"Line of reasoning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the assertion that base-ball is descended from rounders is a pure assumption, unsupported even by proof that the latter game antedates the former and unjustified by any line of reasoning based upon the likeness of the games. The other attempt to declare base-ball itself an out-and-out English game is ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... and all the rest could not unite the characteristics which had just been predicated of Selmann. Like Sterne, Wezel converses with the reader about the way of telling the story, indulging[76] in a mock-serious line of reasoning with meaningless Sternesque dashes. Further conversation with the reader is found at the beginning of Chapter III in Volume I, and in Chapter VIII of the first volume, he cries, "Wake up, ladies and gentlemen," ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... this rather unsatisfactory line of reasoning for some minutes. His companion fitted a wooden chimney on the doll house, found it a trifle out of plumb, and proceeded to whittle a shaving off the lower edge. Then Asaph sighed, as one who gives up a perplexing riddle, put his hand in his ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... always been, more or less consciously, practised by the religious. It is brilliantly advocated in the Thoughts of Pascal, and clearly and forcibly defended in that most remarkable essay in unprofessional philosophy, Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent. This line of reasoning, however, is most familiarly associated with the name of William James; he first illustrated the Pragmatic Method by a famous paper (for a theological audience) on The Will to Believe, and founded the psychological study of religious experience ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... Gaelic-speaking nation, we shall make that state of affairs still worse. English, say the objectors, is spoken more or less everywhere, while Gaelic will never be able to claim the position of a quasi-universal language. To this line of reasoning it might be answered, for one thing, that no one can tell how far Gaelic will go, in case our movement is a success, and that many a language formerly "universal" is today as dead as a door-nail. But we must look at the question ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... change in my whole line of reasoning. If the rival and not the wife lay before me, then which of the two accompanied him to the scene of tragedy? He had said it was his wife; I had proven to myself that it was the rival; was he right, or was I right, or were neither ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... generally proved to be the reviewing court's own judgment of the case in hand. Some of Fitch's fellow practitioners intimated at times that he was tricky. In conferences with opposing counsel, one heard, he required watching, as he was wary of committing himself and it was difficult to discover what line of reasoning he elected to oppose or defend. In such conferences it was his fashion to begin any statement that might seem even remotely to bind him with the remark, "I'm just thinking aloud on that proposition and don't want to be bound by what I say." The students in the office, to whom he was unfailingly courteous, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... a later period in the evolution of the race. Hence revelation might be salutary or even necessary for certain times and places without being essential at all times or, for that matter, a permanent guarantee of the truth of religion. There is nothing here which is new or original with Kant. This line of reasoning was one by which men since Lessing had helped themselves over certain difficulties. It is cited only to show how Kant, too, failed to transcend his age in some matters, although he so splendidly transcended ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... independent of the "parasitic" trader of the village. Such a naive point of view has a certain logical simplicity which is based on the presupposition that conflict is inevitable and that justice and equity can be secured only through dominance. The same line of reasoning finds no solution of the problem of capital and labor, or of the interests of producer as over against consumer, except in strong organization and eternal economic conflict. It is apparent that there is much justification for this view and that it seems in many cases to be a necessary stage ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... 1819, the case of M'Culloch v. Maryland, in which the Chief Justice sustained the constitutionality of the act establishing the National Bank, and declared a state law imposing a tax on a branch of the Bank unconstitutional and void. In the course of his opinion, which followed much the same line of reasoning that Alexander Hamilton had employed, Marshall stated in classic phraseology the doctrine of liberal construction. Holding that the Constitution was not a code of law, but a document marking out in large characters the powers of government, he sought, among the enumerated powers, ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... consciousness." "How," he asked, "is the 'originating Mind' to be thought of as having states produced by things objective to it, as discriminating among these states, and classing them as like and unlike; and as preferring one objective result to another."[6] It was by a similar line of reasoning that Romanes reached the like conclusions.[7] "In my opinion," he said, "no explanation of natural order can either be conceived or named other than that of intelligence as the supreme directing cause." But "this cause must be widely different ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... Through this line of reasoning I learned, clearly and once for all, that inconceivability is not a proof of impossibility; but, on the other hand, that we know many things to be true that are not conceivable to the finite mind, and therefore we must follow ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... prove too much and too little, and in the end become simply our own briefs for our own inclinations. Charity's mood being what it was, she adopted the line of reasoning that led to her own ambition. She spent much time on her knees, but communed chiefly with herself, and rose always confirmed in her belief that to marry Jim Dyckman was the next ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... line of reasoning applies if for the individual A we take the country of the United States. If it tries to increase its factories, machinery, etc., in excess of its ability to pay, it can only do so by borrowing from other countries; and if it cannot pay the interest on ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... should have mentioned 'chest' to us," laughed Betty, when Libbie was "it" for the third time. "We know your line of reasoning now, you see." ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... A similar line of reasoning is as applicable to separate organs as to the whole organisation. A writer[532] has recently maintained that "it is probably no exaggeration to suppose that, in order to improve such an organ as the eye at all, it must be improved in ten different ways at once. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... the law of the tide-producing force is of a mathematical character, and I do not intend in these lectures to enter into mathematical calculations. There is, however, a simple line of reasoning which, though it falls far short of actual demonstration, may yet suffice to give a ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... following the one line of reasoning or the other, the Taney Court subtly transformed its function, and so that of Judicial Review, in relation to the Federal System. Marshall viewed the Court as primarily an organ of the National Government and of its supremacy. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... a counter-petition. In it he enters upon the arguments of Symmachus. Although he could not present the same pathetic figure of an old man pleading for the religion of his ancestors, his arguments are not unjust, and dispose satisfactorily of the leading points made by Symmachus. The line of reasoning represents the best Christian opinion of the times on the matter of the relation ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... its turbulent schisms, six principle men, peculiar people, seed and snake baptists, supralapsarian dogmatists? Had he found the true church all of a sudden in winding up to the end like a reel of cotton some fine-spun line of reasoning upon insufflation on the imposition of hands or the procession of the Holy Ghost? Or had Lord Christ touched him and bidden him follow, like that disciple who had sat at the receipt of custom, as he sat by the door of some zinc-roofed ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... The same line of reasoning should be followed when the partner has called two of a suit over a No-trump. As a rule, under these conditions, it is most unwise for the original No-trump declarer to bid two No-trumps, but with four Aces, the value of the honors thoroughly warrants such a declaration, unless the ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... main grounds for this opinion is the absolute ignorance of the Mosaic law manifested by the author of Job. The line of reasoning is that he must have been either a Jew—and in that case have lived before or simultaneously with Moses—or else an Arab, like his hero, and have written the work in Arabic, Moses himself probably doing it into Hebrew. To a Hebrew scholar this ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... that to have two of the Five Great Powers decline at the last moment to accept the Treaty containing the Covenant would jeopardize the plan for a League and would greatly encourage his opponents in the United States. His line of reasoning was logical, but in my judgment was based on the false premise that the Japanese would carry out their threat to refuse to accept the Treaty and enter the League of Nations unless they obtained a cession of the German rights. I did ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... repress an angry start as he saw whither this line of reasoning must lead. The gross injustice of the idea made him flush hotly, but he was far too wise to expose his hand to the wily old insurrecto leader, who was watching them with an eager look on ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... this line of reasoning, or speculation, let us say, would lead us beyond the firm basis of human reason; it would escape the grasp of intellect, to which I am compelling this course of instruction to bend, but it would never ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne |
