"Polemical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has so little kept in the pure intellectual sphere, has so little detached itself from practice, has been so directly polemical and controversial, that it has so ill accomplished, in this country, its best spiritual work; which is to keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... her acute memory for the letter of Angel Clare's remarks, even when she did not comprehend their spirit, she recalled a merciless polemical syllogism that she had heard him use when, as it occasionally happened, he indulged in a species of thinking aloud with her at his side. In delivering it she gave also Clare's accent and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... of polemical athletes and the relative plenty of the Miss Susie Goldrick kind of teachers, apparently called into being the Berean Lesson Leaf system, with its Bible cut up into lady-bites of ten or twelve verses, its Golden Topics, Golden ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... was a fellow of Lazarus, the favoured disciple of the great Dr Gwynne, a high churchman at all points; so high, indeed, that at one period of his career he had all but toppled over into the cesspool of Rome; a poet and also a polemical writer, a great pet in the common rooms at Oxford, an eloquent clergyman, a droll, odd, humorous, energetic, conscientious man, and, as the archdeacon had boasted of him, a thorough gentleman. As he will hereafter be brought more closely ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... period was Jeremy Taylor, whose works are only represented by "The Great Exemplar of Sanctity" (London, 1667), "Ductor Dubitantium" (London, 1696), which is still the chief English treatise on casuistry, and "A Collection of Polemical and Moral Discourses" (London, 1657). The Library contains two editions of the works (1683 and 1716) of Isaac Barrow, whom Charles II. described as "the best scholar in England." Other eminent writers ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... people" as a crime which ought to be punishable by law; and where the government failed "to protect the people from the bible men, saints, soupers, and fanatics" (the names which he generally applied to earnest Protestants in his abusive and bigoted polemical speeches), then the people should use all means within the law—a sort of qualification never intended to be accepted by those to whom it was addressed—"to put down" all persons obnoxious to the religious hostility of the priests. In the earlier part of his career ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... much reproached with his letter to Crellius. Grotius had written against Socinus, and Crellius, to vindicate his master, answered Grotius with a politeness and good-breeding seldom found in a polemical divine. Grotius thought it his duty to reply to him, and the measures he kept with this adversary were looked on by his enemies as a betraying of the truth. Here follows the letter, which has been so much talked of. "I was ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... Aberdeen to Lord John Russell. Lord John had the peculiar temperament that is hard to agitate, but easy to nettle. So polemical a reading of former whig pranks nettled him considerably. Why, he asked, should he not say just as reasonably that Mr. Gladstone held up the whigs to odium in 1841 for stripping the farmer of adequate protection; ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... it is a question which, in its wider aspect, as including many other items of folklore, ought to be examined into. There is no doubt, however, that by analogy it can be answered, because we have ample evidence, if the writings of reformers may be taken as historical facts and not polemical imaginations, that many very important customs, among the richest as well as the poorest treasures of folklore, have been, so to speak, Christianised by the Church, and that the Church has taken part in and adopted non-Christian ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... scriptures; nor does it appear the least inconsistent—for there it says, "God hath chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise."—Therefore, the wonder that children should be able to understand that, which is the foundation of all polemical divinity, vanishes, when we try it by the touchstone of scripture, which is the criterion by which we ought to judge.—When they are thus instructed in the rudiments of virtue, they are seldom known to apostatize; so that for a native to ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... The following day Wolff wrote a polemical dissertation in the Figaro and carried away his colleagues. The volume was a brilliant success, thanks to Boule de Suif. Despite the novelty, the honesty of effort, on the part of all, no mention was made of the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... was anything but polemical; he cared not to spend time even over those authors whose attacks on the outposts of science, or whose elaborate reconcilements of old and new, might have afforded him some support. On the other hand, he altogether lacked that breadth of intellect which seeks to comprehend all the results of speculation, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... all delicate, as invisible needle-points, in her Majesty's hand. [Letter undated (datable "Lutzelburg, March, 1708,") is to be found entire, with all its adjuncts, in Erman, pp. 246-255. It was subsequently translated by Toland, and published here, as an excellent Polemical Piece,—entirely forgotten in our time ( A Letter against Popery by Sophia Charlotte, the late Queen of Prussia: Being, &c. &c. London, 1712). But the finest Duel of all was probably that between ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... A shrewd polemical expression beamed from Father Beret's eyes, and a very expert physiogomist might have suspected duplicity from certain lines about the old ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... study of the Authorized Version of the Bible, which this semi-theological tractate necessitated, had much to do with the clarification of the author's style. At all events, from this time forth, Nash drops, except in polemical passages where his design is provocative, that irritating harshness in volubility which had hitherto marked his manner of writing. Here, for example, is a passage from "Christ's Tears" which is not ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... and author of various polemical works, he had been raised to the see of Durham in 1730, as it was then said, by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... Messianic interpretation, the authority of tradition has been, first of all, appealed to. It is true that modern Jewish interpreters differ from it; but this has been the result of polemical considerations alone. It can be satisfactorily proved that the Messianic interpretation was the prevailing one among the older Jews. 1 Mac. xiv. 41—"Also that the Jews and priests resolved that Simon should be commander ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... no friend of polemical writing, and I believe the less we see of it in your friendly periodical, the better it is; but still I must protest against such copying of partially-written judgments, when good information can be got. I say not by stretching out a ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... favourable to the cause of truth to set down these remarks according to the order in which they were suggested to my mind by a consideration of the subject itself, instead of observing the formality of a polemical reply; but if the view which they contain be just, they will be found to involve a refutation of the arguers against poetry, so far at least as regards the first division of the subject. I can readily conjecture what should have moved the gall of some learned ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... few other instances, the polemical zeal natural to men who had sacrificed their worldly all for the sake of religion, was observed to degenerate among the refugees into personal quarrels disgraceful to themselves and injurious to their noble cause, it ought on the other hand to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... therefore, find myself in a polemical relation to Aristotle, for I by no means contest the Unity of Action properly understood: I only claim a greater latitude with respect to place and time for many species of the drama, nay, hold it essential to them. In order, however, that ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... soon converted to Social Democracy. Berlin was covered with a network of societies, which became the places of worship of the new faith. Handbills, pamphlets, newspapers, partly polemical, partly literary, in which the mob made their statements and professed their faith stoutly; these, although written very badly, yet by their monotony, their angry reproaches, their invocations, reminded one of ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... managed his mother tongue better, if indeed he ever managed it so well. The little tract is written with singular spirit and rapidity of style. It is clear, trenchant, and direct to a fault. It is indeed far less critical than polemical, and shows no trace of lofty calm, either moral or intellectual. We are not repelled much by his eagerness to refute and maltreat his opponent. That was not alien from the usages of the time, and Warburton at least had ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... it is manifestly unfair to compare a mystical writer like Emerson with a polemical or historical one, I am not concerned to answer the objection, for let the comparison be made with whom you will, the unparalleled non-sequaciousness of Emerson is as certain as the Correggiosity of Correggio. ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... replied, "for the present: I am unwilling to engage in polemical strife with you, the very first evening on which I have seen you for so long a time. I would much rather hear a chapter of your past travels and adventures, which you know your few and brief letters—but I will not reproach you—left me in ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... committed by him at Mohra. The matter stands thus: In Luther's lifetime his Catholic opponent Witzel happened to call out to Jonas, a friend of Luther's, in the heat of a quarrel, 'I might call the father of your Luther a murderer.' Twenty years later the anonymous author of a polemical work which appeared at Paris actually calls the Reformer 'the son of the Mohra assassin.' With these exceptions, not a trace of any story of this kind, in the writings of either friend or foe, can be found in that or in the following century. It was ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... thought, if it were to hold the field as a world-wide religion, must be remodelled so as to bring it better into line with the conclusions of modern philosophy. Less attention should be paid to dogma and to polemical discussions, and more to the ethical and natural principles contained in ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... from a high pole with hooks in his flesh, and trying to imagine how much it hurt him, my attention was arrested by a mention of my name in a conversation held between mother and Mr. Park, one of the neighbors. He occasionally spent an evening at our house, passing it in polemical discussion, revising the prayers and exhortations which he made at conference meetings. The good man was a little vain of having the formulas of his creed at his tongue's end. She sometimes lot these thread of his discourse, but argued also as if to convince herself that ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... Norway comprehended, and in certain hands enjoyed. Polemical literature, if seldom of a high class, was abundant and was much appreciated. The masterpiece of modern Norwegian poetry was, still, the satiric cycle of Welhaven. In ordinary controversy, the tone was more scathing, the bludgeon was whirled more violently, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... be ignored (the safest mode of attack when one's author has no expectant public), and only the most skilful could write of it in a hostile spirit without betraying that some of its strokes had told. An evening newspaper which piqued itself on independence indulged in laughing appreciation of the polemical chapter, and the next day printed a scornful letter from a thinly-disguised correspondent who assailed both book and reviewer. For the moment people talked more of Alfred Yule than they had done since his memorable conflict ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... strange times,' observed the President, 'when a doctor of divinity and an undergraduate set forth like a knight-errant and his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of the church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray Heaven, however, there he no encounter in store for us; for I utterly forgot ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the appeal to his reason from the lure to his interests—here a text, and there a dowry!—here Protestantism, there Jemima!—Own, my friend, that the soberest casuist would see double under the inebriating effects produced by so mixing his polemical liquors. Appeal, my good Mr. Dale, from Philip drunken to Philip sober!—from Riccabocca intoxicated with the assurance of your excellent lady, that he is about to be "the happiest of men," to Riccabocca accustomed to his happiness, and carrying ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... primitive Protestants who had never swerved from the truth through the darkest ages, and could therefore be adopted with acclamation into the general Reformed communion. The Reformation, indeed; had penetrated into their valleys, rendering them more polemical for their faith, and more fierce against the Church of Rome, than they had been before. They had experienced persecutions through their whole history, and especially after the Reformation; but, on the whole, the two last Dukes of Savoy, and also Christine, daughter of Henry ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... grieved with the religious controversies of the present age. The divisions of schools, old school and new school, and the polemical zeal and fury with which the contest is waged, are entirely foreign from the true spirit of Christianity. The Christianity of the age is, in my view, most unamiable. It has none of those lovely, mellow features which distinguished primitive Christianity. If Christianity as it now exists ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... publication were his best commentaries, then eight volumes of his Gospel and Epistle sermons and one volume of his best catechetical writings. These rich evangelical works introduced us to the real Luther, not the polemical, but the Gospel Luther. They contain the leaven of the faith, life and spirit of Protestantism. We now return to his spiritual commentaries on the Bible which are the foundation of all his writings. The more one reads Luther the greater ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... that with five or six Illyrian words and two pedantic little books he improvised "La Guzla" in two weeks. And further: "From that day on I was disgusted with local color, seeing how easy it was to fabricate it." Of course, this statement should in the first place be regarded as polemical and as a sly hit perhaps at Victor Hugo. For Mrime's literary output is a triumph for the cause of local color. What he meant, and illustrates in his work, is that local color and remoteness in time and place are secondary to treatment and style, and that he regarded the romantic ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen
... 1. Polemical discussion is foreign to the plan of this work. But an opinion which stands in need of much illustration, can often receive it most effectually, and least tediously, in the form of a defense against objections. And on subjects concerning ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... epigrams, but most of all in his "Ibis", of which we have an imitation, or perhaps nearly a translation, in Ovid's poem of the same name. On the part of Apollonius there is a passage in the third book of the "Argonautica" (11. 927-947) which is of a polemical nature and stands out from the context, and the well-known savage epigram upon Callimachus. [1002] Various combinations have been attempted by scholars, notably by Couat, in his "Poesie Alexandrine", to give a connected account of the quarrel, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... where Billick had made a point of studying the Strassburg heresiarch carefully. The Carmelite now skilfully exposed the weakness of Bucer's arguments, together with his frequent misinterpretation of Scripture and the Fathers, Billick showing himself to be an experienced polemical writer; but the taste and tone of his book are repugnant to modern ideas, and betray the same acrimony which characterises the writings of Luther against Erasmus, and vice versa. Accusations of hatred, cunning, lying, slandering, and double-dealing, are cast like a hail of bullets, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... another attainment, of which too I did not neglect to inform him; for it was one of which I was not a little proud. Much of my time, during my residence at Oxford, had been devoted to the study of polemical divinity, or the art of abuse, extracted from the scriptures, the fathers, and the different doctors of different faiths. The points that had most attracted my attention were the disputes concerning the Athanasian creed, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Germany. It was believed by many that the book should be prohibited; and the Prussian government was inclined to this measure. Neander, however, advised that the book should rather be met by argument. His Life of Christ which was thus occasioned, wears, in consequence, a somewhat polemical aspect. It has taken the rank of a standard authority, both in German and in English, into which it has been admirably translated ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... impossible to know God, and his benefits and goodness, unless we have a true knowledge of ourselves, and our own frailty and miseries. (Hom. 14, p. 123. Bibl. Patr. Lugdun. T. 9, part 1.) In his sermons and letters, he frequently enforces the obligation of alms-deeds. His other works are chiefly polemical, against the Arians, Pelagians, and Nestorians. In his books against the Sermon of Fastidiosus, (an Arian priest,) to Felix the Notary; On the Orthodox Faith, to Donatus, against Fabian; Three Books to King Thrasimund; Ten Answers to Ten Objections ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... reader, whatever be the subject-matter of his studies, of the antiquary, and the artist, the man of science, the historian, the herald, and the genealogist, in short, Notes relating to all subjects but such as are, in popular discourse, termed either political or polemical, should meet in our columns in such juxta-position, as to give fair play to any natural attraction or repulsion between them, and so that if there are any hooks and eyes among them, they may catch ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... book whose history was so full of vicissitudes? Why did the French government, the church, and the literary world so excite themselves about a dictionary? The "Encyclopaedia" had in fact two functions; it was a repository of information and a polemical writing. Condorcet has thus stated the purpose of the book. Diderot, he says, "intended to bring together in a dictionary all that had been discovered in the sciences, what was known of the productions of the globe, the details ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... the family, from which Frank R. Stockton was descended. On the female side he was descended from the Gardiners, also of New Jersey. His was a family with literary proclivities. His father was widely known for his religious writings, mostly of a polemical character, which had a powerful influence in the denomination to which he belonged. His half-brother (much older than Frank) was a preacher of great eloquence, famous a generation ago as ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... if with sarcastic attempt to mark the logical sequence, Flint had placed a black-clad row of John Stuart Mill's essays, while Hume and Hobbes looked out above and below. It amused Flint, as he sat there alone, to fancy these polemical gentlemen issuing from their bindings and sitting down together around his evening lamp, to talk things over. "Probably," he mused, with that idle pensiveness which is the lazy man's apology to himself for not thinking, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... least," replied his nephew; and began to recite simply, but with feeling, the lines now so well known, but which had then obtained no celebrity, the fame of the author resting upon the basis rather of his polemical and political publications, than on the poetry doomed in after days to support the eternal ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... liveliest possible humour. I have known his claim to the title of "humourist" called in question by precisians: nobody could deny him the title of good-humourist. Except that the sentimental side of Toryism would never have appealed to him, it was chiefly an accident of time that he was a polemical Liberal. He would always and naturally have been on the side opposite to that on which most of the fools were. When he came into the world, as the straitest Tory will admit, there were in that world a great many abuses as they are called, that is to say, a great many things which, once useful ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... relation to that organized system of criticism which is science, than a brigand at large on a mountain has to the machinery of law and police, by which finally he will be hanged. Among such raiding theorists none at present are in quite such urgent need of polemical suppression as those who would persuade the heedless general reader that every social failure is necessarily a "degenerate," and who claim boldly that they can trace a distinctly evil and mischievous strain in that unfortunate miscellany which constitutes ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... given some years previously, he was in no small trepidation at the possible prospect of losing his English dominions, as an excommunication and an interdict were even then hanging over his head. Political and polemical writers have taken strangely perverted views of the whole transaction. One writer,[293] with apparently the most genuine impartiality, accuses the Pope, the King, and the Irish prelates of the most scandalous hypocrisy. A cursory examination of the question might have served ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... ('La Republica Jesuitica'), with the noble disregard of consequences so noticeable in most polemical writers, boldly alters this to a million dollars, his object being to prove that the Jesuits exacted exorbitant taxation from the neophytes. *6* The honey of the missions was celebrated, and the wax made ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half mad, and I, ambitious of shining in conversation parties on Sundays, between sermons, at funerals, etc., used a few years afterwards to puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... adopted from motives of safety, and the monk from the common custom of the convent, had prevented the possibility of their hitherto recognizing each other in the opposite parts which they had been playing in the great polemical and political drama. But now the Sub-Prior exclaimed, "Henry Wellwood!" and the preacher replied, "William Allan!"—and, stirred by the old familiar names, and never-to-be-forgotten recollections of college studies and college intimacy, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Presbyterianism. There is, however, an important difference. Presbyterianism has an ecclesiastical organisation and a written creed, and its doctrines have long since become clearly defined by means of public discussion, polemical literature, and general assemblies. The Molokanye, on the contrary, have had no means of developing their fundamental principles and forming their vague religious beliefs into a clearly defined logical system. Their theology is therefore still in a half-fluid state, so that it is impossible to predict ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable and unmanageable as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence, which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists of the age. He had slain men with his own hand, for aught I know,—certainly, they had fallen, like blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe, before the charge to which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy;—but, be that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... discusses unsettled questions takes up every gauntlet thrown down to him, polemical writing will absorb much of his energy. Having a power of work which unfortunately does not suffice for executing with anything like due rapidity the task I have undertaken, I have made it a policy to avoid controversy ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... transgressions, and have shared with Addison the glory of showing that the most brilliant wit may be the ally of virtue. But, in any case, prudence should have restrained him from encountering Collier. The nonjuror was a man thoroughly fitted by nature, education, and habit, for polemical dispute. Congreve's mind, though a mind of no common fertility and vigour, was of a different class. No man understood so well the art of polishing epigrams and repartees into the clearest effulgence, and setting them neatly in easy and familiar dialogue. In this sort of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with but two years in the science, have been so fortunate as to discover an element, better still probably the most important of all the elements! It was certainly a rare good fortune! It couldn't help but make him the observed among observers. This may have occasioned the hue and cry against his polemical essays on government and church to become more frequent and in some ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... I said, "no polemical discussions! Whether you're right or wrong, that's not what I'm talking about. What I want to know is this:—you are going to teach people about God and Jesus Christ. Do you delight in God? Do you love Jesus Christ? Never mind what I do, or think, or believe. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... which long survived the original combatants. In our own time the cause which Bunyan had defended with rude logic and rhetoric against Kiffin and Danvers was pleaded by Robert Hall with an ingenuity and eloquence such as no polemical ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Christian communion was but for a favored few. Mr. Hale believed that the greater the sinfulness of the individual soul the greater the need and the greater the title to be taken into the fellowship and the brotherhood of the Saviour of souls. So, without polemical discussion, or any heat of controversy, he set the example which has been so widely followed. This meant a great deal more than the abolition of a ceremonial or the change of a rubric. It was an assertion of the great doctrine, never till of late perfectly comprehended anywhere, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the first great instance of the abuse of publicity to such ends. The polemical writings which a hundred years earlier Poggio and his opponents interchanged, are just as infamous in their tone and purpose, but they were not composed for the press, but for a sort of private circulation. Aretino made all his profit out of a complete publicity, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... page, or Understood a single proposition of the writings of those whom they condemn, and have absolutely no rational knowledge either of the arguments by which their faith is defended, or of those by which it has been impugned, will nevertheless adjudicate with the utmost confidence upon every polemical question, denounce, hate, pity, or pray for the conversion of all who dissent from what they have been taught, assume, as a matter beyond the faintest possibility of doubt, that the opinions they have received without inquiry must be true, and that the opinions which others have arrived at by inquiry ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... at stake. It was for this reason that his polemics against Newton were so strongly expressed, although he had no fondness for such controversies. In looking back on that part of the Farbenlehre which he had himself called 'Polemical' in the title, he said to Eckermann: 'I by no means disavow my severe dissections of the Newtonian statements; it was necessary at the time and will also have its value hereafter; but at bottom all polemical action is repugnant to my nature, ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... of his sermons. It has been hitherto the practice to give one or two, with a cursory notice, that Johnson's theological knowledge was scanty, or unworthy of his general fame. We have acted under a very different impression; for though Johnson was not, nor pretended to be, a polemical or controversial divine, he well knew how to apply to the right regulation of our moral conduct the lessons of that Christianity which was not promulged for a sect, but for mankind; which sought not a distinctive garb in the philosopher's grove, nor secluded itself in the hermit's cell, but entered ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... The secret cause of his "melancholy," and his "indolence," and that "want of attachment and pleasure to his subjects;" which his friends "naturally imagined" afforded him so much, was the controversies he had kindled, and the polemical battles he had raised about him. However boldly he attacked in return, his heart often sickened in privacy; for how often must he have beheld his noble and his whimsical edifices built on sands, which the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... see there are many on foot." Up to this time Warburton had merely suggested emendations and puzzled out explanations: he had not set to work seriously on the complete text. Since 1740, when he published the Vindication of the Essay on Man, his critical and polemical talents had been devoted to the service of Pope. To judge from what he says in his Preface, his project of an edition of Shakespeare might have been abandoned had not Pope persuaded him to proceed with it by the offer of making it appear their joint work. Pope had nothing to do with it, for it ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... as we think more probable, he was a bitter satirist made bitter by the earnestness of his conviction, and ridiculing the gods only as a reductio ad absurdum of their pretensions, the fact is indubitable, that he ridiculed them in a polemical spirit, and not to excite the vulgar laughter of the vulgar crowd. But we, who do not believe in those gods, need no such warfare. To us they are beautiful images associated only with high thoughts, until the burlesque writer, in his beggary of wit and invention, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... of the shorter poems with some that are not polemical or essentially Provencal; three or four are especially noteworthy. The Drummer of Arcole, Lou Prego-Dieu, Rescontre (Meeting), might properly find a place in any anthology of general poetry, and an ode ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... obligatory observance of Christmas. It was conducted in the newspaper of the town, then published only on two days of the week, and to the multitude of readers appeared more spirited than edifying, as is the case with most polemical disputes. The worthy Episcopal Doctor had asserted on Christmas Day, that the observance of that festival was of universal Christian obligation. The Presbyterian Doctor took up the cudgels to demonstrate, that, although it was proper and reasonable enough to keep the day, as a matter of ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... men we must look in vain for literary productions having the aim of entertainment. The literature of the time was chiefly polemical, and commentaries crowded on the book-shelves the volumes of classical and Italian writers. To Puritanism, fiction was the invention of the Evil One, but still to Puritanism we owe, what is now, and seems destined ever to remain, the finest allegory ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... ever will. Something there will be of original genius, or if not that, yet of curious, odd, out-of-the-way information, or of quaintness of imagination, or of characteristics pervading some class of men, whether a literary or a polemical,—something, in short, which people desirous of information will some day or other be anxious to read,—such are the volumes which it is desirable to save from annihilation, that they may find their place at last in some of the great magazines ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... faith-cure, Christian science, and other sorts of aerial therapeutics has supplied a motive for this story, and it is only proper that I should feel a certain gratitude to the advocates of the new philosophy. But the primary purpose of this novel is artistic, not polemical. The book was not written to depreciate anybody's valued delusions, but to make a study of human nature under certain modern conditions. In one age men cure diseases by potable gold and strengthen their faith by a belief in witches, in another they substitute ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... the site of the present Royal Hospital, and was founded by Matthew Sutcliffe, Dean of Exeter in 1610, as a school for polemical discussion. It was nicknamed by Laud "Controversy College." King James I. called it after himself, and gave all the timber required for building purposes from Windsor Forest free of charge, and, according to the manner ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... is no discipline which so well consists with solitude, none which so instantly enfranchises the mind from the tyranny of mean self-interest or vain and envious polemics. Men do not grow sour and quarrelsome about the Absolute: everything that is polemical is inspired, as Michelet once said, by some temporal and momentary interest. The man who has climbed to the Idalian spring comes down benevolent. He does not grudge this toiling ant his grain, that snarling dog his bone, but is content to live serene, ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... aims at cleaning and refining raw coffee, and which has been the subject of much polemical discussion, is that of Thum[120]. It entails the placing of the green beans in a perforated drum; just covering them with water, or a solution of sodium chloride or sodium carbonate, at 65 deg. to 70 deg. C.; and subjecting ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... lyrical drama. As we have had no great lyrical drama at all since Manfred and The Cenci, that is not much in its dispraise. There are powerful passages, much poetic grace in the piece; but the four thousand lines of this elaborate polemical poem rather weary us, and a perfervid appeal to the Protestantism and uxoriousness of Britons should have ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... a momentary pang, like having a tooth drawn for the toothache. Mr Siftwell is a shrewd and clear-seeing man in points of theology, and I would trust a great deal to what he says, as I have not, at my advanced age, such a mind for the kittle crudities of polemical investigation that I had in my younger years, especially when I was a student in the Divinity Hall ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... and said, "God is faithful, who doth not suffer us to be tempted above our strength." His body was forcibly penetrated by the fire, and the blood flowed abundantly from the heart; as if to verify his constant desire that his heart's blood might be shed in defence of the gospel. His polemical and friendly letters are lasting monuments of his integrity and talents. It has been before said, that public disputation took place in April, 1554, new examinations took place in Oct. 1555, previous ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... and morality of every description of men among them as of infinitely greater importance than the struggle (for it is nothing better) to change those descriptions by means which put to hazard objects which, in my poor opinion, are of more importance to religion and to the state than all the polemical matter which has been agitated among men from the beginning of the world ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... conviction that if known he could turn his honours to account. In the meantime, however, that record of a night passed in a workhouse had done more to establish the sale of the journal than all the legal lore of Stephen, or the polemical power of Higgins, or ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... chorus of a notable hunting song, which had been pressed into the service of some polemical poet, the followers of the Abbot of Unreason were turning every moment more tumultuous, and getting beyond the management even of that reverend prelate himself, when a knight in full armour, followed by two or three men-at-arms, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... advantage he derives as a political instructor from the facts that all his political speeches and writings are polemical. The difficulty of keeping exposition from being dry is familiar to everybody who has ever sought to communicate knowledge on any subject. But Burke in every one of his political theses had an antagonist, who was literally as he says himself, a helper: who did the work of an ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... science and astrology, such as the reform of the calendar, attracted his attention. His other works consisted of theological essays, ascetic or exegetic, questions of ecclesiastical discipline and reform, and of various polemical writings called forth for the most part ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... much use of the pathetic; very slight landscape-painting and background; no psychology; there is no systematic attempt to introduce, under the story's disguise, the serious discussion of social, political, or polemical questions. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... so did his associate; and he found himself soon involved in lawsuits, into the details of which it is needless to go, but in the course of which he published a series of memoirs, or statements of his case for the public at large. These memoirs are among the most vigorous of all polemical writings; they were very clever and very witty; they were vivacious and audacious; they were unfailingly interesting; and they were read as eagerly as the 'Letters of Junius.' Personal at first, the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Hobart, the busiest and most stirring man I ever knew. The Messrs. Swords were largely occupied in printing works on divinity, and were confessed the printers of sound orthodoxy long before "the novelties which disturb our peace" had invoked polemical controversy. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... so small a place in my memoirs to what has occupied so much of my life is a double one. In the first place, I was most anxious not be polemical. Politics are synonymous with strife, and if I had written a political biography, it would have become the record of a battle, or rather, of many battles, in which I could hardly have avoided saying hard things both of living and dead people. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... says, "George was the more plausible preacher, Robert the greater scholar; George the abler statesman, Robert the deeper divine. Gravity did frown in George, and smile in Robert." As one might infer from so strong an opponent of Laud, amid the large number of his published works most are polemical ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... to tell you once you must not come if I did tell you so. I knew better at the time, and did steadily believe, as far as I was concerned, that no polemical mud, however much was thrown, could by any possibility stick to me; for I was purely an observer; had not the smallest personal or partial interest; and merely spoke to the question as a historian; and I knew whoever could see me must see that. But, at the moment, the little pamphlet ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "Cromwell" and other works by which the breach was to be forced, and took upon himself the task of justifying innovation, and securing its reception with a hesitating public. Hence his criticism at this period was, as he himself has styled it, "polemical" and "aggressive." It was, however, neither violent nor sophistical. On the contrary, it was distinguished by the candor and the suavity of its tone. Goethe, who watched from afar a movement which, directly or indirectly, owed much to German inspiration, was particularly struck with this trait. "Our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of the thoughts underlying Zunz's great works, as well as his numerous smaller, though not less important, productions: biographical and critical essays, legal opinions, sketches in the history of literature, reviews, scientific inquiries, polemical and literary fragments, collected in his work Zur Geschichte und Litteratur ("Contributions to History and Literature," 1873), and in three volumes of collected writings. Since the publication of his "History of Synagogue Poetry," Zunz wrote only on rare occasions. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... country has not been favourable to the development of artistic or scientific tastes, though Chile has produced political leaders, statesmen and polemical writers in abundance. Historical literature has been enriched by the works of Diego Barros Arana, Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna, Miguel Luis Amunategui, Carlos Walker Martinez, and others. One of the earliest native histories of Chile was that of Abbe J. Ignacio Molina, an ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... statements of doctrine very similar to Creeds, but usually longer and polemical, as well as didactic; they are in the main, though not exclusively, associated with Protestantism; the 16th century produced many, including the Sixty-seven Articles of the Swiss reformers, drawn up by Zwingli in 1523; the Augsburg Confession ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... as you can, in mixed companies, argumentative, polemical conversations; which, though they should not, yet certainly do, indispose for a time the contending parties toward each other; and, if the controversy grows warm and noisy, endeavor to put an end to it by some genteel ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Footnote 8: The polemical treatise of Erasmus on this same subject appeared earlier; besides, Erasmus was not actually a teacher ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... Neither the polemical Erasmus nor the witty humorist had been lost in the erudite divine and the disillusioned reformer. The paper-warrior we would further gladly have dispensed with, but not the humorist, for many treasures of literature. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... interesting. Inheriting weak eyes from his mother, he had overtasked their powers, especially in writing the Defensiones, and had become entirely blind. Although his person was included in the general amnesty, his polemical works were burned by the hangman; and the pen that had so powerfully battled for a party, now returned to the service of its first love, poetry. His loss of power and place was the world's gain. In his forced seclusion, he produced the greatest of English ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Questions are found in an undated Wittenberg edition of the Small Catechism, which appeared about 1560, containing pictures dated 1551. Referring to this edition, the Wittenberg proof-reader, Christopher Walther, in a polemical writing (1566) against Aurifaber, asserted that the Questions were not written by Luther, but by John Lang of Erfurt ( 1548). The question at issue has not yet been decided. For while the contents of the Questions reproduce, from beginning to end, Luther's thoughts, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... held the see. He was made Bishop of Chichester in 1605, Bishop of Ely in 1609, and moved to Winchester nine years later. As a pious and austere man, a powerful preacher (an "angel in the pulpit," he was called), a scholar versed in patristic literature, and a polemical writer, he is well known. Milton's elegy suffices to prove the great respect and admiration which he inspired in his contemporaries, and he held a considerable influence over James I.; but his "Manual of Devotion" is the only volume of all his writings that ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... wrote the greater part of Satiro-mastix. 'Mastic' is doubtless an adjective formed without recondite significance from the substantive 'mastic,' i.e. the gum commonly used at the time for stopping decayed teeth. No hypothesis of a polemical intention is needed to account for Shakespeare's conception of Ajax or Thersites. There is no trait in either character as depicted by Shakespeare which a reading of Chapman's Homer would fail to suggest. The controversial interpretation of the play is in conflict with chronology ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... when Goethe was only sixteen years old. It derives additional interest from the fact of its being the very earliest piece of his that is preserved. The few other pieces included by Goethe under the title of Religion and Church are polemical, and devoid of interest to the ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... exasperated, opened a correspondence with Baxter, and wrote a treatise for his benefit, in which, through a hundred pages of polemical Latin, he proved that the Church of Rome was founded on a rock. This he sent to Baxter, and challenged him to overthrow his reasons. Baxter sent an answer for which Rale expresses great scorn as to both manner and matter. He made a rejoinder, directed not only against ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... as you may imagine, were not of a highly doctrinal, still less of a polemical, cast. They perhaps did not search the conscience very powerfully; for you remember that to Mrs. Patten, who had listened to them thirty years, the announcement that she was a sinner appeared an uncivil heresy; but, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Journal des Savants. The original matter, the Memoires, contain a mine of information for the student of the history of French Literature; but the reviews, critical notices, etc., to which Byron refers, were of a highly polemical and partisan character, and were the subject of attack on the part of Protestant and free-thinking antagonists. In a letter to Moore, dated Ravenna, June 22, 1821, Byron says, "Now, if we were but together a little to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... fall short of the ideal, because they drugged ancient history with modern politics. The Jesuit learning of the sixteenth century was sham learning, because it was tainted with the interested motives of Church patriotism. To search antiquity with polemical objects in view, is destructive of 'that equilibrium of the reason, the imagination, and the taste, that even temper of philosophical calm, that singleness of purpose,' which were all required for Pattison's ideal ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... His polemical disposition again revived. He had now been safe so long, that he forgot his fears, and published a Treatise of true Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the best means to prevent the growth ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... as a thinker has suffered somewhat unjustly as a result of his refusal to square his tenets either with democracy or with its opposite. It has been said that ideas were only of use to him so far as they were of polemical service, that the amazing fertility and acuteness of his mind worked only in a not too scrupulous determination to overwhelm his antagonists in the several arguments—on India, or America, on Ireland or on France—which made up his political career. He was, said Carlyle, "vehement ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... which are given to Beethoven's sickness in 1802, the testament which he wrote at that time, and some remarks upon the "Christ on the Mount of Olives," these chapters are devoted to the "Heroic Symphony,"—its history, its explanation, and a polemical discourse directed against the views of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... themselves more thoroughly with weapons than before. Soon afterwards, the intemperate zeal of another individual, armed to the teeth—not, however, like the martial sheriff and his forces, with arquebus and javelin, but with the still more deadly weapons of polemical theology,—was very near causing a general outbreak. A peaceful and not very numerous congregation were listening to one of their preachers in a field outside the town. Suddenly an unknown individual in plain ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
