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More "Refute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poisoned pellet in a bottle of plain ones, and letting the result happen when it might. His argument was, that the murderer would be far from the scene at the time death took place. These statements I submit, and if Christopher Shelby can deny or refute them, none will ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... willed me To treat of with the king on your behalf, I brake even now with him so far, till he In sudden rage of grief, ere I scarce had My tale out-told, pray'd me to stint my suit, As that from which his mind abhorred most. And well I see his fancy to refute, Is but displeasure gain'd and labour lost. So firmly fixed stands his kingly will That, till his body shall be laid in grave, He will not part from the desired sight Of your presence, which silder he should have, If he had once allied you again In marriage to any prince or ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... sick and in trouble, a mind wandering from her sister's grave to her children, and then at the anathema of the Church, made her a widowed maid. To overcome her scruples, her lover wrote a book (inviting the clergy to refute it,) defending the marriage with a deceased wife's sister. But ever as he spoke there was a film before her eyes. There was a gaunt priest, with canonical robes, stood before the gates of heaven. Before him and through him was the way to an eternal happiness, below him was a fiery hell; ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... or noble in this life, so his soule after death, entreth into the body of some excellent beast or other, but the soules of simple and rusticall people do possesse the bodies of more vile and brutish creatures. Then I began to refute that foule error: howbeit my speach did nothing at all preuaile with him: for he could not be perswaded that any soule might remaine without a body. [Sidenote: Chilenso.] From thence I departed vhto a certaine ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... these wiseacres in their own learned lingo; what they say, or what they quote, may be true or it may not; but it has nothing to do with his Idea. If he opens his mouth to justify himself, they refute him with arguments that he does not understand; there is a wall between them. More than a wall; there is a world between them! It is his 'credo' against their 'ignoro'; it is, his 'expecto' against their 'non video'. Yet in ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... in the humility of inquiries or disquisitions, have only proposed them to more ocular discerners. And we shall so far encourage contradiction as to promise no disturbance, or re- oppose any pen, that shall fallaciously or captiously refute us. And shall only take notice of such whose experimental and judicious knowledge shall be employed, not to traduce or extenuate, but to explain and dilucidate, to add and ampliate, according to the laudable custom of the ancients in their sober promotions of ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... this is called in human tongues, as I tell you, neither more nor less than apoplexy. Come, if so you will, count, and continue this conversation at my house, any day you may be willing to see an adversary capable of understanding and anxious to refute you, and I will show you my father, M. Noirtier de Villefort, one of the most fiery Jacobins of the French Revolution; that is to say, he had the most remarkable audacity, seconded by a most powerful organization—a man ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his master's cruelty. It is true that he afterwards composed an elaborate apology for his people in the form of a history in twenty volumes, which may be considered as a kind of palliation for the evil he had done them in action. It was more possible to refute the Roman prejudices based on utter ignorance of Jewish history, than the prejudices based on their narrowness of mind. But even here the writer has often to accommodate himself to a pagan standpoint, which could not appreciate Hebrew sublimity. When he wrote the Antiquities, ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... granted that chronologically it was not so old as the pyramids, but supposing it had been, would that in any way have increased its value for our studies? If we were to place it at 5000 B. C., I doubt whether anybody could refute such a date, while if we go back beyond the Veda, and come to measure the time required for the formation of Sanskrit and of the Proto-Aryan language I doubt very much whether even 5,000 years would suffice for that. ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... grafted trees to bear at an early age. This tree in the nursery of Mr. Jones of Lancaster, Pa., was grafted in May and photographed in September one year following. Of course early bearing is not wholly desirable but in a way it will refute the common belief that black walnuts are necessarily tardy in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... individuals to escape from public obligations, and then to have withheld from them just compensation. It has been gratifying to me in tracing the history of these claims to find that ample evidence exists to refute an accusation which would impeach the purity, the justice, and the magnanimity of the illustrious men who guided and controlled the early ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... from the truth. The traditions that have come down to us of what happened before the building of the city, or before its building was contemplated, as being suitable rather to the fictions of poetry than to the genuine records of history, I have no intention either to affirm or to refute. This indulgence is conceded to antiquity, that by blending things human with divine, it may make the origin of cities appear more venerable: and if any people might be allowed to consecrate their origin, and to ascribe it to the gods as its authors, such is the renown of the Roman people in ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... 'Refute these calumnies,' said Kate, 'and be more patient, so that you may give them no advantage. Tell us what you really did, and show ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... which will be continued later by the examining-magistrate; and I wished above all to explain to you the very serious reasons for which I asked you to interrupt your journey and to come back here with Madame de Gorne. You are now in a position to refute the truly distressing charges that are hanging over you. I therefore ask you to tell me ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... of October 10th to Reynier. This and his letter to Maret seem to me to refute Bernhardi's contention ("Toll," vol. iii., pp. 385-388) that Napoleon only meant to drive the northern allies across the Elbe, and then to turn on Schwarzenberg. The Emperor's plans shifted every few hours: but the plan of crossing ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... but yet maintained by the people as a requisite of orthodoxy. Having gone thus far, Van Os proceeded to deny a form of infralapsarianism, which was termed "justification from eternity." Many prominent but bigoted minds, having long entertained these ultra ideas he was endeavoring to refute, and some having gone so far as to attempt their introduction into a revised edition of the confession of faith, Van Os was censured for heresy. But he took the first opportunity to preach the Protestant doctrine that every one had the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Outlook to prepare an article on woman suffrage, which it published. The statements in it were universally repudiated by the press and the people of that State. Mrs. Grenfell said of it at this convention: "It is as absurd to refute her assertions as to reply to Baron Munchausen or to insist that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland never happened. Such conditions as she describes do not ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... at the outset speaks of 'some critics who affirm the authenticity of the Epistle attributed to him [Polycarp], but who certainly do not justify their conclusion by any arguments nor attempt to refute adverse reasons.' He himself passes over in silence all answers which have been given to the objections alleged by him. Doubtless he considered them unworthy of notice. I have endeavoured to supply this lacuna in his work; and the reader will ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... weeks of the war a conference of black editors, including Walter White, pressed for the creation of an experimental integrated division of volunteers. White argued that such a unit would lift black morale, "have a tremendous psychological effect upon white America," and refute the enemy's charge that "the United States talks about democracy but practices racial discrimination and segregation."[2-28] The NAACP organized a popular movement in support of the idea, which was endorsed by many ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... preamble with publishing a deliberate falsehood, for the purpose of exciting odium against the king; but I think it impossible to view their conduct in any other light. The popish plot and popish army were fictions of their own to madden the passions of their adherents. Charles, to refute the calumny, as he was about to receive the sacrament from the hands of Archbishop Ussher, suddenly rose and addressed him thus, in the hearing of the whole congregation: "My Lord, I have to the utmost of my soul prepared ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... usual disinterestedness, he promptly gave to the Corresponding Society. A second part appeared in 1792; and at length Pitt adopted Burke's opinion that criminal justice was the proper argument with which to refute Tom Paine. Acting on a hint from William Blake, who, in a vision more prosaic and veridical than was usual with him, had seen the constables searching for his friend, Paine escaped to France, and was convicted in ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... and she folded her arms as she gazed at her angry antagonist. "Go! I scorn to refute ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... his frightful conspicuousness. He had not the remotest idea of what he had said in setting forth his case for Germany, and he knew that it was his duty to listen closely to Dora, in order to be able to refute her argument when his two-minute closing speech fell due but he was conscious of little more than his own condition. His legs had now gone wild beyond all devilry, and he had to keep shifting his weight from one to the other in order even to hope that their frenzy ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... Lady Burton was stricken down with an incurable disease. Death with its icy breath hung over her as her pen flew along the paper, and the questions constantly on her lips were "Shall I live to complete my task? Shall I live to tell the world how great and noble a man my husband was, and to refute the calumnies that his enemies have so industriously circulated?" She did complete it in a sense, for the work duly appeared; but no one recognised more clearly than herself its numerous shortcomings. Indeed, it is little better than a huge scrap-book filled with newspaper cuttings and citations ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... never steadied by a healthy divergency of opinions and the presentation of conflicting arguments. It was not even a debating society, for all represented practically the same interests, held the same views, made the same speeches, which there was no one to question or to refute. Hence the monotony of the proceedings, the sameness of the speeches, sometimes marked with great ability, and generally delivered with much eloquence and fervour, at the short annual sessions. The proceedings were usually controlled by a small caucus ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... naturalist who believes in the inductive method must needs draw the conclusion from these naive admissions, that, as Darwinism lacks the empiric prerequisites, it should be discarded. Moreover, the demand is made in all seriousness, that, in order to refute Darwinism which has not as yet been established empirically, ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... fitted into the empty cylinder. But before inserting them she closed the pistol once more, cocked it, and held it out. Her arm trembled violently as she pulled the trigger. Could she do it? As though to refute this doubt of her ability to carry out an act determined upon, she broke the weapon once more, loaded and closed it, and thrust it in the pocket of her coat. Then, washing the grease from her hands, she put on her gloves, and was about to turn out the light ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "Oh well, refute yourself in three good columns in Merlin's paper. We have been enjoying the sight of Nathan's wrath; we have just been telling him that he owes us no little gratitude for getting up a hot controversy that will sell his second edition in a week. In his eyes at this present ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... compound of dogmatism and unbelief? to disperse these cloudy doubts, and to analyse and repel these many ambiguous statements?—Once more. A fool can assert, and in a moment, that 'There is no GOD.' But it requires a wise man to refute the lie; and his refutation will probably demand a volume.—I say, it was in vain to urge such considerations as these. "Why does no one reply to these 'Essays and Reviews?'" was asked,—till, I apprehend, pens enough have been unsheathed ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... so vainly denied in himself, he found his most useful levers in the humble labourers whose characters he had studied, whose condition he sought to make themselves desire to elevate. Unconsciously his whole practice began to refute his theories. The abuses of the old Poor Laws were rife in his neighbourhood; his quick penetration, and perhaps his imperious habits of decision, suggested to him many of the best provisions of the law now called into operation; ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... treatise to encumber a simple argument by controverting any of the trite objections of habit or fanaticism. But there are two; the first, the basis of all political mistake, and the second, the prolific cause and effect of religious error, which it seems useful to refute. ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... To refute the whole system of Arianism, he wrote the book which he called The Treasure, which he divided into thirty-five titles or sections. He answers in it all the objections of those heretics, and establishes from scripture the divinity of the Son of God; and from title ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... wish you would assert it; for I should not be unwilling to acknowledge my relation to the Gods. But you say nothing like it; no, our resemblance to the Gods, it seems, was by chance. Must I now seek for arguments to refute this doctrine seriously? I wish I could as easily discover what is true as I ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to refute all the infamous rumours which were circulated respecting Kleber's death. When the First Consul received the unexpected intelligence he could scarcely believe it. He was deeply affected; and on reading the particulars ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the eighteenth century Dr. Nehemiah Grew, of the Royal Society, published his Cosmologia Sacra to refute anti-scriptural opinions by producing evidences of creative design. Discussing "the ends of Providence," he says, "A crane, which is scurvy meat, lays but two eggs in the year, but a pheasant and partridge, both excellent meat, lay and hatch fifteen or twenty." He points to the fact that ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... believe that in most instances he was; and perhaps the custom was not continued in my case long enough for me to refute the maxim. But as yet, the very gloss upon the god's wings was fresh as on the first day when I had acknowledged his power. Still was Isora to me the light and the music of existence! still did my heart thrill and ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hard years that followed—years in which the blood-thirsty and piratical games of his boyhood paled to the mildest of imaginings—the nickname still clung, long after he had ceased to resent it; long after he had stripes and braid to refute it. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... have shared his knowledge of the incident with any one. But that it had leaked out was cruelly self-evident, and the worst part of it was that the malicious gossip was founded on so much actual fact that it was difficult—almost impossible, in fact—to combat or refute it. She felt helpless in the face of the detestable scandal which had reared itself upon a foundation of such ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Americans need to be told, And it never'll refute them to swagger and scold; John Bull, looking o'er the Atlantic, in choler At your aptness for trade, says you worship the dollar; But to scorn such eye-dollar-try's what very few do, And John goes to that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... nothing more at heart than to convince you I am incapable of forgetting, or neglecting the friendship I made at college, now begin that correspondence by letters, which you and I agreed, at parting, to cultivate. I begin it sooner than I intended, that you may have it in your power to refute any idle reports which may be circulated to my prejudice at Oxford, touching a foolish quarrel, in which I have been involved on account of my sister, who had been some time settled here in a boarding-school. When I came hither with my uncle and aunt (who are our guardians) to fetch her ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... such and such a source is the reliable one par excellence, and the principal basis upon which to establish conclusions. No source, however seemingly insignificant, should be neglected. A brief mention is sometimes very important, as it may be a clue to new data, or may confirm or refute accepted information and thus lead to further investigation. Some documents, of course, are much more explicit than others, but this is no reason why the latter should be neglected. The value of a ...
— Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier
... basis on which our country can have full development, and on which we can have final peace with England, we find in opponents a variety of attitudes, but one attitude invariably absent—a readiness to discuss the question fairly and refute it, if this can be done. One man will take it superficially and heatedly, assuming it to be, according to his party, a censure on Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien. Another will take it superficially, but, as he thinks, philosophically, and ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... Not being able to refute these plausible arguments, Bea contented herself with stubbornly maintaining her point. "But red, Edith, why red? It is a nightmare. Who ever heard of a ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... Saviour did make, by showing that the tendency of his mission was so adverse to the views with which this being was, by the objectors themselves, supposed to act, that it could not reasonably be supposed that he would assist in carrying it on. The power displayed in the miracles did not alone refute the Jewish solution, because the interposition of invisible agents being once admitted, it is impossible to ascertain the limits by which their efficiency is circumscribed. We of this day may be disposed possibly to think such opinions ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... prelude to another feat performed by Old Put, this time a physical one, which, while not so worthy of renown, perhaps, as the great moral victory he achieved over his men, has brought him greater fame. Both taken together absolutely refute the insinuations of his enemies, to the effect that he had suffered a decline of mental, moral, or physical force. Washington wrote, commending him for his action in suppressing the mutiny; and as for the feat now to be mentioned, it may be said to speak for itself. In fact, it has been speaking, ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... and principles the paper is conducted. A cautious arguer will always avoid, as far as he can, the use of evidence that comes from a doubtful source. If one finds that an opponent has used the testimony of questionable witnesses, he can, by exposing the fact, easily refute ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... manifestations of the preceding phases of evolution, gives us, in regard to the social organization in process of formation, a more exact (positive or fact-founded) idea than our opponents think, who always imagine that they have to refute the romantic and sentimental socialism of the ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... singular fact," observes an acute historical writer,[5] "that Lord Grey, on this occasion, made an able and erudite law argument; which all the law lords, including Lord Ellenborough, made vain efforts to refute; and which Lord Ellenborough had the manliness to eulogize;" notwithstanding which Lord Grey's motion for a copy of the opinion of the law officers of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 555, Supplement to Volume 19 • Various
... made a statement to the emperor, and to several other persons, with such good faith and sincerity, that they appeared in their narrative, not merely to have abstained from fabulous statements, but also to contradict and refute the fabulous statements made ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... familiarized themselves with the speculations of the day, not merely for the sake of a wider range of knowledge, but that they might the more successfully refute the assailants of the faith, many of whom were men of great power. They were fully aware that it behooved them to know their ground, for their opponents studied the points of comparison carefully. The infidel Celsus studied Christianity and its relation to the Old Testament histories ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... in which his ideas were clothed than about the ideas themselves, and that he did not hold the same opinions for long together; but the accusation of instability has been made in such high quarters that it is necessary to refute it still ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... now to refute formally the fond, feeble notion, that this parable proves the sinfulness of dissenting from the Church of England, established by the State and prelatic in its government. Even although we should concede ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... do not say that. All I say is that expert testimony would refute us as far as we have gone. But if you will let me make a few tests of my own I can readily clear up that end of the case, I now feel sure. Let me take ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... the fact that, by adopting this stratagem, Dr. Royce could escape altogether the formidable necessity of first arguing the main question of idealism versus realism. Secretly conscious of his own inability to handle that question, to refute my "Soliloquy of the Self-Consistent Idealist," or to overthrow my demonstration that consistent idealism leads logically to hopeless absurdity at last, Dr. Royce found it infinitely easier to deceive his uninformed readers by a ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... parthenogenesis credible? and this he would call going straight to the heart of the matter. Now Pascal's method is, on the whole, the method natural and right for the Christian; and the opposite method is that taken by Voltaire. It is worth while to remember that Voltaire, in his attempt to refute Pascal, has given once and for all the type of such refutation; and that later opponents of Pascal's Apology for the Christian Faith have contributed little beyond psychological irrelevancies. For Voltaire has presented, better than any one since, what is the unbelieving ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... suspected one another of having been her lovers. Vannier had thus made her pay for her hospitality; Langelley and the gendarme Mallet himself, had exacted the same price—accusations it was as impossible as it was useless to refute. She herself well knew her own abasement, and at times disgust seized her. On the evening of September 27th, she did not return to Vannier's; escaping from this hell, she craved shelter from a lacemaker named Adelaide Monderard, who lodged in the Rue du Han, and who was Langelley's ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... resource, Monnica begged a bishop she knew, a man deeply read in the Scriptures, to speak with her son and refute his errors. But so great was the reputation of Augustin as an orator and dialectician that the holy man dared not try a fall with such a vigorous jouster. He answered the mother very wisely, that a mind so ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... ardent mind, prompt imagination, and copious flow of words, who heard with impatience any logic which was not his own, sitting near me on some occasion of a trifling but wordy debate, asked me how I could sit in silence, hearing so much false reasoning, which a word should refute? I observed to him, that to refute indeed was easy, but to silence impossible; that in measures brought forward by myself, I took the laboring oar, as was incumbent on me; but that in general, I was willing to listen; that if every sound ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... fruitless discussions regarding the lack of Scriptural sanction for women's new freedom. Usually a clergyman appeared on the scene, volubly quoting the Bible to prove that any widening of woman's sphere was contrary to the will of God. But always ready to refute him were Antoinette Brown, now an ordained minister, William Lloyd Garrison, and occasionally Susan herself. To the young Quaker broadened by her Unitarian contacts and unhampered by creed or theological ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... under no necessity of denying that there is some analogy between the development of mind in the individual man, and in humanity as a whole, in order to refute the theory of Comte. Still, it must not be overlooked that the development of mind, in all cases and in all ages, is materially affected by exterior conditions. The influence of geographical and climatic conditions, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Jersey was most extraordinary. Last year he [Mr. Cass] should have voted for the proposition, had it come up. But circumstances had altogether changed. The honorable Senator then read several passages from the remarks, as given above, which he had committed to writing, in order to refute such a charge as that of the Senator from ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... gravely asserted in the records of the reign of Charles I., that Jesuits were of three degrees, and were to be found among politicians, merchants, and the professed Fathers living in religious houses. It would be obviously superfluous to refute this ridiculous statement which seems destined to crop up at intervals to the end of time, quite regardless of the fact that it has been repeatedly ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... his study of Scripture, or something unknown that made him take up the part of a Christian Aristotle; in any case he felt himself called into the field to support the cause of St. Augustine against infidelity, and to refute the "anile fable" of the Antipodes. Cosmas referred men back to Revelation on such matters, and his system was "demonstrated from Scripture, concerning which a Christian is not allowed to doubt." Man by himself could not understand the world, but in the Bible it was all clear enough. And from the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... unruffled and not much concerned to know the facts of our adventure. My impression is that he had been taking a nap on my lounge; be appeared refreshed and even gay; but if I am inexact in these details he is alive to refute me. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Tsai li ti, had been watching me ever since I had come to Ch'ao Yang. They had listened much and often to our preaching, and now they had come to make formal inquiries. I gave them such information as I thought they needed, and we got on well enough till they asked me to refute a slander. The slander was to the effect that in a chapel in Peking, the preacher would, when he finished preaching, get down off the platform and have a smoke! I had to admit that this was no slander, but a true statement. I had a good deal to say in explanation ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... of the family and the family honours, he was quite indignant. He, who had ever boasted of being an Elliot, and whose feelings, as to connection, were only too strict to suit the unfeudal tone of the present day. He was astonished, indeed, but his character and general conduct must refute it. He could refer Sir Walter to all who knew him; and certainly, the pains he had been taking on this, the first opportunity of reconciliation, to be restored to the footing of a relation and heir-presumptive, was a strong proof of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... such a delicate point, which the Sicilian canon, Recupero, fancied that there was; [Footnote: Recupero. See Brydone's Travels, some sixty or seventy years ago. The canon, being a beneficed clergyman in the Papal church, was naturally an infidel. He wished exceedingly to refute Moses: and he fancied that he really had done so by means of some collusive assistance from the layers of lava on Mount Etna. But there survives, at this day, very little to remind us of the canon, except an unpleasant guffaw that rises, at times, in solitary valleys of Etna.] but which, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... iron has been proclaimed the best in the world, a proposition that none can successfully refute. Its qualities are becoming known in quarters where it would naturally be expected its superiority would be admitted reluctantly, if at all. It is now sent to New York and Ohio, and even to Pennsylvania—an agency ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... a third shape, that is, in our English 'fashion'; from 'pietas', 'pitie' and 'piete'; from 'capitulum', 'chapitre' and 'capitule', a botanical term. So, too, in Italian, 'manco', maimed, and 'monco', maimed of a hand; 'rifutare', to refute, and 'rifiutare', to refuse; 'dama' and 'donna', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... arguments finds a place in debate: namely, indirect arguments. It is often as much an advantage to a debater to dispose of objections as it is to establish his own case. This is because a question usually has two alternatives. If one can refute the arguments in favor of the opponent's position, he has by that very process established his own. If the points of the refutation are of minor importance and are related to any division of his own direct argument, the refutation of such points should ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... to this new "evasiveness of life," would have to take its place. Attempts are indeed being made at this very hour to "start fresh" with a new aesthetic sense and only the winnowing process of time and the pressure of personal experience can refute such attempts. Meanwhile all we can do is to note the rejection of such attempts by the verdict of the complex vision; a rejection which indicates that if such attempts are to be successful they must imply the substitution of a new complex vision for the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... had once before sounded him, by mentioning the late Reverend Mr. Brown, of Utrecht's, image; that a great and small glass, though equally full, did not hold an equal quantity; which he threw out to refute David Hume's saying[839], that a little miss, going to dance at a ball, in a fine new dress, was as happy as a great oratour, after having made an eloquent and applauded speech. After some thought, Johnson said, 'I come over to the parson.' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... shame of defeat, yet with but doubtful and imperfect success. Paley, with his intuitive sagacity, saw through the difficulty of answering Gibbon by the ordinary arts of controversy; his emphatic sentence, "Who can refute a sneer?" contains as much truth as point. But full and pregnant as this phrase is, it is not quite the whole truth; it is the tone in which the progress of Christianity is traced, in comparison with the rest ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... man in perfect health being much affected by such a charge, because his complexion and conduct must amply refute it. But were it true, to what does it amount?—to an impeachment of a liver complaint. 'I will tell it to the world,' exclaimed the learned Smelfungus: 'you had better (said I) tell it to your physician. 'There is nothing dishonourable in such a disorder, which is more peculiarly ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... this means it lies in the power of every fine woman to secure at least half-a-dozen able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. The female world are likewise indispensably necessary in the best causes to manage the controversial part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to refute them. Arguments out of ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... refute the statements too often made that "men won't work," and "there's work enough if men are only willing to do it." Such is not the truth. I can find you many instances where good, steady workmen have offered to the foremen of certain establishments $10, $25, and even the whole of the first month's ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... he arrived too late, Thalberg having quitted the capital on the preceding day. The enthusiastic praises which were everywhere the answer to his inquiries about Thalberg irritated Liszt, and seemed to him exaggerations based on delusions. To challenge criticism and practically refute the prevalent opinion, he gave two private soirees, one at Pleyel's and another at Erard's, both of which were crowded, the latter being attended by more than four hundred people. The result was a brilliant victory, and henceforth there ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... essentially similar methods of treating their pets, which have been housed, fed, protected and cared for in much the same 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 ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the Judge's stare. It did not seem to be a vacant gaze; on the contrary, it seemed to contain something. It seemed not only fixed; it seemed fixed on some object. It looked past me, behind me, and there, with all its terror and all its intelligence, it rested, motionless. It seemed to refute the notion that dead men cannot see; it seemed to affirm that dead men's eyes are not dead. Into that terrible stare I looked, fascinated, awed, hushed, motionless. Then, ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... danger would increase, since the moral principle would gain additional strength by exercise, both which things are implied in the notion of virtuous habits." (From the chapter on Moral Discipline m the Analogy, sect. iv.) The purpose of this disquisition is to refute the Necessitarians; it is resumed in the third chapter ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... the working class. However, assume again that the census knows how to classify them. Then there were roughly 104,000 men and 107,000 women who ought to have been questioned. They possessed the answers which would justify or refute the casual phrase about the "ignorant workers" or the "intelligent workers." But nobody could think of questioning ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... migratory waves of surplus population from the Columbia Valley would be plausible enough. It is only necessary, however, to turn to the accounts of the earlier explorers of this region, Lewis and Clarke, for example, to refute the idea, so far at least as the Columbia Valley is concerned, although a study of the many diverse languages spread over the United States would seem sufficiently to prove that the tribes speaking them could not have originated at a common center, unless, ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... variations whose accumulation amounts ultimately to specific difference. It is a pity, however, that instead of contenting himself like a theologian with saying that his opponent had been refuted over and over again, he did not refer to any particular and tolerably successful attempt to refute the theory that modifications in organic structure are mainly functional. I am fairly well acquainted with the literature of evolution, and have never met with any such attempt. But let this pass; as with Mr. Darwin, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... is needless to refute the Euhemeristic hypothesis, worthy of the Abbe Banier, that the cow is a real cow, offered by a real historical Gladstone, or by his companion, Jo, to the ignorant populace of the rural districts. We have already ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... this source are apt to make the great man seem unnaturally cold, dignified, remote, and impressive. So usual has this view of Washington become, that there is a common belief that he never laughed aloud—a belief which there are many stories to refute. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... the North Briton, a periodical publication of some talent, but more bitterness. In the forty-fifth number, he assailed the king, charging him with a direct falsehood. The charge should have been dismissed with contempt; for it was against the dignity of the government to refute an infamous slander. But, in an evil hour, it was thought expedient to vindicate the honor of the sovereign; and a warrant was therefore issued against the editor, publisher, and printer of the publication. The officers of the law entered ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the pacha and his minister, after the business of the divan, with their heads aching from the doubts of Hudusi, or the means that they had taken to refute them, in not the best humour in the world listened to the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... proportionally declined in the practice of virtue; and the same year of his reign in which he convened the council of Nice, was polluted by the execution, or rather murder, of his eldest son. This date is alone sufficient to refute the ignorant and malicious suggestions of Zosimus, who affirms, that, after the death of Crispus, the remorse of his father accepted from the ministers of Christianity the expiation which he had vainly solicited from the Pagan pontiffs. At the time of the death of Crispus, the emperor could ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... much dispute about the date of Botticelli's "Nativity," and some defenders of Savonarola have hoped to read 1511 in the strange character of its inscription, so that this beautiful picture, standing forth as the work of one for many years under the influence of "the Frate," may refute the common calumny that that influence was unfriendly to art. Our catalogue, indeed, unhesitatingly asserts of Botticelli, that "he became a follower of Savonarola and no doubt suffered from it;" but ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... done. If there is any flaw in my defence, it is for you two to refute me. I shall answer your ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... commendable, he quoted his name. Bayle observes, that "this is an excess of politeness, prejudicial to that freedom which should ever exist in the republic of letters; that it should be allowed always to name those whom we refute; and that it is sufficient for this purpose that we ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... eye upon the guide. But Reuther's face was still alight. She felt very happy. Their journey had not been for naught. He would have six hours' start of his pursuers; he would be that much sooner in Shelby; he would hear the accusation against him and refute it ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... the floor of the Assembly, as stated. Presently I took up the gauntlet, and made this argument. The challenger never claimed his glove, then nor since; nor has anybody, so far as I know, attempted to refute this speech. Nothing has come to my ears (save as to two points, to be noticed hereafter) but reckless, bold denial of God's truth, infidel affirmation without attempt at proof, ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... portion of the prize-money known by them to have been awarded for the expulsion of the Portuguese in the preceding year, and notoriously in my possession! Their forbearance being so improbable as to refute itself, being contrary to common sense; even in the absence of the vouchers, which were transmitted to the Brazilian Government, but never acknowledged—I am able however to account for the whole from documents no less ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... which to him were so childishly impossible. But as often he would voluntarily retire from the conflict, sometimes shaking his head dubiously, sometimes muttering his impatience with a mere child whose logic he, despite his collegiate training, could not refute. He was as full of philosophical theories as a nut with meat; but when she asked for proofs, for less human belief and more demonstration, he hoisted the white flag and retired from the field. But his admiration ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... were passed untasted. A heart sick and in trouble, a mind wandering from her sister's grave to her children, and then at the anathema of the Church, made her a widowed maid. To overcome her scruples, her lover wrote a book (inviting the clergy to refute it,) defending the marriage with a deceased wife's sister. But ever as he spoke there was a film before her eyes. There was a gaunt priest, with canonical robes, stood before the gates of heaven. Before him and through him ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... delicate point, which the Sicilian canon, Recupero, fancied that there was; [Footnote: Recupero. See Brydone's Travels, some sixty or seventy years ago. The canon, being a beneficed clergyman in the Papal church, was naturally an infidel. He wished exceedingly to refute Moses: and he fancied that he really had done so by means of some collusive assistance from the layers of lava on Mount Etna. But there survives, at this day, very little to remind us of the canon, except an unpleasant guffaw that rises, at times, in solitary valleys of Etna.] but ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... 52. To refute lies is not, at present, my business; but it is my business to give you, in as small a compass as possible, one striking proof that they are lies; and thereby to put you well upon your guard for the whole of the rest of your life. The opinion ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... McFarlane again declared her intention of returning to help him in his fight. However, Wayland again proved to her that her presence would only embarrass the Supervisor. "You would not aid him in the slightest degree. Nash and Landon are with him, and will refute all ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... a regular time allowed for rebuttal. This is, however, not the only time at which it may be introduced. In the debate, put in refutation wherever it is needed. One of the best plans is, if possible, to refute with a few sentences at the opening of each speech what the previous speaker ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... of the stars marked in a more indubitable manner than in the fatal law which determined the destiny of each individual according to the state of the sky at the moment when he came into the world. Cicero, by the very terms which he uses to refute the Chaldeans, shows that the result of these ideas was to consider all infirmities and monstrosities that new-born infants exhibited as the inevitable and irremediable consequence of the action of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... recipe for writing." Among other philosophers, one of the most famous disputants of antiquity, Carneades, was accustomed to take copious doses of white hellebore, a great aperient, as a preparation to refute the dogmas of the stoics. "The thing that gives me the highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a dose of salts; but one can't take them like champagne," said Lord Byron. Dryden's practice was neither whimsical ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... decided by a commission expressly appointed for this purpose. King James, who is represented as favourable to the connexion with France, went from Theobald's to the meeting: the Prince had drawn out for himself the arguments by which he thought to refute the objections of opponents. On the very same day he was taken ill, and was obliged to ask for an adjournment; but from day to day and hour to hour his illness became more dangerous. He exhibited a composed and, when addressed on religious questions, a devout ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... have a tendency to invest your cause with peculiar peril; therefore I impress upon you the fact, that while the law holds you innocent, until twelve men agree that the evidence proves you guilty, the time has arrived when your cause depends upon your power to refute the charges, and disprove the alleged facts arrayed against you. The discovery and elucidation of Truth, is the supreme aim of a court of justice, and to its faithful ministers the defence of innocence is even ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the functions of the heart and other viscera, and was destructive of many favorite theories. The new doctrine, therefore, as may well be supposed, was received by most of the anatomists of the period with distrust, and by all with surprise. Some of them undertook to refute it, but their objections turned principally on the silence of Galen, or consisted of the most frivolous cavils; the controversy, too, assumed the form of personal abuse even more speedily than is usually the case when authority is ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... organic world the given product, its normal or abnormal characteristics, are determined, as people say, by the "environment." The business of the young scholar therefore, in reading Plato, is not to take his side in a controversy, to adopt or refute Plato's opinions, to modify, or make apology for, [11] what may seem erratic or impossible in him; still less, to furnish himself with arguments on behalf of some theory or conviction of his own. His duty is rather to follow intelligently, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... the prosecution of libels by magistrates. "It is a singular fact," observes an acute historical writer,[5] "that Lord Grey, on this occasion, made an able and erudite law argument; which all the law lords, including Lord Ellenborough, made vain efforts to refute; and which Lord Ellenborough had the manliness to eulogize;" notwithstanding which Lord Grey's motion for a copy of the opinion of the law officers of the crown ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 555, Supplement to Volume 19 • Various
... chemist, by discovering the laws of nature, do not bind unconnected phenomena; but they refute the hasty conclusion of sensuous thought, that the phenomena ever were unconnected. Men of science do not introduce order into chance and chaos, but show that there never was chance or chaos. The poet does not make the world beautiful, ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... called the "Preaching Friars" and were carefully trained in theology in order the better to refute the arguments of the heretics. The pope delegated to them especially the task of conducting the Inquisition. They early began to extend their influence over the universities, and the two most distinguished theologians and teachers of the thirteenth century, Albertus ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... been proclaimed the best in the world, a proposition that none can successfully refute. Its qualities are becoming known in quarters where it would naturally be expected its superiority would be admitted reluctantly, if at all. It is now sent to New York and Ohio, and even to Pennsylvania—an agency for its sale having been established in Pittsburg. For gearing, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... might neglect nothing—just as we use catechisms containing the truths of religion, for fear the teachers might forget to speak of some of them. There are "twelve articles" or parts in the Apostles' Creed, and each part is meant to refute some false doctrine taught before the time of the Apostles or while they lived. Thus there were those—as the Romans—who said there were many gods; others said not God, but the devil created the earth; others taught that Our Lord was not the Son of God: and so on for the rest. All these false ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... me—this confession which astounds me. Ah! Mr. Royle," she added, her gloved hands tightly clenched in her despair. "You do not know in what deadly peril Sir Digby now is. Yes, I see it plainly. There is a charge against him—a grave and terrible charge—which he is unable to refute, and yet he is perfectly innocent. Oh, what can I do? How can I act to save him?" and her ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... all this is only a perhaps. Very well; it is only a perhaps, but that is all we want in order to refute the logic of the article just quoted. The scientific sceptic says, "I will not believe that Jesus was really seen after death, because that would be a violation of a law of nature." We reply, "No, not necessarily. It might perhaps have been thus and so." That will do; for if we can ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... who of all the economists has insisted the most strenuously upon the absolute indeterminability of value, is also the one who has taken the most pains to refute that idea. He, if I am not mistaken, is the author of the formula: EVERY PRODUCT IS WORTH WHAT IT COSTS; or, what amounts to the same thing: PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT WITH PRODUCTS. This aphorism, which leads straight to equality, has been controverted since by other economists; we will ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... and how they imprudently associate themselves with men of mere popular talent or independence of feeling!—It is the same in prose works. The Editor scorns to enter the lists of argument with any proscribed writer of the opposite party. He does not refute, but denounces him. He makes no concessions to an adversary, lest they should in some way be turned against him. He only feels himself safe in the fancied insignificance of others: he only feels himself superior to those whom he stigmatizes as the lowest of mankind. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... without leisure to take more than a transient view of Coningsburgh. Yet the idea dwells so strongly in my mind, that I feel considerably tempted to write a page or two in detailing at least the outline of my hypothesis, leaving better antiquaries to correct or refute conclusions which ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... ago he had believed that the breath of scandal could not come near him. He crossed himself repeatedly and muttered prayers. But these misgivings were secreted from the world, before which he appeared as the intrepid champion of his absent nephew, prepared to refute the story in ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... under its guidance the moral activity of this earth, has instituted and condoned war is a known historical fact. That the Church has blessed the banners of opposing factions, and has gloried in the butchering of innocent heretics, no manner of present disregard for the facts and apology can refute and redeem. The religious and civil wars, the massacre of the Albigenses and other sects, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, are still alive in the memories of historians and still rankle. The Crusades were a bloody blot in ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the outset speaks of 'some critics who affirm the authenticity of the Epistle attributed to him [Polycarp], but who certainly do not justify their conclusion by any arguments nor attempt to refute adverse reasons.' He himself passes over in silence all answers which have been given to the objections alleged by him. Doubtless he considered them unworthy of notice. I have endeavoured to supply this lacuna in his work; and the reader will judge ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... that that dear little puss Sally was Goodness-knows-who's child, we feel certain that the information would have been cross-countered with a blank stare of incredulity. Why, the mere fact that Mrs. Nightingale had refused so many offers of marriage was surely sufficient to refute such a nonsensical idea! Who ever heard of a lady with a soiled record refusing ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... incensed Hannibal and the Carthaginians. We do not request that you should at once believe us respecting one who is absent, and when the cause has not been heard. Let him come; let him hear our charges in person, and refute them himself. If there is any enormity one man can commit against another which he has not committed upon us we do not refuse to suffer all the same cruelties over again, if it is possible we can endure them, and let him be acquitted of all ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... this rule, and hath a secret convey- ance, wherewith mortality is not acquainted. If they have that intuitive knowledge, whereby, as in reflection, they behold the thoughts of one another, I cannot peremptorily deny but they know a great part of ours. They that, to refute the invocation of saints, have denied that they have any knowledge of our affairs below, have proceeded too far, and must pardon my opinion, till I can thoroughly answer that piece of Scripture, "At the conversion of a sinner, the angels in heaven rejoice." I cannot, with those in that great father, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... calls the hoss "a pore dumb brute," And yit, like Him who died fer you, I say, as I theyr charge refute, "'Fergive; they ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... use.[8] Nevertheless we should remember that precisely this kind of symbolism was very popular in Spain in the seventeenth century, and gave rise to the splendid literary art of the autos sacramentales. Galds then goes on to refute the allegation of certain critics that he was influenced ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... know that Nicomachus, induced by my personal enemies, brought the case into court, not hoping to prove me guilty, but expecting to be bribed. For, in proportion as such charges are most easily imputed and most difficult to refute, so much the more do all men endeavor to avoid them. 40. I, (members of the) Boule, did not think it right (to shun trial), but when he brought the charge submitted myself entirely to your disposal, nor did ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... are sufficient to refute some singular assertions, e. g., that all the newly-born must see objects reversed, as even a Buffon ("Oeuvres completes," iv, 136; Paris, 1844) thought to be the fact. My boy, when I had him write, in his fifth year, the ordinary figures after a copy that ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... afterwards entered my will or a falsity into my thought, I investigated the source of it. I inquired from whom it came. This was disclosed to me, and I was also allowed to speak with those spirits, refute them, and compel them to withdraw, thus to take back their evil and falsity and keep it to themselves, and no longer infuse anything of the kind into my thought. This has occurred a thousand times. I have remained ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... or commander of a guard shall refute to receive or keep any prisoner committed to his charge by an officer belonging to the forces of the United States, provided the officer committing shall, at the time, deliver an account in writing, signed by himself, ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... fine blocks of ice clearly refute the assertion made by some travellers, that the first real glaciers are found in 19 deg. S. lat. The extensive fields of ice from which the blocks in question are brought are situated in 11 deg. 14' ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... not grant this postulate. He assumes the existence of an infinite mind, to whose knowledge all events are open, and thence infers the necessity of these events. He pleads that omniscience and contingency are incongruous ideas, and, on the ground of pure metaphysics, it would be difficult to refute him. But we demolish his theory by an appeal to facts. We oppose the moral constitution and history of man, to the plausible speculations of philosophy. In other words, the mere metaphysician is a fatalist; ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... parts of our body, and in all the higher animals. They are among the most interesting phenomena to which comparative anatomy introduces us; partly because they furnish one of the clearest proofs of evolution, and partly because they most strikingly refute the teleology of certain philosophers. The theory of evolution enables us to give a very simple explanation ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... prince about a refutation of Machiavellism, which the latter had just published, replied, 'Sire, I fancy that the first lesson that Machiavelli would have given to his disciple would have been to refute his work.'" Whether Voltaire ever did say this to the great Frederick, is very questionable, but it would not have been ill said. After the reader has been taken through a short course of Arabian philosophy, he is enlivened by ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... merits of our present royal mistress," said Alida, who was a little apt to assert her sex's rights, "there is the example of the glorious Elizabeth, to refute his charge." ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... of—one is tempted to say—any rhyme or reason from this scale is more than enough to refute any argument which might tend to show that the quinary, or any other scale, was ever the sole number scale of primitive man. Irregular as this is, the system of the Montagnais fully matches it, as the ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... Pendleton had been in a position to ignore, if not to refute, the latter statement. There was probably no detail of his daily existence calling for less thought or effort than this matter of dining. Opportunities were provided on every hand,—at the houses of his friends, at his club, at innumerable cafes and hotels,—and all that he was ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of his court, who never failed to obey his law, whatever the result might be, tell me if there is anything that pleases because of love without causing us to tremble and grow pale. If any one oppose me in this, I can at once refute his argument; for whoever does not grow pale and tremble, whoever does not lose his senses and memory, is trying to filch and get by stealth what does not by right belong to him. The servant who does not fear his ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... enquiry into the origin of religious creeds cannot, strictly speaking, invalidate, still less refute, the creeds themselves, though it may, and doubtless often does weaken the confidence with which they are held. This weakening of religious faith as a consequence of a closer scrutiny of religious origins is unquestionably a matter of great importance to the community; for society ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... his friend of selfishness, dishonesty, hard-heartedness and avarice, on no better grounds than the assumption that God's justice warrants us in believing that where punishment is inflicted there also must sin have been committed. Job, instead of condescending to refute the charge, ironically admits it, and then bitterly remarks that he would like to know how God would justify His conduct and convict him of sin if only they both could argue out the question together on terms of equality. But in all ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... they have at last carried out the pancratiastic art to the very end, and have mastered the only mode of fighting which had been hitherto neglected by them; and now no one dares even to stand up against them: such is their skill in the war of words, that they can refute any proposition whether true or false. Now I am thinking, Crito, of placing myself in their hands; for they say that in a short time they can impart their ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... matters were examined at great length and with conscientious minuteness by the Commission whose award is under discussion." He admitted, with diplomatic courtesy, that "Mr. Evarts' reasoning is powerful," but still in his judgment, "capable of refutation." He did not, however, attempt to refute it, but based his case simply on the ground that the award gave the $5,500,000 to England. In all frankness his Lordship should have said that Mr. Delfosse, in his grace and benevolence, gave the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... There are plenty to decry it and the whole theory is widely exposed to attack For the arguments on the other side we may look to the numerous adverse publications which Darwin s volume has already called out and especially to those reviews which propose directly to refute it. Taking various lines and reflecting very diverse modes of thought, these hostile critics may be expected to concentrate and enforce the principal objections which can be brought to bear against the derivative hypothesis in general, and ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... walked home. When he reached the opposite curb he slipped and fell, bruising his hands. ... Deny it? Deny it when convicted without trial? There are never any proofs to refute a letter written by an unknown enemy. There is never any guard against the stab in the back. ... He and Kate! It was monstrous. And John? Did John know? Did John see that letter? No, Patty surely had not shown it to John. He knew John (or he believed he did); not all the proofs or explanations ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... and common errors which Sir Thomas Browne set himself to refute, were such as these: That dolphins are crooked, that Jews stink, that a man hath one rib less than a woman, that Xerxes's army drank up rivers, that cicades are bred out of cuckoo-spittle, that Hannibal split Alps with vinegar, together with ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... half-a-dozen able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. The female world are likewise indispensably necessary in the best causes to manage the controversial part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to refute them. Arguments out of ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... those things sometimes myself, but when I hear you say them they make me feel as if I could work twenty years at a sitting, on purpose to refute you!" ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... had essentially similar methods of treating their pets, which have been housed, fed, protected and cared for in much the same 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 ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Criticism,—having dutifully rehearsed, (like the rest,) the feeble expedient of that illustrious Father for harmonizing S. Mark xvi. 9 with the narrative of S. Matthew,—is observed to cite the statements of Eusebius concerning the last Twelve Verses of S. Mark, only in order to refute them. Not that he opposes opinion to opinion,—(for the opinions of Eusebius and of Victor of Antioch on this behalf were probably identical;) but statement he meets with counter-statement,—fact he confronts with fact. Scarcely ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... But we have more extensive information in reference to the other great crime which, it is charged, prevails to a much more alarming extent in countries under Catholic influence, viz., illegitimacy. Here again we shall meet statistics with counter-statistics to refute unjust declarations. We do not wish to be understood as advocating the immaculateness of Catholic communities. We frankly admit and heartily deplore the disorders which Catholics commit, but we deny that they are worse than ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... feature in the guilt of calumny is its uncontrollable character: "the tongue can no man tame." You cannot arrest a calumnious tongue, you cannot arrest the calumny itself; you may refute a slanderer, you may trace home a slander to its source, you may expose the author of it, you may by that exposure give a lesson so severe as to make the repetition of the offence appear impossible; but the fatal habit is incorrigible: to-morrow ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... the learning of the middle ages resided for the most part in the cloister, the member's of the junta were principally clerical, and combined to crush Columbus with theological objections. Texts of Scripture were adduced to refute his theory of the spherical shape of the earth, and the weighty authority of the Fathers of the Church was added to overthrow the "foolish idea of the existence of antipodes; of people who walk, opposite to us, with their heels upwards and their heads ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... that I am as fervent a Catholic as M. Thiers himself; and were I bold enough to seek to refute him, I should do it in the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... school; or to the fear of being convicted by him of some misdemeanour of which he knew himself guilty. These suspicions were not effaced by the conduct of Ferdinand, who, when examined on the subject, managed his answers in such a manner, as confirmed their conjectures, while he pretended to refute them, and at the same time acquired to himself credit for his ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... published in 1856, said that the French Government was "inexcusable d'avoir retenu Flinders en captivite," but denied that his charts were improperly used, and promised that when he came to write the life of Peron in a succeeding volume, he would by an analysis of the evidence refute the story. But Walckenaer died in 1852, before his Flinders article was published, and the author of the article on Peron did not carry out his predecessor's undertaking. It is to be presumed that Walckenaer would have exhibited the facts set ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... was opened at his argumentative assertion of the existence of the Supreme Being. ("Histoire de Jenni.") The margin was covered with pencilled notes, in the stiff but tremulous hand of old age; all in attempt to refute or to ridicule the logic of the sage of Ferney: Voltaire did not go far enough for the annotator! The clock struck two, when the sound of steps was heard without. The stranger silently seated himself on the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pleader.] 1n the fifth century, Paulus Orosius, "acquired a considerable degree of reputation by the History he wrote to refute the cavils of the Pagans against Christianity, and by his books against the Pelagians and Priscillianists." Ibid. v. ii. cent. v. p. 2. c. 2. 11. A similar train of argument was pursued by Augustine, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... incapable of forgetting, or neglecting the friendship I made at college, now begin that correspondence by letters, which you and I agreed, at parting, to cultivate. I begin it sooner than I intended, that you may have it in your power to refute any idle reports which may be circulated to my prejudice at Oxford, touching a foolish quarrel, in which I have been involved on account of my sister, who had been some time settled here in a boarding-school. When I came hither with my uncle and aunt (who are our guardians) to fetch ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... they not being her peers, and not acknowledging the English law, which had never afforded her protection, and which had constantly abandoned her to the rule of force. But seeing that they proceeded none the less, and that every calumny was allowed, no one being there to refute it, she resolved to appear before the commissioners. We quote the two interrogatories to which Mary Stuart submitted as they are set down in the report of M. de Bellievre to M. de Villeroy. M. de Bellievre, as we shall see later, had been specially sent by King Henry III ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... (a third edition of whose book bears date 1635), writing to refute the error 'touching Nature's perpetual and universal decay,' cites triumphantly the names of Ariosto, Tasso, Bartas, and Spenser, as instances that poetic genius had not degenerated; but be ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the Baron of Peddlington was guilty of this traitorous effusion no one, not even the king, could ever really make up his mind. The charge was never fully proven, nor was De Herbert ever able to refute it successfully, although he made frantic efforts to do so. The king, eminently just in such matters, gave the baron the benefit of the doubt, and inflicted only half the penalty prescribed, confiscating his estates, ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... and from the individual sailors who have returned with him. They also made a statement to the emperor, and to several other persons, with such good faith and sincerity, that they appeared in their narrative, not merely to have abstained from fabulous statements, but also to contradict and refute the fabulous statements ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... to conceive of it as a problem insoluble by the human faculties, and to treat Theology as a fond fancy or a waking dream, it were surely well to examine the grounds of such opinions, to expose their fallacy so as to counteract their influence, and to refute those theories which prevent men from judging of the evidence as they would on any other topic of Inductive Inquiry. In adopting this course, we are only following the footsteps of the profound author of the "Analogy," who finding it, he knew not how, "to be taken for ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... and, there being no claimant, I frequently had an opportunity to read it. One of its features was frequent letters from volunteer writers on scientific subjects. Among these was a long letter from one G. W. Eveleth, the object of which was to refute the accepted theory of the universe, especially the view of Copernicus. For aught I knew Mr. Eveleth held as high a position as any one else in the world of science and letters, so I read his article carefully. It was evidently wholly fallacious, yet so plausible that I feared ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... credible? and this he would call going straight to the heart of the matter. Now Pascal's method is, on the whole, the method natural and right for the Christian; and the opposite method is that taken by Voltaire. It is worth while to remember that Voltaire, in his attempt to refute Pascal, has given once and for all the type of such refutation; and that later opponents of Pascal's Apology for the Christian Faith have contributed little beyond psychological irrelevancies. For Voltaire has presented, better than any one since, what is the ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... against the indivisibility of the parts of extension: though at first sight that science seems rather favourable to the present doctrine; and if it be contrary in its DEMONSTRATIONS, it is perfectly conformable in its definitions. My present business then must be to defend the definitions, and refute ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... proper to arrive at. Whatever it shall {here} deem worthy {to be transmitted} to posterity, it will say belongs to Aesop; if it shall be not so well pleased with any portion, it will, for any wager, contend that the same was composed by me. One who thus thinks, I would refute once for all by {this} my answer: whether this work is silly, or whether it is worthy of praise, he was the inventor: my hand has brought it to perfection. But let us pursue our purpose in the ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... that came upon it like a strong and mighty wind—the memory of that lie, in which he had enclosed his friend's life for years, that lie on which her spirit had rested, on which it was resting still. And his sense of truth did not permit him to try to refute her accusation. Indeed, he was filled with a desire that nearly conquered him—there and then, brutally, clearly, nakedly, to pour forth to his friend all the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... conclusively refute the statements too often made that "men won't work," and "there's work enough if men are only willing to do it." Such is not the truth. I can find you many instances where good, steady workmen have offered to the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... note and a tract persuasive of my remaining in his church. The latter I think the most bigoted thing I ever read. He said he would call and see me on the subject. I trust and believe God will give me words whereby to refute his arguments. Brother Tom sanctioned my change, for his liberal mind embraces all classes of Christians in the arms of charity and love, and he thinks everyone right to sit under that minister, and choose that form, which makes the deepest impression ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... from the type of character which the popular imagination had given him. Strangers—criminals—in certain towns in the Territory and out of it must have heard with considerable satisfaction that their depredations had been charged to Harlan. Only once had Harlan been able to refute the charge of rumor. That was when, having passed a night in the company of Dave Hallowell, the marshal of Pardo, word was brought by a stage-driver that "Drag" Harlan had killed a man in Dry Bottom—a town two hundred miles north—and ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and it is said with truth that this best use is the tillage of small areas by small owners. Unfortunately, the facts and this theory disagree. Even the most cursory examination of large holdings throughout the West will refute the contention that the intelligent self-interest of large owners results promptly and directly in the making of homes. Few passions of the human mind are stronger than land hunger, and the large holder clings to his land until circumstances make ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... scandal and the prejudice that assail us in private life? You are silent; but note how much deeper should be the comfort, how much loftier the self-esteem; for if calumny attack us in a wilful obscurity, what have we done to refute the calumny? How have we served our species? Have we 'scorned delight and loved laborious days'? Have we made the utmost of the 'talent' confided to our care? Have we done those good deeds to our race upon which we can retire,—an ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cherishes the landmark; in justice to history which is entitled to the truth; in sympathetic fellowship with those who survived the disaster; and in reverent memory of those who suffered and died in the snow-bound camps of the Sierra Nevadas, I refute the charges of cruelty, selfishness, and inhumanity which have been ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... yet a mere child he suggested to his father the convenience of saying grace over the whole barrel of salt fish, in bulk, as the mercantile phrase would be. By the time that he was sixteen, Shaftesbury and Collins, efficiently aided by the pious writers who had endeavored to refute them, had made him "a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine;" and while he was still his brother's apprentice in Boston, he fell into disrepute as a skeptic. Apparently he gathered momentum in moving along this line of thought, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... claims in pre-Buddhistic Brahmanic literature, though such claims have been made, not only in respect of the position of secondary divinities, but even as regards eschatological conceptions. It is not so easy to refute an improbable historical theory as it is to propound it, but, on the other hand, the onus probandi rests upon him that propounds it, and till now all arguments on this point have resulted only in increasing the number of unproved hypotheses, which the historian should ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... his own wisdom? Must he not be talking 'ad captandum' in all this? I say nothing of the ridiculous predicament in which my own midwifery and the whole art of dialectic is placed; for the attempt to supervise or refute the notions or opinions of others would be a tedious and enormous piece of folly, if to each man his own are right; and this must be the case if Protagoras' Truth is the real truth, and the philosopher is not merely amusing himself by giving oracles out ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... visitest him? O Lord! our Lord! is not Thy name already sufficiently exalted in the earth? Confer Thy glory upon the heavens" (Ps. viii. 4, 6). The Holy One—blessed be He!—then called upon Moses to refute the objection of the envious angels. "I fear," pleaded he, "lest they consume me with the fiery breath of their mouth." Thereupon, by way of protection, he was bid approach and lay hold of the throne of God; as it is said (Job xxvi. 9), "He lays hold of the ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... campaign, "that I'll wet-nurse a new-fledged candidate. They've got at least to have their milk teeth through if they want Benjamin Doolittle after this." To George, itchingly aware through all his rasped nerves of Mrs. Herrington's letter in that morning's Sentinel asking him to refute, if he could, an abominable half column of statistics in regard to legislation in the Woman Suffrage States, the furniture dealer ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... find anything with which to refute the argument he had just heard, and Tai-yue went on to say. "This offence can, anyhow, be condoned; but, what is more, why did you also wink at Yuen Erh? What was this idea which you had resolved in your mind? wasn't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... she repeated her former expressions of displeasure; then endeavoured at some length to refute the objections brought against the match; and finally, her "great misliking" of all opposition, and her earnest desire for the marriage, being reported to her faithful council, they agreed, after long consultations, to offer her their services ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... with a generosity difficult to praise too highly. And Death paid visits here and there but passed the cottage by. At the beginning of the second week, Nature, who has no patience with any attempt to refute her laws, especially on the part of those who are young and vigorous, took Joan in hand. "What is all this, my girl?" she said, "sitting here with your hands in your lap while everybody and everything is working and making and preparing. Stir yourself, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... sat very still. In absent forgetfulness he polished the big glasses the second time and sprung them back carefully on his nose. But even yet he did not answer, merely sat there waiting; awaiting the moment to counter, to refute. ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... decisive moment in your career giving way to doubts which our whole conduct pursued to you through many years ought to refute, I should be almost in despair," replied Jacques Bricheteau, "if I had none but personal denials and asseverations to offer you. But, as you will remember, old Pigoult spoke of an aunt of mine, living in this neighborhood, where you will soon, I hope, find her position ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... had been supplied with materials and machinery, so as to be efficient in producing the various munitions and equipments, the want of which had caused early embarrassment. Thus a good deal had been done to produce the needed material of war, and to refute the croakers who found in our poverty application for the maxim, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... possibility in nature of a political division in which all the men shall be on one side and all the women on the other. The mutual influence of the sexes forbids it. The very persons who hint at such a fear refute themselves at other times, by arguing that "women will always be sufficiently represented by men," or that "every woman will vote as her husband thinks, and it will merely double the numbers." As a matter of fact, the law will prevail in all English-speaking nations: a few men fighting ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... idle tongues to prattle forth slander about him till weary of the occupation, but he could not bear to fancy that Mrs Edmonstone, or rather her friend, should hear anything to his disadvantage which he might not be present to refute; still, happily, he had not forgotten Bertha Eswick's remark, impressed on his mind in childhood—"Do what is right, lad, and never mind what men say ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... But when observations are made upon the winds within the district of such extensive storms as sometimes visit the United States, the directions of the wind are found to be so various, that the advocates of either theory, making due allowance for local disturbances, can triumphantly refute their adversaries. In such storms there are doubtless many centres or maxima of rain, and whether the wind move around or toward these centres, it would inevitably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... has reached the theatre? Do you not see the malice of this question of Baron Swartz? They think the Barbarina is so completely broken, crushed by the displeasure of the king, that she can no longer dance. They have deceived themselves—I will dance tonight. Perhaps I shall go mad; but I will first refute the slander, and bring to naught the report of my disgrace ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... has carried me beyond proper bounds. God is my witness, that it is thy errors and not thyself that I hate. I suffer to see thee in darkness, for I love thee in Jesus Christ, and care for thy salvation fills my heart. Speak! give me your reasons. I long to know them that I may refute them." ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... in him to put off the old man and lead a new life, he changed his name of Samuel to that of Peter. Some time passed, during which he strengthened and instructed himself in his new religion. Very soon he arrived at the point of searching for objections to refute, and adversaries to overthrow. Bold and enterprising, he went at once to the strongest, and Bossuet was the first Catholic author that he set himself to read. He commenced with a kind of disdain; believing that the faith which ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... aboard the Constitution." [Footnote: New edition, London, 1837, vol. ii, p. 456.] These statements are mere assertions unsupported by proof, and of such a loose character as to be difficult to refute. As our navy was small, it may be best to take each ship in turn. The only ones of which the British could write authoritatively were, of course, those which they captured. The first one taken was the Wasp. James says many British were discovered among her ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... their lordships had assigned him gratuitously such assistance as he might not otherwise have obtained at a high price—and allowed his young brother had put many things in such a new point of view, that, although he was quite certain of his ability to refute them, he was honestly desirous of having a few hours to arrange his answer, in order to be able to follow Mr. Fairford from point to point. He had further to observe, there was one point of the case to which his brother, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... and then refute, Each modern philosophic doot'— And so he did; but each quotation Seem'd to outweigh ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... criticism, which is perhaps not less keen than that I must expect from my colleagues. Contradiction of the thesis that all dreams are the fulfillments of wishes is raised by my patients with perfect regularity. Here are several examples of the dream material which is offered me to refute this position. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... affable now. Writing a book gives a man a certain standing. I fancy it is the dignity of print that does it, and we all have the print superstition. I find myself accepting statements in books, whereas if someone said the same things to me over a dinner-table I should refute them with scorn. "If it is in John Bull it is so!" Mr. ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... his feet, denounced his ingratitude in language which was seldom allowed to pass unchallenged in the presence of his wife, while that lady contributed examples of deceitfulness in the past of Mr. Heard, which he strove in vain to refute. Meanwhile, her ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... account therefore my soul, having heard their voice, flutters, and already seeks to discourse subtilely, and to quibble about smoke, and having pricked a maxim with a little notion, to refute the opposite argument. So that now I eagerly desire, if by any means it be possible, ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... the clergy. He was one of the horrid creatures who write with a wink at you, which sets the wicked part of us on fire: I have known it myself, and I own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of Countess Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness. He has just the same benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are to make a choice, the beggar's breech for decency, I say: I like it vastly in preference to a Nymney, who leads you up to the curtain and agitates it, and bids you to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an indication that a life of earnest devotion to material pursuits is not inconsistent with an ardent appreciation of the surpassing importance of speculative inquiries. One such example as this is enough to refute the oft-repeated assertion that in America all philosophy must of course give way before the absorbing interest in the pursuit of wealth. A few years since we chanced to send a copy of an American edition of Plato's "Phaedo" to a German Professor. "Eine wirkliche Erscheinung," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... down with an incurable disease. Death with its icy breath hung over her as her pen flew along the paper, and the questions constantly on her lips were "Shall I live to complete my task? Shall I live to tell the world how great and noble a man my husband was, and to refute the calumnies that his enemies have so industriously circulated?" She did complete it in a sense, for the work duly appeared; but no one recognised more clearly than herself its numerous shortcomings. Indeed, it is ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... because more comfortable than liberty; and uniformity is impossible without compulsion. A man with a free and contentious mind is a danger to the community, for he destroys its ease. He compels his fellows to active thought, if only to refute him. This is a dissipation of energy, and a local weakening of the structure of the State. It is historically true that a few men with ranging and questioning minds have sometimes injected so strong an ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... the saving virtue of obedience, and the theory of ends justifying means. After the irony of Pascal, the condensed rage of La Chalotais, and the grave verdict of the Parlement of Paris (1762), it is not necessary now to refute the errors or to expose the abominations of this casuistry in detail.[174] Yet it cannot be wholly passed in silence here; for its application materially favored the influence of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... nevertheless thanked him; and as he was thinking of an answer: "Your cousin," said the earl, "is extremely coquettish, and I have some reason to suppose she is not so prudent as she ought to be." Hamilton thought the last charge a little too severe; and as he was endeavouring to refute it: "Good God!" said my lord, "you see, as well as the whole court, what airs she gives herself: husbands are always the last people that are spoken to about those affairs that corcern them the most; but they are not always the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... relied on between the freedom and the licentiousness of the press, which it is proper to examine. This seems to me to refute every other argument which is used on this subject; it amounts to an admission that there are some acts of the press which Congress ought not to have power to restrain, and that by the amendment they are prohibited to restrain these acts. Nov, to justify any act of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... leading anatomist led Huxley, as was his wont, to re-investigate the question for himself and satisfy himself one way or the other. He found that the previous investigators were not mistaken. Without going out of his way to refute the mis-statement as publicly as it was made, he simply embodied his results in his regular teaching. But the opportunity came unsought. Fortified by his own researches, he openly challenged these assertions when repeated at the Oxford meeting of the British Association ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... her lip, angry and disconcerted, but utterly unable to refute him or find anything in her memory of Valerie to criticise and condemn, except the intimacy with her brother which had continued and which, she had supposed, would cease on ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the poem, the ball, and her participation in the dance, because, on the preceding day, he had read in an English journal the calumnious statement that Madame Louis Bonaparte had safely given birth to a vigorous and healthy child some weeks previously, and he wished in this manner to refute the malicious statement. ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... led by Natures light; And with the Gentiles much thou must converse, Ruling them by perswasion as thou mean'st, 230 Without thir learning how wilt thou with them, Or they with thee hold conversation meet? How wilt thou reason with them, how refute Thir Idolisms, Traditions, Paradoxes? Error by his own arms is best evinc't. Look once more e're we leave this specular Mount Westward, much nearer by Southwest, behold Where on the Aegean shore a City stands Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil, Athens the eye of Greece, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... lately willed me To treat of with the king on your behalf, I brake even now with him so far, till he In sudden rage of grief, ere I scarce had My tale out-told, pray'd me to stint my suit, As that from which his mind abhorred most. And well I see his fancy to refute, Is but displeasure gain'd and labour lost. So firmly fixed stands his kingly will That, till his body shall be laid in grave, He will not part from the desired sight Of your presence, which silder he should have, If he had once allied you again In marriage to any prince or peer— ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... art. Lysias seems to be of the same opinion, which he defends by saying that the most simple and ignorant people possess a kind of rhetoric when they speak for themselves. They find something like an exordium, they make a narration, they prove, refute, and their prayers and entreaties have the force of a peroration. Lysias and his adherents proceed afterward to vain subtleties. "That which is the effect of art," say they, "could not have existed before art. In all times men have known how to speak for ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... will influence him. Mr. Le Drieux, commissioned by the Austrian government, states that you are Jack Andrews, and have escaped to America after having stolen the pearls of a noble Viennese lady. He will offer, as evidence to prove his assertion, the photograph and the pearls. You must refute this charge with counter-evidence, in order to escape extradition and a journey to the country where the crime was committed. There you will be granted a regular trial, to be sure, but even if you then secure an acquittal you will have suffered many indignities and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... Cyreniac school, was a sort of philosophic voluptuary, teaching that pleasure is the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute the opinions of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful man, who affected to despise all pleasures,—like his own disciple Diogenes, who lived in a tub, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... the agency of the lifeless productions of nature; the intervention of the same supernatural machinery; the existence of elves, fairies, dwarfs, giants, witches, and enchanters; the use of spells, charms, and amulets, and all those highly-gifted objects, of whatever form or name, whose attributes refute every principle of human experience, which are to conceal the possessor's person, annihilate the bounds of space, or command a gratification of all our wishes. These are the constantly-recurring types which embellish the popular tale: which have been ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... and doings of each of them goes without saying, as it was equally so as regarded this more presumptious of the crew "Conrad the Conqueror." There were many, in London especially, who wondered that Apleon did not appear and refute this man's claims, if they ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... indefeasible right, which found their way into the world by the freedom of publication? Even that great work, the treatise of Locke on Government, itself, which is justly regarded as the political Bible (I mean no irreverence) of Englishmen, would never have seen the light, but that it was written to refute the base and detestable tenets of Barclay and Filmer. Their political treatises were false and slavish, and even illegal; for they were the same for which Dr. Sacheverel was afterwards impeached by the Parliament; and which he would not have been if it had not been ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... black spaces below me. I argued that all this pain and waste was no more than the selvedge of a proportionately limitless fabric of sane, interested, impassioned and joyous living. These stiff still memories seemed to refute me. But why us? they seemed to insist. In some way it's essential,—this margin. I ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Jack Bates, meaning to refute the tales they had told of him, and she had asked about the black lamb and the white, and then had told him that he must go out to the whistling buoy and see the real whale they had anchored out there, and related with much detail how Freddie had taken her and Lola out, and how the water ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... Darrow spared an instant's amusement to the quaint incongruity of the name—"you know you sent for Mr. Darrow to refute me; and how can he, till he knows ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... outcry in praise of the beauty of anarchy, expressing herself in broken English, spoken with a cockney accent, in broken French and liquid Russian. Enid Blunt, increasingly guttural, and mingling German words with her Bedford Park English, refuted, or strove to refute, Jennings's ecstatic praise of French verse, citing rapidly poems composed by members of the Sitwell group, songs of Siegfried Sassoon, and even lyrics by Lady Margaret Sackville and Miss Victoria Sackville West. Jennings, who thought he was ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... suggestion could be made at once by simply testing the experiment on a small scale, or a large one, either. But I prefer at present to refute your proposition by an argument drawn from nature herself. If you correctly remember, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing you was on the island of Galveston, many years ago. Do you remember relating to me at ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... alternatives of physical annihilation or abject submission by the almost quixotic generosity of the enemy who fed and housed their non-combatant population. From a constitutional point of view, the presence of Article IV.[348] in the London Convention was in itself sufficient to refute the claim of the republic to be a ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... might trace you chapter by chapter; and at large refute, not only the whole design of your book by a particular replication to them; but also sundry and damnable errors, that like ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... paper mean its readers to understand by its account? Was it a jealous rivalry between herself and Madame Strahlberg?—Was M. de Cymier meant by the cock? And Fred had heard all this—he had drawn his sword to refute the calumny. Brave Fred! Alas! he had been prompted only by chivalric generosity. Doubtless he, also, looked upon her as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Why, 'tis I who had you taught how to refute what is right, and now you would persuade me it is right a ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... angels of darkness, we could not but feel some suspicion that his offences had been exaggerated. That suspicion is now at an end. The vindication is before us. It occupies four volumes. It was the work of forty years. It would be absurd to suppose that it does not refute every serious charge which admitted of refutation. How many serious charges, then, are here refuted? Not a single one. Most of the imputations which have been thrown on Barere he does not even notice. In such cases, of course, judgment must go against ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... originate? In the same way it was rumoured that Ivan Nikiforovitch was born with a tail! But this invention is so clumsy and at the same time so horrible and indecent that I do not even consider it necessary to refute it for the benefit of civilised readers, to whom it is doubtless known that only witches, and very few even of these, have tails. Witches, moreover, belong more to the feminine than ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... brother's communication, you find occasion to suggest a difference between the subject of revelation and the discoveries which have been made by men in the powers and properties of nature. But when you have contended successfully for this (which by no means has any power to refute his argument) you seem not to realize that there must be as great a difference in the evidences by which these different subjects are communicated to the mind, as there are in the subjects themselves. It is acknowledged, ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... I have heard, and have so often attempted to refute, are, that the generality of missionaries are a fanatical class of men, who are more anxious to inculcate the peculiar tenets of their own sects and denominations than the religion of our Saviour; that most of them are uneducated ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... Besides, by this a man may learn, by talk, what it is to repent, to believe, to pray, to suffer, or the like; by this also a man may learn what are the great promises and consolations of the Gospel, to his own comfort. Further, by this a man may learn to refute false opinions, to vindicate the truth, and also to instruct ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... waste of words to follow and refute line by line the article "After Omdurman." Other of Mr Bennett's accusations were: that the 21st Lancers, on the way to the front, robbed hen-roosts and stricken villagers; that once in Omdurman the Soudanese troops abandoned discipline, looted, ravished, and murdered the whole ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... relation of the same name, in the County Militia, with white teeth, who calls up the carriage at the Opera, and is always wishing O'Connell was hanged, drawn, and quartered—then a barrister, who has written an article in the Quarterly, and is very likely to speak, and refute M'Culloch; and these five people, in whose nomination I have no more agency than I have in the nomination of the toll-keepers of the Bosphorus, are to make laws for me and my family—to put their hands ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... earth's surface, it follows that the temperature of any elevated point must be modified in a very important degree by the proximity and extent of the surrounding plains. These observations seem satisfactorily to refute the objections made by certain savants respecting the great height of the Himalaya mountains, which may be, therefore, safely pronounced to be the loftiest mountain chain on ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... rendered him an undesirable member of the club, to the honorary membership of which he had been admitted. The committee, after inquiry, decided to request him to see them, inform him of the charge that had been made against him, ask him if he wished to refute it; if not, it was their intention to cancel his membership. His answer was reported to be as follows: "The charges made against me practically accuse me of behaving like a blackguard. Well, I can be a blackguard—probably a ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... power to cherish or reject; If e'er frivolity has led to fame, And made us blush that you forbore to blame— If e'er the sinking stage could condescend To soothe the sickly taste it dare not mend— All past reproach may present scenes refute, 60 And censure, wisely loud, be justly mute![42] Oh! since your fiat stamps the Drama's laws, Forbear to mock us with misplaced applause; So Pride shall doubly nerve the actor's powers, And Reason's voice be echoed back ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... are valuable in that they refute the charges made against General Bonaparte at this time— first, that he returned from Egypt with a fortune, and, second, that he carried himself with a hauteur which ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... long letter, my dear count, but you know how long all letters must be which are intended to refute opinions and to rectify judgments. M. de Lamartine has the excellent habit of listening to your advice, and that is why I have had at heart to let you know the truth about Byron. The present work will adduce the proofs of the appreciations ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... philosophical experiments by demonstrations of the unity of dogmatic and natural religion. So moderate and philosophical was the temper displayed by Cudworth in his "Intellectual System of the Universe," that the bigots of his day charged him with the atheistic principles which he was endeavouring to refute. But the change of tone in the theologians of the Reformation was itself an indication of the new difficulties which theology had to meet. The bold scepticism of Hobbes was adopted by courtiers and politicians. Charles ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... necessary now to refute formally the fond, feeble notion, that this parable proves the sinfulness of dissenting from the Church of England, established by the State and prelatic in its government. Even although we should concede that the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... that it would serve to give the President an undue influence over the Senate, and in others that it would have an opposite tendency, a strong proof that neither suggestion is true. To state the first in its proper form, is to refute it. It amounts to this: the President would have an improper INFLUENCE OVER the Senate, because the Senate would have the power of RESTRAINING him. This is an absurdity in terms. It cannot admit of a doubt that ...
— The Federalist Papers
... would have been horrible, revolting, sacrilegious. Fortunately it does not even amount to a truth untruly told; and well would it be if all the lies against the Borgias were as easy to refute. True, Pinturicchio did paint Giulia Farnese as the Madonna; true also that he did paint Alexander kneeling in adoration—but not to the Madonna, not in the same picture at all. The Madonna for which Giulia Farnese was the model is over a doorway, as Vasari says. The kneeling Alexander is in another ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... ordinary music of life in ten thousands of those households, falling accidentally upon our ears, and giving us truthful, artless impressions, such as labored statements and solemn depositions would not so well convey, and which theories, counter-statements, arguments, and invectives never can refute. Our senior pastor would say that the letter is like the Epistles of John,—not a doctrinal exposition, but a breathing forth of the spirit which the evangelical history had inspired. I have come to know more, however, ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... advanced in the knowledge of truth, he proportionally declined in the practice of virtue; and the same year of his reign in which he convened the council of Nice, was polluted by the execution, or rather murder, of his eldest son. This date is alone sufficient to refute the ignorant and malicious suggestions of Zosimus, who affirms, that, after the death of Crispus, the remorse of his father accepted from the ministers of Christianity the expiation which he had vainly solicited from the Pagan pontiffs. At the time of the death of Crispus, the emperor ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
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