"Polemic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should make sure that the boys are on their side before they raise the standard of virtue. Nor ought they to summon morality for support of a polemic. Matey Weyburn's object of worship rode superior to a morality puffing its phrasy trumpet. And, somehow, the sacrifice of an enormous number of women to Lord Ormont's glory seemed natural; the very thing that should be, in the case of a first-rate military ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in his impassioned polemic on "The Revival of Art": "The painter whose devotion to nature is such that he never leaves or varies from her, may be, and likely is, a happier man than if he were a true artist...To men of the other type, the external image disturbs the ideal which is so complete ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... act of faith in writing Jean-Christophe were only concerned with France, if the polemic of it were not directed against a universal evil, there would be no reason for translation. But, like Zarathustra, it is a book for all and none. M. Rolland has written what he believes to be the truth, and as Dr. Johnson observed: "Every man has a right to utter ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... Shakespere, and then towards all other literary craftsmen. William Gifford, his first competent editor, set himself to work to destroy this, and undoubtedly succeeded. But the acrimony with which Gifford tinctured all his literary polemic perhaps rather injured his treatment of the case; even yet it may be doubted whether Ben Jonson has attained anything like his proper ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... is not only historic but it is also polemic; polemic, however, not in the spirit or interest of any party or conventicle, but in the spirit and interest of science and humanity. Orthodoxy insists on doctrines whose irrationality in their current forms is such that they can never be a basis ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... analysis of Buffon's true meaning, veiled by the reticences due to the conditions under which he wrote, is as masterly as the English in which he develops it. His sense of wounded justice explains the vigorous polemic which here, as in all his later writings, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... interests than perhaps a northern people could ever find in art, pure and simple, it was not like the time that followed it, a "prosaic" age. Enthusiasm burned fierce and clear, displaying itself in the passionate polemic of Milton, in the fanaticism of Bunyan and Fox, hardly more than in the gentle, steadfast search for knowledge in Burton, and the wide and vigilant curiousness of Bacon. Its eager experimentalism tried the impossible; wrote poems and then gave them a weight of meaning they could ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... other accomplishments beside those of the polemic. He was not, it is true, overloaded with the learning of "the schools"—was, in fact, quite ignorant of some of the branches of knowledge which he imparted to his pupils: yet this was never allowed to become apparent, for as we have intimated, he would frequently himself acquire, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Scott and Byron. The first, whose Fair Maid of Perth is read as a new book, is praised for his "objective" qualities. The second is pronounced the greatest modern poet of England, but censured for his polemic tendency. Goethe's rapture is kindled when he ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... vivifies the other biographies of Jesus and the impassioned pleadings of Paul. He is a pure and lofty soul, but he writes as if in seclusion from the world. His favorite words are abstract and general. The parable and precept of the early gospels give place to polemic and metaphysic disquisition. The Christian communities for which he writes have left behind them the sharp antagonisms of the first generation, and have drawn together into a harmonious society, strong in their mutual affection, their inspiring faith, and their rule of life, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... religious dispute which he had held in Latin with two popish priests attached to the Irish chieftain O'Neal. A place in reversion freely bestowed on him by the king at once rewarded the zeal of the young polemic, and encouraged him to desert the profession of the law, in which he had embarked, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... had lived for some time at Bonn to study for his Lectures; and the influences of German literature and of the German character and state of society had made a very perceptible change in his views of life. His personal disposition was much softened; he was less militant and polemic; his tastes had begun to turn themselves towards the poetic and contemplative. He attached much less importance than formerly to outward changes; unless accompanied by a better cultivation of the inward nature. He had a strong distaste for the general meanness of ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... very elaborate discussions of textual difficulties. But still I also have in many places formed theories of my own, whether they are right or wrong it will be for scholars to judge. I had no space for entering into any polemic, but it will be found that my interpretations of the systems are different in some cases from those offered by some European scholars who have worked on them and I leave it to those who are acquainted with the literature of the subject to decide ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... sermons, and pamphlets, and raised him without will or further act of his to the high place of the heresiarch. With admirable singleness of mind, he held modestly aloof. 'There is no scholar,' he wrote to a friend, 'less willing or less able to be a polemic. I could not give account of myself if challenged. I delight in telling what I think, but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men,' The year before, his oration on the American Scholar had filled Carlyle with delight. It was the first ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... the contrary, ascribed everything to chance and apparently denied causation, because the same result follows from different antecedents. It is noticeable that none of these views imply theism or pantheism but the Buddha directed so persistent a polemic against the doctrine of the Atman that it must have been known in Magadha. The fundamental principles of the Sankhya were also known, though perhaps not by that name. It is probably correct to say not that the Buddha borrowed from the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... notice; could pull vegetables, or dig out Hebrew roots, with alternate ease. Notwithstanding their long days of labor, their minds kept their edge, being freshly set by incessant doctrinal disputations. Such, indeed, was the public appetite for controversy that polemic warfare never slumbered. Our view of their character is assisted by a contrast with the English clergy of the same day, and which reveals shameful deformities on the part of the latter—avarice, indolence, and gluttony. Of such, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... frightened out of their opinions, yet they may be persuaded out of them: they may be touched by the affecting earnestness of serious conversation, and allured by the attractive beauty of a consistently serious life. And while a young woman ought to dread the name of a wrangling polemic, it is her duty to aspire after the honourable character of a sincere Christian. But this dignified character she can by no means deserve, if she is ever afraid to avow her principles, or ashamed ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... intersexual passion. Not a few prominent persons have been innocent victims of this distressing disease; it is well-known what strange masculine proclivities several eminent female novelists and artists have shown; and whenever a woman shows great creative power or polemic aggressiveness the chances are that her brain is of the masculine type. It is therefore quite possible that Sappho may have been personally a pure woman, her mental masculinity ("mascula Sappho" Horace calls her) being her misfortune, not her fault. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... in the unequal dispute, derived, from the popular work of their Imperial missionary, an inexhaustible supply of fallacious objections. But in the assiduous prosecution of these theological studies, the emperor of the Romans imbibed the illiberal prejudices and passions of a polemic divine. He contracted an irrevocable obligation to maintain and propagate his religious opinions; and whilst he secretly applauded the strength and dexterity with which he wielded the weapons of controversy, he ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... was silent for a moment, and gave token of succumbing to this unexpected polemic strength. Then, taking thought and courage together, "Ye can't say the Bible ain't down on 'strong drink'?" There was no answer from the vanquished, and he went on in the overwhelming miller's voice: "Hil'ry hed better be purtectin' his-self ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... is to the last degree unattractive, except to a misanthropic disposition; or to that, perhaps, of a stern theological polemic, when tempted to be pleased with every superfluity of evidence for overwhelming the opposers of the doctrine which asserts the radical corruption of our nature. As spread over a coarse and repulsive ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... Point out montri, signali. Points (railway) relforko. Poise balanci, ekvilibri. Poison veneno. Poisonous venena. Poke the fire inciti la fajron. Poker fajrincitilo. Polar polusa. Pole (wooden) stango. Pole (shaft of car) timono. Pole (geography) poluso. Polecat putoro. Polemic disputo, polemiko. Police polico. Policeman policano. Polish poluri. Polish (substance) polurajxo. Polished (manners) gxentila. Polite gxentila. Politic sagxa. Political politika. Politician politikisto. Politics politiko. Poll (vote) vocxdoni, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... that he was intensely a moralist, as only the moralists of our true and noble time have been. Not Tolstoy, not Ibsen himself, has more profoundly and indignantly felt the injustice of civilization, or more insistently shown the falsity of its fundamental pretensions. He did not make his books a polemic for one cause or another; he was far too wise and sane for that; but when he began to write them they became alive with his sense of what was wrong and false and bad. His tolerance is less than Tolstoy's, because his resignation is not so great; it is for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... secondary share in the ecclesiastical controversies in the Eastern Church, though the circumstance of these controversies having been carried on in the Greek language has made the natives of Western Europe attribute them to a philosophic, speculative, and polemic spirit, inherent in the Hellenic mind. A very slight examination of history is sufficient to prove that several of the heresies which disturbed the Eastern Church had their origin in the more profound religious ideas of the oriental nations, and that many ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... 'God save King Richard,' to shelter themselves from its delusive radiance in the obscure haunt of Old Philosophy. This word Old had great charms for him. The good old times were always on his lips; meaning the days when polemic theology was in its prime, and rival prelates beat the drum ecclesiastic with Herculean vigour, till the one wound up his series of syllogisms with the very orthodox conclusion of ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... to set down some theology of his own, and did so in a manuscript which he entitled, "If I Could Be There." It is in the dialogue form he often adopted for polemic writing. It is a colloquy between the Master of the Universe and a Stranger. It begins: I. If I could be there, hidden under the steps of the throne, I should hear conversations ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... starting on this endless polemic again, Vera. We are meeting for the last time, as you determined we should. Let us make an ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... the polemic excursus, of course, I chuckle over them most sympathetically, and then say how naughty they are! I have done too much of the same sort of thing not to sympathise entirely with you; and I am much inclined to think that it is a good thing for a man, once at any rate ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... instead of assisting and palliating his natural deficiencies, she is the first to ridicule and expose them. Her passions, having never been checked, have become exceedingly violent. She converses on politics and divinity with all the fury of a partizan and a polemic; she seems impatient of the trammels of her sex; and her conversation frequently goes beyond the bounds of decency and good manners. One cannot help pitying the lot of Imperitus, who has a large share of good-nature, and who ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... Luxury. So successful to our minds is the polemic of a prophet like Isaiah against idolatry that the wonder to us is that it was ever necessary; and, indeed, there are few things more puzzling to the ordinary reader of Scripture than the constant lapses of the people of God into idolatry. How could they, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... polemic. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of all knowledge; so there is of every science. The radical and characteristic idea concerned in this term polemic is found in our own Parliamentary distinction of the good speaker, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... been trying for years to oust him from his position on the Blanley faculty but has been unable to do so because of the provisions of the Faculty Tenure Act of 1963. Most of his remarks were in the nature of a polemic against this law, generally regarded as the college professors' bill of rights. It is to be stated here that other members of the Blanley faculty have unconditionally confirmed the fact that Doctor Chalmers did make the statements attributed to him a ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... of prophetic instincts to the rigorous measures of Ezra, which demanded the divorce of all foreign women (Ezra ix. x, cf. Neh. xiii. 23ff.); for it can hardly be doubted that there is a delicate polemic in the repeated designation of Ruth as the Moabitess, i. 22, ii. 2, 6, 21, iv. 5, 10—she even calls herself the "stranger," ii. 10. It would be pleasant to think that the writer had himself married one of these foreign ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... "On the Crown," in Greek, and understood at first sight not only the force and propriety of the language and the meaning of the orator, but the whole scheme of the laws, customs, and manners of the Athenians. By Doctor Grindal, professor of theology, she was initiated into the subtleties of polemic divinity, to which she gave assiduous application. Such, during the short reign of her brother, was the laudable and tranquil time of her life, and by these occupations and pursuits she was prepared for the great part she was to act ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... researches were not those of a polemic divine, but of a Christian, concerned for his own salvation ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... advantageous and remunerative station to take for one who should undertake a formal exposure of Pope's hollow-heartedness; that is, it would most commensurately reward the pains and difficulties of such an investigation. But it would be too long a task for this situation, and it would be too polemic. It would move through a jungle of controversies.... Instead of this I prefer, as more amusing, as less elaborate, and as briefer, to expose a few of Pope's personal falsehoods, and falsehoods as to the notorieties of fact. Truth speculative often-times, drives its roots into depth, so dark ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Scotland, especially in the Highlands and the northern counties, we have made some use of both our eyes and ears. We have seen, and sickened to see, hordes of schoolboys of ten and twelve years bandying as nicknames, with boys whose parents belonged to the Establishment, the terms of polemic controversy. 'Moderate' has become in juvenile mouths as much a term of hatred and reproach in extensive districts of our country, as we remember 'Frenchman' used to be during the great revolutionary war. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... be underrated. For his name has fallen into such extreme disrepute in America that to have been guided by his advice seems only an additional offense. But such was not the case; Hutchinson came of old and prominent Massachusetts stock; he was a descendant of Anne Hutchinson, of polemic fame, and when appointed to office he appeared a man of good standing and ability. The English government had a perfect right to rely upon the soundness of his statements and opinions. Thus it was really of great moment for Franklin to be able to convince the people of Massachusetts ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... no such thing as an Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich—that the two instruments of 1867 are not only of different date but are essentially independent, each being revocable at will by the power by which it was enacted. An able polemic in opposition to the views of Tisza is to be found in F. Tezner, Ausgleichsrecht und Ausgleichspolitik (Vienna, 1907). Tezner ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... empty houses, instead of being there to hear the sermon, and that the drunkards, being rarely church-goers, get little good by the statistics and eloquent appeals of the preacher. Every now and then, however, the Reverend Mr. Fairweather let off a polemic discourse against his neighbor opposite, which waked his people up a little; but it was a languid congregation, at best,—very apt to stay away from meeting in the afternoon, and not at all given to extra ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ever wrote. It is sufficient to notice that the next occupation of Pascal, after his conversion, was to write these eighteen "Letters," which as prose are of capital importance in the foundation of French classical style, and which as polemic are surpassed by none, not by Demosthenes, or Cicero, or Swift. They have the limitation of all polemic and forensic: they persuade, they seduce, they are unfair. But it is also unfair to assert that, in ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... Biblical critic, and violent polemic on political as well as theological subjects; born at Saxe-Altenburg; regarded the Christian religion as overlaid and obscured by accretions foreign to it; denied the historical truth of the Gospels, and, like a true disciple of Hegel, ascribed the troubles of the 19th century ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... bounds in the democratic and levelling principles which are expected from their titled pulpits. The new evangelists will, I dare say, disappoint the hopes that are conceived of them. They will not become, literally as well as figuratively, polemic divines, nor be disposed so to drill their congregations, that they may, as in former blessed times, preach their doctrines to regiments of dragoons and corps of infantry and artillery. Such arrangements, however favourable to the cause of compulsory freedom, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... work, the dominant characteristic of which is comprehensiveness rather than originality. He took the doctrines of Zeno and Cleanthes and crystallized them into a definite system; he further defended them against the attacks of the Academy. His polemic skill earned for him the title of the "Column of the Portico." Diogenes Laertius says, "If the gods use dialectic, they can use none other than that of Chrysippus"; [Greek: ei me gar en Chrysippos, ouk an en Stoa] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... ministry, seems to have been that of carrying out the religious reformation which had been demanded by Colet and Erasmus while checking the spirit of revolt against the unity of the Church. His severities against the Protestants, exaggerated as they have been by polemic rancour, remain the one stain on a memory that knows no other. But it was only by a rigid severance of the cause of reform from what seemed to him the cause of revolution that More could hope for a successful issue to the projects of reform which the council laid before Parliament. ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... desired that very thing: "Ye may get that sooner than ye believe," she said; but Knox expressed his disbelief that he would ever get it. Papists would never argue except when "they were both judge and party." Knox himself never answered Ninian Winzet, who, while printing his polemic, was sought for by the police of the period, ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... deserted the Old Academy for the New, and admits the charge. How is this to be reconciled with his own oft-repeated statements that he never recanted the doctrines Philo had taught him? Simply thus. Arcesilas, Carneades, and Philo had been too busy with their polemic against Zeno and his followers, maintained on logical grounds, to deal much with ethics. On the other hand, in the works which Cicero had written and published before the Academica, wherever he had touched ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... shock, and the resistance. Mr. Irving has, in fact, without leave asked or a licence granted, converted the Caledonian Chapel into a Westminster Forum or Debating Society, with the sanctity of religion added to it. Our spirited polemic is not contented to defend the citadel of orthodoxy against all impugners, and shut himself up in texts of Scripture and huge volumes of the Commentators as an impregnable fortress;—he merely makes use ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... up with the usual polemic ability of Milton; but by its very plan and purpose it threw upon him difficulties which no ability could meet. It had that inevitable disadvantage which belongs to all ministerial and secondary works: the order and choice of topics being all determined by the "Eikon," Milton, for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... were to enter into a polemic on this subject, or simply to make conscientious researches, there would be many chances of proving, in opposition to the axiom, that the fault of these great men lay in the bad choice of their helpmates. In truth, if there have been a Gemma Donati and a Milbank, we also find in ancient ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... aristocracy of the eighteenth century outlived even the self-destructive acts of its own perversity. A life which was entirely without object, entirely destitute of functions, would not, says Riehl, be so persistent. He has an acute criticism of those who conduct a polemic against the idea of an hereditary aristocracy while they are proposing an "aristocracy of talent," which after all is based on the principle of inheritance. The Socialists are, therefore, only consistent in declaring against an aristocracy of talent. "But when they have turned the world ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... had raised him to a just eminence; but he reigned the dictator and tyrant of the world of literature. The real merit of Warburton was degraded by the pride and presumption with which he pronounced his infallible decrees; in his polemic writings he lashed his antagonists without mercy or moderation; and his servile flatterers, (see the base and malignant Essay on the Delicacy of Friendship,) exalting the master critic far above Aristotle and Longinus, assaulted every ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... and George Jean Nathan for many years have sung praises of the Moral in the Smart Set. But its production on the English speaking stage still remains an event eagerly to be awaited. Briefly, the play is a polemic against the "men higher up," churchmen, reformers, and ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... begin with however, are F. C. S. Schiller's in his 'Studies in Humanism,' especially the essays numbered i, v, vi, vii, xviii and xix. His previous essays and in general the polemic literature of the subject are fully referred ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... "A vastly entertaining polemic. It directs attention to many undoubtedly neglected facts which writers of the North have ignored or minimized."—The New York Times Saturday ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... of patriotic verse or prose which all our history has inspired—the passages where Shakespeare brings his rays to focus on "this earth, this realm, this England,"—or where the dread of national dishonour has kindled Chatham to an iron glow,—or where Milton rises from the polemic into the prophet, and Burke from the partisan into the philosopher. The armoury of Wordsworth, indeed, was not forged with the same fire as that of these "invincible knights of old." He had not swayed senates, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... impossible here, though it is necessary for a complete sketch of the matter, to distinguish the different elements and channels of this Darwinian influence; in Darwin's own writings, in the vigourous polemic of Huxley, and strangely enough, but very actually for popular thought, in the teaching of ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... other. But this difference between the maxims of diversity and unity may easily be reconciled and adjusted; although, so long as they are regarded as objective principles, they must occasion not only contradictions and polemic, but place hinderances in the way of the advancement of truth, until some means is discovered of reconciling these conflicting interests, and bringing reason into union and ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... the first page that he has written his book "for those who are called the bourgeois," in order to dissuade them from the concessions which they themselves, in their own minds, can not prevent themselves from making to the undeniable truth of the socialist ideal, when he reaches the end of his polemic, the irresistible implications of the facts force M. Garofalo to a series of eclectic compromises, which produce on the reader, after so many accusations and threats of repression, the depressing impression of a mental collapse, as unforeseen ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... canons, to compare their lists of those who saluted one another in the choir, or who glared at one another between versicle and antiphon like mad dogs ready to fly at one another, or to speak with wonder about a certain polemic discussed by the Doctoral and the Obrero in the Catholic papers in Madrid, which had lasted for three years, as to whether the deluge was partial or universal; answering each other's articles with ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... with the problem in all these forms. In Greece, the problem of art and of the artistic faculty arose for the first time after the sophistic movement, as a result of the Socratic polemic. ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... opportunities of showing his agility, and reach the gate in a greater sweat and with more blisters 'a parte post' than his brother hero, Zuinglius. I guess that the comments of the latter on the Prophets will be found almost sterile in these tiger-lilies and brimstone flowers of polemic rhetoric, compared with the controversy of the former with our Henry VIII., his replies to the Pope's Bulls, and ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... books on the Liar itself, a work directed against those who thought that such propositions were both false and true, another against those who professed to solve the Liar by a process of division, three books on the solution of the Liar, and finally a polemic against those who asserted that the Liar had its premises false. It was well for poor Philetas of Cos that he ended his days before Chrysippus was born, though as it was he grew thin and died of the Liar, and his epitaph served as a solemn reminder ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... not wholly unneeded in the present day. They show how in a department in which it demanded the united life-long labors of a Kepler, Galileo, and Newton to elicit the truth, the hasty guesses of a great theologian, rashly ventured in a polemic spirit, gave form and body to but ludicrous error. It is not after a fashion so impetuous and headlong that the elaborately wrought key must be plied which unlocks the profound mysteries of nature. But of this ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... arrived—a man of ascetic countenance and venerable age—one whom Gerard Douw respected much, forasmuch as he was a veteran polemic, though one, perhaps, more dreaded as a combatant than beloved as a Christian—of pure morality, subtle brain, and frozen heart. He entered the chamber which communicated with that in which Rose reclined, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... perhaps think that I, the writer of this little work, have a pretty strong and faithful memory, when I tell him that every word of it, with all its details, has been written in a situation which sternly denied me the use of books bearing on my subject. A few volumes of rhetorical criticism and of polemic divinity, that have not, nor, to my knowledge, could have furnished me with a solitary fact or date, are all the companions of my solitude. Other voice than the voice of the wind I have rarely ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... ibn Djanah (among the Jews, R. Jonah), the most eminent representative of the Spanish school, born at Cordova about 985; he studied at Lucena, and died at Saragossa about 1050. Besides small polemic works, he left a long one, "The Book of Detailed Research," including a grammar and a dictionary. Ibn Dianab was an original and profound grammarian. Unfortunately his disciples ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... unconquerable singularity, and he adds a short dialogue between himself and a recruiting sergeant. And after this again there comes an appendix containing an apologia for Lavengro, a great deal more polemic against Romanism, some historical views of more originality than exactness, and a diatribe against gentility, Scotchmen, Scott, and other black beasts of Borrow's. This appendix has received from ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... always does, and this he does on the present occasion.—v. 5 and 6. He does not, like a vehement polemic, say Jewish ceremonies and rules are all worthless, nor some ceremonies are worthless, and others essential; but he says, the root of the whole matter is charity. If you turn aside from this, all is lost; here at once the controversy closes. So far as any rule ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... voice waxed stronger while she delivered this polemic. Slowly the churchman's face darkened, as he moved backward and sank ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... impressions of a man, nearer eighty than seventy, when the shadows of evening are gathering around, and, in a retrospective glance, the whole field of past vision appears, in all its complexities, like the indistinct tumults of a dream. The acute reasoner—the fiery politician—the eager polemic—the emulous aspirant after fame; and many such have I known, where are they? and how mournful, if any one of them should be found, at last, to have directed his solicitudes, alone, to material objects;—should have neglected to cultivate his own little plot of earth, more valuable than mines! and ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... whose infirmity had kept her so far in the rear of the crowd, now came hobbling on, glided unobserved by the polemic group, and paused on the left brink of the fountain, within a few feet of the two spectators. She was a magnificent old dame, as ever mortal eye beheld. Her spangled shoes and gold-clocked stockings shone gloriously within the spacious circle of a red hoop-petticoat, which swelled to the very point ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which is so rare and delightful a thing. And, like all poetic humour, it oscillates between cynicism and passion almost bewilderingly. For a little more of this what pages and pages of jocularity about Bottles and the Rev. Esau Hittall would we not have given! what volumes of polemic with the Guardian and amateur discussions of the Gospel of St John! In the first place, note the metrical structure, the sober level octosyllables of the overture changing suddenly to a dance-measure which, for a wonder in English, almost ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... written when Moliere was suffering from illness; but his energy remained indomitable. The comedy continued that long polemic against the medical faculty which he had sustained in L'Amour Medecin, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, and other plays. Moliere had little faith in any art which professes to mend nature; the physicians ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... imperialism, that, later under the republic, could stand up against it as a deadly competitor in the person of Louis Bonaparte. The fought the aristocracy of finance just the same as did the rest of the bourgeois opposition. The polemic against the budget, which in France, was closely connected with the opposition to the aristocracy of finance, furnished too cheap a popularity and too rich a material for Puritanical leading articles, not to be exploited. The industrial bourgeoisie was thankful to it for its servile defense ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... of Plato, De Repub., V, was no mere fancy, is proved by the polemic which Aristophanes directs against it in his Ecclesiazuses. See also Aristot., Polit., II, 2, Schn. In the contemporary practice of the Greeks, with the increasing democratization of the state, it became more and more usual ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... he was dangerous to his antagonist; and tho his reasoning might be faulty, he would frequently gain his cause by a flash of wit that took the public, and, as it were, hustled his adversary out of court. But he was not always a victorious polemic. His vehemence in controversy was sometimes too precipitate for his prudence; he would rush into a fight with his armor unfastened, and with only a part of the necessary weapons; and as the late Washington Hunt[44] once ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... pamphlet. He was only a regimental surgeon in Benares, but his name was well known amongst his compatriots as a very learned specialist in physiology. The pamphlet was called A Treatise on the Yoga Philosophy, and produced a sensation amongst the representatives of medicine in India, and a lively polemic between the Anglo-Indian and native journalists. Dr. Paul spent thirty-five years in studying the extraordinary facts of Yogism, the existence of which was, for him, beyond all doubt. He not only described them, but explained some of the most extraordinary ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... as it is, is nothing beside his numberless treatises in dogma and polemic. These were the work of his life, and it is by these posterity has known him. The theologian and the disputer ended by hiding the man in Augustin. To-day, the man perhaps interests us more. And this is a mistake. He himself would not have allowed for a moment that his Confessions ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... the continuity of tradition and of church doctrine, to the exceptional veneration of these fathers for the gospels, to their opinions being formed earlier than the composition of the works in which they are expressed, possess no force. The ends which the fathers in question had in view, their polemic motives, their uncritical, inconsistent assertions, their want of sure data, detract from their testimony. Their decisions were much more the result of pious feeling biased by the theological speculations of the times, than the conclusions of a sound judgment. ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... the universe had 'flaming walls' or any walls at all. That 'immaginata circonferenza,' 'quella margine immaginata del cielo,' on which antique science and Christian theology alike reposed, was the object of his ceaseless satire, his oft-repeated polemic. What, then, rendered Bruno the precursor of modern thought in its various manifestations, was that he grasped the fundamental truth upon which modern science rests, and foresaw the conclusions which must be drawn from it. He ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Europe, he could, of course, relate only such facts as exist; and should it appear that this history has but two cycles, one of them incomplete, he would be under no obligation to make more. But such is not the case. His "history" is purely a piece of polemic. His aim is to establish a formula for all history, past, present, and to come; and, in this view, the paucity of instances on which his induction rests becomes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... the centre, but in part also of the civil. It lay in the nature of his genius to prove all things, and it lay in his temperament to seek rapport with all sorts of men. He was infinitely related;—not an individual of note in his day but was linked with him by some common interest or some polemic grapple; not a savant or statesman with whom Leibnitz did not spin, on one pretence or another, a thread of communication. Europe was reticulated with the meshes of his correspondence. "Never," says Voltaire, "was intercourse among philosophers more universal; Leibnitz servait l'animer." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Of the mass of polemic and apologetic literature which Strauss' Leben Jesu called forth, little is at this distance worth the mentioning. Ullmann, who was far more appreciative than most of his adversaries, points out the real weakness of Strauss' work. That weakness lay in ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... world, though. The specialists were beginning to know about Dredge. His remarkable paper on Sexual Dimorphism had been translated into several languages, and a furious polemic had broken out over it. When a young fellow can get the big men fighting over him his future is pretty well assured. But Dredge was only thirty-four, and some people seemed to feel that there was a kind of deflected nepotism ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... they were getting on famously. Arthur was composing a piano concerto, and Ellenora engaged upon a novel—a novel, I was told, that would lay bare to its rotten roots the social fabric; and knowing the girl's inherent fund of bitter cleverness I awaited the new-born polemic with gentle impatience. I hoped, however, like the foolish inexperienced old bachelor I am, that her feminine asperity would be tempered by the suavities ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... passage from the Remarks on the Fable of the Bees will illustrate Law's method as a polemic: ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... the Unknown God has been prepared for, and now follows, and with it is bound up a polemic against idolatry. Conciliation is not to be carried so far as to hide the antagonism between the truth and error. We may give non-Christian systems of religion credit for all the good in them, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... adversary, resting on the deep-seated prejudice of our fellow-countrymen in the United Kingdom, calculated upon establishing his own fame as a keen-sighted polemic, as a shrewd and truth-loving man, upon the fallen reputation of one, who, as he would demonstrate,—yes, that he would,—set little or no value on truth, and who, therefore, would deservedly sink into obscurity, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... and mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position, for I well know there is no scholar less willing or less able than myself to be a polemic. I could not give an account of myself, if challenged. I could not possibly give you one of the 'arguments' you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands; for I do not know what arguments are in reference to any expression of a thought. I ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... to this continued polemic against the popedom and false teachers, we must not omit to mention some characteristic controversial writings, provoked from him by his indignation at the attacks on Christianity by Jews, nay, by their seduction ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... ever, has dropped into the class of books which are more quoted than read. In reading it, it is of the utmost importance to comprehend clearly and to bear constantly in mind the purpose of the author in writing it. This purpose is evidently not artistic but polemic, to show in the most unmistakable characters the vileness and folly of the anti-royalist party. Anything like a regular plot—the absence of which has often been deplored or excused—would have been for this end not merely a superfluity but a mistake, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... reformation which had been demanded by Colet and Erasmus while checking the spirit of revolt against the unity of the Church. His severities against the Protestants, exaggerated as they have been by polemic rancor, remain the one stain on a memory that knows no other. But it was only by a rigid severance of the cause of reform from what seemed to him the cause of revolution that More could hope for a successful issue to the projects of reform which the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Jolly Seventeen's afternoon bridge. She had learned the elements of the game from the Sam Clarks. She played quietly and reasonably badly. She had no opinions on anything more polemic than woolen union-suits, a topic on which Mrs. Howland discoursed for five minutes. She smiled frequently, and was the complete canary-bird in her manner of thanking the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... all possible modifications, it is essentially erroneous; and this small treatise has originated in no love of discord, or taste for polemic excitement, but in a solemn sense of duty,—the duty of aiding, in some humble measure, the more learned and important labours of others who are "set for the defence of the truth." The writer aims only at a common sense view of the subject, ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... expected pardon in the modest but respectable inn where he had stayed in happier years. To make only passing mention of less spiritual amusements, with which he could not wholly dispense—he spent most of his time in writing a polemic against the slanderer Voltaire, hoping that the publication of this document would serve, upon his return to Venice, to give him unchallenged position and prestige in the eyes ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... the face of nature to the conscientious man. For his people thought themselves intellectual, and certainly were critical. Mere edification in holiness was not enough for them. A large infusion of some polemic element was necessary to make the meat savory and such as their souls loved. Their ambition was not to grow in grace, but in social influence and regard—to glorify their dissent, not the communion ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... press; and even attempts have been made, not seldom, by profane ridicule, to bring them into contempt. The very duty of public, social covenanting, either in a National or ecclesiastical capacity, has been often opposed in the polemic writings of the ministers of this body, however often inculcated and exemplified in the word of God. The moral nature of the duty taken in connection with prophetic declarations, to be fulfilled only under the Christian ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... is a polemic without a peer, and you say that "no other living man could have made so absurd a theory appear so plausible, deceived hundreds of abler men than himself." Surely there is something very faulty in ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... whole society, or of endowed college foundations and an aristocracy if it is only of the few. Hence American society took its literary meals at the common table of the English-speaking race, with little or no effort at a separate establishment. There was much writing, but mostly polemic or journalistic. When real literature was attempted, it consisted in general of imitations of British essays, or fiction, or poetry; and in the last two cases not even imitations of the best models in either. The ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... polemic was a mason of the name of James Humphrey: he astonished Cromek by an eloquent dissertation on free ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... insight into and sympathy with the struggles of men who are groping after God, if haply they may find him, will shorten the polemic sword of the professional converter whose only purpose is destructive hostility without tactics or strategy, or whose chief idea of missionary success is in statistics, in blackening the character of "the heathen," in sensational letters for home consumption and reports ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... either this difficulty, or a second which this treatise is calculated to excite. He places the Supper of the Lorde at the head of the numerous productions of Robert Crowley, as if its authorship was perfectly ascertained. But Crowley must have been a precocious polemic if he wrote a theological treatise, like that answered by More, at least a year previously to his entering the university. The date of his admission at Oxford was 1534; he was elected Fellow of Magdalene in 1542; he printed the first edition of Piers Plowman ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... never alleged my force was strong enough to accept of a combat en champ clos, with a scholar and a polemic. Besides, the match is not equal. You, sir, might retire when you felt the battle go against you, while I am tied to the stake, and have no permission to say the debate wearies me.—I would ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... "Nathan the Wise" was written in verse, but did not prove a success as a drama. In one he attacked the tyranny of the German petty princes, and in the other the intolerance of the Established Church. We may assume that is the reason why Lowell admired them; but Lowell was also too critical and polemic to be wholly a poet,—except on certain occasions. In 1847 he published the "Fable for Critics," the keenest piece of poetical satire since Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,"—keen and even saucy, but perfectly good-humored. About the same time he commenced his "Biglow ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... and its chevaux-de-frise of references bristling and dense enough to make the keenest, stoutest and best-equipped assailant think twice before advancing. Nor is there anything controversial in it to provoke an assault. The author is no polemic. Though he obviously feels and thinks strongly, he succeeds in attaining impartiality. He even represses comment until it serves for little more than a cement for his data. What of argument there is shapes itself mostly from his collation. The minute and recondite records he throws together, in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various |
