"Cavil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the practical. It has been a grave fault with many writers on horological matters that they did not make and measure the abstractions which they delineated on paper. We do not mean by this to endorse the cavil we so often hear—"Oh, that is all right in theory, but it will not work in practice." If theory is right, practice must conform to it. The trouble with many theories is, they do not contain all the elements ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... they make their own excuse in the work itself, do not pass in a statement without cavil at the arrogance that would exalt the work of men's hands above the work of God. Shall we strive with our pigments to outshine the sun, or teach the secrets of form to the cunning Artificer by whom the world was made? What room for Art, except as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... lords, there is still a power reserved to the admiralty, of dismissing these guardians of commerce from their stations, and employing them in case of great necessity in the line of battle, on this side cape Finisterre. Not to cavil, my lords, at the term of great necessity, of which it is apparent that the commissioners of the admiralty are to judge, I would desire to be informed what measures are to be taken, if a royal navy should unluckily rove beyond this cape, which is marked out as the utmost bound of the power ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... hundred thousand men drawn together without an effort, every man a volunteer,—a spectacle never before exhibited to the world,—puts at rest all doubt upon it; and not only that, it settles beyond all cavil the superiority of self-government, based on the broadest principles of freedom and the broadest system of education, over any other form which has ever been adopted. Passing from this, however, as a fact which needs ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... enough to satisfy men who had just come out of the Acordada. There was cold mutton, ham, and venison, maize bread, and "guesas de Guatemala," with a variety of fruit to follow. Verily a supper at which even a gourmand might not cavil; though it was but the debris of a dinner, which seemed to have been partaken of by a goodly ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
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