"Confute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plain language, at least; this was the case for the prosecution, stripped of all pedantic juggling; and Raleigh now drew himself together to confute these charges as best he might. 'Let me answer,' he said; 'it concerns my life;' and from this point onwards, as Mr. Edwards remarks, the trial becomes a long and impassioned dialogue. Coke refused to let Raleigh speak, and in this was supported by Popham, a very old ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... come yet. Lord Granville and his faction persist in persuading the King, that it is an affair of no consequence; and for the Duke of Newcastle, he is glad when the rebels make any progress, in order to confute Lord Granville's assertions. The best of our situation is, our strength at sea: the Channel is well guarded, and twelve men-of-war more are arrived from rowley. Vernon, that simple noisy creature, has hit upon a scheme that is of great service; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil, and confute my pen— To make me own this hind of princes peer, This rail-splitter a ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... whether English liberties have ever run a graver danger in modern times than at the trial of the twelve reformers. The Government sought to overwhelm them with a mass of evidence which they lacked the means to sift and confute. But no definite act was charged against them, and the whole case turned on a monstrous attempt to give a wide constructive interpretation to the law of high treason. High treason in English law has the perfectly definite meaning ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... them? Is there not everywhere in God's Book a flat contradiction to this, in multitudes of promises, of invitations, of examples, and the like? Alas! alas! there will then be there millions of souls to confute this plea; ready, I say, to stand up, and say, 'O! deceived world, heaven swarms with such as were, when they were in the world, to the full as bad as you!' Now, this will kill all plea or excuse, why they should ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... William IV on the dissolution was another delusion, and so on in perverse, wicked, contradictory human nature. Those who like to probe such systems may do so—the only wise conclusion is Swift's, "If you want to confute a lie, tell another in the opposite direction." Madame de Sevigne tells of a curate who put up a clock on his church. His parishioners collected stones to break it, saying it was the Gabelle. "No, my friends," he said, "it was the Jubilee," ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... Test. Append. p. 239, 240. So vain and groundless are these and the like evasions and subterfuges of our modern sceptics and unbelievers, and so certainly do thorough inquiries and authentic evidence disprove and confute such evasions and subterfuges upon ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... last from Lord Byron, through Murray, telling me he had informed Lady B. of his having given me his Memoirs for the purpose of their being published after his death, and offering her the perusal of them in case she might wish to confute any of his statements. Her note in answer to this offer (the original of which he enclosed me) ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... me with them, not rank me with any names that deserve remembrance. If I cannot survive the Milles's, the What-d'ye-call-him's, and the compilers of catalogues of topography, it would comfort me very little to confute them. I should be as little proud of success as if I had carried a ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... and it may now be useful to consider briefly what can be said for her position. We must begin by looking at the matter from the Church's standpoint. It is a good rule to endeavour to understand your opponent's position before you try to confute him; an excellent rule seldom complied with by anti-Catholic controversialists. Now the Church starts with the proposition that man has an immortal soul destined to eternal happiness or eternal misery, and she proceeds to claim ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... thereupon so justly, and withal so clearly, that his adversaries were forced to give up the cause, according to the relation of the Portuguese, who were witness of it. After this they advanced such extravagant and mad propositions, that they cost the Father no trouble to confute, for they destroyed themselves. But the most pleasant part of this day's work was, that the seven Bonzas not being able to agree on some points of doctrine, fell foul on each other, and wrangled with so much ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... the old Translation, which shall effectually confute Mr. Pope: for our Author hath done little more than throw the very words of North ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... Erymanth the entire truth, and had been believed, but it was quite probable that even that truth might divide for ever between him and Viola, and those other stories of the Stympsons both cousins had, of course, flatly denied, but had never been able otherwise to confute. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... overcome; he must exhibit once in the Academy. The Academicians would be satisfied with that. Mr. Jones did exhibit in the Academy; he was elected on the strength of this one exhibit. He has never exhibited since. These are the facts: confute them who may, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Bishop of Pontus in the third century, was favoured by a vision of the Trinity, which enabled him to confute and utterly subdue the Sabellian heretics—the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Grape that can with Logic absolute The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute: The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice Life's leaden Metal ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Okusama! The expression of your face has changed. Heigh-ho! Whither away? Alas! It is plain that she would go to the yashiki of Okumura. Evil her purpose. She would confute the malice spoken by Koume, by parent and child. She would fetch away with her Iemon Dono. Iya! Ho, there! Your honoured judgment strays. She believes in what Gombei has said; that he is with the Okumura. Does she not remember times past, the reproof of the Danna? Sa! As before! ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... that, to justify God, he had to justify all His ways to man; that if the good rules at all, it rules absolutely; and that a single exception would confute ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... tradition on the subject, Aristotle had represented the Locrian colony as founded by some Parthenidae or slaves' children, as they were called, a statement which seems to have roused the indignation of Timaeus, who went to a good deal of trouble to confute this theory. He does so ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... Thompson cared to touch. He had never supposed there was a normal being with views on religion and economics, upon any manifestation of human problems, with views so contrary to his own. The maddening part of it was her ability to cite facts and authorities whose existence he was not aware of, to confute him with logic and compel him to admit that he did not know, that much of what he asserted so emphatically was based on mere belief rather than demonstrable fact or rational processes of arriving at a conclusion. Sometimes both Sam Carr and ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... difference and contradiction towards all antiquity; undertaking not only to frame new words of science at pleasure, but to confound and extinguish all ancient wisdom; insomuch as he never nameth or mentioneth an ancient author or opinion, but to confute and reprove; wherein for glory, and drawing followers and disciples, he took the right course. For certainly there cometh to pass, and hath place in human truth, that which was noted and pronounced in the highest truth:- Veni in nomine partis, nec recipits me; si ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... familiarly accompanie the vnbealeuers / They can not chose but they must heare many subtill reasons and see many other thinges which do mutch make against the true religion that they do profes: Which thinges when they se and be not able to disproue and confute / They do it not: And so they ronne into two mischeifs. The furst is / That they ar as it wer witnesses of the blasphemie / and of the reproche that the vnbeleauers do to the truthe: the seconde / that they maie happ to haue summe stinge left ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them: for they teach not their own use, but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted; not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... plenty, curs'd; Who their old monarch eagerly undo, And yet uneasily obey the new. Search, Satire, search; a deep incision make: The poison's strong, the antidote's too weak. 'Tis pointed truth must manage this dispute, And down-right English, Englishmen confute. ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... because her alledged unnatural and cruel conduct to her son, and shameful avowal of guilt, were stated in a Life of Savage now lying before me, which came out so early as 1727, and no attempt had been made to confute it, or to punish the authour or printer as a libeller: but for the honour of human nature, we should be glad to find the shocking tale not true; and, from a respectable gentleman[493] connected with the lady's family, I have received such information and remarks, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... eternal humorist The eternal enemy of the absolute, Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist With your air indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—" And—"Are ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... throughout the mill that Katie Robertson was a thief, who appeared in unbecoming finery bought with ill-gotten gains. The rumor never took sufficient definiteness of shape to reach the girl so that she could confute it and explain its origin. Of course, she was not likely to tell any one in the mill about the finding of the fifty-dollar bill and what had passed between Mr. James Mountjoy and herself, since it was largely to her own credit, nor ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... of the sectarists, with their six thousand errata, like the false Duessa, covered their crafty deformity with a fair raiment; for when the great Selden, in the assembly of divines, delighted to confute them in their own learning, he would say, as Whitelock reports, when they had cited a text to prove their assertion, "Perhaps in your little pocket-bible with gilt leaves," which they would often pull out and read, "the translation may be so, but the Greek or the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... such hypotheses. With years enough behind his back, Lincoln will take the selfsame track, And prove, hulled fairly to the cob, A mere vagary of Old Prob. 120 Give the right man a solar myth, And he'll confute the sun therewith. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... leaven, invited Palladius hither, who obtaining liberty from Celestine, and being enjoined to introduce the hierarchy as opportunity should offer, came into Scotland, and succeeded so effectually in his commission, as both to confute Pelagianism and new-model the government ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... never being in anywise trusted? They do not differ from persons of any age or sex in that country, if the world has been as justly, as it has always been firmly, persuaded that the people of Italy are effete in point of good faith. I have seen much to justify this opinion, and something also to confute it; and as long as Garibaldi lives, I shall not let myself believe that a race which could produce a man so signally truthful and single-hearted is a race of liars and cheats. I think the student of their character should also be slow to upbraid Italians for their duplicity, without admitting, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... calls the Christian doctrine a secret system [of belief], we must confute him on this point also, since almost the entire world is better acquainted with what Christians preach than with the favourite opinions of philosophers. For who is ignorant of the statement that Jesus ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... replies To questions put to suit him, Would not, I think, have looked so wise With Lesbia to confute him; He would more probably have bade Xantippe ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... thou wouldst have thy skill thought universal, Though thy dull ear be to music untrue; Then, whilst we strive to confute the Rehearsal, Prithee leave thrashing of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... and such a man that he is not at all the person he was, or of such and such another that he is twice the man he used to be—expressions than which none nearer the truth can well be found. On the other hand, those whom Bishop Butler is intending to confute would be the first to admit that, though there are many changes between infancy and old age, yet they come about in any one individual under such circumstances as we are all agreed in considering as the factors of personal ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... Conversion of the Gentiles, there was no use of alledging the Scriptures, which they beleeved not. The Apostles therefore laboured by Reason to confute their Idolatry; and that done, to perswade them to the faith of Christ, by their testimony of his Life, and Resurrection. So that there could not yet bee any controversie concerning the authority to Interpret Scripture; seeing no man was obliged during his infidelity, to ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... another's; of such proof, we have more than enough. Most people have not the time, patience, or ability, to set down quietly with close observation, and investigate the subject thoroughly. Hence it has been found easier to receive error for truth, than to make the exertion necessary to confute it; the more so, because there is no guide to direct the investigation. I shall, therefore, pursue a different course; and for every assertion endeavor to give a test, that the reader may apply ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... ([Greek: en tois adiorthotois antigraphois]) is found "He wept,"' Epiphanius is instructive. Perfectly well aware that the expression is genuine, he goes on to state that 'Irenaeus quoted it in his work against Heresies, when he had to confute the error of the Docetae[495].' 'Nevertheless,' Epiphanius adds, 'the orthodox through fear ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... what it means to experiment with the future of a people. To overthrow their traditions: to confute their beliefs and superstitions, and to subvert their gods! And what do you offer them in return? Other traditions; other beliefs; another God—and education! Do you dare to assume the responsibility? Do you dare to implant ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... some risk in carrying on the altercation at this juncture, Timothy, having bound up his jaws, could not withstand the inclination he had to confute his master. He therefore, in a muttering accent, protested, that, if the knight would give him leave, he should prove that his honour had tied a knot with his tongue, which he could not untie with all ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Eleazar said, "be diligent to study the law, that thou mayest know how to confute the Epicurean; consider also in whose presence thou art laboring, for the Master of thy work is faithful to pay thee the reward ...
— Hebrew Literature
... Insects seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the notion, that bats go down chimneys and gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down upon a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more despatch than I was aware of, but in a most ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... cardinals, about as many bishops, and fifteen or sixteen theologians of the Sorbonne, laden with thick folios—the writings of the Fathers of the first five centuries, with which the Cardinal of Lorraine still professed his ability to confute the Reformed.[1147] Again the twelve Huguenot ministers were admitted; but the lay deputies of the churches were excluded.[1148] The discussion was long and desultory. Beza began by replying to the first ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Believe me, therefore, my whole hope rests upon your present compliance. My father, I am certain, by his letter, will now hear neither petition nor defence; on the contrary, he will only enrage at the temerity of offering to confute him. But when he knows you are his daughter, his honour will then be concerned in yours, and it will be as much his desire to have it cleared, as it is now ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... he is neither to raise an old Heresie from the grave, nor to mention a blasphemous opinion unnecessarily; but if the people be in danger of an errour, he is to confute it soundly, and endeavour to satisfie their judgements ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... John could best combat and confute, both by his words and writings, the subtle and deadly heresies which were especially rife there. "False Christs," such as Simon Magus, the first heretic, Menander, Dositheus, and others, no longer troubled the Infant Church with their blasphemous impostures, but ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... among the various plays, or to determine point by point the lineal order of their succession. I have examined no table or catalogue of recent or of earlier date, from the time of Malone onwards, with a view to confute by my reasoning the conclusions of another, or by the assistance of his theories to corroborate my own. It is impossible to fix or decide by inner or outer evidence the precise order of production, much less of composition, which critics of the present or the past may have set their wits to ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of that door—in that darkness where Isabel's own special chairs were, and her own special books, and the two great walnut wardrobes filled with her dresses and wraps? What tragic argument might be there vainly striving to confute the gentle dead? "In God's name, what else could I have done?" For his mother's immutable silence was surely answering him as Isabel in life would never have answered him, and he was beginning to understand how eloquent the dead can be. They ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... verily remain in the wilderness among beasts, and after forty days did hunger and faint for lack of food; so the external ear did hear the tempting words of Satan, which entered into the knowledge of the soul, and which, repelling the venom of such temptations, caused the tongue to speak and confute Satan, to our unspeakable comfort and consolation. It appears also that the body of Christ Jesus was carried by Satan from the wilderness unto the temple of Jerusalem, and that it was placed upon the pinnacle of the same temple, from whence it was carried ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... true, has not a word to say of hatred and contempt; he is simply occupied with a theoretical exposition of how certain arrangements, for instance, the three-class suffrage, is pernicious. I am unable to confute this teaching. But I have this to say with respect to the organic unity of human nature, that if the doctrine is true then it follows that every normally constituted working man must come to hate and distrust not only these arrangements and institutions but also ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Mood or Figure in Aristotle. It was called the Argumentum Basilinum (others write it Bacilinum or Baculinum) which is pretty well express'd in our English Word Club-Law. When they were not able to confute their Antagonist, they knock'd him down. It was their Method in these polemical Debates, first to discharge their Syllogisms, and afterwards to betake themselves to their Clubs, till such Time as ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... to be a notorious liar among persons whom I know to be of undoubted credit. Now, Mr. Veal is more of a gentleman than to say she lies, but says a bad husband has crazed her; but she needs only present herself, and it will effectually confute that pretence. Mr. Veal says he asked his sister on her death-bed whether she had a mind to dispose of anything. And she said no. Now the things which Mrs. Veal's apparition would have disposed of were so trifling, and nothing of justice aimed at in the disposal, that the design ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... was rough, and his tongue had a keen Shropshire tang, which indeed it never lost, giving thereby evidence to confute those who afterwards claimed for him kinship with a noble family. In truth Benbow was the son of an honest tanner of our town, and took no shame of his origin: his greatness was above such pettiness of spirit. He had run away to sea at an early age, and for some ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... what I was suspecting to be your notion; yet I would not have you wonder if by-and-by I am found repeating a seemingly plain question; for I ask not in order to confute you, but as I was saying that the argument may proceed consecutively, and that we may not get the habit of anticipating and suspecting the meaning of one another's words; I would have you develope your own views in your own way, whatever ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... learned not only from the study of the right road in science, but from observing where and how men may go astray. I know, indeed, few more useful exercises for the learner than to examine a few paradoxes, when leisure serves, and to consider how, if left to his own guidance, he would confute them. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... there is much which is open to attack, and some avail themselves largely of this opening to assail the cherished belief of the people; but as a rule it is far better to assert and enforce truth than to confute error, though truth does at times require error to be directly exposed. The native brethren are much more inclined to aggressive speech than the missionaries. They know their own countrymen well; they are familiar with their modes of thinking and of acting, they are well acquainted ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Subjects—to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics—upon the divine authority of the holy Scriptures—upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church—upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ—upon the Divinity of ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... in this opinion, so wrong that I confute him by subjoining his own account of what befell, somewhat later ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... set down in its principles, and he that doth any way confute that spirit, presently it falls a raging, and cries out, serpent, liar, wolf, dragon, devil, be silent with thy serpentine wisdom, and smoke of the bottomless pit. Now in this the devil is wonderfully ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hours. I think you are enough of a chemist to know that no doctor would dare go on the stand and swear to death from morphine poisoning in the face of such evidence against him. The veriest tyro of an expert toxicologist could too easily confute him." ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... journal of the Liman campaign Jones's bitterness is pathetically expressed in inflated self-praise, called out by the desire to confute the calumnies of his enemies. "Every one to whom I have the honor to be known," he wrote, "is aware that I am the least selfish of mankind.... This is known to the whole American people.... Have I not given proofs sufficiently striking that I have a heart the most sensitive, a soul the most ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... sigh of relief. She credited herself with having secured Persis's car very neatly. The man might, perhaps, get into trouble, but she could make that up to him by a generous tip. Her one idea was to contradict and confute the disgraceful announcement at its fountain-head. It was providential that the unknown Lord Chilminster's place was so near; but had it been ten times as far off, Jeannette, boiling with justifiable indignation, and with her mind made up to exact reparation, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... litter. As they passed the threshold, the baron dipt his finger in the font-stone and offered holy-water to his lady, who accepted it, as usual, by touching his finger with her own. But then, as if to confute the calumnies of the malevolent lady of Steinfeldt, with an air of sportive familiarity which was rather unwarranted by the time and place, he flirted on her beautiful forehead a drop or two of the moisture which remained on his own hand. The opal, on which one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... up to the standard of morality therein contained. The more highly cultured will hear the same passages unmoved, because they, in the excess of artificially gained wisdom, have deadened their instincts so far, that while they listen to a truth pronounced, they already consider how best they can confute it, and prove the same a lie! Honest enthusiasm is impossible to the over- punctilious and pedantic scholar,—but on the other hand, I would have it plainly understood that a mere brief local popularity is not Fame, . . No! for the author ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... suffic'd To make some think him circumcis'd: And truly so he was, perhaps, Not as a proselyte, but for claps, He was in logic a great critic, Profoundly skill'd in analytic; He could distinguish, and divide A hair 'twixt south and south west side; On either which he could dispute, Confute, change hands, and still confute; He'd undertake to prove by force Of argument, a man's no horse; He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a lord may be an owl; A calf an alderman, a goose a justice, And rooks committee-men and trustees, He'd run in debt by disputation, And pay with ratiocination: ...
— English Satires • Various
... do deny it," again, in his impulsiveness, snapping at the controversial bait, "and I will confute you there in a ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... reigned in that manner above forty years, falling passionately in love with her own son, she endeavoured to induce him to comply with her criminal desires, and was slain by him: all this, I say, is so void of all appearance of truth, that to go about to confute it would be but losing time. It must however be owned, that almost all the authors who have spoken of Semiramis, give us but a disadvantageous ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... which I have been so far from offending, that I have been scrupulous perhaps to a Fault in quoting the Authors of several Passages which I might have made my own. But as this Assertion is in reality an Encomium on what I have published, I ought rather to glory in it, than endeavour to confute it. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... my mind was full of the questions raised by this letter, I received a call from the daughter of the same business man whom my friend considered so unscrupulous. She was passing through Chicago and came to ask me to give her some arguments which she might later use with her father to confute the charge that Settlements were irreligious. She said, "You see, he has been asked to give money to our Settlement and would like to do it, if his conscience was only clear; he disapproves of Settlements ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... which he published in 1617 in three large folios—De Republica Ecclesiastica, of which the original still exists among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. "He exclaims," says Fuller, "'in reading, meditation, and writing, I am almost pined away,' but his fat cheeks did confute his false tongue in that expression." In this book he shows that the authority of the Bishop of Rome can easily be disproved from Holy Scripture, that it receives no support from the judgment of history and antiquity, that the early bishops of that see had no precedence over other ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... shut quickly. There was an implied accusation against him in the fervor of her admiration for the wife who had deserted him. He groped for something in self-justification with which to confute Lois Montgomery's daughter. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... passed for certain, undisputed; It ne'er cam i' their heads to doubt it, Till chiels gat up an' wad confute it, An' ca'd it wrang; An' muckle din there was about it, Baith loud ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... inevitable necessity. It is sound, now and for all time." The cynical pessimist, on the other hand, admits the errors of past policy, but says frankly that it is too late to change. "We have gone too far, raised passions we cannot allay." I shall not try further to confute the honest pessimist. The preceding chapters have been written in vain if they do not shatter the theory of original sin. And to the cynical pessimist, who is a reincarnation of our old friend Fitzgibbon (for that clear-headed statesman frankly imputed original sin to the conquerors ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... young. He has not grown a day older since this time five years. I found he had taken a great deal of trouble about me, recommended me strenuously, brought forward my papers on foreign policy, and been at much pains to confute that report that was afloat against me. He treated my appointment as a personal favour; and he is a man of weight now. You were right, Theodora; it would have been abominable to sulk in our corner, because ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Collection whenever the public taste calls for a new edition. But the original, what would I not give to have it in my hands, to touch the very parchment which came from the press of my revered ancestor, and, gloating on the crabbed letters, confute MacCribb to his face ipso visu et tactu of so inestimable a rarity. Exchanges—or "swaps," as the vulgar call them—are not unknown among our fraternity. Ask what you will for this treasure, to the half of my kingdom: ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... Doellinger takes up. Reducing the chief phenomena of religious and social decline to the one head of failing authority, he founds on the state of Protestantism the apology of the Papacy. He abandons to the Protestant theology the destruction of the Protestant Church, and leaves its divines to confute and abjure its principles in detail, and to arrive by the exhaustion of the modes of error, through a painful but honourable process, at the gates of truth; he meets their arguments simply by a chapter of ecclesiastical history, of which experience teaches them the force; ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... his eyes on the floor, while the Bantam in rudest Doric commenced his narrative. Knowing what was to come, and thoroughly nerved to confute the main incident, Richard barely listened to his barbarous locution: but when the recital arrived at the point where the Bantam affirmed he had seen "T'm Baak'll wi's owen hoies," Richard faced him, and was amazed to find himself being mutely addressed by a series of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he proceeded to confute by experience: he had repeatedly been called in to cases of mania described as sudden, and almost invariably found the patient had been cranky for years; which he condensed thus: "His conduct and behaviour for many years previously ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... verify or confute this conjecture, Lieutenant, now Captain Flinders (from whose journal these observations on the advantages of the strait are taken), has lately sailed in his Majesty's ship Investigator. He is accompanied by several professional men of great abilities, selected by that ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... difficult. "Winter time; so dangerous, so precarious," answer Bruhl and Comte de Saxe: There is this danger, this uncertainty, and then that other;—which the King and Valori, with all their eloquence, confute. "Impossible, for want of victual," answers Maurice at last, driven into a corner: "Iglau, suppose we get it, will soon be eaten; then where is our provision?"—"Provision?" answers Valori: "There is M. de Sechelles, Head of our Commissariat in Prag; such a Commissary never ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... votaress" were not so unsullied as could be wished. We know how loudly Leicester had complained—we have seen how clearly Walsingham could convict; but Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute: for an absolute sovereign, even without resorting to Philip's syllogisms of axe and faggot, was apt in the sixteenth century to have the best of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... creature, with a passion for him, and still less to have heard the suborned wretch pretend to confess it. She therefore found no difficulty in obeying her father in that particular, and rather chose to submit to the imputation than to undergo the shame which she must have suffered in endeavouring to confute it. She attempted to persuade Sir Charles to permit her to stay in the house under what restrictions he and his lady should think proper, till her conduct should sufficiently convince him of her innocence, and not to ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... once every year; intending thereby, that the Clergy, and especially such as were Ministers in the congregation, should (by often reading, and meditation in God's word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth; and further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) might continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... logic absolute Both Standard Oil and Copper can confute; The Sovereign Alchemist that in a trice National ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... not reproach you for entertaining those ideas. And, besides, I have not the right to do so. If I should undertake to argue with you, you, with your wonderful talents, would confute me a thousand times over. No, I will not attempt any thing of that kind. What I say is that these poor and humble inhabitants of Orbajosa are pious and good Christians, although they know nothing about German philosophy, and that, therefore, you ought not publicly to manifest your contempt ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... folly. Neither shall any man or matter escape some touch of these smiling railers. But for Erasmus and Agrippa, they had another foundation than the superficial part would promise. Marry, these other pleasant fault-finders, who will correct the verb, before they understand the noun, and confute others' knowledge before they confirm their own: I would have them only remember, that scoffing cometh not of wisdom. So as the best title in true English they get with their merriments is to be called good fools: for so have our grave forefathers ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Macaulay & Co. 'Oh for a Pot of Ale, etc.,' rather than such Alarums. Better dull Woodbridge! What bothered me in London was—all the Clever People going wrong with such clever Reasons for so doing which I couldn't confute. I will send an original Omar ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... already recognized," said Mr. Rylands. "It was Jane who lied about you, and your return with me will confute her slanders." ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the previous evening they had learned by heart a poem of their great poet, Jacob Catz, and that they were probably on their way to some agricultural convention of which the programme was in their pockets, where with arguments drawn from their modest experience they would confute the propositions of some scientific farmer from Goes or Middelburg. Ludovico Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman, the author of an excellent work on the Netherlands printed in Antwerp in the sixteenth century, says that there was hardly a man or woman in Zealand who did not speak ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... of Saxony, used to say he had well discerned that nothing could be propounded by human reason and understanding, were it never so wise, cunning, or sharp, but that a man, even out of the selfsame proposition, might be able to confute and overthrow it; but God's Word only stood fast and sure, like a mighty wall which neither can be ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... of the ancient people of Strood common to several other parts of the kingdom, e.g. Auster in Dorsetshire, which the quaint and diligent Lambarde, quoting from Polydore Virgil, evidently regarded as serious, and takes immense pains to confute! It relates to St. Thomas a Becket and his contention with King Henry II., whereby he began to be looked upon as the King's enemy, and as such began to be "so commonly neglected, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... lately spoke to him in Greek, and Shakspeare resolves to bring him, as he has brought Shakspeare, to a tragical conclusion. Mr. Pope suggests the last choice of a subject for writing a book, by making the Nonsense of others his argument; while his own puts it out of any writer's power to confute him." In another fling at Pope, he gives the reason why Mr. Pope adds the dirty dialect to that of the water, and is in love with the Nymphs of Fleet ditch; and in a lecture on the spleen he announced "an anatomical discovery, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... arranged their arguments in my mind. I armed myself with their weapons. I felt my heart spring joyously within me as I felt the strength I had acquired, and I sent to the philosopher to visit me, that I might conquer and confute him. He came; but he spoke with pain and reluctance. He saw that I had taken the matter far more deeply to heart than he could have supposed it possible in a courtier and a man of fortune and the world. Little did he know of me or my secret ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... book.—When Hobbes was at any time at a loss for arguments to defend his unsocial principles, viva voce, he always used to say—"I have published my opinions; consult my works; and, if I am wrong, confute me publicly." To most persons this mode of confutation was by far too operose; but they might have confoundedly puzzled the philosopher ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... a step as yet beyond the ability of most controversialists. To admit that your antagonist may have seen some truth not visible to yourself, and to read his work in this sense,—in order to learn, and not merely to confute,—is not ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Bonteen at the club. Men were going in and out with that feverish excitement which always prevails on the eve of a great parliamentary change. A large majority against the Government was considered to be certain; but there was an idea abroad that Mr. Daubeny had some scheme in his head by which to confute the immediate purport of his enemies. There was nothing to which the audacity of the man was not equal. Some said that he would dissolve the House,—which had hardly as yet been six months sitting. Others were of opinion that he would simply ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... with a near back-wheel out of track in just the same way that this particular wheel was out of track, and that its tyres were the same as those of the car that drew up outside Burns's training-quarters, then I should have a wealth of circumstantial evidence that it would be almost impossible to confute. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... no doubt proceed to the greatest lengths against me, I being the only surviving officer, and they most inclined to believe a prior story, all that can be said to confute it will probably be looked upon as mere falsity and invention. Should that be my unhappy case, and they resolved upon my destruction as an example to futurity, may God enable me to bear my fate with the fortitude of a man, conscious that misfortune, not any misconduct, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... obeyed. When I came into her presence she said she could not have believed I would ever have been wanting in my duty to that degree as to wound the memory of the late King, her lord. I had such reasons to offer as she could not herself confute, and therefore referred me to the Cardinal, but I found he understood those things no better than her Majesty. He spoke to me with the haughtiest air in the world, refused to hear my justification, and commanded me in the King's name to retract publicly the next day in full assembly. You ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... deny that we should have been better justified in a very different conduct. But it is material to the present argument to declare what that conduct actually was, because it is of itself sufficient to confute all the pretexts by which the advocates of France have so long laboured to perplex ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... temperature: if one held to the existence of a Moral Sense in all men, settling questions of right and wrong, as surely as all men know sweet things from bitter by tasting them: these stories, and they could be multiplied by hundreds, abundantly suffice to confute the error. There is no authentic copy of the moral law, printed, framed, and hung up by the hand of Nature, in the inner sanctuary of every human heart. Man has to learn his duties as he learns the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... can with logic absolute The two and seventy jarring sects confute: The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice Life's ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... infinity. And infinity, that is to say, the accumulation of an infinite number of substances, is, properly speaking, not a whole any more than the infinite number itself, whereof one cannot say whether it is even or uneven. That is just what serves to confute those who make of the world a God, or who think of God as the Soul of the world; for the world or the universe cannot be regarded as an animal ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... purpose of the writer to convey the impression that his period of waiting had been passed without pleasure; but yet we may easily confute him with another quotation from The Lantern-Bearers. "One pleasure at least," says Stevenson, "he tasted to the full—his work is there to prove it—the keen pleasure of successful literary composition." Was this honorable author ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... your crutch, John Meldrum, lean on me, And when your lovely daughter shall complain, Send Gilbert's wooden argument again. If still you wonder that I take a wife From the unpolish'd walks of humble life, I'll tell you on what ground my love began, And let the wise confute it if they can. I saw a girl, with nature's untaught grace, Turn from my ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... Church on as many Sunday mornings in full term, "between the commencement of the last month in Lent term and the end of the third week in Act term, upon either of the following subjects:—to confirm and establish the Christian faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics; upon the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures; upon the authority of the writings of the primitive fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church; upon the divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; upon ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... dissolving into tears; especially when he happened to advert unto the impudence of that hypocrisy which reconciled goodness and villainy, and made it possible for men to be saints and devils both together; whereby religion became ruinous to itself, and faith became instructed to confute and baffle duty. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... expended in articles for the benefit of the convicts who embarked for this country, which articles had been entrusted to the Rev. Mr. Johnson, to be disposed of according to the intention of the subscribers after our arrival, Mr. Johnson wrote to his friends in England to confute this report; and by accounts lately received, it appeared that no such public collection had ever been made; at Mr. Johnson's request, therefore, the governor published a contradiction of the above report in the general ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... one bridle-rein and making Buntie, his mustang-pony, pirouette just as the wicked-tempered Briquette sometimes pirouettes when his father is in the saddle. Yet Dinky-Dunk's nerves are a bit ragged and there are times when he's not always just with the boy, though it's not for me to confute what the instinctive genius of childhood has already made reasonably clear to Dinkie's discerning young eye. But I can not, of course, encourage insubordination. All I can do is to ignore the unwelcome and try to crowd ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... this, the very words whereof confute themselves and shock alike our reason and our conscience? Or shall we say with St John and with St Paul, that if men can be so good, God must be infinitely better; that if man can love so much, God must love more; if man, by shaking off the selfishness ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... consist of 20,000 or above, are there not more fencible persons in the shires on the north side of Forth? Believe it who please we cannot stop our own consciences, and put out our own eyes. Let the rolls of several shires be looked to, and it shall confute that testimony. Nay, are there not more persons not formerly secluded, in all those shires? What meant the levy appointed immediately after Dunbar? Was not 10,000 foot, and 1,400 horse put upon these shires which are not under the power of the enemy, and yet the rules of exclusion ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... north-east storm, now some thirty-six to forty-eight hours old, had spent its force, and would soon give place to a serene and lucid atmosphere. I believe the Barometer at no time countenanced this augury, which a brief experience sufficed most signally to confute. Before we had passed Coney Island, it was abundantly certain that our freshening breeze hailed directly from Labrador and the icebergs beyond, and had no idea of changing its quarters. By the time we were fairly ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... not be suspected," he says, "that we pass by any chapters because we have no answers at hand, I have thought it best, according to my ability, to confute everything proposed by him, not so much observing the natural order of things, as the order which he has taken himself." (Orig. cont. Cels. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... had always been good-natured? She remembered oddly after many years a day when he had turned away from the glazing eyes of a wood-pigeon he had shot. What use to tell such things to his daughter, whose life was laid in ruins by that sin of his youth? Those tragical eyes would confute her in the midst of her excuses. She could not yet make any plea for forgiveness for the ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... have in this country of ours, no less than three sorts, which are all of them easily propagated, and prosper very well, if they are rightly ordered; and therefore I shall not omit to disclose one secret, as well to confute a popular error, as for the ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Earwaker, 'feel no shame whatever in the retrospect of their idiocy. To convert a mind is a subject for high rejoicing; to confute a temper isn't ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... a written word, in return, the Lord meets him. And he does not quote the scripture for logical purposes—to confute Satan intellectually, but as giving even Satan the reason of his conduct. Satan quotes Scripture as a verbal authority; our Lord meets him with a Scripture by the truth in which he regulates ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... impossible not to conceive an high, opinion of its laws, if we rather consider what is said of them than what they visibly are. These monuments of our pristine rudeness still subsist; and they stand out of themselves indisputable evidence to confute the popular declamations of those writers who would persuade us that the crude institutions of an unlettered people had reached a perfection which the united efforts of inquiry, experience, learning, and necessity have not been able ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... irregularly by twos and threes. "It may be hard—for some while—to make her see the—the necessity. Women fight for their own by instinct—right or wrong, they do not ask themselves. If you reason, they will seize upon any sophistry to confute you—to persuade themselves. Doubtless the instinct comes from God; but to men, sometimes, it makes ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... no leisure to debate with you, to confute your errors. One thing only will I add, before dismissing you to ponder what I have uttered. It is in your power to prove your return to reason and the dignity of a Roman; I need not say how; the occasion will surely ere long present itself, and leave you in ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... vehement botcher, And deacon also, I cannot dispute with you: But if you get you not away the sooner, I shall confute you with a cudgel. ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... fashions. "The ladies of quality here, of late," says a writer from Paris, in 1642, "addict themselves to the study of philosophy, as the men; the ladies esteeming their education defective, if they cannot confute Aristotle and his disciples. The pen has almost supplanted the exercise of the needle; and ladies' closets, formerly the shops of female baubles, toys, and vanities, are now turned to libraries and sanctuaries of learned works. There is a new star risen in the French ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... deposited at Brest to purchase oatmeal for subsequent shipment. He also brought promises of military assistance on a scale far beyond anything France had yet afforded. It is almost needless to say he was received at Galway and Limerick with an enthusiasm which silenced, if it did not confute, his political enemies, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... will yet descend more particularly to confute our opposites' several answers and defences, which they have used against our argument of scandal. And I begin with our Lord Chancellor: "As for the godly amongst us (saith he(397)), we are sorry they should be grieved; but it is their own fault, for if the ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... he perceived him, said: "Embrace me, my dear marshal; I am glad to see you. I want no explanation or justification: I have honoured and esteemed you as the bravest of the brave."—"Sire, the newspapers have told a heap of lies, which I wish to confute: my conduct has ever been that of a good soldier, and a good Frenchman."—"I know it, and accordingly never doubted your attachment."—"You were right, Sire. Your Majesty may always depend upon ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... and efficacy of divine grace; consubstantiation; and particularly justification by faith, to establish the truth and importance of which was one of its chief objects. The last seven articles condemn and confute the Popish tenets of communion in one kind, clerical celibacy, private masses, auricular confession, legendary traditions, monastic vows, and the exorbitant power of the church. This Confession is silent on the doctrine of predestination. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... is not an 'admitted fact,' how could it 'warrant belief' in the 'coming resurrection'?" [Footnote: The Nineteenth Century, July, 1890.] Mr. Huxley is using Canon Liddon's phrases here; but he is using them to confute those for whom, as he knows very well, Canon Liddon does not speak. Those who say that the story of Jonah is an "admitted reality" may, perhaps, be able to see that it "warrants belief" in the "coming resurrection." To my own mind, even this is by no means clear. I do not see ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... perhaps, had Marie been tenderly impressed by poor Giustiniani when he arrived at night, travel-stained and drenched with rain, in the first fit of a fever; 'but woman,' said the sagacious narrator, as he received a tumbler of grog from the steward, 'is a mystery'—an opinion I am not inclined to confute. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... said before, to pit oneself against another's praise and reputation is by no means fitting for a public man: however, in important matters, where mistaken praise is injurious and detrimental, it is not amiss to confute it, or rather to divert the hearer to what is better by showing him the difference between true and false merit. Anyone would be glad, I suppose, when vice was abused and censured, to see most people voluntarily keep aloof from it; but if vice should ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... whole courses [27] bear, To reef them now becomes the master's care; The sailors summon'd aft all ready stand, And man the enfolding brails at his command: But here the doubtful officers dispute, Till skill and judgment prejudice confute: For Rodmond, to new methods still a foe, 290 Would first, at all events, the sheet let go; To long-tried practice obstinately warm, He doubts conviction, and relies on form. This Albert and Arion disapprove, And first to brail the tack up firmly move: "The ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... world is governed. He finds that there is quackery in legislation as in everything else; that rulers have their whims and errors as well as other men, and are not so wonderfully superior as he had imagined, since even he may occasionally confute them in argument. Thus awe subsides into confidence, confidence inspires familiarity, and familiarity produces contempt. Such was the case, say they, with William the Testy. By making himself too easy ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... rightly called it electrifying. And the same is true of the book which it so gloriously opens. As history and as philosophy, it is neither original nor exact. It derived directly from Locke, and many aspects of the world and thought since Darwin's time confute it. But, however much anticipated, and however much exposed to scientific ridicule, it remains one of the burning books of the world—one of those books which, as Lord Morley said, rank as acts, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... prayers of man. To this conclusion the educated world is now rapidly coming. If, nevertheless, men thoroughly convinced of this still choose to believe in the efficacy of prayer, reason and science are incompetent to confute them. The belief must be tried elsewhere, - it must be transferred to the tribunal of conscience, or to a metaphysical court, in which ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... a comic poet.[1] Such, however, as, influenced by envy and calumny, have persuaded you, and those who, being themselves persuaded, have persuaded others, all these are most difficult to deal with; for it is not possible to bring any of them forward here, nor to confute any; but it is altogether necessary to fight, as it were with a shadow, in making my defense, and to convict when there is no one to answer. Consider, therefore, as I have said, that my accusers are twofold, some who have lately accused me, and others long since, whom ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... latter proviso people often say, "But why should he not? it would be so easy to confute and convince your sceptic, and it would do him good!" Such critics lose sight of the fact that, in the first place, none of those who know anything want to confute or convince sceptics, or trouble themselves in the slightest degree about the sceptic's attitude one way or ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... the like o' him ony gate for powtering wi' his fingers amang the het peat-ashes and roasting eggs.' Davie all this while lay with his nose almost in the fire, nuzzling among the ashes, kicking his heels, mumbling to himself, turning the eggs as they lay in the hot embers, as if to confute the proverb, that 'there goes reason to roasting of eggs,' and justify the eulogium which poor ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... England, our great and beloved country, rests on nothing but commerce. Teresa was very much annoyed, and left the table before the cheese, saying as she did so: 'There, Miss Lavish, is one who can confute you better than I,' and pointed to that beautiful picture of Lord Tennyson. Then Miss Lavish said: 'Tut! The early Victorians.' Just imagine! 'Tut! The early Victorians.' My sister had gone, and I felt bound to speak. I said: 'Miss Lavish, I am an ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... "It was easy to confute the charge; it was tyrannical to punish words in men whose deeds had raised you to the command ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... We should remember, however, that Plato was not considering any altruistic virtue such as kindness, sympathy, benevolence, generosity and the like, but only what nature indicates to be the essential condition of successful association. Thus interpreted, are we prepared to confute the statement? Do we know of any state of society in human or animal life at any time, past or present, of which the contrary of Plato's statement ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... Land League; and it is not possible to get rid of facts such as I have stated, by vague and general complaints, by imputations against parties, imputations against England, or imputations against Government. You must meet them, and confute them, if you can. None will rejoice more than myself if you can attain such an end. But in the meantime they stand, and they stand uncontradicted, in the face of the British House of Commons." The speech in which this tremendous indictment was delivered attracted ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... seduction of her smile. She also was entertaining an emotion or two. She had not at all known where she would find the strength to confront and confute a grandmotherly old ruffian. But luck was ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... seeing him before my eyes that denied he had defiled my bed, I may confute him with words, and with what has happened ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... disheartened. Nature is strong; she is persistent; she completes her syllogism after we have long been feeding the roots of her grasses, and has her own way in spite of us. Some ancestral Cromwellian trooper leaps to life again in Nathaniel Greene, and makes a general of him, to confute five generations of Broadbrims. The Puritans were good in their way, and we enjoy them highly as a preterite phenomenon; but they were not good at cakes and ale, and that is one reason why they ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... blending and conciliation of the two modes of argumentative writing referred to in Bishop Kurd's acute observation, that if your first object is to convince, you cannot use a style too soft and insinuating; if you want to confute, the rougher and more unsparing the better. And the description ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... has a tendency to suffocate, rather than to develop, original genius. It was universally acknowledged that, in the literary contest, the Jansenists were completely victorious. To the Jesuits nothing was left but to oppress the sect which they could not confute. Lewis the Fourteenth was now their chief support. His conscience had, from boyhood, been in their keeping; and he had learned from them to abhor Jansenism quite as much as he abhorred Protestantism, and very much ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... The lord-chancellor had a difficult task to perform. He was among those who up to this period had earnestly refuted all the pleas of concession which were now brought forward, and he had now to confute all these refutations. As late as last year he had declared his conviction, that emancipation, though accompanied by weighty securities, was pregnant with danger to the constitution and establishment; and he now declared ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Gregory X., and the tale was generally believed till the Reformation. There is a German miracle-play on the subject, called The Canonization of Pope Joan (1480). David Blondel, a Calvinist divine, has written a book to confute the tale. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... a packet of old letters and began turning them over as if in search of one that would confute Terence's suspicions. As he searched, he began to tell a story about an English lord who had trusted him—a great English lord, whose name he ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... Which testimony has a double value; first, as corroborating the probability of Pope's statement viewed in the light of a fact; and, secondly, as corroborating that same statement viewed in the light of a current story, true or false, and not as a disingenuous fiction put forward by Pope to confute Lord Harvey. ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Vision as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for striking the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's Theory of Matter and Spirit, and saying, "Thus I confute him, Sir." Coleridge drew a parallel (I don't know how he brought about the connection) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no two things could be more distinct. The one was a shop-boy's ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... some of his spare hours in this study: on other days, when his ordinary labour was over, he meditated some work in Flemish on religion. The subject which he liked best at that time was Christ's love to mankind: he no doubt intended to confute the extravagant opinions of the Gomarists. He purposed also to write a Commentary on the ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... into three parts,—the 'stout words' against God which the Prophet sets himself to confute (verses 13-15); the prophecy of the day which will show their falsehood (verse 16 to iv. 3); and the closing exhortation and prediction ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... secret self disclosed; I know it—so believe it—for the sake Of this forbearance—that you have till now Concealed these sentiments, although embraced With so much ardor,—for this cautious prudence. I will forget, young man, that I have learned them, And how I learned them. Rise! I will confute Your youthful dreams by my matured experience, Not by my power as king. Such is my will, And therefore act I thus. Poison itself May, in a worthy nature, be transformed To some benignant use. But, sir, beware My Inquisition! 'Twould afflict ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... OF A PROPER ATTITUDE OF MIND IS CAUTION.—Always realize the possibility of error both in another and in yourself. Be on your guard against intentional or unintentional deception. As Bacon said, "Read not to contradict and to confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."[3] The author you are reading may have made a mistake, or may be trying to mislead you. "When we think of ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... matters, soch as in London commonlie cum to the hearing of the Masters of Bridewell. Here is base stuffe for that scholer, that should becum hereafter, either a good minister in Religion, or a Ciuill Ientleman in seruice of his Prince and contrie: except the preacher do know soch matters to confute them, whan ignorance surelie in all soch thinges were better for a Ciuill Ientleman, than knowledge. And thus, for matter, both Plautus and Terence, be like meane painters, that worke by halfes, and be cunning onelie, in making the worst part of the picture, as if ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... the nobleness and piety of that lady, that sucked the poisonous purulent matter from the wounds of the brave Prince in the holy land, when an assassin had pierced him with a venomed arrow: and if it be told that women cannot retain council, and therefore can be no brave friends, I can best confute them by the story of Porcia, who being fearful of the weakness of her sex, stabbed herself in the thigh to try how she could bear pain; and finding herself constant enough to that sufferance, gently chid her Brutus for not trusting her, since now she perceived, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... weather," said Henrietta, surprised at the accurate remembrance, which she could not confute. "She misses ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Majesty," he said, "I doubt whether that will confute Brinnaria's enemies or even convince the majority of ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them. Read not to contradict and confute, or to believe and take for granted, or to find talk and discourse, but to weigh ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... answered. 'As for me, speak you with the magister when he comes from France. As for my mistress, three times she hath seen the King since Winchester's feast was three months agone. She in no wise affected his Highness till she had heard his Highness confute the errors of Dr Barnes in the small closet. When she came away therefrom she said that his Highness was like a god for his knowledge of God's law. If you want better tales than that go to a wench from the stairs to make them ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... Zenocrate, were Egypt Jove's own land, Yet would I with my sword make Jove to stoop. I will confute those blind geographers That make a triple region in the world, Excluding regions which I mean to trace, And with this pen [233] reduce them to a map, Calling the provinces, cities, and towns, After my name and thine, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... was given to Mr. Molineux, one of the commissioners of the Admiralty, who engaged in it with no great inclination to favour me; but, however, thought one of the instruments, which, to confirm my own opinion, and to confute Mr. Whiston's, I had exhibited to the Admiralty, so curious or useful, that he surreptitiously copied it on paper, and clandestinely endeavoured to have it imitated by a workman ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... phenomena of this river have put mankind to the expense of. Yet there are people so bigoted to antiquity, as not to pay any regard to the relation of travellers who have been upon the spot, and by the evidence of their eyes can confute all that the ancients have written. It was difficult, it was even impossible, to arrive at the source of the Nile by tracing its channel from the mouth; and all who ever attempted it, having been stopped by the cataracts, and imagining none that followed them could pass farther, have taken ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... Caesares, Domitian c. 15. The soothsayer's power of divination was tested by asking what his own fate would be. He said he would very soon be devoured by dogs. Domitian desiring to confute such uncanny powers of prediction ordered him to be killed and securely buried. The funeral pyre was knocked down by a storm, and dogs devoured ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... charge that I was about to insinuate. I was to accuse my companion of nothing less than murder. I was to call upon him for an avowal of his^ guilt. I was to state the ground of my suspicions, and desire him to confute or confirm them. In doing this, I was principally stimulated by an ungovernable curiosity; yet, if I intended not the conferring of a benefit, I did not, at least, purpose the infliction of evil. I persuaded ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown |
