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More "Contraries" Quotes from Famous Books



... pastime, sufficiently I have proved afore, both by reason and authority of the best learned men that ever wrote. Then seeing pastimes be leful [lawful], the most fittest for learning is to be sought for. A pastime, saith Aristotle, must be like a medicine. Medicines stand by contraries; therefore, the nature of studying considered, the fittest pastime shall soon appear. In study every part of the body is idle, which thing causeth gross and cold humors to gather together and vex scholars very much; the mind is altogether bent and set on work. A pastime then must ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... this—whether it be market, mass, or mischief—and no one will look at you twice. At home it should be the same. There may be visitors; if Monna Olimpia can contrive it, there will be a good many. You may judge of their quality by her anxiety to receive them. Be guarded then, my dear, and go by contraries. They will not find the pattern of the carpet so interesting as you should do. Give them prose for their poetry, vinegar for their sweet wine, bitter herbs when they look to you for cane of sugar. Keep your honeycomb for him who is trying to earn it. Think where I am going, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... he likes the hardest and most obscure best; for as ladies wear black patches to make their complexions seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did; for contraries are best set off with contraries. He has found out a new sort of poetical Georgics—a trick of sowing wit like clover-grass on barren subjects, which would yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, ...
— English Satires • Various

... is right in there that we find the root and the germ of permanent social relations. And I wish you to note another very significant fact. You hear people talking about selfishness and unselfishness, as though they were direct contraries, mutually exclusive of each other, as though, in order to make a selfish man unselfish, you must completely reverse his nature, so to speak. I do not think this is true at all. Unselfishness naturally and necessarily springs out of selfishness, and, in the deepest sense of the ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... only masters of right reason, put aside the votes and opinions of the rest of mankind. Thus, notwithstanding the innate light, we are as much in the dark as if it did not exist; a rule that will warp any way is not to be distinguished amidst its contraries. If these rules are so liable to vary, through adventitious notions, we should find them clearest in children and in persons wholly illiterate. He grants that there are many opinions, received by men of different countries, educations, and tempers, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... less in the dogmatism of the head than in the motions of the heart; he would bring the doctrine away from the angry disputes of the schools and incorporate it into practical life. He was thoroughly united with the Reformers as to the real signification of justifying faith, but these contraries which were sought to be reestablished he rejected.... From Spener's view a new phase of spiritual life began to pervade the heart. The orthodoxy of the State Church had been accustomed to consider all baptized persons ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... body, to be the grief of my mind? If that itself can either fear or complain, let it. But as for the soul, which indeed, can only be truly sensible of either fear or grief; to which only it belongs according to its different imaginations and opinions, to admit of either of these, or of their contraries; thou mayst look to that thyself, that it suffer nothing. Induce her not to any such opinion or persuasion. The understanding is of itself sufficient unto itself, and needs not (if itself doth not bring itself to need) any other thing besides ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... of the Triclinium, derives its name from a large triclinium in the centre of the peristyle, which is spacious and handsome, and bounded by the city walls. The House of the Vestals is a little further on. What claim it has to this title, except by the rule of contraries, we are at a loss to guess; seeing that the style of its decorations is very far from corresponding with that purity of thought and manners which we are accustomed to associate with the title of vestal. The paintings are numerous and beautiful, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... the flash of her eyes. Could he possibly wish, or bear, to, have anything altered? But she had reason to desire an extended sale of the work. Her aim, in the teeth of her independent style, was at the means of independence—a feminine method of attempting to conciliate contraries; and after despatching the last sheets to the printer, he meditated upon the several ways which might serve to, assist her; the main way running thus in his mind:—We have a work of genius. Genius is good for the public. What is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... all," retorted his Majesty; "plenty of other countries have had to afford it before now. But it was only when England did it that we took up with the notion. We are always imitating England: the attraction of contraries, I suppose, because we are surrounded by land as they are by water. Why else did they start turning me into a commercial traveler, sending me all over Europe and round the world to visit colonies that no longer really ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... philosophies contain the absolute philosophy. The philosophy of Plato, of Aristotle of Bacon, of Locke, of Leibnitz, of Reid, are all philosophies, no doubt; but that is all that is to be said. Even contraries must resemble one another in one point, or they could not be contrasted. In truth, there is, I think, a striking analogy between man's spiritual and intellectual condition; only his intellect is a little less variable than his "spiritual faculty"; far more so, however, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... suspended in the air in the centre of the universe, and the stars and planets revolved around it, each fastened in a crystalline ring; the moon and sun revolved in the same manner, only at a farther distance. The generation of the universe was by the action of contraries, by heat and cold, the moist and the dry. From the moisture all things were originally generated by heat. Animals and men came from fishes by a process of evolution. There is evidence in his philosophy of a belief in the development ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... though the area of its interest is yet wider, and the depths to which it reaches more profound; all its contradictory phenomena move under one embracing law, and all its contraries shall finally be solved in the clear perception of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... in itself, had a certain effect upon Camilla; it might be an effect of fear. I do not say, for I do not know, what her feelings towards Vaudemont exactly were. As the calmest natures are often those the most hurried away by their contraries, so, perhaps, he awed and dazzled rather than pleased her;—at least, he certainly forced himself on her interest. Still she would have started in terror if any one had said to her, "Do you love your betrothed less than when you met by that happy lake?"—and her heart would have ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... his hands, and he leaves them behind him voluntarily, choosing base life instead of honourable death, let justice be done. The old legend of Caeneus, who was changed by Poseidon from a woman into a man, may teach by contraries the appropriate punishment. Let the thrower away of his shield be changed from a man into a woman—that is to say, let him be all his life out of danger, and never again be admitted by any commander into the ranks of his army; and let him pay a heavy ...
— Laws • Plato

... of all things began to be. But chiefliest in the spirit (beast or man, Planet of heaven or blossom of earth or sea) The divine contraries of ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... contrary to both nature and will, since these flow from an internal principle. The other is natural necessity, resulting from the natural principles—either the form (as it is necessary for fire to heat), or the matter (as it is necessary for a body composed of contraries to be dissolved). Hence, with this necessity, which results from the matter, Christ's body was subject to the necessity of death and other like defects, since, as was said (A. 1, ad 2), "it was by the consent of the Divine will that the flesh was allowed to do ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... the source, he said, of great failures, but by the opposite course even more successes, and greater, were attained. If he had merely followed this method without complications, he would have had no protection against such as had come to know him; they would have taken everything by contraries and would have deemed his saying that he did not wish something to be equivalent to his ardently desiring it, and that he was eager for something equivalent to his not being concerned about it. It happened, however, that he became angry if any one gave evidence of understanding him. Many were ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... contraries that the truth is determined. Even in the midst of the apparent plenty of fish, fishing crews sometimes came home empty-handed after continued effort. Often ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... the key-stone of religious philosophy. Its diverse interpretations. Its mathematical expres ion[TN-1] shows that it does not relate to contradictories. But certain concrete analytic propositions, relating to contraries, do have this form. The contrary as distinguished from the privative. The Conditioned and Unconditioned, the Knowable and Unknowable are not true contradictions. The synthesis of contraries is ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... Parallels, and has furnished a specimen in that of Petrarch and Rousseau, and intended for another that of Erasmus with Cicero. It is amusing to observe how a lively and subtle mind can strike out resemblances, and make contraries accord, and at the same time it may show the pinching difficulties through which a parallel is pushed, till ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... include. This fact, that every event is known as possessing the quality of exclusion, shows that exclusion is as positive a relation as inclusion. There are of course no merely negative relations in nature, and exclusion is not the mere negative of inclusion, though the two relations are contraries. Both relations are concerned solely with events, and exclusion is capable of logical definition ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... lodestar. Passion in her is A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove, And it shall turn, by instant contraries, Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his For whom it burns, clings close i' the ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti

... yesterday, we did set out, and after a good passage of four hours and a half, landed at Dover. I begin to count my comforts, for I find their contraries thicken on my apprehension. I have, at least, done for a while with postchaises. My trunks were a little opened at Calais, and they would have stopped my medals, but with much ado and much three louis's they let them pass. At Dover I found the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... promise to show it to me.... In general I love to seize things by some unwonted lustre.' There, in the two greatest of the essayists, one sees precisely what goes to the making of the essayist. First, a beautiful disorder: the simultaneous attack and appeal of contraries, a converging multitude of dreams, memories, thoughts, sensations, without mental preference, or conscious guiding of the judgment; and then, order in disorder, a harmony more properly musical than logical, a separating and return of many elements, which end by making a pattern. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... the unsubstantialness of the dream. He may, indeed, have learned that the dream is not to be relied on for telling the truth; the Zulu, for example, has even reached the perverse triumph of critical logic achieved by our own Aryan ancestors in the saying that "dreams go by contraries." But the Zulu has not learned, nor had the primeval Aryan learned, to disregard the utterances of the dream as being purely subjective phenomena. To the mind as yet untouched by modern culture, the visions seen and the voices heard in sleep possess as much objective ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... America: he drew the man, and described the day, and what is done in it: he read the hearts of men and women, their probity, and their second thought, and wiles; the wiles of innocence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices slide into their contraries: he could divide the mother's part from the father's part in the face of the child, or draw the fine demarcations of freedom and of fate: he knew the laws of repression which make the police of nature: and all the sweets and all the terrors of human lot lay in his mind as truly but as softly as ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... is usually taken in the Scripture for the same with Common; and consequently their contraries, Holy, and Proper, in the Kingdome of God must be the same also. But figuratively, those men also are called Holy, that led such godly lives, as if they had forsaken all worldly designes, and wholly devoted, and given themselves to God. In the proper sense, that which ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... "Dreams go by contraries, and I am, therefore, a very brave man. But come, it is eleven o'clock. Let us see what this place ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... upon oak-trees an affirmation that the idea of an oak dwells in her formative thought. Nature affirms the oak-idea by oaks; the consummate poet exhibits the same realism. He embodies. He lends a soul to forms. The real and ideal in Art are indeed often opposed to each other as contraries, but it is a false opposition. Let the artist represent reality, and all that is in him, though it were the faith of seraphs, will go into the representation. The sole condition is that he shall select his subject from native, spontaneous choice,—that is, leave his genius to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... by contraries in the Moon, and when the Man wished to keep warm he knocked off a few chunks of ice and put them in his stove; and he cooled his drinking water by throwing red-hot coals of fire into the pitcher. Likewise, when he became chilly ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... childishly, as not knowing that they cannot justify both sides, when the question lies between opposite and contradictory principles. By this sort of simplicity, which approves of errors, if much practised, and of opposites, or essential contraries, when authorities may be found for them, no work, perhaps, is more strikingly characterized, than the popular School Grammar of W. H. Wells. This author says, "The use of but as a preposition ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... cannot be reasonably hoped by him that dares always to hover over the precipice of destruction, or delights to approach the pleasures which he knows it fatal to partake. Austerity is the proper antidote to indulgence; the diseases of mind as well as body are cured by contraries, and to contraries we should readily have recourse, if we dreaded guilt ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... supposed that Australia is topsey-turvey mad, but in India it seems that matters also go by contraries, when compared with their mode of procedure at home. A lawsuit has been occasioned in Calcutta through white ants devouring a will. In England our Aunts (who are generally whites) make wills (bless them!) and we devour them, or at least live on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various

... stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily, I say to you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." It should be noticed that the terms of this award are the exact contraries of those of the award to the righteous. On the one hand, the King says, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit {70} the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;" on the other, he says, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into the [oe]onian fire prepared for the devil and ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis

... hypothesis wholly removed from sensible apprehension. There is no parallel in the cases. So the ridiculousness has been made evident of Plato's famous analogical argument that by a general law of nature all things are produced contraries from contraries; ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... the result of the more profound views which they entertain on ethical and metaphysical subjects, start from the cardinal vices and not the cardinal virtues; since the virtues make their appearance only as the contraries or negations of the vices. According to Schmidt's History of the Eastern Mongolians the cardinal vices in the Buddhist scheme are four: Lust, Indolence, Anger, and Avarice. But probably instead of Indolence, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... Chaucer? And I have heard this morning from two or three of the early readers of the Chronicle (I never care to see it till the evening) that the verses are there—so that my wishes have fulfilled themselves there at least—strangely, for wishes of mine ... which generally 'go by contraries' as the soothsayers declare of dreams. How kind of you to send me the fragment to Mr. Forster! and how I like to read it. Was the Hebrew yours then ... written then, I mean ... ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... which in logic are called contraries. Both, therefore, cannot be exclusively and simultaneously true, but both may be simultaneously false. Thus, "all men are white" and "no men are white" are contraries, but they are both false. And this, I submit, is the judgment to be pronounced on these two exclusive definitions of conscience. Neither is, exclusively speaking, true, but there is a measure of truth common to both, and that measure it will be the ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... asleep. Under my right arm the whip still dangled; In my left hand the reins for an instant slackened. Suddenly I woke and turned to question my groom: "We have gone a hundred paces since you fell asleep." Body and spirit for a while had exchanged place; Swift and slow had turned to their contraries. For these few steps that my horse had carried me Had taken in my dream countless aeons of time! True indeed is that saying of Wise Men "A hundred years are but a ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various

... him as she quarrelled with no one else, and if that wasn't a sign of love in woman, then Jingleberry had studied the sex all his years—and they were thirty-two—for nothing. In short, Marian behaved so like a sister to him that Jingleberry, knowing how dreams and women go by contraries, was absolutely sure that a sister was just the reverse from that relationship which in her heart of hearts she was willing to assume towards him, and he was happy in consequence. Believing this, it was not at all strange that he should make up his mind to propose ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... and for the king's. Lan. Fie, Mortimer, dishonour not thyself! Can this be true, 'twas good to banish him? And is this true, to call him home again? Such reasons make white black, and dark night day. Y. Mor. My Lord of Lancaster, mark the respect. Lan. In no respect can contraries be true. Q. Isab. Yet, good my lord, hear what he can allege. War. All that he speaks is nothing; we are resolv'd. Y. Mor. Do you not wish that Gaveston were dead? Pem. I would he were! Y. Mor. Why, then, my lord, give me but leave to ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... well. Thorstan was consumed by love, and must always be with her if he could. She was gentle with him, as she was with everybody, and had to own to herself that it was Thorstan who now possessed her thoughts. That may have been going by contraries, for if Leif paid her nothing but the good-humoured civility he had ready for everybody, Thorstan, on his part, seemed afraid of her, and was speechless in her company. But there's all the difference in the world between a man completely easy in your company and one completely uneasy. Leif was a ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett

... Michael Cassio. He frequented their house, and his free and rattling talk was no unpleasing variety to Othello, who was himself of a more serious temper; for such tempers are observed often to delight in their contraries, as a relief from the oppressive excess of their own; and Desdemona and Cassio would talk and laugh together, as in the days when he went a-courting ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... peruse it: Some will undoubtedly approve of the Captain's Production because 'tis scandalous and malicious; others will disapprove of it for the very same Reasons; for the Tasts of Mankind being as different as their Constitutions, they must of Consequence be often as opposite as the most absolute Contraries in Nature: A Knave loves and delights in Scandal, Detraction, Infamy, in blasting, ruining his Neighbour's Character, because these are consonant to the Depravity of humane Nature, and in themselves vile: Upon the very same ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous

... the reason stdeth by contrary wordes or contraries be rehearsed by cparison, thus: Flattery hath pleasa[un]t begynnynges, but the same hathe verye bytter endynges. Cicero agaynst Catiline: when they coulde not lyue honestlye, they had rather dye shamefully. They that be after the fleshe, care for these thynges ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry

... Mrs. Charlot Gett-all go away with Wilding! A Man of Wilding's extravagant Life Get a Fortune in the City! Thou mightst as well have told me, a Holder-forth were married to a Nun: There are not two such Contraries in Nature, 'Tis flam, 'tis foolery, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... and pithiness are intended to make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those two monosyllables express the precisely accurate contraries of right character, in the two great offices of the Church—those of bishop ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... more for Hercules: Better and sooner durst I undertake To make the different seasons of the year, The winds, or elements, to sympathise, Than their unmeasurable vanity Dance truly in a measure. They agree! What though all concord's born of contraries; So many follies will confusion prove, And like a sort of jarring instruments, All out of tune; because, indeed, we see There is not that analogy 'twixt discords, As between things ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... suppose, that dreams go by contraries. Suppose a true friend wished to steal a kiss in ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... this mode of reasoning from contraries is a great help, for his philosophy of the vices is the only one which admits of classification; his descriptions of virtue, while they include the ordinary formal divisions, are far too profound ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... must follow by consequence that the other contrary must answer to the remanent opposite to that wherewith it is conferred. As, for example, virtue and vice are contrary in one kind, so are good and evil. If one of the contraries of the first kind be consonant to one of those of the second, as virtue and goodness, for it is clear that virtue is good, so shall the other two contraries, which are evil and vice, have the same connection, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... "non-human," i.e., the not-ourselves, the negation of ourselves and consequently a non-existence. Most Easterns confuse the contradictories, in which one term stands for something, and the other for nothing (e.g., ourselves and not-ourselves), with the contraries (e.g., rich and not-rich poor), in which both terms express a something. So the positive-negative "infinite" is not the complement of "finite," but its negation. The Western man derides the process by making "not-horse" the complementary entity of "horse." The Pilgrim ends with the favourite ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... of plaintiff, to the incalculable danger of the estate, and to the disregard of decency and justice. What rendered this assumption and exercise of power the more intolerable, was, that the persons the most unfit were selected; and as if, it would appear, from a "hateful love of contraries," the man learned in law being sent to preside over the business of equity, of which he knew nothing, and the man learned in equity being entrusted with the direction of law of which he knew worse than nothing; being obliged to unlearn all he had previously learnt, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... Man. Natural Selection Could not Have Deprived a Monkey of Hair. Nor Have Given a Human Brain. The Brain-Worker Contravenes Natural Selection at Every Step. Civilization the Contradiction of Natural Selection. Morality and Religion the Direct Contraries of Natural Selection. Tendency Immoral, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... pocket, Poppy," she said, "and don't on any account let me see it—I must try to forget it, or my courage will go. Evidently, Poppy, names go by contraries. I wrote some dismal papers on purpose for The Downfall; I will now offer them to a magazine which ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... terms, description of religious rites, and astronomy). He was a perfect master in reconciling contradictory texts and differentiating in applying general principles to particular cases, as also in interpreting contraries by reference to differences in situation, eloquent, resolute, intelligent, possessed of powerful memory. He was acquainted with the science of morals and politics, learned, proficient in distinguishing inferior things from superior ones, skilled in drawing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... are two species of order, and that these two orders are two contraries within one and the same genus. Suppose also that the idea of disorder arises in our mind whenever, seeking one of the two kinds of order, we find the other. The idea of disorder would then have a clear meaning in the current practice of life: it would ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... affection in his eyes that sometimes does exist between men, Carrick saw the thought with the weird prescience of the dying. "Dreams go by contraries, sir," he ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... creature! whither am going?" Then I reproached myself with my unthankful temper, and that I had repined at my solitary condition; and now what would I give to be on shore there again! Thus, we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it. It is scarcely possible to imagine the consternation I was now in, being driven from my beloved island (for so it appeared to me now to be) into the wide ocean, almost two leagues, and in the utmost despair of ever recovering it again. ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... their contraries, are the foundation of everything that we call a relation. They are no more capable of being described than sensations are; and, as it appears to me, they are as little susceptible of analysis into simpler elements. Like simple tastes and smells, or feelings of pleasure ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... their merchandise aboard, these ships will sail upon the next Sunday and will make their way through our Narrow Sea. We have for a great time been long-suffering to these people, for which they have done us many contraries and despites, growing ever more arrogant as we grow more patient. It is in my mind therefore that we hie us to-morrow to Winchelsea, where we have twenty ships, and make ready to sally out upon them as they pass. May God and Saint George ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the rest. Diseases which arose from excess of heat were to be attacked by cooling remedies; those from excess of cold, by heating ones; and so of the other derangements of balance. This was truly the principle of contraries contrariis, which ill-informed persons have attempted to make out to be the general doctrine of medicine, whereas there is no general dogma other than this: disease is to be treated by anything that is proved to cure it. The means the Galenist ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... from lightless hell; For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold, And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell; These contraries such unity do hold, Only to flatter fools, and make them bold; So Priam's trust false Sinon's tears doth flatter, That he finds means to burn his Troy ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... following story, that an old man's prayers are sometimes reversed in response, as dreams are said to "go by contraries": An old Arab left his house one morning, intending to go to a village at some distance, and coming to the foot of a hill which he had to cross he exclaimed: "O Allah! send some one to help me over ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... fast, plainly to be in company, or plainly to be only, think I not to counsel thee at this time; for why, perfection standeth not in them. But this counsel may I give thee generally, to hold thee by in these stirrings, and in all other like unto these; evermore where thou findest two contraries, as are these—silence and speaking, fasting and eating, onliness and company, common clothing of Christian religion and singular habits of divers and devised brotherhoods, with all such other what so they be, the which in themself are but works of kind[253] and ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various

... themselves most fertile in generating flattering illusions and artful sophisms. George Sand was indeed a great sophist. She had always in readiness an inexhaustible store of interpretations and subterfuges with which to palliate, excuse, or even metamorphose into their contraries the most odious of her words and actions. It is not likely that any one ever equalled, much less surpassed, her expertness in hiding ugly facts or making innocent things look suspicious. To judge by her writings and conversations she ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... of your daughter," said the latter, "we shall hardly agree. Now I maintain that Donna Beatrice is the contrary of insufferable—the most extreme of contraries. In ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... world of contraries," observed Rolla sagely to herself. "Mayhap I shall find all ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... was reflecting on Tolstoi's title, War and Peace. I used to think that he wanted to express the antithesis of these two states, but now I ask myself if he did not connect these two contraries in one and the same folly—if the fortunes of humanity, whether at war or at peace, were not equally a burden to his mind. By all means let us keep faithful to our efforts to be good; but in spite of ourselves we take this precept a little in the sense of the placards: 'Be good to ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... you a pot of sweetmeats and a pot of honey —neither of them half so sweet as yourself—but don't be vain upon this, or presume to grow sour upon this character of sweetness I give you; for if you do I shall send you a pot of pickles (by way of contraries) to sweeten you up, and bring you to yourself again—whatever changes happen to you, believe me that I am unalterably yours, and according to your motto, such a one, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... womanhood to make a plaything of that picturesque child of nature, just as loneliness caused him to open his eyes to the existence of that, which in the logical and ordinary course of events, he would have entirely overlooked. But since life is made up almost entirely of contraries, it is not so much with reasons that we have to deal as with facts—things as they are. Clothe human nature in whatever garb you like, at heart it remains the same. Time and place and condition make little difference; the real man within is ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... to the platform and corroborated these statements, paying a fine tribute to the political influence of women. He was followed by Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.), whose reputation as a humorist was fully sustained in her clever portrayal of Dreams that Go by Contraries. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt (N. Y.) gave a brilliant address on The ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... commander under the usurper Oliver Cromwell: and then it was, as I am informed, he composed this loyal Poem. For, though fate, more than choice, seems to have placed him in the service of a Knight so notorious, both in his person and politics, yet, by the rule of contraries, one may observe throughout his whole Poem, that he was most orthodox, both in his religion and loyalty. And I am the more induced to believe he wrote it about that time, because he had then the opportunity to converse ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... we rarely find; Though strong the bent, yet quick the turns of mind: Or puzzling contraries confound the whole; Or affectations quite reverse the soul. The dull, flat falsehood serves for policy; And, in the cunning, truth itself's a lie: Unthought-of frailties cheat us in the wise; The fool lies hid in ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... out of the storie, all which doo prooue that this their disloiall resistance sprang rather by others incitement, than of their owne seeking. Thus we se what alterations happen in the actions of men, and that euill things manie times (though naturallie bad) doo inferre their contraries, as one aptlie ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed

... that it is never advantage to himself that moveth a man in this kingdom to undertake this or that. The thing that alone advantageth a man here is the thing which he doth without thought unto that advantage. To your world, this world goeth by contraries. The man here that doeth most service, that aideth others the most to the obtaining of their honest desires, is the man who standeth highest with the Lord of the place, and his reward and honour is, to be enabled to the spending of himself yet more for the good of his fellows. There goeth a rumour ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... L50, or L100. A captain of the Danish naval service writes to me, that being in distress for a sum of money by which he might transport himself to Columbia, to offer his services in assisting to free that province, he had dreamed I generously made him a present of it. I can tell him his dream by contraries. I begin to find, like Joseph Surface, that too good a character is inconvenient. I don't know what I have done to gain so much credit for generosity, but I suspect I owe it to being supposed, as Puff[44] says, one of those "whom Heaven has blessed with affluence." Not too much of that neither, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... a great believer in dreams," she said, sympathetically; "but she always thought they went by contraries; and, if she was right, why, yours bodes ever so much good. But come, Hobert, let us go into the house: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... replied Flambeau frowning, while the other went on eating fish with an air of entire resignation. "If all you can suggest is that notion of a message conveyed by contraries, I call it uncommonly clever, but...well, what would you ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... cause of the change, it at least marked a turning point, and it deserves to be studied as one of the historic documents of modern printing. It is more than this, however; it is a piece of creative criticism, and though teaching not by example but by contraries, it forms one of the best existing brief compends of what a well-made ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... down, she lies flat at your feet— Take her then!" Well, I knew it—what fools are men! Take the bee by her horns, will your honey prove sweet? Sweet is grass—will you pasture your cows in a fen? Oh, if contraries could but ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... would (by contraries) Execute all things: For no kinde of Trafficke Would I admit: No name of Magistrate: Letters should not be knowne: Riches, pouerty, And vse of seruice, none: Contract, Succession, Borne, bound of Land, Tilth, Vineyard none: No vse of Mettall, Corne, or Wine, or Oyle: No ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labors, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts, lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries. ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... this isle, my lord, I' th' commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... color, in the midst of the five primordial colors, is the harmonic expression of them by way of excellence; and the result of the union of two contraries, light and darkness. There are, besides, agreeable tints, compounded of the oppositions of extremes. For example, of the second and fourth color, that is, of yellow and blue, is formed green, which constitutes a very beautiful harmony, and ought, perhaps, to possess the ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... the more he has to say.'—'Yes,' cried Olivia, 'he is well enough for a man; but for my part, I don't much like him, he is so extremely impudent and familiar; but on the guitar he is shocking.' These two last speeches I interpreted by contraries. I found by this, that Sophia internally despised, as much as Olivia secretly admired him.—'Whatever may be your opinions of him, my children,' cried I, 'to confess a truth, he has not prepossest me in his favour. Disproportioned friendships ever terminate in disgust; ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... are known only together: the science of contraries is one. Subject and object, mind and matter, are known only in correlation and contrast, and in the same common act: which knowledge is at once a synthesis and an antithesis of both, and may be indifferently defined an antithetic synthesis and a synthetic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... all her waywardness, "but yet a woman!" There was only the one man that I have ever known who could have developed the best that was in Angelica, and him she had just missed, as so often happens in this world of contraries. I am thinking of our poor Julian, known to her as the Tenor, whom she had met when it was too late, and in an evil hour for us and for herself apparently, the consequences having been his death and her own desolation. Yet ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... he said, "that Germany dreams of nothing but humiliating England; that is no secret—it has been the talk of Europe for ten years past. But it is one of those dreams which never come true—or go by contraries!" ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... this time to be used to finding that everything goes by contraries in these days," I said, "but really, by what inversion of common sense, as it was understood in the nineteenth century, do you make out that by accepting a pecuniary provision from the nation I oblige it more than ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... his head en say, sezee, dat, fur ez his 'membunce go back, he aint come 'cross nothin' in de lawyer-book ter de contraries er dat, en den dey all 'gree dat Brer Rabbit kin have ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... else, affected to be gracious to the English. He said, "L'Angleterre est une grande nation, aussi bien que la France, il faut que nous soyons amis!" Great men's words, like little men's dreams, are sometimes to be interpreted by the rule of contraries. ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... itself, each quality feeding itself from its correlative opposite, there can be no high behavior. This is the reason why qualities loftiest in kind and largest in measure are vulgarly mistaken, not for their friendly opposites, but for their mere contraries,—why a very profound sensibility, a sensibility, too, peculiarly of the spirit, not of nerve only, is sure to be named coldness, as Mr. Ruskin recently remarks,—why vast wealth of good pride, in its often meek acceptance of wrong, in its quiet ignoring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... wild water, their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away." "Satque superque satis"—we cannot go on. There is nothing like calling things by their contraries—it is truly startling. Whenever you speak of water, treat it as fire—of fire, vice versa, as water; and be sure to send them all shattering out of reach and discrimination of all sense; and look into a dictionary for some such word as "chrysoprase," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... to revert in detail to those symbols and forms of the Presbyterian system which the triumph of Independency had set aside during the Commonwealth, and which had been allowed only partially, and side by side with their contraries, in the broad Church-Establishment of the Protectorate. The unanimity and rapidity of the House in their votes in this direction must have alarmed the Independents and Sectaries. It was on Feb. 29 that the House appointed a Committee of twenty-nine on the whole subject ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... from them, not pull them: to keep always a distance between her and themselves. He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity. Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can happen to a good man. Contraries are not mixed. Yet that which happens to any man may to every man. But it is in his reason, what he accounts it ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... ain't no danger from her, Johnny. I had a dream, an' dreams goes by contraries an' always have. What you dream never comes true. It's always the opposite. An' I dreamed that little she-devil come up on you when you was asleep, took a big bread-knife, an' cut your head plumb off! Yessir, I could see her holdin' up that head o' yourn, an' the blood ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... knowledge, but likewise in all intelligence and wisdom; for these [qualities] would inflow into those loves from heaven, that is, from the Divine through heaven. As, however, man is not born into those loves, but into their contraries, that is to say, into the loves of self and of the world, therefore he cannot but be born in complete ignorance and want of knowledge But by Divine means he is brought to something of intelligence and wisdom, yet not actually into ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg

... subsist according to position. At the same time there is much in it of the ineffable and unknown, the uncoordinated, and that which is deprived of position, but these are accompanied with a representation of the Contraries: and the former are more excellent, than the latter. But every where things pure subsist prior to their contraries, and such as are unmingled to the commingled. For either things more excellent subsist in the one essentially, and in a certain respect the contraries of these ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... conscience of men; so great as if they have once tasted of it, it is seldom seen that any torture or persecution can make them relinquish or abandon it. But as this is that which the author of the Revelation calleth the depth or profoundness of Satan, so by argument of contraries, the just and lawful sovereignty over men's understanding, by force of truth rightly interpreted, is that which approacheth nearest to the ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... means considered a specific for small-pox in some regions. The discarding of the flannel and bacon, of course, caused great offence; and there was but too much reason to fear that all his directions as to the management of the girl would be observed by contraries, the moment his back was turned. He had long ago found explanation and argument to be useless. All that he could do was, to declare authoritatively, that if his directions were not followed, the girl would die, and her death would ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... of the "new" school, which was really as old as Hippocrates, who said four hundred years before Christ that some remedies acted by the rule of "contraries," and some by the rule of "similarity," was long and hard compared with that of the entrance of woman upon the practice of medicine, although the latter involved sex questions and the former only forms, and professional prejudice did not ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... manifest, differences must be produced in Unity; these differences in the world are the "pairs of opposites"—the contraries. These contraries are everywhere. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... depends upon circumstances. I suppose," he added, "if, as is said, one's sin is sure to find one out, the same rule goes by contraries. It seems poor Cliffe once spoke of me to a district visitor, the only visitor he ever had; and this gentleman, hearing of the inquest, came yesterday to inquire about him of me; and the end was that he offered me a situation with a person he knew, a very respectable chemist ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... and laid in the dust, that the Lord may be just when he speaketh, and clear when he judgeth (Psal. li. 4). And as the Apostle teacheth us, 1 Cor. xi. 31, that if we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged of God; and, by the rule of contraries, if we judge not ourselves, we shall be judged of God; so say I now, if we give glory to God, and take shame and confusion of faces to ourselves, God shall not confound us, nor put us to shame: but if we will not be confounded ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... which is based on antagonistic elements, on opposites, without the middle term that conciliates them, unites them, and makes them dialectically one, copies the Divine model in its distinctions alone, which, considered alone, are opposites or contraries. It denies, if Englishmen could but see it, the unity of God. The French, or imperial system, which excludes the extremes, instead of uniting them, denies all opposites, instead of conciliating them—denies the distinctions in the model, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... why his conversation was sometimes coarse? "All the contraries are to be found in [111] me, in one corner or another"; if delicacy, so also coarseness. Delicacy there was, certainly,—a wonderful fineness of sensation. "To the end," he tells us, "that sleep should ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... generic passion, having for its species desire and delight, the contraries of which are abhorrence and pain. Desire is of absent good; abhorrence is of absent evil; delight is in present good; pain is at present evil. The good and the evil which is the object of any passion must be apprehended by sense, or by imagination in a sensible way, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... fiery morsel of engaging caprice and naughtiness that a quiet spinster could well have lit upon. It really sometimes seemed to Honora as if there were scarcely a fault in the range of possibilities that she had not committed; and indeed a bit of good advice generally seemed to act by contraries, and served to suggest mischief. Softness and warmth of feeling seemed to have been lost with her father; she did not show any particular affection towards her brother or Honora. Perhaps she liked Miss Wells, but ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... startled and made wise By their low-breathed interpretings, The simply-meek foretaste the springs Of bitter contraries." ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... how soon I could get away to what I still believed to be a righteous cause in which my father wished me to fight. I slept soundly after my day of adventure. I dreamed that I rode into London behind the Duke, amid all the glory of victory, with the people flinging flowers at us. But dreams go by contraries, the ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... far as I can make out; but the different readings of the other texts are all given in top-notes, instead of foot-notes as with us, this being one of the points in which customs in the east and west go by contraries. Very occasionally, the editor indicates by a single character, equivalent to "right" or "wrong," which reading in his opinion is to be preferred. In the notes to the present republication of the Corean text, S stands for Sung, ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... them again by verbal Nouns and Participles. 6. And last of all, when we have chang'd Adverbs into Nouns, and Nouns sometimes into one Part of Speech, and sometimes into another; then we may speak by contraries. 7. We may either change affirmative Sentences into negative, or the contrary. 8. Or, at least, what we have spoken indicatively, we may speak interrogatively. Now for Example Sake, let us take ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... I plantation of this isle, my lord, And were the king of it, what would I do? I' the commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things: for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none: No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil: No occupation; ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... in some dogmatism or other, who will say: "This man comes to no conclusion, he vacillates—now he seems to affirm one thing and then its contrary—he is full of contradictions—I can't label him. What is he?" Just this—one who affirms contraries, a man of contradiction and strife, as Jeremiah said of himself; one who says one thing with his heart and the contrary with his head, and for whom this conflict is the very stuff of life. And that is as clear as the water that flows from the melted ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... of extension and yet coexistent with it we have the pain of intensity. Hell is the centre of evils and, as you know, things are more intense at their centres than at their remotest points. There are no contraries or admixtures of any kind to temper or soften in the least the pains of hell. Nay, things which are good in themselves become evil in hell. Company, elsewhere a source of comfort to the afflicted, will be there ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... A is notB, are equally demonstrable, the premise in each undeniable, the induction evident, and the conclusion legitimate—the result must be, either that contraries can both be true, (which is absurd,) or that the faculty and forms of reasoning employed are inapplicable to the subject—i.e. that there is a metabasis eis allo genos. Thus, the attributes of Space and time applied to Spirit are heterogeneous—and the proof of this ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... sharp, be cured only with diet and tendering. Celsus[53] could never have spoken it as a physician, had he not been a wise man withal, when he giveth it for one of the great precepts of health and lasting, that a man do vary and interchange contraries, but with an inclination to the more benign extreme: use fasting and full eating, but rather full eating; watching and sleep, but rather sleep; sitting and exercise, but rather exercise; and the like. So shall nature be cherished, and yet taught ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... belief, that the skilful could read the future in dreams. The rules of the art, if any existed in ancient times, are not known; but in our day, one simple rule opens the whole secret. Dreams, say all the wiseacres in Christendom, are to be interpreted by contraries. Thus, if you dream of filth, you will acquire something valuable; if you dream of the dead, you will hear news of the living; if you dream of gold and silver, you run a risk of being without either; and if you dream you have many friends, you will be persecuted by ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... treys; a bale of flat cater treys; a bale of Fulhams; a bale of light graniers; a bale of gordes, with as many highmen and lowmen for passage; a bale of demies; a bale of long dice for even or odd; a bale of bristles; a bale of direct contraries,—names of false dice. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... Though contraries my heart compose, Hard as the diamond's solid frame, And soft as yielding wax that flows, To thee, my fair, 'tis still ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra









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