"Casuistry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was then thought of the influence on young minds of the right or wrong views of political questions entertained by their instructors. The fathers were right. When the life of the nation is concerned,—in the struggle with foreign or domestic foes,—there is a right and a wrong in politics which casuistry may seek to confuse, but which sound moral sentiment cannot mistake, and which those who have schools of learning in charge should be held to respect. Better the College should be disbanded than be a nursery ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... St. Cyprian re-baptizes heretics; St. Stephen accepts their baptism. The early ages administer, the later deny, the Holy Eucharist to children.[22] Who shall say that in such practical matters, and especially in points of casuistry, points of the when, and the where, and the by whom, and the how, words written in the fourth century are to be the rule ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... of casuistry," by which the moral value of an act is determined and the exact degree of guilt attaching to ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... College, London. The subject referred to by De Morgan is his expression of opinion in his Theological Essays (1853) that future punishment is not eternal. As a result of this expression he lost his professorship at King's College. In 1866 he was made Knightbridge Professor of Casuistry, Moral Theology, and Moral Philosophy ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... thank God that he had the grace to feel sorry for the misdeed, at the same time as he lamented that "his nature was so content to follow the pleasure still." Pepys compounded with his conscience for such breaches of his oath by all manner of casuistry. He excused himself for going, contrary to his vow, to the new theatre in Drury Lane, because it was not built when his vow was framed. Finally, he stipulated with himself that he would only go to the theatre once a fortnight; but if he went oftener he would give ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... search of more than ten years, he at length found it in the hands of a poor man who dared not offer it for sale. Once in his possession, the thought of giving it up, or of letting the owner redeem it, had never even occurred to him. Yet the treasure made him rejoice with a trembling which all his casuistry would have found it hard to explain; for he would not confess to himself its real cause—namely, that his God-born essence was uneasy with a vague knowledge that it lay in the bosom of a thief. "Don't you think, sir," said Dawtie, "that whoever has that ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... character of his future work. His success at the Bar was moderate, but his fees increased steadily if slowly. He defended (unsuccessfully) a Galloway minister who was accused among other counts of 'toying with a sweetie-wife,' and it is interesting to find in his defence some casuistry about ebrius and ebriosus, which reminds one of the Baron of Bradwardine. He took part victoriously in a series of battles with sticks, between Loyalist advocates and writers and Irish Jacobin medical students, in the pit of the Edinburgh ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... Physical Science: as well as of that misinformed Moral Sense which finds in the Atonement of our LORD nothing but a stone of stumbling and a snare. It is true of Popish error also;—for what else is this but a setting up of the Human above the Divine,—(Tradition, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, the casuistry of the Confessional, and the like,)—and so, once more substituting the creature for the Creator?—What again is the fashionable intellectual sin of the day, but the self-same detestable offence, under quite a different disguise? The idea of Law,—(that ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... Royston would keep to his virtuous resolutions. The first half of them he carried out perfectly: he did go straight to Cecil Tresilyan, and tell her of his intentions to depart. She did not betray much of her disappointment or surprise, but she argued with so fascinating a casuistry against the necessity of such a sudden step, that it was no wonder if she soon convinced her hearer of the propriety of at least delaying it. In a case like this an excuse of "urgent private affairs" that would suffice for the most rigid martinet that ever tyrannized ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... surpassing the last in severity, had not rendered the path of the judges, whether lay or ghostly, altogether easy. There were found prisoners, accused of holding and teaching heretical doctrines, well skilled in holy lore, however ignorant of the casuistry of the schools, who made good their assertion that they could give a warrant for all their distinctive tenets from the Sacred Scriptures. Their arguments were so cogent, their citations were so apposite, that the auditors who had come with the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... could not prevent the return of a child-like confidence in the profound goodness of life. Everything would be right, everything was eternally bound to be right from the beginning. That inherited casuistry of temperament, which had confused the pleasant with the true for generations, had become in her less a moral conviction than a fixed quality of soul. To dwell even for a minute on "the dark side of things" awoke in her the same instinct ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... "Let casuists decide the casuistry, but the compassion the heart decides for itself. But, sir," deepening in seriousness, "as I now for the first realize, you but a moment since introduced the word irresponsible in a way I am not used to. Now, sir, though, out of a tolerant spirit, as I hope, I try my best ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... have used words studiously calculated to deceive his creatures and worshippers, is 'no religion worthy of the name.' 'Incredibile est, Deum illis verbis ad populum fuisse locutum quibis deciperetur,' is a verdict in which for once Jesuit casuistry concurs with the healthy moral sense of all mankind." (p. 458). Mr. Huxley calls believers in the Scriptures, and (apparently) believers in a personal God, bigots, old ladies of both sexes, bibliolators, fools, ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... and before him in rows sat his robed court—fifty distinguished ecclesiastics, men of high degree in the Church, of clear-cut intellectual faces, men of deep learning, veteran adepts in strategy and casuistry, practised setters of traps for ignorant minds and unwary feet. When I looked around upon this army of masters of legal fence, gathered here to find just one verdict and no other, and remembered that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to Lynbrook with the echoes of this casuistry in his brain. It seemed to him but a part of the ingenious system of evasion whereby a society bent on the undisturbed pursuit of amusement had contrived to protect itself from the intrusion of the disagreeable: ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... shares the secret, it will not be necessary to disguise the Bible style, and we may follow the text exactly. Let me try the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, omitting seven verses which refer to subtleties of Hebrew casuistry, for which we should have to go to Lyman Abbott or St. Alphonsus to ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... all his right to be treated as a moral agent. Nay, it seems to be a sin to act so as to induce him to suppose himself such. Contingent consequences must be excluded; but would, I am persuaded, weigh in favour of annulling on principle an oath sinfully extorted. But I hate casuistry so utterly, that I could not without great violence to my feelings put the case in all its bearings. For example:—it is sinful to enlarge the power of wicked agents; but to allow them to have the power of binding the conscience of those, whom they have injured, is to enlarge the power, &c. Again: ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... smile; "but is not this good advice? I have consulted God and demigod; the nymph of the river, and what I far more admire and trust, my blue-eyed Minerva. Both have said the same. My own heart was telling it already. Action, then, be mine; and into the deep sea with all this paralysing casuistry. I am happy to-day for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... iterated preaching of house-life. Remain; becontent; go round and round in one barren path, a little money, a little food and sleep, some ancient fables, old age and death. Of all the inventions of casuistry with man for ages has in various ways which manacled himself, and stayed his own advance, there is none equally potent with the supposition that nothing more is possible. Once well impress on the mind that it has already all, that advance is impossible because there is nothing ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... Hugh opportunity to contemplate incidentally the play of air and light in Ramsey's curls without her having the slightest suspicion of him!—gave her chances to ply him with questions in autobiography and social casuistry and to enjoy keenly the ridiculous majesty of his eyes and voice, while the two dear chaperons talked apart as obliviously as if she were merely asking him how deep the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... leave it to you. I am certain you and Mr. O'Donnell know best. It's too difficult and delicate for me. I am horribly blunt. Forgive me if I seemed to pretend to casuistry. I am sure I had no such meaning. I said what I thought. I always do. I never meant that it was not a very clever letter; and if it does exactly what you require it should be satisfactory. To-morrow evening John and I dine with you, and I look forward to plenty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the benevolent Mr. Wilkinson fell flat on his face in the road, but continued to laugh softly, and turned towards his flying companion a face of peculiar peace and benignity. Evan's mind went through a crisis of instantaneous casuistry, in which it may be that he decided wrongly; but about how he decided his biographer can profess no doubt. Two minutes afterwards he had overtaken Turnbull and told the tale; ten minutes afterwards he and Turnbull had somehow tumbled into the yacht called the Gibson Girl and had ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... act of complete revulsion she spurned it all: the moral casuistry that beguiled him, the church that cloaked him; spurned psalm and prophet and apostle, Christ and ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... Voland His letters to her His Regrets on My Old Dressing-gown Domestic discomfort His indomitable industry Life at Grandval Meditations on human existence Interest in the casuistry of human feeling Various sayings A point in rhetoric Holbach's impressions of England Two cases of conscience A story of human wickedness Method and Genius: an Apologue Conversation Annihilation Characteristic of the century Diderot's inexhaustible friendliness The Abbe Monnier ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... This is, I take it, some confused allusion to the great Dominican Doctor, S. Thomas Aquinas, who was regarded as being the supreme Master of scholasticism and casuistry. Casuistry must be taken in its true and original meaning—the balancing ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... request was granted. It is impossible to deny the truth of his statement, or the genuineness of his certificates. But both were loose perversions of a half-truth, shifts palliated by the uncertainties of a revolutionary epoch. A habitual casuistry is further shown in an interesting letter written at the same time to M. James, a business friend of Joseph's at Chalons, in which there occurs a passage of double meaning, to the effect that his elder brother "hopes to come in ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... his troubles ceased. He gave up his speculations and casuistry, and concluded to take things as he found them and to make them better. He became more than ever the friend and patron of his servants, rendered to them, to the best of his ability that which was ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... mind with as perfect oblivion of self as the most heroic sufferer for principle. The faculty which in Gladstone, the statesman, applied to realities and inspired only by the desire to discover the truth and to clothe it in language, assumes, in the minds of superficial observers, the air of casuistry from the nicety of its distinctions and the earnest desire of the speaker to present truth in its finest shades— in Follett, the advocate, applied indiscriminately to the development of the specious shows of things as of their essences, wore all the semblance of sincerity; and, ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... this man had put them to; but this did not greatly affect our fortunes either way. One of the most bitter thoughts of all was that a secular priest named Serjeant, who, with another named Morris, was of Gallican views, had given evidence in public court against the Jesuits' casuistry. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... I ought to drown myself first. I promised a poor fellow, who was a real modern pessimist, on my word of honour not to tell the police. I'm no hand at casuistry, but I can't break my word to a modern pessimist. It's like breaking one's word to ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... yesterday your answer, dated March 10. My offer was an honest one, and surely could only be construed as such even by the most malignant casuistry. I could answer you, but it is too late, and it is not worth while. To the mysterious menace of the last sentence, whatever its import may be—and I cannot pretend to unriddle it—I could hardly be very sensible even if I understood it, as, before ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... grasp at for herself she yearned now to pour lavishly, quickly, into Lucy's hands. Only so—such is our mingled life!—could she altogether still, violently and by force, a sort of upward surge of the soul which terrified her now and then. A mystical casuistry, bred in her naturally simple nature by the subtle influences of a long-descended Christianity, combined in her with a piteous human instinct. When she rose from her knees she was certain that she would never win and marry David Grieve; she was equally certain that she would do all in ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... folly, and was betrayed. It drags on a dishonored life, with little or no chance of recovering its character, inflicting cruel disgrace upon the unlucky family of ideas, no matter what their own innocence and respectability, to which it happens to belong. Thus Casuistry, if not a very useful, was at least a perfectly harmless, member of society, and moved in the best circles, until in an evil hour she became too intimate with the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... himself the trouble of reasoning. It encourages the indolent propensity of deciding difficulties by precedent instead of principles. Macaulay, for example, was once required to argue the point of political casuistry as to the degree of independent action permissible to members of a Cabinet. An ordinary mind would have to answer by striking a rough balance between the conveniences and inconveniences likely to arise. It would ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Knowledge.' 'But,' resumed the Zealot, 'those accustomed to subtle inquiries may dwell only on the minutiae of faith,—inexplicable, because useless to explain, and argue from those minutiae against the grand and universal truth.' Pardon me again: it is the petty not the enlarged mind which prefers casuistry to conviction; it is the confined and short sight of Ignorance which, unable to comprehend the great bearings of truth, pries only into its narrow and obscure corners, occupying itself in scrutinizing the atoms of a part, while the eagle eye of Wisdom contemplates, in its widest scale, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... casuistry which it is not the business of a soldier to decide. We leave that to gownsmen. But pray, Mr. Penn, what right had you to the ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... to fix upon a definite ratio of income or property of universal obligation, will give constant ground for questions of casuistry inevitably tending rather to screen the conscience, than to stimulate to ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... law and apply it to life, obtain great influence and become the virtual rulers of the nation. While no doubt guided in the main by the noble spirit of their religion, they are led by their system into many absurdities, and their casuistry even becomes at times immoral. They afford the classical example of the results which flow from the doctrine of verbal inspiration, thoroughly worked out; and the life of the Jews under them becomes highly unnatural and artificial, and tends to occupy itself with the husk instead ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... and my wife reasoned it all out with him. She convinced me, perfectly, so that what Tedham proposed to do seemed not only sentimental and foolish, but unnatural and impious. I confess that I admired her casuistry, and gave it my full support. She was a woman who, in the small affairs of the tastes and the nerves and the prejudices could be as illogical as the best of her sex, but with a question large enough to engage the hereditary powers ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... must not be forgotten that we are discussing a question of casuistry, one which is 'stuff o' the conscience,' and where ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... generally too dull to be mischievous; but it was altogether inefficient as a means of binding the supple and slippery consciences of cunning priests, who, while affecting to hold the Jesuits in abhorrence, were proficients in that immoral casuistry which was the worst part of Jesuitism. Some grave divines had openly said, others had even dared to write, that they had sworn fealty to William in a sense altogether different from that in which they had sworn fealty to James. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with deference, for her judgment upon them. A change came over his habits of thought and his literary tastes; the harsh, rude disputant, the tough, dry logician, found himself addressing to his young friend epistles in verse on doctrinal points and matters of casuistry; Westminster Catechism in rhyme; the Solemn League and Covenant set to music. A miracle alone could have made Baxter a poet; the cold, clear light of reason "paled the ineffectual fires" of his imagination; all things presented themselves ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... No earthly casuistry could ever lead her to doubt that he had heard her prayer that morning. She might reply simply ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... compliment; and that too at the expense of his ecclesiastical connexion and general principles. If I cannot but be viewed as an enemy of the Church of England as a Methodist, it is a poor compliment to tell me that I am friendly to it as a man. I do not understand the hair-splitting casuistry which separates the man from ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Waterland, by Whiston, by Blackburne, and by some of the more ardent Calvinists, was strong, and felt to be so. In appearance, if not in reality, there was clearly something equivocal, some appearance of casuistry and reserve, if not of insincerity, in subscribing to formularies, part of which were no longer accepted in the spirit in which they had been drawn up, and with the meaning they had been originally intended to bear. The Deistical and Arian controversies of the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... of their vows, and as shamefully subtile in their artful evasion of them. The Pharisees could be easy enough to themselves when convenient, and always as hard and unrelenting as possible to all others. They quibbled, and dissolved their vows, with experienced casuistry. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees in Matthew xv. and Mark vii. for flagrantly violating the fifth commandment, by allowing the vow of a son, perhaps made in hasty anger, its full force, when he had sworn that his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... have the limitation of all polemic and forensic: they persuade, they seduce, they are unfair. But it is also unfair to assert that, in these Letters to a Provincial, Pascal was attacking the Society of Jesus in itself. He was attacking rather a particular school of casuistry which relaxed the requirements of the Confessional; a school which certainly flourished amongst the Society of Jesus at that time, and of which the Spaniards Escobar and Molina are the most eminent authorities. He undoubtedly abused the art ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... strain, The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain; As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest, Closed one by one to everlasting rest; Thus at her felt approach and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all is Night. See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head! Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more; Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense! See Mystery to Mathematics fly! In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Her casuistry was interrupted by some one softly whistling a theme from the overture to Masaniello, popular at the college in the form of an arrangement for six pianofortes and twelve hands. There was only one ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... adopted and he goes to hear a sermon On the Growing Habit of Careful Patient Investigation as Encouraging Casuistry. [October 1897.] ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... the office, which differs very little, perhaps scarcely enough, from that appointed for the Baptism of Infants, is attributed to Griffith, the Bishop of St. Asaph. The compiler of the Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea was Bishop Sanderson, famous among English theologians as an authority on casuistry. He must have found it rather a nice case of conscience to decide whether a Stuart divine in preparing forms of prayer for a navy that had been the creation of Oliver Cromwell ought wholly to omit an acknowledgment of the nation's obligation to that stout-hearted, if non-Episcopal ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... estimate its value, or the merits of the attack and defence on particular points. The subject is one by itself, more or less entering into the whole question of morals, and especially the immense fabric of casuistry or moral theology built up by successive teachers in the Jesuit schools. Trained, as he was, a devout disciple of the Roman Church, enthusiastic on behalf of its doctrines and preachers, Pascal had apparently no knowledge of the details of Jesuit doctrine and morality ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... would have taken refuge in casuistry and told the king that it was not for a pope to be bound to the cardinal's promises, in which contention he would have been supported by the Jesuits. However, in his heart Ganganelli had no liking for the Jesuits. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 'moral sense' only disguise the true identity of rules of morality with the considerations that can be shown to produce general happiness. Whenever there appears to be a conflict between these rules and considerations, utility is the only sure criterion. To the extreme situations in which casuistry revels, as when a man is called upon to sacrifice his life or his personal honour for his country's good, the Utilitarian would apply this unfailing test inexorably; in such cases a man ought to decide upon a calculation of the greatest ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... are the more to be regretted because there has never been an English essayist more entertaining or suggestive than De Quincey. His works cover a very wide range of subject-matter,—from the 'Knocking on the Gate in Macbeth' to the 'Casuistry of Roman Meals' and the 'Toilet of a Hebrew Lady.' His topics are always piquant. Like Poe, De Quincey loved puzzling questions, the cryptograms, the tangled under sides of things, where there are many and conflicting facts to sift and correlate, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... logically consistent followers of those Christian Fathers, and their successors in every branch of the Church, who have held that a lie for righteous purposes was admissible when the results to be secured by it were of vital importance. All the refinements of casuistry have their value to those who admit that a lie may be right under certain conceivable circumstances; but to those who, like Augustine and Aquinas, insist that a lie is a sin per se, and therefore never admissible, casuistry itself ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... his fortune, in order for gaining his own salvation in it; yea, even though he knows the other man's temporal damnation would be the cause of his eternal, by his swearing and despairing. Neither do I think this in casuistry and sin, because the swearing, undone man is a free agent, and can choose whether he will swear or no, anybody's wishes whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding: And in politics I am sure it is even a Machiavellian holy maxim, "That ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... ordinary way, and though they can hurt nobody who does not meddle with the fountain, and have no wish to be man-eaters, complications naturally supervene. And sometimes, besides fighting,[147] and love-making, and love casuistry, and fairy-tales, and oracles, and the finer comedy above mentioned, "Messire d'Urfe" (for he did not live too late to have that most gracious of all designations of a gentleman used in regard to him) did not disdain, and could not ill manage, sheer farce. The scene with Cryseide ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... casuistry no less than morals, and philosophers in the future, if man should at last have ceased to battle with ghosts, might be called upon to review material civilisation from its beginnings, testing each complication ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... collection of unrelated opinions, but a connected whole. The tendency towards a separate department of study is shown by the ever-increasing space devoted to the discussion of general economic topics in general theological treatises, and more notably still in the manuals of casuistry for the use of the confessional, and handbooks of canon law for the use of ecclesiastical lawyers. It was shown even more distinctly by the appearance of a shoal of special treatises on such subjects as contracts, exchange, and money, not to mention those ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... to my angry missive of April came to me towards autumn, and who wrote back from Virginia with war for war, controlment for controlment. These menaces, however, frightened me little: my poor mother's thunder could not reach me; and my conscience, or casuistry, supplied me with other interpretations for her texts of Scripture, so that her oracles had not the least weight with me in frightening me from my purpose. How my new loves speeded I neither informed her, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... released thy bond, in detaining the hostage against the spirit of the guilty compact; that in the very words themselves of the oath, lies the release—'if God aid thee.' God aids no child to parricide—and thou art England's child! But all school casuistry is here a meanness. Plain is the law, that oaths extorted by compulsion, through fraud and in fear, the Church hath the right to loose: plainer still the law of God and of man, that an oath to commit crime it is a deadlier sin to keep than to forfeit. Wherefore, not absolving thee from ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lift the helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond the feeble motion of the hand or beseeching glance of the eye—these are offices that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls where the stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is subdued,—where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender mercies of his ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... business and with degrees of success we are too amiable to dispute about, yet employ very different methods. He, for instance, scorns disguises, while I pride myself upon mine. And, by the way, as a Professor of Moral Philosophy, you are doubtless used to deciding questions of casuistry?" ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... anything in reply to her casuistry; they both looked equally posed by it, for different reasons; and Agatha went on as vehemently as before, addressing herself now to one and now to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... officers and of the fate of the hostages, cancelled the agreement, and contented themselves with surrendering to the enemy those who had concluded it as personally responsible for its fulfilment. Impartial history can attach little importance to the question whether in so doing the casuistry of Roman advocates and priests kept the letter of the law, or whether the decree of the Roman senate violated it; under a human and political point of view no blame in this matter rests upon the Romans. It was a question of comparative indifference whether, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a pure freak in poetry. Perhaps it might be asserted of James Thompson, without too much casuistry, that he was, poetically speaking, not a materialist but a pessimist, and that the strength of his poetic gift lay in the thirst of his imagination for an ideal world in which his reason would not permit him to believe. One cannot say of him, as of Coleridge, that "his unbelief never ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... over in a week, and they were glad to see him, as well as to hear the hopeful tidings. But the girls had quite a bit of casuistry in their talk that night as they were going to bed, partly as to how Charles could be so glad, and partly whether one ought to be glad under all circumstances, when events happened that did not ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... of it. But only you give the tip to Sim Rowe that M'riar's in with him, and that he's putting the screw on her, and Sim he'll do the rest. Twig?" Conscious casuistry always closes one eye, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... reasonable men, led by the strongest contemporary minds, have repudiated it and exposed its crude rascality. From Shakespear and Dr. Johnson to Ruskin and Mark Twain, the natural abhorrence of sane mankind for the vivisector's cruelty, and the contempt of able thinkers for his imbecile casuistry, have been expressed by the most popular spokesmen of humanity. If the medical profession were to outdo the Anti-Vivisection Societies in a general professional protest against the practice and principles of the vivisectors, every doctor in the kingdom would gain ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... taking of life is sternly forbidden in the ethical code of Buddha, and the most prominent of the obligations undertaken by the priesthood is directed to its preservation even in the instances of insects and animalculae, casuistry succeeded so far as to fix the crime on the slayer, and to exonerate the individual who merely partook of the flesh.[1] Even the inmates of the wiharas and monasteries discovered devices for the saving of conscience, and curried rice was not rejected in consequence of the animal ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... by giving a certain latitude, under the moral responsibility of the agent, for accommodation to peculiarities of circumstances; and under every creed, at the opening thus made, self-deception and dishonest casuistry get in. There exists no moral system under which there do not arise unequivocal cases of conflicting obligation. These are the real difficulties, the knotty points both in the theory of ethics, and in the conscientious guidance of personal conduct. They are overcome practically with ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... embarrass her. Few persons who knew of the existence of such a deposit would hesitate about taking possession of it; and, once reclaimed, in what way were the best intentions to be satisfied with the disposition of the gold? To find the owners would probably be impossible; and a question in casuistry remained. Mary pondered much on this subject, and came to the conclusion that, were she the person to whom such a treasure were committed, she would set aside a certain period for advertising; and failing to discover those who had the best claim to the money, that ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... thanks for the sermons, which I will certainly return as you suggest. I had the other day a trying experience, and I think a hard case of casuistry; I am not sure that I was right; but also not by any means sure I was wrong. Long ago, before my present crisis, I had promised somebody to take part in what I took to be a small debate on labour. Too late, by my own carelessness, I found to my horror it had ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... that training in the use of the French language should be substituted for the disputations in Latin; that in religion the study of the Bible was neglected for books of devotion and propaganda compiled by the members of the Order; that moral casuistry and religious bigotry were taught; and that the discipline was unnecessarily severe ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... as the old lady was, versed in the habits of the people, and long trained to suspect a certain air of dulness, by which, when asking the explanation of a point, they watch, with a native casuistry, to see what flaw or chink may open an equivocal meaning or intention, she was thoroughly convinced by the simple and unreasoning concurrence this humble man gave to every proviso, and the hearty assurance ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... especially whilst in the centre of fiery partisans. But sorrow, in such a case, is a sentiment of deeper vitality than anger; and this sorrow for the result will co-operate with the original scruples on the casuistry of the questions, to reproduce the demur and the struggle many times over, in consciences ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... Containing the great address of the landlady, the great learning of a surgeon, and the solid skill in casuistry of the worthy lieutenant. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... to establish rules for the complicated problems of delectation that thus arose, but he was constrained to admit that no rules are really possible, and that such matters must be left to the judgment of a prudent man. At that point casuistry dissolves and the modern point of view emerges (see, e.g., Lea, History of Auricular Confession, vol. ii, pp. 57, 115, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... highest representative of the state, has been his personal friend and benefactor; all this, too, not on any ground of fact, but on an assumed probability that the crown will prove a sacrament of evil, and transform him into quite another man. A strange piece of casuistry indeed! but nowise unsuited to the spirit of a man who was to commit the gravest of crimes, ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... seem to be no pressing need of his long soliloquy. He being ex proposito a man of few words, his sudden volubility is a little surprising, though it should be duly noticed that the soliloquy is not a self-defense. There is no casuistry in it. Tell does not argue the case with himself, like one in doubt about the rightness of his conduct. That is as clear as day to him, and he never wavers for a moment. But he has time to think while waiting, and his soliloquy is only his thinking made audible. Delivered with ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... history; ingenious, although sometimes untenable, theories regarding the Essenes, the supposed expressions for eternity in the Scriptures, the character of Judas Iscariot, the doctrine of demons, the principles of casuistry, style, and rhetoric; the discussions of various points in philosophy and logic; the prodigality of erudition displayed in the articles on Plato, Homer, Dinner Real and Reputed, Bentley; the transcendent ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... movement attracted the greatest attention. The Scholastic system of philosophy had been abandoned in favour of the teaching of the Leibniz-Wolf school and of Kant. The entire course of study for ecclesiastical students underwent a complete reorganisation. Scholasticism, casuistry, and controversy were eliminated. Their places were taken by Patrology, Church History, Pastoral Theology, and Biblical Exegesis of the kind then in vogue in ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... our temporal circumstances. And if its eulogists claim for it such a power, they commit the very same kind of encroachment on a province not their own as the political economist who should maintain that his science educated him for casuistry or diplomacy. Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of view faith. Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, gives no command over the passions, no influential motives, no vivifying principles. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... which he had sworn not to pass. In his own judgment he kept his vow, but not in that of his natural advisers. It is satisfactory to find that the Zoroastrian priesthood, speaking by the mouth of the chief Mobed, disclaimed and exposed the fallacy of this wretched casuistry. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... I ever knew a woman who was a more perfect 'gentleman.' Scorning all that was not direct, and true, and simple, she herself hated disguise or casuistry in any form. Her eyes looked through your soul and out at the other side, but you never felt that her judgment, whatever it was, would be harsh. She was curiously detached, and yet you always wanted her sympathy, and if she loved you it never failed you. She was a strong partisan, which ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... been placed. Satisfied on this topic, he proceeded to revise the memoranda which he had taken down from the mouth of the person employed to interrupt the funeral service of the late Lord Ravenswood. Bred to casuistry, and well accustomed to practise the ambidexter ingenuity of the bar, it cost him little trouble to soften the features of the tumult which he had been at first so anxious to exaggerate. He preached to his colleagues of the privy council the necessity of using conciliatory measures with young men, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... between Freeman and Lady Desbro', which give The Roundheads unity and dramatic point, are entirely her own invention. In the original Rump neither cavaliers nor Lady Desbro' appear. Ananias Goggle also, the canting lay elder of Clements, with his subtle casuistry that jibs at 'the person not the office,' a dexterous character sketch, alive and acute, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... to know what our real teaching is, as on other subjects, so on that of lying, let them look, not at our books of casuistry, but at our catechisms. Works on pathology do not give the best insight into the form and the harmony of the human frame; and, as it is with the body, so is it with the mind. The Catechism of the Council of Trent was drawn up for the express purpose of providing preachers ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... said the great physician. "There is at least no diseased casuistry about you. I do not regard ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... peculiar point of view was morally justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has often haunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct with regard to Harriet prove the goodness of his heart, his openness to argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not square with his expressed code of conduct; nor is it easy to understand ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... not prove an incest-desire in the living psyche. Rather the contrary, a living fear of the automatic conclusion: the soul's just dread of automatism. And though this may sound like casuistry, I believe it does explain a good deal of the dream-trick.—That which is lovely to the automatic process is hateful to the spontaneous soul. The wakeful living soul fears automatism as it fears death: ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... as to the ancient philosopher. "What makes an action right or wrong? What is a duty? What is expediency? How shall I learn to choose between my principles and my interests? And lastly (a point of casuistry which must sometimes perplex the strictest conscience), of two 'things ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... to the gods and to our parents (I.). Cases may arise of conflicting obligation; as, shall we prefer a friend to a deserving man? shall a person robbed reciprocate to robbers? and others. [We have here the germs of Casuistry.] (II.) As to the termination of Friendship; in the case of the useful and the pleasant, the connexion ceases with the motives. In the case of the good, it may happen that one party counterfeits the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... man's mind is occupied in reflecting on the errors, and perhaps the crimes, of a long and variegated life; when his ties to this world are loosened, and his interest in eternity becomes more lively, and near; a religion that enables a zealous or interested priest (aided by the casuistry and argument of centuries) to barter a promise of everlasting bliss, for lands and tenements bequeathed to the church, provides amply for the acquisition of earthly treasure, for its ministers, and those devoted to a life of religious ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... their connections with us, or is it better for them to "accept the situation" and gradually wean themselves from us and from our affairs? It would be idle to determine this question in the abstract: it is perhaps idle to decide any question of casuistry in the abstract. But, in practice, there are constantly arising questions which really require some decision of this ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... the lamp. He ransacked cosmography, astrology, alchemy, optics, the canon law, and the divinity of the schoolmen for ink-horn terms and similes. He was in verse what Browne was in prose. He loved to play with distinctions, hyperboles, paradoxes, the very casuistry and dialectics of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... therefore inevitable, and must we not prepare diligently for it? I will answer all these questions quite simply and directly without casuistry and logic-chopping, and honestly desiring to avoid paradox and "cleverness." And these quite simple answers will not be in contradiction with anything that I have written, nor will they invalidate any of the principles I have ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... won and had been disqualified. Those were the simple facts; and no casuistry by the cleverest of London lawyers could get away ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... absolutely supreme, and superior to all interests, were, with a sovereign, subordinate to the great duty of insuring the safety of his country. Nor could it be imagined that Francis would be so romantic in his principles, as not to hearken to a casuistry which was so plausible in itself, and which so much flattered all the passions by which, either as a prince or a man, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... aimed at being the substitution of Constitutional Government for the dictatorial rule. The author deals at great length with the background to this idea, playing on popular fears to reinforce his casuistry. For although constitutional government is insisted upon as the sole solution, he speedily shows that this constitutionalism will depend more on the benevolence of the dictator than on the action of the people. And should his advice be not heeded, when Fortune wills that ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... after good has often lent a strange power to evil. And sometimes, as at the Reformation, or French Revolution, when the upper classes of a so-called Christian country have become corrupted by priestcraft, by casuistry, by licentiousness, by despotism, the lower have risen up and re-asserted the natural sense of ...
— Philebus • Plato
... it, yet come to be adopted by a majority, should be left open questions also. Of course, of novelties in doctrine we do not speak,—we trust that within the Free Church none such will ever arise; we refer rather to those semi-metaphysical points of casuistry, and nice questions of conduct, in which the differences that perplex non-established Churches are most liable to originate,—matters in which one man sees after one way, and another man after another,—and which, until heaped up ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... and his mental state matters so little that the bare idea of there being such a connection is, as a rule, entirely lost sight of. The externalisation of religion in the West, as evidenced by its ceremonialism and its casuistry, has faithfully mirrored itself in the externality of Western education. The examination system (which I will presently consider) keeps education in the grooves of externality, and drives those grooves so deep as to make escape from them impossible. Yet it does but give formal ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... casuistry, Wilks, and I want you, as a judge of what a loyal citizen should do, to say what is our duty in regard ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the donor resolutely declined to buy split-cane rods, deeming high-class greenhearts sufficient for beginners, though the vicar argued that it was always wise in tuition to begin as you intend to proceed. This casuistry cousin heeded not. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... him from marrying an unknown and penniless girl. The Marchese Vivaldi only adopts the ordinary paternal measures; the Marchesa, and her confessor the dark-souled Schedoni, go farther—as far as assassination. The casuistry by which Schedoni brings the lady to this pass, while representing her as the originator of the scheme, is really subtle, and the scenes between the pair show an extraordinary advance on Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier art. The mysterious Monk who counteracts Schedoni remains an unsolved ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... to Mr. Mortimer. They sounded like half-past, and in that case it must have been a quarter to eight when she stood on her doorstep. Finally, there was the reason of reasons which superseded the necessity of any further attempt to persuade herself by any casuistry—she must save Cutts. ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... intellectual delight in subtle disquisition. The doctrine of immortality as it appeals to the mind of the cultured, dissatisfied pagan Cleon; the miracle of Lazarus as it is brooded over by the Arab physician Karshish; the balancing of faith and doubt in the clever casuistry of Bishop Blougram—these are topics to Browning's taste and are treated with skill and mastery. Taken all in all these poems give to the reader a full impression of Browning's characteristic force, the darting, penetrating power of his phrase, the rush ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... against any possible infringement." And they contrived, by an artful and technical interpretation, to find statutes which favored their ends. They wrought out asceticism into a system, and observed the most painful ceremonials—the ancestors of rigid monks; and they united a specious casuistry, not unlike the Jesuits, to excuse the violation of the spirit of the law. They were a hierarchical caste, whose ambition was to govern, and to govern by legal technicalities. They were utterly deficient in the virtues of humility and toleration, and as such, peculiarly offensive ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... like pains and pleasures. 'Fictitious' as they may be, therefore, the fiction enables us to express real truths, and to state facts which are of the highest importance to the moralist and the legislator. Bentham discusses some cases of casuistry in order to show the relation between the tendency of an action and the intention and motives of the agent. Ravaillac murders a good king; Ravaillac's son enables his father to escape punishment, or conveys poison to his father ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... guardians drawn, Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn, Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord, And dies, when ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... "Yes, dear child, we are not here to do battle with giants; we are here to be happy like the flowers, if we can be. It is because you could, that I have always secretly admired you. Cling to that trade; believe me, it is the right one. Be happy, be idle, be airy. To the devil with all casuistry! and leave the state to Gondremark, as heretofore. He does it well enough, they say; and his vanity enjoys ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ecclesiastical orders, and I have found them honourable and good men, in all ways estimable outside the narrowness which limits the world to Mother Church. They were athletes, scholars, and gentlemen, nor can I ever remember any examples of that casuistry with which they are reproached. Some of my best friends have been among the parochial clergy of the Church of England, men of sweet and saintly character, whose pecuniary straits were often a scandal and a reproach to the half-hearted folk who accepted their spiritual ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... however, are exceptional where a worthy or respectable reason will hinder the accomplishment of a duty; and we shall find, as a rule, that sufficient harmony exists between cause and effect, between the exaction of the necessary law and the result of the complying effort, to enable our casuistry to keep alive within us the idea of the ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... would never make her criminal. With sophistical delicacy he veiled his own motives; and, instead of following the plain dictates of reason, he involved his understanding in that species of sentimental casuistry which confounds all principles of right and wrong. But the dread that he felt lest Wharton should discover what was going on might have sufficiently convinced him that he was not acting honourably. The suspicions which Mr. Wharton formerly showed of his wife ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... incredulous. It hardly does to consider the moral aspect of the play at this juncture. Vanderdecken is merely a greedy, selfish skipper who, having got into some trouble, is anxious that a pure young maiden should throw away her life that he may be comfortable. Not any casuistry or splitting of hairs can alter the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... other women give more richly and recklessly? She found that it was possible to turn about every one of her reserves and delicacies so that they looked like selfish scruples and petty pruderies, and at this game she came in time to exhaust all the resources of an over-abundant casuistry. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... readers who had been brought up under the Jewish dispensation, and had the formalities of the Law of Moses in their very blood, the apostle battles with their dangerous conservatism. It is a very noble piece of spiritual casuistry, but it is signally unfitted for the comprehension of a child. Suddenly by my flushing up with anger and saying, 'Oh how I do hate that Law,' my Father perceived, and paused in amazement to perceive, that I took the Law to be a person of malignant temper ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... consequences of sex; he debars himself from marriage and paternity; through isolation, he escapes all family influences, curiosities and indiscretions; he belongs wholly to his office. He has prepared himself for it long beforehand, he has studied moral theology together with casuistry and become a criminal jurist; and his sentence is not a vague pardon bestowed on penitents after having admitted in general terms that they are sinners. He is bound to weigh the gravity of their errors and the strength of their repentance, to know the facts ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... or Lord Westbury, to inquire into the real force of the phrase. For after all, it is not only when signing the Articles that the bond and pledge of subscription means more than is intended. When Mr Wentworth was able to tear himself from the agreeable casuistry of this self-discussion, he got up in much better spirits to go about his daily business. First of all, he had to see his father, and ascertain what were the Squire's intentions, and how long he meant to stay in Carlingford; and then—It occurred to the Perpetual ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... of casuistry, such as that whether money dishonestly come by could be accepted for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Choiseul, I detest Madame du Barri and her faction. You, who are a Foreign Minister, and can distinguish like a theologian between the two natures perfectly comprehend all this; and, therefore, to the charity of your casuistry I recommend myself in this jumble of contradictions, which you may be sure do not give me any sort of trouble either way. At least I have not three distinctions, like Chatelet when he affronted Czernichew, but neither in his private ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... while they were the saints of God. That was a nobler type of religion than the one that came after it, into which Jesus Christ was born. When devotion cools it crusts; and the crust is superstition and formalism and punctilious attention to the proprieties of worship and casuistry, instead of joyful obedience to a law, and abstinence from, instead of sanctification ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... love which it accomplishes;' or, when Leone Leoni, steeped in passion and crime, but talented and adorned with manly beauty, exclaims to his beloved, 'As long as you hope for my amendment you have never loved my personal self.' It also appears to correspond with this casuistry of erotic fancy, when the heroes of her tragedies, of sky-storming earnestness, but adorned with all unnatural qualities, give themselves up to the latter as to an intoxicating spell, and in the delirium of self-delusion hold sin for ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... and tomatoes stewed in oil and seasoned with garlick, and the wine and grapes were sour. However, we had excellent beds. In my room there was a small collection of books, on a dusty shelf, which I should not have expected to find in such hands. Among them were some old works of theological casuistry, Metastasio, a translation of Voltaire's plays, and a geographical dictionary in Italian. I learnt that they had belonged to the proprietor's uncle, a medico at Padua, and were heirlooms with his property, which our host inherited. The position of these small ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... holy orders, lived a life of austerity, and gave himself up to reclaim the lost and instruct the poor and ignorant; was a man of extensive learning, and found time from his pastoral labours to contribute extensively to theological literature and chiefly casuistry, to the extent of 70 volumes; was canonised in 1839; the order he founded is called by his own name as ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... more to a snout in this pickle? What language can be low and degenerate enough?" In the Apology for Smectymnuus, Milton sets forth his own defence of his acrimony and violence: "There may be a sanctified bitterness," he remarks, "against the enemies of the truth;" and he dares to quote the casuistry ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... extreme stand relations like that with Anne Park, the heroine of Yestreen I had a Pint o' Wine, which were purely passionate and transitory. Between these come a long procession affording excellent material for the ingenuity of those skilled in the casuistry of the sexes: the boyish flame for Handsome Nell; the slightly more mature feeling for Ellison Begbie; the various phases of his passion for Jean Armour; the perhaps partly factitious reverence for Highland Mary; the respectful adoration for Margaret Chalmers ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... the moral nature, and it will take care of the intellectual. In other words, the best thing for the intellect is the cultivation of the conscience, not in casuistry, but in conduct. It may take longer to arrive; but the end will be the highest possible health, vigor, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... of the 12th Month (March) 1671-2, he had fully analysed 'The Design,' exposed the sophistry, and scripturally answered the gross errors which abound in every page of this learned and subtle piece of casuistry. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you know, as well as I do, to be mere casuistry," he rejoined. "The law professes to regard the unconvicted man as innocent; but how does it treat him? You heard how the magistrate addressed our friend; outside the court he would have called him Mr. Hornby. You know what will happen to Reuben ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... consent to act the invalid unless the spring ran down altogether; was keen for exercise and for mixing among men—his native servants if no others were near by. Here is a bit of confession and casuistry quite a ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... it delivers are too general to be of any use, because the application of them is still left to be adjusted by a reference to particular circumstances; and that, if a revelation were framed, it ought to take in all the limitations of action, and furnish, in fact, a complete system of casuistry; otherwise it would be of no avail. Were there none who attempted ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... at peace. For certainly he had not told all the truth to his dear friend, the Count of Fieramondi. Yet since no more was heard of Paul de Roustache, and the Countess's journey remained an unbroken secret, these questions of casuistry need not be raised. After all, is it for a man to ruin the tranquillity of a home for the selfish pleasure of a conscience ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... clerical garb excels, or through fortunate stupidity, serviable foolishness, the old nun brought a formidable support to the conspiracy. They thought she was timid; she showed herself bold, talkative, violent. This one was not trouble by the hesitations of casuistry; her doctrine seemed to be an iron bar; her faith never hesitated; her conscience had no scruples. She found quite natural Abraham's sacrifice, because she would immediately have killed her father and mother if she had received an order from heaven to do so; and in her opinion nothing ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... which become essential characteristics of his later work. There is no humour in these early poems, or (since Naddo and the critic tribe of Sordello came to qualify the assertion) but little; there is no wise casuistry, in which falsehood is used as the vehicle of truth; the psychology, however involved it may seem, is really too simple; the central personages are too abstract—knowledge and love and volition do not exhaust ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... casuistry, for she was now rolling a cigarette with an air of insufferable probity. I gave her up and played a new game of smashing horseflies as they settled on my mount. Dandy Jim plays the game ably. When a big fly settles on his nose he holds his head round ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... possessed a high market value. It was, in fact, only when art began to expire in Italy, when Vasari published his extensive necrology and formed his famous collection of drawings, that property in a sketch became a topic for moral casuistry. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... impelling motive of these three plays as a passionate appeal for a higher standard of truth—in journalism, in finance, in monarchy: an appeal for less casuistry and more honesty. Such a motive was characteristic of the vehement honesty of Bjornson's own character; he must always, as he says in one of his letters, go over to the side of any one whom he believed to "hold ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Much subtile casuistry has been expended upon the point, whether Paul Jones was a knave or a hero, or a union of both. But war and warriors, like politics and politicians, like religion and ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the ethereal plain; As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest; Thus, at her felt approach and secret might, Art after art goes out, and all is night. See skulking truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heap'd o'er her head. Philosophy, that lean'd on heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... public affairs which had always met with his most decided approbation."[49] At worst, the Solicitor-General can only be blamed for letting his abnormally sensitive conscience lead him into political casuistry, the logic of which might not appear so cogent to the governor as to himself, when the crisis should come. How sensitive that conscience was, may be gathered from the fact that his acceptance of office in 1841 was accompanied with an avowal of want of confidence, made openly ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... reader should go along with the short remainder of this story, because it bears strongly upon the true moral of our Eastern policy, of which, hereafter, we shall attempt to unfold the casuistry, in a way that will be little agreeable to the calumniators of Clive and Hastings. We do not intend that these men shall have it all their own way in times to come. Our Eastern rulers have erred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... desire, nay insist, that their confessors shall absolve them for their acts of inconstancy. The priests, on their side, are drawn or forced on, step by step. There grows up a vast literature, at once various and learned, of casuistry, of the art of allowing all things; a progressive literature, in which the indulgence of to-night seems to become the severity ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... the world at large how very little difference America's participation in hostilities would make. When America tacitly negatived this theory by the energy with which she raised billions and mobilised her industries, Hun propagandists, by an ingenious casuistry, spread abroad the opinion that these mighty preparations were a colossal bluff which would redound to Germany's advantage. They said that President Wilson had bided his time so that his country might strut as a belligerent for only the last ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... discussion of our present cycle, particularly from the point of view of the "pound-of-flesh" incident (1 : 393-410), writes, "I may remark that this recital [i.e., of the decisions], which here borders on the comic, is based upon serious traditional legends which have to do with Buddhistic casuistry" (p. 397). Benfey's fragmentary citations are not very convincing; but this Jataka proves that his reasoning, as usual, was ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... might be a single grain of leaven there, and the mere suspicion of such a thing would have disqualified them from participating in the feast. Remember that these men had just broken every principle of justice in their treatment of Jesus, and now they palter over minute points of Rabbinical casuistry. So Philip of Spain abetted the massacres of Alva, but rigorously performed all the rites of the Church; and the Italian bandit will carefully honor priest, and host, and church. How well our Lord's sharp sword cut to the dividing of soul and spirit, in such cases as these: ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... accused Shaw of being anti-domestic, a shaker of the roof-tree. But in this sense Shaw may be called almost madly domestic. He wishes each private problem to be settled in private, without reference to sociological ethics. And the only objection to this kind of gigantic casuistry is that the theatre is really too small to discuss it. It would not be fair to play David and Goliath on a stage too small to admit Goliath. And it is not fair to discuss private morality on a stage too small to admit the enormous presence of public morality; that character which ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... address which marks the conclusion of my service in the dignified and honorable office to which, through your unmerited favor, I have been twice chosen, to the consideration of some of the questions in casuistry the answers to which will be found to furnish a basis for a code of professional ethics. It is not asking too much of the engineer that his professional morality shall conform to higher standards than those which govern men who buy and sell with no other object than the getting of gain. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... a wrong scent, and stopped short with a low bow—Two misfortunes, quoth the corporal to himself, are twice as many at least as are needful to be talked over at one time;—the mischief the cow has done in breaking into the fortifications, may be told his honour hereafter.—Trim's casuistry and address, under the cover of his low bow, prevented all suspicion in my uncle Toby, so he went on with what he had to say ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... not only in keeping St. John from plundering Miss Hernshaw, but in standing firm and taking the punishment which ought to fall upon him and not on her. But the sense of having done right sufficed him no more than the sense of having got the better of St. John. What was lacking to him? In the casuistry of the moment, which was perhaps rather emotional than rational, it appeared to Hewson that he had again a duty toward Miss Hernshaw, and that his feeling of dissatisfaction was the first effect of its non-fulfilment. ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... could justify polytheism. Thundering against idol worship, the great orator fights with all his might against caste, infant marriages, and superstitions. Chastising all the evils grafted on India by centuries of casuistry and false interpretation of the Vedas, he blames for them the Brahmans, who, as he openly says before masses of people, are alone guilty of the humiliation of their country, once great and independent, now fallen and enslaved. And yet ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... with a woman and does not hide it, who even declares his firm intention of continuing to live with his concubine—can he be admitted to baptism? Augustin has to answer all these questions, and go into the very smallest details of casuistry. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases. There broken vows and death-bed alms are found, And lovers' hearts with ends of riband bound, The courtier's promises, and sick man's pray'rs, The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs, 120 Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea, Dry'd butterflies, and tomes of casuistry. ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope |
