"Cavil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the practical. It has been a grave fault with many writers on horological matters that they did not make and measure the abstractions which they delineated on paper. We do not mean by this to endorse the cavil we so often hear—"Oh, that is all right in theory, but it will not work in practice." If theory is right, practice must conform to it. The trouble with many theories is, they do not contain all the elements ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... they make their own excuse in the work itself, do not pass in a statement without cavil at the arrogance that would exalt the work of men's hands above the work of God. Shall we strive with our pigments to outshine the sun, or teach the secrets of form to the cunning Artificer by whom the world was made? What room for Art, except as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... lords, there is still a power reserved to the admiralty, of dismissing these guardians of commerce from their stations, and employing them in case of great necessity in the line of battle, on this side cape Finisterre. Not to cavil, my lords, at the term of great necessity, of which it is apparent that the commissioners of the admiralty are to judge, I would desire to be informed what measures are to be taken, if a royal navy should unluckily rove beyond this cape, which is marked out as the utmost bound of the power ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... hundred thousand men drawn together without an effort, every man a volunteer,—a spectacle never before exhibited to the world,—puts at rest all doubt upon it; and not only that, it settles beyond all cavil the superiority of self-government, based on the broadest principles of freedom and the broadest system of education, over any other form which has ever been adopted. Passing from this, however, as a fact which needs ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... enough to satisfy men who had just come out of the Acordada. There was cold mutton, ham, and venison, maize bread, and "guesas de Guatemala," with a variety of fruit to follow. Verily a supper at which even a gourmand might not cavil; though it was but the debris of a dinner, which seemed to have been partaken of by a goodly ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... giggle gang you call the Market Research Group have been groping around like so many blind mice. How would you like to know in advance, beyond any cavil, the exact future reaction to any product, new, old or sea-changed—or to any campaign to be inflicted on ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... to cavil at received axioms has beset me through life. No sooner does a truth present itself than I want to see it on its other side. If I hear the Devil spoken ill of, I puzzle myself to find what can be said in his favor. The man who thus halts between conflicting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... born again, since we cannot love God, unless the remission of sins has been received. For as long as we feel that He is angry with us, human nature flees from His wrath and judgment. If any one should make a cavil such as this: If that be faith which wishes those things that are offered in the promise, the habits of faith and hope seem to be confounded, because hope is that which expects promised things, to this we reply that these dispositions cannot in reality be severed, in ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... presumption was in favour of the rightness of what was most pleasant, and that the onus of proving that it was not right lay with those who disputed its being so. I have said more than once that he believed in his own depravity; never was there a little mortal more ready to accept without cavil whatever he was told by those who were in authority over him: he thought, at least, that he believed it, for as yet he knew nothing of that other Ernest that dwelt within him, and was so much stronger and more real than the Ernest of which he was conscious. The dumb Ernest persuaded with inarticulate ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... said, "I do not wish to cavil or carp or rub it in in any way. I will merely remark that you pretty nearly landed us in the soup, and pass on to more congenial topics. Didn't you know we were ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... hands of private bankers, swell above the fragmentary portion which the old Bank of the United States could afford to allot to us, to somewhat over two millions of dollars, almost wholly owned by our own people; and to read our monthly bills of mortality, which attest, beyond the reach of cavil, a condition of general health without a parallel in the annals of cities laved by the tides. He lived to see the farmers, who supplied the population of 1802 with vegetables and fish enough to serve, but none to spare, ship off nearly half ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... illustrious men has long been placed beyond the reach of cavil. Criticism cannot reach, envy cannot detract from, emulation cannot equal them. Great present celebrity, indeed, is no guarantee for future and enduring fame; in many cases, it is the reverse, but there is a wide difference between the judgment of the present and that of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... they note, will flee him.' Thus they buzzed, Self-praised, and knowing not that simpleness Is sacred soil, and sown with royal seed, The heroic seed and saintly. Mitred once Such gibes no more assailed him: one short month Sufficed the petty cavil to confute; One month well chronicled in book which verse Late born, alas, in vain would emulate. At once he called to mind the days that were; His wanderings in Northumbrian glens; the hearths That welcomed him so joyously; at once Within his breast the heart parental ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... long silence. Norwegian periodicals—there is not to this day a book on Shakespeare by a Norwegian—contain not a single contribution to Shakespearean criticism till 1880, when a church paper, Luthersk Ugeskrift[11] published an article which proved beyond cavil that Shakespeare is good and safe reading for Lutheran Christians. The writer admits that Shakespeare probably had several irregular love-affairs both before and after marriage, but as he grew older his heart turned to the comforts of religion, and in his epitaph he commends his soul ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... mind produces what is termed organic dis- ease as certainly as it produces hysteria, and it must re- 177:3 linquish all its errors, sicknesses, and sins. I have demonstrated this beyond all cavil. The evidence of divine Mind's healing power and abso- 177:6 lute control is to me as certain as the evidence of my ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... his disappointment was, Mr. Neal was not embittered. There was one thing that he knew now beyond all cavil or doubt: he knew that he should find the man with the good face. He knew that he should eventually meet him somewhere, sometime, and come to know him. How Mr. Neal longed for that time words cannot describe, but his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to myself to find the only sure guidance, the only solid footing, among the ancients. They, at any rate, knew what they wanted in art, and we do not. It is this uncertainty which is disheartening, and not hostile criticism. How often have I felt this when reading words of disparagement or of cavil: that it is the uncertainty as to what is really to be aimed at which makes our difficulty, not the dissatisfaction of the critic, who himself suffers from the same uncertainty. Non me tua fervida terrent Dicta; ... Dii me terrent, et ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Legem,' Mr. Sergeant Manning raises question concerning the antiquity of guineas and half-guineas, with the following remarks:—"Should any cavil be raised against this jocular allusion, on the ground that guineas and half-guineas were unknown to sergeants who flourished in the sixteenth century, the objector might be reminded, that in antique records, instances occur in which the 'guianois d'or,' issued from the ducal mint at Bordeaux, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... other parts as shall cause the roof to be forgotten, thrown off like an eschar from the living frame. Nevertheless, we must always admit that it may be forgotten, and that if the Gothic seal be indeed set firmly on the walls, we are not to cavil at the forms reserved for the tiles and leads. For, observe, as our definition at present stands, being understood of large roofs only, it will allow a conical glass-furnace to be a Gothic building, but will not allow so much, either of the Duomo of Florence, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... digress for a moment. The intellectual minds, the material scientists, who cavil at the "science of the stars," declaring it to be mere fortune-telling, consequently false, do but air their ignorance of this most profound subject, not knowing that it embraces and contains all sciences, all religions, that have ever been ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... an' Tutt an' Cherokee an' Monte an' the rest of the Wolfville outfit is fallin' like November's leaves, them Red Dog bandits is fadin' jest as fast. If anything, they're fadin' faster. They're too p'lite or too proodent to cavil at the presence of Spellin' Book Ben, an' by third drink time after we starts thar's no gents left standin' except that Wells-Fargo book-keep sharp for Red Dog, an' Spellin' Book for us. It's give an' take between ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... memorandum of the noble duke, which has been so much the subject of cavil, it is the offspring of a manly mind, pouring out its honest opinions with an earnestness characteristic of sincerity, and with a zeal too warm to stand upon nice and scrupulous expression. I am sure that it contains nothing but ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... mighty and sustaining. Such an uninteresting undertaking could not last forever, he told himself over and over again; nothing ever did. And now with ironic conformity to law, his philosophy had turned on him, demonstrating beyond cavil that not only did the things one longed to be free of come to a sure finality but so did those one ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... agencies, the Salvation Army is able to prove beyond cavil that it can assist our criminal system to attain this noble end, ought not opportunity to be given it in full measure? Is it too much to hope that when the new Prison Act, of which the substance has recently been outlined by the Home Secretary, comes to be discussed, this object may be kept ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... hour of eight we 'went in' to dinner, to the strains of the Roast Beef of Old England. It was a right jovial feast, and the most cordial good-fellowship prevailed. He would have been a cynical epicurean who would have criticised the appointments; the banquet itself was above all cavil. Rummaging among some old papers the other day, I found the menu, which deserves to be quoted: 'Soup—Julienne. Fish—Whitebait (from the Cabul River). Entrees—Cotelettes aux Champignons, Poulets a la ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... been well; but Griselda had a pernicious habit of recurring to any slight words of blame which had been used by her friends. Her husband had congratulated her upon having attained the perfection of the art of disputing, since she could cavil about straws. This reproach rankled in her mind. There are certain diseased states of the body, in which the slightest wound festers, and becomes incurable. It is the same with the mind; and our heroine's was in this ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but we have it sealed in the New Testament. "As, it was in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah." They don't believe in Lot's wife, but He says, "Remember Lot's wife." So there is not a thing that men to-day cavil at but the Son of God indorses. They don't believe, in the swallowing of Jonah. They say it is impossible that a whale could swallow Jonah—its throat is too small. They forget that the whale was prepared for Jonah; ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... at Opportunity, At Time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful Night; In vain I cavil with mine infamy, In vain I spurn at my confirm'd despite: This helpless smoke of words doth me no right. The remedy indeed to do me good Is to let forth ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... smiles on Lucy's part, Mr. Lillburgh ventured to resume his visits, and Lucy's cheek always looked so particularly rosy on such occasions, that Mr. Lee soon became too entirely happy in the result, to cavil any longer at the cause of her renovated health and spirits. Sometimes, also, memory would recall for an instant that terrible period of anxiety, and then he would treat Mr. Lillburgh with such pointed cordiality, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... no note of cavil in Marion's voice. Her eyes were earnest and serious; and she waited, as one waits in honest perplexity, to have a puzzle solved. But she was known as one who held dangerous, even infidel notions, and Mr. Pembrook, bewildered as to how to answer her, seemed to feel that probably a rebuke ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... of them said, "He hath a devil and is mad." Festus said with a loud voice, "Paul, thou art beside thyself." And Nordau shouts in a voice more heady than that of Pilate, more throaty than that of Festus, "Mad—Whitman was—mad beyond the cavil ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... and other students of kindred power and spirit. Researches and discussions in this department are still pushed with the greatest zeal; and it is confidently believed that in a few years the views adopted in the present writing will be established beyond all cavil from any fair minded critic. Then all the steps will have been clearly defined in the development of that doctrine of the great Day of the Lord, which, beginning with a poetic picture of a Jewish overthrow of the Gentiles, through the inspiring power of Jehovah, before the walls of Jerusalem, ended ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... settled. A note has been sent from the Foreign Office to the Lord Mayor, announcing that the definitive treaty had been finally settled at Amiens, on the 27th of March, by the plenipotentiaries of England, France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic. The treaty, as it transpires, is the source of general cavil. It leaves to France all her conquests, while England restores every thing except Ceylon and Trinidad; the one a Dutch colony, and the other a Spanish; both powers having been our Allies at the commencement of the war. The Cape is to be given back to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... thou Minstrel Harp! Yet, once again, forgive my feeble sway, And little reck I of the censure sharp May idly cavil at an idle lay. Much have I owed thy strains on life's long way, Through secret woes the world has never known, When on the weary night dawned wearier day, And bitterer was the grief devoured alone.— That I o'erlive such woes, Enchantress! is ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... their faults, your nation, your government, your town and townspeople, else you would not so often scold them! Otherwise, why do you let us call them yours? Because they belong to you? No, because you belong to them. Beyond cavil you are your own, but beyond cavil, too, you are theirs; their purchased possession, paid for long, ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... mooast fascinatin an' lovable elves, Are all on 'em mortal, just th' same as ussels, An' show tempers 'at sometimes are net ovver pleasant, They find fault whear ther's room, an' sometimes whear ther isn't, An' to get there own way, why they'll kiss, coax, or cavil, They'll smile like an angel, or storm like the devil. But aw've monny times sed, an' aw say it ageean, 'At women are ofter i'th' reight nor are th' men, Just fancy gooin hooam to a bachelor's bed, All shudderin an' shakkin yo lig daan yor heead. There's a summat a ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... a cavil, it is that the topics of religious consolation, however beautiful, are repeated till a sort of triteness attends them. It seems as if you were forever losing Friends' children by death, and reminding ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... ceremony 'twere, Joconde replied, All cavil then we quickly could decide; Precedence would no doubt with you remain: But this is quite another case 'tis plain; And equity demands that we agree, By lot to settle ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... retiring to the solitude of your old habitation, to look into the magic lantern of that unknown world. It is sinful of you to waste your hours in dressing out these apes to look more human, and teaching dogs to dance. One thing only I require—you must not cavil at the form; the rest I can leave to your ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... his chair, dropping an empty shoe with a thump, but, being of the West, without cavil or waste of wind, he stretched his hands above his head, balancing on one foot to keep his unshod member from the damp floor. He had unbuckled his belt, and now, loosened by the movement, his overalls seemed bent on sinking floorward in an ecstasy of abashment at the intrusion, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... at the peculiar character of his employer, and in a way slightly disgusted, but he was not in a position to cavil or feel squeamish over apparent lack of honesty, and resolved at once to ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... so verbose and ostensibly so sincere as to be received without the slightest cavil. Naturally our task-masters studiously declined to extend any enlightenment upon the matter, preferring to lull the visitors into a false haven of credibility. Unfortunately we discovered that we ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... and said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?" To confess, still more to state, that John the Baptist had his doubts concerning the character of Jesus, could not but afford a handle to cavil and objection. But truth, like honesty, neglects appearances. The same observation, perhaps, holds concerning ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... produced discontent of late years, I would mention our forest laws and sanitary regulations, our legislative and fiscal systems—measures so necessary that no one interested in the prosperity of India could cavil at their introduction, but which are so absolutely foreign to Native ideas, that it is essential they should be applied with ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... innocence was thus demonstrated beyond cavil, though nobody paid any particular attention to the demonstration. As for Allen, he had vanished; he was heard ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... paper had indeed been circulated, in which the logic of a small sharp pettifogger was employed to prove that writs, issued in the joint names of William and Mary, ceased to be of force as soon as William reigned alone. But this paltry cavil had completely failed. It had not even been mentioned in the Lower House, and had been mentioned in the Upper only to be contemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy of the City swelled the procession. The banners of England and France, Scotland and Ireland, were ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not agree. Four years of disturbance in every part of the country, in the course of which troops had been called out in several states, and civil war had been narrowly averted at least half a dozen times, had proved this beyond all cavil. With almost any other people than the Americans civil war would have come already. With all the vast future interests that were involved in these quarrels looming up before their keen, sagacious ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for Preservative had given them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company, were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm up and spill ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... facts beyond cavil or dispute or reversion. One is that God's laws cannot be broken. We are not trying to say that they should not be broken; or that they cannot be broken with impunity; or that if broken we shall be punished. They simply cannot ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... interest him in its practice at Chicago. Indeed, no one can fail to wonder at the marvellous skill of architectural engineering which can run up a building of twenty stories, the walls of which are merely a veneer or curtain. Few will cavil at the handsome and comfortable equipment of the best interiors; but, given the necessity of their existence, the wide-minded lover of art will find something to reward his attention even in their exteriors. In many instances their architects have succeeded admirably in ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the Runes resemble very nearly the ornithichnites or fossil bird-tracks of Dr. Hitchcock, but with less regularity or apparent design than is displayed by those remarkable geological monuments. These are rather the non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum. Resolved to leave no door open to cavil, I first of all attempted the elucidation of this remarkable example of lithick literature by the ordinary modes, but with no adequate return for my labour. I then considered myself amply justified in resorting to that heroick treatment the felicity of which, as applied by the great Bentley ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... vie with Mr. Allen's unrivalled polemic amiability and be as conciliatory as possible, I will not cavil at his facts or try to magnify the chasm between an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Napoleon and the average level of their respective tribes. Let it be as small as Mr. Allen thinks. All that I object to is that he should think the mere size of a difference is capable of deciding ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... in the Irvine MS. about 1800; that there is no proof of Macpherson having furnished any of these; and that the genuineness of one of them, "The Sun Hymn," given seem to be beyond the possibility of cavil. ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... was not sensitive, and was too satisfied at having gained his object to cavil at Mark's manner of yielding. 'Very well; that's settled,' he said. 'I'm glad you've come to your senses, I'm sure. We'll have you on the Woolsack yet, and we'll say no more about the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... fully given in my official report herewith, that I need add nothing to it. It was a magnificent battle in its conception, in its execution, and in its glorious results; hastened somewhat by the supposed danger of Burnside, at Knoxville, yet so completely successful, that nothing is left for cavil or fault-finding. The first day was lowering and overcast, favoring us greatly, because we wanted to be concealed from Bragg, whose position on the mountain-tops completely overlooked us and our movements. The second day was beautifully clear, and many a time, in the midst of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... as well as the experience, how wonderingly be smiles at his worship of former idols, how different a colour does history wear to him, how cautious is he now to praise, how slow to admire, how prone to cavil! Human nature has become the human nature of art; and he estimates it not from what it may be, but from what, in the corruptions of a semi-civilization, it is! But in the same manner as the young student clings to the belief that the sage or the minstrel, who has enlightened his ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and virtue. In Miss Milner it was so united. Yet let not our over-scrupulous readers be misled, and extend their idea of her virtue so as to magnify it beyond that which frail mortals commonly possess; nor must they cavil, if, on a nearer view, they find it less—but let them consider, that if she had more faults than generally belong to others, she had likewise ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... for liberty and justice, it was the Cheyennes. If any ever demonstrated their physical and moral courage beyond cavil, it was this race of purely American heroes, among whom Little Wolf ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... received somewhat dubiously; the assemblage not clear whether to approve it or to cavil at it. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of successful people, to cavil because his success was not more complete. How the time was wasting here in this uncomfortable interlude! Why could he not have discovered Leander's whereabouts earlier, and by now be jogging along the road home with ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... was convinced that the only way of seeing a country as it is must be to see it with all its traditions and recollections. It is, in fact, with the Bible as his guide that a traveller ought to visit the Holy Land. If we are determined to carry with us a spirit of cavil and contradiction, Judea is not worth our going so far to examine it. What should we say to a man who, in traversing Greece and Italy, should think of nothing but contradicting Homer and Virgil? Such, however, is the course adopted by too ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... series of triumphs that Father Louis Thomassin, Priest of the Oratory, issued his Universal Hebrew Glossary. In this, to use his own language, "the divinity, antiquity, and perpetuity of the Hebrew tongue, with its letters, accents, and other characters," are established forever and beyond all cavil, by proofs drawn from all peoples, kindreds, and nations under the sun. This superb, thousand-columned folio was issued from the royal press, and is one of the most imposing monuments of human piety and folly—taking ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and collective action has resulted in this particular case in thousands of the children's "Arbor Gardens" round about the city. It is an experience "en gros," one of such dimensions that cavil ceases and admiration ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... might easily cavil at the word "worm." The Lampyris is not a worm at all, not even in general appearance. He has six short legs, which he well knows how to use; he is a gad-about, a trot-about. In the adult state, the male is correctly garbed in wing-cases, like the true Beetle ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... and disputacious — He has had the benefit of a school-education, seems to have read a good number of books, his memory is tenacious, and he pretends to speak several different languages; but he is so addicted to wrangling, that he will cavil at the clearest truths, and, in the pride of argumentation, attempt to reconcile contradictions — Whether his address and qualifications are really of that stamp which is agreeable to the taste of our aunt, Mrs Tabitha, or that indefatigable maiden is determined to ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... subject to a fate in his private constitution. There is the difference, and it does not seem to me insignificant. Our way to the cases of crime is now somewhat more clear; for it is already established beyond cavil that the mere fact of an average, to which, without any discriminations, our philosopher appeals with such confidence, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... not perceive that he was in any way put out or moved by its reception. Claims for past services, whether upon the country or upon individuals, are seldom well received; like the payment of a tavern bill, after we have done with the enjoyments, we seem inclined to cavil at each ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... next took the army list in hand, Where he found a new "Field Marshal;" And when he saw this high command Conferred on his Highness of Cumberland,[47] "Oh! were I prone to cavil—or were I not the Devil, I should say this was somewhat partial; 190 Since the only wounds that this Warrior gat, Were from God knows whom—and the Devil ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... terribly militated against the effective employment of the battalion as a first-class fighting unit. Individually, the men were all right, but the battalion record in certain respects was held to be very faulty. I have no wish to cavil at the War Office authorities' honest desire to serve the public and yet temper their judgment with mercy to individuals. But the case was one where they should not have temporised in any way. As matters turned out, the Royal Irish Fusiliers were very ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... now more accustom'd to travel; And less inclin'd, therefore, at trifles to cavil: So, cheerfully lends his smooth wings to the breeze, And with rapture extols ev'ry prospect he sees. O'er many a bank, with sweet violets spread, Green field, blooming garden, and hyacinth-bed; Thro' daisy-deck'd vallies, o'er soft swelling hills, Across velvet-clad lawns, and beside limpid ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... they have settled down, desertion is far rarer than in civilised countries. I have seen a native workman with his shoulder blade in his arm-pit, his face cut to ribbons, and with pieces of casting sticking to his back through the carrying away of a crane, cavil against the idea of being taken into the township where the doctor was, lest his old woman, unused to a town life, should find the surroundings uncongenial. This in a broken, muttered whisper, twelve hours after the accident had happened, during which time every new ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... the surface; but they show us how awfully complicated the phenomenon is. All young geologists have a great turn for speculation; I have burned my fingers pretty sharply in that way, and am now perhaps become over-cautious; and feel inclined to cavil at speculation when the direct and immediate effect of a cause in question cannot be shown. How neatly you draw your diagrams; I wish you would turn your attention to real sections of the earth's crust, and then speculate ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... is sent to the janitor or the elevator boy we have no cavil, for these gentlemen do actually see a fire and hear bells ring; but the apartment tenant hears naught but the hissing of the steam in the radiator, and counts himself lucky to hear that. Why not be honest ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... of morality; but as to the conduct of the whole, it does not appear to be of a piece; every vision seems a distinct rhapsody, and does not carry on either one single action or a series of many; but we ought rather to wonder at its beauties than cavil at its defects; and if the poetical design is broken, the moral is entire, which, is uniformly the advancement of piety, and reformation of the Roman clergy. The piece before us is entitled the Vision of Piers the Plowman, and I shall quote that particular part ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... sin which is always at hand to enter an objection against this or that promise that by the Spirit of God is brought to our heart to comfort us; and if the poor coming sinner is not aware of it, it will, by some evasion, slight, trick, or cavil, quickly wrest from him the promise again, and he shall have but little ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sorcerers they can think of, and he at whose name the smouldering leaves burst into a bright flame is the one who has done the deed. Having thus ascertained the true cause of death, beyond reach of cavil, they proceed to light up the ghost to the door of his murderer. For this purpose a procession is formed. A man, holding the smouldering fire in the potsherd with one hand and a bundle of straw with the other, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... success of the young blind seeker after knowledge is practically assured; for, as I have said, in mental attainment, at least, the blind child is the peer of the child with eyesight,—here, beyond cavil, ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... great elevation on which he now stood. While arranging the focus of the instrument, an object first met his eye that caused his heart almost to leap into his mouth. Land was looming up, in the western board, so distinctly as to admit of no cavil about its presence. It was an island, mountainous, and Mark supposed it must be fully a hundred miles distant. Still it was land, and strange land, and might prove to be the abode of human beings. The glass told him very ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Jour,[9] but the fact that a collection of fables was, in the sixth century of our era, brought from India to Persia, and by means of various translations naturalized among Persians, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, and all the rest, admits of no doubt or cavil. Several thousand years have passed between those two migrations, and to mix them up together, to suppose that Comparative Mythology has anything to do with the migration of such fables as that of Perrette, would be an anachronism of a ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... did you ever find the epithet 'good,' applied to the title of Doctor? Had you called me 'learned Doctor,' or 'grave Doctor,' or 'noble Doctor,' it might be allowable, because they belong to the profession. But, not to cavil at trifles, you talk of my 'spring-velvet coat,' and advise me to wear it the first day in the year, — that is, in the middle of winter! — a spring-velvet in the middle of winter!!! That would ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... realities that are being quietly and potently assumed and affirmed to-day throughout the world. Of course the language of assertion will vary with each individual, but this is immaterial. The essences affirmed are beyond cavil. Other illustrations might be given, but they would be mere phases of that one breath of new hope and courage that is stirring in every land, to "spread contagion on mankind," of ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... the scope and nature of this reform are so little understood and that so many things not included within its plan are called by its name. When cavil yields more fully to examination, the system will have large additions to the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... authority for the price of cats throughout all Italy. As often as Milord committed a new assassination, and the attempt was made to extort from us more than two pauls as the price of blood, we drew this document from our pocket, and proved beyond a cavil that two pauls was what we were accustomed to pay on such occasions, and obstinate indeed must have been the man or woman who did not yield to such a weight ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... peruse them. By reading the argumentative passages I learned that somehow (I knew not how) children could be produced or not produced as desired; and in this stage of the matter it seemed to me so admirable that it should be so that I wondered why there should be cavil. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the softness of her sex, Her features all the sweetness of the devil, When he put on the cherub to perplex Eve, and paved (God knows how) the road to evil; The sun himself was scarce more free from specks Than she from aught at which the eye could cavil; Yet, somehow, there was something somewhere wanting, As if she ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... laughter that it was: "Let the women learn in silence with all subjection;" while Katy, much diverted, read extracts casually selected from the work, such as: "A wife should receive her husband's decree without cavil or question, remembering that the husband is the head of the wife, and that in all matters of dispute his opinion naturally and scripturally outweighs ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... as it relates to venomous tales repeated purposely to injure; but how colorless are the people who never have critical opinions on anything or anybody; or people who, having them, never express them! Criticism and cavil are two very different things. Absence of criticism is absence of the power of distinction. This age of science has taught people to look truth straight in the face and learn to discriminate. That person to whom everything is sweet ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... you to listen to me, Elsie," he said, with a passionate intensity that stilled the rising storm in her bosom. "Doctor Christobal may have pleaded his own cause already. It is not for me to cavil at him for doing that. But I cannot lose you without a word. Whether you marry him or me, or neither of us, I shall love you for ever. I want you to know that. It is no new discovery to me. I think my heart went out to you when I carried you in ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... how to spin out a case or involve it in a labyrinth of figures of speech. Mungo Park, who frequently heard these special pleaders, says that in the forensic qualifications of procrastination and cavil, and the arts of confounding and perplexing a cause, they are not easily surpassed by the ablest pleaders in Europe. The following may serve as an example of their talent:—An ass had got loose and broken into a field of corn, much of which it destroyed. The proprietor of the corn ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... prisoner; but if it escaped into a crack or crevice of the apartment, as spiders often do when assailed, all doubt of its guilty connection with the person accused of witchcraft was removed: it was set down as, beyond question or cavil, her veritable imp; and the evidence of her confederacy with Satan was thenceforward regarded as complete. The books of law and other learned writings, as well as the practice of courts in the old countries, recognized this doctrine of transformation into the shapes of animals, and the employment ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... freedom upon pure intellectual aids, from the vain labor of such an effort. He consigns him, however philosophic, to the evidence of 'inevitable assumptions, upon axiomatic postulates, which the reflecting mind is compelled to accept, and which no more admit of doubt and cavil than of establishment by formal proof.' I am not sure whether I understand Phil. in this section. Apparently he is glancing at Kant. Kant was the first person, and perhaps the last, that ever undertook formally to demonstrate the indemonstrability of God. He showed that the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... only when I confront the enemy, but every day and every hour of my life, will I look back with emotion to the time when I beheld the two most eminent commanders of the age contemplating each other's greatness without envy, and accepting each other's suggestions without cavil; and I trust that, from the sight, I may receive inspiration as far as lies within my capacity, to emulate their moral as well as ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... knew that much would be expected of him, and that his means would be limited. His powers would be liable to a constant and various restraint. His measures were sure to be the subject of perpetual cavil. If the city were besieged, there were nearly one hundred thousand mouths to feed, and nearly one hundred thousand tongues to dispute ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... virtuous action should be thus rewarded. Perhaps you will say that His ways are inscrutable, and, that as we have neither the power, nor have we the right to attempt to read them, so we should not venture to cavil at His ordinances, but humbly believe that the ultimate result will be for our benefit. I believe it is so, lady; or it may be for a punishment; but it is bitter, very bitter, oftentimes to bear. But I am wandering from my story. We could watch the progress ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Companions for that Bible newly bound; That Bible, bought by sixpence weekly saved, Has choicest prints by famous hands engraved; Has choicest notes by many a famous head, Such as to doubt have rustic readers led; Have made them stop to reason WHY? and HOW? And, where they once agreed, to cavil now. Oh! rather give me commentators plain, Who with no deep researches vex the brain; Who from the dark and doubtful love to run, And hold their glimmering tapers to the sun; Who simple truth with nine-fold reasons back, And guard the point ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... is the ceaseless hum, to him who musing walks at noon." The entomologist has laboured hard to show us that the insect has no voice, and that the "drowsy hum" is made by the wings; a fact which, being beyond all cavil, puts to the blush the old-world story of Plutarch, who tells us that when Terpander was playing upon the lyre, at the Olympic games, and had enraptured his audience to the highest pitch of enthusiasm a string of his instrument broke, and a cicada or grasshopper perched ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... the healthy act of a man's mind. It is a mysterious indescribable process, that of getting to believe;—indescribable, as all vital acts are. We have our mind given us, not that it may cavil and argue, but that it may see into something, give us clear belief and understanding about something, whereon we are then to proceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. Certainly we do not rush out, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... understand me so; for although nothing is so common as to use a part for the whole; yet if you should be out of humour with a bad dinner, a bad lodging, an ill-dressed shirt, or an ill-printed book, you might be disposed to cavil, and object, that in critical precision of language, (supposing a man to walk slow) he could not be said to have dirtied his shoes, no more than a boarding-school girl, who has cut her finger in paring an apple, could be said to ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... It is ungrateful to cavil at this moralizing and didactic temper, which animates a large part of the nation and is responsible for much of the British achievement. But its place is in the world of action not in that of letters, and it does not produce the greatest literature or ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... that of John Milton. The charge appears very plausible and damaging at first sight. We notice it in order to exhibit De Quincey's marvellous sagacity in detecting the true relation of things: he utterly dissipated the force of the cavil by simply stating the actual bearings of the two classes of poetry. Ancient poetry was darkly austere and practical; the imagination was fettered by a grim austerity; the merely passionate—that which proceeds from the sphere of the sensibilities alone—finds no resting ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cavil about the road. Don't you know that I have days when "don't care" masters me—when I'd ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... up what ye did. I never asked you, onyway. Ye ken you and Wat hauled me awa' wi' you against my wull,' said Liz rather angrily, being in a mood to cavil at trifles. 'I kent hoo it wad be, but I'll tak' jolly guid care ye dinna get anither chance o' castin' up onything o' the ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Guinea?" said the man in gray; "where is he? Let us at once find him, and refute beyond cavil this injurious hypothesis." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... delightful harmony, but it seemed that the books and the pictures were chosen to match them. The man talking, in the great carved armchair by the fire, fitted the place. His vigorous, pleasant face looked prosperous, and so kindly was his air that one might not cavil at a lack of subtler qualities. He drew a long breath as he brought out the last words of ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Miss Clinton, by saying it was necessary," said he steadily. "There are other distinguished men here who are further distinguishing themselves by toeing the mark without complaint or cavil. Mr. Landover was appealed to on three distinct occasions by Captain Trigger and the committee. He ignored all private appeals—and commands. The time had come for a show-down. It was either Landover and his little band of sycophants, or me and the ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... after day, entreating me to believe; but I saw the one flaw in the theory, and I refused to be convinced till the actual existence of Willie Hughes, a boy-actor of Elizabethan days, had been placed beyond the reach of doubt or cavil. ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... the conclusion that the effects of individual experience are not cumulatively hereditary we shall cease to cavil at the fact that there has been no anatomical or structural progress in the human body or brain since the time when men first became social and civilised beings, that is to say, since they first began to work together with their ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... himself as he called out to his butler that he was ready for dinner. Then he bounded up to his room humming. His very muscles were of quite a different texture seemingly now from an hour or two ago! How the blood flew about joyously in his body! Dear Venus! she makes us pay generally, but who can cavil at the glorious gifts she gives? As soon as his dinner was disposed of, and all his other servants had retired from the room, Hamilton called his butler, Pir Bakhs, to him, and held a long conference with that intelligent and trustworthy individual. Hamilton was one of those men ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... stands convicted of critical malice by his poor cavil at the supposed title; and has betrayed his ignorance of the ease and beauty of Epistolary method, as well as the most gross misapprehension, by his ridiculous analysis of the work, resolving it into thirty-six parts. He seems, however, to ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... taken for public uses without just compensation" is a fundamental provision of the Constitution of the United States, which is itself a part of the Constitution of every State of the Union; and the right of private ownership in land is defined and protected beyond doubt or cavil in New York under the State Constitution. An Act passed in 1830 provides and declares that all lands within the State "are allodial, so that, subject only to the liability to escheat, the entire and absolute property is vested in the owners according to the ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... sours the temper and narrows the views. To have produced works of genius, and to find them neglected or treated with scorn, is one of the heaviest trials of human patience. We exaggerate our own merits when they are denied by others, and are apt to grudge and cavil at every particle of praise bestowed on those to whom we feel a conscious superiority. In mere self-defence we turn against the world, when it turns against us; brood over the undeserved slights we receive; and thus the genial current of the soul is stopped, or vents itself in effusions ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... known. No one disputes this, except in reference to his own religion. This, he is apt to assert, had something "supernatural" about its origin. If this word be correctly used, it may stand without cavil. The "natural" is that of which we know in whole or in part the laws; the "supernatural" means that of which we do not at present know in any degree the laws. The domain of the supernatural diminishes in the ratio of the increase of knowledge; ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... celebration, at a time when the troops are unpaid—when the soldiers, wounded at the last pronunciamiento, are refused their pensions, while the widows and orphans of others are vainly suing for assistance. "At the best," say those who cavil on the subject, "it was a civil war—a war between brothers—a subject of regret and not of glory—of sadness and not of jubilee." As for General Valencia's congratulation to the president, in which he compares the "honourable ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... compositions: it is inferior, not indeed in ease, but in simplicity and antique rigour of language, to the common version used in the Kirk of Scotland. Burns had admitted "Death and Dr. Hornbook" into Creech's edition, and probably desired to balance it with something at which the devout could not cavil.] ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... frankly confess, that we did not meet in pleasant relations, except now and then, when the lifting of a veil, as it were, revealed for a moment the true life of each. Yet I was fond of looking at her from a distance, and defending her when silly people were inclined to cavil at her want of feminine graces. Then I would say, 'I would like to be an artist now, that I might paint, not the care-worn countenance and the uneasy air of one seemingly out of harmony with the scene about her, but the soul that sometimes looks out from ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... lordship, and I saw he had crossed to the doorway and stood with his back to us. "Diana," he continued after a moment, "in this world of change, of doubt and uncertainty, one thing is very sure and beyond all cavil and dispute: Peregrine loves you far better than he loves himself, since he is strong enough to forego so much of present happiness for your future welfare. He honours me by placing you in my charge, I who love you as a daughter and will treat you as such. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... suddenly and sent the eunuchs scurrying back. There was a wish to split up the party for a few minutes so that no one would know what the others were doing. I knew I should immensely annoy the eunuchs by going towards the women's quarters. Well, I would not cavil.... ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the charge of a judicious governess, a very small establishment being kept for them, and the earl paying them impromptu and flying visits. Generous and benevolent she was, timid and sensitive to a degree, gentle, and considerate to all. Do not cavil at her being thus praised—admire and love her whilst you may, she is worthy of it now, in her innocent girlhood; the time will come when such praise would be misplaced. Could the fate that was to overtake his child have been foreseen by the earl, he would have struck her down to death, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... I smoked at ease in my pareu upon the paepae of my simple hosts I felt some misgivings rise in me. Yet why cavil at the vehicle by which one arrives at Nirvana? Had I not tasted the chicha beer of the Andes, and found it good? And vague analogies and surmises floated before me in the curls of smoke that rose in the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... for my whole life," she said. And indeed I do believe she was so thoroughly frightened, that if a police-officer had come into the house and asked her to reveal secrets compromising the good name of her own son, she would have done so without cavil or question. "I feel as if I wanted to take my stand out on the common, and, in the face of the whole world, declare what I have done for Mary Leavenworth. But first," she whispered, "tell me, for God's sake, how those girls are situated. I have not dared to ask or write. ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... ill to cavil each with each. I might retort. I only say to thee ITS slaves we are: ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... had disappeared with the big canvas and the cartoons [Transcriber's note: cartons?], and Hannah Ann and Henry had reduced everything to a state of perfection that even the most critical Symons in the world could not cavil at, and Bruce had said his last farewells and was on the blue rug at the studio door with his hand on the knob to usher them out, that Patricia found utterance ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... Republican party has borne the brunt, and accomplished the appointed evolutions of progress; and the Republican party has deserved well of the American people, of history and of humanity. And the children and grandchildren of those who to-day cavil, defile and stone the party, they hereafter will bless the Republican party, who, with noble consciousness can say to the spirit of light and of duty: Nunc dimitte in ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... devoted its utmost energy for half a century—in fact, ever since Bismarck began to make ready for the seizing of unwilling Schleswig-Holstein. And so far as the art of music is concerned there is also no need to cavil. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... "Beyond a cavil; as may be seen by divers particulars in his outward conformation, viz: in the shape of the head, the muscles of the arms and of the legs, the air and gait, besides sundry other signs, that are familiar ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... refreshing, but I argue nothing from it; there is nothing real in the freedom of thought at the West,—it is from the position of men's lives, not the state of their minds. So soon as they have time, unless they grow better meanwhile, they will cavil and criticise, and judge other men by their own standard, and outrage the law of love every way, just as ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... patriotism, which is lighted with the opening of the campaign, and which goes out like a candle in a gust of wind the day after the election; men who came to applaud blindly, and a few who came to cavil and deride. Loring oriented himself in a leisurely eye-sweep, and so came by ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... society afresh, and to build up domestic life on a new and more enduring basis;—at a time when the greatest laxity of morals prevailed, and the enemies of the Gospel were known to be on the look out for grounds of cavil against Christianity and its Author;—what wonder if some were found to remove the pericope de adultera from their copies, lest it should be pleaded in extenuation of breaches of the seventh commandment? The very subject-matter, I say, of St. John viii. 3-11 would sufficiently account ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... leave behind him any true philosopher among them; any who followed his mode of argumentation, his subjects of disquisition, or his course of life; any who would subdue the malignant passions or coerce the looser; any who would abstain from calumny or from cavil; any who would devote his days to the glory of his country, or, what is easier and perhaps wiser, to his own well-founded contentment and well-merited repose. Xenophon, the best of them, offered up sacrifices, believed ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... a beneficent Creator, who has moral objects in view, and cares for the delight and the improvement of His creatures,[1] and looking to the known effects on the mind of beauty in art and in nature, the existence is at once and beyond all cavil explained. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... faith is injured by allowing that there is no such positive proof, when or by whom these and some other books of holy Scripture were written, as to exclude all possibility of doubt and cavil. ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton |
