"Debatable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the governor, at the request of the majority of the members returned as elected to the house, to use such means as were in his power to defeat these lawless and revolutionary proceedings is perhaps a debatable question; but it is quite certain that there would have been no trouble if those who now complain of illegal interference had allowed the house to be organized in a lawful and regular manner. When those who inaugurate ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... reason than because the price demanded was a high one. This is the very worst possible reason for buying a book. Whether it is ever wise to buy a book, as Aulus Gellius used to do, simply because it is cheap, and regardless of its condition, is a debatable point, but to buy one dear at the mere bidding of a bookseller is to debase yourself. The result of this ungodly traffic has been to enlarge for the moment the circle of book-buyers by including in it men with commercial instincts, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Tresslyn, I know that Anne loves me," he said, with forced calmness. "She doesn't love my grandfather. That isn't even debatable. I fear that I am the only person in the world who does love him. I suspect, too, that if he loves any one, I am that one. If you think that he is fool enough to believe that Anne loves him, you are vastly ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... tobacco. For a while he forgot the evening's adventure, but eventually found himself listening to a discussion—carried on over steaming tumblers of toddy—in regard to certain predispositions of the always debatable sex. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... evening of the 27th there was much cheering along the Rebel lines. Their bands, too, were unusually lavish of the Rebel airs they were wont occasionally to waft across the debatable ground which separated our lines. Had the enemy received reinforcements, or had Grant met with a reverse? While on picket that night, in making my rounds, I could distinctly hear the Rebels chopping on the knob which they had so recently ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... division of the country which impresses the observer strongly at the first. On a longer sojourn and a more intimate familiarity, the twofold division gives place to one which is threefold. The lower differs from the upper valley, it is a sort of debatable region, half plain, half vale; the cultivable surface spreads itself out more widely, the enclosing hills recede into the distance; above all, to the middle tract belongs the open space of the Fayoum nearly fifty miles across in its greatest diameter, and containing ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... not a debatable question; undeniably he did need to be brought up with a sharp turn. It was in her mind that perhaps she had said enough; but she wished to make sure ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... place to go is another of those debatable questions and I feel that the same conclusion holds good. A book is the wisest passport to Russia at present. Marooned in Moscow, by Marguerite E. Harrison, is not a new book—in the sense of having ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... him, and, after being duly cautioned by her mother to "be careful," though whether that was of any value or not is possibly debatable, the small, speedy craft again ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... was just the way he had expected him to take the matter. It made him rather ashamed of the weakness and uncertainty to which he had confessed. Of course they could do nothing with a woman; it wasn't a shooting business—yet. But there was a debatable future, if the gist of the note on the table ran true to their unspoken analysis of it. Promise of something like that was ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... might bring this debatable picture, and let me see it—the others as well, if you wish. Wouldn't that be a good idea? I mightn't get quite such a shock in the morning, when the detective man parades you before me. It is not very late. I have plenty of time to stroll that far ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... generally believed that there is no transmission of syphilis to the child by its father, the father's share of responsibility for the syphilis lying in his having infected the mother. None the less, it must be conceded that this is still debatable ground, and that quite recently the belief that syphilis can be transmitted by the father has been supported on theoretical grounds by ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... turned in at the gate. In another minute it had reached a point where the tent began to show from behind a clump of bushes. Sally's hand clutched Max's shoulder. Her brother was ill-humouredly surveying the signs of occupancy of the debatable ground. ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... who has been in Europe since the war began the question of the importance of fats is no longer debatable. Having practically gone without them, he knows they are important. In Germany it is the lack of fat that is the cause, perhaps, of the most discomfort and makes the German most dissatisfied with his rations. Even when the ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... the present those parts which we are willing to accept as our own standards of action. If there are portions which do not seem practicable, let us post them in our minds as debatable propositions, as points to be tested by the experience of coming years, or as working hypotheses in the science ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... ajar, unlocked; extended, expanded, spread, gaping, yawning, unfolded, dehiscent; frank, unreserved, candid, ingenuous, guileless, overt, undisguised; generous, liberal, bounteous, open-handed; revealed, patent, manifest; unsettled, undetermined, debatable, undecided, controvertible; mild, clement; free, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... working-classes, have reached a low estimate of interest and profits, and a high estimate of wages; while others, actuated by a desire to emphasize the power of the capitalist classes, have minimized the share which goes as wages. At the outset of our inquiry, it might seem well to avoid such debatable ground. But the importance of the subject will not permit it to be thus shirked. The following calculation presents what is, in fact, a compromise of various views, and can only claim to be a rough ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... justification of the argument two cases in which scrub fowl (MEGAPODIUS DUPERREYI TUMULUS) are concerned may be cited. Being a previously recorded fact, the first is excusable only on the grounds of its applicability to a debatable point. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... discussions among geologists. As I do not propose to make here any treatise of Geology, but simply to place before my readers some pictures of the old world, with the animals and plants that inhabited it at various times, I shall avoid, as far as possible, all debatable ground, and confine myself to those parts of my subject which are best known, and can therefore be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... water seas had constituted themselves; and of the subsequent appearance of aquatic before terrestrial forms of life. But whether these "protoplasts" would, if we could examine them, be reckoned among the lowest microscopic algae, or fungi; or among those doubtful organisms which lie in the debatable land between animals and plants, is, in my judgment, a question on which a prudent biologist ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of a half grown lad, with a rosy face, and laughing blue eyes. Larry Densmore expected to become a lawyer some fine day, and in evidence of his fitness for the business he was constantly asking questions, and finding debatable points in such matters as naturally ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... Merceron went nightly to her phantom death bareheaded and with golden locks tossed by the wind. Moreover, the pin was of modern manufacture; moreover, ghosts do not wear—but there is no need to enter on debatable ground; the ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... and plaster, which may be frescoed, covered with some rich colored plain paper, or hung with violet velvet, according to your taste and means. The old-fashioned chair-rail seems to me a sensible institution It occupies the debatable ground between use and beauty, and may therefore be somewhat enriched. The plastering beneath it may be given a different tint from that above, and when the walls are high its effect is good. It is really carrying ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... This debatable territory on the map is full of vast waste spaces, together with the names of savage tribes never heard of before or since, some of which are familiar names, merely spelled in an unusual manner, while others owe their origin, perhaps, to the imagination ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... Old Testament Company was very slight as compared with that of the New Testament Company. The latter Company had, almost in every other verse, to settle upon a text—often involving much that was doubtful and debatable—before they proceeded to the further work of translating. The Old Testament Company, on the contrary, had ready to hand a textus receptus which really deserved the title, and on which, in their preface, ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... undefinable; confused &c. (indistinct) 447; mystic, oracular; dazed. perplexing &c. v.; enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical; experimental &c. 463. unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable) 519. fallible, questionable, precarious, slippery, ticklish, debatable, disputable; unreliable, untrustworthy. contingent, contingent on, dependent on; subject to; dependent on circumstances; occasional; provisional. unauthentic, unauthenticated, unauthoritative; unascertained, unconfirmed; undemonstrated; untold, uncounted. in a state of uncertainty, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... popularity of this measure. It would be hailed with joy by millions. The capitalists of our Northern cities, who now await with impatience some indications of A REGULAR POLICY, will welcome with enthusiasm a proposition which would at once render the debatable land no longer debatable, and which would effectually disorganize the entire South, by rendering numbers desirous of selling their slaves in order to secure what must sooner or later be irrecoverably lost. If government has a policy in this matter, it is ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... thoughtful observers will agree that the immediate service we owe the business communities of the country is to prevent private monopoly more effectually than it has yet been prevented. I think it will be easily agreed that we should let the Sherman antitrust law stand, unaltered, as it is, with its debatable ground about it, but that we should as much as possible reduce the area of that debatable ground by further and more explicit legislation; and should also supplement that great act by legislation which will not only clarify it but also facilitate its administration and make it fairer to all concerned. ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... was clear to the leaders in Thebes that, unless some one struck the first blow, the Lacedaemonians would never be brought to break the truce with their allies. They therefore persuaded the Opuntian Locrians (4) to levy moneys on a debatable district, (5) jointly claimed by the Phocians and themselves, when the Phocians would be sure to retaliate by an attack on Locris. These expectations were fulfilled. The Phocians immediately invaded Locris and seized ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... a Philosophical-Speculative: but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric or even quite nondescript and unnameable; whereby the Book not only loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... of the period was sizzling in the fire, Mr. Meredith recovered enough to pull out his purse and pay up the debatable levy. A moment later the steaming drink was poured ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of interest except the political question and the peculiar appearance of the people up in that particular part of India. It has been debatable ground as far back as the earliest days of Aryan colonization. Although Peshawur is regarded as a modern city, it is mentioned by the historians who wrote up the campaigns of Alexander the Great, and if you will go up there the guides will show you ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... ceased to give those excellent summaries of celebrated trials which for many years had been a feature of its volumes. The question whether "the appetite for the strange and marvellous" has abated in an appreciable degree with the passing of time and is not perhaps keener than it ever was, is a debatable one. But it is undeniable that the present volumes of the Annual Register have fallen away dismally from the variety and human interest of their predecessors. Of the trial and execution of Peace the volume for 1879 ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... something pleasant to say about the most immature and unpromising efforts, and he has the knack of so handling his own early experience as to make it an encouragement and a stimulus, and not (as the manner of some is) a burden and a bogey. Mr. Morley never obtrudes his own opinions, never introduces debatable matter, never dogmatizes. But he is always ready to pick up the gauntlet, especially if a Tory flings it down; is merciless towards ill-formed assertion, and is the alert and unsparing enemy of what Mr. Ruskin calls "the obscene empires ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... said at last—"suppose that we wish to be able on returning to our native land to state that we have not only been to our advanced positions but have even made a short excursion into the debatable territory—that is, into what is commonly ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the world to receive them on trust and without inquiry? People read to have something to talk about, and 'to seem to know that which they do not.' Consequently, there cannot be too much dialectics and debatable matter, too much pomp and paradox, in a review. To elevate and surprise is the great rule for producing a dramatic or critical effect. The more you startle the reader, the more he will be able to startle others with a succession ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... to the Minto descent, Stevenson claims to have 'shaken a spear in the Debatable Land and shouted the slogan of the Elliots.' He evidently knew little or nothing of his relations on the Elphinstone side. The Logie Elphinstones were a cadet branch of Glack, an estate acquired by Nicholas Elphinstone in 1499. William Elphinstone, a younger son of James of Glack, and ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... this city by S. Hueston, we think decidedly the best edition of the Scriptures for common use that has ever been printed in the English language. Its chief merit consists in this, that without embracing a syllable of debatable matter in the form of notes, it contains every needful explanation and illustration of the text that can be gathered from ancient art, literature and history, expressed with great distinctness and compactness, together with such well-executed wood ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... It is a debatable question whether love is a cause or an effect, whether Adam discovered a heart in the recesses of his anatomy before or after the appearance of Eve. In the case of Joe Ridder it ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... "brothers of a common country," he was perfectly resolved that the country should remain "common," even if the bond of brotherhood had to be riveted by force. He admitted that this necessity would be "an ugly point;" but he was perfectly clear that "the right of a State to secede is not an open or debatable question." He desired that General Scott should be prepared either to "hold or retake" the Southern forts, if need should be, at or after the inauguration; but on his journey to Washington he said to many audiences ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... crop up in the inquiries of some intelligent mechanic seeking knowledge among the obsolescent accumulations of a public library, or it may for a moment be touched upon by some veteran teacher. But the time when social and economic science had to choose between debatable and inexpressive technicalities on the one hand or the stigma of empiricism on the ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... clay is "properly prepared" forms the debatable ground, and has already furnished a convenient basis for the charge that it is never "properly prepared" for women-artists until it is ready for the caster. I affirm, from personal knowledge, that this charge is utterly without foundation,—and as it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... questions refer to action and the conduct of our lives. In religion, in politics, in economics, in sociology, what is truth to one man may be error to another. We may adopt a course of action because it seems the more expedient. Debatable questions have two sides to them. In the moral realm that is true which is agreeable to the largest number of competent judges. A mind that could see further and deeper might reverse all our verdicts. To be right on any question in ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... doctrine or duty, we may rest assured, when he did undertake to give an explanation, he would not have left that part altogether unexplained. On the whole, I think the earlier portion of the parable is debatable ground; it is left in the shade; there is room for difference of opinion in regard to it. In some aspects it may suggest useful reflections as a picture of the good and evil mingled in the Church; in other ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Henry V., he was too kingly as Hamlet, and Booth is the princeliest Hamlet that ever trod the stage. If Kean and the elder Booth were more supernal in their lightnings of passion and scorn,—and there are points in "Richelieu" which leave this a debatable question,—Edwin Booth is more equal throughout, has every resource of taste and study at his command; his action is finished to the last, his stage-business perfect, his reading distinct and musical as a bell. He is thus the ripened product of our eclectic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... bank your head thrice sweet and dear I lay, and spread your hair on either side, And see the new-born woodflowers bashful-eyed Look through the golden tresses here and there. On these debatable borders of the year Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow; And through her bowers the wind's ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... take out that interest shortly. The road runs through debatable ground from St. Resa to de la Pama. Not an inch of it but what is being hotly contested. But it isn't the regulars that make the trouble, for at present the territory belongs to Peru, though how soon she will lose it is not for me to say. It's the murderous bush-raiders that ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... train. We have passed the fortifications. The stuccoed houses of the suburbs, the factories, taverns, and gloomy hovels in the debatable land round Paris are so many points of sunshine in the far distance. The train is going at full speed. The fields of green or gold are being unrolled like ribbons before my eyes. Now and again a metallic sound and a glimpse of columns and advertisements ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... the length of the room, slowly and with knitted brows. "If you mean the world-wide order,—the order of gentlemen,"—he said, coming to a pause with the breadth of the table between him and Haward, "we may have that ground in common. The rest is debatable land. I do not take you for a sentimentalist or a redresser of wrongs. I am your storekeeper, purchased with that same yellow metal of which you so busily rid yourself; and your storekeeper I shall remain until the natural ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... years since this valley was a place choked with jungle, the debatable land and battle-ground of cannibals. Two clans laid claim to it—neither could substantiate the claim, and the roads lay desert, or were only visited by men in arms. It is for this very reason that it wears now so smiling an appearance: cleared, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the essential fact we reach in the Ideal of To-day. Here we are on firm ground. The law we acknowledge, the light we follow,—these may be expressed with entire clearness and confidence. The test they invite is present experiment. Nothing vital shall be staked on far-away history or debatable metaphysics. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... and took terrible vengeance. Many ancient coffins and Roman remains have been found here. The Dee now runs with swift current past Overton to the ancient town of Holt, whose charter is nearly five hundred years old, but whose importance is now much less than of yore. Holt belongs to the debatable Powisland, the strip of territory over which the English and Welsh fought for centuries. Holt was formerly known as Lyons, and was a Roman outpost of Chester. Edward I. granted it to Earl Warren, who built ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... I exclaimed, looking toward a gap in the hills that was framed by the debatable knoll on one side and reached by a short cut across the old orchard and abandoned meadows of the farm above, the lack of cultivation resulting in ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... stand within his shadow, and watch his kingdom coming. In an awful transfiguration all things stand for what they are. Evil is seen to be evil, and good to be good. Right and wrong sunder more far apart, and we cannot mistake them as we do at other times. The debatable land stretching between them—that favorite resort of undecided natures—disappears for a season, and offers no longer its false refuge. The mind is taken away from all artificial supports, and the knowledge comes home to the soul afresh, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... identify Mr. Moore with 'George's friend from the army'? Mr. Moore remembers he was on debatable ground last summer.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... dinner with the stiffness of men between whom much is unsaid. As the oystershells departed, however, we had found common memories. He recalled delightfully those little northern towns in the debatable region which from a critic's point of view may be considered Lombard or Venetian, with a tendency to be neither but rather a Transalpine Bavaria. To me also the glow of the Burgundy on the tablecloth brought back strange provincial altarpieces in this territory—marvels in crimson and ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... dim, dumb, dowie, and damnable. I hate to be silenced; and if to talk by signs is my forte (as I contend), to understand them cannot be my wife's. Do not think me unhappy; I have not been so for years; but I am blurred, inhabit the debatable frontier of sleep, and have but dim designs upon activity. All is at a standstill; books closed, paper put aside, the voice, the eternal voice of R. L. S., well silenced. Hence this plaint reaches you with no very great meaning, no very great purpose, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Assyria, which may have been five centuries before she wrote, her statement, however, proves that it came from Persia, and not from Arabia, for Assyria formed an important portion of the Persian Empire under the Sassassian dynasty, and in fact was for some centuries a kind of debatable land, and alternately occupied by the Persians and Romans, according as victory swayed to one side or the other. The term Assyria, then, denoting Persia in general, is used here in a well known ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... misunderstood woman, she has none the less misunderstood herself. Indeed, her feet have for ages been treading debatable ground, that has shaken beneath her through the clashings of man's ignorance and her own vague, restless clamors and aimlessness. She has felt the stirrings within of that real being she was created, but has never dared to assert herself, or, to speak ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... time—1789, or thereabout—were quite too populous and strong to apprehend any further serious molestation from their Indian neighbors. But between these points and the Ohio River lay a wide border of debatable land, where the restless savages still kept up their hostile demonstrations, which, though less bloody and wasting than at an earlier period, were yet sufficiently frequent and harassing to keep the white settlers in ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... fish lots for sale in the Sydney and Melbourne Fish Markets varies, and this opens up a somewhat debatable point. with us the lots are comparatively small, both at the Woolloomooloo and at the Redfern Market; while at Melbourne, on the other hand, the lots are much larger. When the lots are small it gives private buyers a ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... long shot, Katie," said Mrs. Bates. "Life has made a real woman of you. I kept watchin' you to-day comin' over; an' I was prouder 'an Jehu of you. It's a debatable question whether you have thrown away your time and your money. I say you've got something to show for it that I wish to God the rest of my children had. I want you should brace your back, and stiffen your neck, and make ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... contrary opinion had taken so full a possession of the minds of men as to leave no room even for the half belief which poetry requires? Such we suspect to have been the case. It was impossible for the poet to adopt altogether the material or the immaterial system. He therefore took his stand on the debatable ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He has doubtless, by so doing, laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot but believe that he was poetically in the right. This task, which almost any other writer would have found ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... until they were able to work such devastation on British commerce as marked the course of the War of 1812. The period allowed the new nation to acquire the strategic mouth of the Mississippi, and to make such inroads of settlers in the debatable land of the Floridas that Britain was unable to secure a permanent footing in them during hostilities. Twenty years carried forward the Old World struggle to a point so near its close that the Americans were able in the end to make ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... time, and flung him once more, helpless, against the dripping precipice. With what life was left in him, he clutched with both hands the bare serpentine edge. Good luck befriended him. The great wave had lifted him up on its towering crest to the level of vegetation, beyond the debatable zone. He clung to the hard root of woody sea-aster in the clefts. The waves dashed back in tumultuous little cataracts, ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... existence of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. But few persons have seen the Canyon, and far fewer ever have proven its existence by descending to its bottom; but none the less Reason admonishes all of us that the great chasm exists, and is not a debatable question. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... and the flesh made Cecil's heart an odd sort of debatable land; if she could not always insure success and supremacy to the right side, she certainly did endeavor to preserve the balance of power. Personally she rather disliked Mr. Fullarton, but she seemed to look upon him as the embodiment of a principle, and the symbol of an abstraction. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... reply may be condensed as "Get thee hence!" And, as if to bear out some royal mandate, the natives disappeared from the vicinity, the supplies were cut off, leaving the Spaniards halting upon this debatable ground, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... young man, or boy—for he was on the debatable ground of eighteen, when one may be either boy or man, according to one's acts, deeds, or exploits, as it used to ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... ranks of the students. It is still debatable whether revolution and riot in colleges are actuated by a passion for truth or a love of excitement. Anyway, the "Techs" laid deep places to the effect that when a certain professor appeared at chapel, a unique reception would ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... to reopen debatable matters, and they returned to London joyously. The terminus stopped Dick in the midst of an eloquent harangue on the beauties of exercise. He would buy Maisie a horse,—such a horse as never yet bowed head to bit,—would stable it, with a companion, some twenty miles from London, and ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... or brackish water conditions of sedimentation are requisite to the later formation of oil, as is suggested in the above quotation, has long been a debatable question. It may be noted that certain oil shales formed in fresh water basins contain abundant organic matter which is undoubtedly suitable for the generation of oil and gas, and that these shales on distillation yield oil essentially like that obtained from oil shales of marine origin; that ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... towards the outer edge, and forming a slight groove where the purfling is reached, but not the exaggerated scoop which is commonly seen in the instruments of the many copyists. This portion of the design has formed the subject of considerable discussion among the learned in the Violin world, the debatable points being the appearance of this peculiarity and its acoustic effect. As regards the former question, the writer of these pages feels convinced that the apparent irregularity is in perfect harmony with the general outline of the great Amati's instrument; and ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... to be wondered at; for when before, in all history, do we find a general in command of half a million of men, and in presence of an enemy inferior in numbers and no better disciplined than his own troops, leaving it still debatable, after the better part of a year, whether he is a soldier or no? The question would seem to answer itself in the very asking. Nevertheless, being most profoundly ignorant of the art of war, like the majority of the General's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of the Drina, we descended to that of the Morava by a steep road, until we came to beautifully rich meadows, which are called the Ushitkza Luka, or meadows, which are to this day a debatable ground for the Moslem inhabitants of Ushitza, and the Servian villages in the neighbourhood. From here to Ushitza the road is paved, but by whom we could not learn. The stones were not large enough to warrant ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... him would be to retire and leave those who had opposed the policy of Conciliation a free stage for any more heroic projects they might contemplate. Mr Redmond still remained indecisive and Mr O'Brien—whether wisely or unwisely will always remain a debatable point with his friends—quietly quitted the stage, resigning his seat in Parliament, withdrawing from the Directory of the United Irish League, and ceasing publication of his weekly newspaper on the ground, as he says himself, that "the authorised national policy ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... torrent; at the utmost guides, not controllers, of those whom they represent but do not govern. It is much the same now. The peoples of European civilization, after a period of comparative repose, are again advancing all along the line, to occupy not only the desert places of the earth, but the debatable grounds, the buffer territories, which hitherto have separated them from those ancient nations, with whom they now soon must stand face to face and border to border. But who will say that this vast general movement represents the thought, even the unconscious ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... not touch the debatable ground of the red man's origin, nor inquire whether he is the last remains of a people once high in civilization. But we are tempted to express the full belief that tropical America is not his "centre of creation." ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... afterward famous Major Robert Anderson was his superior officer), at Bellefontaine, Alabama, and at Pittsburg, in Pennsylvania, on recruiting service. When the war with Mexico was declared, Lieutenant Sherman was sent to California, then a debatable land. He reached Monterey Bay, by way of "the Horn," in January, 1847, and spent three years in California, returning east as bearer of despatches to the War Department in 1850. In May, 1850, he married ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... the art of fiction that have appeared to emerge and to become established in the course of time, a reader of novels is left at last amazed by the chaos in which the art is still pursued—frankly let it be said. Different schools, debatable theories, principles upheld by some and rejected by others—such disagreement would all be right and natural, it would be the mark of vigour in the art and the criticism of it. But no connected argument, no definition of terms, no formulation of claims, not so much as ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... Valleys and in large parts of Kentucky and Missouri where the Southern staples would not flourish, and in great tracts of the pine barrens where the quality of the soil repelled all but the unambitious. The tobacco and cotton belts remained as the debatable ground in which the two systems might compete on more nearly even terms, though in some cotton districts the planters had always an overwhelming advantage. In the Mississippi bottoms, for example, the solid spread of the fields facilitated the supervision of large gangs at work, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... we reach "Romola" there is a change, debatable ground is entered upon at once. Hitherto, the story-teller has mastered the preacher, although an ever more earnest soul has been expressing itself about Life. Now we enter the region of more self-conscious literary art, of planned ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... incidents of a life full of contrarieties, and a character so strange as to be almost mysterious, sufficiently show the difficulties of the task I have undertaken. But the course I intend to pursue will relieve me from the necessity of entering, in any particular manner, upon those debatable points of his personal conduct which have been so much discussed. I shall consider him, if I can, as his character will be estimated when contemporary surmises are forgotten, and when the monument he has raised to himself is contemplated ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... pickets, to which the gunboats would contribute their louder share, their aim being rather embarrassed by the woods and hills. We made reconnoissances, too, to learn the country in different directions, and were apt to be fired upon during these. Along the farther side of what we called the "Debatable Land" there was a line of cottages, hardly superior to negro huts, and almost all empty, where the Rebel pickets resorted, and from whose windows they fired. By degrees all these nests were broken up and destroyed, though it cost some trouble ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... evidently considered that this possibly debatable statement was sufficiently answered by a grunt, for that was all the answer he ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... herself, such as the literary Lady Charleville, and Mrs. Lefanu, sister of Sheridan, who were always ready with advice and sympathy. With Mrs. Lefanu Sydney corresponded regularly for many years, and in her letters discusses the debatable points in her books, and enlarges upon her own character and temperament. Chief among her ambitions at this time was that of being 'every inch a woman,' and she was a firm believer in the fashionable theory that true womanliness was incompatible with learning. 'I dropped the study of chemistry,' ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... time, London was divided into twenty-six wards (and several liberties). The "Out Parishes" of the "City," the City of Westminster, and the five "Parliamentary Boroughs" of Marylebone, Lambeth, Southwark, Finsbury, and Tower hamlets, and a region of debatable land lying somewhere between that which is properly called London and its environs, and partaking in a certain measure ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... they really do, of what they would do if they were quite free to work their will, and of what they will do, on the other hand, if they are effectively controlled by the sovereign state. Regulation of monopolies we must have; that is not a debatable question. The sovereignty of the state will be preserved in industry and elsewhere, and it is perfectly safe to assert that only by new and untried modes of asserting that sovereignty can industry hereafter be in any sense natural, rewarding ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... de Virieu would have found it very difficult to give an honest answer to the question. He was in a strange, debatable state of mind about Sylvia—beautiful, ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... rest content. It is only to the eyes that see through long-distance glasses, the minds that regard the present as nothing more nor less than an inevitable link joining the future to the past, that this distant, debatable land stands out in its ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... paid is a debatable question: whether to Satan for his captives, or to eternal and necessary holiness, to the divine law, to the claims of God who is by His nature the holy Lawgiver. The latter, referring to God and ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... each other, remained in force till our own times, though its disadvantages soon began to appear. The Chaplains, though committed by their appointment to the general doctrines of the Reformation, were by no means bound to agree on the many debatable questions to which the Reformation had given rise, and did not always convey the same doctrines to their people, or work harmoniously together. It was not, however, till the year 1868 that this inconsistency ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... progress and happiness by reliance on fallacious beliefs which will not bear examination. Such, at least, is the feeling or motive which has prompted me to devote much time and thought to a difficult but important inquiry in a debatable region of inference and conjecture, where (I am afraid) evidence on either side can never be absolutely conclusive, and where, especially, the absolute demonstration of a universal ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... writer, a vast field for ethnological, geographical, and historical speculation and research. The ancient world stands revealed in the Homeric poems. Besides, almost numberless volumes have been written based upon the equally debatable questions of the Homeric text ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... pleasant juvenile story. E. Ralph Cheyney's extract from his essay on "Youth" is in many ways remarkable, and shows us that we have another recruit of choice quality. His rather peculiar ideas are well expressed, though their soundness is quite debatable. A few abnormal characters like Byron and Shelley doubtless experienced all the adolescent phenomena which Mr. Cheyney describes, but we believe that the average youth is a copyist, and for the most part reflects his ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... of a people is necessarily determined to a large extent by the ideas of the relations of the sexes, and by the institutions and conventions that arise through such ideas. One of the most important and debatable of these questions is whether women are to be considered as citizens and independently responsible, or as beings differing in all their capacities from men, and, therefore, to be set in positions of at least material dependence to an ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Dicky of Dryhope, with others, Armstrongs, was also true to the call of duty. A few verses in the ballad are clearly by aut Gualterus aut diabolus, and none the worse for that. Salkeld, of course, was not really slain; and, if the men were "left for dead," probably they were not long in that debatable condition. In the rising of 1745 Prince Charlie's men forded Eden as boldly as Buccleuch, the Prince saving a drowning ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... tracts of debatable land was interposed a paved high road, twice as broad as it needed to have been, and furnished with a stone gutter down the centre, into which flowed, from every side, streams not Castalian; while five or six ducks, belonging to the master of the shop, acted as the only town scavengers; ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... Of historic themes, I would counsel this hypothetical genius to beware. If there are any which can fittingly be steeped in a lyric atmosphere, they are to be sought on the outskirts of history, or in the debatable land between history and legend. The formula of Schiller can no more be revived than the formula of Chapman or of Rowe. That a new historic drama awaits us in the future, I have little doubt; but it will be written in prose. The idea that the poetry of drama is to be sought specifically ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... on the authority of an auction note, the little collection Poems and Essays, with a Paraphrase on Cicero's Laelius, or, Of Friendship ... By a Gentleman (1674), and G. Thorn-Drury, on the equally debatable evidence of an anonymous manuscript ascription on the title page of his own copy, ascribed the Poetical Reflections to Howard.[6] An examination of the Poems and Essays, however, reveals no point of resemblance with our poem. How, then, does Howard ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... and beyond it, and to come to close quarters with our proper division, the origin of Romance itself is a very debatable subject, or rather it is a subject which the wiser mind will hardly care to debate much. The opinion of the present writer—the result, at least, of many years' reading and thought—is that it is a result of the marriage of the older East and the newer (non-classical) West ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... I say, the Church would concentrate her forces in this inner fortress, the personality of Christ, and quit the debatable ground of historical enquiry, it would be to me and to many an unfeigned relief; but meanwhile, neither scientific critics nor irrational pedants shall invalidate my claim to be of the number of believing Christians. I ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fortified city, occupying a commanding hill overlooking the Danube; it is a rare old town, battle-scarred and rugged; having been a frontier position of importance in a country that has been debatable ground between Turk and Christian for centuries, it has been a coveted prize to be won and lost on the diplomatic chess-board, or, worse still, the foot-ball of contending armies and wrangling monarchs. Long before the Ottoman Turks first ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... were coming. I am very glad to see you." They took each other's hands, and Mrs. Warrender bent forward to give the kiss of welcome. They were two equal powers, meeting on debatable ground, fulfilling all the necessary courtesies. Not like this should Theo's mother have met his wife. It should have been a young creature whom she could have taken into her arms, who would have flung herself upon the breast of his mother, or ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... wall was built that stretched with its lines of mound, ditch, stone-rampart, and road, and its series of camps and forts, from near the mouth of the Tyne to Solway Firth. Henceforth the wall marked the debatable frontier, but York never lost its strategic value. It was thus used by the Romans, William I., Edward I., Edward II., and Edward III. in their occupation of and their expeditions against the North. It has served as a base depot ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... the Union in 1848 that brought about the organization of the Territory of Minnesota. The peculiar situation in which all the people residing west of the St. Croix found themselves set them to devising ways and means to obtain some kind of government to live under. It was a debatable question whether the remnant of Wisconsin which was left over when the state was admitted carried with it the territorial government, or whether it was a "no man's land," and different views were entertained on the subject. The question was somewhat embarrassed by ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... of debatable land was an act of aggression to which the colonists were not bound to submit. The first to understand that it was a question of existence was the man on whose head the destinies of the country rested. Washington ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... He paused. It is debatable if he had spoken wisely, or had spoken even in consonance with fact, but his outburst had, at least, the saving grace of sincerity. He was pallid now, shaking in every limb, and in his heart was a dull aching. She seemed so incredibly soft and little ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... traditions of the army, and of the north, being derived from France, those of the south fro, England, and those of the southwest from Spain, by the way of Mexico and Texas. Under his instruction, you will remain longer in the debatable land between perfect ignorance of horsemanship, and being a really accomplished rider, than you would if taught by a foreigner, but, as has already been said, you will learn more rapidly at first, an the result, if you choose to work hard, will ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... however, of an unwritten constitution is that there are always a number of cases for which the law does not provide; and there were many more in the seventeenth century than there are to-day. These cases constituted the debatable land between the crown and parliament. Parliament assumed that the crown could neither diminish parliamentary privilege nor develop its own prerogative without parliamentary sanction; and it read this assumption back into history. ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... good friend?" inquired the mayoress, taking off a light pair of shagreen-mounted spectacles; for being of that debatable age when time is hardly known by his advances on the person, having just mounted these helps occasionally, as she said, when mending a pen or sewing fine work, she cared not to show that they were in use at other seasons more ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... proper arrangement of statistical matter which relates to the prepuce and circumcision that, before such tables could be satisfactorily and convincingly constructed, time and the evolutionary processes that follow it will bid fair to completely remove this debatable appendage from man. It may be at a very far-distant period that this evolutionary preputial extinction will take place,—probably contemporary with the existence of Bulwer's "Coming Race,"—but not at a too remote period for the proper and ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... of Bali but not in Java, Heilprin avoids the unscientific term line, because he finds his zoological realms divided by "transition regions," which are intermediate in animal types as they are in geographical location.[333] Wallace notes a similar "debatable land" in the Rajputana Desert east of the Indus, which is the border district between the Oriental and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple |
