"Sophistry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... longer privately and apart, but jointly and in public, all of them, they began to slander Dion, noising it about that he had charmed and bewitched Dionysius by Plato's sophistry, to the end that when he was persuaded voluntarily to part with his power, and lay down his authority, Dion might take it up, and settle it upon his sister Aristomache's children. Others professed to be indignant that the Athenians, who formerly had come to Sicily with a great ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Mr. Hope-Scott never exceeded the legitimate bounds of forensic debate. All litigated questions, and especially this species of private legislation, have two sides, and it is the business of an advocate to present in the most favourable light the cause which he is retained to defend. Deliberate sophistry is as culpable as false relations of fact; but completeness or judicial impartiality belongs to the tribunal, and not to the representative of the litigant. When all moral scruples have been allowed their full weight, the qualifications of a great advocate are almost exclusively ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... accommodate himself to the situation, no time for sophistry. He was not equipped with the forty years of steadily growing callousness that had vanished; the fiend who had inspired him with the lust for torture had deserted him, and the sight and the knowledge of himself came as suddenly as a ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of business yielded profits, that act, whether cheating, robbing or slaughtering, was justified by some sophistry or other. Astor did not debauch, spoliate, and incite slaughter because he took pleasure in doing them. Perhaps—to extend charitable judgment—he would have preferred to avoid them. But they were all part of the formulated necessities ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... Englishman's sophistry very shocking to Lapham. It addressed itself in him to that easy-going, not evilly intentioned, potential immorality which regards common property as common prey, and gives us the most corrupt municipal governments under the sun—which makes the poorest voter, when he has tricked into ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Let him set his mind and heart upon a given pursuit, pleasure, or line of conduct not altogether advisable at the moment, and the ingenuity of the excuses by which he justified himself were monuments of elaborate sophistry. Yet, if later he lost interest, he reversed his arguments with supreme disregard for his ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... rank sophistry. The question is:—Does a thief (and a fraudulent debtor is no better) acquire a claim to impunity by not possessing the power of restoring the goods? Every moral act derives its character (says a Schoolman with an unusual combination of profundity with quaintness) ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "That is sophistry. I am a woman and I have been a wife. I know what I say. You have no right to marry any woman and allow the existence of such a possibility. It may not be logic, ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... be (return'd Don Henrique) my Honour, my Friendship forbids it. No (she return'd) your Honour requires it; and if your Friendship opposes your Honour, it can have no sure and solid Foundation. Female Sophistry! (cry'd Henrique;) but you need no Art nor Artifice, Ardelia, to make me love you: Love you! (pursu'd he:) By that bright Sun, the Light and Heat of all the World, you are my only Light and Heat—Oh, Friendship! Sacred Friendship, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... smallest circumstances in reference to it are of importance, yet it were less vital to doubt the miraculous inspiration of a genealogy than the authoritative teaching of an epistle; or to doubt the date of a book than its contents. No doubt is unimportant; but it were merely repeating the sophistry of the Stoics, in making all sins equal, to deny gradations of importance in doubts; gradations which however are not here put forward to defend eclecticism, but to enforce the lesson, that, in dealing with a doubter, the consideration of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... History of England is a classic: though it can hardly be said to be an adequate account of our country. Few books have ever exercised so amazing an influence as Rousseau's Social Contract; yet the loosest mind of to-day can perceive its sophistry. Burke's diatribes on the French Revolution affected the history of Europe; though no one denies that they were inspired by passion and deformed by panic. Hobbes has very few readers to-day; but the Leviathan may last ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... and daughters, to whom you dare to unbosom the most secret as well as the most shameful actions. You kneel down at his feet and whisper in his ear your most intimate thoughts and desires, and your most polluting deeds; because your church, by dint of cunning and sophistry, has succeeded in persuading you that there was no impropriety or danger in doing so; that the man whom you chose for your spiritual guide and confident could never be tempted or tainted by such foul recitals. But that same church, through some mysterious providences, is made to ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... Letters would be as a kind of satirical poems; the short, and for ever balanced, sentences constitute a true metre; and the connection is that of satiric poetry, a witty logic, an association of thoughts by amusing semblances of cause and effect, the sophistry of which the reader has an interest in not stopping to detect, for it flatters his love of mischief, and ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... plenty of sophistry. Her father had always assured her of the invalidity of the marriage, without thinking it necessary to dwell on his own arrangements for making it invalid, so that was no reasonable ground of objection; and a lady ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have bad knights, that good knights have bad tempers, that the Church has rough priests and coarse cardinals; I have known it ever since I was born. You fool! you had only to say, 'Yes, it is rather a shame,' and I should have forgotten the affair. But I saw on your mouth the twitch of your infernal sophistry; I knew that something was wrong with you and your cathedrals. Something is wrong; everything is wrong. You are not an angel. That is not a church. It is not the rightful king ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... voluptuous surroundings with which my fancy enlarged upon it! No, indeed,—my invention to John Meavy was nothing; but, as a means to profit you and me and the rest of us, 't was a thing of the grandest import. So, at first, he would not have had us keep our secret for a day; but I—by a sophistry that is only sophistic when we add to the consideration man's impotent and easily perverted will—brought him into my plans, showing him what an instrument for good vast riches would be in his hands. And he was ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... when they draw in their chairs to dinner. Indeed, a good meal and a bottle of wine is an answer to most standard works upon the question. When a man's heart warms to his viands, he forgets a great deal of sophistry, and soars into a rosy zone of contemplation. Death may be knocking at the door, like the Commander's statue;[15] we have something else in hand, thank God, and let him knock. Passing bells are ringing all the world over. All the ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle at any cost which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings. The judicious and candid mind of Machiavelli shows itself in his luminous, manly, and polished language. The style of Montesquieu, on the other hand, indicates in every page a lively and ingenious, but an unsound mind. Every trick of expression, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in Greece"[905] without feeling that his vindication of Plato is complete and unanswerable: "Plato never represents the Sophists as teaching a lax morality to their disciples. He does not make sophistry to consist in holding wicked opinions; he represents them as only too orthodox in general,[906] but capable of giving utterance to immoral paradoxes for the sake of vanity. Sophistry rather tampers and trifles with the moral convictions than directly attacks them." The ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... correspondence of persons whose interests and passions were diametrically opposed to those of our correspondents, and find that, when they have occasion to refer to them, they also confirm the great facts already ascertained, then our belief becomes conviction which can not be overturned by any sophistry, that these things did occur. If Whig and Tory agree in relating the facts of James' flight, and William's accession, if the letters of his Jacobite friends and those of the French ambassador confirm the statements ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... A: What poor sophistry from the poor sophists who have taught you. Indeed you are in a bad way to be free like your dog! Do you not eat, sleep, propagate like him, even almost to the attitude? Do you want the sense of smell other than through your nose? Why do you want to have liberty otherwise ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... mind had been, she wronged him when she said he had made sport of her for his own pleasure. She might then dismiss him and proceed with her marriage, but first she must know this much of the truth at least. So he argued, insensible to the sophistry of his reasoning, which was in reality impelled by the hunger to see her and hear her voice again. He snatched his hat and bolted out, almost running ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... several of the Peers, and especially by Lord Cowper, the "silver-tongued Cowper," who had {217} been so distinguished a Lord Chancellor under Anne, and under George himself. Lord Cowper's was an eloquent and a powerful speech. It tore to pieces the wretched web of flimsy sophistry by which the supporters of the Bill endeavored to make out that it was not a measure of religious persecution. Indeed, there were some of these who insisted that, so far from being a measure of persecution, it was a measure ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... hears. The Symposium of Plato is a work of this character, and can with difficulty be rendered in any words but the writer's own. There are so many half-lights and cross-lights, so much of the colour of mythology, and of the manner of sophistry adhering—rhetoric and poetry, the playful and the serious, are so subtly intermingled in it, and vestiges of old philosophy so curiously blend with germs of future knowledge, that agreement among interpreters is not to be expected. The expression 'poema magis putandum quam comicorum poetarum,' ...
— Symposium • Plato
... day and generation if it isn't to do something that's worth while, and to leave behind us at the last something that hasn't got the American eagle stamped on it with the motto 'In God We Trust.' Ugh! How the good Lord must hate us for that copyrighted chunk of sophistry I It's a wonder He doesn't send His angels down to make ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... indeed, than Luther there have been. Some of these have also made attempts to introduce needed reforms in the corrupt Roman Church. Rome met their learned and labored arguments with the consummate skill of a past master in sophistry. Those learned efforts came to naught. Rome will never be reformed by human learning and scholarship. Scholars are rarely men of action. It is because Professor Luther taught and acted that Rome hates him. He would have been permitted to lecture in peace whatever he wished—others ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... which he had been educated, rushed on his mind, and, like furies armed with fiery scourges, seemed determined to drive him to despair. As he combated these horrible recollections with distracted feelings, but with a resolved mind, he became aware that his arguments were answered by the sophistry of another, and that the dispute was no longer confined to his own thoughts. The Author of Evil was present in the room with him in bodily shape, and, potent with spirits of a melancholy cast, was impressing upon him the desperation of his state, and urging ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... think, not pausing that she might answer her aunt's sophistry, which she hardly noticed, but that she might consider, if it were possible, what it was that she was about to do;—that there might be left a moment to her before she had surrendered herself for ever to her doom. And then she spoke. "Aunt Charlotte," she said, "if you will ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... you are a victim of sophistry—sophistry of the most dangerous kind. I can't argue with you, but I pity you, and ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... which is not by holding up its hand, but by falling on its face. But there is no more curious quality in its degradation than a sort of carelessness, at once of hurry and fatigue, with which it flings down its argument—or rather its refusal to argue. It does not even write sophistry: it writes anything. It does not so much poison the reader's mind as simply assume that the reader hasn't got one. For instance, one of these papers printed an article on Sir Stuart Samuel, who, having broken the great Liberal statute ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... that strong display of fervour for which I was remarkable at my years, and expected old Barnet to be utterly confounded; but he only shook his head, and, with the most provoking grin, said: "There he goes! Sickan sublime and ridiculous sophistry I never heard come out of another mouth but ane. There needs nae aiths to be sworn afore the session wha is your father, young goodman. I ne'er, for my part, saw a son sac like a dad, sin' my een first opened." With that he went away, saying with an ill-natured wince: "You made to honour ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... and his friends discuss is, the endurance of pain. Is it an unmixed evil? Can anything console the sufferer? Cicero at once condemns the sophistry of Epicurus. The wise man cannot pretend indifference to pain; it is enough that he endure it with courage, since, beyond all question, it is sharp, bitter, and hard to bear. And what is this courage? Partly ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... except by his own choice. You might have been master of the vineyard, but you have preferred to have the vineyard master you. Confronted with an uncongenial task, you slunk away from it and shielded yourself behind the sophistry that the work was unworthy of you. As if any work were unworthy of ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... not there to listen to such a world-old hypothesis—to such a time-worn, long-ago-refuted, bald, feeble, illogical, vicious, patent sophistry—to an ancient, baseless, wearisome, ragged, unfounded, insidious, falsehood originated by women themselves, and by them insinuated, foisted, thrust, spread, and ingeniously promulgated into the ears of mankind by underhanded, secret and deceptive methods, for the purpose of augmenting, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... convention representing the people—the people including all interests, and all interests constituting justice—it was impossible that the national tribunal could violate justice, and that, consequently, it was useless to subject it to forms. Such was the chain of sophistry, by means of which the committee transformed the convention into a tribunal. Robespierre's party showed itself much more consistent, dwelling only on state reasons, and ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... as also in part of our time, said Luther, it was dangerous studying, when divinity and all good arts were contemned; and when fine, expert, and prompt wits were plagued with sophistry. Aristotle, the Heathen, was held in such repute and honour, that whoso undervalued or contradicted him was held, at Cologne, for the greatest heretic; whereas they themselves understood not Aristotle. The Sophists did much ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... escape from those ills, invent "another and a better world" of the imagination, in which, along with the ills, the innocent goods of sense would also find no place. This integrity of the instinctive reactions, this freedom from all moral sophistry and strain, gives a pathetic dignity to ancient pagan feeling. And this quality Whitman's outpourings have not got. His optimism is too voluntary and defiant; his gospel has a touch of bravado and an affected ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the trouble of cultivation, the Englishman discovers some productive germ that with his indefatigable energy brings forth a thousand fold. Nor is Colonial work, industrial activity and commercial thrift disturbed by bureaucratic sophistry or immoderate fiscal pretentions, that so frequently suffocate the most promising and audacious undertakings ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... admitting that the guilt has become a part of one's being, and humbling one's pride to the ground. The public sentence pronounced by the judge, the shame which he fixes upon the culprit, has, then, for its object to pave the way toward reformation, to break down the defenses which the sophistry of wickedness sets up, to compel the man to see himself as others see him, to force him to realize to the full the evil of his present state. Not to blast him utterly, not to exclude him forever from the kindly society of men, but to lead him into the way along ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... illustrative detail with which he fills the scheme in every part. He knows, and can shrewdly criticise every thinker and writer who has preceded him; he classifies them as he classifies the mental faculties, the parts of logical speech, the parts of sophistry, the parts of rhetoric, the parts of animals, the parts of the soul, the parts of the state; he defines, distinguishes, combines, classifies, with the same sureness and minuteness of method in them all. He can start from a general conception, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... "I shall still find you sincere, Harrington; scorning to take any unfair advantage in argument, and impatient of all sophistry, as I have ever found you. You will be fully aware of the moral significance of the conclusion at which you have arrived, —even that there is no conclusion to be arrived at; and you will be miserable,—as all must be who have your power ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... sentence thrown away—no time lost in mere ornament. Perhaps no book extant containing so few pages, can said to convey so many genuine historical facts. There is here no attempt to glaze over recorded truth, or win the reader by sophistry to opinions merely those of the author. The pure, simple history of Queen Mary is placed before the reader, and each one is left to form an unbiased opinion from events impartially recorded there. One great and most valuable ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... in life be overcome" has not reached his home, nor was there hanging on the wall, as in so many German homes, the famous order of the day of Crown Prince Rupert of Bavaria, which commences with "Soldiers of the army! Before you are the English!" in which he exhorts his troops with all the tricky sophistry ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... considered themselves not only at liberty to use all means against society, the enemy; but honour or scruples of any sort among themselves were tabooed. A naturally honourable man like Giannoli was, of course, free from the danger of falling victim to such perverted sophistry. But the manner in which these doctrines succeeded in perverting the minds of fairly intelligent and well-meaning men is ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... cause of nothing, that men should blame me rather than not canvass my actions or fail to attribute to me any initiative. I felt somehow that the blame would lie with my counsellors; they had undertaken to guide and control me. If they failed they, more than I, must answer for the failure. Sophistry of this kind passes well enough with one who wants excuses, and may even array itself in a cloak of plausibility; it was strong in my mind by virtue of the strong resentment from which it sprang, and the strong ally ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... fascinated us, but Pierre Leroux, with his tone of profound conviction and his thorough appreciation of the great problems awaiting solution, exercised a still more potent influence, and we did not see the shortcomings of his studies and the sophistry of his mind. My customary course of reading was Pascal, Malebranche, Euler, Locke, Leibnitz, Descartes, Reid, and Dugald Stewart. In the way of religious books, my preferences were for Bossuet's Sermons and the Elevations sur ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Precisely the same sophistry will not indeed suffice for those disciples who, adopting the alternative law of the utilitarian code, feel bound to attend to the consequences not of individual actions, but of classes of actions. The cleverest ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... there's a little sophistry in that argument," replied I; "but we had better wait till we find whether we shall have the opportunity afforded us of trying our powers of fascination before we quarrel about the effects to be produced by them. I cannot ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... good principles, and that plain, steady, good sense, which goes straight to its object, without being dazzled or imposed upon by sophistry. She was unacquainted with the refinements of sentiment, but she distinctly knew right from wrong, and had sufficient resolution to abide by the right. Perhaps many romantic heroines might have thought it a generous self-devotion to have become in similar circumstances ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... is what we are so ready to say,' she answered, her breath coming more quickly, and her eye meeting his with a kind of antagonism in it; 'but it is all sophistry. The only safety lies in following out the plain duty. The parent wants the child's help and care, the child is bound to give it; that is all it needs to know. If it forms new ties, it belongs to them, not to the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a wholesome dislike to the involving of a straightforward situation in a tangle of disingenuous sophistry, I ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... hardly used. Not so had fortune treated him in the past. Most of all he bewailed the inclusion of a woman in the necessary chicanery of diverting votes. Catch him again being over-persuaded by Bill Moore's sophistry! ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... Callias, Thrasimachus, Polus, Aristophanes, or some of his adversaries and emulators might object; but neither they nor [4425]Anytus and Melitus his bitter enemies, that condemned him for teaching Critias to tyrannise, his impiety for swearing by dogs and plain trees, for his juggling sophistry, &c., never so much as upbraided him with impure love, writing or speaking of that subject; and therefore without question, as he concludes, both Socrates and Plato in this are justly to be excused. But suppose they had been a little overseen, should divine Plato be defamed? no, rather ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... fundamental principles of morals. Of such matters, poets and orators are the most unexceptionable of all witnesses; for they address themselves to the general feelings and sympathies of mankind; they are neither warped by system, nor perverted by sophistry; they can attain none of their objects; they can neither please nor persuade, if they dwell on moral sentiments not in unison with those of their readers. No system of moral philosophy can surely disregard the general feelings of human nature, and the according judgment of all ages and ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... ceremonial observances and devout contemplation. The Indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtilty of logical discussion, though these are directed to unattainable ends,—to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the Supreme with Nature. Nothing seemed to come out of these speculations but ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Who cannot see the sophistry of this? Who does not see that cash is only a transient form, which men give at the time to other values, to real objects of usefulness, for the sole object of facilitating their arrangements? In the midst of social complications, the man who is in a condition to lend, scarcely ever has the exact ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... for a moment. If such a doubt had entered my mind I should have been miserable indeed; but no such thought fretted me. I was only hurt that he could have brought himself to believe anything against me, that he should have listened to her false sophistry and not have asked for my explanation; but, as I remembered that love was prone to jealousy and not above suspicion, I soon ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sophistry!' said Rose. 'You accuse or you exonerate. Nobody can be half guilty. If you do not hold him innocent you are unjust!' Lady Jocelyn rejoined: 'Yes? It's singular what a stock of axioms young people have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... regarded as addicted to the refinements of an over-fastidious morality, reviewing the professional rules that are recognised in England, asks 'whether it be right that not merely believing, but knowing a statement to be true, he should do all that can be done by sophistry, by rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indignant exclamation, by gesture, by play of features, by terrifying one honest witness, by perplexing another, to cause a jury to think that statement false.' Bentham denounced in even stronger language the habitual method of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... said. "Oh, I know that this is no new thing. There is no novelty in the situation of a girl giving herself to a man whom she despises, for the sake of his money. The records of the Divorce Court teem with such cases. For the battered honour of my father I am going to lose my own. Be silent—no sophistry of yours can hide the brutal truth. I hate that man from the bottom of my soul, and he knows it. And yet his one desire is to marry me. In Heaven's ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... of Dogmatism was its absolute reliance on the wisdom of Hippocrates, and Methodism was marred by its insufficiency and sophistry. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... a bitter word; Say rather fear—of what belongs to Heav'n. Was there no crime, Anselmo, when thou stol'st, Like a disguised thief, this trusting heart? What sophistry can'st thou put forth to show Thou should'st retain thy ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... strength with her fully. The first attempt had been to make her an accomplice by sophistry; by destroying her faith in Christianity, and confusing her sense of right and wrong, to bring her into the ranks of those convenient women who regard the marriage-tie only as a friendly alliance to cover licence ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... considerably more valuable; and one would think it apparent, that such occasional premiums have no more to do with justice, than a levy of black mail, paid by its victim, because he would fare no worse. The New York Express exposes the sophistry of its contemporary, by simply asking what is paid to authors of less reputation, who may possess even superior merit; and The Literary World—a periodical of The Spectator class,—though it growls a little at Punch, and now and then takes too much in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... were offensive to Christians; and that it was the duty of a Christian prince to suppress pagan ceremonies. In the epistles of Symmachus and of Ambrose both the petition and the reply are preserved. They are a strange blend of sophistry, superstition, sound sense and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have been, and his brow grew red with shame at their recollection. One thing he did hope, hope sincerely—that Lucy did not care for him. That she liked him very much, and had been on most confidential terms with him, he knew; but he did hope her liking went no deeper. Strange sophistry! how it will deceive the human heart! how prone we are to admit it! Lionel was honest enough in his hope now: but, not many hours before, he had been hugging his heart with the delusion that Lucy ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... mixed with sophistry, we beg the reader to recollect the popular story of the Irishman who was run over by a troop of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... sophistry, no doubt, but oh, it's beguiling sophistry! It's so perfectly disguised that I seldom recognize it except at night when I lie awake, and it sits on my bed, without ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... oaths by which he had bound himself to murder Duncan, another art of sophistry by which men have sometimes deluded their consciences, and persuaded themselves that what would be criminal in others is virtuous in them: this argument Shakespeare, whose plan obliged him to make Macbeth yield, has not confuted, though he might easily have shown that a former obligation could ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... many weeks off. Will they let the casuists quibble away the very words, and adulterate the generous spirit of the constitution? When a measure passes by the proper authorities, shall it be stopped by force? Sophistry may change the form of the question, may hide some of the consequences, and may dupe some into an opinion of its moderation when triumphant; yet the fact will speak for itself. The government can not go to the halves. It would be another, a worse government, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... The glaring sophistry of Satan's citation of scripture was unworthy a categorical reply; his doctrine deserved neither logic nor argument; his misapplication of the written word was nullified by scripture that was germane; ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... mind will seek to cover over the fact with a web of sophistry; he will reflect how old the dead man was, how wicked, how wretched; he will try to convince himself that it was only an accident that occasioned his death—a push given by him in sudden anger—how ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... field, the weapons of the understanding used, and the arguments of science advanced, not in such a way however as to injure simple-minded faith. This was the manner in which Christ opposed the scepticism of the Sadducees and the sophistry of the Pharisees, and this is what is meant by that saying of his, concerning the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove. High hung this garland; but it was worthy of the sweat ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... was about Mary that made her little speeches, half argumentative, all-pleading, so wonderfully persuasive. Her facts were mere fancies, and her logic was not even good sophistry. As to real argument and reasoning, there was nothing of either in them. It must have been her native strength of character and intensely vigorous personality; some unknown force of nature, operating through her occultly, that turned the channels of other persons' ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... learning, that men of such acute understandings as Abelard and Lombard, who might have done much to reform the errors of the church, and to restore science in Europe, should have depraved both, by applying their admirable parts to weave those cobwebs of sophistry, and to confound the clear simplicity of evangelical truths, by a false philosophy ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... viragos. But in Shakespeare all the elements of womanhood are holy, and there is the sweet yet dignified feeling of all that continuates society, as sense of ancestry and of sex, with a purity unassailable by sophistry, because it rests not in the analytic processes, but in that sane equipoise of the faculties, during which the feelings are representative of all past experience,—not of the individual only, but of all those by whom she has been educated, and their predecessors, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... the Examiner, and in a crowd of pamphlets and periodicals which followed in its train, the humour of the poet Prior, the bitter irony of Swift, an Irish writer who was now forcing his way into fame, as well as St. John's own brilliant sophistry, spent themselves on the abuse of the war and of its general. "Six millions of supplies and almost fifty millions of debt!" Swift wrote bitterly; "the High Allies have been the ruin of us!" Marlborough was ridiculed and reviled, even his courage ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... singular skill. His mind was fertile in resources. He was a master of logic. No man perceived more quickly than he the strength or the weakness of an argument, and no one excelled him in the use of sophistry and fallacy. Where he could not elucidate a point to his own advantage, he would fatally becloud it for his opponent. In that peculiar style of debate which in intensity resembles a physical combat, he had no equal. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... giant who used to spoil young pilgrims with sophistry. He attacked Mr. Greatheart with a club; but Greatheart pierced him under the fifth rib, and then cut off his head.—Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... all the other unorganized Territories. This contention was one of those non-sequiturs of which Douglas, in the heat of argument, was too often guilty. Still more regrettable, because it seemed to convict him of sophistry, was the mode by which he sought to evade the charge of the Appeal, that the act organizing New Mexico and settling the boundary of Texas had reaffirmed the Missouri Compromise. To establish his point he had to assume that all the land cut off from ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... relating to the works of the "veritable mound-builders" as to leave no hiatus into which the theory of a lost race or a "Toltec occupation" can possibly be thrust. It forms an unbroken chain connecting the mound-builders and historical Indians which no sophistry or reasoning can break. Not only are these graves found in mounds of considerable size, but they are also connected with one of the most noted groups in the United States, namely, the one on Colonel Tumlin's place, near Cartersville, Ga., known as the Etowah mounds, ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... I; "and, Miss Leavenworth, it is this thing which makes your cousin's position absolutely dangerous. It is a fact that, left unexplained, must ever link her name with infamy; a bit of circumstantial evidence no sophistry can smother, and no denial obliterate. Only her hitherto spotless reputation, and the efforts of one who, notwithstanding appearances, believes in her innocence, keeps her so long from the clutch of the officers of justice. That key, and ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... attacks the Skeptics of the day who devoted their minds to destructive dialectical quibbling and sophistry[112] instead of seeking for God and the human good. They are ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... utterly absurd to maintain that some advantages which were withheld from a man accused of felony might reasonably be allowed to a man accused of treason. What probability was there that any sheriff would pack a jury, that any barrister would employ all the arts of sophistry and rhetoric, that any judge would strain law and misrepresent evidence, in order to convict an innocent person of burglary or sheep stealing? But on a trial for high treason a verdict of acquittal must always be considered as a defeat of the government; and there was but too much ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he turned aside from the worm in his path,—so I have allowed to him whatever contrasts with his inexpiable crime have been recorded on sufficient authority. But I have invariably taken care that the crime itself should stand stripped of every sophistry, and hideous to the perpetrator as well as to the world. Allowing all by which attention to his biography may explain the tremendous paradox of fearful guilt in a man aspiring after knowledge, and not generally inhumane; allowing that the crime came upon him in the partial insanity ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... censure. I might say of Giri what Scott wrote of patriotism, that "as it is the fairest, so it is often the most suspicious, mask of other feelings." Carried beyond or below Right Reason, Giri became a monstrous misnomer. It harbored under its wings every sort of sophistry and hypocrisy. It might easily—have been turned into a nest of cowardice, if Bushido had not a keen and ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... they rot—Ambition's honoured fools! Yes, Honour decks the turf that wraps their clay! Vain Sophistry! in these behold the tools, The broken tools, that tyrants cast away By myriads, when they dare to pave their way With human hearts—to what?—a dream alone. Can despots compass aught that hails their sway? Or call with truth ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... more logical the American argument became the less intelligible it appeared to most Englishmen, and what seemed at last the very axioms of politics to the colonial radical struck the conservative British mind as the sophistry ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... materiality, and abstruse investigations of useless subjects, they are mere literary legerdemain. Their disputations being usually built on an undefinable chimera, are solved by a paradox. Instead of exercising their power of reason they exert their powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide every subject with such casuistical minuteness, that those who are not convinced, are almost invariably confounded. This custom, it must be granted, is not quite so prevalent as it once was: a general ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Prof. Weber (op. cit.) finds Greek influence—his universal solvent—in the development of India's religion, philosophy, literature, astronomy, medicine, architecture, &c. To support this fallacy the most tortuous sophistry, the most absurd etymological deductions are resorted to. If one fact more than another has been set at rest by comparative mythology, it is that their fundamental religious ideas, and most of their gods, were derived by the Greeks from religions flourishing in the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... to discuss with himself the ethics of the situation. A clear call had come to him on behalf of the man who had been his best friend, even though he had never met him. He must answer that call, or he must turn his back on it. Sophistry would not help at all. There were no excuses his ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... moral theory that is merely coercive and arbitrary, therefore, is not in a genuine sense moral. A morality, to justify itself, must appeal to the heart of man. The good which it recommends must be a good which man can without sophistry approve. And the good for which man can whole-heartedly strive is not determined by logic, but, in the last analysis, by biology. Human beings cannot freely call good that to which they have no spontaneous prompting. Those ascetics who have denied the flesh may have ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... about Sinfi, Wilderspin, and Cyril Aylwin, speaking of them in the most genial and affectionate terms. In a few minutes, without withdrawing a word he had said about either of them, he had entirely changed the spirit of every word. At first I tried to resist his sophistry, but it was not to be resisted. I ended by apologising to him for ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... own heart is, after all, the best reply to the sophistry just noticed. No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question. It is not more incomprehensible than distinctive. There lives no man who at some period has ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... been confounded with antivivisection by the union of zany cranks and trade-unionized men of medicine, who have not refrained from the coercion of patients, from the deception of the public, from the inoculation of legislators with mendacity, capsuled in sophistry, and from the direct or indirect corruption or intimidation of not a few public journals. The discovery of the ways and means and men is bringing the evil to ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... Lady Emily Lindore had undergone exactly the same process in its formation as that of her cousin; yet in all things they differed. Whether it were the independence of high birth, or the pride of a mind conscious of its own powers, she had hitherto resisted the sophistry of her governesses and the solecisms of her aunt. But her notions of right and wrong were too crude to influence the general tenor of her life, or operate as restraints upon a naturally high spirit and impetuous temper. Not all the united efforts of her preceptresses ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... and fully acknowledged by all the virtuous and the candid, that in principle it is as sinful to hold a human being in bondage who has been born in Carolina, as one who has been born in Africa. All that sophistry of argument which has been employed to prove, that although it is sinful to send to Africa to procure men and women as slaves, who have never been in slavery, that still, it is not sinful to keep those ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... enforcement of religion, morality, loyalty, and subordination, while it delights and improves the wise and the good, will, I trust, prove an effectual antidote to that detestable sophistry which has been lately imported from France, under the false name of Philosophy, and with a malignant industry has been employed against the peace, good order, and happiness of society, in our free and prosperous country; but thanks be to GOD, without producing the pernicious effects which were ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... ours. It may be repeated that Browning is no apologist for Louis Napoleon: he simply calls him to the front, and, standing aside, allows him to speak for himself.[46] In his speech under these circumstances we find just as much truth entangled with just as much sophistry as we might reasonably expect. Here, we get what seems the genuine truth; there, in what appears to the speaker a satisfactory defence, we see that he is simply exposing his own moral defect; again, like Bishop Blougram, he "says true things, but calls them by wrong names." Passages of the last ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... I argued with myself. I almost got myself convinced sometimes. But I knew in my heart it was only sophistry. You see, it isn't as if she would let me do anything for her, even if she wanted anything done, which I've no particular reason to suppose she does. She's English, and a stranger over here, but she told me—when we were friends—that ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... bane of his life and happiness. They need not be surprised, then, to hear that from the want of any self-sustaining power in himself he fell into the use of liquor again; he said he could not live without it, but then he did not make the experiment; for he took every sophistry that appeared to make in his favor for granted. He lived, if it could be called life, for two years and a half after this melancholy accident, but without the spring or energy necessary to maintain his position, or conduct his business, which declined as rapidly as he did himself. ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... afternoon, Unto each other say:— "Dear bishop," quoth the brave huzzar, "As nobody denies "That you a wise logician are, "And I am—otherwise, "'Tis fit that in this question, we "Stick each to his own art— "That yours should be the sophistry, "And mine the fighting part. "My creed, I need not tell you, is "Like that of Wellington, "To whom no harlot comes amiss, "Save her of Babylon; "And when we're at a loss for words, "If laughing reasoners ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Pope, as such, they insisted, might decide for peace, and condemn the shedding of blood, whilst, as temporal sovereign, he would authorize his ministers to act as should seem to them proper, and they would declare for war. This miserable sophistry only showed the weakness of the government which employed it. The Pontiff could not be expected to act as if he were two distinct persons. Nor whilst his ministers waged war, could he, whose representatives they were, be considered as neutral. For a few months that this ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... society, will be able to repress all anti-social feelings. He aims at order and symmetry, oblivious that human nature does not easily and rapidly bend to such treatment. It is his inability to discover the true mode of investigation that accounts for much of Rousseau's sophistry. His truisms and verbal propositions, his dogmatic assertions and unreal demonstrations, savour more of theology than of political science, while his quasi-mathematical method of reasoning from abstract formulae, assumed to be axiomatic, gives a deceptive air of exactness ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... our modern Caesars have most liberally construed! I am a poor casuist, Sir; nor do I think the loyal commander of the Coquette would wish to uphold all that sophistry can invent on such a subject. If we begin with potentates, for instance, we shall find the Most Christian King bent on appropriating as many of his neighbors' goods to his own use, as ambition, under the name of glory, can covet; the Most Catholic, covering with the mantle of his Catholicity, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... device, so wearisome to modern readers, is used by Chretien preferably when some sentiment or deep emotion is to be portrayed. Ovid may well have suggested the device, but Ovid never abuses it as does the more prolix mediaeval poet. For the part playing by the eyes in mediaeval love sophistry, see J.F. Hanford, "The Debate of Heart and Eye" in "Modern Language Notes", xxvi. 161-165; and H.R. Lang, "The Eyes as Generators of Love." ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... it fair to persecute, in this way, at the instigation of a proud aristocrat (he had already learned this slang sophistry), a young man, who is almost a stranger ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... inclined. Whereas, if the oath which he accounted inviolable was once publicly known, no party with whom he might have occasion to contract, would have rested satisfied with any other. Louis XI of France practised the same sophistry, for he also had a peculiar species of oath, the only one which he was ever known to respect, and which, therefore, he was very unwilling to pledge. The only engagement which that wily tyrant accounted binding upon him, was an oath by the Holy Cross of Saint Lo d'Angers, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... how the historical representation in Isaiah liii. is of some suffering prophet or remnant, yet the truth and patience, the grief and triumph, have their highest fulfilment in Him who said, 'FATHER, not My will but Thine.'" (p. 74.) I have transcribed this passage to illustrate the miserable sophistry of the author. It is foretold by Malachi that before the great and terrible day of the LORD, Elijah is to come back to Earth[56]. John Baptist came in his "spirit and power[57]," but was not Elijah himself. How does it ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... opinion of those that have grounds to hope better of them. (7.) As to all that have unduly suffered in these matters (either in their persons or relations), through the clouds of human weakness, and Satan's wiles and sophistry, I do truly sympathize with them; taking it for granted that such as drew themselves clear of this great transgression, or that have sufficient grounds so to look upon their dear friends, have hereby been under those sore trials and ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... events had already carried Cornelia a considerable distance beyond her position on the evening of her return from New York, when she had excused her beautiful appearance, to herself, by suggesting that it would not do for the husband of her sister to detest her! That was sophistry, and it was sophistry that served her now; but the subjects upon which she exercised it were becoming hourly more and more ticklish. The woman of two weeks back would have started and turned pale before ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... almost inclined to infer from this passage that the author had identified himself so completely with his own creation as to have become slightly infected with Mr. Barry Lyndon's sophistry; for it is impossible to maintain seriously that rogues and fools are no less successful in life than men of honesty and talent. But the truth is that Thackeray found in a daring rogue a much finer subject for character-drawing than in the blameless hero, while he was deeply ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... his task of reconciling his favorite theory with the Dred Scott decision, such was his political boldness, and such had been his skill and success in sophistry, that he undertook even this hopeless effort. Douglas, therefore, made a speech at Springfield, Illinois, on the 12th of June, 1857, in which he broadly and fully indorsed and commended the opinion of Chief-Justice Taney and his concurring associates, declaring that ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... the Foreign Office now had but one policy so far as Egypt was concerned. The active sophistry in him made him advocate non- intervention in Egyptian affairs as diplomatic wisdom, though it was but personal purpose; and he almost convinced himself that he was acting from a national stand-point. Kaid and Claridge Pasha pursued their course of civilisation in the Soudan, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on, "the work should be its own reward, its own justification. At least would-be artists are told so repeatedly. Whenever one rebels at the injustice the world is there with this sophistry, feeds him with it as a nurse feeds pap to a crying child, until he's full and temporarily comatose. But just suppose for an instant that the same argument were used in any other field of endeavor. Suppose, for instance, you ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... and "Jacques," I trace the same high morality of one who had tried the liberty of circumstance only to learn to appreciate the liberty of law;—to know that license is the foe of freedom; and, though the sophistry of Passion in these books disgusted me, flowers of purest hue seemed to grow upon the dark and dirty ground. I thought she had cast aside the slough of her past life, and begun a new existence beneath the sun of a ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... for the reason that the home is loath to recognize it as anarchy, and resents any such implication on the part of the school. The father may be quite unable to exercise any control over the boy, but he is reluctant to admit the fact to the teacher. Such a boy is an anarchist and no sophistry can gloss the fact. What he needs is a liberal application of monarchy to fit him for democracy. He should read the Old Testament as a preparation for an appreciative perusal of the New Testament. If the home cannot generate in him due respect for ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson |
