"Reasoner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... With due respect for the astronomical knowledge of those who hold this view, all I can say is that this is a novel, and nothing but a novel, without any facts to support it, and that the few facts which are known to us do not enable a careful reasoner to go beyond the conclusions stated many years ago by Colebrooke, that the "Hindus had undoubtedly made some progress at an early period in the astronomy cultivated by them for the regulation of time. Their calendar, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... reasoner a look expressive of his affectionate wonder at her inspired perception of legal possibilities, the old lawyer said, that the first thing in order was a meeting between herself and Miss PENDRAGON; which, as it could ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... principle; inference &c (judgment) 480. prosyllogism^, syllogism; enthymeme^, sorites^, dilemma, perilepsis^, a priori reasoning, reductio ad absurdum, horns of a dilemma, argumentum ad hominem [Lat.], comprehensive argument; empirema^, epagoge^. [person who reasons] reasoner, logician, dialectician; disputant; controversialist, controvertist^; wrangler, arguer, debater polemic, casuist, rationalist; scientist; eristic^. logical sequence; good case; correct just reasoning, sound reasoning, valid reasoning, cogent reasoning, logical reasoning, forcible reasoning, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the President; and this last argument, since it resolves itself into mere power, without stopping to point out the sources of that power, is not only the shortest, but in truth the most just. He is the most sensible, as well as the most candid reasoner, in my opinion, who places this treasury order on the ground of the pleasure of the executive, and stops there. I regard the joint resolution of 1816 as mandatory; as prescribing a legal rule; as putting this subject, in which all have so deep an interest, beyond the caprice, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... insisting on man's limitations because he can not be a mother, than on woman's because she can be. Surely maternity is an added power and development of some of the most tender sentiments of the human heart and not a "limitation." "Yes," says another pertinacious reasoner, "but it unfits woman for much of the world's work." Yes, and it fits her for much of the world's work; a large share of human legislation would be better done by her because of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... is a very keen and cogent reasoner. Like a powerful logician who is confident that he has the truth upon his side, and like a pureminded man who has no sinister ends to gain, he often takes his stand upon the same ground with his opponent, adopts his positions, and condemns him out of his own mouth. ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... she favored Gordon Wright's addresses to her daughter, and Captain Lovelock had a grotesque theory that she had set her heart upon seeing this young lady come into six thousand a year. Miss Evers's devoted swain had never struck Bernard as a brilliant reasoner, but our friend suddenly found himself regarding him as one of the inspired. The form of depravity into which the New England conscience had lapsed on Mrs. Vivian's part was an undue appreciation of a ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... his readers with attempting to refute Johnson's arguments, paradoxical as they often were, should be placed Reynolds's portrait of that 'labouring working mind[9].' It might make him reflect that if the mighty reasoner could rise up and meet him face to face, he would be sure, on which ever side the right might be, even if at first his pistol missed fire to knock him down with the butt-end of it[10]. I have attempted therefore not to criticise but to illustrate ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... A reasoner among the troop, more daring than the others, and shocked that someone might doubt his soul, observed the interlocutor with sight-vanes pointed at a quarter circle from two different stations, and ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... assuredly false, principle; but the assumption of it by De Saussure proves all that I want to prove,—namely, that the beds of the slaty crystallines are in the Alps in so large a plurality of instances correspondent in direction to their folia, as to induce even a cautious reasoner to assume such correspondence ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... nobly speaks[XIII-5]—continued through succeeding ages, and illuminated by the Light which has come into the world—may still express the worthiest thoughts of the modern scientific investigator and reasoner. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... was, "some how or other," to work out something good: in short, there is nothing so convenient as this "some how or other" way of accommodating one's self to circumstances; it is the main-stay of a heedless actor, and tardy reasoner, like Dolph Heyliger; and he who can, in this loose, easy way, link foregone evil to anticipated good, possesses a secret of happiness almost equal to the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... polemical struggles with outsiders; used to have a Byronic notion that getting hold of other people's thoughts, and passing them off for those of somebody else, was not a very great sin; is a better anecdote teller than reasoner; can be very solemn and most virtuously combative; could yet, though he seems to have settled down, get up, on the shortest notice, any amount of "immortal William" steam, and throw every ounce of it into a good ninth-rate jeremiad. Still he has many capital points; he is a most indefatigable toiler ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... poet, and the formularist, the echoes of whose teachings had influenced him even in his obscure home. A start of aversion appeared in his fancy to move them at sight of those other sons of the place, the form in the full-bottomed wig, statesman, rake, reasoner, and sceptic; the smoothly shaven historian so ironically civil to Christianity; with others of the same incredulous temper, who knew each quad as well as the faithful, and took equal freedom ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... put forward by various newspapers or private individuals, there were one or two which were feasible enough to attract the attention of the public. One which appeared in The Times, over the signature of an amateur reasoner of some celebrity at that date, attempted to deal with the matter in a critical and semi-scientific manner. An extract must suffice, although the curious can see the whole letter in the issue of the 3rd ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... so eminent in Bayle were equally so in Warburton. In his early studies he had particularly applied himself to logic; and was not only a vigorous reasoner, but one practised in all the finesse of dialectics. He had wit, fertile indeed, rather than delicate; and a vast body of erudition, collected in the uninterrupted studies of twenty years. But it was the SECRET PRINCIPLE, or, as he calls it, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... live," wrote Rufus Choate in his diary in September, 1844, "all blockheads which are shaken at certain mental peculiarities shall know and feel a reasoner, a lawyer and a man ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... intention, to re-establish, under another name, that step in the argument which corresponds to the major, by affirming the necessity of previously perceiving the relation between the idea of man and the idea of mortal. If the reasoner has not previously perceived this relation, he will not, says Dr. Brown, infer because Socrates is a man, that Socrates is mortal. But even this admission, though amounting to a surrender of the doctrine that an argument consists of the minor and the conclusion ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... it is that a Christian is not called a doer, a reasoner, an objector, and perverse disputer; but a BELIEVER. Be thou an example to the believer. 'And believers were the more added to the Lord,' &c. (Acts 5:14; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and from that work, as the boy carries it out, to deduce certain laws and develop the principles which underlie them. Wherever it is deemed possible to do so, it is planned to have the boy make these discoveries for himself, so as to encourage him to become a thinker and a reasoner instead of a ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... one of those cases where the art of the reasoner should be used rather for the sifting of details than for the acquiring of fresh evidence. The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete and of such personal importance to so many people, that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... made a masterly lawyer's speech, Sheil the speech of a glittering orator, guarding unitarians by the arguments that had (or perhaps I should say had not) guarded Irish catholics, Peel and Gladstone made political speeches lofty and sound, and Macaulay the speech of an eloquent scholar and a reasoner, manfully enforcing principles both of law and justice with a luxuriance of illustration all his own, from jurists of imperial Rome, sages of old Greece, Hindoos, Peruvians, Mexicans, and tribunals beyond the Mississippi.[196] We do not often enjoy such parliamentary nights ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... I who differ from him. I am only a monad—a thing of no moment. The whole tendency of the highest plane of modern thought differs from him. He defends the indefensible. He is an excellent observer, but a feeble reasoner. I should not recommend you to ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the wickedness of Durazzo will be thought a proper parallel to Richard's. But parallels prove nothing: and a man must be a very poor reasoner who thinks he has an advantage over me, because I dare produce a circumstance that resembles my subject in the case to which it is applied, and leaves my argument just as strong as it was before ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... upon him as a man of disordered intellects, because he reasoned in a style to which they had not been used and which confounded their dim perceptions. If you said that though you differed with him in sentiment, yet you thought him an admirable reasoner, and a close observer of human nature, you were answered with a loud laugh, and some hackneyed quotation. "Alas! Leviathan was not so tamed!" They did not know whom they had to contend with. The corner stone, which ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of experience; he is commonly a reasoner, frequently a successful reasoner. Doubtless he could be vanquished in mere reason, and the case against him put logically. But it can be put much more precisely in more general and even aesthetic terms. He is in the clean and well-lit ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... reasoner," retorted Bearwarden, who saw that this, like so many other things, had reminded Ayrault of Sylvia, "that is but small consolation for having lost it now, though I suppose our lot is not so hard as if ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... like those of all truly great men, was open to conviction. He was a quick and powerful reasoner; and a moment's reflection sufficed to remind him of the impotency of his rage. It subsided as quickly as it had been roused. He panted for breath, and looked benignantly ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... name, and it is thrown into the scale of theological belief as if it added great strength to the party which claims him. That he was a man of extraordinary endowments and deep spiritual nature was not questioned, nor that he was a most acute reasoner, who could unfold a proposition into its consequences as patiently, as convincingly, as a palaeontologist extorts its confession from a fossil fragment. But it was maintained that so many dehumanizing ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... not a logician or reasoner, and not a rhetorician, in the common sense. He was a poet, who wrote chiefly in prose, but also in verse. His verse was usually rough, but sometimes finished and melodious; it was always extraordinarily concise and expressive. During his engagement to the lady who became his second wife, he ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... imagination nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original combinations and at once exerted the powers of the scholar, the reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits were too eager to be always cautions. His abilities gave him a haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal or mollify, and his impatience of opposition ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... more sanguine reasoner than our guest. Even in some of the facts which were related by Carwin, he maintained the probability of celestial interference, when the latter was disposed to deny it, and had found, as he imagined, footsteps of an human agent. Pleyel was by no means equally credulous. He scrupled ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... first-class carriage. We all three shook hands, and I saw at once from the reverential way in which Lestrade gazed at my companion that he had learned a good deal since the days when they had first worked together. I could well remember the scorn which the theories of the reasoner used then to excite in ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... God," said the reasoner, but with such a self-satisfied air in his approval, that Marion thought it time ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... philosophical foundation of their creed. Wilberforce's book, A Practical View, attained an immense popularity, and is characteristic of the position. Wilberforce turns over the infidel to be confuted by Paley, whom he takes to be a conclusive reasoner. For himself he is content to show what needed little proof, that the so-called Christians of the day could act as if they had never heard of the New Testament. The Evangelical movement had in short no distinct relation to speculative movements. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... while, the Protestant Arminians stand aloof, and deride the mutual perplexity of the disputants, (see a curious Review of the Controversy, by Le Clerc, Bibliotheque Universelle, tom. xiv. p. 144-398.) Perhaps a reasoner still more independent may smile in his turn, when he peruses an Arminian Commentary on the Epistle ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... greatest skill and his best headwork; for I confess to the belief that a beaver reasons. I have so often seen him change his plans so wisely and meet emergencies so promptly and well that I can think of him only as a reasoner. ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... sensible and somewhat impartial writer, is the only political foreign reasoner who has done justice to Canada; but it is par parenthese only; and even his powers of mind and of reasoning, nurtured as they have been in republicanism, fail to convince fearless hearts that democracy is ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... at this time: "Miss Anthony is the same clear, calm reasoner—a woman of the same firm convictions and with the same forcible, dignified and essentially womanly manner of expressing them—that she has always been. While in Cincinnati she is the guest of her cousin, Mrs. A. B. Merriam, of Walnut Hills, where many call upon her and find a talk ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... compliance with our pride and folly, to conform to our artificial regulations. It is by a conformity to this method we owe the discovery of the few truths we know, and the little liberty and rational happiness we enjoy. We have something fairer play than a reasoner could have expected formerly; and we derive advantages from it which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of God to mankind in virtue of their "first disobedience" and inherited depravity is at the bottom of it. The extent to which that idea was carried is well shown in the expressions I have borrowed from Jonathan Edwards. According to his teaching,—and he was a reasoner who knew what he was talking about, what was involved in the premises of the faith he accepted,—man inherits the curse of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... delusion which he continued to weave, for enwrapping his own judgment, such reasoner omitted wholly to cross the warp of combined result. He neglected that vastly-important filament—proper and value-enhancing handling of his valuable production; the reality that southern cotton, sugar and rice had become so great a factor in national wealth, mainly through manipulation ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... its mother, or the mother her child. Is one tempted to commit a wrong in thought or action, his friend, though absent, appears at his side and begs him not to do it. If one is in doubt or uncertainty, he summons his friend, who become a patient reasoner, and an impartial judge. Who does not find himself, daily, looking through other people's glasses, weighing on other people's scales, sounding other people's voices? It is a habit that friends have ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... views, and illustrating an obscure but most interesting chapter in the marvelous history of human nature. It is written with perfect modesty, and freedom from pretense, doing credit to the ability of the author as a narrator, as well as to her fairness and integrity as a reasoner." ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... has that leonine aspect sometimes esteemed a physiognomical attribute of the German, and, with fair enough qualities generally, is without any especial intellectual strength. Near him is another "first-rate,"—all energy and action, acute enough, a quick reasoner, very cool and resolute. Below these is the face of one whom the thief-takers think lightly of, and call a man of "no account." Yet he is a man of far better powers than either of the "first-rates,"—has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... since I had seized the money; and being desirous to shake off the yoke of a governor, 'Do you know, Mr. Brinon,' said I, 'that I don't like a blockhead to set up for a reasoner? Do you go to supper, if you please; but take care that I have post-horses ready before daybreak.' The moment he mentioned cards and dice, I felt the money burn in my pocket. I was somewhat surprised, however, to find the room where the ordinary was served filled with odd-looking creatures. My ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... thus he has gone to his great account? We shall not follow his spirit into another life; but it is miserable to reflect that one hour's patience might have saved him to the world and to God, and showed him, after all, that the great object of his life had been accomplished. Blind and impatient reasoner!—what has ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... out of the usual course of a chairman, by requesting, almost as a personal favour to himself, that the delegates would adopt the recommendation of the Hampden Club. Mr. Cobbett then rose, and, in a speech replete with every argument which this most clear and powerful reasoner could suggest, proposed the first resolution, that the meeting should adopt the recommendation of the Hampden Club, and agree to recommend the reformers to petition to the extent of householder suffrage only; urging, as Major Cartwright had done before, the necessity of agreeing ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... connexion with the topic of the recent revolutions on the continent, and parliamentary reform in this country, concluded an interesting debate by saying—"He was for reform—for preserving, not for pulling down—for restoration, not for revolution. He was a shallow politician, a miserable reasoner, and he thought no very trustworthy man, who argued, that because the people of Paris had justifiably and gloriously resisted lawless oppression, the people of London and Dublin ought to rise for reform. Devoted as he was to the cause of parliamentary reform, ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... was still another reason why his captain had chosen him for the work he had in mind. Though not so quick or clever as Roy, Henry was a keen observer and close reasoner. Moreover, he was entirely dependable, was very discreet, and being the largest boy in the party, was best fitted to take care of himself ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... seemed so ready to help me and to forward Nino's suit? Why had he given me the smallest clue to the count's whereabouts? Now I am not a strong man in action, but I am a very cunning reasoner. I remembered the man, and the outrageous opinions he had expressed, both to Nino and to me. Then I understood my suspicions. It would be folly to expect such a man to have any real sympathy or sense of friendship for anyone. He had amused himself by promising to come ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... reasoner was most firmly attached to the Christian religion. His zeal to promote it appeared, first, in his middle age, by publishing a discourse to demonstrate the reasonableness of believing Jesus to be the promised Messiah; and, afterwards, in the latter part ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... workmanship of power divine. For he who, justly, deems the Immortals live Safe, and at ease, yet fluctuates in his mind How things are swayed; how, chiefly, those discerned In heaven sublime—to SUPERSTITION back Lapses, and fears a tyrant host, and then Conceives, dull reasoner, they can all things do, While yet himself nor knows what may be done, Nor what may never, nature powers defined Stamping on all, and bounds that none can pass: Hence wide, and wider ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... have been exhibited in the Zoological Park, two stand out with special prominence, by reason of their unusual mental qualities. They differed widely from each other. One was a born actor and imitator, who loved human partnership in his daily affairs. The other was an original thinker and reasoner, with a genius for invention, and at all times impatient of training and restraint. The first was named Rajah, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... fault to find with Mr. Huxley as a discoverer of facts or as an exponent of comparative anatomy. In both of these respects he is beyond all praise of mine, and I am ready to sit at his feet; but when he begins to reason from the facts which he sets forth, then, like every other reasoner, he is amenable to the laws of argumentation, and his conclusions are to be tested by the relation which they bear to the premises which he has advanced, and by the proof which he furnishes for the ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... conduct, entirely depend. Not to mention, that, to a young beginner, the general observations and maxims occur not always on the proper occasions, nor can be immediately applied with due calmness and distinction. The truth is, an unexperienced reasoner could be no reasoner at all, were he absolutely unexperienced; and when we assign that character to any one, we mean it only in a comparative sense, and suppose him possessed of experience, in a smaller and ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... we have a consistent reasoner! a logical arguer! There is nothing in his conclusions which cannot be found in his premises. He asks nothing in practice which he does not justify in theory. His principles may perchance be false, and this is the point ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... process of reasoning adds nothing to knowledge (in the reasoner). It only displays what was there before, and brings to conscious possession what before was unconscious." And again: "Mind can do its work without knowing it. Consciousness is the light that lightens the process, not the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... depression—enter the smug, comfortable presence of Judge Nahum Dickensheets, at present senior counsel of the North Chicago Street Railway. He was a very mountain of a man physically—smooth-faced, agreeably clothed, hard and yet ingratiating of eye, a thinker, a reasoner. Swanson knew much of him by reputation and otherwise, although personally they were no ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the cases of progressive modification which are cited from among the Invertebrata appear to me to have a foundation less open to criticism than these; and if this be so, no careful reasoner would, I think, be inclined to lay very great stress upon them. Among the Vertebrata, however, there are a few examples which appear to be far ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... With the blood of his gallant adversary and his country's idol on his hands, the penalties of debt and treason hanging over him, the fertility of an acute intellect wasted on vain expedients,—an outlaw, an adventurer, a plausible reasoner with one sex and fascinating betrayer of the other, poor, bereaved, contemned,—one holy, loyal sentiment lingered in his perverted soul,—love for the fair, gifted, gentle being who called him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... sensible girl and a good reasoner, but her knowledge of minerals was exceedingly limited. Each piece of white rock was, to her, quartz; and the place where gold was found in any form was a mine, or would be one later when developed. She really wished to find out if there was more of the ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... when it involved the greatest peril to the position and prospects of the speaker. But how much moral considerations were apt to be present to his mind, I do not know. He was mostly known—so we of the North thought—as an impracticable reasoner. Miss Martineau said, "He was like a cast-iron man on ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... you this general statement doubtfully, and only as that towards which an impartial reasoner will, I think, be inclined by existing data. But I shall be able to show you, without any doubt, in the course of our studies, that the achievements of art which have been usually looked upon as the results of peculiar inspiration have been arrived at only through long ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... is the motto of the savage philosophy of causation. The untutored reasoner speculates on the principles of the Egyptian clergy, as described by Herodotus.(1) "The Egyptians have discovered more omens and prodigies than any other men; for when aught prodigious occurs, they keep good watch, and write down what ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... placed by the idolatry of Boswell; if by the worst parts of his mind, we should place him even below Boswell himself. Where he was not under the influence of some strange scruple, or some domineering passion, which prevented him from boldly and fairly investigating a subject, he was a wary and acute reasoner, a little too much inclined to scepticism, and a little too fond of paradox. No man was less likely to be imposed upon by fallacies in argument, or by exaggerated statements of facts. But, if while he was beating down sophisms and exposing false testimony, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... by chance, and that art had not in the least contributed to render it commodious to men, because there are caves somewhat like that house, which yet were never dug by the art of man? One should show to such a reasoner all the parts of the house, and tell him for instance:—Do you see this great court-gate? It is larger than any door, that coaches may enter it. This court has sufficient space for coaches to turn in it. This staircase is made up of low steps, that one may ascend it with ease; and turns ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... tore a veil from the eyes of Charlie Brooke. He had always been fond of May Leather, after a fashion. Now it suddenly rushed upon him that he was fond of her after another fashion! He was a quick thinker and just reasoner. A poor man without a profession and no prospects has no right to try to gain the affections of a girl. ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... him, and at once his audacity gives way; he speaks; shrug your shoulders and he is silent. You must not discuss with him; however good a reasoner you may be, you will be worsted, for he is a ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his systems of noses, and observed my uncle Toby's deportment—what great attention he gave to every word—and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, with what wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of it—surveying it transversely as he held it ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... agree with me if I could so effectually button-hole and fasten on to it as to eat it. Most men have an easy method with turtle soup, and I had no misgiving but that if I could bring my first premise to bear I should prove the better reasoner. My difficulty lay in this initial process, for I had not with me the argument that would alone compel Mr. Sweeting think that I ought to be allowed to convert the turtles—I mean I had no money in my pocket. No missionary enterprise can be carried on without any money at all, but even ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... 'was an adviser more at cross purposes with the advised. It would be impossible to draw a more striking portrait of the abstract reasoner, whose calculations of human motives omit all reference to passion, and who fancied that all prejudice can be dispelled by a few bits ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... her material greatness—these were the objects for which he was ready to devote the best energies of heart and brain, and if need were, to lay down his life. He might be skilled in every elegant accomplishment, an acute reasoner, an orator, a musician, a poet; and to some extent he was all of these. But before all else he was in the highest sense a practical man, finding in strenuous action his chief glory and pride. And such a man was the last to melt into ecstasies over the high ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell |
