"Contradiction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the killing of D.S. Terry. It will be evident to the reader that they readily sap the whole case, and that there is no substantial dispute possible concerning the facts. These truths we assert, without fear of successful contradiction, establish the justifiableness of the act of the United States marshal who fired upon and killed Terry. We think there will be no dispute among sensible men that a federal circuit judge or a justice of the supreme bench, passing from one portion of the circuit to another in which ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... more and more obvious that the matter would have to be faced and ended one way or the other. Quisante was not patient, and he would not be dealt with by way of favour. And she herself was in a turmoil and a contradiction of feeling which she summed up antithetically by declaring that she disliked him more every hour he was there and missed him more every hour he was not; or, to adopt the Dean's metaphor, his presence set her teeth ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... was Annixter prepared to accept another man's opinion without reserve. In conversation with him, it was almost impossible to make any direct statement, however trivial, that he would accept without either modification or open contradiction. He had a passion for violent discussion. He would argue upon every subject in the range of human knowledge, from astronomy to the tariff, from the doctrine of predestination to the height of a horse. Never would he admit himself to be mistaken; when cornered, he would intrench himself ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... In an error purely intellectual, where the will has no part, the objective truth indeed is missed, but the intelligence that dwells within the man is not flouted and gain-sayed. It takes two to make a contradiction as to make a quarrel. But an intellectual error has only one side. The intellect utters some false pronouncement, and there is nothing within the man that says otherwise. In the moral error there is a contradiction ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... of those mighty men who, in personal intercourse, have a force of nature that not merely renders opposition impossible, but absolutely masters the will and intention, so that there is not even the secret contradiction of mind. We have seen this in his dealings with both his own Normans and the Saxons who came in contact with him. His presence was so irresistible that men yielded to it unconsciously, but when absent from him they became themselves again, and in the reaction they committed treason against ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... true that the Socialists will at some future day reap the harvest from Mr. Lloyd George's and Mr. Churchill's campaigns, though a careful analysis of the expressions of these statesmen will show that they have said nothing and done nothing in contradiction to their State-capitalistic or ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... exercise of this right has no limits but in the defect of power. Whoever, therefore, has power, may employ it to this extent; and no previous convention is required to justify his conduct. But a right to do wrong, or to commit injustice, is an abuse of language, and a contradiction in terms. It is no more competent to the collective body of a people, than it is to any single usurper. When we admit such a prerogative in the case of any sovereign, we can only mean to express the extent of his power, and the force with ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... a baronet living at Blackberry Hall, Kent. Blunt and testy, but kind-hearted; "charitable as a Christian, and rich as a Jew;" fond of argument and contradiction, but detesting flattery; very proud, but most considerate to his poorer neighbors. In his first interview with lieutenant Worthington, "the poor gentleman," the lieutenant mistook him for a bailiff come to arrest him, but sir Roflert nobly paid the bill ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... temper, and that it would be in vain to urge any thing in contradiction to an inclination she found she was resolved to indulge; but she secretly trembled for the consequence, the count having said many amorous things to herself before he pretended any passion for Melanthe; and tho' he had of late desisted on finding how ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... In contradiction to the terms of their description their own figure, as will be noticed, shows three toes in front and two behind, or a total of five, which makes the bird an ornithological curiosity, indeed. However, as the cast in the Smithsonian collection shows three toes in front and one behind, it is ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... man," she said, shaking her finger at him as if she expected a contradiction, "mind you, there's no a lass i' twunty parishes like this lassie o' mine. An' dinna think that me an' my guidman dinna ken brawly what's bringin' ye to Craig Ronald. Noo, it's richt an' better nor richt—for ye're yer faither's ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... I, shrinking into a corner of the coach, however; for I did not know precisely how much contradiction the proper spirit of a woman would endure; 'but, my love, would it not have been more dignified to treat the villain with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... with a rather low forehead, dark complexion and a round head, which his short clipped hair caused to appear still more spherical. A hare-lip, never appropriately treated, gave his mouth a singular, grieved droop; but, as if in contradiction to this, his eyes were black and restless. The contrast with the steady gray eyes, and high forehead of the boy sitting next to him, was as great as ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... first address, but soon pall and nauseate, unless they are associated with more sprightly qualities. The chief use of sugar is to temper the taste of other substances; and softness of behaviour, in the same manner, mitigates the roughness of contradiction, and allays the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... like you when you talk like that, Uncle Harry—that is, I shouldn't like you if I thought you meant it; but you only talk so out of contradiction. If I had said I thought Frank was very foolish for having gone into the water, you would have taken the opposite ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... which would not in future expose him to such an unfortunate accident. In his researches, he discovered the use of linseed and nut oil, which he found most siccative. This is generally believed to have happened about 1410. There is however, a great deal of contradiction among writers as to the van Eycks, no two writers being found to agree. Some assert that John van Eyck introduced his invention both into Italy and Spain, while others declare that he never left his own country, which ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... sake of not offending (for instance) two remarkably nice American women, of the kind that had kept most of their illusions, left you with the conviction that the next minute it would go quickly back to its own standpoint There was a curious contradiction in him; he struck you as serious, and yet he could not be said to take things seriously. This was what made Kate Theory feel so sure that he had lost the object of his affections; and she said to herself that it must have been under circumstances of peculiar ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... not be impaired, and I shall, if God spare my Billy, be useful in his first education, and be helpful to dear Miss Goodwin—or to any babies—with all my heart—he may make me an humble nurse too!—How peevish, sinfully so, I doubt, does this accident, and their affectionate contradiction, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... cabin this evening with some of his metal plates and discoursed upon them. He has no respect for the intellects of the early Mehrikans. I thought for a moment I had caught him in a contradiction, but he was right ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... possible alternatives. One should also try to apply it first to one instance, and then to another to see how it will work. It seems to me that it is emphatically not a case for instant execution, by conviction of intrinsic absurdity or of self-contradiction, or by caricature of what it would look like if reduced to skeleton shape. Humanism is in fact much more like one of those secular changes that come upon public opinion overnight, as it were, borne upon tides 'too deep for sound or foam,' that survive all the crudities ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... any serious difficulty arose—ruling by the moral power of wisdom and sanctity—one of the best and loftiest characters of all antiquity. And nothing was more remarkable than his patience under contradiction, and his eagerness to insure freedom of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... million. Painful as I felt the obligation of gratitude towards the man whom I had for years regarded as my enemy, I was bound to acknowledge that he had acted an honorable part towards me. I was well aware that no real contradiction existed between these high-minded actions and the harshness with which he had imprisoned me at school, and, so to speak, relegated me to exile. Provided that I renounced all attempts to form a third between him and ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... god himself appeared to the sleeper and delivered his message in words. That is precisely the manner in which Kronos warned Xisuthros of the coming Deluge in the version of Berossus; while in the Gilgamesh Epic the apparent contradiction between the direct warning and the dream-warning at once disappears. It is true that Gudea states that he did not understand the meaning of the god's message, and so required an interpretation; but he was equally ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... could avail; even in narration, the violation of tragical dignity is insufferable, and is as much worse than the hyper-tragic horrors of Titus Andronicus (a play which is usually printed, without reason, amongst those of Shakspeare) as absolute farce or contradiction of all pathos must inevitably be a worse indecorum than physical horrors which simply outrage it by excess. Let us not, therefore, hear of the judgment displayed upon the Grecian stage, when even Sophocles, the chief master of dramatic ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... some time in Switzerland. In a locked drawer I found the casket and a copy of The Veiled Queen. I read much in the book. Every word I found there was in flat contradiction to my own mode ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Piper's mediumship was the result of illness, it is strange that her recovery should have favoured the development and perfecting of this same mediumship. There appears to be a contradiction here. I am not competent regarding the question, but, on examining the facts, I can hardly believe that mediumship is a mere neurosis. After all, are there not famous men of science who declare that genius itself is only a neurosis? In their eyes the bandit is only a sick man; but the ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... Montaigne had enforced on Pascal as the sincere compte rendu of experience. But then he passes at a tangent from the circle of the great sceptic's apprehension. That prospect of man and the world, undulant, capricious, inconsistent, contemptible, lache, full of contradiction, with a soul of evil in things good, irreducible to law, upon which, after all, Montaigne looks out with a complacency so entire, fills Pascal with terror. It is the world on the morrow of a great catastrophe, the casual forces of which have by no means spent themselves. Yes! this world we see, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... time of Frank Lydston, Kiernan, and Chevalier, a new series of ideas has been introduced for the explanation of the possibility of sexual inversion. This contains a new contradiction to the popular belief which assumes that a human being is either a man or a woman. Science shows cases in which the sexual characteristics appear blurred and thus the sexual distinction is made difficult, ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... he fancies he can elicit this and that, by his own logic, out of sentences and clauses torn from their context, he has no right to disguise what I have said to the contrary, and claim to justify his fraud by accusing me of self-contradiction. Against all my protests, and all that I said to the very opposite previous to any controversy, he coolly alludes to it (p. 40 of the "Defence") as though it were my avowed doctrine, that: "Each man, looking ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... Thus the apparent contradiction in the practice of these tribes, who venerate and almost deify the animals which they habitually hunt, kill, and eat, is not so flagrant as at first sight it appears to us: the people have reasons, and some very practical reasons, for acting as they ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... much," was the reply, "but unless the King gives me such orders in contradiction of those which I have received, I cannot let you pass. Once more, gentlemen, it is impossible, and you must return. Did you hear me, M. Saint Simon? Ah, sir, you—" He said no more, for Saint Simon had passed onward, ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... to observe, Mr. Chairman, how totally hostile are these doctrines of Laybach to the fundamental principles of our government. They are in direct contradiction; the principles of good and evil are hardly more opposite. If these principles of the sovereigns be true, we are but in a state of rebellion or of anarchy, and are only tolerated among civilized states because it has ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... are agreed that to barter with one's sentiments, his honor, his cloth, his pen, or his note, is infamous. Unfortunately this idea, which suffers no contradiction as a theory, and which thus stated seems rather a commonplace than a high moral truth, has infinite trouble to make its way in practice. Traffic has invaded the world. The money-changers are established even in the sanctuary, and by sanctuary I do not mean religious things alone, but whatever ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness." Is their religious value, even as in the parables of the New Testament, entirely independent of their historical or scientific accuracy? Is there any contradiction between the distinctive teachings of the Bible and modern science? Do not the Bible and science deal with two different but supplemental fields of life: the one with religion and morals, the other with ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... perceived that she was making use of the strange power to carry on disputes with the dead which is possessed by widows. The tone was a complete reconstruction of her marriage. There was a girn in it, as if she had learned to expect contradiction and disregard as the habitual response to all her remarks, and at the back of that a terror, far more dignified than the protest to which it gave birth, at the dreadful things she knew would happen ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... shape, whether divine or human, or devilish, there is none equal to Bunyan's Mr. Facing-both-ways—the fellow with one eye on heaven and one on earth—who sincerely preaches one thing and sincerely does another, and from the intensity of his unreality is unable either to see or feel the contradiction. He is substantially trying to cheat both God and the devil, and is in reality only cheating himself and his neighbours. This of all characters upon the earth appears to us to be the one of which there is no hope at all, a character becoming in these days alarmingly abundant; and the aboundance ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the argument is often made that there is a fundamental contradiction between economic growth and the quality of life, so that to have one we must forsake ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon
... the campaign fund of his party. Astute and observing, he imagined himself a representative of the merchant-princes of Venice under the Doges and England under the Plantagenets, and he spoke in a measured, stately tone, advancing his ideas with a positiveness that would not brook contradiction. On several occasions he had been one of the "solid men of Boston" who had contributed considerable sums for the pecuniary relief of Mr. Webster, and this emboldened him to assume a dictatorial tone in advising the Secretary of State to resign after the Ashburton Treaty had been negotiated. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... must be, if it would be a kingdom or empire. In the hands of all it must be, if it would be a republic. To insist on having the personal liberty that goes with a republic, and at the same time not to set a limit to the resources an individual can own, is a contradiction. A republic has economic laws that are essential to her existence. Any others mean her destruction. And it is utterly out of the question for any political party to improve the conditions of the people, while they use the present economic laws as ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... you; it was the fault of your instructors. But why have you not more improved since you have long had the opportunity from our example? You see I always believe your stories. That is, I never contradict them. Why do you not believe mine?' Contradiction, or a direct denial of the truth of what another says, is among the Indians deemed extremely rude. Only great superiority, as of a father to a child, or of an old counsellor to some boy, can excuse it. Alaquippy and the other Indians kindly made some apology ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... Everyone had taken sides, and was obstinate; and the numbers on both sides were even. Each side, when I appeared, therefore appealed to me to make it a majority. Mindful of the scholastic adage that whenever you meet a contradiction you must make a distinction, I immediately sought and found one, as follows: "Which party is right," I said, "depends on what you PRACTICALLY MEAN by 'going round' the squirrel. If you mean passing from the ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... Child," said he. And the cherubic eyes gazing from under the fierce contradiction of heavy eyebrows up to the tall girl's face conveyed to her mind that "please" was a tribute. Also, she suddenly knew that the superintendent had hesitated over her name on purpose. A man in a high position may wish to be agreeable ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... principles men hold, and the temperament they are of. Men of the world will regard him in one way, worshippers of genius in another; and there are many whom the judgments of neither of these will satisfy. One thing is plain to every one; it is the contradiction between the noble gifts he had and the actual life he lived, which make his career the painful tragedy it was. When, however, we look more closely into the original outfit of the man, we seem in some sort to see ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... of loving her set all his suppressed repugnances and prejudices bristling in contradiction. He cursed the weakness that had got him into this soul-racking situation. The silence clamoured for him ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... neighbor that the poor man would be fain to laugh out of sheer faint-heartedness. If anyone, however, pretended to contradict him in any of his stories, he was on fire in an instant. His very cocked hat assumed a momentary fierceness, and seemed to resent the contradiction. "How the devil should you know as well as I? I tell you it was as I say;" and he would at the same time let slip a broadside of thundering oaths[5] and tremendous sea phrases, such as had never been heard before within ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... not troubled by doubts respecting the clearness of her own judgment. Eccentricity was in her eyes originality; a wholesale contradiction of established facts was a new view. She had not the horrid perception of difference between the real and the imitation which spoils the lives of many. She was equally delighted with both, and remained in blissful ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... them. We acquire the power of combination and co-operation, in losing the desire for splendour and domination. We see that people value ease and security, more than they admire originality and fantastic contradiction. And so we come to the blessed time when, instead of reflecting after a social occasion whether we did ourselves justice, we begin to consider rather the impression we have ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... tolerated a speaker who said that the expectation would not be realized, or denounced the proceedings of those who made the promise? All else, of course, was of secondary importance at the time, in comparison with the expectations and the hopes placed before you; any contradiction appeared to be nothing but sheer obstruction and malignity, while the proceedings described seemed to be of incredible importance ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... is done yet. The advice of the Admiralty proposed today to the States of Holland is in contradiction with itself. They annul in truth their famous resolution of the 18th of November, as to the restriction of convoy, (from which they wished then to exclude ship timber) but would suspend the adoption of the resolution as to the extension of these convoys, until the time ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... became still more furious, and stabbed himself with the fatal sword he had received from Hector, with whom he had fought. Ajax resembled Achilles in several respects; like him he was violent, and impatient of contradiction; and, like him, invulnerable in every part of ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... to laughter from his odd peculiarities. On the latter occasions he used abruptly to withdraw from the ridicule he had provoked; for notwithstanding the general mildness of his character, his solitary habits had engendered a testy impatience of contradiction, and a keener sense of pain arising from the satire of others, than was natural to his unassuming disposition. As for his parishioners, they enjoyed, as may reasonably be supposed, many a hearty laugh at their pastor's expense, and were sometimes, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... with "civilization" at the same time that they have increased the dependence of one part of the world upon another part. Oddly enough, this interdependence has been intensified under a system of society that deified competition. The conflicts, inevitably resulting from such a contradiction, have taken a terrible toll in life and well-being, and have left Europe ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... more close, more intimate than those of blood, by a union more sacred, more imperious than any other union beside. He kindles the flame of a love which kills out the love of self and prevails over every other love. Without contradiction, the greatest miracle of Christ is the reign of love. All who believe in Him sincerely feel this love, wonderful, supernatural, supreme. It is a phenomenon inexplicable, impossible to reason and the power of man; a sacred fire given to the earth by this new Prometheus, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... propositions. We say that the truth-conditions are tautological. In the second case the proposition is false for all the truth-possibilities: the truth-conditions are contradictory. In the first case we call the proposition a tautology; in the second, a contradiction. ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... strange cries, and the servants were desired to order him to withdraw; "they returned, saying carelessly that he was a nutt, or gipsy, who had been robbed." A robbery from a gipsy was such a strange contradiction of terms, that the colonel went personally to enquire into the matter, when he was horror-struck by finding, that the man had been, not only plundered of his earnings by a band of Bunjarras, but frightfully mutilated and wounded, a trifle which the Hindoo servants had not thought worth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... folly. There was then a young woman in Bristol, of good parentage, but an unmitigated virago; her family were thoroughly ashamed of her temper and her exploits. They allowed her to have her own way, simply for fear that, through contradiction, she might plunge herself into even worse courses than those she now habitually followed. In short, she was the talk and jest of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... the town that had grown up round the Oracle at Delphi. In them, and in the Oracle under their management, the poet shows no interest (Mr. Verrall thinks), none in the many mystic peculiarities of the shrine. It is quite in contradiction with Delphian tradition to represent, as the Hymn does, Trophonius and Agamedes ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... is a spirit of contradiction prevailing in Reno which is very difficult to understand. All traces of the "wild and woolly" Western town have disappeared. The people of Reno are very docile indeed .... there are no cowboy yells nor Indian whoops, which some of our Eastern and Southern friends imagine still to exist. And the ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... effects he is so ready to admire. In practice, he approves; in theory, he condemns. He ranks the Hydriotaphia among the gems of English literature; and the prose style of which it is the consummate expression he denounces as fundamentally wrong. The contradiction is obvious; but there can be little doubt that, though Browne has, as it were, extorted a personal homage, Mr. Gosse's real sympathies lie on the other side. His remarks upon Browne's effect upon eighteenth-century prose show clearly enough the true bent of his opinions; and they show, too, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... their manners, and too much austerity in their principles, for them to be returned by the majority at an election where universal suffrage is adopted." Such were the opinions which were printed without contradiction in America in the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... find the date of this is placed in 1792, in contradiction, by mistake, to what I have asserted in 'Guilt and Sorrow'. The correct date is 1793-4. The chief incidents of it, more particularly her description of her feelings on the Atlantic, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... take him from me," Mrs. Thorne retorted in defiant contradiction; her ideas of the power of men and lawyers hopelessly vague and bewildered. "No court on earth would take so small ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... enunciation of his ideas, we must remember that he confessed that he was baffled by many of Bergson's notions. James certainly neglected many of the deeper metaphysical aspects of Bergson's thought, which did not harmonize with his own, and are even in direct contradiction. In addition to this Bergson is no pragmatist, for him "utility," so far from being a test of truth, is rather the reverse, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... implications and memories, memories of one's "reading," save the mark! all the more that our proper bestowal required two carriages, in which we were to "post," ineffable thought, and which bristled with every kind of contradiction of common experience. The postilion, in a costume rather recalling, from the halls of Ferrero, that of my debardeur, bobbed up and down, the Italian courier, Jean Nadali, black-whiskered and acquired in London, sat in the rumble along with Annette Godefroi of Metz, fresh-coloured, broad-faced ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... affirmance of attributes with respect to the Soul directly leads to the inference of its destructibility, and hence the assertion of its permanency or indestructibility under such conditions is a contradiction in terms, according to what is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... to find any final sustenance or pleasure in the Secularist literature, which had once convinced him so easily. Secularism up to a certain point, it began to seem to him, was a commonplace; beyond that point, a contradiction. If the race should ever take the counsel of the Secularists, or of that larger Positivist thought, of which English secularism is the popular reflection, the human intellect would be a poorer instrument with a narrower swing. So much was plain ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... person—the strong influence, nay, command, which she possessed over him, a circumstance clearly established by the very fact of her residing in the very place, where of all others, he should least have desired to find her—her thus acting, and continuing to act in direct contradiction to his wishes; when, I say, I viewed her disclosure in connection with all these circumstances, I could not help feeling that there was at least a fearful verisimilitude in the allegations which she had made. Still I was not satisfied, nor nearly so; young minds have a reluctance almost insurmountable ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... two friends at once quit Lassalle and move off arm in arm talking, leaving Lassalle and Helene eyeing each other across the sofa. Her eyes flash defiance; he relaxes, smiles, paying no attention to her contradiction concerning Hamlet. He kneels on the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... that God's righteousness includes His grace. He could not demonstrate it, He could not be true to Himself, if His grace remained hidden. We must not, however, conceive of this as if it constituted on our side a claim upon grace or upon forgiveness: such a claim would be a contradiction in terms. All that God does in Christ He does in free love, moved with compassion for the misery and doom of men. But though God's righteousness as demonstrated in Christ's death—in other words, His action in consistency with His character—includes, and, if we choose to interpret ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... of the one and many originated in the restless dialectic of Zeno, who sought to prove the absolute existence of the one by showing the contradictions that are involved in admitting the existence of the many (compare Parm.). Zeno illustrated the contradiction by well-known examples taken from outward objects. But Socrates seems to intimate that the time had arrived for discarding these hackneyed illustrations; such difficulties had long been solved by common sense ('solvitur ambulando'); the fact of the co-existence of opposites ...
— Philebus • Plato
... often as pernicious to biography as too little; the mind remains perplexed by contradiction of probabilities, and finds difficulty in separating report from truth. If Johnson then lamented that so little had ever been said about Butler, I might with more reason be led to complain that so much has been said about himself; for numberless informers but distract or cloud information, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Barney's attending to the horse, he had very improperly left it to his son." To all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never a word. Colonel Lloyd could not brook any contradiction from a slave. When he spoke, a slave must stand, listen, and tremble; and such was literally the case. I have seen Colonel Lloyd make old Barney, a man between fifty and sixty years of age, uncover his bald head, kneel down upon ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... of no use to oppose her. For my part, I think her papa has acted wisely in permitting the engagement. Contradiction would embellish her hero; while, left to him, she will soon find him out. I do not concern myself, for Miss Martindale can get over a ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... planted, with his four huge feet firmly set, defying any force in heaven or earth to budge them. His head, despite all the boys could do, maintained a relaxed attitude—a contradiction in terms justified by the facts—and also with a certain sidewise inclination toward the saloon. It was almost as if he were watching the saloon door. In truth, that is exactly what old Ben was doing. He was watching for Tim. Ben had good reason for knowing Tim's ways since, for a considerable ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... was probably what Hartmut thought; that's how he acted toward his mother," said Willibald, and the remark was so just that nothing could be said in contradiction; it provoked Frau von Jischenhagen none the ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... many, and publicly asserted by a few, that Bewick never wrote his own works, but was wholly and solely employed on the designs; to this I have his positive contradiction, which would be enough; but that in addition to his own Memoir, which I have read in his own MS., I have seen him compose, extract, and translate passages for each bird he has engraved while I was in his house. If his works have any ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... American revolution. There was a minor class of exceptions to this general rule, however, to which it will be proper to advert, lest, by conceiving us too literally, the reader may think he can convict us of a contradiction. In order to be fully understood, the explanations shall be given at ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... theme; he wrote every spare moment. Billy Fairfax worked so hard that he grew thin. Honey Smith went off on long, solitary walks. Ralph Addington, as usual, showed an exasperating tendency towards contradiction, an unvarying contentiousness. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... enslave, and rule over the whole world, at least as much as was well known to him, and the shortness of his life would give him leave to visit; what had, I say, such as these to do with clemency? Who cannot see the absurdity and contradiction of mixing such an ingredient with those noble and great qualities I have before mentioned? Now, in Wild everything was truly great, almost without alloy, as his imperfections (for surely some small ones ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... enchanting smile. Ce sera une femme d'esprit. For the mother, I can console myself. I am not sure that SHE was a femme d'esprit, though she wished to pass for one. Round, rosy, potelee, she yet had not the temperament of her appearance; she was a femme austere. I have often noticed that contradiction in American ladies. You see a plump little woman, with a speaking eye, and the contour and complexion of a ripe peach, and if you venture to conduct yourself in the smallest degree in accordance with these indices, you discover a species of Methodist—of what do you call it?—of Quakeress. ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... hand, vicar of Cranbrook, who had originated the controversy by a book in which he ardently supported the opinion in question, affirmed that no Christian bishop before Trimnell ever denied it.[115] Evidently it was a point which had not come very prominently forward for distinct assertion or contradiction, and one in which there was great room for ambiguity. To some it seemed a palpably new doctrine, closely trenching on a most dangerous portion of the Romish system, and likely to lead to gross superstition. To others it seemed a harmless and very edifying part of belief, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... not, and never will be, any direct evidence as to the origin of conscience; and as that sense (like any other power of our mental nature) is capable of being educated, evoked, enlightened, and strengthened, and may also by neglect and contradiction deteriorate and wither away, there is ample room for allowing a certain part of the theory.[3] But many people who examine their own conscience will feel that the description certainly does not suit them; there ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... [Noncoincidence.] Contrariety. N. contrariety, contrast, foil, antithesis, oppositeness; contradiction; antagonism &c. (opposition) 708; clashing, repugnance. inversion &c. 218; the opposite, the reverse, the inverse, the converse, the antipodes, the antithesis, the other extreme. V. be contrary &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... with his imaginative "cozy" word pictures. He has made the mistake of omitting to learn the other man's conception of a cozy home before selling the expectation of coziness. He is shocked when the sale is declared annulled with the prospect's contradiction of his description, "There's nothing cozy about this place." The intending buyer of a home feels there has been a misrepresentation; though the bungalow is exactly like the plans and specifications shown to him. He was sold an idea that "the ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... of England. There is no occasion to enter upon the learned controversies of which these different allegations have been the cause; it is sufficient to say that they have led to nothing but obscurity, contradiction, and doubt, and that there is more moral verisimilitude in the account just given, especially in Matilda's first prejudice against marriage with a bastard, and in her conversation with her father, Count Baldwin, when she ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... but enough has been said to show that nearly all our farm machinery was in use before 1870, and that since that date, as I said, the reduction of labor cost has not upon the whole field exceeded 2-1/2 per cent. The assertion that reduced transportation lowers the farm price is in flat contradiction of political economy, as, according to that, the benefits should be divided between producer and consumer, the farm price rising and the ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... Christie; but I reckon He knew as well as any of us what it is to be wearied and troubled, when matters went not to His comfort. 'The contradiction of sinners' ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... lady," says the elder, "for we are gentle born." He spoke truth, but no woman can brook contradiction. "Hoity-toity!" says she, and, but that she remembered that she was Queen, she'd have cuffed the pair of 'em. "It shall be gallows, hurdle, ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... Nature, the comprehension of the works of antiquity is the momentary antagonist of the comprehension of Nature. And this may seem strange, when we consider that antique art was itself due to perfect comprehension of Nature. But the contradiction is easily explained. The study of Nature, as it was carried on in the Renaissance, comprised the study of effects which had remained unnoticed by antiquity; and the study of the statue, colourless, without light, shade, or perspective, interfered ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... the authorities of Antwerp published a brief and spirited defence of their own conduct. They denied that any affront or want of respect on their part could have provoked the outrage of which the Duke had been guilty. They severely handled his self-contradiction, in ascribing originally the recent attempt to his just vengeance for past injuries, and in afterwards imputing it to accident or sudden mutiny, while they cited the simultaneous attempts at Bruges, Denremonde, Alost, Digmuyde, Newport, Ostend, Vilvoorde, and Dunkirk, as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... honest father was no match at all for the deep hypocrisy and deceitful plausibility of Sir Robert Whitecraft, the consequence was, that she allowed her father to take his own way, without either remonstrance or contradiction. She knew very well that on this occasion, as on every other where their wits and wishes came in opposition, Sir Robert was always able to outgeneral and overreach him; she therefore resolved to agitate herself as little as possible, and to ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Charlemagne could not write. Eginhard understood, as Gibbon says, the court and the world, and the Latin language, it is true; but, nevertheless, we may much more rationally believe that the secretary made use of a vague expression, than suppose that he wished to imply, in one sentence, the manifest contradiction of Charlemagne being in the habit of going through all the abstruse calculations of astronomy, in an age when those calculations were most complicated, without being able to write. The whole of Charlemagne's life renders the supposition absurd. He studied ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... give an emphatic contradiction, but as she remembered how pointedly she had asked for his escort during the last few days, she ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... "your fin. We've fought, but we'll let that go. We wipe the slate clean and start in all over again on the Maggie II, and I'm free to state, without fear of contradiction, that in the last embroglio you showed up like four aces and a king with the entire company standin' pat. Scraggsy, you're a hero, and what you propose proves that you're considerable of a singed cat—better'n you look. We'll go freebootin' down on the Gold ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... At first Teresa was severe and stony-hearted towards the child; her obstinacy, like a thorny hedge, had to be broken down. The smallest fault was chastised, every moment of her time had its allotted task, of which she had to give an account, not a single contradiction, not the slightest sulkiness was put up with. Then, too, she was never able to escape detection, a far-seeing, austere pair of eyes was ever upon her, making falsehood impossible, looking through her very soul, seizing and pruning down every thought ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... I may as well make a note of, and that is how there arises that strange contradiction of the hills being higher than I had expected and everything near at hand being so ridiculously smaller. This is a question I think easily answered: the very terms of the problem suggest the solution. To everything near at hand I applied my own stature, as a sort of natural unit of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other hand, overwhelming evidence that in many cases, among our domestic animals and cultivated plants, close interbreeding does produce bad results, and the apparent contradiction may perhaps be explained on the same general principles, and under similar limitations, as were found to be necessary in defining the value of intercrossing. It appears probable, then, that it is not interbreeding in itself that is hurtful, but interbreeding without rigid selection ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... body as well as the influence of the former upon the latter. We prefer to believe that we are dealing with two writers, or else that some literary forger, anxious to create a diversion, deliberately made Tertullian responsible for this strange contradiction. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... dowager in a tone, admitting of no contradiction; "the women who live alone from choice are cold and selfish; or have hurts to hide and are heart-sick of a world in which their illusions have been destroyed; or else they have never known companionship, and so never feel the lack of it. My child, I will not have you like any of these; ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... mistaken it; and if it appear I have not, the world will suspect, "what gentleman that was, who was allowed to speak twice in parliament, because he had not yet spoken to the question[A];" and perhaps conclude it to be the same, who, as it is reported, maintained a contradiction in terminis, in the face of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... thought more easy to answer one of these questions than the other, but the answer to both is really the same: that mankind have ungoverned passions which they will gratify at any rate, as well to the injury of others as in contradiction to known private interest: but that as there is no such thing as self-hatred, so neither is there any such thing as ill-will in one man towards another, emulation and resentment being away; whereas there is plainly benevolence or good-will: there is no ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... He banged open his opera hat and squeezed it shut again. "Why won't you have a simple contradiction ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... Miss Ada's efforts to bring the three little cousins nearer together, it was some time before they actually did become real friends: Mary, seeing that anything she could say against America aroused a fierce contradiction from Polly, slyly teased her whenever she could, and Polly, who was loyal to the backbone, grew more and more indignant, often on the verge of tears, rushing to her aunt or uncle with a tale of Mary's abuse of ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... through the morning without doing more than dropping some mysterious hints. But how long the day seemed, short as it really was! Would it never get dark? For it was clear and frosty, and the afternoon, to Jinny, appeared, out of contradiction, to be twice as long as usual of ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... to Cicero on the other, is to maintain an argument very much on a par with that which it amused Burke himself to maintain when he contended for the superiority of the "Aeneid" over the "Iliad." It is quite enough to be able to say well-nigh without fear of contradiction that Burke is probably the greatest orator who ever spoke ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... This contradiction, like many other contradictions, is one which ought first of all to be registered as a mere fact; long before we attempt to explain why things contradict themselves, we ought, if we are honest men and good critics, to register the preliminary truth that things do contradict themselves. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... variously regarded by Chinese parents to be taken into the palace, she found there educated eunuchs who were set aside as teachers of the imperial harem. She was bright, attractive, and I think I may add without fear of contradiction, very ambitious, and this in no bad sense. She devoted herself to her studies with such energy and diligence as not only to attract the attention of the teacher, but to make herself a fair scholar, a good penman, ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... quarrel arose as they sat at breakfast. The lady very innocently observed, she believed the tea was made with Thames water. The husband, in mere contradiction, insisted upon it that the tea-kettle was filled ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... that (Brahman is) not (recognised) on account of the difference of designation; (we say) not so, on account of there being no contradiction in ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... instance—she might have been safely left within reach of the most beautiful flowers in the conservatory without any special warning; not one would have been touched. She was truly, as Martin said, a strange mixture and contradiction. ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... Sovereign's right is founded) expresses and implies this subjection to the laws; and therefore to alledge, that an alien is not a subject, because he is in bondage, is not only a plea without foundation, but a contradiction in terms; for every person who, in any respect, is in subjection to the laws, must ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... alike criminal; and there is no man but is bound to resist it to the best of his power, wherever it shall show its face to the world. Law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity. Name me a magistrate, and I will name property; name me power, and I will name protection. It is a contradiction in terms; it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics, to say that any man can have arbitrary power. In every patent of office the duty is included. For what else does a magistrate ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... enough uncertainty and contradiction respecting the data and arguments applied in the solution of this question, to render it probable that men will never quite agree which of the Bahamas it was upon which these startled and exultant Europeans first stepped. Though Las Casas ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... petulant and susceptible. All her feelings were quick and ardent; and having never experienced contradiction or restraint, she was little practiced in self-control; nothing but the native goodness of her heart kept her from running continually into ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the author of the long romance of Ipomadon, which follows its source with a closeness which precludes all possibility of reproduction from memory, has tacked on two references to hearing,[61] not only without a basis in the French but in direct contradiction to Hue de Rotelande's account of the source of his material. In Emare, "as I have heard minstrels sing in sawe" is apparently introduced as the equivalent of the more ordinary phrases "in tale as it is told" and "in romance as we read,"[62] the ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... wishes to serve her he must stand for the language; if he prefers English civilisation he should go back to England. There only can he develop on English lines. An Irishman in Ireland with an English mind is a queer contradiction, who can serve neither Ireland nor England in any good sense, and both Ireland and England disown him. So the Irishman of other than Gaelic ancestors should stand in with us, not accepting something disagreeable as inevitable, but claiming a right by birth and citizenship, joining ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... is that held by Mr. Mivart, who follows St. Augustin, and implies that he has the sanction of Suarez. But, in point of fact, the latter great light of orthodoxy takes no small pains to give the most explicit and direct contradiction to all such imaginations, as the following passages prove. In the first place, as regards plants, Suarez discusses ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... fear of contradiction that the future well-being of society is largely in the hands of woman. What will she do with it? ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... made by such artists as the Goths had at command to embody the ideas of power or grace they wished to indicate, were often as absurd as the work of a modern child. Hence the grotesque is an inseparable ingredient in their designs, often quite accidental, and frequently in express contradiction to the intention of the designer, who imagined in all seriousness many scenes that now only excite a smile. A strong sense of the ludicrous was, however, felt by mediaeval men, and embodied in the art-works they have left for our contemplation. ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... different heights from the stair railings to the wall, where she attached them with glue, but she twice saw the lady pass through the cords, leaving them untouched. When Miss Morton cornered the figure and tried to touch her, or pounce on her, she dodged, or disappeared. But by a curious contradiction her steps were often heard by several of the family, and when she heard the steps, Miss Morton used to go out and follow the figure. There is really no more to tell. Miss Morton's father never saw the lady, even when she sat on a sofa for half ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... all," reiterated Eustace, and then, satisfied by the absence of contradiction, which did, in fact, mean a good deal from the silent Harold, he began to discover his own accession of dignity. "Then it all belongs to me. I am master. I am squire—Eustace Alison, Esquire, of Arghouse. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Maid—all alone in her innocence, her purity, her sweetness, and gentle reverence—stood before them, day after day, to answer subtle questions, face a casuistry which sought to entrap her into contradiction or confusion, or to wring from her a confession that she was no heaven-sent messenger, but was led away by her own ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... told me, that one day in London, when Dr Adam Smith was boasting of it, he turned to him and said, 'Pray, sir, have you ever seen Brentford?' This was surely a strong instance of his impatience, and spirit of contradiction. I put him in mind of it to-day, while he expressed his admiration of the elegant buildings, and whispered him, 'Don't ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... man's name to a bill instead of his own. You might have made him trustee for your widow or children, and have felt sure that their interests would have been scrupulously respected at his hands. Yet with all this—strange contradiction as it may seem—if he could have laid surreptitious fingers on M. Platzoff's Diamond, that gentleman would certainly never have seen his cherished gem again. But had Platzoff placed it in his hands and said, "Take this to London for me and deposit ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... appears a contradiction in the picture of Chesterton the philosopher pondering on the Logos and Chesterton the child offering trinkets to Our Lady, we may remember the Eternal Wisdom "playing in the world, playing before God always" whose delight is to be with ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the watch for doors he will never see them, and that unless he is incessantly pressing forward to the kingdom of heaven he will never find it—so that the kingdom does come by observation. It is with this as with everything else—there must be a harmonious fusing of two principles which are in flat contradiction to one another. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler |
