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More "Contradiction" Quotes from Famous Books



... appeal into his voice; but a sly contradiction of it showed faintly in his face, a hint that he took a crafty pleasure in dragging into the light the depravity he had kept in ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... of suspending them, so that they cannot descend and proceed to what constitutes that love?" The argument was next taken up by those who were in cold and in heat; in cold towards their wives, and in heat towards the sex; and they said, "What is the chaste love of the sex? Is it not a contradiction in terms to talk of such a love? If chastity be predicated of the love of the sex, is not this destroying the very thing of which it is predicated? How can the chaste love of the sex be the sweetest of all loves, when chastity ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... playfulness is, like the gravity of the other, thoroughly unpoetical. To string together at will fantastical images is not to travel into the realm of the ideal; and the imitative reproduction of the actual cannot be called the representation of nature. Both requisites stand so little in contradiction to each other that they are rather one and the same thing; that art is only true insomuch as it altogether forsakes the actual, and becomes purely ideal. Nature herself is an idea of the mind, and is never presented to the senses. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... who came here with Captain Barker, started in a direction to Swan Port (Swan River) with a party of men, and in eleven days went over at least two hundred miles of ground. He says, without fear of contradiction in future, that there is far greater proportion of good land in this direction than in any other part of Australia that he had been in, and also wood of large growth, with innumerable rivers. He ascended ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... passion to Greek temperance; yet Gothic rigidity, [Greek: stasis] of [Greek: ekstasis], to Greek action and [Greek: eleutheria]. You see how doubly, how intimately, opposed the ideas are; yet how difficult to explain without apparent contradiction. ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin

... perfectly familiar; that both Dante and the husband of Beatrice were prominent men; and that Boccaccio can have had no motive for making a statement which, if untrue, he must have known to be so. Further, if the statement had been untrue, it would surely have been contradicted, and some trace of the contradiction would have been found. But, on the contrary, it seems to have been accepted from the first. It is repeated by Boccaccio's younger contemporary and disciple Benvenuto of Imola, who himself lived for some time in Florence, before all those who would be able from their own recollection to confirm ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... As if in contradiction, a bright tongue of flame darted up between the sticks, and the fire began chattering and snapping defiance at me. Now, if there's anything which would provoke a saint, it is to be jeered and snapped at in that way by a man's own fire. It's an unbearable impertinence. I threw out my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... Buonaparte was not obstinate in his own opinion with men of science about those things of which he was ignorant; but he would bear no contradiction in tactics ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... a frank confession! And what a contradiction you are to yourself! For did you not send word by that Irish monkey that you were 'too busy to come'? And yet you dress yourself in white, with red roses, for ME! And you come after all! Capricious child! Oh Senora Soriso, ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... themselves into your arms, bit by bit, recognize your kingship alone as possible, and look to nothing but it for protection, prop, or stay. Nevertheless, sir, that your Majesty may not regard me as a spirit of contradiction for having found nothing good in all these proposals made to you by these great negotiators, I will add to my suggestions just one thing; if a bit of Catholicism were quite agreeable to you, if it were properly embraced and accepted accordingly, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... On no occasion was Annixter prepared to accept another man's opinion without reserve. In conversation with him, it was almost impossible to make any direct statement, however trivial, that he would accept without either modification or open contradiction. He had a passion for violent discussion. He would argue upon every subject in the range of human knowledge, from astronomy to the tariff, from the doctrine of predestination to the height of a horse. Never would he admit himself to be mistaken; when cornered, he would ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... lois, parce que sur ce terrain il a plus de chance d'arriver a des resultats certains. II faut en consequence proceder a l'interrogatoire des temoins. 5. L'histoire racontee, dans les livres des Juges et de Samuel, et meme en partie celle comprise dans les livres des Rois, est en contradiction avec des lois dites mosaiques; donc celles-ci etaient inconnues a l'epoque de la redaction de ces livres, a plus forte raison elles n'ont pas existe dans les temps qui y vent decrits. 6. Les prophetes du 8e et du 7e siecle ne savent rien du code mosaique. 7. Jeremie est le premier prophete ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... large type, and without a word of contradiction or even doubt, in a biography of Mr. Dickens put forth by Mr. Hotten: "Dr. Shelton McKenzie, in the American Round Table, relates this anecdote of Oliver Twist: In London I was intimate with the brothers ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... sentence," and pronounced it in a conditional form; that is, "such compensation was due, if the wrong be proved," and the wrong had to be proved or disclaimed by six or twelve persons confirming or denying the fact by oath; ordeal being resorted to in case of contradiction between the two sets of jurors. Such procedure, which remained in force for more than two thousand years in succession, speaks volumes for itself; it shows how close were the bonds between all members of the community. Moreover, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... pugnacity. I have witnessed instances of his care to avoid wounding feelings needlessly. He never kept back his opinions which, on some points, were shallow and even absurd; and when his antagonist was as persistently positive as himself, he was apt to be over vehement in contradiction. I have heard Mr. Murray say that once in a dispute with Dr. Whewell at a dinner the language on both sides grew so ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... by Murat (whose history of the United States is a very obscure work) is contrary to evidence North or South. Regular nurseries were built only on a few large plantations. The arguments in favor of slavery on pages nine and ten are stated without qualification or contradiction. I deeply regret that a Journal of Negro History should admit an article so full of statements both untrue and dangerous to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... was the fault of your instructors. But why have you not more improved since you have long had the opportunity from our example? You see I always believe your stories. That is, I never contradict them. Why do you not believe mine?' Contradiction, or a direct denial of the truth of what another says, is among the Indians deemed extremely rude. Only great superiority, as of a father to a child, or of an old counsellor to some boy, can excuse it. Alaquippy and the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... lahks that the Company has to pay to the Nawab, is that a trifle? Yes, my dear fellow, for I should like it to have to pay still more, to teach it how to leave this Factory, which is, beyond contradiction, the finest of its settlements, denuded of soldiers and munitions of war, so that it is not possible for ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill

... bread and wine; or, in other words, that the substance of the bread remained, but the body of Christ was inherent in it, so that both the substance of the bread and of the body and blood of Christ was there also. This was called the doctrine of Consubstantiation, in contradiction ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... in all writings, and especially in the sacred books, between real and apparent contradictions. Venturous critics have supposed a contradiction existed in that passage of Scripture which narrates how Moses changed all the waters of Egypt into blood, and how immediately afterwards the magicians of Pharaoh did the same thing, the book of Exodus allowing no ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Prince took no notice. When Ookooma came near my chair, I whispered to him, "Ya weetee," (you are drunk;) he turned round, and affecting to be angry, called out, "Weetee nang," (I am not drunk) in a voice and manner which were in direct contradiction to his assertion: his subsequent behaviour, however, was so correct and sedate when the feast broke up, and all were again upon duty, that he was probably merely pretending to be tipsy, in order to suit what was considered to be the humour ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... it. Perhaps God did not make it. For God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good: and that pit cannot be very good; for all good things are orderly, and in shape; and in that pit is no shape, no order, nothing but contradiction and confusion. When a man is in that pit, it will seem to him as if he were alone in the world, and longing above all things for company; and yet he will hate to have any one to speak to him, and wrap himself up in himself to brood over his own misery. When he is in that pit he shall ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... ourselves are: (1) The maintenance of the independence of the Republic, (2) the securing of equal rights, and (3) the redress of grievances. This brief but comprehensive programme has never been lost sight of, and I think we may challenge contradiction fearlessly when we assert that we have constitutionally, respectfully, and steadily prosecuted our purpose. Last year you will remember a respectful petition, praying for the franchise, signed by 13,000 ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... appellation of the White Rose of England. The Flemings, moved by the authority which Margaret, both from her rank and personal character, enjoyed among them, readily adopted the fiction of Perkin's royal descent: no surmise of his true birth was as yet heard of little contradiction was made to the prevailing opinion: and the English, from their great communication with the Low Countries, were every day more and more prepossessed in favor of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... not believe that God will plunge any of his children into everlasting woe. Such a thought of God is a contradiction of his Fatherhood. He is leading us all, by different ways, towards the pure and holy life for which ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant

... York, and fixed it at 122,399 English yards. The attention of the world thus once awakened, Huygens and Cassini applied themselves to ascertain the figure of the earth. The first experiments of the French savans were in contradiction to Newton's theory of the flattening of the poles; but the controversy was the means of exciting new interest. The eyes of the scientific world were turned more intently on the subject. New experiments ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... of Morgan bring, moreover, other interesting facts to light. Although the "pairing family" of the Iroquois starts in insolvable contradiction with the terms of consanguinity in use among them, it turns out that, as late as the first half of the 19th Century, there existed on the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) a family-form that actually tallied with that which, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... said without fear of contradiction that the National Suffrage Conventions will go down in history as the most notable held by women during the present age, excepting, of course, those of an international nature. The lofty character of their demands, the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... understand the sensations of people who had indulged too freely in some sort of drug. He had temporarily lost the power to feel. Here was Sylvia, a self-confessed wanton—and yet here was Sylvia as deeply intrenched in his heart as ever. This was a monstrous contradiction. One of these things must be a fact, the other ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... his officer, "thou hast spoken like an angel sent down to examine men's bosoms: that man, Agelastes, is a contradiction, such as earth has seldom witnessed. Possessing all that wisdom which in former times united the sages of this nation with the gods themselves, Agelastes has the same cunning as the elder Brutus, who disguised ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... contrary, to try and merit your esteem—I will only say, that I am confident you would not have wrote such a letter. Nothing, I flatter myself, in my conduct, ought to have drawn ridicule on my character from the commodore's pen; and you have borne the handsomest testimony of it, in contradiction to his. I thought then, as I did before the action, and do now, that it is not the interest of our countries to injure each other. I am sorry that I was forced to write you so unpleasant a letter; but, for the future, I trust that none but pleasant ones will pass between us: for, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... one who did not respect his supremacy, but courageously opposed him, often without any further motive than that of contradiction. She was the only girl of the family, and the favorite; and she took advantage of her position. Sometimes it looked as though Stolpe would be driven to extremities; as though he longed to pulverize her in his wrath; but he always gave ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... 'is ease there, seemingly, as to the manner born. Looks like he does any'ow, the way 'e's behaving of hisself now.—So long, bo'sun," he added jauntily. "I'm called from yer side to descend the companion ong route for higher spheres. Sounds like a contradiction that, but ain't so.—See you again when the docks 'as quitted this fond old floating 'earse of ours and took themselves back to their 'ereditary marble 'alls ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... Socrates scorned to contradict. The philosopher's friends begged him to use his eloquence to defend himself and confound his accusers; but he calmly refused, saying, "My whole life and teaching is the only contradiction, and the best defense I ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... were times, he knew, when it seemed as if a demon possessed him and drove him to wound even those who loved him and whom he loved—times when their affection only roused in him some hideous spirit of sullen contradiction. ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... the lessons he had lately learned from destiny. Already, mindful of the promise he had made de Gery, he exhibited a certain contemptuous coldness for the hungry herd that fawned servilely about his heels, and seemed to have adopted deliberately a system of peremptory contradiction. He called the Marquis de Bois-l'Hery "my good fellow," sharply imposed silence on the Governor, whose enthusiasm was becoming scandalous, and was inwardly making a solemn vow that he would rid himself as speedily as possible of all that begging, compromising horde of bohemians, when an ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... thing to serve the purposes of a doctrinal idea, and to make it mean something essentially opposite, when that idea is not involved? Does anyone imagine that the translators would have introduced this contradiction, and have translated the Greek of Mark xiii. 29, as they have done, unless they had gone to this text with the preconceived idea that a certain sin can never be forgiven, and therefore that the passage must be strained and contorted to endorse ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... gun was doing, and ordered a captain of voltigeurs to report to him with another gun. "I could not tell the general," says Grant, "that there was not room enough in the steeple for another gun, because he probably would have looked upon such a statement as a contradiction from a second lieutenant. I took the captain with me, but ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen

... lightly—"I said I felt 'disposed' to like him! But that's only in the spirit of contradiction, because he detests ME! And it's a sort of duel between us of sheer intellectuality, because he is trying to discover—in the usual slow, laborious, calculating methods of man—the very thing I HAVE discovered! He's on the verge—But ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... was most anxious. He wrote, you know, to me from Malta, when the account of his conversion first appeared, to take all necessary steps to contradict the announcement, and counteract its consequences. He gave me carte blanche, and was anxious to know precisely what I had done. I told him that a mere contradiction, anonymous, or from a third person, however unqualified its language, would have no effect in the face of a detailed narrative, like that in all the papers, of his walking in procession and holding a lighted taper, and all that sort of thing. What I did was this. I ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... the utterly fugitive, and because each one is liable to influence by every condition of time, place, and circumstance, that the chemist's theory is opposed as often to the painter's practice as the experience of artists themselves varies. This may explain the charges of inconsistency and contradiction which have been brought against writers on pigments, faults that lie rather with the nature of the subject than ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... By some strange contradiction, ever since the doors are open to every one there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When, twelve years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the "Medusa" of Gericault, the "Massacre of Scio" by Delacroix, the "Baptism ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac

... Another contradiction in the book: in one gospel the condition of salvation is "whosoever believeth shall not be damned," and in another we are promised that if we forgive our enemies God will forgive us—and there's sense in this last promise. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... the presence of the ruthless ruler through Enkidu. The "Man of Anu" formed by Aruru as a deliverer is confused in the course of the growth of the Epic with Enkidu, the offspring of Ninib, and in this way we obtain the strange contradiction of Enkidu and Gilgamesh appearing first as bitter rivals and then as close and inseparable friends. It is of the nature of Epic compositions everywhere to eliminate unnecessary figures by concentrating ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous

... that the fte passed off well, our promenade amongst the lamps in the garden was stupid enough. I tried to stir the Maids of Honour up a little, but it was hard work even to make them laugh, and the people looked glum, being as it were a sort of contradiction to the illuminated garden. The last day was a day of repose. The next day being Saturday, the Imperial Family received us to take leave, and nothing could be more truly kind and affectionate in manner than they all were to me. I say to me, for I know not what was said to others, ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... Clarence Colfax) in his Indian buckskins. Eugenie went as Marie Antoinette. Tall Maude Catherwood was most imposing as Rebecca; and her brother George made a towering Friar Tuck, Even little fifteen-year-old Spencer Catherwood, the contradiction of the family, was there. He went as the lieutenant Napoleon, walking about with his hands behind his back and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... fear of successful contradiction that there never was and never will be such a case unless it is made so by the worst sort ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... me to remain thus stretched in the darkness. I struck a match, and the little yellow-papered room frightened me. I lighted a cigarette, and, as always happens, when one turns in a circle of inextricable contradiction, I began to smoke. I smoked cigarette after cigarette to dull my senses, that I might not see my contradictions. All night I did not sleep, and at five o'clock, when it was not yet light, I decided that I could stand this strain no longer, ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... surprise at this message, on which Socrates asks, "Is not Evenus a philosopher?" and on the question being answered in the affirmative, he says that he or any philosopher would be willing to die, though perhaps he would not commit violence on himself. This, again, seems a contradiction to Simmias; but Socrates explains it by showing that our souls are placed in the body by God, and may not leave it without his permission. Whereupon Cebes objects that in that case foolish men only would wish to die, and ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato

... or can be made. This is an established truth. The universe, therefore, which is God's image, and consequently full of God, could be created only in God from God; for God is Esse itself, and from Esse must be whatever is. To create what is, from nothing which is not, is an utter contradiction. But still, that which is created in God from God is not continuous from Him; for God is Esse in itself, and in created things there is not any Esse in itself. If there were in created things any Esse in itself, this would be continuous from God, and that which is continuous from ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg

... the philosopher at his word. "Greatness once and forever has done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson. "Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good." "Every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good,"—popularity, for instance. "The characteristic of heroism is persistency." "When you have ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... instructions "as vague and general as possible," the simple direction to confer "upon the subject to which it relates"; but his chief refused the suggestion, and wrote the following instruction, which carried a palpable contradiction on ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... expression, aware of his reader, and anything but the naif utterer of unsophisticated emotion. To recall this will save us from much perplexity in the interpretation of his words, and will clear up many an apparent contradiction in his evidence ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... therapeutics, expresses the opinion that musical sounds received by the auditory nerve, produce reflex action upon the sympathetic system, stimulating or depressing the vaso-motor nerves, and thus influencing the bodily nutrition. He maintains, without fear of contradiction, that certain mental conditions are benefited by suitable musical harmonies. Muscle-fatigue is overcome by stimulating melodies, as is strikingly exemplified in the effect of inspiring martial strains upon wearied troops on the march. And it appears to be an established ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... no religion. That this opinion is still prevalent at the present day is undeniable,—philosophers and physicians are believed to be atheists and non-religionists,—while, at the same time, by that strange contradiction that is so common, philosophers and physicians are the known and recognized sources of religions, such is the intimate relation existing between physical and moral hygiene. Confucius, the contemporary of Pythagoras, whose religion was said ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... also try to apply it first to one instance, and then to another to see how it will work. It seems to me that it is emphatically not a case for instant execution, by conviction of intrinsic absurdity or of self-contradiction, or by caricature of what it would look like if reduced to skeleton shape. Humanism is in fact much more like one of those secular changes that come upon public opinion overnight, as it were, borne upon tides 'too deep for sound or foam,' that survive ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... his mind with his usual blunt directness. He had been a good deal nettled at the minister's attitude, for, instead of seconding his propositions, Dr. Morrison had sat with a faraway, indifferent look, as if the pending discussion was entirely out of his range of interest. John could have borne contradiction better. An argument would have gratified him. But to have the speech and statistics which he had so carefully prepared fall on the minister's ear without provoking any response was a great trial of his patience. He was inwardly very ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... ideas by piecing together a few words which at the time had appeared to me unintelligible, but which I had remembered. God, in his eyes, was the order of nature, from which all things proceed, and he would not brook contradiction upon this point. He loved humanity as representing reason, and he hated superstition as the negation of reason. Although he had not the poetic afflatus which the nineteenth century has given to these great truths, System, I feel sure, had very high and ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... Leibnitz, and to most others who have devoted their attention to the origin of evil. On the one hand, exaggerated views concerning the divine agency, or equally extravagant notions on the other, respecting the agency of man, have frequently converted a seeming into a real contradiction. In general, the work of God has been conceived in such a relation to the powers of man, as to make the latter entirely disappear; or else the power of man has been represented as occupying so exalted and independent a position, as to exclude the Almighty from his rightful dominion ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... gave such activity to our motions. At a hasty glance it might be supposed we were merrily occupied, there was so much alacrity in the bustle we made; but the bent and silent heads offered a strange contradiction to the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... economy the government of Ireland is a form of Pantheism, with the Chief Secretary as underlying principle. He is the source of everything, good and evil, light and darkness, benignity and malignity, with the unfortunate result that he is in perpetual contradiction with himself. As we know, the equilibrium of modern governments is maintained by mutual strain between the various ministers. Sometimes, as in the case of Lord Randolph Churchill, a strong personality, moved by a new idea, tears the structure ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... to infect the Minds of Men, and dispose them to Lewd and Dissolute Practices. And therefore, says he, I do not see how any Person pretending to Sobriety and Virtue, and especially to the pure and holy Religion of our Blessed Saviour; can, without great Guilt and open Contradiction to his Holy Profession, be present at such Lewd and Immodest Plays, much less frequent them, as too many do, who would yet take it very ill to be shut out of the Communion of Christians, as they would most certainly have been in the first and purest ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous

... melancholy proof of the instability of all sublunary things, and the vanity of all our hopes of lasting fame; for who can expect his name will live to posterity, when even the names of mighty islands are thus soon lost in contradiction and uncertainty! ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... partial admission of truth and the maimed relation of facts; the bold assertion of deliberate falsehoods; the deceptive headlines—and the people live on headlines; the insinuating title which is often in flagrant contradiction to the dispatch it underlines:—these are a few of its various strategies of attack. "The Pope and the War," "Quebec and the War," "The Guelph Novitiate Incident," are recent instances of ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... Babylonian Chronicle is a real, if somewhat crude history. In fact, it can be said without fear of contradiction that it is the best historical production of any cuneiform people. Our present copy is dated in the twenty second year of Darius I of Persia, 500 B.C., but, as it was copied and revised from an earlier exemplar, ...
— Assyrian Historiography • Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead

... improper resentment, or by an ill-judged opposition. When cooled, and in his usual temper, the man of understanding, if he has been wrong, will suggest to himself all that could be urged against him. The man of good nature will, unupbraided, own his error. Immediate contradiction is, therefore, wholly unserviceable, and highly imprudent; an after repetition is equally unnecessary and injudicious. Any peculiarities in the temper or behavior ought to be properly represented in the tenderest and in the most ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... defender! If it be necessary to remove the apparent contradiction,—if it be not rather a great beauty,—surely, it were easy to say, that no traveller returns to this world, as to his home, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... remarkable, that when we got to the north of 60 degrees, the symparometer acted directly opposite to that plan for which it was intended; and instead of the declension of the oil being indicative of bad weather, and its ascension prognostic of fair weather, a direct contradiction to the movement of the barometer was the result. Let those who understand the matter account for the fact. The coldness of the climate could have had no influence, for the temperature differed not from that of England; and when we were cruising in the latitude of the Naze, this symparometer ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... not your desires divided against themselves? and the word of the Lord comes perhaps in accordance with one desire and in contradiction of another?" ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... is open to the genius, he stands in contradiction to his age and must perforce struggle with it. Thus the Greeks . they instinctively made the utmost exertions to secure a safe refuge for themselves (in the polis). Finally, everything went to pieces in politics. They were compelled to take up a stand against their enemies . ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... somewhere, to posit it rather in the future than in the past, and to work with all the light we are able to secure towards its attainment. This working may, however, be done in two ways as regards education: we may state, first, and I think without fear of contradiction, that there is too much sickness among American women. We may then patiently and fully investigate all the habits of those women, and if we come to the conclusion that co-education or that over-study in amount or in manner is ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... when we tell ourselves that we are well off that we are happiest: that self-addressed assertion often implies some tacit contradiction. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... mother was certain to be depressed, inclining to much rain; yet, strangely enough, it was on such occasions very dry! When mother was "fair," (barometrically speaking, of course), father was naturally down at "changeable"! Yet there was wonderful contradiction in the readings of this barometer; for, when mother's countenance indicated "much rain," father sometimes went down to "stormy," and the tails of ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... December 1883 (p. 1432), says: "Several years ago, in the Christmas number of The Publishers' Circular, we described the original Christmas card, designed by Mr. J.C. Horsley, R.A., at the suggestion of Sir Henry Cole, and no contradiction was then offered to our theory that this must have been the real and original card. On Thursday, however, Mr. John Leighton, writing under his nom de plume, 'Luke Limner,' comes forward to contest the claim of priority of design, and says: 'Occasional cards of a purely ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... of the Manichean hypothesis is extremely easy if we be permitted to assume that both the principles which it supposes are either of infinite power or of equal power. If they are of infinite power, the supposition of their co-existence involves a contradiction in terms; for the one being in opposition to the other, the power of each must be something taken from that of the other; consequently neither can be of infinite power. If, again, we only suppose both ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham

... the dowager in a tone, admitting of no contradiction; "the women who live alone from choice are cold and selfish; or have hurts to hide and are heart-sick of a world in which their illusions have been destroyed; or else they have never known companionship, and so never feel the lack of it. My child, I will not have ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... persisted in his desperate effort. They reflect in their disorder his variable soul, and the misgivings which troubled it to its depths. And yet it cannot be that this interior fact should be in violent contradiction with logic. The head ought not to hinder the heart. With the future believer, a parallel work goes on in the feelings and in the thought. If we are not able to reproduce the marches and counter-marches, or follow their repeatedly ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... resolution, at another it suggested the wayward abstraction of the dreamer. He was well-figured, with a hand of peculiar whiteness, suggesting in its breadth more the man of action than of meditation. But it was a contradiction; for, as you saw it rise and fall, you were struck by its dramatic delicacy; as it rested on the railing of the veranda, by its latent power. You faced incongruity everywhere. His dress was bizarre, his face almost classical, the brow clear and strong, the profile ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Fellow of Shoreham, Would snub his companions and bore 'em, By flat contradiction, which was an affliction To the friends of ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... of no use to oppose her. For my part, I think her papa has acted wisely in permitting the engagement. Contradiction would embellish her hero; while, left to him, she will soon find him out. I do not concern myself, for Miss Martindale can get over a little matter of ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... I believe, to defend philanthropy and charity upon the basis of the sanctity of human life. Yet recent events in the world reveal a curious contradiction in this respect. Human life is held sacred, as a general Christian principle, until war is declared, when humanity indulges in a universal debauch of bloodshed and barbarism, inventing poison gases and every ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... that the Socialists will at some future day reap the harvest from Mr. Lloyd George's and Mr. Churchill's campaigns, though a careful analysis of the expressions of these statesmen will show that they have said nothing and done nothing in contradiction to their ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... fantastic, almost capricious in its wilfulness, yet causing it to express the fact with a marvel of precision. We see that the earth ends; we cannot reach the end we see; therefore the "earth doth end with endless ending." It is a case of that contradiction in the form of the words used, which brings out a truth in another plane as it were;—a paradox in words, not in meaning, for the words can bear no meaning but the one which ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... about my person any such loose and reckless document as a blank check. There's a total disregard of the first claims of prudence and economy implied in this small slip of paper which is nothing less than a flat contradiction of the principles that have governed my whole life. I can't submit to flat contradiction. Good-morning, ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... that the argument is often made that there is a fundamental contradiction between economic growth and the quality of life, so that to have one we ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon

... amiable discussion turn into contradiction and argument. The tactful person keeps his prejudices to himself and even when involved in a discussion says quietly "No. I don't think I agree with you" or "It seems to me thus and so." One who is well-bred never says "You are wrong!" or "Nothing of the kind!" ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... arbitrary action of the said Chief Justice, to take comprehensive measures in order to prevent absolute constitutional and judicial disorder and chaos. It was an instance where a Chief Justice in conflict with a law existing for, at least, forty years, and in direct contradiction of his own decisions, suddenly adopted and applied a new principle, which affected the legality of the laws of the Republic, and produced real constitutional chaos. Would not any other Government under similar circumstances have done exactly what this Republic did, namely, pass ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz

... Gospels were in general circulation whilst multitudes were still alive who are described in them as either the spectators or the subjects of His works of wonder; and yet, though the evangelists often enter most minutely into details, so that their statements, if capable of contradiction, might have been at once challenged and exposed, we do not find that any attempt was meanwhile made to impeach their accuracy. Their manner of recording the acts of the Great Teacher is characterised by remarkable simplicity, and the most acute reader in vain ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... trusting to his generous instincts, which were so manifest to her when he was absent; but when he came to her and spoke, there was something in his voice and manner which she would not own, even to herself, as being a contradiction to her faith, and yet which chilled her and made her seek a refuge in ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... time and space, said, Let the West be East; and before the locomotive the West fled from Buffalo to Chicago, across the prairies, the Rocky Mountains, the desert steppes beyond, and down the Pacific slope, until it stared the Orient into a self-contradiction. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... a more characteristic term. In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive, a motive not motivirt. Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object; or, if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say, that through its promptings we act, for the reason that we should not. In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable, but, in fact, there is none more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... with the air of one making a serious contradiction; but her, "Oh, well,—" and a little laugh that followed it ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... determined to such activities as are adequately conceived through man's essence only (III:Def.ii.). Now, if such desire could be excessive, human nature considered in itself alone would be able to exceed itself, or would be able to do more than it can, a manifest contradiction. Therefore, such ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... allowed himself to be led wherever she wished—Edmee had drawn support from two sources apparently very antagonistic: the philosophy which was preparing the downfall of Christianity, and Christianity which was proscribing the spirit of inquiry. To account for this contradiction, you must recall what I told you about the effect produced on the Abbe Aubert by the Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard. Moreover, you must be aware that, in poetic souls, mysticism and doubt often reign side by side. Jean Jacques himself furnishes a striking example of this, and you know ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... surface, so has it been permitted to this obscure and superficially educated one to discover the truth of the entire matter among the badly-arranged and frequently really illegible documents preserved at the Hall of Public Reference at Peking. Without fear of contradiction, therefore, he now sets forth the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... responsibility for the experiments which were carried on under my daily supervision, I have left fullest freedom to the authors in the expression of their views. My own views and my own conclusions from the experiments would not seldom be in contradiction with theirs, as the authors are sometimes also in contradiction with one another; but while I, of course, have taken part in frequent discussions during the work, in the completed papers my role ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... Russian life than to the defects of the tsar himself. His love of liberty, though sincere, was in fact unreal. It flattered his vanity to pose before the world as the dispenser of benefits; but his theoretical liberalism was mated with an autocratic will which brooked no contradiction. "You always want to instruct me!'' he exlaimed to Derzhavin, the minister of justice, "but I am the autocratic emperor, and I will this, and nothing else!'' "He would gladly have agreed,'' wrote Adam Czartoryski, "that every one should ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... fortune,—or shall we say misfortune,—for as we have seen it is variously regarded by Chinese parents to be taken into the palace, she found there educated eunuchs who were set aside as teachers of the imperial harem. She was bright, attractive, and I think I may add without fear of contradiction, very ambitious, and this in no bad sense. She devoted herself to her studies with such energy and diligence as not only to attract the attention of the teacher, but to make herself a fair scholar, a good penman, and an exceptional painter, and it was not ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... been designed goes far toward proving that other organs and other seemingly less explicit adaptations in Nature must also have been designed, and clinches our belief, from manifold considerations, that all Nature is a preconcerted arrangement, a manifested design. A strange contradiction would it be to insist that the shape and markings of certain rude pieces of flint, lately found in drift-deposits, prove design, but that nicer and thousand-fold more complex adaptations to use in animals and vegetables do not a ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... the things, Gentlemen, that we propose to do for you, and, at the rate of progress which we propose to adopt, I say without fear or contradiction, that within the next Five Hundred years we shall so reform social conditions in this country, that the working classes will be able to enjoy some ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... brook no contradiction on the part of those who were engaged to execute his works, Handel spared no pains to help them over a difficulty, or to show how his music should be expressed. At times, however, his temper took the form of the most unsparing sarcasm. One day a singer at rehearsal ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... success, to expound its purport. First, loc. cit., he finds fault with gird as being employed in rather an unusual manner; or, if taken in its common meaning of taunt or reproof, then that kindly is said ironically; because there seems to be a contradiction in terms. (Monck Mason's rank distortion of the words, there cited, I will not pain the reader's sight with.) MR. COLLIER'S note concludes with a supposition that gird may possibly be a misprint. This is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... appearance and consistency of celluloid—it being the intention of his old laundress to make him indeed the stiffest and most highly polished gentleman of his high world. His noble face as always a sermon on kindness, sincerity, and peace; yet having this contradiction, that the happier it seemed, the sadder it was to look at: as though all his virtues only framed his great wrong; so that the more clearly you beheld the bright frame, the more deeply you felt the ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... circumstance clearly established by the very fact of her residing in the very place where, of all others, he should least have desired to find her—her thus acting, and continuing to act in direct contradiction to his wishes; when, I say, I viewed her disclosure in connection with all these circumstances, I could not help feeling that there was at least a fearful verisimilitude in the allegations which ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... imposed upon us by another power, but by our own enlightened will." (p. 35.) In this, the last stage of the Colossal Man's progress, Dr. Temple gives him four avenues of learning: (1) Experience, (2) Reflection, (3) Mistakes, (4) Contradiction. By withholding from this enumeration the Revealed Will of GOD, and the known sanctions of the Divine Law, he thrusts out GOD from every part of his scheme; denies that He is even one of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... other end. You shall see 'em tomorrow." He pointed to the map to indicate the spot, and then straightened himself and glared about the room as though he had said something no one could believe and expected contradiction. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... in acknowledging the compliment, gave an emphatic contradiction to an opinion which, he said, he understood had been expressed in some quarters, that Landsborough and McKinlay had had tracks to guide them in ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough

... said, to Hippolyte's convalescence, and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrancois, "Leave him alone! leave him alone! You perturb his morals with your mysticism." But the good woman would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it all. From a spirit of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the patient a basin filled with holy-water and a branch ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... say a few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... story, your present life; you, yourself—such a contradiction to what you profess! Well, it all has a ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero

... moment imagine he has faith in God, and yet allow himself to be irreverent towards Him. To believe in God, is to believe the being and presence of One who is All-holy, and All-powerful, and All-gracious; how can a man really believe thus of Him, and yet make free with Him? it is almost a contradiction in terms. Hence even heathen religions have ever considered faith and reverence identical. To believe, and not to revere, to worship familiarly, and at one's ease, is an anomaly and a prodigy unknown even to false religions, to say nothing of the true one. Not only ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... said the doctor gravely. "As I heard you read that petition I thought of that. I assure you that I have verified, in another sphere of action, several analogous facts proving the unlimited influence one man may acquire over another. In contradiction to the opinion of my brethren, I am perfectly convinced of the power of the will regarded as a motor force. All collusion and charlatanism apart, I have seen the results of such a possession. Actions promised during sleep ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... when composing it, that he was writing a book that would drive the clergy mad. The promoting the independent power of the clergy has, he says, "done more mischief to human societies than all the gross superstitions of the heathen, who were nowhere ever so stupid as to entertain such a monstrous contradiction as two independent powers in the same society; and, consequently, their priests were not capable of doing so much mischief to the Commonwealth as some since have been." The fact, that in heathen times greater differences in religion never gave rise to such desolating feuds as had always rent Christendom, ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... are contraries; whereas contrary relations to contrary things, implies a certain likeness, e.g. to recede from something white, and to approach to something black. This is most evident in the case of contradiction, which is the principle of opposition: because opposition consists in affirming and denying the same thing, e.g. "white" and "non-white"; while there is fittingness and likeness in the affirmation of one contrary ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... Martin come home to me complaining of it. We have no doubt on earth that Gippsland is a very fine place; but my brother has his idea's of dignity, you must know, and I only wish he had been more used to contradiction, you may believe me. He is a lamb by nature. And, as he says, 'Why underrate one's own country?' He cannot bear to hear boasting. Well! I put it to you, dear Annette, is he so unimportant a person? He asks to be respected, and especially by his dearest friend. From that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... sufferings, that a number of small inconveniences, habitual severity of reproof, and frequent contradiction and disappointment, inure children to pain, and consequently improve their temper. Early sufferings, which are necessary and inevitable, may improve children in fortitude; but the contradictions and disappointments, which arise immediately from the will of others, have not the same effect. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... moiety is, as Professor Huxley says, materialistic; but from the self-contradictions inseparable from every species of materialism the Cartesian variety is, of course, no more exempt than any other, and it has besides one self-contradiction peculiar to itself. A clock's pendulum vibrates, and its hands move, not simply by reason of the situation and figure of its weight and wheels, but also because some intelligent person, by winding up the clock, has communicated an impulsive force to the weight and wheels. ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... tread on a sentiment, or bring down a moth-eaten tradition upon my head. I was for the hard, bright world, and the future; there in that cedar-scented room, sat the two ladies, forever guarding the faded furniture and the crumbling past. The pathetic contradiction of Miss Matoaca returned to me, and I laughed aloud. Miss Matoaca, who worked for the emancipation of women, while she herself was the slave of an ancestry of men who oppressed women, and women who loved oppression! Miss Matoaca, whose mind, long and narrow like her face, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... to assure this House that as a matter of fact the Government practically loses nothing by the passage of this bill. I realize that these two statements placed side by side seem to involve a contradiction. Therefore I will make a brief ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... exclusive list of seventeen genuine Giorgiones. These are both in Venice, "The Christ bearing the Cross" (in S. Rocco), and "The Storm calmed by S. Mark" (in the Academy). The question whether or no we are to accept the former of these pictures has its origin in a curious contradiction of Vasari, who, in the first edition of his Lives (1550), names Giorgione as the painter, whilst in the second (1565), he assigns the authorship to Titian. Later writers follow the latter statement, and to this day the local guides adhere to this tradition. ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... the fatal mistake of Catholic and Protestant philosophy by assuming an impersonal deity in three modes of manifestation, while Christian thinkers have played around the logical contradiction of one personality in three equal persons for fifteen hundred years. We must utterly break with the idea of a personal God, and accept that of one impersonal essence behind ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880

... that it must have been so always. We are thus driven into this dilemma: life must be an energy—but, as such, it cannot be purposive! Life is purposive, yet it must be an energy—for otherwise it could not affect the bodily energies and the material world! Here then is an apparent paradox—a flat contradiction—incapable ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... seems, was in the habit of seeing patients in his own house every evening after he had settled all his business for the day. What a strange contradiction in the human heart, eh, monsieur? The tiger turned lamb for the space of one hour in every twenty-four—the butcher turned healer. How well the English milor had gauged the strange personality of that redoubtable ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... put the very pertinent question (seeing the force of this), whether she had transactions with the prisoner after this alleged stealing. You will remember for yourselves, gentlemen, and I point to it without fear of contradiction, that at first she stated the ear-rings were taken on the 19th of October, but, seeing, with a woman's keen perception, the fatal error she had made in stating that admission, seeing that you, as common-sense men, would have at ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... sacerdotal of whose ignorance in matters of the world and of literature enlivened the conversation by guileless amazement and unexpected questions. They came to talking of one of the plague spots of social life, of which we were just now speaking—adultery. My uncle remarked on the contradiction which the legislators of the Code, still feeling the blows of the revolutionary storm, had established between civil and religious law, and which he said was at the ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac

... precipitating him to the floor, and quite covering him up beneath a quivering and straining mass of human forms. The mayor tripped over a stool and fell prone. The populace gave vent to shrill outcries. In short and in fine, I may affirm, without fear of successful contradiction, that ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... man was found sitting under a tree near the camp, uttering strange cries, and the servants were desired to order him to withdraw; "they returned, saying carelessly that he was a nutt, or gipsy, who had been robbed." A robbery from a gipsy was such a strange contradiction of terms, that the colonel went personally to enquire into the matter, when he was horror-struck by finding, that the man had been, not only plundered of his earnings by a band of Bunjarras, but frightfully mutilated and wounded, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... anomaly—viz., the fact that the return of farm produce per acre on American farms is, as a rule, very much less than that from our own impoverished soils in this country. To many, at first sight, this seems to be in direct contradiction to our common belief, and to point to the conclusion that the virgin soils of America are, after all, actually inferior in fertility to ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... to render me hateful in the sight of the world. But I esteemed the reproach of the cross an honour. I forgave and prayed for my persecutors, and remembered how very lately I had acted the same part towards others myself. I thought also that Christ endured the contradiction of sinners; and, as the disciple is not above his Master, I was glad to be in any way conformed to ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... smiled, avoiding as far as possible a further discussion of this contradiction, so unconscious on his part, and in the drag of his thought he ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... with which it was surrounded; and it is asserted that he declined the offered dignity. But it is added, that, finding the choice allowed him lay between immediate death [Footnote: Historians have failed to remark the contradiction between this statement and the allegation that Ltus selected Pertinax for the throne on a consideration of his ability to protect the assassins of Commodus.] and acceptance, he closed with the proposals of the praetorian cohorts, at the rate ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... delusion, however, was brief; and the intelligence of the rise had no sooner reached Downing Street in its turn, than a messenger was dispatched to undeceive the city, and the city-marshal was employed to read the contradiction in the streets. The confusion in the Stock Exchange was now excessive; but the committee adopted the only remedy in their power. They ordered the Stock Exchange to be shut, and came to a resolution, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... not the evil and misery of the world, is not all that which we know as "sin" and pain, in manifest contradiction to this Christian conception of a GOD of Love? Most certainly they are: and it has been the strength of Christianity from the beginning that—unlike many rival systems and philosophies, including the "Christian Science" movement of modern times—it has always faced facts, and in particular ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... silence ensued, in the course of which each individual appeared to be bringing home to his own heart the application of the remark just uttered; and which, however they might seek to disguise the truth from themselves, was too forcible to find contradiction from the secret monitor within. And yet of those assembled there was not one, perhaps, who would not, in the hour of glory and of danger, have generously interposed his own frame between that of his companion and the steel or bullet of an enemy. Such are the contradictory ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... it to be possible to reduce the art of detecting them to definite rules. Only one general principle can be laid down, and that is, that when the literal sense is absurd, incoherent, or obscure, or in contradiction with the ideas of the author or the facts known to him, then we ought to presume ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... of my own way and opinions, and won't bear contradiction! Oh, Agatha, how you love to preach to us all! I won't say you are mistaken, for I am not going to get up an argument, and I want you all to be especially agreeable while I lay a plan of ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... scourging, and the shame; and you won't face the Vicar of Newport for Him! You can't walk half a mile, and ask a civil question of a man from whom you expect a civil answer, for love of the Man who came down all the way from Heaven to earth, and endured all the contradiction of sinners for three-and-thirty years, and faced all the malice of the devil, for the love of you! Are you ashamed of yourself, Thomas de Vaux, or ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt

... 2 Kings x. 12-14. Stade has shown that this account is in direct contradiction with its immediate context, and that it belonged to a version of the events differing in detail from the one which has come down to us. According to the latter, Jehu must at once have met Jehonadab the son of Rechab, and have entered Samaria in his company (vers. 15-17); this would have been ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... for a moment what can be meant by a sensation of Space. Does it not look very like a contradiction in terms? Pure Space, if it means anything, means absolute material emptiness and vacuity. How, then, by any possibility can it give rise to a sensation? What sensory organ can it be conceived as affecting? How and in what way can it ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... objected to the size of the ship, to the length, breadth, depth, draught of water, height of jack, rake before and aft, breadth of the floor, scantling of the timber, and so on. Then another of the objectors was called; and his evidence was so clearly in contradiction to that which had already been given, that either one or both must be wrong. The principal objector, Captain Waymouth, next gave his evidence; but he was able to say nothing to any purpose, except giving their lordships "a long, tedious discourse of proportions, measures, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... young men of unequalled ability, tireless, watchful, and brave to a fault. Captain C.R. Holmes, as Assistant Adjutant General, was promoted to that position from one of the Charleston companies. I fear no contradiction when I say he was one of the very best staff officers in the army, and had he been in line of promotion his merits would have demanded recognition and a much higher position given him. Captain W.M. Dwight, as Adjutant ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... says that Poe, when he reached the goal, emerged from the water with neck, face, and back blistered. The facts of this feat, which was undertaken for a wager, having been questioned, Poe, ever intolerant of contradiction, obtained and published the affidavits of several gentlemen who had witnessed it. They also certified that Poe did not seem at all fatigued, and that he walked back to ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... this decree would have left Gordon helpless to do anything for the curtailment of the slave trade until the year 1889, and then only permitted to inflict a quite insufficient punishment on those who broke the law. General Gordon pointed out the contradiction between the Convention and the Decree, and the impossibility of carrying out his original instructions if he were deprived of the power of allotting adequate punishment for offences; and he reverted to his original proposition of registration, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... The only contradiction to this tale was, that the officers of justice found the escritoire not broken open, but unlocked; and yet the key which belonged to it was found in a pocketbook in my clothes, where Desmarais said, rightly, I always kept it. How, then, had the escritoire been unlocked? it was supposed ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... advice, according to my small model. Men ought to take heed, of rending God's church, by two kinds of controversies. The one is, when the matter of the point controverted, is too small and light, not worth the heat and strife about it, kindled only by contradiction. For, as it is noted, by one of the fathers, Christ's coat indeed had no seam, but the church's vesture was of divers colors; whereupon he saith, In veste varietas sit, scissura non sit; they be two things, unity and uniformity. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... to be sure, old Humphrey, you are as honest as a—pshaw! the parson means to palaver us; but, to return to my position, I tell you I do n't like your flat contradiction. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... on another line of thought. "Life itself, flaring out. Brooking no contradiction." He came round suddenly to the doctor's qualification. "Why male? Don't little girls ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... adjacent landholders. Although no law forbade any inhabitant from purchasing land, the costliness of the transfer constituted a prohibition; so that it was the rule of the country that the plough should not be in the hands of its owner. The church was rested on a contradiction; claiming to be an embodiment of absolute truth, it was ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft

... The contradiction alluded to was that in spite of the decisive mood which two months earlier in the year had caused her to write a peremptory and final letter to Edward, she was now hoping for some answer other than the only possible one a man who, as she held, did not ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... misconduct could not possibly be imputable to him. Such an agency in a pecuniary trust was the very last on which Mr. Hastings ought to have risked his disobedience to the orders of the Direction,—or, what is even worse for his motives, a direct contradiction to all the principles upon which he had attempted to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... myself with classifying the De Republica and the De Legibus under the same name with these essays of Cicero, which are undoubtedly moral in their nature. But it may pass, perhaps, without that distinct contradiction which had to be made as to the enveloping the De Officiis in the garb of philosophy. It has been the combining of the true and false in one set, and handing them down to the world as Cicero's philosophy, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... were characterised by their abrupt violence. Once dining with Lord Halifax he became so impatient of contradiction, that he rushed out of the room, overthrowing the sideboard. Inquiring on the next day how he had behaved, Moyle observed, "You went away like the devil, taking one corner of the house with you." The wits, perhaps, then began to suspect their ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... up a heathen and an idolater; of one who was a great conqueror, and had gained many bloody battles, and learned to hold men's lives very cheap; of one who was an absolute emperor, with no law but his own will, furious at any contradiction; of a man of wonderful power of mind—confident in himself, his own power, his own cunning. But he seems not to have been a bad man, considering his advantages. The Bible never speaks harshly of him, though he carried ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... the second) chapter of my childish experience, formed that sort of fierce and fantastic contradiction to the first, which might seem to move in obedience to some incarnate principle of malicious pantomime. A spirit of love, and a spirit of rest, as if breathing from St. John the Evangelist, had seemed to mould the harmonies of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... it if we can only save it. Out of this agony and tears will be born a united people. We have always been cursed with the impossible contradiction ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... of America, too. Oh, yes, they are," he continued, noting Wilbur's look of contradiction. "It wasn't Columbus or Amerigo or any o' the floatin' adventurers who first saw a blue splotch o' land on the horizon that discovered America. It was the men who conquered the forest, who found all, did all, an' became all that the life demanded, that really ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... of rumour such as we are well used to in the islands. But others were not so sure. Others considered that the rumour (even if unfounded) was of an ill example, might bear deplorable fruit, and, from all points of view of morality and policy, required a public contradiction. Eleven of these last entered accordingly into the annexed correspondence with the President. It will be seen in the crevice of what quibble that gentleman sought refuge and sits inexpugnable. In a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... but was so promptly and fully contradicted by the united testimony of M'Clutchy and M'Slime, that the matter was made to appear very highly complimentary to the benevolence and humanity of both. "So far from the proceedings in question," the contradiction went on to say, "being marked by the wanton cruelty and inhumanity imputed to them, they were, on the contrary, as remarkable for the kindness and forbearance evinced by Messrs. M'Clutchy and M'Slime. The whole ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... conveyed only in the most delicately obscure manner, spared him no more than the plain English of his relations with her. Requested to come to the Club, at a certain hour of the afternoon, that he might hear Major Worrell's personal contradiction of scandal involving the young lady's name, together with his apology, etc., Dudley declined: and he was obliged to do it curtly; words were wanting. They are hard to find for wounded sentiments rendered complex by an infusion of policy. His present mood, with the something new to digest, held ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... here to explain what may appear a contradiction, when I say, that the soul must be brought to nothing in order to pass into God, and that it must lose all that is its own; and yet I speak of capacity ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... could, with the dread of the preacher's admonishing cough before him, Wilfrid stated the case to Emilia; saying that he loved her with his whole heart; but that the truth was, his father was not in a condition of health to bear contradiction to his wishes, and would, he was sure, be absolutely opposed to their union. He brought on himself another reprimand from Mr. Marter, in seeking to propitiate Emilia's reason to comprehend the position rightly; and could add little ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... not mind them," said Canalis, smiling upon her, "we are neither beaten, nor caught in a contradiction. Every work of art, let it be in literature, music, painting, sculpture, or architecture, implies a positive social utility, equal to that of all other commercial products. Art is pre-eminently commerce; presupposes ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... Mrs. Fosdick had been staying with a family who owned the farm where she was born, and she had visited every sunny knoll and shady field corner; but when she said that it might be for the last time, I detected in her tone something expectant of the contradiction which Mrs. Todd ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... authority, that "no man, woman, or child in Esmond, ever says anything that he or she might not have said in the reign of Queen Anne." This is one of those extreme utterances in which enthusiasm, losing its head, invites contradiction. Thackeray professedly "copied the language of Queen Anne,"—he says so in his dedication to Lord Ashburton; but he himself would certainly never have put forward so comprehensive a claim as the above. There is no doubt a story that he challenged Mr. Lowell (who was his fellow-passenger ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... congratulatory address to Cardinal Betoun, and Ninian Winzet in the sad appeals and confessions inserted in his 'Tractates,' as well as that of impartial modern historians like Tytler and Dr Joseph Robertson, is more than sufficient to establish it beyond contradiction. The testimony of Conaeus, who died when about to be raised to the purple, covers almost all that Alesius and Knox have averred: 'In multorum sacerdotum aedibus scortum publicum ... nec a sacrilego quorundam luxu tutus erat matronarum honos aut virginalis ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... ostensibly in confirmation of that of January, was signed by Charles, by the advice of Catharine, the King of Navarre, the Cardinals of Bourbon and Guise, the Duke of Guise, the constable, and Aumale. But there was a glaring contradiction between the two laws, for Paris was expressly excepted from the provisions. In or around the capital no exercises of the reformed religion could be celebrated.[127] Such was the trick by which the triumvirs ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... curtsey to the laird, and went on again up the road for Hermiston and Cauldstaneslap, walking fast, breathing hurriedly with a heightened colour, and in this strange frame of mind, that when she was alone she seemed in high happiness, and when any one addressed her she resented it like a contradiction. A part of the way she had the company of some neighbour girls and a loutish young man; never had they seemed so insipid, never had she made herself so disagreeable. But these struck aside to their various destinations or were out-walked and left behind; and when she ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Thoreau sends me a paper with the old fault of unlimited contradiction. The trick of his rhetoric is soon learned: it consists in substituting for the obvious word and thought its diametrical antagonist. He praises wild mountains and winter forests for their domestic air; snow and ice for their warmth; villagers and wood-choppers for their urbanity, and the wilderness ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... "pretending to be from God, that contradicts any part of natural laws ought immediately to be rejected as imposture; for the deity cannot make a law contrary to the law of nature without acting contrary to himself,—a thing in the strictest sense impossible, for that which implies contradiction is not an object of Divine Power." The cardinal idea of West's; position, as of that of most of the liberal men of his time, was stated by him in one sentence, when he said, "To preach Christ is to preach ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... never will be, any direct evidence as to the origin of conscience; and as that sense (like any other power of our mental nature) is capable of being educated, evoked, enlightened, and strengthened, and may also by neglect and contradiction deteriorate and wither away, there is ample room for allowing a certain part of the theory.[3] But many people who examine their own conscience will feel that the description certainly does not suit them; there are many things which conscience disapproves, ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... greatest opposite is the nearest to the extreme; the least or nothing is in the middle, where the opposites meet, and are one and identical; as between the coldest and hottest and the hotter and colder, in the middle point is that which you may call hot and cold, or neither hot nor cold, without contradiction. In that way whoso is least content and least joyful is in the degree of indifference, and finds himself in the habitation of temperance, where the virtue and condition of a strong soul exist, which bends not to the south wind nor to the north. This, then, to return to the point, is ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... discoursed as a philosopher might to a school of disciples gathered together to be taught by his wisdom, not to dispute it. He feared chiefly not a counter creed but the materialising effects of the industrial movement of his own day. Expecting no contradiction, Wordsworth did not care to quit his own standpoint in order that he might see how things appear from the opposing side. He did not argue but let his utterance fall into a half soliloquy spoken in presence of an audience but not always ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... exercised his authority upon the occasion, and interdicted Thespis not only from writing but from teaching the art of composing tragedies at Athens. Whether Thespis was supported by the people in contradiction to Solon, or whether he contrived to follow his business in some other part of Attica, out of the jurisdiction of that great man, is not known; but he certainly disregarded the interdict, and not only wrote ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... your soul was like an Aladdin's palace with a thousand windows opening on the human spectacle! Self-contradiction the fools call it, if you will not shut your eyes to half the show. I love the people, yet I hate their stupidity and mistrust their leaders. I hate the aristocrats, yet I love the lilies that toil not, neither do they spin, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... you," Beauchene ended by saying, without any show of anger, as he abruptly brought his perambulations to an end. "You want to place me in contradiction with myself, and make me confess that I accept Moineaud's seven children and need them, whereas I, with my fixed determination to rest content with an only son, suppress, as it were, a family in order that I may not have to subdivide my estate. France, 'the country of only sons,' as folks say ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... No Contradiction to your great Design; But will not such Proceeding injure us? Where is our Trade and Commerce to be carry'd? For they're possess'd of all the Country round, Or whence ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers

... tautological. In the second case the proposition is false for all the truth-possibilities: the truth-conditions are contradictory. In the first case we call the proposition a tautology; in the second, a contradiction. ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein

... flat contradiction," said Lottie, dejectedly. "There are the words, 'I am glad I was not there '; and there is the fact that He let Lazarus die; and there also are the facts of His weeping and raising Lazarus: and, now I think of it, He performed many ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... whites; but even as he spoke Tarzan was convinced that he lied. Several times the ape-man approached the subject from different angles, but never was he successful in surprising the wily cannibal into a direct contradiction of his original statement that there had been no women ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... and that this holy influence is not at our command, or to be procured by study, but is the free gift of God to chosen and devoted servants. Hence arises our testimony against preaching for hire, in contradiction to Christ's positive command, 'Freely ye have received, freely give;' and hence our conscientious refusal to support such ministry by tithes or ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... assistance from the episcopal bench. To avoid future misunderstanding I may say that all my books are written by myself. If at any time it is suggested that any publication of your Lordship has been written by me, I shall be glad if you will immediately issue a contradiction. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various

... bad, and indifferent, flies equally fast in Joppa; and had there been a town-crier deputed for the purpose, Phebe's accident could not have sooner become a household tale in even the most distant districts of the place. After a contradiction of the first rumor, reporting her burned to a crisp and only recognizable by a ring of her mother's on her left hand,—which ring by-the-way she never wore,—and after a contradiction in due course of the second rumor, reporting Gerald to be lying in ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... naturally impatient, and piqued a little at the princess's contradiction, as soon as he saw Mesrour, "Vile slave," said he, "is this a time to laugh? Why do not you tell me which is dead, the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... There is no contradiction between romanticism and Heimatkunst; for it was romanticism that in its time aroused the Germans to a real sense of what their native heath meant for them; neither is Heimatkunst opposed to naturalism. In both Heimatkunst and naturalism nature is the watchword, but with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... woven into its life. It was this shoddy in the garment of our Goddess of Liberty, which has occasioned the rent which those needles there"—pointing to some bayonets—"must mend. And it is this shoddy of contradiction and infidelity which makes many a man's prosperity, seemingly substantial at first, promising warmth and wear, fall suddenly to pieces, and leave his soul naked to the ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... Mannering, as he looked sternly into his face, lost all fear of personal assault. He was neatly but shabbily dressed, pale, and with a slight red moustache. He had a somewhat broad forehead, eyes with more than an ordinary lustre, and, in somewhat striking contradiction to the rest of his features, a large sensitive mouth with a distinctly humorous curve. Even now its corners were receding into a smile, which had in it, however, other elements than ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... lowered in consternation. She was in great awe of this young man whose square chin was in such extreme contradiction to his softly luminous eyes, and she began to feel less fortified by the reminder ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates

... anomaly. A land of freedom, boastfully so-called, with human slavery enthroned at the heart of it, and at last dictating terms of unconditional surrender to every other organ of its life, what was it but a thing of falsehood and horrible self-contradiction? For three-quarters of a century it had nevertheless endured, kept together by policy, compromise, and concession. But at the last that republic was torn in two; and truth was to be possible under the flag. Truth, thank God, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... giving time for any one to answer him. Cambaceres, moderate and prudent, equally clever in giving counsel and at yielding when counsels were useless, deemed the anger of the First Consul too passionate to admit of contradiction. The Council of State, several times consulted, was brought over with repugnance to the idea of an extraordinary measure. The First Consul wished a law; it was decided to involve the great bodies of the State in the arbitrary act which he was about to commit. "The consuls do not ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... murder at the time of the occurrence shocked and excited the better thinking and humane classes largely, not only in Pennsylvania, but to a considerable extent over the Northern States. It may be said, without contradiction, that Chester county, at least, was never more aroused by any one single outrage that had taken place within her borders, than by these occurrences. For a long while the interest was kept alive, and even as lately ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... slight would not have called forth a contradiction; yet this defiance had that effect. She had touched the chord of my vanity—I might almost say, of my affection. With ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... expense would be useless; so No. 13, deserted by man, and cursed by God, remained vacant and avoided. People came from far and near to look at it, but no one entered its doors lest some evil fate should befall them. Yet, in strange contradiction to the horror it created in every breast, the houses on either side ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... tall, desiccated, quick in movement. Dark rings below her eyes attested either a nervous disease, an hysterical temperament, or both. Immediately at her left sat a boy of about fourteen years of age, his face a curious contradiction between a naturally frank and open expression and a growing sullenness. Next him stood a vacant chair, evidently for Miss Bishop. Opposite lolled a young man, holding a newspaper in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. He was very handsome, with a drooping ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... could have fallen eighty yards—that is, 240 feet—to say nothing of the supplementary descent of forty-five feet further—without being smashed to "smithereens." But although we may hesitate to give credence to such an extraordinary statement, it would not be a proper thing to give it a flat contradiction. Who knows whether there may not be in the bones of these animals some elastic principle or quality enabling them to counteract the effects of such great falls? There are many mechanical contrivances of animal life as yet but very imperfectly understood; and it is well-known ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... search became almost a monomania. His mind, fixed strainingly upon this one, all-engrossing object, lost its balance, and he could no longer reason upon his own course, or see its futility, or devise a better. The invariable disappointment which closed every day's search, by some strange contradiction, only confirmed him in the belief that Madeleine was in Paris, and that he would shortly find her there; that he would meet her by some fortunate chance; would be drawn to her by some mysterious magnetic instinct. Every few days he visited the bureau des passeports, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... solves the contradiction by saying that one ought to learn profane knowledge in addition, not for pleasure but for instruction, in order that the useful things, found therein may be turned to the use of sacred learning. Hence Gregory blamed a certain bishop, not for acquiring profane knowledge but because, for ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... wrote the phrase to death, magazines were filled with copy—good, bad and indifferent—mostly written, be it said, by men whose knowledge of the question was by no means complete: editorial opinion, and contradiction of that opinion, were printed side by side in journals having a good name. To one who endeavored actually to understand what was being done, and whither these broad tendencies and strange cravings of the Chinese were leading a people who ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... several meetings for conference and treaties with the Indians, besides those which he held for the purchase of lands. But unbroken and reverently cherished tradition, beyond all possibility of contradiction, has designated one great treaty held under a large elm-tree, at Shackamaxon (now Kensington), a treaty which Voltaire justly characterizes as "never sworn to, and never broken." In Penn's Letter to the Free ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... relying on you to overcome my patient's objections to any experiments that might be deemed advisable on her dog. I meant something much more serious than that. I have known you only a few hours, Mr. Ewart; but nobody need tell me you are anything of a fool, unless he wants a very flat contradiction. You are looking at this affair from a personal point of view—and no wonder, either. But if you were not so worried about your fiancee your brain would have grasped my point at once. That is why I want you to send for ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... New England and in Scotland with respect to the influence of their religious theory of life upon general education. Nowhere has Puritanism, with its keen intelligence and its iron tenacity of purpose, played a greater part than it has played in the history of Scotland. And one need not fear contradiction in saying that no other people in modern times, in proportion to their numbers, have achieved so much in all departments of human activity as the people of Scotland have achieved. It would be superfluous to mention the preeminence of Scotland in the industrial arts since the days of James Watt, ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... me stop here for a moment to emphasize a very curious contradiction. Between my first seance with Mrs. Hartley and this, our third attempt to secure the music, I had held two sittings in the home of a friend. Mrs. Hartley had come to the house about ten o'clock in the morning, bringing nothing with her except a few tips of soft slate-pencil. During the sitting ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... told," he continued, "that you have engaged yourself to marry Herbert Fitzgerald; and I have now come to hear a contradiction of ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... Fertilisation," for it is difficult to believe that the pollen of the purple anthers has become, by adaptation, less effective than that of the yellow anthers. In the letters here given there is some contradiction between the statements as to the position of the two sets of stamens in relation to the sepals. According to Eichler ("Bluthendiagramme, II., page 482) the longer stamens may be either epipetalous or ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... your accounts, I observe a material difference subsists between your husbandry, modes, and customs, and ours; everything is local; could we enjoy the advantages of the English farmer, we should be much happier, indeed, but this wish, like many others, implies a contradiction; and could the English farmer have some of those privileges we possess, they would be the first of their class in the world. Good and evil I see is to be found in all societies, and it is in vain to seek for any spot where those ingredients ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... that he is justified in persevering in its practice. He has often said, that "he never knew any statement tell, or any argument, however powerful, attain the desired end, if only once repeated;" and on this principle he acts. He repeats and repeats again, in the teeth of contradiction and disproof, what he wishes to have believed; and the result shows the wisdom of his proceeding. Those who contradict soon get tired, while, by perseverance, he is left in full possession of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... way in all pigeonries. In fact, there is no case better adapted than that of the pigeons, to refute the doctrine which one sees put forth on high authority, that "no other characters than those founded on the development of bone for the attachment of muscles" are capable of variation. In precise contradiction of this hasty assertion, Mr. Darwin's researches prove that the skeleton of the wings in domestic pigeons has hardly varied at all from that of the wild type; while, on the other hand, it is in exactly those respects, such as the relative length of the beak ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... is in a person can proceed from him, nothing can proceed from man except what is temporal, and nothing from the Lord except what is eternal. For the infinite cannot proceed from the finite; that it can is a contradiction. The infinite, however, can proceed from the finite, still not from the finite but from the infinite by the finite. In turn, what is finite cannot proceed from the infinite; this is also a contradiction; it can be produced from the infinite and this is creation and not proceeding. On this subject ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... accused from the pulpit Maitland of Lethington, now in the Castle, of having said that 'Heaven and hell are things I devised to fray bairns;' and Maitland's demand for evidence or apology was brought to him. Knox had never been able to bear contradiction, especially when he was somewhat in the wrong; and those who wish to acquire new virtues must not postpone them to their last hours. His defence was roundabout and ineffectual; and all were glad when he parted from these details of his long life-struggle, ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... I die? Isn't there some contradiction?" Sri Yukteswar's eyes were twinkling with love ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... of exquisite quality and flavour, infinitely superior in richness, size, and flavour to those of Spain and Portugal, or any part of Italy; indeed, I have no hesitation in declaring, (without fear of contradiction,) that this country produces the finest grapes, oranges, and pomegranates in the world, and in the greatest abundance. I have myself tasted at Marocco, at a Hebrew Rabbi's table, excellent imitations of burgundy, claret, champagne, madeira, and rhenish, or old hock, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... a law known as Law I. of 1897, which empowered him to exact assurances from the judges that they would respect all resolutions of the Volksraad, without testing whether they were in accord or contradiction with the Constitution; and in the event of the President not being satisfied with the replies of the judges, it further empowered him to dismiss them summarily. The judges protested in a body that they would not submit to such treatment. The High ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot

... of its administrators; but that, nevertheless, the generality of the individuals of intelligence, wealth, and influence, have all the while been of a quite opposite spirit, zealously intent on remedying the flagrant evil, would be instantly rejected as a contradiction. Such an enlightened and philanthropic spirit prevailing widely among the individuals of the nation would carry its impulse into the government in one manner or another. It would either constrain the administrators of the state to act in conformity, or ultimately displace them ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... themselves over an hour or two at a time, which was the limit of the medium's psychokinetic power, on which their manifestations depended. But that these personalities are not in time to be evolved so that they will be more permanent and consistent with dreamers generally, would be a contradiction to at least some ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... interpolation borrowed from the Greek and Roman imperial tradition. But experience shows that simultaneous faith in the descent from David and the conception by the Holy Ghost is possible. Such double beliefs are entertained by the human mind without uneasiness or consciousness of the contradiction involved. Many instances might be given: a familiar one to my generation being that of the Tichborne claimant, whose attempt to pass himself off as a baronet was supported by an association of laborers on the ground that the Tichborne family, in resisting it, were trying to do a ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... avoided the fatal mistake of Catholic and Protestant philosophy by assuming an impersonal deity in three modes of manifestation, while Christian thinkers have played around the logical contradiction of one personality in three equal persons for fifteen hundred years. We must utterly break with the idea of a personal God, and accept that of one impersonal essence behind all phenomena." [Hartmann's ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880

... physician, she buys certain "cures" recommended to her by Mrs. Busybody and later tries other physicians and ends by losing faith in herself. Meantime she grows worse and worse. There are thousands such. It may be here stated without fear of contradiction that if the public in general would repose more confidence in the medical profession, there would be much less suffering, much less sorrow, fewer regrets, fewer irresponsible "isms," and cults, because there would be fewer disappointed individuals to support them. If the medical profession would ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... their host produced a profound sensation upon the Pagans. The most tolerant of men, he was accustomed to listen to their wholesale denunciations of all things with a good natured smile, contenting himself with a calm contradiction now and then. Proverbial for his patience and good temper, he produced the greater sensation now when he gave vent to his anger upon a subject which not only Fenton but every guest present usually ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... foe, with scornful eye askance, Thus answered. Ill for thee, but in wished hour Of my revenge, first sought for, thou returnest From flight, seditious Angel! to receive Thy merited reward, the first assay Of this right hand provoked, since first that tongue, Inspired with contradiction, durst oppose A third part of the Gods, in synod met Their deities to assert; who, while they feel Vigour divine within them, can allow Omnipotence to none. But well thou comest Before thy fellows, ambitious to win From me some plume, that thy success may show ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... uphold the power of the Peishwa, and to lessen that of Scindia and Holkar and, by playing one against the other, to avert the horrors of civil war. Were I to call in the aid of the English, I should be acting in contradiction to the principles ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... intervals of business at the police-office, would enjoy both in his arm-chair. Between the vulgar calls of this kind of magistracy, and the perusal of the urbane Horace, there must have been a gusto of contradiction, which the bottle, perhaps, was required to render quite palatable. Fielding did not love his bottle the less for being obliged to lecture the drunken. Nor did his son, who succeeded him in taste and office. I know not how a former poet-laureat, Mr. Pye, managed; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... ourselves of conventional prejudice and go to the fountain-head, to try all spirits, in fact, and find out what spirits really are of God. When Vauvenargues began to reflect, he was astonished at the inexactitude and even self-contradiction of the philosophical language of his day. He was not, and probably never would have become, what we understand now as a philosopher. He was a moralist, pure and simple, and had no more relation with men like Descartes or Berkeley than a rousing revivalist preacher has with a regius ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... his word. "Greatness once and forever has done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson. "Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good." "Every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good,"—popularity, for instance. "The characteristic of heroism is persistency." ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... name—suggestive of a sad and somber dignity; recalling, in its first association, mournful ideas of penitence and seclusion—had been here, as events had turned out, inappropriately bestowed? Surely, this self-contradictory girl had perversely accomplished one contradiction more, by developing into a character which was out of all harmony ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... the expression of them. We acquire the power of combination and co-operation, in losing the desire for splendour and domination. We see that people value ease and security, more than they admire originality and fantastic contradiction. And so we come to the blessed time when, instead of reflecting after a social occasion whether we did ourselves justice, we begin to consider rather the impression we ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... his care to avoid wounding feelings needlessly. He never kept back his opinions which, on some points, were shallow and even absurd; and when his antagonist was as persistently positive as himself, he was apt to be over vehement in contradiction. I have heard Mr. Murray say that once in a dispute with Dr. Whewell at a dinner the language on both sides grew so fiery ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... plate fails to intercept the inductive radiant energy; and it can scarcely be so, for if the plate is replaced by a coil of wire, it is found that induced currents are set up therein, and therefore inductive radiant energy must have been intercepted. This apparent contradiction may ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various

... apartment of the cavern was silent and gloomy. The woman lay in her usual place and posture, though there were those present who affirmed they had seen her borne to the woods by the supposed "medicine of the white men." Such a direct and palpable contradiction of the tale related by the father caused all eyes to be turned on him. Chafed by the silent imputation, and inwardly troubled by so unaccountable a circumstance, the chief advanced to the side of the bed, and, stooping, cast an incredulous look ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... developed for the first time, his fiery, stubborn character, irritable before contradiction, even to the point of adopting the most extreme resolution. "Down with War!" Since it was not possible for him to protest in any other way, he would leave the country. The Emperor might arrange his affairs as best he could. The struggle ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... supported the opinion in question, affirmed that no Christian bishop before Trimnell ever denied it.[115] Evidently it was a point which had not come very prominently forward for distinct assertion or contradiction, and one in which there was great room for ambiguity. To some it seemed a palpably new doctrine, closely trenching on a most dangerous portion of the Romish system, and likely to lead to gross superstition. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... anyone's hopes, fears, or beliefs. His greatness is largely due to this fidelity in a mind of extraordinary power; and if, as a private person, he had a religious faith, his tragic view can hardly have been in contradiction with this faith, but must have been included in it, and supplemented, not ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... nation and for his own sake as a citizen. If he wishes to serve her he must stand for the language; if he prefers English civilisation he should go back to England. There only can he develop on English lines. An Irishman in Ireland with an English mind is a queer contradiction, who can serve neither Ireland nor England in any good sense, and both Ireland and England disown him. So the Irishman of other than Gaelic ancestors should stand in with us, not accepting something disagreeable as inevitable, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... your usage:—and you have a credulity, Madam, against all probability, if you believe you should have avoided being Solmes's wife: That I have put you upon sacrificing your duty and conscience—yet, dearest creature! see you not the contradiction that your warmth of temper has surprised you into, when the reluctance you shewed to the last to leave your persecutors, has cleared your conscience from the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... ask, if God has ever abrogated the law of the Sabbath? If he has it can easily be found. We undertake to say without fear of contradiction, he has not made any such record in the bible; but to the contrary, he calls it a perpetual covenant, a "sign between me and the children of Israel forever," for the reason that he rested on the seventh day. Exo. ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates

... officers, especially the young subs, availed themselves largely of this judicious laxity, and the result was a medley of costume, rather picturesque than military. Braided coats, long hair, plumed hats, and large mustaches, were amongst the least of the eccentricities displayed. In a curious spirit of contradiction, the infantry adopted brass spurs, anticipatory, perhaps, of their promotion to field-officers' rank; and, bearing in mind, that "there is nothing like leather," exhibited themselves in ponderous over-alls, a la Hongroise, topped and strapped, and loaded down the side with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... factor in the durability of the commutator. Besides this, the commutator is sustained by supports carried in flanges upon the shaft, which flanges, as an additional safeguard, are coated all over with hard rubber, one of the finest known insulators. It may be stated, without fear of contradiction, that no other commutator made is so thoroughly insulated and protected. The three commutator segments virtually constitute a single copper ring, mounted in free air, and cut into three equal pieces by slots across its face. Four slit copper springs, called commutator ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... import to parade such importance, is often a fault of natures whose native means of expression is the thin line, the geometer's precision, the architect's foresight in measurement. And by allowing for it I think we can explain the contradiction apparent between the critics' continual insistence on what they call Duerer's great thoughts, and the sparsity of intellectual creativeness which strikes one in turning over his engravings, so many are there of which either ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... my subsequent observations and discoveries which compel me, greatly to my regret, to give a direct contradiction to the gallant Admiral's version of what took place in the North Sea on the night of Trafalgar ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... had offended any by contradiction or rudeness, it was seldom long before he sought to be reconciled and forgiven. But though his private enmities were easily appeased, yet where he considered the cause of truth to be concerned, his resentment was vehement and unrelenting. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... the fathers was easily equal to explaining away this contradiction; but the old current of thought, strengthened by both these legends, arrested their attention, and, passing through the minds of a succession of the greatest men of the Church, influenced theological opinion deeply, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... dish,—"a conglomerate," as he used to say; but these generally turned out such atrocious compounds that he was ultimately induced to give up his attempts in extreme disgust. Not forgetting, however, to point out to Jack that his failure was a direct contradiction to the proverb which he, Jack, was constantly thrusting down his throat, namely, that "where there's a will there's a way." For he had a great will to become a cook, but could by no means find a way ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... the French Revolution attacked the form of this ruling religion; because it was incrusted in the forms of government, monarchical, theocratic, or aristocratic, which they sought to destroy. It is the explanation of that apparent contradiction of the mind of the 18th century, which borrowed all from Christianity in policy, and denied, whilst it despoiled, it. There was at one and the same time a violent attraction and a violent repulsion in ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... have secured the fruits of her cruelty. Her undoubted powers of fascination, in spite of the fiendishness of her real character, are doubly proved by the devotion of her lover and the guilt of her accomplice. At the same time, with that strange contradiction inherent in human nature, the Jekyll and Hyde elements which, in varying degree, are present in all men and women, the Widow Gras had a genuine love for her young sister. Her hatred of men was reasoned, deliberate, merciless and implacable. There is something almost sadistic ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... what brought Germany into the lists, the Germans declare, to defend western ideals and western democracy. Yet Russian government is Prussian in its organization, and it is on the side of the ideal of western democracy that she is explicitly aligned. The contradiction is striking, and it is still more striking when we recall that in her armies are over a quarter of a million of Jews, and that in the other armies there are half as many more. For the Jews the war is more than civil; it is ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... of opposites seems at first paradoxical enough. To say that Christianity is a religion of both infinity and finitude means nothing less than that it contains a contradiction. Hegel's view, strange as it may sound, is just this: everything includes a contradiction in it, everything is both positive and negative, everything expresses at once its Everlasting Yea and its Everlasting No. The negative ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... novel proceeding, sufficiently alarming to determine her not to take the potion; but dislike of contention, and a wish to discover whether there was any just foundation for her conjectures, made her, she said, almost instinctively, and in contradiction to her usual frankness, pretend to swallow the medicine. Then, agitated as she had been by her mother's violence, and now by unaccustomed fears, she lay unable to sleep, starting at every sound. Soon her door opened softly, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... friend is Bhima Gandharva. At the same time, his name is not Bhima Gandharva. But—for what is life worth if one may not have one's little riddle?—in respect that he is not so named let him be so called, for thus will a pretty contradiction be accomplished, thus shall I secure at once his privacy and his publicity, and reveal and conceal him in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... trusting heart dictated the Dedication of "Persiles and Sigismunda" to the Count de Lemos. His whole spirit, indeed, seems rather to have been filled with a cheerful confidence in human virtue, and his whole bearing in life seems to have been a contradiction to that discouraging and saddening scorn for whatever is elevated and generous, which such an interpretation of the Don ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... improbability which arises from the want (for this properly is a want, not a contradiction) of experience, is only equal to the probability there is, that, if the thing were true, we should experience things similar to it, or that such things would be generally experienced. Suppose it then to be true that miracles were wrought on the first promulgation of ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... they are of the nature of that which is knowledge and so on, there is no contradiction to ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... however, by what she said this evening, though he was also secretly surprised and delighted. The contradiction is a common one. The miser is half mad with joy on discovering that he has much more than he supposed, and bitterly resents, at the same time, any notice which may be taken ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... Missions between the Parana and Uruguay, I now address myself. He who attacks a subject quite fallen out of date, and still not old enough to give a man authority to speak upon it without the fear of contradiction, runs grave risk. ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... the list, but enough has been said to show that nearly all our farm machinery was in use before 1870, and that since that date, as I said, the reduction of labor cost has not upon the whole field exceeded 2-1/2 per cent. The assertion that reduced transportation lowers the farm price is in flat contradiction of political economy, as, according to that, the benefits should be divided between producer and consumer, the farm price rising and the city or export ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter

... claim to deserve this title beyond all question, and such a plebiscite is of course impossible. I can claim no more than that my attempt to realize this title is an honest one, and I can assert, without fear of contradiction, that every one of the poems I have included is a "gem of purest ray serene"; that none can be too often read or too often repeated to one's self; that every one of them should be known by heart by every lover of good literature, so that each may become, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... could her mark be a mark given by Satan, inasmuch as there was feeling therein; ergo, it must be a natural mole, and it was a lie that she had it not before bathing. Moreover, that on this point the old harlot was nowise to be believed, seeing that she had fallen from one contradiction into another about it, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... that was none the wiser for any experience or misfortune that befell him," and records his extraordinary facility in making friends and making enemies. Horace Walpole characterized him in a series of his smartest antitheses as "a singular person whose life was one contradiction." "He wrote against popery and embraced it; he was a zealous opposer of the court and a sacrifice for it; was conscientiously converted in the midst of his prosecution of Lord Strafford and was most unconscientiously a persecutor of Lord Clarendon. With great parts, he always ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... hand, has ever heard of a renegade Wagnerite? Such an animal does not exist, and if a specimen could be found, it would pay to exhibit him in a dime museum. The very expression seems a contradiction in terms. Wagner frequently asserted that no one could understand his music unless he admired it; and there is truth in this, for only enthusiasm can sharpen the mental faculties sufficiently to enable us to perceive the countless subtle beauties in Wagner's and Weber's ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... no claim to accuracy in every case, but unless there is specific contradiction I will claim these named as men who played an honorable though an humble part in framing the laws of the commonwealth which has given eight Presidents to our Republic. I will be glad to hear from any one who can give further ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... much hay, and not enough of grain; or he had too much grain, and not enough of hay; instead of old Barney's attending to the horse, he had very improperly left it to his son." To all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never a word. Colonel Lloyd could not brook any contradiction from a slave. When he spoke, a slave must stand, listen, and tremble; and such was literally the case. I have seen Colonel Lloyd make old Barney, a man between fifty and sixty years of age, uncover his ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... his reign of twenty-two years. [45:2] Dr. Lightfoot strives again and again to evade the force of this evidence, and absurdly quotes the sufferings of Polycarp and his companions as furnishing a contradiction; but he thus only takes for granted what he has elsewhere failed to prove. He admits, at the same time, that this case stands alone. "The only recorded martyrdoms," says he, "in Proconsular Asia during his reign [that of Antoninus Pius] are those ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen

... a puzzling performance altogether; one sees not any more than Sir Walter Scott could see how a drama requiring paradisiacal costume could have been acted even in the age of Nell Gwyn; and yet it is even more unlikely that Dryden should have written a play not intended for the stage. The same contradiction prevails in the piece itself; it would not be unfair to call it the most absurd burlesque ever written without burlesque intention; and yet it displays such intellectual resources, such vigour, bustle, adroitness, and bright impudence, that admiration almost counterweighs derision. Dryden could ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... guide on the upward path, the true hierophant of the mysteries of God, is love[10]. Love has been defined as "interest in its highest power";[11] while others have said that "it is of the essence of love to be disinterested." The contradiction is merely a verbal one. The two definitions mark different starting-points, but the two "ways of love" should bring us to the same goal. The possibility of disinterested love, in the ordinary sense, ought never to have been called in question. ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... "thou hast spoken like an angel sent down to examine men's bosoms: that man, Agelastes, is a contradiction, such as earth has seldom witnessed. Possessing all that wisdom which in former times united the sages of this nation with the gods themselves, Agelastes has the same cunning as the elder Brutus, who disguised his talents ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... last—it is a year ago now—is a dull useless boiling-up of human activities, an immense clustering of futilities. It is as unfinished as ever; the builders' roads still run out and end in mid-field in their old fashion; the various enterprises jumble in the same hopeless contradiction, if anything intensified. Pretentious villas jostle slums, and public-house and tin tabernacle glower at one another across the cat-haunted lot that intervenes. Roper's meadows are now quite frankly a slum; back doors and sculleries gape towards ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... best inheritance; to wit—good humour. And who was my father? Why, that has nothing to do with the humour. He was lively and stout, round and fat; and his outer and inner man were in direct contradiction to his calling. And pray what was he by profession and calling in civil society? Yes, if this were to be written down and printed in the very beginning of a book, it is probable that many when they read it would lay the book aside, and say, "It looks so uncomfortable; ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... have two maxims. One is never to believe a single word a woman says to me—that's the only means of not being duped; the other is to find what interest she has in doing the opposite of what she says, and behaving in contradiction to the facts she pretends to confide to me. I think that you and I understand ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... history in such a way as to show, however imperfectly, how it came to be what it is. I have been careful to compare many authorities and to follow the consensus of testimony wherever I have found discrepancy or contradiction. ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins

... had intended to create a hell," he said, "I assert without fear of successful contradiction that when God was there in the Garden of Eden it was the time for Him to have put Adam and Eve and all their posterity on notice that there was a place of everlasting torment. It would have been only a square deal for Him to ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... talk to you about him. You know you don't mean what you are saying, and you only say it out of contradiction, because I praise him. He shan't be run down by you, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... that the evidence against the consortium is conclusive, and I have not space here to set it all forth. But to any European radical Mr. Lamont's statement that the consortium does not want control reads like a contradiction in terms. Those who wish to lend to a Government which is on the verge of bankruptcy, must aim at control, for, even if there were not the incident of the Chicago Bank, it would be impossible to believe that Messrs. Morgan are so purely philanthropic as not to care whether ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... unused to contradiction, was provoked beyond bearing at the courage and independent spirit of his retainer. There was not a tenant upon his estate, or at least not one of Hawkins's mediocrity of fortune, whom the general policy of landowners, and still more the arbitrary and uncontrollable ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... believe that God will plunge any of his children into everlasting woe. Such a thought of God is a contradiction of his Fatherhood. He is leading us all, by different ways, towards the pure and holy life for which he brought ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant

... was strange—a contradiction It seemed of nature and her works! For little ducks, beyond conviction, Should float without the help of corks: Great Johnson, it bewildered him! To hear of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... of pity for myself of wild regret; of sorrow, Oh, infinite for a fate so desolate, a doom so dreary, so heart-sickening! You may laugh at the contradiction if you will, sir, but I felt that I could sacrifice my own life on the instant, to redeem another fellow-creature from such a place of horror, from an end so piteous. My soul and my vital spirit seemed in that desperate moment to be separating; while one in ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman

... or the publication of her amorous entanglements one could hardly maintain, and yet the men in the case seem to have been at least as caddish as she was unwomanly. But it would take volumes to recount what volumes have already recounted, and bewilderment and contradiction would still be the chief result. Since so much of the story is familiar, I can ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... (N.B. mighty familiar of late!) for me to come to Cambridge now is one of God Almighty's impossibilities. Metaphysicians tell us, even He can work nothing which implies a contradiction. I can explain this by telling you that I am engaged to do double duty (this hot weather!) for a man who has taken advantage of this very weather to go and cool himself in "green retreats" all the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... concentric zones, with the core in the southeastern corner of the Province and the lines radiating in a north-westerly direction, the English would be found at the core, the Germans in the next zone, and the Scotch-Irish in the outlying area. This zoning offers no real contradiction of the usual pattern of Pennsylvania migrations. However, when one combines the data of internal movements with those of external origins, certain contradictions do appear. The most noteworthy of these is, of course, the prominence of English settlers on this Fair Play ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... even though it was affected by self-interest, he had already drunk of the cup tempered with camphor? The desires of his frail human flesh, desires which had had their renaissance since Millicent's appearance, were they quite banished? Had the woman in her white tent meant nothing to him? As if in contradiction to his words, he flung himself on the sand. A ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... this doctrine is that man is not in a state of probation. There is a flat contradiction between the idea that man is in a state of probation and the affirmation that the whole series of volitions, states, actions, and events of his life is fixed, unchangeably, by the Divine decree, before he comes into existence. I have long regarded this as an inevitable deduction from the Calvinistic ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson

... anywise been done to the proportion of malt therein, it was very apt to make her eloquent to an extraordinary degree. On these occasions, feeling herself to be clearly in the right, she found it difficult to endure contradiction, considering it excessively unreasonable and rude, and expressing her sentiments thereupon with great freedom. In one of these moods, she had been overheard by Master Prout, in a colloquy with one of her gossips, contrasting the "wearyful and forlorn" condition of women in the colony ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... of convalescence, Margot almost came to the conclusion that what she had heard had been the effect of imagination only; as unreal and dream-like as the other events of that fateful afternoon. At other times, as if in contradiction of these theories, every intonation of the Editor's voice would ring in her ears, and once again she would ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... and dragging it out again. "Don't believe it. A boy who don't want money is a monster, not fit to be trusted with it. Here you are, boy. Five guineas. Don't fool it away, but buy anything with it you like."—A strange contradiction, by the way, though the old admiral did not notice it.—"Put it in your pocket, and—Pst! Syd," he whispered, "whenever you want any more, write to me. Don't bother the dad. Our secret, ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... seized the idea. Philip's mood of contradiction prompted him to pronounce it useless folly, and he vouchsafed no interest in the arrangements for securing light, by selecting all the bits of firewood fittest for torches, and saving all the oil possible from the two lamps they were allowed. The chief difficulty was that Guibert was not trusted, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... unmanageable;—very fanatical too, and never persuaded that August's Apostasy was more than a sham one, not even when he made his Prince apostatize too. Their Sovereignty has been a mere peck of troubles, disgraces and vexations: for those thirty-five years, an ever-boiling pot of mutiny, contradiction, insolence, hardly tolerable even to such ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Eastern question; I outlined the characters of all my companions left in camp, and sketched in a sort of comedy the sympathetic and disparaging observations they would make on my adventure; I repeated something like a thousand times, without contradiction, "What a fool you were to leave the river!" I stopped twenty times, thinking I heard its loud roar, always deceived by the wind in the tree-tops; I began to entertain serious doubts about the compass,—when ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... years to the land of heather, to a memory of the laird's daughter whom he had worshiped with the hopeless adoration of a red-headed gillie. It had been the one romance of his life, and somehow it had reincarnated itself in his love for the half-breed girl. To him it seemed a contradiction of nature that Jessie should be related to the flat-footed squaws who were slaves to their lords. He could not reconcile his heart to the knowledge that she was of mixed blood. She was too fine, too dainty, of too ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... the fault of your instructors. But why have you not more improved since you have long had the opportunity from our example? You see I always believe your stories. That is, I never contradict them. Why do you not believe mine?' Contradiction, or a direct denial of the truth of what another says, is among the Indians deemed extremely rude. Only great superiority, as of a father to a child, or of an old counsellor to some boy, can excuse it. Alaquippy and the other Indians kindly made some apology for ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... sarcastically, as though this future that he was anticipating was an absurd contradiction of the ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... which would brook no contradiction. He announced to the Geheimraethe, and to the court, that it was his pleasure to revive the ancient office of Landhofmeister, and that he had conferred this, the highest charge of his court, upon a Bohemian nobleman of the name of Wuerben, but that this ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... waited and—the wish being father to the thought—day after day the sun rose on fresh stories of an advance—a bloody fight—a splendid victory—or the capture of Washington. But the sun always set on an authoritative contradiction of them; and at last the excitement was forced to settle down on the news that General Johnston had extended his pickets as far as Mason's and Munson's hills, and the army had gone into camp on the field it had so bloodily won ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... was speaking—or rather screaming—for his voice, pitched high, seemed to fill the entire room—every glance was fixed upon de Marmont. Every one of course expected a contradiction as hot and intemperate as was the accusation. It was unthinkable, impossible that what St. Genis said could be true. They all knew de Marmont well. Nephew of the Duc de Raguse who had borne the lion's share in surrendering ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... to hym glod, God's message came to him. 66 wythouten oer speche, without contradiction, without more words. 67 my sa[gh]es soghe, etc., my saws (words) sow, etc. 77 typped schrewes, great sinners; literally, extreme, tip-top, schrews. 78 ta me, take me, seize me. 82 mansed, cursed. 94 glwande, glowing, ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various

... the conclusion that domination by labor is impossible, and a contradiction in terms, seeing that all superiority which manifests itself among a people means cheapness, and tends only to impart force to all other nations. Let us banish, then, from political economy all terms borrowed from the military vocabulary: to fight with equal weapons, to conquer, to crush, to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... "cozy" word pictures. He has made the mistake of omitting to learn the other man's conception of a cozy home before selling the expectation of coziness. He is shocked when the sale is declared annulled with the prospect's contradiction of his description, "There's nothing cozy about this place." The intending buyer of a home feels there has been a misrepresentation; though the bungalow is exactly like the plans and specifications shown ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... ch. lx, points out that there is no real contradiction between the statement cited from Timaeus, and the accounts gives of the transaction ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... days, speaking indeed from a very comfortless bed, in the slow pains of a dire disease. She had been long within sound of clear, bright Christian teaching. But deep in the soul, unmoved and ah, so difficult to dislodge, lay that notion of an atoning value in our own pains which is a radical contradiction to the glorious paradox of the perfect and unique work ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... guests began to arrive Miss Trueman found herself regarding them even more critically than usual; an argumentative spirit rose in her, and her calm contradiction of Mrs. Ranger, who discussed with great subtlety the notable advantages—even from the artistic point of view—of the approaching spring when experienced in the city, in comparison with that be-rhymed season's vaunted country beauties, ...
— Julia The Apostate • Josephine Daskam

... Soonest were best, but I thrust no man hence. He ceased; they gnawing stood their lips, aghast With wonder that Telemachus in his speech Such boldness used. Then rose Amphinomus, Brave son of Nisus offspring of the King Aretus, and the assembly thus address'd. My friends! let none with contradiction thwart And rude reply words rational and just; Assault no more the stranger, nor of all 520 The servants of renown'd Ulysses here Harm any. Come. Let the cup-bearer fill To all, that due libation made, to rest We may repair at home, leaving the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... in this republic of redskins, and so-called savages, should exist the same political contradiction as among some other republican communities, having the name of civilised. For although themselves individually free, the Tovas Indians do not believe in the doctrine that all men should be so; or, at all events, they do not act up ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... hands, and Christian was disappointed. The grip of Farrar's fingers was limp and almost nerveless, in striking contradiction to the promise of his honest face and ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... failure as a monk by such assertions, they involve themselves in self-contradiction. By their own principles monkery is not a natural life; yet, when a monk fails in his monkery, they fault him for not being natural. First, they tell the applicant that he must not be what he is, and afterwards ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... the general changes in the social geography of Russia which are threatened if the processes now at work continue unchecked. The relations between town and village are the fundamental problem of the revolution. Town and countryside are in sharp contradiction daily intensified by the inability of the towns to supply the country's needs. The town may be considered as a single productive organism, with feelers stretching into the country, and actual outposts there in the form of agricultural enterprises taking their directives ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... one of her prefaces, Elizabeth Barrett had employed—for the first time in English literature, I think—the term Dramatic Lyric. This naturally appealed to Browning, and he gave the title in 1842 to his first published collection of short poems. At first blush "dramatic lyric" sounds like a contradiction in terms, like "non-mathematical algebra." Drama is the most objective branch of poetry, and the lyric the most subjective: but Browning was so intent upon the chronicling of all stages of life that he carried the methods of the ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... his latter years he became blind, but his presence could not then even be spared when any serious difficulty arose—ruling by the moral power of wisdom and sanctity—one of the best and loftiest characters of all antiquity. And nothing was more remarkable than his patience under contradiction, and his eagerness to insure freedom of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... such a flat contradiction, and having not the least evidence to rebut it, the Turk was obliged to withdraw from the royal presence discomfited, while the Armenian doctor retired to his own dwelling, comforting himself, in ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray

... ILLUSTRATION.—without fear of truthful contradiction, we affirm that the homes, public assemblies, and streets of all our large cities abound to-day with living illustrations and proofs of the widespread existence of this physical and moral scourge. An enervated and stunted manhood, a badly developed physique, a marked absence ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... Englishman reading this strange announcement would naturally remark that the first line of the couplet contains a logical contradiction, probably of Hibernian origin; but I have often thought, during my wanderings in Russia, that the expression, if not logically justifiable, might for the sake of vulgar convenience be legalised by a Permissive ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... luck a contradiction, Her window still stood open to conviction; And by short course of circumstantial labour, He fix'd the guilt upon his adverse neighbour;— Lord! how he rail'd at her: declaring how, He'd bring an action ...
— English Satires • Various

... Bismarck, over his pipe and lager, snorted out his alarm. The Queen of England's object, he said, was clearly political—she wished to estrange Germany and Russia—and very likely she would have her way. "In family matters," he added, "she is not used to contradiction;" she would "bring the parson with her in her travelling bag and the bridegroom in her trunk, and the marriage would come off on the spot." But the man of blood and iron was not to be thwarted so easily, and he ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey









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