"Contradictory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and contradictory nature of many of the principles usually laid down by our grammarians, for the discrimination of long quantity and short, it is quite apparent, that but very few of them have well understood either the distinction itself or their own rules concerning ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... me with great confidence; as if (notwithstanding his contradictory bashfulness) he would look me through; while my eye but now-and-then could glance at him.—He begged my pardon with great humility: he was afraid I would think he deserved no other answer, but that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... fell from his hand, and he sighed aloud! Mr. Beckendorff started, and the Prince awoke. Vivian, confounded, and unable to overpower his emotions, uttered some hasty words, explanatory, apologetical, and contradictory, and retired. In his walk to the summer-house a man passed him. In spite of a great cloak, Vivian recognised him as their messenger and guide; and his ample mantle did not conceal his riding boots and the spurs which glistened ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... in the explanation of this passage. His interpretation, however, seems to me much too recondite. The meaning of the passage may be certain enough; but surely the expression is confused, and one part of it contradictory to the other. BOSWELL. This note is first given ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... were proved, and before forming the advance guard. I gave the order to the column, "With ball cartridge—load." I made inquiries from the inhabitants as to their knowledge of the whereabouts of the enemy. The reports were contradictory and evidently unreliable. To take proper precaution and keep my appointment at Stevensville was ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... overlookers brought reports to Albert that there were hardly any safety-lamps used in the great pit, and that the galleries were so insufficiently supported that there was great danger in continuing to work there. However, the reports were contradictory, and after trying in vain to settle what was to be done, Lord St. Erme rode this morning to the collieries, to make a personal inspection, and insist on the men using the Davy-lamp. After trying to dissuade him, Albert proposed to go ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... struggle for the possession of Kansas commenced. After the passage of the Kansas bill we had reports in the newspapers of gross frauds at pretended elections of rival legislatures, of murder and other crimes, in short, of actual civil war in Kansas; but the accounts were contradictory. It was plainly the first duty of Congress to ascertain the exact condition of affairs in that territory. This could not be done until a speaker ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the blow was given because wearing a white hat they thought I was a Tuscan. If the first reason had been sufficient, the other, miserable as it is, had not been necessary. But all the defence is palpably false, contradictory, and nothing worth. An untruth defended cannot become truth. All these facts, without troubling you further, prove the truth of my statement, which it has been my ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... for in them we find an instinctive feeling of shame, the unconscious perception of the fact that the whole institution has been ignominiously degraded, and that the sonorous words of wise and apathetic teachers are contradictory to the dreary, barbaric, and sterile reality. So there are no true cultural institutions! And in those very places where a pretence to culture is still kept up, we find the people more hopeless, atrophied, and discontented than in ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... been difficult to help seeing—that there was a singular, indescribable change in the old man, and that while his manner was far more restless and unsettled than usual, there was yet a curious, contradictory decision in it, that perplexed her very much. She fancied once that he spoke wildly, and at random; for on her saying she regretted not to have seen him when she had been there before that morning, he at first replied that he had been to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... said he had often expostulated with his old comrade of the "Beagle" for entertaining views which were contradictory to the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... in thee, if thou dost not oblige thyself to other and new offices? Thou dost not stick to infringe her universal and undoubted laws; but stickest to thy own special and fantastic rules, and by how much more particular, uncertain, and contradictory they are, by so much thou employest thy whole endeavour in them: the laws of thy parish occupy and bind thee: those of God and the world concern thee not. Run but a little over the examples of this kind; thy life is full ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... said a third—very judiciously, however—"that our author has the good sense to rely more on his chisel than on the Muses." The lessons taught were of a sufficiently varied, but, on the whole, rather contradictory character. By one writer I was told that I was a dull, correct fellow, who had written a book in which there was nothing amusing and nothing absurd. Another, however, cheered my forlorn spirits by assuring me that I was a "man of genius, whose poems, with much that ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... contained the last word regarding matters of science. But the writers of the Hebrew text had been under the influence of that Babylonian conception of the universe which accepted the earth as unqualifiedly central—which, indeed, had never so much as conceived a contradictory hypothesis; and so the Western world, which had come to accept these writings as actually supernatural in origin, lay under the spell of Oriental ideas of a pre-scientific era. In our own day, no one speaking with authority thinks of these Hebrew ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... in 1806. Let this suffice to show that the Prussians have not so much reason to complain against the French as they pretend to have; besides, the conduct of the Prussian Government itself was so vacillating and contradictory that they had themselves only to blame for what they suffered. They should have supported Austria in 1805. But the fact is that the vanity and the amour propre of the Prussian military were so hurt at the humiliation they experienced at ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... party calls meritorious, the other denominates flagitious. These opinions vary, contract, or expand, like the events of the war on which they are founded. What can an insignificant man do in the midst of these jarring contradictory parties, equally hostile to persons situated as I am? And after all who will be the really guilty?—Those most certainly who fail of success. Our fate, the fate of thousands, is then necessarily involved in the dark wheel of fortune. Why then so many useless reasonings; we are the sport ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... countenance could not carry the loss; it would forfeit what little air of dignity it possessed. A small pointed beard, an eye-glass? Possibly. Another trimming of the hair might have improved him, but, on the whole, it was a face difficult to manipulate, on account of its inherent insipidity and self-contradictory features; one of those faces which give so much trouble to the barbers and ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... time the terror of the unfortunate passengers was very great— the more so that it was undefined. They saw the captain, however, every now and then come into the cabin and toss off a tumbler of strong rum-and-water, and then return on deck, and shout out with oaths often contradictory orders. The gale all this time was increasing, until it threatened to become as violent as the hurricane from which we had escaped. I could not help wishing that we had not left our leaky little schooner. We might have reached some land in her. Now we did not know where ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... even had the experience of one of my pieces, the march from Tannhauser, being interrupted by storms of applause. The pleasure thus expressed was aroused, it seems, because the audience was surprised to find that my music, of which there had been so many contradictory reports, contained such long phrases of connected melody. Well satisfied as I was, both with the way in which the concert had been carried out and its enthusiastic reception, I had on the following days to overcome contrary impressions caused by the papers giving vent to their feelings against ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... have been. To some Nicodemus it was given to hear Him discourse on the new heart; some lawyer heard His story of the good Samaritan; others midst the press and throng caught a part of the tale of the prodigal son. But the momentary glimpse, the fragmentary word, the rumors strange and contradictory, yielded only confusion and mental unrest. But this brief biography exhibits to us His entire career, sets each eager listener down beside Christ while He unrolls each glowing parable, each glorious precept, each call to inspiration and the higher life. Thus books ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... haughtiest and most imperious of queens; her mood varied, no one could tell how, and it was most dangerous to mistake it. It was part of her pleasure to find in her favourite a spirit as high, a humour as contradictory and determined, as her own; it was the charming contrast to the obsequiousness or the prudence of the rest; but no one could be sure at what unlooked-for moment, and how fiercely, she might resent in earnest a display of what she had herself encouraged. Essex was ruined for all real greatness ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... contest, and everything seemed to turn on the decision of Lord Palmerston. This tantalizing vision of a swift fulfilment of his prayers seemed to Philip Vaughan even less endurable than his previous apprehensions. To hear from hour to hour the contradictory chatter of irresponsible clubmen and M.P.'s was an insupportable affliction; so, at the beginning of the Session, he "paired" till Easter, and departed on one of his solitary rambles. Desiring to cut himself off as completely as possible ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... respect to the opposite duties of leading celibate lives, and of continuing families, have been contradictory. In many nations it is and has been considered a disgrace to bear no children, and in other nations celibacy has been raised to the rank of a virtue of the highest order. During the fifty or so generations that have elapsed since the establishment of Christianity, the nunneries ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... fire. One of the village committee solemnly took off his hat and poured on oil. The great moment had come. Brenda Macrae approached the sacred pile, and, tremulous from the effect of much contradictory advice, applied the torch. Silence, thou Grieve and others, false prophets of disaster! Who now could say that Pettybaw bonfire had been badly built, or that its fifteen tons of coal and twenty cords of wood had been ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Reality. Pure Change is not only unthinkable—that perhaps Bergson would allow—but it is something which cannot be experienced. There must be points of reference—a starting point and an ending point at least. Pure Change, as is the way with "pure" anything, turns into its contradictory. Paradoxical though it may seem, it ends as static. It becomes the One and Indivisible. This, at least, was recognized by Heraclitus and is expressed by him in his figure of the ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... small hotel just off Broadway. The old gentleman saluted. Orde nodded good-humouredly. In his private soul he was a little amused at the old boy. To his view a man and clothes carried to their last refinement were contradictory terms. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... critically. To the initiated, there was a good deal both in the man's speech and bearing to rouse suspicion. A subtle difference that would hardly be defined as superiority; was it not rather something contradictory, not quite homogeneous, and in so far disadvantageous? The Colonel was not addicted to careful analysis of his impressions, and he felt ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... allowed to persuade himself that Maurice had either never had any absorbing interest in the Costellos, or that his interest in them was being gradually supplanted by others. In this opinion, and in a curiously uncomfortable and contradictory humour, his friends found him when they came ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... will,) there are times when the strongest Christian of us has reeled under questionings of such staggering obscurity." Many a man, seeing nature hang her veil of shifting glories above the silent tombs of vanished generations, voiceless now forever, entertaining innumerable contradictory queries amidst feelings of decay and sights of corruption, before the darkness of unknown futurity might piteously ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... as a Spiritualist, or as a man,—being what he was,—let us remember that he was never false to his convictions, never a hypocrite nor a deceiver, and that he died with his harness on, having been occupied for the last five years of his life in digesting the treasury decisions, often contradictory, and always inaccessible, for there was no index, until he took them in hand, going back thirty years, I believe, and reducing the whole to a system which need be no longer unintelligible to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... with and if you wish to reflect credit on your father and mother, do it by accomplishing more than they did, because you live in a better time. Every nation has had what you call a sacred record, and the older the more sacred, the more contradictory and the more inspired is the record. We, of course, are not an exception, and I propose to talk a little about what is called the Pentateuch, a book, or a collection of books, said to have been written by Moses. And right here in the commencement let me say that Moses never wrote one word ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... questions appeared to embarrass the natives greatly. All their accounts were contradictory: one giving me to understand that Toby would be with me in a very short time; another that he did not know where he was; while a third, violently inveighing, against him, assured me that he had stolen away, and would never come back. It appeared to me, at the time, that in making these ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... allurements of company; and many a long winter evening passed delightfully in the elegant quietude of home, as they read, and sang, and talked of the past, and dreamed of the future in each other's society. But, contradictory as it may appear to the theory of the sentimentalist, it is nevertheless a fact, that two persons cannot always find sufficient excitement in talking to each other merely; and this is especially true of those to whom high excitement has been a necessary of life. After ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fact and to demand at once: "what shall we will? Tell us what we must will." Some seem to think that they have solved the difficulty when they have advocated certain systems of memory and mind-training. Such systems may be in themselves useful or useless—the evidence furnished to me is contradictory—but were they perfect systems, a man cannot be intellectually born again merely by joining a memory-class. The best system depends utterly on the man's power of resolution. And what really counts is not the system, but the spirit in which the man handles it. ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... improve his temper. He swore and cursed most terribly at his ill luck, as he chose to call it; and, to console himself, opened his spirit case and drank tumbler after tumbler of rum and water. The result was soon apparent: he issued contradictory orders—quarrelled with the mates—struck and abused the men, and finally turned into his cot with his clothes on, where he remained for several days, calling loudly for the spirit bottle whenever he awoke. From this period he became an altered man from what he had at ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... to very different conclusions. The philological arguments are no less beset with difficulties. Both the facts and their significance are obscure, and the inquiry into them has hitherto yielded little beyond confident and yet wholly contradictory assertions and theories which are not susceptible of proof. The archaeological evidence, on the other hand, is definite and consistent, and perhaps deserves fuller notice than it has yet received. It illuminates, not only the material civilization, ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... more of our academic school of painters are grouped. There is George de Forest Brush, the painter of the "Boston Madonna", in some of his earlier illustrative canvases and a very fine pre-Raphaelite "Andromeda". Brush is so contradictory at times that this small group is quite insufficient to do him full justice. Horatio Walker clings persistently to his conviction of the supremacy of the older methods, without giving any indication of contact ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... Barere,[2116] with others, all of them wedded to the theory the same as their adversaries to traditions. To one who is familiar with the two groups, behold two inimical doctrines confronting each other; two irreconcilable systems of opinions and passions, two contradictory modes of conceiving sovereignty, law, society, the State, property, religion, the Church, the ancient regime, the Revolution, the present and the past; it is civil war transferred from the nation to the parliament. Certainly the Right would like to see the First ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... These opinions are as numerous, indeed, as the characteristic features of different nations and governments; but were they a thousand times more diversified than they are ascertained to be, and a thousand times more contradictory and absurd, they still recognise some instinctive or constitutional principle common to our race, and which no reasoning or artifices of priests or designing men could possibly produce. No conceit or imagination can ever originate, though it may certainly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... that they should both be one, but not without some Reluctancy on the Female side; for 'tis the Humour of our Sex, to deny most eagerly those Grants to Lovers, for which most tenderly we sigh, so contradictory are we to our selves, as if the Deity had made us with a seeming Reluctancy to his own Designs; placing as much Discords in our Minds, as there is Harmony in our Faces. We are a sort of aiery Clouds, whose Lightning flash out one way, and the Thunder another. Our Words ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... few, but universally to all men, "Go therefore and tell all nations, baptising them," &c. Matt. xxviii. 19. "Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature," Mark xvi. 15. Now there cannot be contradictory wills in God, he will have all saved, and not all, how can this stand together? be secure then, believe, trust in him, hope well and be saved. Yea, that's the main matter, how shall I believe or discern my security from carnal presumption? my faith is weak and faint, I want those signs ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... dispatches and the rapid developments of critical conditions here had informed you of affairs in this quarter. I had not written to you fully and frequently, first, because in the incessant change of affairs I would be exposed to give you contradictory accounts; and secondly, because the amount of the subjects to be laid before you would demand too ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... that presumption alone makes Atheists. Inform them then what your God is; teach them his essence; speak of him intelligibly; say something about him, which is reasonable, and not contradictory or impossible. If you are unable to satisfy them, if hitherto none of you have been able to demonstrate the existence of a God in a clear and convincing manner; if by your own confession, his essence is completely veiled from ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... personal reasons rather than from conviction, and his sentiments were largely determined by filial prejudice and the interests of his friends; his views are generally superficial, and his judgments of persons biassed, sometimes contradictory, and often unjust. DODINGTON (Lord Melcombe), Diary, edited by Wyndham, 1785, ending with 1761. HARRIS, Life of Lord Hardwicke, 3 vols., 1847, useful to 1764, and with an account of the circumstances preceding C. Yorke's death in 1770, written by his brother. BISSET, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... place to me, Wynnie," he said, when I had ended. "I must go and see her. I have a suspicion, amounting almost to a conviction, that she is one whose acquaintance ought to be cultivated at any cost. There is some grand explanation of all this contradictory strangeness." ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... stone, up and down which noisy wooden sandals clattered all the day long. Over the entrances to the shops the proprietors were dropping the white and brown awnings for the day. Very few people shopped after luncheon. There were pleasanter pastimes, even for the women, contradictory as this may seem. By eleven o'clock Courtlandt had finished the reading of his mail, and was now ready to hunt for the little lady of the Taverne Royale. It was necessary to find her. The whereabouts of Flora Desimone was of vital importance. If she had not yet arrived, the presence of her friend ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... that a whole has many parts, that the continuous is also the divisible, that in all objects of sense there is a one and many, and that a like principle may be applied to analogy to purely intellectual conceptions. If we attend to the meaning of the words, we are compelled to admit that two contradictory statements are true. But the antinomy is so familiar as to be scarcely observed by us. Our sense of the contradiction, like Plato's, only begins in a higher sphere, when we speak of necessity and free-will, of mind and body, of ...
— Philebus • Plato
... "Your temper is contradictory to-day," said Clara coldly. "Did you know," she said presently, "that the princesses will be at the Countess ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... 1623. Ben did not weave the amazing tissue of involved and contradictory falsities attributed to him by Baconians. Beaumont died in the same year as Shakspere, who died in the depths of the country, weary of London. Has Mr. Greenwood found obituary poems dropped on the grave of the ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... contradictory, those two words," said Dolly. "It is deceitful; it gets hold of a man, and then he cannot get loose from it. You know, Mr. St. Leger, ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... misconception is shared both by the reviewers and the reviewed. At least, Mr. Darwin uses expressions which imply that the natural forms which surround us, because they have a history or natural sequence, could have been only generally, but not particularly designed—a view at once superficial and contradictory; whereas his true line should be, that his hypothesis concerns the order and not the cause, the how and not the why of the phenomena, and so leaves the question of design ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Durham.—Having employed my leisure for many years in collecting materials for the biography of the famous Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, I am baffled by the conflicting and contradictory accounts of,—(1.) The title by which he became possessed of the Vesci estates; (2.) When and by what authority he took upon him the title of "King of the Isle of Man;" and (3.) How he became dispossessed of that title, which it is well known that Edward II. bestowed upon Gaveston; ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... contradictory accounts of the impression made upon Charles by this his first sight of his intended bride. Charles wrote a letter to Lord Clarendon, in which he expressed himself very well satisfied with her. He admitted that she was no beauty, but her countenance was ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... from any remarks upon these contradictory statements until Mr. Fox shall have had an opportunity to obtain the means of fully explaining them. How essential it is that this should be promptly done, and that the steps necessary to a faithful observance on the part of Her Majesty's colonial authorities ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... his "plans and wishes," which had been "fully explained" to me before I went to Pulaski, and "properly appreciated," instead of upon what I had gathered from General Thomas's orders to Stanley and subsequent orders to me about fighting Hood at Pulaski, absolutely contradictory to that stated in his report, "without risking a general engagement," and his assent to my radically different suggestions made after I assumed command at Pulaski, as stated in my report. It is not incumbent upon me to try to reconcile this statement in ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... run off his pen with delightful ease. The third came harder; the events and incidents of the story became confused and contradictory; the character of Billy Isham obstinately refused to take the prominent place which Condy had designed for him; and with the beginning of the fourth chapter, Condy had finally come to know the enormous difficulties, the exasperating complications, the discouragements that begin anew with every ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... bad blow, at first, to find that he had not been arrested for murder; but Ascham, who had come to him at once, explained that he needed rest, and the time to "review" his statements; it appeared that reiteration had made them a little confused and contradictory. To this end he had willingly acquiesced in his removal to a large quiet establishment, with an open space and trees about it, where he had found a number of intelligent companions, some, like himself, engaged in preparing or reviewing statements of their cases, and others ready to lend an interested ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... us: sentimental as a girl, garrulous, ungrammatical, incomprehensible, affected, vain of her little human ancestry, unstable, inconsistent, unreliable in statement, and naively and everlastingly self-contradictory-oh, trivial and common and commonplace as the commonest of us! just a Napoleon as Madame de Remusat saw him, a brass god with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that we were only four in number, counting the Indian. But by-and-by, our traveling companion became a source of considerable uneasiness. When questioned regarding his lost horse he did not give straight replies, but was evasive and somewhat contradictory, and Mr. Driskol began to have suspicions regarding his friendly intentions. But what to do, or how to rid ourselves of his presence, was a puzzling question. Besides, we felt that we were safer where he could ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... describes the vie intime of mermen and merwomen. Somewhat resembling Swift's inimitable creations, the Houyhnhnms for instance, they prove, amongst other things, that those who dwell in a denser element can justly blame and severely criticise the contradictory and unreasonable prejudices and predilections of mankind. Sayf al-Muluk (vol. viii. Night dcclviii.), the romantic tale of two lovers, shows by its introduction that it was originally an independent work and it is known to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... fought, rather less than ten miles from the town of Buenos Aires. The terrified civilian inhabitants of the town awaited the result in profound suspense. All the while the fight was raging a succession of messengers came galloping through the streets bearing contradictory fragments of news. After some hours the citizens were no longer left in doubt. The stragglers of Rosas's beaten army came pouring into the town, and it became known that the Dictator, completely defeated, had fled. General Rosas and his daughter were ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... unwritten law of social nature, to the great and pregnant principle of political necessity. All government supposes subjects; all authority implies obedience: to suppose in one the right to command what another has the right to refuse, is absurd and contradictory; a state, so constituted, must rest for ever in motionless equipoise, with equal attractions of contrary tendency, with equal weights of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... animals, and will constantly improve them. The old adage, "Anything worth doing at all, is worth doing well" is nowhere more true, than in the care of calves. We shall not pause to present the various and contradictory methods of raising calves, that are presented in the numerous books, on the subject, that have come under our observation. Hay-tea, various preparations of linseed-meal, oilcake-meal, oatmeal, and every variety of ground feed, sometimes mixed up with gin, or some kind ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... to write this in his book also, and, ordering him to read what he had written, soon convinced him how contradictory his wishes had been. In the winter, he wished it to be always winter; in the spring, he wished for a continuance of that season; in the summer, he wished it never to depart; and when autumn came, it afforded him too many delicious fruits to ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... and then saying no more? Of course Clara asked herself that question as soon as she was alone in her bedroom, after leaving Captain Aylmer below. And she made two answers to herself two answers which were altogether distinct and contradictory one of the other. At first she decided that he had said so much and no more because he was deceitful because it suited his vanity to raise hopes which he had no intention of fulfilling because he was fond of saying soft ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... fronds, and they were motionless and seemed not to have been touched by something passing through them. She had gone, yet I continued still, bent almost double, gazing fixedly at the spot where I had last seen her, my mind in a strange condition, possessed by sensations which were keenly felt and yet contradictory. So vivid was the image left on my brain that she still seemed to be actually before my eyes; and she was not there, nor had been, for it was a dream, an illusion, and no such being existed, or could exist, in this gross world; and at the same time I knew that she had been there—that ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... Lord; and we firmly believe that they are practicable, and binding on every Christian, and that, in the life to come, every man will be rewarded according to his works. And, further, it is our belief that, in order to enable mankind to put in practice these sacred precepts, many of which are contradictory to the unregenerate will of man, every man, coming into the world, is endued with a measure of the light, grace, or good spirit, of Christ, by which, as it is attended to, he is enabled to distinguish good from evil, and to correct the disorderly passions ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... contradictory that she could not reach a decision regarding the action she should take and she bit her lips with vexation as ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... suffering to most of us as we conquer for them our awkwardness and our shyness? Let us pause for a moment, and try to be just. Let us contemplate these social ethics, which call for so much that is, perhaps, artificial and troublesome and contradictory. Society, so long as it is the congregation of the good, the witty, the bright, the intelligent, and the gifted, is the thing most necessary to us all. We are apt to like it and its excitements almost too well, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... have already said, those characters were meant to be both mouthpieces of the author and revived historical figures, but they were also meant—and primarily, I suspect—to be something else: embodiments of the contradictory phases of a single individual, namely ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... all nature. The real God of India is by himself without power; real efficacious power is attributed only to three divinities who exist externally to him. Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, possessed of qualities in part contradictory and attributes that are mutually exclusive, have no other accord or harmony than that which results from the power of things itself, and which is found external to their own thoughts. Such is the Indian Trimurti. What an immense difference between this Triad and ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... recited in low and measured tones one of his own poems, caring little or nothing whether his neighbors attended to him or not. The glib tongue of the Marchese Gualdro ran on smoothly and incessantly, though he frequently lost the thread of his anecdotes and became involved in a maze of contradictory assertions. The rather large nose of the Chevalier Mancini reddened visibly as he laughed joyously to himself at nothing in particular—in short, the table had become a glittering whirlpool of excitement and feverish folly, which at a mere touch, or word out of season, might rise to a raging ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... died away, and something wholly contradictory took its place. He felt a rush of self-pity, and then of trust. What if he called on her to help him—unveiled himself to this kind and charming woman—confessed to her his remorse about Phoebe—his secret miseries ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all sorts of contradictory rumours about the effect of the German crusade in the United States. Oh well, the world has got to choose whether it will have English or German domination in Europe; that's the single big question at issue. For my part I'll risk the English and then make a fresh ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... decidedly contradictory, popular conceptions of the man whose business it is to sell books. One is the sentimental notion of an old gentleman in a "stovepipe hat," a dreamer and an idealist, who keeps a second-hand stall. The most delightful pictures of him are in the ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... all likely," answered Dorothy, biting her lip, "that such a thing will happen." She was swayed by two contradictory impulses—one to scream with laughter, the other to ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... distinguished American statesman remarked that the war of the rebellion was waged "to expound the constitution." It is a pertinent question now, shall all other contradictory principles be retained in the constitution until they, too, are expounded by civil war? On what theory is it less dangerous to defraud twenty million women of their inalienable rights than four million negroes? Is not the same principle involved in both cases? We ask congress to pass a sixteenth ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... ago, how infinitely unimportant, seemed all those convolutions of trail and argument in which he had expended the finest flowers of his contradictory faculties, the stanch immobility of his obstinacy, his unswerving singleness of purpose in seeing only one side of a question, this afternoon, a few short hours since! The mutability of the affairs of the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... and Ferrier entered, with Marsham and the butler behind him. Mr. Ferrier, in his London frock-coat, appeared rounder and heavier than ever but for the contradictory vigor and lightness of his step, the shrewd cheerfulness of the eyes. It had been a hard week in Parliament, however, and his features and complexion showed signs ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of industry and finance, the motive of power and the craving for certain states of consciousness all exist together, and to some extent antagonize one another. The present practical desire is confused by the traditional object. The will of a nation is a composite will, and its history is full of contradictory impulses, and also full of surprises. Nations often think they are fighting for economic reasons when their real motives are plainly to gain military distinction. The reputation is quite as satisfying as any material prosperity gained. ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... at this dinner? What did they say to him, and what could he say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those strange dreams which border on insanity. He gazed at the two women with a fixed idea in his mind, a morbid, self-contradictory idea: ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... overlook this. It's mad to go on. It's mad anyway. If you knew how I've lied to myself, how I've struggled and fought and twisted to keep this back from you! And here it is, confused and grotesque and contradictory and wrong. If I could look at you and say it, I could get it right. If I could look at you—if I could see you. Give me a chance. Then I'll go away again—if you say so. I had to give you warning—it didn't seem square not. And I've bungled it like this! I tell you I can't help ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... city of which one hears the most contradictory accounts. The mere traveller not uncommonly pronounces it "disappointing, uninteresting, less foreign than most Continental capitals,"—"everything to be seen at best second-rate France," etc., etc. The Museo, of course, must be admired,—even the most ignorant know that ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... shalt not lust, thou shalt not swear; into that which is completely abolished, such as an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, being tainted with unrighteousness, and having the same work of unrighteousness, and these are taken away by the Saviour because contradictory (for those things which are contradictory are mutually destructive), "For I say unto you that ye in no wise resist evil, but if any one smite thee turn to him the other cheek also;" and into that part which is changed and converted from that ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... environment at all, and consequently could have no recognition of our own existence. The confusion of thought involved even in the attempt to state such a condition shows it to be perfectly inconceivable, for the simple reason that it is self-contradictory and self-destructive. On this account it is clear that our own existence and that of the world around us necessarily implies the presence of a Universal Mind acting on certain fixed lines of its own which establish the basis for the working of all individual minds. ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... that, as Bullinger remarks, "they perceived he expected never to return home again." Even his horse seemed to have a foreboding of evil. He shied, as Werner Steiner relates, and as many saw with terror, backwards. Too sagacious not to observe that he must encounter contradictory measures, the lukewarmness of allies, and secret treachery, which he more than once predicted; too manly to retire now in the hour of need; too full of confidence in God, not to believe that He would protect ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... he lay on his sofa, struck him as by no means contradictory; she simply reminded him that very young women are generally innocent and that this is on the whole the most potent source of their attraction. Her innocence moved him to perfect consideration, and it seemed to him that if he shortly became her husband it would be exposed to a danger the ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... in order of review—a pursuit of a far more ambitious nature than mine. It was always part of my second brother's whimsical, self-contradictory character to view with the profoundest contempt the learned profession by which he gained his livelihood, and he is now occupying the long leisure hours of his old age in composing a voluminous treatise, intended, one of these days, to eject the whole body corporate of ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... reach the newspapers are regarded with suspicion, not only because they come exclusively through British channels, but on account of their contradictory character. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ventured no farther than to inform them privately, that they would do him an acceptable service if they chose John de Gray, Bishop of Norwich, for their primate [e]. The election of that prelate was accordingly made without a contradictory vote; and the king, to obviate all contests, endeavoured to persuade the suffragan bishops not to insist on their claim of concurring in the election; but those prelates, persevering in their pretensions, sent an agent to maintain their cause before Innocent; while the king and the convent ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... accentuated communal jealousies and gave external form and substance to the struggles of town with town. So far distant was the possibility of confederation on a grand scale that every city strove within itself to establish one of two contradictory principles, and the energies of the people were expended in a struggle that set neighbor against neighbor on the field of war and in the market-place. The confusion, exhaustion, and demoralization engendered by these conflicts determined the advent of the Despots; and after 1400 Italy could ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Cycle is the process by which information is acquired, converted into intelligence, and made available to policymakers. Information is raw data from any source, data that may be fragmentary, contradictory, unreliable, ambiguous, deceptive, or wrong. Intelligence is information that has been collected, integrated, evaluated, analyzed, and interpreted. Finished intelligence is the final product of the Intelligence Cycle ready to be ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... developed into a very personal thing. And with that thought came also the conception of what a powerful antagonist he would be. For it improves some men to wear glasses; and Clovelly had a delightful, wheedling tongue. It was allusive, contradictory (a thing pleasing to women), respectful yet playful, bold yet reverential. Many a time I have longed for Clovelly's tongue. Unfortunately for me, I learned some of his methods without his art; and of this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... would thus interpret Lord Roberts's delay and his contradictory orders to Lord Methuen, but it was rather galling not to be able to ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially—Me. de Stael or Hobhouse, for example. But I liked Lewis; he was a Jewel of a Man had he been better set, I don't mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to everything and everybody. Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go before to pilot him. I am absent at times, especially towards evening, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... meaning. When Paul made the gobbledygook speech, they all reacted in the same way—frightened, and then defensive. The you-me routine simply bewildered them, as we'd be at a set of semantically lucid but self-contradictory statements. When Lillian tried to introduce herself, they ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... (England), said he, "the laws are numerous, but then one is always found to be a key to the other. In Ireland it is just the contrary; your laws so perpetually clash with one another, and are so very contradictory, that I protest I don't understand them."—"True, my lord," cried Harwood, "that ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... the East nor of the West but rather international in its universality, yet India is specially fitted to make great contributions. {FN8-5} The burning Indian imagination, which can extort new order out of a mass of apparently contradictory facts, is held in check by the habit of concentration. This restraint confers the power to hold the mind to the pursuit of truth ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... manifestation that might be taxed with even a remote emotionalism. And yet, at that very time, he was laying the foundations of a claim to be that broad and vague thing called an "artist." Even as early as this, apparently, he was troubled by two contradictory impulses: he wanted to be an artist and give himself out; and he wanted to be a gentleman and hold himself ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... that the Council could do was to heap honors and emoluments on the family of Nuncomar; and this they did. In the meantime the assizes commenced; a true bill was found; and Nuncomar was brought before Sir Elijah Impey and a jury composed of Englishmen. A great quantity of contradictory swearing, and the necessity of having every word of the evidence interpreted, protracted the trial to a most unusual length. At last a verdict of guilty was returned, and the Chief Justice pronounced sentence of death on ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the passions and vices. Yet he felt himself irresistibly dragged along by the uncommon vivacity of action in this wild Drama; and at the same time powerfully attracted by the depth, the tenderness and fulness of true feeling manifested in it: so that, at last, out of those contradictory emotions of his, a clear admiration and pride for his Son's bold and rich spirit maintained the upper hand. By Schiller's friends and closer connections, especially by his Mother and Sisters, all pains were of course taken to keep up this favourable humour in the Father, and carefully ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Farquharson," Mrs Crow turned to him. "An' how reely BE ye? We've heard better, an' worse, an' middlin'—there's ben such contradictory reports." ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... it stands, but this is very bad.) It is a mistake to think of it as a first article. The article itself is in the main a mistake. Firstly, the subject requires the greatest discretion and nicety of touch. And secondly, it is all wrong and self-contradictory. Nobody can for a moment suppose that "sporting" amusements are the sports of the PEOPLE; the whole gist of the best part of the description is to show that they are the amusements of a peculiar ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... His real nature and qualities, and dishonoring Him. A very good definition, if you only know what His nature and qualities are. But that is not revealed; for, studying Him through the medium of the bible, we find Him illimitably contradictory. He commands us not to work on the Sabbath day, because it is holy. Yet God works himself on the Sabbath day. The sun, moon and stars swing round in their orbits, and all the creation attributed to this God goes on as on other days. He says: "Honor thy father and mother," ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the last order of the people, that was law? Nay, certainly they all knew it; and they therefore obeyed the Aemilian law, rather than the old one, under which the censors had been at first created; because it was the last order; and because, when two laws are contradictory, the new always repeals the old. Do you mean to say, Appius, that the people are not bound by the Aemilian law? Or, that the people are bound, and you alone exempted? The Aemilian law bound those violent censors, Caius Furius and Marcus Geganius, who showed what mischief that office might do ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... earth, meeting with but little success. The allegorical idea cannot be followed without weariness, and, in fact, the intentions of the writer are by no means clear, the allegory being frequently involved and contradictory. The beauty of the poem lies in its detached passages, its occasional poetic touches, its graphic pictures, biting satire, and withering denunciation of fraud, corruption, and tyranny. The measure adopted is the unrhymed alliterative, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... were mild, good natured, and full of contradictory characteristics. Despite their usual good nature, they were capable of great bursts of passion, particularly over public affairs. They often looked dirty, because their white clothes soiled easily; yet they probably spent more time and money over external cleanliness than ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... long in a spin"—"too much length in the limbs for a light weight; bone's always awfully heavy"—"dark under the eye, been going too fast for training"—"a swell all over, but rides no end," with other innumerable contradictory phrases, according as the speaker was "on" him or against him, buzzed about him from the riff-raff of the Ring, in no way ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... The love of action, the impatience of abstraction, the equity which leads us to desire that every one may have a fair hearing, the reserve which had rather detect personal experience than have it announced— tendencies all easily perverted to evil, often leading to results the most contradictory, yet capable of the noblest cultivation—seem to explain the fact, that writers of this kind should have flourished so greatly among us, and that scarcely any others ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... public is well aware that each doctor has something different to say or prescribe. I have a personal case in point. During eighteen months I consulted seven different doctors, and got seven different contrary diagnoses as well as contradictory modes of treatment, and this, too, in the city of Munich, which is hardly secondary to any other city for its medical talent. Is there any cause to blame the public for running to the magnetizers? I should do so myself if my magnetic susceptibility ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... moment of his agony, came inspiration. He must save them all with a lie! Queer that, queer and contradictory! Yes, after practicing the truth, he must save them all ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... the mythological system should collapse when once the spontaneous play of imaginative thought gave place to self-conscious, systematising reflection. The mass of incoherent, and often contradictory myths, in which the true was so strangely blended with the false, the beautiful with the ugly or revolting, fell almost by its own weight. The more solid materials it contained were first transmuted into allegories, and then expressed in the language of science ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... it, every word, and in his contradictory heat and flurry and despair he felt as if there were no words at his call which were strong enough to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... sitting in church courts with these brethren, [47:1] and desirous to be known not as apostles, but as elders. [47:2] We possess little information respecting either their official or their personal history. A very equivocal, and sometimes contradictory, tradition [47:3] is the only guide which even professes to point out to us where the greater number of them laboured; and the same witness is the only voucher for the statements which describe how most of them finished their career. It is an instructive fact that no ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... their green and yellow and red lamps, held a whispered consultation on the manner of conciliating these contradictory demands. Then, after a minute's hesitation, the violins began the prelude of that once famous air, which has remained popular in Venice—the words written, some hundred years ago, by the patrician Gritti, the music by an ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... have to those of the body: but, overlooking all that they say as of little consequence, I shall treat only of the thing itself. Let us, then, understand perturbation to imply a restlessness from the variety and confusion of contradictory opinions; and that when this heat and disturbance of the mind is of any standing, and has taken up its residence, as it were, in the veins and marrow, then commence diseases and sickness, and those aversions which are in opposition to ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... glass-smooth river, with the sumptuously colored autumn trees casting down into it the imperial gold and crimson of their reflections. Silently she was struggling to master and dominate and suppress a confusion of contradictory mental processes. At almost regular intervals, like a hollow stroke on a brazen gong, her brain resounded to the reverberations of "The wedding is on the twenty-first." And each time that she thrust that away, there sprang up with a faint hissing note of doubt and suspicion, "Why ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... a science, much research has been made to determine its effect, if any, upon plant growth. The earlier investigations gave in many cases contradictory results. Whether this was due to a lack of knowledge of the science on the part of the one performing the experiments, or some defect in the technical applications, we are not prepared to say; but this we do know, that such men as Jolabert, Nollet, Mainbray and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... in the making of yearly instead of permanent appropriations for the civil list and military establishments, yet when the House desired to strengthen public credit it had rendered the appropriation for those objects permanent and not yearly. It was, therefore, "contradictory to suppose that the House was bound to do a certain act at the same time that they were exercising the discretionary power of voting upon it." The debate determined nothing, but it is of interest as the first declaration in Congress of the supremacy ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... is," said Durtal, who thought over again the contradictory declarations of the monks, confessing that they led at once the most attractive and the most atrocious life; "the fact is that the good God deceives them. They attain here below Paradise, while ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... peculiarly alive to the generosity that leans towards the weak and the wronged; the engaging mixture of mildness and gaiety with which she tended her peevish and sneering uncle, convinced him of her better and more enduring qualities of disposition and womanly heart. And even—so strange and contradictory are our feelings—the very remembrance that she was connected with a family so hateful to him made her own image the more bright from the darkness that surrounded it. For was it not with the daughter of his foe that the lover of Verona fell in love at first sight? And is not that a common type ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... containing water at this time. He described to Hamd its situation, and the way to it, with a view of persuading him to go and fetch some water for us; but his description was so confused, and I thought contradictory in several circumstances, and withal so pompous, that I concluded it to be all a story, and told him he was a babbler. "A babbler!" he exclaimed; "min Allah, no body in my whole life ever called me ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... Lost," and writing her opinions upon it in a large blank book. She was also devising a plan for raising trees and flowers in the garret, so that she might realize a picture of a tropical wilderness. Her tastes were so contradictory that time never hung heavy with her; though she had as little practical talent as any person I ever knew, she was a help to both sick and well. She remembered people's ill turns, and what was done for them; and for the well she remembered dates and suggested agreeable ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... malignant delusion maintained directly and immediately by ignorance, by an absolute determination and even a fanatic zeal not to receive one new idea. Tenets involving the most palpable impossibilities, and asserted in self-contradictory terms, must stand inviolable to all question or controversy; literature must be scouted as a profane folly; not a principle of true philosophy is to be admitted; hardly is an application of the plainest mechanics to improve a machine or implement to be tolerated; ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... of that light unreflecting sex: varium semper et mutabile. And then her Fine-ladyism, though a purseless one: capricious, coquettish, and with all the finer sensibilities of the heart; now in the rackets, now in the sullens; vivid in contradictory resolves; laughing, weeping, without reason,—though these acts are said to be signs of season. Consider, too, how she has had to work her way, all along, by flattery and cajolery; wheedling, eaves-dropping, namby-pambying; how she needs wages, and knows no other ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... connected with the line so as to be receptive of a call at any time while the telephone is not in use. The requirements also demand that no conducting path shall normally exist between the two sides of the line. These two apparently contradictory requirements are met by placing a condenser in series with the ringer so that the ringer will be in a path that will readily transmit the alternating ringing currents sent out from the central-office generator, ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... vanity seems to have been as remarkable as that of Zeuxis. Among the most celebrated of his works was a portrait of the personified Athenian Demos, which is said to have miraculously expressed even the most contradictory qualities ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... angler take fyshe, surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte!!" Yet Isaac Walton called this art, "The Contemplative Man's Recreation." But a book-fisherman, like myself, must not presume to reconcile such great and contradictory authorities.] ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... friend, I myself was the happy man. My first name was Francis as well as his; and I had found Clara so gentle, so confiding, so flatteringly cordial in her intercourse with me, that, once within my power, and prevented from receding by shame, and a thousand contradictory feelings, I had, with the vanity of an amoureux de seize ans, the confidence to believe I could reconcile the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... arrangements to that effect before leaving home. Rosa's reference to my desire to go back to my clients was sheer badinage"—smiling mournfully. "You have heard her talk often enough to understand how little of earnest there is in the raillery." More insincerity! For, contradictory as it may appear, Mrs. Sutton felt constrained to believe his unsupported word, in opposition to his wife's written assertion that he designed to return to ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... claim a few words later on, has been exhaustively threshed out; and in view of the contradictory statements for and against the habit of opium smoking, it is recognized that any conclusion, satisfactory to both parties, is a very remote possibility. The Chinese themselves, who are chiefly interested in the argument, have lately come to a very definite conclusion, which is that opium has to ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... forth two distinct and contradictory theories of the functions of natural selection. According to the one theory natural selection is selective or preservative, and nothing more. According to the other theory natural selection creates the variations(!) ... It certainly seems absurd to speak of ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... technicalities. Every legal subterfuge was exhausted by the quartet of talented and high-priced attorneys provided by Belle Cora's questionable fortune but unquestioned affection. The trial proved a feast of oratory, a mass of contradictory evidence. Before it began a juror named Jacob Mayer accused L. Sokalasky with offering him a bribe. Sokalasky, brought into court, denied the charge. And there it ended, save that thenceforth the "twelve good men and ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... life up to the Eighteenth Century were very contradictory; there were even a few attempts to give him a supernatural parentage; and certain good men, as if to hold the balance true, denied that he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... therefore from the former doctrine, that that God whose words they are, is able to make a reconciliation and most sweet and harmonious agreement with all the sayings therein, how obscure, cross, dark, and contradictory soever they seem to thee. To understand all mysteries, to have all knowledge, to be able to comprehend with all saints, is a great work; enough to crush the spirit, and to stretch the strings of the most capacious and widened soul that breatheth on this side glory, be they notwithstanding ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... determined not to do so again. Thus two hungry souls, thirsting for each other's love, acted the cold part of casual acquaintances. Could the veil have been lifted, could the barriers have been broken down, what misery might have been spared! but it is ever thus. Humanity is contradictory and the heart's ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... only just missed the final shaping which turns epic material into epic poetry. For epic material, it must be repeated, is not the same thing as epic poetry. Epic material is fragmentary, scattered, loosely related, sometimes contradictory, each piece of comparatively small size, with no intention beyond hearty narrative. It is a heap of excellent stones, admirably quarried out of a great rock-face of stubborn experience. But for this to be worked into some great structure of epic poetry, the Heroic Age must be capable of producing ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... stared at her, dismayed. All his confused contradictory impressions assumed a new aspect at this announcement; and to hide his surprise he added lightly: "Ah—then you will have Paris, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Merodach were sons of Hea or Hoa. Many deities, however, are without parentage, as not only Il or Ra, but Hea, San (the Sun), Ishtar, and Nergal. Sometimes the relationship alleged is confused, and even contradictory, as in the case of Nin or Ninip, who is at one time the son, at another the father of Bel, and who is at once the son and the husband of Beltis. It is evident that the genealogical aspect is not that upon which ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... it seemed somewhat flat to make the same preparations a second time over, but as no contradictory message had been received, it did not appear possible that a second disappointment could supervene. The tea- table was set out with special care, and a supply of home-made cakes placed on the three-storied brass stand. Once more Miss Briskett donned her best gown, and sat gazing ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... They were young men with money and friends to back them, who, having taken to literature as soon as they chipped the university shell, were already in the full swing of periodical production, when Tom, to quote two rather contradictory utterances of his mother, ruined his own prospects and made Letty's fortune by marrying her. I can not say, however, that they had found him remunerative employment. The best they had done for him was to bring him into such a half sort of connection with a certain weekly paper that now and then ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... the petty cares which obscured the morning of my life," Mary declares through her heroine,—"continual restraint in the most trivial matters, unconditional submission to orders, which as a mere child I soon discovered to be unreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory. Thus are we destined to experience a mixture of bitterness with the recollection of our most innocent enjoyment." Edward, as the mother's favorite, escaped her severity; but it fell upon Mary with double force, and was with her carried out with a thoroughness ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... comers, and make himself necessary and indispensable. Under that placid exterior he conceals, I believe, a boundless ambition, and hatred and jealousy lurk under his professions of esteem and political attachment. His is one of those contradictory characters, containing in it so much of mixed good and evil, that it is difficult to strike an accurate balance between the two, and the acts of his political life are of a corresponding description, of questionable utility and merit, though always marked by great ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... I found myself much embarrassed to fulfill so many pressing and contradictory duties, the consequences of my imprudence; had I been in my natural situation, after the proposition and refusal of the journey to Geneva, I had only to remain quiet, and everything was as it should be. But I had foolishly made of it an affair which could not remain in the ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... instincts. If a single point is in accordance with their nature, he labors to twist all the others to his purpose, although it may involve a fundamental principle impossible to reconcile. Some one else succeeds in another point, and proceeds to recommend something altogether different. False and contradictory assertions are made either through ignorance, or interest. Interest may blind the judgment, ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... medical men of sound judgment, and long experience, is that the amount of death and disaster in the world would be less, if all diseases were left to themselves, than it now is under the multiform, reckless, and contradictory modes of practice, with which practitioners of diverse denominations carry on their differences, at the expense of ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... we had a very welcome north-east breeze; with the help of the sails we could now increase the not very reckless speed that the motor was capable of accomplishing. Before we sailed, the most contradictory accounts were current of the Fram's sailing qualities. There were some who asserted that the ship could not be got through the water at all, while with equal force the contrary view was maintained — that she was a notable fast sailer. As might be supposed, the truth as usual lay about half-way ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... really the feelings of this man? Is this the man who only two short months before proposed to suckle his child with his setter? Yes, I answer, the very same man; nor, in fact, is there, to the eye of reason, any thing contradictory in his ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... what aspect she would appear, she whose nature seemed to him so varied and contradictory, and whose face was the index to these changing phases. She came in quietly, a young girl, pale, inquiring, yet saying no word; but there was a sparkle in her gaze that made the blood leap for a ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... what was going on in Europe; he could only sense it day by day. He had always been taught that the German people were pre-eminent in the virtues Americans most admire; a month ago he would have said they had all the ideals a decent American boy would fight for. The invasion of Belgium was contradictory to the German character as he knew it in his friends and neighbours. He still cherished the hope that there had been some great mistake; that this splendid people would apologize and right ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... of bitterness against her for having indirectly caused that great unhappiness, and at the same time so keenly resent her sympathy, which she could not easily express without speaking indignantly of Miss Starbrow—this seemed so strange, so almost incongruous and contradictory, that if the case had not been so sad she would have burst into a laugh. As it was she only burst into tears, and threw her arms ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... went on to tell me something which might seem to a great many people to be quite contradictory of what she had just said—and she said it with the most profound conviction. She told me that your husband has fallen ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... optimism, implied in the phrase that "God is all," turns at once into a pessimism. For, as soon as we inquire into the meaning of this "all," we find that it is only a negation of everything we can know or be. Such a pantheism as this is self-contradictory; for, while seeming to level all things upwards to a manifestation of the divine, it really levels all downwards to the level of mere unqualified being, a stagnant and empty unknowable. It leaves only a choice between akosmism and atheism, ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... arrived a short time ago from Stockholm, and did not contain any thing of importance, but that matters stand well. The German mail has not come, and, in general, the news was so contradictory that nobody knew ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... be supposed, however, from the above remarks, about the multiform and self-contradictory character of the amorphous thing called Hinduism, that it is therefore impossible for us to understand and measure its nature and power. For Brahmanism, through all ages, has not been without a definite tendency, an underlying philosophy and pervasive fundamental ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... as on neutral ground. Auguste passed through the rooms without finding the woman who now exercised so mighty an influence on his fate. He entered an empty boudoir where card-tables were placed awaiting players; and sitting down on a divan he gave himself up to the most contradictory thoughts about her. A man presently took the young officer by the arm, and looking up the baron was stupefied to behold the pauper of the rue Coquilliere, the Ferragus of Ida, the lodger in the rue Soly, the Bourignard of Justin, the convict of the police, and the dead ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Miss Abbott, and closed her eyes wearily. Each moment her difficulties were increasing. She wished that she was not so tired, so open to contradictory impressions. She longed for Harriet's burly obtuseness or for the ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... that I never travel the sea that I am not pervaded by an antagonistic and contradictory frame of mind that sets itself against all the popular and religious ideas of it. The ocean impresses me with neither the majesty nor the power of God. Indeed, it does not impress me with God at all, but to the contrary, gives me a sort ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... seen by this retrospect how difficult it is to seize all the shifting subtleties of this remarkable character. His sophisms even, when self-contradictory, are so adroit that they are often hard to parry. He made a great merit to himself for not having originated the new episcopates; but it should be remembered that he did his utmost to enforce the measure, which was "so holy a scheme that he would ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... division was brought up between 9 and 10 o'clock and posted on Bate's left, Johnson's line and the line of Bate's refused brigade paralleling the pike at a distance of not more than 150 yards. Many contradictory statements have been made relative to the distance of that part of the Confederate line from the pike. The owner of the land pointed out to me a small plantation graveyard as being just inside their line that night. He said that the position of their line was marked, after they had gone in the ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... be dislodged or disturbed by the inhabitants of a Territory even though ninety-nine out of every hundred were opposed to it. In the Territorial Legislatures laws might be passed to protect slavery but not to exclude it. From such contradictory constructions in the same party, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... a recurrence to the old antithesis of religion and civilisation, as if these were contradictory elements. On the contrary, it is but to show that the present world of religion and of economics are not two worlds, but merely different aspects of the same world. Therewith it is not alleged that religion has not a specific ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... then hypocrisy is one of the great pillars of civilization, and how does it matter what the heart says while the lips are silent? The Recording Angel can alone read hearts, and he must often find them singularly contradictory and ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... the professor led Peppino into giving me a great deal of information about the evil eye in which he swore he did not believe. It was all rather indefinite and contradictory, partly, no doubt, because those who believe in it most firmly are the analfabeti and ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... unwilling to trust them with arms for their own defence; the intolerable weight of taxes, rendered still more oppressive by the intricate or arbitrary modes of collection; the obscurity of numerous and contradictory laws; the tedious and expensive forms of judicial proceedings; the partial administration of justice; and the universal corruption, which increased the influence of the rich and aggravated the misfortunes of the poor. A sentiment of patriotic ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various |
