter: "Oh, come to me, my Princess! Dearer than all Empresses:—imperial charms, what were they to thine for a heart that has—" with more of the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... are frequently disproved by facts; and themselves admit the existence of unreliable spirits, which communicate like them. They give contradictory responses, and mutually criminate each other; but their reality is not disproved by any discrepancy, or want of truthfulness in their responses; for if they are spirits, none but unclean spirits would respond in a ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... asseveration that the rank of the Holy See was derived from the gift of Christ, and that the Church's solidity as a fabric consisted in it, and equally the maintenance of the Catholic religion, established the contradictory of that 28th canon, and enforced for ever the subordination of the see which Acacius sought to exalt. At the same time it pointed out the distinction between the See of Peter and all other sees: the distinction that in the case of every other bishop the spiritual life of the bishop, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... poets, Hesiod, Virgil, and Ovid, in proof that the heathen poets taught the unity of the Supreme Deity, proceeds to show that the better pagan philosophers, also, agree with them in this. "Aristotle," he says, "although he disagrees with himself, and says many things that are self-contradictory, yet testifies that one Supreme Mind rules over the world. Plato, who is regarded as the wisest philosopher of them all, plainly and openly defends the doctrine of a divine monarchy, and denominates the Supreme ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... spheres, claim a monopoly of employment for their members, to the exclusion of those who do not belong to their associations. Logic has something, perhaps not much, to do with political action, and it is almost inconceivable that a party can go on for long holding these two contradictory opinions. Which of them will be abandoned, the future only ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... quietly walking away with their rifles slung behind them, in spite of a line of sentries placed across the road and the efforts of their officers. Cuthbert questioned some of the men, as they came along, as to what had happened, but the most contradictory answers were given. They had been fired upon from Fort Valerien; they had been attacked from Courbevoie; they had been betrayed; they had been sent out without any cannon: ammunition was short; they were not going to stay to be shot down; they were going to the ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty



Words linked to "Contradictory" :   contradict, self-contradictory, contradictoriness, at odds, logical relation, mutually exclusive, antonymous, unsupportive, inconsistent, incompatible



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