"Contradiction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... 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
... contradiction with themselves,' 'contradictory.' [632] 'The king first summoned his councillors, then dismissed them immediately, and for a long time meditated by himself.' Ceteris refers to the preceding amicis, ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... 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
... 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
... 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 |
