"Reasoning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sciences, at least in their earlier stages? Are there not frequently, or always, many phenomena which at first seem inexplicable, but which are gradually accounted for as knowledge increases? If, then, this is no objection in scientific pursuits generally, why should it be so here?" This reasoning would be perfectly valid if Darwinism were regarded simply as a scientific investigation. But it is under consideration now on very different rounds. Whatever Mr. Darwin's own views may be, the theory is brought forward by others, not as a mere interesting ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... such reasoning, I made a variety of enquiries between Battersea and Wandsworth, relative to the condition of the poor. I learnt with grief that the payment of day-labourers varies from 2s. 6d. to 1s. 6d. per day, or ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... It is uncertain, because the subject lies entirely beyond the reach of human experience. It is useless, because our knowledge of this cause being derived entirely from the course of nature, we can never, according to the rules of just reasoning, return back from the cause with any new inference, or making additions to the common and experienced course of nature, establish any principles of conduct and ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... never before seen a boat of that kind, made of glass bottles, and that, even allowing that she would float at all, if we struck a rock where should we be? They declared that, tired as they were, they preferred to go on struggling on foot through the forest rather than get drowned. With his peculiar reasoning, Benedicto said that it was bad enough to die of starvation, but to die of starvation and get drowned as well ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of the cosmic evolutionary principle at the point where it reaches its highest level. The effort of Nature has always been upwards from the time when only the lowest forms of life peopled the globe, and it has now culminated in the production of a being with a mind capable of abstract reasoning and a brain fitted to be the physical instrument of such a mind. At this stage the all-creating Life-principle reproduces itself in a form capable of recognizing the working of the evolutionary law, and the unity and continuity of purpose running through the whole progression ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... one did. Their enemy, this time, Upsoaring to a place sublime, Let fall upon his royal robes some dirt, Which Jove just shaking, with a sudden flirt, Threw out the eggs, no one knows whither. When Jupiter inform'd her how th' event Occurr'd by purest accident, The eagle raved; there was no reasoning with her; She gave out threats of leaving court, To make the desert her resort, And other brav'ries of this sort. Poor Jupiter in silence heard The uproar of his favourite bird. Before his throne the beetle now appear'd, And by a clear complaint ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... rest for the nerve before the sensation can be renewed in its first freshness. Now it is the same, though in a less degree, with the more important sense of sight. We look long and steadily at a thing to know it, and the longer and more fixedly we look the better, if it engages the reasoning faculties; but an aesthetic pleasure cannot be increased or retained in that way. We must look, merely glancing as it were, and look again, and then again, with intervals, receiving the image in the brain even as we receive the "nimble ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... must have some engineering talent to make the selection; they must be able to calculate as exactly as if they took their levels, to secure the size and depth of water in the pond which is necessary. It is the most wonderful, perhaps, of all the instincts, or reasoning ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... heartless wife which she had frankly admitted she must be if he married her; and Della had, unwittingly, skillfully touched a tender chord, when she made the appeal to his feelings which she did. He had felt the force of her reasoning, and had been delighted with her frankness and her confidence; though it pained him to relinquish her, he was too much a soldier to display his wounds; and, though he parted from her nominally a friend, he was never more her lover ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... way to her son's reasoning, as he thought, but no sooner was she alone with Jock than she told him that he must take her to London to see Janet in her lodgings before ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... any stranger or more distant relation: hence, in that nation, it was lawful for a man to marry not only his niece, but his half-sister by the father; a liberty unknown to the Romans, and other nations, where a more open intercourse was authorized between the sexes. Reasoning from this principle, it would appear, that the ordinary commerce of life among great princes is so obstructed by ceremony and numerous attendants, that no ill consequence would result among them from marrying a brother's widow; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... certainly buried in the parish. From the vestry books I found many notices of John Shakespeare as contributing to the expenses of the poor, first on the "waterside" of the parish, and then on the "landside"; and I believed, reasoning from a State Paper Bill, that he was referred to in the entry, "received for a pewe, from the Princes' Bitmaker 30s., 1639-40." His name disappeared from the books long before 1646; and I fancied he had gone farther east to the ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... fair and consecutive reasoning, to our last general proposition, which is this: God was ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... not at all, being kept awake by exultation in what had happened and forecast of triumphs soon to be enjoyed. But her thoughts turned constantly to the graven image which she longed to see, and, by a process of reasoning natural to such a mind as hers, she persuaded herself that now was the moment to fulfil her desire. The bust once brought down, she would not again dream of going to seek it, and, consequently, it could not serve again to augur evil. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... Science have surely concepts in common. They both refer to the same thing when they speak of Space; we presume also when they speak of Matter. Indeed, Philosophy analyses the conceptions involved not only in scientific reasoning, but in the most common and ordinary mental processes. It analyses them with special reference to the relations between the Phenomenal and the Real—a question which, though it always lies latent, ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... finer his introduction of the Veto Bill in December, 1909. "His speech was perfect: forcible in manner, statesmanlike in argument, felicitous in epithet and phrasing." Balfour on the same occasion was at his worst: "hampered by his former contrary declarations, trivial in reasoning, feeble in delivery." He was ill, and ought not to have come. I asked if Balfour's frequent inconsistencies and vacillations were due to carelessness. He said no, but to the necessity imposed upon him, not of proclaiming principles, but of keeping together a divergent party. I asked what ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... matter stands to-day our Government has sunk lower, as regards British and European opinion, than it has ever been in our time, not as a part of the hysteria of war but as a result of this process of reasoning, whether it be right ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... look at it, it ought not to be necessary to jump on the necks of the wicked to make them good, that is, to make them understand what they would wish they had done in twenty years. We live in a more reasoning and precise age and what more particularly concerns us in the wicked is not their necks, but their heads and their hearts. It seems to us that they are not using them very much and that the moment they do and we can get ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... there would be a turkey a-piece was not shared by Company I; but no one denied it in Charley's hearing. The boy held it as sick people often do fantastic notions, and all fell into the humor of strengthening the reasoning on ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... extent to which stimulants may advantageously be used. It is remarkable that amongst nearly all nations, either alcohol in some form or one of the stronger alkaloids is in common use. From this fact it is sometimes argued that stimulants must supply a physiological need. The same method of reasoning will apply with greater force to the use of condiments. Such conclusions appear to us to be scarcely warranted. If the extensive or even universal practice of a thing proves its necessity, then has there been justification, either now ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... fiat lux. Suppose the drop to be larger and the spoonful bigger; you have the world. Man is the eel. Then what is the good of the Eternal Father? The Jehovah hypothesis tires me, Bishop. It is good for nothing but to produce shallow people, whose reasoning is hollow. Down with that great All, which torments me! Hurrah for Zero which leaves me in peace! Between you and me, and in order to empty my sack, and make confession to my pastor, as it behooves ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... little story. Sometimes, indeed, trouble of that sort was soon over and forgotten; but sometimes, if the young man didn't do the right thing by her, and the girl's folk took it hardly, well, then—-! So had run the reasoning of this good woman. Being of the same class, she had looked at her lodger from the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the notion of cause altogether as false and a mere delusion. As to attempting to remedy this want of objective and consequently universal validity by saying that we can see no ground for attributing any other sort of knowledge to other rational beings, if this reasoning were valid, our ignorance would do more for the enlargement of our knowledge than all our meditation. For, then, on this very ground that we have no knowledge of any other rational beings besides man, we should have a right ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... out, now angling into the wind, now pulling full into the teeth of the gale. Even my purpose was almost forgotten in the intensity of the task of merely keeping away from the surf. Dully I pulled, reasoning no more than that that was the thing for me ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... of dismay, and reproach, sounded in his ears. Innocent and guilty alike regarded him with indignant eyes. To the mysterious feminine reasoning it appeared there were different degrees in the crime of theft. To pay a debt by means of a worthless cheque was evidently less reprehensible than to pilfer a brooch from a dressing-table. Guest knew himself condemned before ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... attitude. Usually he is holding several stocks that show a big loss and he does not know what to do with them. He reasons that they are selling so low now they surely will sell higher some time. Perhaps his reasoning is good and perhaps it is not. The stocks may have no chance of going up for a very long time, if at all, but even though they have a good chance to go up later, it is better for him to sell them now if he can put the money derived from the sale into something ...
— Successful Stock Speculation • John James Butler
... them often suffer in reputation precisely because they know what hopeless arguments and what still more hopeless jests will move collectivities, the individual units of which would never have listened to such humour or to such reasoning. ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... reasoning, the Earl of Ripon, Under Secretary for War, announced that volunteer corps would be enrolled throughout the country. The government plans were published on the first of July, were warmly accepted by all parties, and a circular was issued, dated July 13th, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... him, for his Lord's sake, to aim at clearness, point, force of expression, that the message may be the better taken in. God is as little glorified by a bad style as by a bad voice, or bad handwriting, or bad reasoning. And by a good style I mean not a style polished and elaborated to please fastidious tastes (the best taste, by the way, is best pleased with correct simplicity), but a style which shall be both pure and plain in word and phrase, "understandable of the people" yet such as ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... condensation of phrase, to a depth of intuition for a proper coalescence with which ordinary language is inadequate, to a concentration of passion in a focus that consumes the lighter links which bind together the clauses of a sentence or of a process of reasoning in common parlance, or to a sense of music which mingles music and meaning without essentially confounding them. We should demand for a perfect editor, then, first, a thorough glossological knowledge of the English contemporary with Shakespeare; second, enough ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... qualities, and which totally differs in nature from all other beings—this is the point proved in the two previous adhyayas; there being given at the same time arguments to disprove the objections raised against the Vedanta doctrine on the basis of Smriti and reasoning, to refute the views held by other schools, to show that the different Vedanta-texts do not contradict each other, and to prove that the Self is the object of activities (enjoined in injunctions of meditation, and so on). In short, those ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... to the truth we have only to fix our attention on the ideas which each one finds within his own mind." (Malebranche, "Recherche de la Verite," book I. ch. 1.)—"Those long chains of reasoning, all simple and easy, which geometers use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, suggested to me that all things which come within human knowledge must follow each other in a similar chain." (Descartes, "Discours de ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... your latest gift, the Analogy of Joseph Butler, late Lord Bishop of Durham. But, honestly, old man, did you know how funny it was when you sent it? It's funnier than any of the books of Moses, without being bloody. What a dear, innocent old soul the Bishop is! How sincerely he believes he is reasoning when he is merely doing a roguish two-step down the grim corridor of the eternal verities—with a little jig here and there, and a pause to flirt his frock airily in the face of some graven image of Fact. Ah, he is so weirdly innocent. Even when his logical toes go blithely into the air, his dear ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... after some pointed and forcible reasoning against it, pronounces the play-house to be 'the devil's chapel,' 'a nursery of licentiousness and vice,' and 'a recreation which ought not to be allowed among a civilized, much less ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... her companions, asked permission to read them a poem of the master’s which she found beyond her comprehension. When the reading was over the opinion of her friends was unanimous. “Nothing could be simpler! The lines were lucidity itself! Such close reasoning etc.” But dismay fell upon them when the naughty lady announced, with a peal of laughter, that she had been reading alternate lines from opposite pages. She no longer disturbs the harmony ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... have fatal consequences, frightened her into more order, and drew her away himself. He had then the kindness to go with her into another room, where, when her first vehemence was spent, his remonstrances and reasoning brought her to a sense of the danger she might occasion, and made her promise not to return to the room till she had gained ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... internal feelings of doubt and reluctance by such reasoning as this, Markham Everard continued in his resolution to unite himself with Cromwell in the struggle which was evidently approaching betwixt the civil and military authorities; not as the course which, if at perfect liberty, he would have preferred adopting, but as the best choice ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... "This reasoning, coupled with similar arguments from Lorenzo, seemed so conclusive that our auditors agreed to our suggestions, and Michael di Lando was chosen to command our organization. He was already head of the wool-combers union, the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... they regard this as what is called a mere question of taste, which, according to the proverb, is not to be disputed about. In fact, however, the good or bad taste of an architectural design, say, if you like, its correctness or incorrectness, is to a considerable extent a matter of logical reasoning, of which you must accurately know the premises before you can form a just conclusion. But there is another reason for this prevalent uncertainty and vagueness of opinion, arising out of the very nature of architectural art itself, as compared with the imitative arts. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... stead-fastly concealed, and one of them may even be heard to blurt out the most precious secrets of the whole brotherhood. Indeed, a lapse of this sort occurred but a short while ago, to a well-known aesthete of the Hegelian school of reasoning. It must, however, be admitted that the provocation thereto was of an unusual character. A company of Philistines were feasting together, in celebration of the memory of a genuine anti-Philistine—one who, moreover, had been, in the ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... conceive; unless it proceeded from a want of similar feelings in his own breast. To argue from her being much older than Johnson, or any other circumstances, that he could not really love her, is absurd; for love is not a subject of reasoning, but of feeling, and therefore there are no common principles upon which one can persuade another concerning it. Every man feels for himself, and knows how he is affected by particular qualities in the person he admires, the impressions of which are too minute ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... he knew; but that having reason to suspect the Marquis, Monsieur l'Ambassadeur had had the goodness to have him watched, and had taken this journey on purpose to detect him. It was not without much reasoning, and the evidence of a lady who had been in England long enough to know the impossibility of such a thing, that I would justify Lord G from this piece of complaisance to the Jacobins, and convince ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Willie was drunk when he died, it was as notorious that it was not because he was drunk that he died—but that he died because his water-cart went over him when he was drunk. However that may be, and there is no use in wasting much reasoning on the point, William left, at his death, a widow and two children, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... on a lonely shore, far removed from human kind, inevitably produces in the mind strange effects. All ordinary reasoning is set at naught and common sense goes astray. The nearness of the unknown and unapproachable ocean; the ever varying and menacing sounds that issue from it; the leaping and curling billows that, ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... complain. The thought was forced upon me: "The rascals—they have served other people so in their day; it being their own turn, now, they were not expecting any better treatment than this; so their philosophical bearing is not an outcome of mental training, intellectual fortitude, reasoning; it is mere animal training; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... And he began reasoning again that the New Testament was a natural continuation of the Old, that Judaism has outlived its day. . . . Picking out his phrases, he seemed to be trying to put together the forces of his conviction and to smother with them the uneasiness of his soul, and to prove to himself that in giving ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... testimony and the mode of argument in such a way that the best final result would be achieved. You judge correctly of the fitness and propriety, as well as of the power, of the means you have to be employed. You would plan a thing better than you could use the tools to make it. Your reasoning organs are gaining upon your perceptions. At fifteen your mind was devoted to facts and phenomena; of late years you have been thinking of principles and ideas. You are a keen critic, especially if you can put wit as a cracker on your whip; you can make ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... course, the method thereof depends on character; a cheerful heart In one, a buoyant imagination in another, and the sweet self-oblivion which Faith imparts in a third, sentiment here and will there, work the same miracle. Foresti belonged to that class of Italians who combine perspicacity and force of reasoning with a frank, affectionate, and trustful disposition,—types of the manly intellect, the childlike heart; incarceration, while it failed to enfeeble the former, by seclusion from life's game and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... himself to such elemental necessities as air or water. Most of life's necessaries had fallen into monopolistic hands and were used to wring tribute from unfortunate mortals who had arrived too late to share in the graft, as witness, for instance, Standard Oil. So ran Bill's reasoning when he took the trouble to reason at all. Men had established arbitrary rules to govern their forays upon one another's property, to be sure, but under cover of these artificial laws they stole merrily, and got away with it. Eagles did not scruple to steal from one another, horses ate one another's ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... I was glad to see them. In spite of all my reasoning that it made no difference about anybody coming to see me off, it did make a good deal of difference. It was a lonely sort of business starting off in that way—especially after seeing Rectus's father and mother come down to the ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... come, recollect that your reasoning powers are almost as worthy of employment as your rhetorical abilities! We are not quite so bad as that, you know. We may be a little behind the times in Lichfield; we certainly let well enough alone, and we take things pretty much as they come; but we meddle with nobody, and, after ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... He was, after all, a little disappointed. Mr. Coulson was obviously a man of common sense. His words were clearly pronounced, and his reasoning sound. They had reached the courtyard of the hotel now, and the reporter began ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bring it about, he springs up, cuts one of the reeds growing around the pool where Fafner goes to drink, and fashions it into a pipe. He tries upon it to imitate the bird-note. "If I can sing his language," is his reasoning, "I shall understand, no doubt, what he sings!" After repeated attempts, charmingly comical, and much vain mending of the reed with the edge of Nothung, he grows impatient, is ashamed of his unsuccess before the "roguish listener." He tosses away the silly reed ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... chance and had no wish, intention, or power to make good prevail over ill. And with his instinctive love of Natural Beauty thus confirmed and strengthened by this testing of his instinct against what cool reasoning on the facts revealed by observation in the forest had to say about it, he can with lightened heart search still further into Nature, and see her in higher, wider, deeper aspects than the forest ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... His will in anything On one endowed with sight, hearing and reasoning, He stops his ears and blinds his eyes and draws his wit From him, as one draws out the hairs to paste that cling; Till, His decrees fulfilled, He gives him back his wit, That therewithal he may ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... the Ministry justified its ruthless attack upon a neutral power in almost precisely the same language that Von Bethmann Hollweg used in justifying the attack on Belgium, and Lord Ponsonby used the sort of reasoning then, in answer to the Government, that England is now using in answer to Germany. I was distrustful of the quotations that were given to me and looked the volume up, and found that England was governed by much the same idea that Germany was—just sheer necessity. Of course, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... cases, a grave mistake to, reason with a worry. We must first drop the worry, and then do our reasoning. If to drop the worry seems impossible, we can separate ourselves from it enough to prevent it from interfering with our reasoning, very much as if it were neuralgia. There is never any real reason for a worry, because, as we all know, worry never helps us to gain, and often is ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... practice. The original conception was that the offender against the law should be punished, and that the punishment should be made to fit the crime, an 'opera bouffe' conception which has been abandoned in reasoning though not in practice. Under this conception the criminal code was arbitrarily constructed, so much punishment being set down opposite each criminal offense, without the least regard to the actual guilt of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... it can be done. Every year makes it more certain, because with increase of reasoning power he'll see the absurdity of this attitude. It is no good to him to ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... that you must not believe: and therefore prayer is not merely an impertinence, it is a mistake; for it is speaking to a Being who only exists in your own imagination. I need not say, my friends, that all this, to my mind, is only a train of sophistry and false reasoning, which—so I at least hold—has been answered and refuted again and again. And I trust in God and in Christ sufficiently to believe that He will raise up sound divines and true philosophers in His Church, who will refute it once more. But meanwhile I can only appeal to your ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... case in which the Constitution had clearly not given it, and in which no doubt respecting the construction of the article could possibly be raised. The court decided, and we think very properly, that the legislature could not give original jurisdiction in such a case. But in the reasoning of the court in support of this decision some expressions are used which go far beyond it.... The general expressions in the case of Marbury v. Madison must be understood with the limitations which are given to them in this opinion; limitations ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... restricted to one sex or the other, so exclusively feminine or masculine, as the case may be, that their entire comprehension by both sexes is not possible. Intuition, imagination, sympathy may help a great deal; men and women will accept much from each other which they cannot to their reasoning satisfaction account for, and, if the difference serves only to enhance, by its mystery, the melodiousness of the eternal human duet, it also proves that, while the singers may be in harmony, they are never in ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... attractive in the sight of this young sorrow, sincere without reasoning or afterthought. It was a virgin grief which the simple hearts of Eugenie and her mother were fitted to comprehend, and they obeyed the sign Charles made them to leave him to himself. They went downstairs in silence ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... the delusion, common enough, of choosing his favourite weapons from his weakest faculty; and the very inferiority of his intellect prevented him from seeing where his true strength lay. He would argue; he would try and convert me from scepticism by what seemed to him reasoning, the common figure of which was, what logicians, I believe, call begging the question; and the common method, what they call ignoratio elenchi—shooting at pigeons, while crows are the game desired. He always ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... had parted; Miriam was gliding back to the house, and Marcus came towards him, walking like a man in his sleep. Only Nehushta stood where she was, her eyes fixed upon the ground as though she were reasoning with herself. Still like a man in a dream, Marcus passed him within touch of his outstretched hand. Caleb followed. Marcus opened the door, went out of it, and pulled it to behind him. Caleb caught it in his hand, slipped through and closed it. A few paces down the wall—eight or ten perhaps—was ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... wonderful example of the different styles of oratory of which each was master; Clay, of declamation, invective, wit, humor and bitter sarcasm; Calhoun of clear statement and close reasoning. This contest, aside from its oratorical power, deserves a place in history. In answer to Clay's attack on his life he replied: "I rest my public character upon it, and desire it to be read by all who ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Of course, in the language of John Stuart Mill, "when the analogy can be proved, the argument founded upon it cannot be resisted."[7] But so great is the difficulty of proof that many are compelled to attach the most inferior weight to analogy as a method of reasoning. "Analogical evidence is generally more successful in silencing objections than in evincing truth. Though it rarely refutes it frequently repels refutation; like those weapons which though they cannot kill the enemy, will ward his ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... But thenceforward all Sweyn's reasoning and mastery could not uphold White Fell above suspicion. He was not called upon to defend her from accusation when Christian had been brought to silence again; but he well knew the significance of this fact, that her name, formerly uttered freely and often, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... premises and cannot be persuaded by evidence to do otherwise; it is not generally used in its other senses, i.e., to describe a person with a native incapacity to reason correctly, or a clown. Indeed, in hackish experience many fools are capable of reasoning all too effectively in executing their errors. See also {cretin}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... national spirit of Robert Boyle's native country is always boiling up, often boiling over. Scotland, too, has a national spirit, so has Wales; in both countries this spirit is separatist in its essence, but the national instinctive tendencies are curbed and guided by the higher reasoning centres of the brain. In England itself the sense of nationality is usually dormant; only an insult or a threat from without stirs this gigantic force into life. In Ireland the national kettle is kept always on the boil; in Scotland and Wales it is kept simmering; in England, on the other hand, ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith
... whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling, Nor form nor feeling, great nor small; A reasoning, self-sufficient thing, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... this new crown upon her! Humble as the beautiful beggar-maid must have felt when the king raised her, she wondered why she had been thus chosen by one whom she had deemed so immeasurably above her. And this is another phase of woman's love,—that it exalts the beloved beyond all reasoning. ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... considered a doubtful case by the society. Yet a shilling a day will only give the family bread and tea for every meal, with an occasional dish of potatoes. By strict economy a little margarine may be purchased, but by no process of reasoning may it be said that the family has enough to eat, or suitable food." The Irish wage would have to be a high wage to buy the old diet. For that is not supplied by Ireland for Ireland any more. When Ireland became a cow lot, cereal and vegetable crops became few. But milk should be plentiful? ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... the different men to the address, to the clarity of the reasoning, the simplicity of the argument, the strength of the appeal and the glowing patriotism that filled all the pages. The pamphlet had been worn by much reading. It was covered with the black finger prints of busy men who had been working around the ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... of authors who lay actual claim to the title of poets, follow the same principle. Whenever, after a writer's meaning is fully understood, it is still matter of reasoning and discussion whether he is a poet or not, he will be found to be wanting in the characteristic peculiarity of association so often adverted to. When, on the contrary, after reading or hearing one or two passages, we instinctively and without ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... to rock the ship even slightly! Oh, no, indeed; it was men's business to keep the nation out of war. Men never had shown marked skill at keeping nations out of war in the history of the world. But never mind! Logic must not be pressed too hard upon the "reasoning" sex. This time, ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... of reasoning which Mr. Hill took he was justifiable in feeling as he did. Everything about the little farmhouse reminded him of the woman he had loved. He never came to the house without a pang of painful loneliness at her absence. He felt ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... such similar pictures, are strictly peculiar to the infancy of humanity. The reasoning faculty at length inevitably makes itself felt, and diversities of interpretation ensue. Comparative geography, comparative astronomy, comparative theology thus arise, homogeneous at first, but soon ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... do without it, and as the South had a virtual monopoly of the stuff, the need of it would compel the European nations to recognize the independence of the Southern Confederacy, and which would thereby result in the speedy and complete triumph of the Confederate cause. But in thus reasoning they ignored a law of human nature. Men, under the pressure of necessity, can get along without many things which they have previously regarded as indispensable. At this day, in my opinion, many of the alleged ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... have me say something of my opinion about your idea of taking the name of Guise;(450) but he has written so fully that I can only assure you in addition, that I am stronger even than he is against it, and cannot allow of your reasoning on families, because, however families may be prejudiced about them, and however foreigners (I mean, great foreigners) here may have those prejudices too, vet they never operate here, where there is any one reason to counterbalance them. A minister who has the least disposition to promote ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... believe that he had really found out about that train. I declined to join in the search. He and the boy went off together. They came back in about half an hour. They said they had found a train standing by itself in a field and that it must be ours because there was no other. The reasoning did not seen conclusive to me, but I agreed to go and sleep in whatever train they had found. I suggested that we should leave our luggage on the platform and pick it up when the train ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... course of events at sea; to maintain, if necessity arise, not arbitrarily, but as those in whom interest and power alike justify the claim to do so, the laws that shall regulate maritime warfare. This is no mere speculation, resting upon a course of specious reasoning, but is based on the teaching of the past. By the exertion of such force, and by the maintenance of such laws, and by these means only, Great Britain, in the beginning of this century, when she was the solitary power of the seas, saved ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... expression, perhaps; but Weir assured me, with much amusement in his tone, that those were the very words Old Rogers used. Leaving the expression aside, will the reader think for a moment on the old man's reasoning? My condition WAS his business; for he was ready to die for me! Ah! love does indeed make us all each other's keeper, just as we ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... ma'am," Polwarth replied, "I told you, the first time I had the pleasure of speaking to you, that it was by observing and reasoning upon what I observed, that I knew you were alive and at the Old House. But it may be some satisfaction to you to see how the thing took ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... of his star surely Fate had a purpose in all its doings. One who has learned to believe that no bullet will find him unless "his name and number are on it" has little difficulty in excusing his own indiscretions by fatalistic reasoning. ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... Mendel, under his father's tuition, had made rapid strides. He was the wonder of every male inhabitant of the community. His knowledge of the Scriptures was simply phenomenal, and his philosophical reasoning puzzled and ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... what I do not understand is, that I should have passed through that dreadful ordeal; having no previous knowledge of the murdered man in his lifetime, or only knowing him (if you suppose that I saw the apparition of Ferrari) through the interest which I took in his wife. I can't dispute your reasoning, Henry. But I feel in my heart of hearts that you are deceived. Nothing will shake my belief that we are still as far from having discovered the dreadful ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... did not threaten him as perilous. Without reasoning, he was convinced that a woman who lay down to sleep beside a burning candle in this wild place would make no outcry when she awoke and found the light had drawn instead of kept away possible cave-inhabitants. Day grew beyond the low sill and thinned obscurity around ...
— Marianson - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of reasoning seemed to give the boys fresh courage, and they walked on, expecting every moment to come in sight of the frame work which surrounded the shaft. At length, after a long half hour, Tommy stumbled over an obstruction lying in a chamber which somehow ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... divinely intended equality of the sexes it is impossible to consider that any mutual relation is an incident for the one and the total of existence for the other. We may lay it down as a premise upon which to base our whole reasoning that all mutual relations of the sexes are not only divinely intended to, but actually do bring equal joys, pains, pleasures and sacrifices to both. Whatever mistake one has made has acted upon the other, and reacted ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... say, what is all this to the purpose? This is still but reasoning: but, if you are in love, you are: and love, like the vapours, is the deeper rooted for having no sufficient cause assignable for its hold. And so you call upon me again to have ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... and she was seemingly incapable of receiving any others. In her mind men were strong and brave, and women weak and timorous; she believed that the first were good to hold on to, and that the last were good to hold on; all this she held by birthright, without ever reasoning upon it ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... period gave to the Jews a greatly enlarged intellectual vision and led them to adopt many of the ideas of their Greek conquerors. In their literature it is easy to recognize the influence of the more logical Greek methods of reasoning and of the scientific attitude toward the universe. It was during this period that the wise were transformed into scribes, and the rule of the scribal method of thinking and interpretation began. The struggles through which the Jews passed intensified their love for the law and the temple services. ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... laughed away the barriers she had interposed, followed her carelessly, and brought her to bay when he had proved or disproved the genuineness of her indifference. But Markham was singularly ingenuous, his reasoning as simple and direct as that of a child. He had never understood the woman of society and until Olga had appeared upon his horizon had let her severely alone. Hermia had been an accident—a divine ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... "The Inestimable Estimate of Brown."] And the possibility of such exceeding folly in a man otherwise of good sense and judgment, not depraved by any brain-fever or enthusiastic infatuation, is to be found in the vicious process of reasoning applied to such estimates; the doctor, having taken up one novel idea of the national character, proceeded afterwards by no tentative inquiries, or comparison with actual facts and phenomena of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... If some of these old ideas are erroneous, the mind must be more or less ready to discard them. It is very difficult to dislodge deep-seated convictions. Contradictory ideas are not assimilated. Only one of them is actually accepted. Even when to the objective reasoning they seem false, they frequently ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... to decide the question ourselves, want to hear the real rights of the matter, we should not, surely, apply to a pickpocket to know what he thought on the point. It might naturally be presumed that he would be rather a prejudiced person—particularly as his reasoning, if successful, might get him OUT OF GAOL. This is a homely illustration, no doubt; all we would urge by it is, that Madame Sand having, according to the French newspapers, had a stern husband, and also having, according ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sensible of the danger in which the unhappy man himself, the innocent and beautiful Alice, and his own father, were likely to be placed—to say nothing of the general risk of the community by a sudden insurrection, he at the same time felt that there was no chance of reasoning effectually with one, who would oppose spiritual conviction to all arguments which reason could urge against his wild schemes. To touch his feeling seemed a more probable resource; and Julian therefore conjured Bridgenorth to think how much his daughter's honour and safety were concerned in his abstaining ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... speech is quick and staccato, his tendency is to overcome, to fight rather than assuage, though he is the champion of everything he loves. From the time he could form distinct sounds he has called me Barbara, and no amount of reasoning will make him do otherwise, while the imitation of his father's pronunciation of the word goes ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... influence of such novel theories of genius, JOHNSON defined it as "A Mind of large general powers ACCIDENTALLY determined by some particular direction." On this principle we must infer that the reasoning LOCKE, or the arithmetical DE MOIVRE, could have been the musical and fairy SPENSER.[A] This conception of the nature of genius became prevalent. It induced the philosophical BECCARIA to assert that every individual had an equal degree of genius for poetry ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... in many good men. They have a vague trust that Providence will do more than it has promised. They are ready to think, that, if it is God's will that they are to gain such a prize, it will be sure to come their way without their pushing. That is a mistake. Suppose you apply the same reasoning to your dinner. Suppose you sit still in your study and say, "If I am to have dinner to-day, it will come without effort of mine; and if I am not to have dinner to-day, it will not come by any effort of mine; so here I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... idiosyncrasy from temperament, whereas, according to what would appear to be sound reasoning, based upon an enlarged idea of the physiology of the subject, a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... ago, yet the undercurrent of popular thought, as seen in our social habits, theological dogmas, and political theories, still reflects the same customs, creeds, and codes that degrade women in the effete civilizations of the old world. Educated in the best schools to logical reasoning, trained to liberal thought in politics, religion and social ethics under republican institutions, American women cannot brook the discriminations in regard to sex that were patiently accepted by the ignorant in barbarous ages as divine law. And yet subjects of emperors in the old world, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... those who absolutely reject the trustee theory, the guardianship theory. I have never found a man who knew how to take care of me, and, reasoning from that point out, I conjecture that there isn't any man who knows how to take care of all the people of the United States. I suspect that the people of the United States understand their own interests better than any group of men in the ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... was not followed by action. Throughout the whole Summer the President maintained a correspondence with the Germans, distinguished by patient reasoning on his part and continual shiftings and equivocations on theirs. Meanwhile nothing was done; the public sentiment of the first days after the Lusitania had been sunk had slackened; division and dissension had returned and redoubled. Pacifism was more active than ever and German ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... had set herself out to do, after the interview with Joe Barron, was to catch a porcupine in one of his traps, and thus, according to her peculiar method of reasoning, convince the confident woodsman that porcupines did eat eggs! As for the episode of the weasel, she resolved that she would not say anything to him about it, lest he should twist it into a confirmation of his own views. As for those seven eggs, so happily spared to her, she argued ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... to all their reasoning. "My anchor's doon, an' here I stoap! I've conseedered a' that ye've pit furrit! 'Convenience tae th' toon, if supplies are needit'? (I'll no' need that mony!) ... 'Nae distance tae bring th' workin' gang'? (I've a wheen men here mysel'!) ... 'Nae dues ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Reasoning that in a similar situation I should not care for the presence of an outsider, I left the mother and daughter alone together as much as I could without appearing rude. I think they both, appreciated my action, ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... in being cheated than in that kind of wisdom which perceives, or thinks it perceives, that all mankind are cheats. But, while simple fact forbids our assuming either of these extremes, we must, nevertheless, in reasoning upon the phenomena of human conduct, allow large scope for the influence of which I am now treating. For, as I have already intimated, we shall find it lurking under numerous forms. In discussing the question ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... Schule, the principal had a class in geometry recite for my edification. I soon saw that the young girl who had been chosen as the star pupil to wrestle with the pons asinorum was giving an exhibition of memorizing and not of mathematical reasoning. I asked the principal if my surmise were correct. He replied without hesitation, "Yes, it was entirely a feat in memory. Females have only low reasoning power." I urged that if this were so, it would be well to train the faculty, but he countered with the assertion, "We Germans do not think ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... alarmed over the loss of the baboon. It was a camp pet of Colonel Hare's and ran free in camp whenever the colonel was there. He had captured it when a mere baby in British East Africa. The troglodyte, with a strange reasoning yet untranslatable, loved the colonel devotedly and followed him about like a dog and with a scent far keener. So Ahmed and some of the keepers set off in ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... far from introspective; in fact he did very little thinking. His mind had never been trained to it, as his muscles had been trained to fighting. Billy reacted more quickly to instinct than to the processes of reasoning, and on this account it was difficult for him to explain any great number of his acts or moods—it is to be doubted, however, that Billy Byrne had ever attempted to get at the bottom of his soul, if ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the question of his reasoning which pursues a devious and zigzag course, varying according to the way the wind blows—and he is not alone in this peculiarity in Kansas, as I say—Jonathan steadily toiled against the wind, he stopped altogether, and taking out his lunch basket, he removed a pie and sat down ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... why a thing like that should give him so much joy. It didn't seem sensible in the old way of reasoning—and yet, didn't it? If it could be proved to the fellows that there was really a God like that, companionable, reasonable, just, loving, forgiving, ready to give Himself, wouldn't every one of them jump at the chance ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... readjusting movement the two men in him became one, so that when the reasoning man reached slowly his conclusion he formulated it thus: "It couldn't happen. If it did, it wouldn't happen this way. He" (even to himself he could not say "they") "would have managed better, or worse." At last ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair |
