"Contradiction in terms" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who walks in the footsteps of his Master by observing His precepts; who reproduces in his own life the character and virtues of his Divine Model. In a word, a Christian is another Christ. It would, therefore, be a contradiction in terms, if a Christian had nothing in common with his Lord except the name. The disciple should imitate his Master, the soldier should imitate his Commander, and the members ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... the beginning of the inscription, the thought of the triad—Anu, Bel, Ea—evidently underlies this interesting invocation, but at the same time the association of a consort with Anu brings the god into closer relationship with his fellows. He takes on—if the contradiction in terms be permitted—a more human shape. His consort bears a name that is simply the feminine form to Anu, just as Belit is the feminine to Bel. 'Anu,' signifying 'the one on high,'—a feminine to it was formed, manifestly under the influence ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... vigorous, joyous, eager little creatures, and their voracious appetite for life, it shook my previous ideas so thoroughly that they have never been re-established. The steady level of good health gave them all that natural stimulus we used to call "animal spirits"—an odd contradiction in terms. They found themselves in an immediate environment which was agreeable and interesting, and before them stretched the years of learning and discovery, the fascinating, endless process ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... example, the paradox of the love of the world—"Somehow one must love the world without being worldly." Again, "Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die." The martyr differs from the suicide in that he cherishes a disdain of death, while the motive of the suicide is a disdain of life. Charity, too, is a ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... "No, Nettie; I behaved rudely to HIM. Yes! Besides, if he behaved rudely, he was no gentleman. It's a contradiction in terms, don't you see? But I'll tell you what I'm going to do if he comes. I'm going to show a proper spirit for once in my life. I'm going to refuse to see him. You've got ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to ask one of these thoughtless revilers of vanity whether it has ever been his misfortune to meet a woman without it. He would probably try to escape by declaring that a woman without vanity is a purely imaginary being, if not a contradiction in terms; and we admit that there is something to be said in favor of this view. Nothing is more astonishing to the male philosopher than the odd way in which, from some stray corner of character where he would have least thought of looking for it, female vanity now and then ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Stephen. The Dancing Faun and the Frieze of the Parthenon express movements. But they do nothing of the sort. They express movements arrested at a certain point. They are supposed to represent nature, but they do not even do that, because arrested motion is a contradiction in terms, and because the point of arrest is an artificial and ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... 'Bacon alone wrote all the plays and sonnets which are attributed to Shakespeare.' So Bacon entrusted his plays, and the dread secret of his authorship, to a boorish cabotin with whom he had no 'close intercourse'! This is lady's logic, a contradiction in terms. The theory that Bacon wrote the plays and sonnets inevitably implies the closest intercourse between him and Shakespeare. They must have been in constant connection. But, as Mrs. Pott truly says, this is 'contrary to ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... said the repressed young painter, struck by her seriousness. 'Blame me; I ought to have known better. But perhaps a man—well, I will say it—a lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms. I saw that, and hoped that I might speak without ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... God as the source of the power in question deduced. And the same vice underlies the further argument by which Mr. Green meets the familiar objection to the personality of the Absolute as involving contradictory conceptions. An infinite Person, he argues, is no contradiction in terms, unless "finition or limitation" be regarded as identical with "negation" (which, when applied to a hypothetical Infinite, one would surely think it is); and an Absolute Will is not the less absolute from being self-determined ab intra. For how, he asks, can any Will which is causative ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... to whom they are responsible? I think not. In any such community—and Rome is becoming such a one—the elements of disruption, anarchy, and ruin, are there at work, and will overthrow it. A society of atheists is a contradiction in terms. Atheists may live alone, but not together. Will you compel your subjects to become such? If a part remain true to the ancient faith, and find it to be sufficient, will you deny to the other part the faith which they crave, and which ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... friend—which, however, cannot signify much if you get 'the money.' Seven of clubs promises the most brilliant fortune, and the most exquisite bliss this world can afford; but then you are ungallantly warned that you must 'beware of the opposite sex'—which seems a contradiction in terms—for how call 'the most exquisite bliss this world can afford' be secured without the aid of 'the opposite sex'? Five of clubs is the main point of maid-servants, young girls from the country, governesses, in short, of all the floating womanhood of the land—for ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... permit, I will prune and clear away from the line of vision these weeds of errant fancy. For the record must of all things be honest and comprehensive; rather than shapely, effective, or literary. To be sure the pundits would say that this is to misuse and play with words; to perpetrate a contradiction in terms. Well, we shall see. Whatever the critics might say, your author by profession would understand me well enough when I say: 'Honest, rather ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... certain malignant but voluptuous satisfaction in drawing the attention of the Master of Lazarus to this curious lapse in the family tradition. Now in the opinion of the Master of Lazarus the feminine intellect was simply a contradiction in terms. Having engaged the best masters in the county, whose fees together with their fares (second class from Exeter to Harmouth) he had himself punctually paid, he had declined to take any further interest in his grand-daughter. He had no objection to her taking up music, a study ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... on Salisbury Plain to listen to Shelley's skylark would probably (after an hour or two) consider it a rather subdued sort of skylarking. It may be argued that it is just as illogical to hope to fix beforehand the elusive effects of the works of man as of the works of nature. It may be called a contradiction in terms to expect the unexpected. It may be counted mere madness to anticipate astonishment, or go in search of a surprise. To all of which there is only one answer; that such anticipation is absurd, and such realisation will be disappointing, that images will seem to be idols and idols will seem to ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... to agriculture which will inevitably divorce the farmer from the ownership of his tools. An industrial revolution analogous to that in manufacture during the nineteenth century is distinctly probable, and capitalistic agriculture may soon cease to be a contradiction in terms. Like all inventions it will disturb deeply the classicalist tendency, and this disturbance may generate a new impulse to replace the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... necessary to premise, but for the frequency with which the phrase occurs, that the "spiritual body" is a contradiction in terms. The office of body is to relate spirit to an objective world. By Platonic writers it is usually termed okhema—"vehicle." It is the medium of action, and also of sensibility. In this philosophy the conception of Soul was not ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... or possessions. It is eternal, immutable, and independent of all attributes. The affirmance of attributes with respect to the Soul directly leads to the inference of its destructibility, and hence the assertion of its permanency or indestructibility under such conditions is a contradiction in terms, according to what ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... and finitude is limitation considered simply in itself. The sphere of quantity, therefore, is absolutely identical with the sphere of the finite; and the phrase infinite quantity, if strictly construed, is a contradiction in terms. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... scepticism forbidding thought necessarily forbids speech; a man cannot open his mouth without contradicting it. Thus when Mr. Wells says (as he did somewhere), "All chairs are quite different," he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... printed, "God is all, and yet is no thing;" For what does 'thing' mean? Itself, that is, the 'ing', or inclosure, that which is contained within an outline, or circumscribed. So likewise to 'think' is to inclose, to determine, confine and define. To think an infinite is a contradiction in terms equal to a boundless bound. So in German 'Ding, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... around him. Sex was felt from the first to be part, and a foundational part, of the great order of the world and of human nature; and therefore to separate it from Religion was unthinkable and a kind of contradiction in terms. (1) ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... deadliness of this conception appears even more unmistakable. For love is the prerogative of personality alone. Apart from personality we cannot conceive of love. And we cannot conceive of personality without the struggle between love and malice. "Absolute love" is a contradiction in terms; for it is the nature of love to be perpetually overcoming malignant opposition; and, in this overcoming, to be perpetually approximating to a far-off ideal which can never ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... is not sufficient. Just as there is personality behind every government, so there should be a definite set of personal convictions behind literary criticism, which is not a science, though science may aid it. Sterilized, dehumanized criticism is almost a contradiction in terms, except in those rare cases where the weighing of evidential facts is all that is required. But these cases are most rare. Even a study of the text of Beowulf, or a history of Norman law, will be influenced by the personal ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... the province of poetic pleasure, but to the form and length of actual poetry. 'A long poem,' he says, with more truth than most people are quite willing to see, 'is a paradox.' 'I hold,' he says elsewhere, 'that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.' And, after defining his ideal, 'a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour,' he says, very justly, that 'within this limit alone can the highest order of true poetry exist.' In another ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... requisites in a healthy, well-developed Imagination are truth and distinctness. To those who deem Imagination but another name for fiction and falsehood, it may seem a contradiction in terms to talk of a true Imagination; but it is not so. Works of fiction charm us always in proportion as they seem true, and it is the morbid Imagination only that delights in falsehood. We sometimes see persons who, without apparent intention of falsehood, seem incapable of speaking the truth. ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... uncertain in spite of certainty, and at the same time most certain in spite of uncertainty, and who are thus best able to feel that there is nothing in such complete harmony with itself as a flat contradiction in terms. For nature hates that any principle should breed, so to speak, hermaphroditically, but will give to each an help meet for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it; as in the case of descent with modification, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... there still remained a lingering remnant of public opinion that clung to the coast defense theory, and we met this in beautiful fashion by providing for "sea-going coast defense battle-ships"—the fact that the name was a contradiction in terms being of very small consequence compared to the fact that we did ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... substance consisting of frozen water and without odor, what you say is a contradiction in terms," he ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... reason, unsatisfactory. I should have preferred a little more directness. What is the condition of an enactment which is declared by a subsequent act of Congress to be "inoperative and void?" Does it remain in force? I take it, not. That would be a contradiction in terms, to say that an enactment which had been declared by act of Congress inoperative and void is still in force. Then, if it is not in force, if it is not only inoperative and void, as it is to be declared, but is not in force, it is of course repealed. If it is ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... one peculiarly susceptible to {238} the treatment likely to be proposed by these radical and unconventional spirits. It was difficult to describe the constitutional position of Canada without establishing a contradiction in terms, and neither abstract and logical minds like that of Cornewall Lewis, nor bureaucratic intelligences like Stephen's, could do more than intensify the difficulty and emphasize it. The deus ex machina must appear and solve the preliminary or theoretic difficulties ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison |
