"Confutation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to answer you!" said the prince. "Out of respect to myself I will, for such is the unsullied honor of Robert Bruce, that even the air shall not be tainted with slander against his truth, without being repurified by its confutation. Gaveston, you have known me five years; two of them we passed together in the jousts of Flanders, and yet you believe me capable of falsehood! Know then, unworthy of the esteem I have bestowed on you, that neither to save mean or great, would I deviate from the strict line of truth. The ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... party in the name of Logan, and falsely pretended to have been presented by him to the government of France; counting that the bare mention of my name therein, would connect that in the eye of the public with this transaction. In confutation of these and all future calumnies, by way of anticipation, I shall make to you a profession of my political faith; in confidence that you will consider every future imputation on me of a contrary complexion, as bearing on its front the mark ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Court for the base insinuations in his poem against the character of women. Christine herself heartily disapproved of the Romance of the Rose, and wrote a sharp criticism upon it. Her "Cit des Dames" is an elaborate confutation of the opinion that women are naturally more immoral and less capable of noble studies or high intellectual attainments than men. In her introduction she says: "I reflected why men are so unanimous in attributing wickedness to women. I examined my own life and those of other women ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... must first determine what the immediate end or object of the drama is. And here, as I have previously remarked, I find two extremes of critical decision;—the French, which evidently presupposes that a perfect delusion is to be aimed at,—an opinion which needs no fresh confutation; and the exact opposite to it, brought forward by Dr. Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout in the full reflective knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the impossibility of delusion, he makes no sufficient allowance for an intermediate state, which I have before distinguished ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Professor, what he wrote about Professor Tapper—a screed by the way that nearly caused a mortal combat between the two savants—may be read in his massive volume entitled "The Confutation of the Tapper Theory of a South Polar Fur-Bearing Pollywog, by Professor Simeon Sandburr." It weighs twelve pounds, and can be found ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... notice a peculiarity of Owen's treatises, which is at once an excellence and a main cause of their redundancies. So systematic was his mind that he could only discuss a special topic with reference to the entire scheme of truth; and so constructive was his mind, that, not content with the confutation of his adversary, he loved to state and establish positively the truth impugned: to which we may add, so devout was his disposition, that, instead of leaving his thesis a dry demonstration, he was anxious to suffuse its doctrine with those spiritual charms ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... before Niedermeyer; not exactly in triumph, but with the alacrity of all felicitous confutation. He looked at it much longer than was needful to read it, stroking down his beard gravely, and I felt it was not so easy to confute a pupil of the school of Metternich. At last, folding the note and handing it back, "Has your friend mentioned Madame Blumenthal's errand ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... year in which he was made Master of Arts, he published a confutation of Varillas's account of Wickliffe; and, engaging in the study of the civil law, became Doctor in 1692, and was ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... out of England. If privy search be made, and shortly, peradventure in the house of the same bishop shall be found his first copy. Master More hath sent oftentimes and lately books unto Peto, in Antwerp—as his book of the confutation of Tyndal, and of Frith's opinion of the sacrament, with divers other books. I can no further learn of More's practices, but if you consider this well, you may perchance espy his craft. Peto laboureth busylier ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... The adversaries, in the Confutation, have also cited against us Col. 3, 14: Charity, which is the bond of perfectness. From this they infer that love justifies because it renders men perfect. Although a reply concerning perfection could here be made in many ways, yet we will simply recite the meaning of Paul. It ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... resolutions. He cannot open the book, and look upon our written frame of government, without seeing that it is called a constitution. This may well be appalling to him. It threatens his whole doctrine of compact, and its darling derivatives, nullification and secession, with instant confutation. Because, if he admits our instrument of government to be a constitution, then, for that very reason, it is not a compact between sovereigns; a constitution of government and a compact between ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... recommendation to his regard! It supposes that God will banish those from his presence who long for it; and bring those to dwell in it who do not desire it! A supposition, which, in our view, carries its own confutation in it. For the all important inquiry is, confessedly, how to obtain salvation? The solution which the supposition exhibits, is this, by being willing ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... his work against Newton's "Chronology" in his lifetime, "because I knew his temper so well, that I should have expected it would have killed him; as Dr. Bentley, Bishop Stillingfleet's chaplain, told me, that he believed Mr. Locke's thorough confutation of the Bishop's metaphysics about the Trinity hastened his end." Pope writhed in his chair from the light shafts which Cibber darted on him; yet they were not tipped with the poison of the Java-tree. Dr. Hawkesworth, died of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... delusion was that his character was marked by honesty and general benevolence; and those who wished to please him pretended to accept his own comfortable theory. He regarded himself as a really good fellow, and in his own person he was a living confutation of Byron's dashing paradox. Then there was Renton Nicholson, a specimen of social vermin if ever there was one. This fellow earned a sordid livelihood by presiding over a club where men met nightly in orgies that stagger the power of belief. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Infinitely Little, The Northern Pactolus, Pandore et sa Boite, Cancer and Capricorn, Phoebus et Selene followed each other in leisurely succession. And he also found time for those controversies that so moved and amused the world; among others, his famous and triumphant confutation of Canon ——, on one hand, and Professor ——, the famous scientist, on the other, which has been compared to the classic litigation about the oyster, since the oyster itself fell to Barty's share, and a shell to each ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... viz. that they must be circumcised and keep the ceremonial "law of Moses, or else they could not be saved," Acts xv. 2. The synod put forth a doctrinal power, in confutation of the heresy, and clear vindication of the truth, about the great point of "justification by faith without the works of the law," Acts xv. 7-23; and (Independents themselves being judges) a doctrinal decision of matters of faith by a lawful synod, far surpasseth ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... And I think the Examen should be pushed forward with the utmost expedition. Thus, "This day, &c., An Examen of Mr. Pope's Essay, &c., containing a succinct Account of the Philosophy of Mr. Leibnitz on the System of the Fatalists, with a Confutation of their Opinions, and an Illustration of the Doctrine of Free-will;" [with what else ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... illegal tribunal, to confiscate freehold property, and to send the fathers of the Established Church to a prison. This romance rests on no evidence, and, though it has been repeated down to our own time, seems hardly to deserve confutation. No fact is more certain than that Sunderland opposed some of the most imprudent steps which James took, and in particular the prosecution of the Bishops, which really brought on the decisive crisis. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that this will be considered censorious, and the proverbial generosity and hospitality of the south will be appealed to as a full confutation of it. The writer thinks he can appreciate southern kindness and hospitality. Having been born in Virginia, raised and educated in South Carolina and Kentucky, he is altogether southern in his feelings, and habits, and modes of familiar ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... difficulty of believing one's children in fault, but Lady Temple was entirely past accepting the possibility of Conrade's being to blame in this particular instance. It made her bristle up again, so that even Rachel saw the impossibility of pressing it, and trusted to some signal confutation to cure her of her infatuation. But she was as affectionate as ever, only wanting to be forgiven for the morning's warmth, and to assure dear Aunt Curtis, dear Grace, and dearest Rachel in particular, that there was no doing without them, and it was the greatest ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bishop Cumberland, 1718, are four Latin lines from Dean Duport's epigram upon the Bishop's confutation of Hobbes. In the south choir aisle, on the tablet to Dean Lockier, 1740, is the only instance of the arms of the Deanery impaling another shield, on a monument. Near this is a wooden tablet executed in good taste, recording the fact that the iron screens ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... El Abeed; but as the quotation from Aly Bey in the above Journal of Sciences and the Arts, page 271. asserts it to be towards the east, and again, in page 272. declares it to be towards the west, such incoherence, I presume, requires no confutation. I consider that it originates from Moorish inaccuracy. 440 The La Mar Zarak of Adams, if any such river exists, may be a corruption of Sagea el Humra, i.e. the Red Stream, a river in the southern confines of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... Confutation with it: Ned Phillips says so, too. As to what passed, that July Forenoon, between him and Uncle Kit, before the latter left Town in the Ipswich Coach, and with Betty Fisher fidgetting in and out of the ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... this way may be most properly and most successfully confuted; such as deserve not, and hardly can bear a serious and solid confutation. He that will contest things apparently decided by sense and experience, or who disavows clear principles of reason, approved by general consent and the common sense of men, what other hopeful way is there of proceeding with him, ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... expression, contains the beginning and the end of sound science. It thus appears that a Christian magistrate may subscribe (or, which is quite as pious and far more economical, induce others to subscribe) for the confutation of heretics, and afterwards send them to gaol for not being confuted. What a glorious commentary on the great truth that England is a free country, and that Christianity relies entirely on the force of persuasion! Fortunately, however, our case was not ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... him, a show estate, where the supply of labour was cheap and unlimited, and the people well cared for without any elaborate legislation being required for their protection. Here at any rate was a positive result of the administration of the Dutch, and a confutation of the stories of down-trodden peasants in Java; and the traveller made up his mind that if possible he would one day be a planter and that his plantation should be ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... shook his head at poor Mrs. Fairfield's hasty confutation of her own self-acquittal from the charge of pride; but he saw that it was not the time or moment for effectual peace-making in the most irritable of all rancours,—namely, that nourished against one's nearest relations. He therefore dropped the subject, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... limitations of human knowledge; and the optimistic views in which he believes Dr. Mandeville to concur with him are brought to bear on the more gloomy philosophy of Carlyle, some well-known utterances of whom are brought forward for confutation. The chief points of ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... him to complaint. While the distributors of literary fame were endeavouring to depreciate and degrade him, he either despised or defied them, wrote on as he had written before, and never turned aside to quiet them by civility, or repress them by confutation. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... long dialogues, such as 'Le Philosophe et le Theologien', and 'Reve': 'Dieu-Moi'; there is the 'Songe d'un Quart d'Heure', divided into minutes; there is the very lengthy criticism of 'Bernardin de Saint-Pierre'; there is the 'Confutation d'une Censure indiscrate qu'on lit dans la Gazette de Iena, 19 Juin 1789'; with another large manuscript, unfortunately imperfect, first called 'L'Insulte', and then 'Placet au Public', dated 'Dux, this 2nd March, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... guessed it. Dick had been talking, rather bitterly as well as floridly, about sighting the cold Northern Star and losing the Southern Cross. I lay back and gloated over the starry picture overhead through a crisscross picture-mount of ragged grass. I left the confutation of the scoffer to Miss Moore. There was an edge on many of her remarks that night, and I could trust her to deal with him. But what she said I have forgotten. Only I remember that he gave her best at last. Then, and not till then, I broke silence, ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... of James Usher archbishop of Armagh. The third was the Reason of Church Government urged against the Prelacy, by Mr. John Milton, in two books. The fourth was Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnuus; and the fifth an Apology for a Pamphlet called, a Modest Confutation of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrants against Smectymnuus; or as the title page is in some copies, an Apology for Smectymnuus, with the Reason of Church ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... that to promote a woman to beare rule, or empire aboue any realme, nation or citie, is repugnant to nature, contumelie to God, and a thing moste contrariouse to his reuealed and approued ordenance: and because also, that somme hath promised (as I vnderstand) a confutation of the same, I haue delayed the second blast, till such tyme as their reasons appere, by the which I either may be reformed in opinion, or els shall haue further occasion more simply and plainly to vtter my iudgement. Yet ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... that he had heard, but after that way that he had heard it by such men and such meanes as he thought it hard but it should be true." This affirmation rests on the credibility of certain reporters, we do not know whom, but who we shall find were no credible reporters at all: for to proceed to the confutation. James Tirrel, a man in no secret trust with the king, and kept down by Catesby and Ratcliffe, is recommended as a proper person by a nameless page. In the first place Richard was crowned at York (after this transaction) September 8th. Edward the Fourth had not been dead four months, ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... a similar turn of mind: It may perhaps be doubted, whether this cast of temper be the effect of nature or education; but, in either case, it is an incontestable symptom of a mean and contemptible disposition, and is alone a sufficient confutation of the extravagant panegyrics, which many hypothetical writers have bestowed on the ingenuity and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... degrees his secret aspirations became bolder. She was a woman; there were men who knew her; some of them inferior to him in position, and, he flattered himself, in mind. He had even heard a tale against her character. To him her face was its confutation, and he knew how ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... charge its practice on the landlords. They have nothing whatever to do with it; it is a mode of dealing between one class of tenantry and another. The assertion in the "Cry from Ireland," that the peasant gives his manure, and pays 18s. an acre besides, is too ridiculous to require confutation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol. III, ch. 154, p. 938) says that this book was printed in England in the [228] time of Cromwell, and he appears not to have been informed that it was only a translation of the much older original Flemish. He adds that Dr. George Kendal wrote a confutation of it at Oxford in the year 1657, under the title of Fur pro Tribunali, and that the dialogue is there inserted. This dialogue presupposes, contrary to the truth, that the Counter-remonstrants make God the cause of evil, and ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... the high-flying nonsense of their descendants. Some of the more respectable were Jews. The absurdity of supposing a population of eight millions all sprung from gentle loins in the course of a century and a half is too manifest for confutation. The aristocracy of the South, such as it is, has the shallowest of all foundations, for it is only skin-deep,—the most odious of all, for, while affecting to despise trade, it traces its origin to a successful traffick in men, women, and children, and still draws its chief ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... insufficient results, actually caused animalcules to be produced from pure sand, and fishes to be created out of oysters, and birds to be generated by slimy and grovelling reptiles, and men to be born from monkeys;—if he should tell us all this, certainly we could offer no direct confutation of the wonderful tale. In regard to alleged facts of this character, the wisest of men are, and always must be, mere children. But it would be monstrous to say, that this wild assertion derived any support from their admitted bewilderment and ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... amount. Yet a clamour was raised among the Whigs, on account of the multiplication of his preferments; and a charge was founded against the Lord-Lieutenant of extravagant favour to a Tory divine, which Swift judged worthy of an admirable ironical confutation in his "Vindication of Lord Carteret." It appears, from the following verses, that Delany was far from being of the same opinion with those who thought he was too amply provided for.—Scott. See the "Vindication," "Prose Works," vii, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... a few days after, the prophet was abashed, and quite unable to account for this summary confutation. However, dear good Rutilianus very soon restored the oracle's credit by discovering that this was the very thing the God had foreshown; he had not directed him to choose a living teacher; Pythagoras and Homer were long dead, and doubtless the boy was now enjoying their instructions in Hades. Small ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Date of the 10. of June ordained to be subscribed by all the Subjects, and other unjust Decrees established by Law, against the Plots and Practises of Malignants, and against the Principles and Tenents of Erastianism, which spread among divers in this Kingdom; For the better confutation whereof, it is hereby Recommended to the Ministery to study that point of controversie well, that they may be the more able to stop the mouths of gainsayers: Tis also hereby Recommended to the several Presbyteries and Provincial Synods, that they make special enquiry and trial concerning ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... positive confutation rather nonplussed Sarp, his theory not being able at once to assimilate his fact, and he himself feeling, that, if he pushed the comparison farther, he would reach some such atrocity as that, if the white and shining flower produced in its season again the black bean from which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... that he was under a misconception. He fancied a possibility of preaching a pure religion. What followed? He was, he must have been defeated. That is, practically, else why did he not persist? But his confutation was the factual confutation of experience. It was no go. That he found too surely. But why? I am sure that he never found out. Enough that he felt—that under a strong instinct he misgave—a deep, deep gulf between him and them, so that neither could he ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... distinctly here, the rule he so often claims he has himself put in practice, elsewhere, that the use of CONFUTATION in the delivery of science, ought to be very sparing; and to serve to remove strong preoccupations and prejudgments, and not to minister and excite disputations and doubts. For he says in another place, 'As Alexander Borgia was wont to say ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... expect to be equal to angels. He enforces this view by an illustration suggested by the "Rev. Mr. Brown of Utrecht," who had observed that a great or small glass might be equally full, though not holding equal quantities. Mr. Brown intended this for a confutation of Hume, who has said that a little Miss, dressed for a ball, may be as happy as an orator who ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Dauid Beaton Archbishop of Saint Andrewes, and other prelates of Scotland, and all his goodes confiscate, and his picture at last burned in the open market place, &c. But for so muche as the storye of hym, with his articles obiected against hym, and his confutation of the same, is already expressed sufficiently in the Firste edition of Actes and Monuments, and because he being hapily deliuered out of their handes, had no more but onely his picture burned, referring the reader to the booke aboue mentioned, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... astrology, met in More with its most able oppugner. His tract, which has excited much less attention than its merit deserves, (I have not been able to trace a single quotation from it in any author during the last century,) is entitled "Tetractys Anti-astrologica, or a Confutation of Astrology." Lond. 1681, 4to. I may mention while on the subject of More, that the second and most valuable part of the memoir of him by Ward, his devoted admirer and pupil, which was never printed, is in my ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... volume, certainly the earliest in English, professes to have been printed by "Michal Wood" in 1553. Can we not determine the place of its origin by the recollection of the fact, that Bishop Bale's Mysterye of Iniquyte, or Confutation of Ponce Pantolabus, was printed at Geneva by "Mychael Woode" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... Jews, and the Heathen philosophers were so warmly engaged in controversy, there is reason to believe that pious frauds were not uncommon: and that when one party suspected forgeries, instead of an attempt at confutation, which might have been difficult, they had recourse perhaps to a countermine: and either invented altogether, or eked out some obscure traditional scraps by the embellishments of fancy. When we consider, amongst many literary impositions of later ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... We require exhortation, that we may be led to true good; dissuasion, that we may be turned from things truly evil; obstetrication, that we may draw forth our unperverted conceptions; and confutation, that we may be ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... condescending to repeat the illiberal epithets bestowed in this appeal of the American commander to the people of Upper Canada, on the administration of his majesty, every inhabitant of the province is desired to seek the confutation of such indecent slander in the review of his own particular circumstances. Where is the Canadian subject who can truly affirm to himself that he has been injured by the government, in his person, his property, or ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... which has been much employed for explaining mineral appearances, is too vague, imperfect, or unexplicit, for science, whether as the means of knowing nature, or the subject of confutation. This is not the case with that of stalactite; here is a term that implies a certain natural operation, or a most distinct process for attaining a certain end; and we know the principles upon which it proceeds, as well as the several steps that may be traced in the general result. It is an operation ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... one of these three effusions may unquestionably mean anything that anybody chooses to read into the text; that a Luther is as safe as a Loyola, that a Renan is no safer than a Cumming, from the chance of confutation as a less than plausible exponent of its possible significance: but that, however indisputable it may be that they were meant to mean something, not many human creatures who can be trusted to go abroad without a keeper will be likely to pretend to a positive understanding ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... before the world for more than forty years. It has been supported in hundreds of books and pamphlets, but, as a rule, it has been totally neglected by scholars. Perhaps their indifference may seem wise, for such an opinion may appear to need no confutation. 'There are foolisher fellows than the Baconians,' says a sage—'those who argue against them.' On the other hand, ignorance has often cherished beliefs which science has been obliged reluctantly to admit. The ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... innate' (who says they are?), and this implication Mr. Spencer supports by 'proofs that among various savages religious ideas do not exist.' 'Sir John Lubbock has given many of these.' But it would be well to advise the reader to consult Roskoff's confutation of Sir John Lubbock, and Mr. Tylor's masterly statement.[5] Mr. Spencer cited Sir Samuel Baker for savages without even 'a ray of superstition' or a trace of worship. Mr. Tylor, twelve years before ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... from William Tyndal, or George Jaye (alias Joy), or "som yong unlearned fole," he determines "for lacke of hys other name to cal the writer mayster Masker," a sobriquet which is preserved throughout his confutation. At the same time, it is clear, from the language of the treatise, that its author, though anonymous, believed himself well ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... to show, by an examination of dates and circumstances, that this story is untrue. Such confutation was surely not needed; for the narrative is on the face of it a romance. How it found its way into Mariana's history is quite clear. He acknowledges his obligations to the ancient chronicles; and had doubtless before him the Cronica del famoso ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tiger, as be those also of Hircania), or to them that are bred in Archadia, where copulation is oft seen between lions and bitches, as the lion is in France (as I said) between she wolves and dogs, whereof let this suffice, sith the further tractation of them doth not concern my purpose, more than the confutation of Cardan's talk, De subt., lib. 10, who saith that after many generations dogs do become wolves, and contrariwise, which if it were true, then could not England be without many wolves: but nature hath set a difference between them, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... such instances, were it needful, to the confutation of that low, and I had almost said, unmanly contempt, with which a certain celebrated genius treats our sex in general in most of his pieces, I have seen; particularly his Letter of Advice to a new married Lady; so written, as must ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Levitical law; in the same code are inserted many of the Saxon institutions, though these two laws were in all respects as opposite as could possibly be imagined. These indisputable monuments of our ancient rudeness are a very sufficient confutation of the panegyrical declamations in which some persons would persuade us that the crude institutions of an unlettered people had attained an height which the united efforts of necessity, learning, inquiry, and experience ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... course, seen Bishop Watson's Apology for the Bible. It is a complete confutation of Paine; but that was no difficult matter. The most formidable Infidel is Lessing, the author of "Emilia Galotti";—I ought to have written, "was", for he is dead. His book is not yet translated, and is entitled, in German, "Fragments of an Anonymous Author". It unites ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... what He said, entered into the convictions He inspired. But He knew this as well as His disciples, and for this very reason it is beside the mark to point to what He said, or rather to what He did not say, in confutation of their experience. For it is their experience—the experience that the forgiveness of sins was mediated to them through His cross—that is expressed in the doctrine of Atonement: He died ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the sea of rains, the gulf of dews, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... confession which he made to Warburton will be a sufficient indication of his qualifications as a student. He says (in 1739) that he never in his life read a line of Leibnitz, nor knew, till he found it in a confutation of his Essay, that there was such a term as pre-established harmony. That is almost as if a modern reconciler of faith and science were to say that he had never read a line of Mr. Darwin, or heard of such a phrase as the struggle for existence. It was to pronounce himself absolutely disqualified ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... though there be Faults enough to offer ample {290} matter for a large Confutation; yet I am scarce inclined to believe, that any will bestow so much pains upon it. For, if that be true, which (in his Preface) he saith of himself, Aut solus insanio Ego, aut solus non insanio: it would either be Needless, or to no Purpose. ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... shook his head. 'I must not forget my situation so far as to attempt a formal confutation of that opinion; but, notwithstanding your success, and the valour which achieved it, you have undertaken a task to which ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... memorial therefore should not be admitted, nor a hearing granted to the claim advanced therein, which should be refused further consideration. And to the end that his plea be drawn up according to the requirements of law, and for the better confutation of the reasons advanced in the said memorial, he [i.e., Solana] maintains that what was petitioned for and obtained by the opponents in the warrant (which was secured through the aid of money) was the establishment ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... with that of mankind; and as no tribe has ever yet been discovered so brutish as to be without some government, and yet so enlightened as to establish a government by common consent, it is surely unnecessary to employ any serious argument in the confutation of a doctrine that is inconsistent with reason, and unsupported by experience. But though all inquiries into the origin of government be chimerical, yet the history of its progress is curious and useful. The ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... of things was not unfavourable to his hopes. She treated his insinuations and professions with levity; but her arguments seemed to be urged with no other view than to afford an opportunity of confutation; and, since there was no abatement of familiarity and kindness, there was room to hope that the affair would terminate agreeably ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... his wine, he decoyed this pedagogue into a debauch, during which his caution forsook him, and he exposed himself to the censure of the company. Sometimes, when the conversation turned upon intricate subjects, he practised upon him the Socratic method of confutation, and, under pretence of being informed, by an artful train of puzzling questions ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... birth or blood in promoting the spread of religion, civilization, education, culture, and freedom should sin, not in ignorance, but against the light, and that from a thousand quarters at once champions armed with the panoply of knowledge should be able to spring to his confutation. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... of confirming her relation, by inserting, at length, the letters that every transaction occasioned, has not only set the greatest part of the work above the danger of confutation, but has added to the entertainment of the reader, who has now the satisfaction of forming to himself the characters of the actors, and judging how nearly such, as have hitherto been given of them, agree with those which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... to my mind, the inevitable result of that method of reasoning which is applied to the confutation of Protestantism, with so much success, by one of the acutest and subtlest disputants who have ever championed Ecclesiasticism—and one cannot put his claims ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... with those who apprehend any mischief, from this source, to the productive resources of the country. Not on the absurd ground (which to any one acquainted with the elements of the subject needs no confutation) that railway expenditure is a mere transfer of capital from hand to hand, by which nothing is lost or destroyed. This is true of what is spent in the purchase of the land; a portion too of what is paid to agents, counsels, engineers, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... revelation, the spot where the bodies of SS. Gervasius and Protasius reposed. He saw a great many miracles performed in Africa by the relics of St. Stephen, of which he makes mention in his book of the City of God, written for the confutation of the most learned of the pagans, wherein he says that, to quote only those operated in the Dioceses of Calame and Hippo, several books would not suffice. Nicetius, Bishop of Treves, writing to Clodosvinda, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... reputation (the only wish of your heart) to object than to defend, to pull down than to set up. And your talents were admirable for that kind of work. Then your huddling together in a critical dictionary a pleasant tale, or obscene jest, and a grave argument against the Christian religion, a witty confutation of some absurd author, and an artful sophism to impeach some respectable truth, was particularly commodious to all our young smarts and smatterers in freethinking. But what mischief have you not done to human society! You have endeavoured, ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... that like mamma?" says Sally. If so, why be so astonished at it?—is a question that suggests itself to her hearer. But self-confutation is not a disorder for his treatment. Besides, the doctor likes it, in this case. His own surprise at mamma's conduct is unqualified by any intimate acquaintance with her character. She may be inconsistency itself, for ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... are written with ill intentions, to advance dangerous opinions, or destroy foundations; it may be then of real use to know from what quarter they come, and go a good way towards their confutation. For instance, if any man should write a book against the lawfulness of punishing felony with death; and, upon enquiry, the author should be found in Newgate under condemnation for robbing a house; his arguments ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... retribution due to evil acts, because the criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy and does not come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in visible nature. There is no stunning confutation of his nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted the law? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie with him he so far deceases from nature. In some manner there will be a demonstration of the wrong ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is also said by Lassen to be mentioned in the Laws of Manu.[59] This system is founded on the Upanishads, and would seem to be later than that of Kapila, since it criticises his system, and devotes much space to its confutation.[60] But Duncker regards it as the oldest, and already beginning in the Upanishads of the Vedas.[61] As the oldest works now extant in both systems are later than their origin, this question of date can only be determined from their contents. That which logically precedes the other ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke |
