"Fallacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... despotism. In a work published by me many years ago, I have pointed out the marks of their imposture; and I have since seen no cause to change my views. Regarding all these letters as forgeries from beginning to end, I have endeavoured, in the following pages, to expose the fallacy of the arguments by which Dr. Lightfoot has attempted ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... honour which comes from his parents and elders. Both are true. Here, as in most spiritual things, you have an antinomia, an apparent contradiction, which nothing but the Gospel solves. And it does solve it; and your one-sided view of the text resolves itself into just the same fallacy as the old ascetic one. 'We must love God alone, therefore we must love no created thing.' To which St. John answers pertinently 'He who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?' If you love your brethren, you love Christ in them. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... without them in its power it cannot carry out the principles for which it stands. The possession of wealth represents vast possibilities for service. Thousands of tragic experiments have demonstrated, however, the fallacy of the seductive doctrine that the end justifies the means. The tragedy that overshadows many of the seemingly most successful men of to-day is the memory of the iniquitous methods whereby they have acquired wealth ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... in a boiling pot rises to the top, and makes itself seen, concealing the pure liquid beneath, until it is skimmed off. And so we have political demagogues shouting the untenable fallacy that all men are equal, together with other flamboyant nonsense; and hooligan suffragists smashing windows. But all these are only the scum upon the outside of a great upward movement in mankind, and are not to be taken as the incontestable proof of the vicious condition ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... little essential connexion there is between democracy and peace. It discloses a confusion of ideas even greater than the antithesis between industrialism and militarism in the writings of Herbert Spencer. On this latter fallacy it is enough to quote the words of Admiral Mahan; 'As far as the advocacy of peace rests on material motives like economy and prosperity, it is the service of Mammon; and the bottom of the platform will drop out when Mammon thinks that war will ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... treatment that was necessary to Thucydides and Livy is not required by the historians of our puny and degenerate day. Even the Count Gobineau, who so ably and, to his followers, conclusively proves the fallacy of the dearest hope of every learned philanthropist and patriot, does not, in his most earnest antagonism to the doctrine of human progress, insinuate the existence of a principle urging the systematic and inevitable decline of individual ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... she really had been. What most distressed me was that she blamed herself, indirectly, for what had happened. Again and again did she declare to me that, had she not given him leave to take the afternoon off the tragedy would not have happened. In vain I tried to make her see the fallacy of her argument—she would not ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... criticism may be that, leaving the land out of consideration, the proposed yield tax at a personal property valuation of the crop means that but one year's tax is to be paid upon the timber. The fallacy of this, however, will be seen when it is remembered that it is a crop, having been produced from nothing by the owner, since his acquisition of the land and while he was paying taxes upon his land upon its value for productive purposes throughout the entire period just as any other crop grower ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... is another fallacy. This is one of the most difficult accomplishments and should be reserved for a later ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... where you northerners mistake yourselves. The negro seldom desires to mix with whites, and I hold it better they should keep together; but that two races cannot live together without the one enslaving the other is a fallacy popular only with those who will not see the future, and obstinately refuse to review the past. You must lessen your delicate sensibilities; and when you make them less painful to the man of colour at the north, believe me, the south will respond to the feeling. Experience ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... "England," "Germany," "France," etc., in these connections actually stand for a very small group of diplomats controlling foreign policy. The association of the names unfortunately makes us think of the countries as a whole, a word fallacy that leads ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... when we attain to this viewpoint, that we begin to understand the mistake of ordinary opinion in identifying the hero with the soldier. Especially in this age of waxing militarism, it is well for us to note the fallacy which is involved in this primeval superstition. Heroism, at its truest and best, is spiritual. It is "an obedience," says Emerson, "to a secret impulse of an individual's character." It needs no other stimulus, hides in no gorgeous trappings, craves no companionship ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... the toleration of the legislative body he defames and disregards. His great power is the veto; but the perverse use of this could easily be checked by the perverse use of many a legislative power which a mere majority of Congress can effectively use. The fallacy of the argument of "the President's friends," in their proposition that Congress should settle the dispute by the easy method of allowing Mr. Johnson to have his own way, consists in its entire oversight of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the ice was lying crosswise and edgeways, so that a person desirous of looking at the Wellington Channel floe, as the accumulation of many years of continued frost, might have some grounds upon which to base his supposition. A year's observation, however, has shown me the fallacy of supposing that in deep-water channels floes continue to increase in thickness from year to year; and to that subject I will return in a future chapter, when treating of ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... an illusion is a false sense perception, so a false inference is called a "fallacy". One great cause of fallacies consists in the confused way in which facts are sometimes presented, resulting in failure to see the relationships clearly. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... North Carolina has endeavored to enforce this doctrine, and deduce from certain premises, the right of a State, when she feels herself aggrieved, to secede from her sister States, and assume an independent position and a separate nationality. The fallacy of the gentleman's position, in fact the fallacy of the doctrine of "State rights," and the deductions made therefrom by the school of politicians and statesmen to which the gentleman belongs, arises from confounding the terms State rights and State sovereignty, ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... manifested in this example of what occurred in the period of the Witchcraft Delusion, when the words of an ignorant and barbaric Hebrew were taken by Christian followers to be the words of a god. And yet our Martian guest recognizes that in this day all men are aware of the fallacy of this utterance in a book which is still ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... another fallacy which appears to me to pervade the so-called "ethics of evolution." It is the notion that because, on the whole, animals and plants have advanced in perfection of organization by means of the struggle for existence and the consequent "survival of the ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and yet uneasily, vaguely, I felt there must be a fallacy somewhere. I had been told and not told, what should, or should not, be done, in an affair that apparently could have no rules, and yet had distinctions as to fair and unfair, some of which were explained and some left as obvious. I felt somewhat confused. But often in my later experience ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... the Temporall Officers on the Spirituall; but of both on the Civill Soveraign; which ought indeed to direct his Civill commands to the Salvation of Souls; but is not therefore subject to any but God himselfe. And thus you see the laboured fallacy of the first Argument, to deceive such men as distinguish not between the Subordination of Actions in the way to the End; and the Subjection of Persons one to another in the administration of the Means. For to every ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... social life, confused the perception of human relations, and raised "hob," as the saying is, in political economy. We theorize and legislate as if people were things. Most of the schemes of social reorganization are based on this fallacy. It always breaks down in experience. A has two friends, B and C—to state it mathematically. A is equal to B, and A is equal to C. A has for B and also for C the most cordial admiration and affection, and B and C have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... never thought at the time to doubt the infallibility of these two generals in all matters pertaining to their profession. I supposed they moved in small bodies because more men could not be passed over a single road on the same day with their artillery and necessary trains. Later I found the fallacy of this belief. The rebellion, which followed as a sequence to the Mexican war, never could have been suppressed if larger bodies of men could not have been moved at the same time than was the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and often injurious, to compare one set of artists, or writers, with another. But, in estimating the merits of public men, especially of two Parties acting in direct opposition, it is not only expedient, but indispensible, that both should be kept constantly in sight. The truth or fallacy of French principles, and the tendency, good or bad, of the Revolution which sprang out of them; and the necessity, or non-necessity—the policy, or impolicy—of resisting by war the encroachments of republican and imperial ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... female housekeeper, or spiritual adviser) who, entering the vineyard at the eleventh hour, (the precise moment at which his patience and humility become exhausted,) carries off the golden prize, and adds another melancholy confirmation, to those already upon record, of the fallacy of all human anticipations. It matters little what may have been the motives of his conduct; whether duty, affection, or that more powerful incentive self-interest; how long or how devotedly he may have humoured the foibles or eccentricities of his relative; or what sacrifices ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... in the words: "This view of life is not mine." The solemn declaration does not seem to me to be so annihilating to the said "view" (really a series of fugitive impressions which I have never tried to co-ordinate) as is complacently assumed. Surely it embodies a too human fallacy quite familiar in logic. Next, a knowing reviewer, apparently a Roman Catholic young man, speaks, with some rather gross instances of the suggestio falsi in his article, of "Mr. Hardy refusing consolation," the "dark gravity of his ideas," and so on. When a Positivist and a Catholic agree ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... a fallacy in that,' replied Emily. 'Their life is probably not hard at all. I used to feel that pity, but I have reasoned myself out of it. They are really happy, for they know nothing of ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... times are less romantic and interesting than bygone centuries is a fallacy. From time immemorial, love and the battle between evil and good are the two things which have given the world romance and interest. Every story, whether we find it in the myths of the East, the folklore of Europe, the poems of the Troubadours, or in our newspaper of ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... found that animalculi appeared in the substance, and argued from this that they developed spontaneously. In 1769, Spallanzani, a skilled experimental physiologist, in a brilliant series of experiments showed the imperfect character of Needham's work and the fallacy of his conclusions. Spallanzani placed fluids, which easily became putrid, in glass tubes, which he then hermetically sealed and boiled. He found that the fluid remained clear and unchanged; if, however, he broke the sealed point of such ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... between their town and Manchester. They had no sooner stated their errand than Mr. Huskisson, angrily throwing down his pen, in very few words refused their request, winding up his reply with these memorable words—remarkable not only for the fallacy of his then opinions, but also in connection with the calamitous event of the next day—"Gentlemen, I supported the scheme of the railway between Liverpool and Manchester as an experiment, but as long as I have the honour to ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... discovers the true temper of a person so much as his letters, requires a good deal of limitation and qualification. Johnson's ideas on the same subject may be recommended as a corrective. He held that there was no transaction which offered stronger temptations to fallacy and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... preparatory study for this work, he has sought the rewards of industry, in sifting out the certain and the useful from the hypothetical and the fanciful, and the results of judicious discrimination between fallacy and just reasoning, in support of theories. This volume is designed to be a complete manual for all but amateur cultivators. While it is believed that he who follows its directions will be certain of success, it is not intended to disparage the merits of other works, but to ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... the term "working-class" in the Bill. It would encourage the Socialistic fallacy that the people of England were divided into two classes—the leisured class and the working class; whereas everybody knew that most of the "leisured class" had no leisure and many of the "working-class" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... shooting from behind a hedge, merciless beating, shooting in the legs, and other similar variations of Irish Home Rule, on which I shall dwell in a later chapter—being only a protector of the weak tenant against the hard landlord, I think one fact will prove more forcibly than any argument the fallacy of ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... later that she had been silenced by a fallacy. For, is youth the most critical period of life? Neither brother nor sister, however, were talking absolutely for the argument. Beneath this dialogue, the current in her mind pressed to elicit some avowal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in January Mr. Early sat alone. He had so many tentacles spread out through the world of men and women that solitude was unusual to him. Indeed it had often occurred to him, as an example of the fallacy of ancient sayings, that there was nothing in that old epigram about the loneliness of the great. The higher he had risen in the scale of greatness the more insistently and persistently had the world invaded his life, until even his appreciation of ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... in order; analyze, and classify; adjust the furniture with the handmaids of science, art, and beauty in evidence and at call; but for goodness' sake! stop hypnotizing the musician—"Just a little"—under the fallacy or the pretense of strengthening the Will by weakening it just a little more! This is "giving your patients fits, because you are death on fits"! Rescue Science from this atheromatous degeneration, and then suppress the dabblers in "black magic" who pose ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... extended far beyond the limits of pure industrialism; it moulded and controlled society in all its forms, destroying ideals old as history, reversing values, confusing issues and wrecking man's powers of judgment. Until the war it seemed irresistible, now its weakness and the fallacy of its assumptions are revealed, but it has become so absolutely a part of our life, indeed of our nature, that we are unable to estimate it by any sound standards of judgment, and even when we approximate this we cannot think in other terms when ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... examine before you accuse, and I will patiently hear and cheerfully answer to accusation. If you think it wrong in me not to treat virtue and genius with neglect, bring me your proofs, and if I cannot demonstrate their fallacy I will own my error. Let me add, the accusation of reason is a duty; from which, though painful, we ought not to shrink. It is the mistaken accusation of the passions only at which justice bids the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... There is a further—a second—fallacy in the supposed analogy between the submission of individuals to law, and the advocated submission of states to a central tribunal. The law of the state, overwhelming as is its power relatively to that of the individual citizen, can neither ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... not to lend a willing ear to them; at least against circumstantial evidence, which is the same thing. How many almost irresistable cases of inferences drawn from pregnant facts have been shown, in which time proved the fallacy of such inferences, and that many an innocent man has been consigned to an ignominious death by circumstantial or (which is the same thing) inferential evidence, and still so strong were the facts and circumstances in the very cases cited by them, (where time proved the innocence of the ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... me happy indeed. You say you are superstitious, but if these numbers don't win you mustn't draw the conclusion that I don't love you; that would be a dreadful fallacy." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and again that we cannot, while throwing our markets open to the world, maintain American standards of living and opportunity, and hold our industrial eminence in such unequal competition. There is a luring fallacy in the theory of banished barriers of trade, but preserved American standards require our higher production costs to be reflected in our tariffs on imports. Today, as never before, when peoples are seeking trade restoration ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... the fallacy of this spirit. It was supposed that the girl was practised in the art of ventriloquism, an art better known now than formerly; but it was soon after discovered that there was not so much ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... principles of conduct; that is, for education in the broadest sense of the word. Criticism is the operation by which suggestion is limited and corrected. It is by criticism that the person is protected against credulity, emotion, and fallacy. The power of criticism is the one which education should chiefly train. It is difficult to resist the suggestion that one who is accused of crime is guilty. Lynchers generally succumb to this suggestion, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... before him in written documents? [11:4] This view, if correct, entirely alters the relation of Papias to the written Gospels; and its discussion was a matter of essential importance to the main question at issue. Again, when he reproduces the Tuebingen fallacy respecting 'the strong prejudice' of Hegesippus against St Paul [12:1], and quotes the often-quoted passage from Stephanus Gobarus, in which this writer refers to the language of Hegesippus condemning the use of the words, 'Eye hath not seen, etc.', why does he not state that these words were employed ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... the benefit of the people it must therefore have the power to do what ever may seem to conduce to the public good is an error into which even honest minds are too apt to fall. In yielding themselves to this fallacy they overlook the great considerations in which the Federal Constitution was founded. They forget that in consequence of the conceded diversities in the interest and condition of the different States it was ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... would if he had been alive—making allowances for temperamental variations. Degas knew that to grasp the true meaning of the nude it must be represented in postures, movements which are natural, not studio attitudes. As Monet exposed the fallacy of studio lighting, so Degas revealed the inanity of its poses. Ibsen said the stage should be a room with the fourth wall removed; Degas preferred the key-hole through which we seem to peep upon the privacy of his ugly females ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... on such a patent fallacy. He moved back to the front to repel boarders. Several men stared from the depths of their dentist's chairs, but made no proffer of their seats. They believed that woman's newfangled equality included the privilege of ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... perfectibility, which was so popular at that time with the "Intelligentia." Cultured circles clung to the theory of what we call "progress," vague though are the notions attaching to the term. I was horrified with the spectacle of an execution in Paris, and my eyes were opened to the fallacy underlying the theory of human wisdom. The doctrine of "progress" I now felt to be a mere superstition, and I was further confirmed in my conviction by the sad death of my brother after a painful ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... either out of a spirit of adventure, or to try the hearts of men. Such a conception is shocking to the Christian notion of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, but we question if there be not times when the most pious and perfect Christian may not find comfort and relief from a fallacy which was a matter of faith in less enlightened creeds, and over which the apostle, writing to the Hebrews, throws the sanction of his authority, so far as angels are concerned. [Heb., xiii, 1: 'Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... Orangemen are members of the Church of Ireland, and have always been regarded as Conservative. On the contrary, Presbyterians and Methodists are considered to be advanced Liberals, and herein lies a popular English fallacy—Gladstonians often refer to the Orange agitation against the disestablishment of the Irish Church, which they would fain compare with the present opposition to Home Rule, forgetting or ignoring the fact that the strength of Ulster resides in the Nonconformist ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... "no," and some say "yes." If it is true that you can't, the whole fabric of the wonderful story, one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful I have ever read, "The Moon Maid," by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is built on a fallacy. You see, I am a believer in reincarnation and I would surely like to correspond with others who are also! Would not that also disprove the whole theory of reincarnation if it is true? I think it is not true, but I may be wrong. Is reincarnation ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... line are points.' Prove this by the rule of railways. "2. Show the fallacy of defining an angle, as 'a worm at one end and a fool at the other.' "3. If one side of a triangle be produced, what is there to prevent the other two sides from also being brought forward? "4. Let A and B be squares having their respective boundaries in E and W ends, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... fallacy, a mere chimera, that was gone; an impracticability too. She had smiled at it as such when Dorcas used to hint at it; but are there no castles in the clouds which we like to inhabit, although we know them altogether air-built, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... consequently that he is a freeman; and if a freeman in the common acceptation of the term, then a freeman in every acceptation of it. This pithy and syllogistic sentence comprises the whole argument, which, however elaborated, perpetually goes back to the point from which it started. The fallacy of it is its assumption that the term 'freedom' signifies nothing but exemption from involuntary service; and that it has not a legal signification more specific. The freedom of a municipal corporation, or ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... gentlewoman, a kinswoman of the said gentleman's, who lives in Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the within-named Mrs. Bargrave lives; who believes his kinswoman to be of so discerning a spirit, as not to be put upon by any fallacy; and who positively assured him that the whole matter, as it is related and laid down, is really true; and what she herself had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's own mouth, who, she knows, had no reason to invent and publish such a story, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... all this seems clever reasoning; but it is in fact a stupendous fallacy. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Philip conquered and subsequently things went ill with Greece. A man looked at Mars and subsequently ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... the village the old men and the women began to meet them, and now a scene ensued that proved the fallacy of the old fable of Indian apathy and stoicism. Parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters met with the most rapturous expressions of joy; while wailings and lamentations were heard from the relatives of the killed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... home; in the second he descants on the luxuries of bed, and the nutritious value of dreams: "The busy part of mankind," he says, "are content to swallow their sleep by wholesale: we choose to linger in bed and digest our dreams." The last "Fallacy" is remarkable for a sentence which seems to refer to Alice W.: "We were never much in the world," he says; "disappointment early struck a dark veil between us and its dazzling illusions:" he then concludes with, "We once thought life to be something; ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... its more intimate and sacred aspect. Yet the abundance of crowned rulers, past and present, attached by solemn selection or marriage, who are not by blood and tradition of the people, shows the fallacy of this supposition. Napoleon was an Italian who learnt French with some difficulty, and who was at first hostile to the French and somewhat contemptuous of their ways. Marechal Bernadotte—French to his finger-tips—became King of Sweden. Pierre Loti, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... popular reverence for the Constitution—that sense of its sacredness which lies so deep in the heart of the North. They do it to mislead the honest masses, whose hearts are mainly right, but whose heads—some of them, but, thank God! not many now—are not so clear to see the miserable fallacy of its application. They make it a text and pretext for inveighing against the government, and so weakening its hold on the popular confidence and support; for raising seditious outcries against ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... assiduously a quarter of a century ago. At the end of the seventies there was a prevailing idea that the only mission of the artist was to record with absolute fidelity the facts of nature.... To-day the fallacy of that creed is properly recognized, and the artists on whom we have to depend in the immediate future for memorable works have substituted for it something much more reasonable.... There runs through ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... it is just the same thing to drive a large body of water astern at a slow speed as a small body at a high speed. This is the favorite fallacy of the advocates of hydraulic propulsion. The turbine or centrifugal pump put into the ship drives astern through the nozzles at each side a comparatively small body of water at a very high velocity. In some early experiments we believe that a velocity of 88 ft. per second, or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... ascended the Pontifical throne when the Catholic world was filled with admiration at his clemency as a Pontiff and his wisdom as a temporal Sovereign.... The most important facts have shown to mankind the fallacy of the groundless predictions of that pretended philosophy which had declared the Papacy to be, from the nature of its constitutive principle, the enemy of constitutional liberty. In the course of a few months, the Holy Father, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... these intricate provisions are founded on a patent fallacy. Preferences are not expressed in the Hare system, as in true preferential voting, that they may be given effect to in deciding the election, but simply in order to allow the elector to say in advance to whom he would wish his vote transferred ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... Graeme. "I confess you have the better of me.—But is there not a fallacy in your argument?" ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... it, in my innocent abstraction in aesthetical matters), has no very salutary reputation among the blameless moralists of the press. I need not, therefore, on this occasion, concern myself with more than the curious fallacy by which there is supposed to be something inherently wrong in artistic work which deals frankly and lightly with the very real charm of the lighter emotions and the ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... Pope of Rome has the power to bless and sanctify a piece of cloth, a ring, or any dead and inert object, he undoubtedly is "the real thing," and if such is the case the Bible is a lie, the gospel a fallacy, and God Almighty becomes a hireling, and we have no further need of ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... fallacy in speaking of the resolution of the North to crush Secession by force. It is the resolution of the nation,—of all that is faithful and loyal in it, wherever found. The people of the Southern States have not had any fair opportunity to express their opinions. The military usurpers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... many an old monk live, practising all this with punctilious care as the essence of a holy life, and resting upon the fallacy that these cruel mortifyings of the flesh would greatly facilitate the acquisition of everlasting ease and joy in a better world; as if God knew not, better than themselves, what chastisements and afflictions were needful for them. We may sigh with pain over such ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... acknowledgment of the monarchy of small things, the same idea that made Dickens believe that common men could be kings—that is, in the same category as the Divine care of the hairs of the head. It gives the lie to the rather popular fallacy that events are important by their size. It is once more a position that the stone on the hillside is as mighty as the mountain of which it is only ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... pointed out limits to them, or showed their truth to be contingent on some circumstance not originally attended to. It will appear, I think, from the subsequent part of our inquiry, that there is no logical fallacy in this mode of proceeding; but we may see already that any other mode is rigorously impracticable: since it is impossible to frame any scientific method of induction, or test of the correctness of inductions, unless on the hypothesis that some inductions ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... which I do not see just now some fallacy in the theory to invalidate the practise, for in Spain, the mother country, this corps is displaying, and ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... distinctly articulated in the "Contrat Social" of Jean Jacques Rousseau, was familiar to the minds of those by whom the paper was drawn. Thoughtful men at the present day universally recognize the fallacy of this plausible hypothesis, which once had such wide currency and so serious an influence on the course of political history in America. But whether or not they were affected by the theory, the practical good sense of the men and their deference to the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... patch or two there, and I'll Warrant you for pretending as much as any man; And who, you Fool, shall know the fallacy? ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... converted into wax or comb, a simple question will show its fallacy. Do not the bees belonging to a hive that is full of combs, and no more wax for that purpose needed, bring home as much and often more pollen than one half full? Any person who has watched two such hives five minutes when busily ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... the Christians. So he himself made answer in many words, and by dark speeches hinted that Nachor should relax his resistance, and be worsted by the argument of the orators. But Nachor the more mightily prevailed, tearing to pieces all their propositions and conclusions and exposing the fallacy of their error. After the debate had been prolonged till well-nigh eventide, the king dismissed the assembly, making as though he would renew the ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... sailing, indeed, to say that they did; and yet there is no proof of anything of the kind. As the former Director of this Institution, Sir H. De la Beche, long ago showed, this reasoning may involve an entire fallacy. It is extremely possible that 'a' may have been deposited ages before 'b'. It is very easy to understand how that can be. To return to Figure 4; when A and B were deposited, they were 'substantially' contemporaneous; A being simply the finer deposit, and B the coarser of the same detritus ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... discovered, and no one—the eminent discoverer himself not excepted—has yet any idea of its full importance, its possibilities, its connection with physical phenomena, or even its bearing upon the most puzzling scientific problems. How then can any "Adept" attempt to prove the fallacy of much that is predicated in the nebular and solar theories when the only means by which he could successfully prove his position is an appeal to, and the exhibition of, that sixth sense— consciousness which the physicist cannot postulate? Is not ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... story as that of King Noble and his not always loving subjects, should have been made, as usual, the battle-ground of literary fancy and of that general tendency of mankind to ferocity, which, unluckily, the study of belles lettres does not seem very appreciably to soften. Assisted by the usual fallacy of antedating MSS. in the early days of palaeographic study, and by their prepossessions as Germans, some early students of the Reynard story made out much too exclusive and too early claims, as to ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... their antagonism is the most notable characteristic of the modern scientific mind; and I believe no credulity or fallacy admitted by the weakness (or it may sometimes rather have been the strength) of early imagination, indicates so strange a depression beneath the due scale of human intellect, as the failure of the sense of beauty in form, and loss of faith in heroism of conduct, which have become the curses of recent ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... the only calumny which has been circulated against my person and reputation; nor is it the first time that the Marechal d'Ancre has been designated as the instigator of my unpopular measures; every new cabal inventing some fallacy to undermine my authority and to throw discredit upon my government. Since, however, you give it as your opinion that I shall better serve the King by retaining the regency until he shall be of fitting age to act upon his own responsibility, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... to establish agreement among the witnesses by a skilful distribution or rather dislocation of their evidence, a favourite device with the Critics, involves a fallacy which in any other subject would be denied a place. I trust that henceforth St. Luke ix. 54-6 will be left in undisputed possession of its place in the sacred Text,—to which it ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... own. But you must have confidence in me. And first, you must cease to believe that Catholics regard Mary, the Blessed Mother, as a divine person; second, that they worship saints or their relics, and many another fallacy under which you labor. You must be willing to read and study, withdrawing your mind as much as possible from your bereavement, and giving certain time to the care of your children. In these matters you must be obedient, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... theirs, because they allow killing, and the killers are ten times too numerous for the sheep. They imagine that by permitting only the killing of rams they are saving the species; but that is an absolute fallacy, and soon it will ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... of consciousness that accompanies these readjustments varies enormously, this method of moralization may be said to be always, like the preceding, a more or less conscious process. Learning by experience is subject, of course, to many mistaken judgments; the fallacy of post hoc propter hoc leads many learners to avoid perfectly innocent acts as supposedly involving some evil result with which they were once by chance connected; and the true causes of the evils are often overlooked. Even when dimly conscious readjustments become ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... follows, as a matter of course, that the greatest danger to be apprehended is the burning the boundary-fences of farms. I have heard it asserted that these fires are sometimes caused by spontaneous combustion, which I consider altogether a fallacy.] ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... intellectual work, as originality, or at any rate independence of thought, a faculty of felicitious generalisations and diacritical judgment, long-sustained intellectual effort, an unselective mirroring of the world in the mind, and that relative immunity to fallacy which goes together with a stable and comparatively unresponsive ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... the old popular Southern legend that they were the unacknowledged children of white parents was current concerning them. There was absolutely not the slightest earmark of the Negro about them. It may be stated here, as another race fallacy, that the "telltale dark mark at the root of the nails," supposed to be an infallible test of Negro blood, is a delusion and a snare, and of no value whatever as a test of race. It belongs with the grewsome superstition that a woman apparently ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... otherwise, as Lady Rylton is still, even at forty-six, a very graceful woman. Small—very small—a sort of pocket Venus as it were, but so carefully preserved that at forty-six she might easily be called thirty-five. If it were not for her one child, the present Sir Maurice Rylton, this fallacy might have been carried through. But, unfortunately, Sir Maurice is now twenty-eight by the church register. Lady Rylton hates church registers; they tell so much; and truth ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... palpable as not to be able to deceive anyone, but yet bearing just the resemblance of argument which is calculated to amuse by contrast." Farther on we read again: "There are several different kind of jokes and raillery, which will be found to correspond with the different kinds of fallacy." On this we may observe that some jests, generally of the "manufactured" class, are founded on a false logical process, but in most cases the error arises more from the matter than from the form, and often from mistakes of the senses. Although nearly every misconception may be represented ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... my desk—sometimes with a wet towel bound round my head, to cool the throbbing of my heated brow; at others, with a tea-pot of strong green tea by my side, to arouse and stimulate my wearied faculties: conventional specifics, of which, by the way, I very quickly discovered the fallacy. ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Kilkenny cats, or robbing Peter to pay Paul; but it is the way of the world, and as every animal must contribute in kind to the picnic of the universe, one does not see what better arrangement could be made than the providing each race with a hereditary fallacy, which shall in the end get it into a scrape, but which shall generally stand the wear and tear of life for some time. "Do ut des" is the writing on all flesh to him that eats it; and no creature is dearer to itself than it is to some other that ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... psychology now warn every student against the 'intellectualist' fallacy which is illustrated by my quotation from Macaulay. Impulse, it is now agreed, has an evolutionary history of its own earlier than the history of those intellectual processes by which it is often directed and modified. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... waies argue the Princes weakness; for in a strong principality they never will suffer such divisions; for they shew them some kind of profit in time of peace, being they are able by means thereof more easily to mannage their subjects: but war comming, such like orders discover their fallacy. Without doubt, Princes become great, when they overcome the difficulties and oppositions that are made against them; and therefore Fortune especially when she hath to make any new Prince great, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... has announced to his army that the fighting is over, and that the siege of Richmond now begins. A fallacy! Even if we were unable to repair the railroads, the fine crop of wheat just matured would suffice for the subsistence of the army—an army which has just withstood the military power of the North. It is believed that nearly 300,000 ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... argued, that the Duke of Wellington possesses all this influence by virtue of his leadership of a powerful party. Of course this means that any other leader of the conservatives could possess as much, or it means nothing. It is a fallacy. The Duke of Wellington's claims are almost entirely personal. It is to himself alone that all this silent homage is paid. Even were he to retire from active life to-morrow, still would he be followed into his retirement by political ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... Powers that are suffered to lie dormant, and no Powers at all, there is here no material Distinction to be made. Again, this Notion of Adam's being more likely to stand than his Posterity, is a mere Fallacy: it supposes a Difference of State, and Rectitude of Mind, between him and us; which, if true, will likewise suppose, that our State being more weak and defenceless than his, the Task or Duty, assigned us, must be proportionate to our different ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... that since your kind live on no planet of this system, you must come from another star. Since his science says that this is just as impossible as coming from another galaxy, he is convinced of the fallacy ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... be allowed as a valid reason for the abrogation of a charter, he affirmed that nothing short of such absolute necessity could excuse such a measure, and he relied on the previous history of the Company to prove the fallacy of an observation that had sometimes been made, that commercial companies could not govern empires. There were three interests to be considered: that of the native Indians, that of the Company, and that of this country; and the problem to be solved was, "how to do the most good to India and to the ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... some time to address the meeting on the fallacy of the present corn law as a protection to the farmer, amid frequent cries for adjournment, in consequence of the crowded state of the ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... indeed, of profound significance, and is too often ignored. It is often asserted that we have to explain the lower by the higher, and we can only understand the significance of religion in its lower forms by bearing in mind the higher manifestations. This is sheer fallacy. In nature the higher develops out of the lower, of which it is compounded. In biology, for example, it is now generally conceded that the secret of animal life lies in the cell. This may be modified in all kinds ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... convince me that the need of avoiding a northern winter was not a fallacy, and likewise to make Tibbie insist on coming here for fear Maister Colin should not be looked after. It is rather a responsibility to have let her come, for she has never been farther south than Edinburgh, but she would not be denied. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at first you don't succeed,' you know follow out the inestimable Watts's advice, and 'try again.' There's nothing like it: it gets to be quite a game in the long run. I thank my stars," laughing, "I have never been a slave to the 'pathetic fallacy' called love; yet it has its ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... was quoted by Lamb in his Popular Fallacy "That Home is Home": "It has been prettily said, that 'a babe is fed ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... make little darts of its own will in a curious way. Thus, the unconsciousness of muscular action on the part of savages engaged in the experiment with sticks would lead them to believe that spirits were animating the wood. The same fallacy beset the table-turners of 1855-65, and was, to some extent, exposed by Faraday. Of course, savages would be even more convinced by the dancing spoon of Mr. Darwin's tale, by the dancing sticks of the Zulus, and the rest, whether the phenomena were ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... by the fallacy which she felt in this speech without being quite willing or able to ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... liquor; "but," said he, "when I seen my darlin's mind gone, I couldn't stand it widout the drop of drink to keep my heart an' spirits up." He died of consumption in the workhouse of Ballykeerin, and there could not be a stronger proof of the fallacy with which he reasoned than the gratifying fact, that he had not been more than two months dead, when his son recovered his reason, to the inexpressible joy of his mother; so that had he followed up his own sense of what was ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... the injury he received was undesigned. The groom, on the other hand, maintains that the piece was wrenched out of Hazlewood's hands, and deliberately pointed at his body, and Lucy inclines to the same opinion—I do not suspect them of wilful exaggeration, yet such is the fallacy of human testimony, for the unhappy shot was most unquestionably discharged unintentionally. Perhaps it would be the best way to confide the whole secret to Hazlewood—but he is very young, and I ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... 'primitive thought', when we come to analyse them, all seem to resolve themselves into one or other of the ordinary sorts of fallacy, as our own logic-books expound them. If the study of them proves anything at all, it is the familiar aphorism that, while there is only one right way of doing and thinking, there are countless ways of going wrong. Among the most reasonable people (at their highest) that the ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... sciud bi proporscionD tu thi hed end person, for it is laf-ebl tu si e laRgg het op-on e smol hed, end e smol het op-on e laRgg hed." But sometimes he goes all astray. He is, for instance, desperately ill-informed as to English law. In England, he tells us, and believes the pathetic fallacy, "thi trens start end arraiv verE pongh-ciuAllE, othaR-uais passen-giaRs hu arraiv-let for theaR bis-nes cud siu ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... could not brook the idea of leaving them in the hands of the savage monster. She even trusted to the hope that he would withdraw, as soon as he could, without molesting any of them. A few minutes served to convince her of the fallacy of this expectation. When the opening had been made sufficiently large, he raised his tomahawk, sunk it deep into the brains of one of the children, and throwing the scarcely lifeless body into the back yard, ordered the mother to follow after. There was no alternative but death, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... political, used by his rivals or foes for his destruction. He is aware of the fatal consequences all former factions suffered from the public exposure of their past crimes and future views; of the reality of their guilt, and of the fallacy of their boasts and promises. He does not doubt but that a faithful account of all the actions and intrigues of his Government, its imposition, fraud, duplicity, and tyranny, would make a sensible alteration in the public opinion; and that even those who, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in their place a large number of torpedo-boats. These, in spite of their small fighting capacity, would be able to attack the strongest ironclads by well-aimed torpedoes. It was soon realized that this theory rested on a fallacy—that a country like the German Empire, which depends on an extensive foreign trade in order to find work and food for its growing population, and, besides, is hated everywhere because of its political and economic prosperity, ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... fallacy is that the blind can tell colors by feeling. This is absolutely impossible. I have heard of men who could tell the difference of color in horses, but, upon questioning them closely, I found that the texture of the hair varied in ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... something of the quick Stevensonian instinct for the moral issue, and the Devil not infrequently winces about the time the noon edition of the Evening Sun comes from the press. There is no man quicker to bonnet a fallacy or drop the acid just where it will disinfect. For instance, this comment ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... novel use of these Ciceronian divisions. All non-human objects—flowers, animals, etc.—are seen as exhibiting male or female attributes. It might almost be said that with this anthropomorphic approach she is attempting to develop a "philosophical" basis for the pathetic fallacy. Furthermore, if the human is used to measure beauty in the non-human, the implication is that man, not God, is the measure of beauty. By setting up man as the mediator between the material and the divine, she points to the concentration in the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... 'nerves,' which is about as sensible as talking about a man suffering from ten fingers. We speak of 'liver' and 'digestion' when we mean the failure of liver and the absence of digestion. And in the same manner we speak of the dangers of logic, when what we really mean is the danger of fallacy. ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton |
