"Doctrinaire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... public men then living, the one most deeply imbued with the spirit of our free constitution. Its checks and balances jumped with his humour. His nature was without any taint of fanaticism, nor was he anything of the doctrinaire. He was neither a Richard Baxter nor a John Locke. He had none of the pure Erastianism of Selden, who tells us in his inimitable, cold-blooded way that "a King is a King men have made for their own sakes, for quietness' sake." "Just as in a family one man is ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... wants to be consistent? The dullard and the doctrinaire, the tedious people who carry out their principles to the bitter end of action, to the reductio ad absurdum of practice. Not I. Like Emerson, I write over the door of my library the word 'Whim.' Besides, my article is really a most salutary and valuable warning. If it is attended ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... the administration is apt to fall too exclusively into the hands of officials whose ability is of the doctrinaire type; they work hard, and can give logical and statistical reasons for the measures they propose, and are thus able to make them attractive to, and believed in by, the authorities. But they lack the more perfect knowledge ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... of the country be reasonably entrusted with the duties of citizenship. We must ascertain what sort of franchise will be suited to local conditions, and how interests that may be unable to find adequate representation in such constituencies are to be represented." But it was perhaps Mr. Montagu's doctrinaire Radicalism that betrayed itself in the treatment of the question of "communal" representation, i.e. the creation of separate constituencies for various communities, which, however important or however much entitled to make their voices heard, might be submerged in ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... double- sexed publicist, is himself. M. Blanc, placed on the borders of democracy and socialism, one degree lower than the Republic, two degrees beneath M. Barrot, three beneath M. Thiers, is also, whatever he may say and whatever he may do, a descendant through four generations from M. Guizot, a doctrinaire. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... to stand on. The belief that the men of the early world lived to a great age is no doubt old, but the settled chronology, based on the years in which each patriarch begat his son, is an artifice in which we manifestly see the doctrinaire treatment of history which was coming into vogue for later periods, attempting to lay hold of the earliest legends as well. Only when the living contents of the legend had completely disappeared could its skeleton be used as a ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England. He said Cupid was nothing but the blindfolded child: pretty idea that, I think! I shall have as good a chance with Patsy as with anyone else. Mind: I'm not bigoted about it. I'm not a doctrinaire: not the slave of a theory. You and Lord Summerhays are experienced married men. If you can tell me of any trustworthy method of selecting a wife, I shall be happy to make use of it. I await your suggestions. [He looks with polite attention to Lord Summerhays, ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... Machiavelli in all their moral nudity. There is an emotional and mystical element in the advanced German thinker, which makes him capable of accepting in full sincerity intellectual and moral absurdities of which the more robust common sense of other nations would be incapable. The advanced German doctrinaire is the "wisest fool in Christendom." The depth of his learning is generally in the inverse ratio to the shallowness ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... politics have one of their sources in the idea that societies are capable of infinite and immediate modifications, without reference to the deep-rooted conditions that have worked themselves into every part of the social structure. The same opposition of the positive to the doctrinaire spirit is to be observed in the remarkable vindication of Party, which fills the last dozen pages of the pamphlet, and which is one of the most courageous of all Burke's deliverances. Party combination is exactly one of those ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Liberation against Napoleon, old as Luther's appeal to the German Princes in 1520. The years following Leipsic were consumed by German Liberalism in efforts to invent a constitution like that of England. It was the happy period of the doctrinaire, of the pedant, and of the student of 1688 and the pupils of Sieyes. Heine's bitter address to Germany, "Dream on, thou son of Folly, dream on!" sprang from a chagrin which every sincere German, Prussian, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... their hearts dislike them. However much the young person might be shielded, he soon got to know that men and women of the world—often far nicer people than the prophets who preached abstention—continually spoke sneeringly of the new doctrinaire laws, and were believed to set them aside in secret, though they dared not do so openly. Small wonder, then, that the more human among the student classes were provoked by the touch- not, taste-not, handle-not precepts of their rulers, into questioning much that they would otherwise ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... in principle, that the chief object of a statesman should be rather to proclaim his adhesion to certain doctrines, than to achieve their triumph by quietly accomplishing his ends. In our opinion, there is no more unsafe politician than a conscientiously rigid doctrinaire, nothing more sure to end in disaster than a theoretic scheme of policy that admits of no pliability for contingencies. True, there is a popular image of an impossible He, in whose plastic hands the submissive destinies ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... all of us most concerned, of course, about the working-man and his dinner pail,—whom the Democrats had wantonly thrown out of employment for the sake of a doctrinaire theory. They had put him in competition with the serf of Europe. Such was the subject-matter of my own modest addresses in this, my maiden campaign. I had the sense to see myself in perspective; to recognize that not for me, a dignified and substantial lawyer of affairs, were the rhetorical ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... memory. Instead, he found himself obliged to exhibit her committing the worst actions imaginable; and, his conclusions not concording with his premises, he abandoned further incursions into the past. History is a dangerous ground for a doctrinaire to investigate. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... no war on Platt or anybody else, merely for the fun of it. "We must use the tools we have," said Lincoln to John Hay; and Lincoln also had many tools which he did not choose, but which he had to work with. Roosevelt differed from the doctrinaire reformer, who would sit still and do nothing unless he had perfectly clean tools and pure conditions to work with. To do nothing until the millennium came would mean, of course, that the Machine would pursue its methods undisturbed. Roosevelt, on the contrary, knew that ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... 144. Cf. Dennis's similar remark in The Impartial Critick, Hooker, I, 31. Racine, in his preface to Esther, said nothing doctrinaire about the use of the chorus. He merely mentioned that it had occurred to him to introduce the chorus in order to imitate the ancients and to sing the ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... men and affairs, at once humane, liberal, moderate, and capable of understanding the difficulty, as well as the necessity, of a great reform; indeed, their correspondence, full of facts, stated with precision and judgment, when compared with the doctrinaire rubbish of the Assembly, presents the strongest possible contrast.—But most of these lights remain under a bushel; only a few of them get into the Assembly; these burn without illuminating, and are soon extinguished in the tempest.' ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... His data are uncertain, his means of verification lacking. The very best qualities in him are a source of frustration. For if he is really critical and saturated in the scientific spirit, he cannot be doctrinaire, and go to Armageddon against the trustees and the students and the Civic Federation and the conservative press for a theory of which he is not sure. If you are going to Armageddon, you have to battle for the Lord, but the political scientist ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... the bar, saw that the typical sot was certainly under the impression that he had an audience. He was, in fact, addressing a homily to Michael on the advantages of Temperance. See, he said—substantially—the reward of self-restraint! He was no mere bigoted doctrinaire, wedded to the absurd and exaggerated theories of the Teatolers. He had not a word to say in favour of Toalabshnensh. It was against Human Naysh. But Manshknewwhairtshtop, like himself, was always on the safe side. He charged Micky to be on his ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... distortion, or what men of science would call "flat absurdity," he can in any way improve his composition, he does not hesitate to simplify, distort, or fly in the face of facts. He wants to create significant form, and all means to that end he finds good. But he is no doctrinaire. He never distorts or makes his pictures look queer on principle. He cares nothing for being in the fashion, neither does he eschew a novel eccentricity lest the nicest people should say that he is going a little too far. His work is uncompromisingly sincere. He neither protests against ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... singer of orthodoxy. His hymns faithfully present the accepted doctrines of his church. No hymnwriter is more staunchly Lutheran than he. But he was too vital to become a mere doctrinaire. With him orthodoxy was only a means to an end, a more vigorous Christian life. Many of his hymns present a forceful and straightforward appeal for a real personal life with God. The following hymn may be called an orthodox revival hymn. It was a favorite with the great Norwegian lay preacher, ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... with the Democratic managers who had taken Colville up, being all in the Republican family; whichever it was, it was a mortification for Colville which his pride could not brook. He stood disgraced before the community not only as a theorist and unpractical doctrinaire, but as a dangerous man; and what was worse, he could not wholly acquit himself of a measure of bad faith; his conscience troubled him even more than his pride. Money was found, and a printer bought up with it to start a paper in opposition to the Democrat-Republican. ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... and tact during the sessions of 1874-75 could have saved it. He had to keep himself in the background, to use an Italian astuteness in explaining away the blunders of his followers; and when this would not do he had to use violent language, which should frighten timid doctrinaire Orleanists with prospects of popular risings in which he would take the lead. His greatest triumphs were earned when, by dint of superhuman coaxing in the lobbies, he got the Republic proclaimed as the Government of France (in 1875, on M. Wallon's motion) by a majority ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... above all, that of John Tyler. As a matter of fact, he was not commended to the Whig party on any solid grounds. His whole political life had shown him an opponent of their main ideas; he was, in fact, a Southern doctrinaire, and frequently suffered from acute attacks of that very troublesome political disease, Virginia metaphysics. As President he attempted to enforce his doctrines, and when Whig leaders, and above all Henry Clay attempted, not only to resist, but to crush him, he asserted his dignity at the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... "Don't you be too doctrinaire, my dear Sidney; you and I are practical men. We must deal with the existing, the urgent; and there is nothing more pressing at this moment than the formation of a new government. What I want is to see you as ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... vegetate to a conception of Anarchism and a desire for its realisation, is required an evolution which generally is not passed through under the sole influence of the propaganda; since the lessons derived from the facts of daily life are more efficacious than all doctrinaire preaching, it is for us to take an active part in the life of the masses and to use all the means which circumstances permit to gradually awaken the spirit of revolt, and to show by these facts the path which leads to emancipation. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... generally comprehend the value of the principle. They did not see that in a society organised and governed by Reason and Justice themselves, the unreserved toleration of false opinions would be the only palladium of progress; or that a doctrinaire State, composed of perfectly virtuous and deferential people, would arrest development and stifle origiality, by its ungenial if mild tyranny. Mercier's is no exception to the rule that ideal societies are always repellent; and there are probably few who would ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... the doctrinaire, just as parterres of flowers of similar hue please the eyes of the gardener; while the Universities of Germany delight the thinker, as the graceful forms and varied colours of the flowers of some ...
— University Education in Ireland • Samuel Haughton
... sparkling wines, the vintage of Champagne and Burgundy. Accordingly the Frenchman is lightsome and buoyant. He is a great theorist and classifier. He adheres to the ornate worship of the Mother Church when religiously disposed. His literature is perspicuous and clear. He is an admirable doctrinaire and generalizer,—witness Guizot and Montesquieu. He puts philosophy and science into a readable, comprehensible shape. The Teutonic diet of sauer-kraut, sausages, cheese, ham, etc., is indigestible, giving rise to a vaporous, cloudy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... have committed colossal blunders; so have their predecessors, and so do the doctrinaire Socialists who pooh-pooh them. A large class, like a great nation, never learns better or quicker than by undergoing the consequences of its own mistakes. And for all the faults committed in past, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... unit, as the dollar is the prime unit of our medium of exchange, may not be evident at once; but if we examine the writing of clear thinkers carefully, without attempting to settle the matter in any doctrinaire fashion, we shall find that the paragraph, and not the sentence, is the more unified whole. I turn to Cardinal Newman, and in the middle of a paragraph find the sentence, "This should be carefully observed," a sentence meaningless when taken from the context. ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... the Jew just because of his intellectuality is a natural-born idealist, internationalist, doctrinaire, and revolutionist, while the Negro, because of his natural attachment to known familiar objects, places, and persons, is pre-adapted to conservatism and to local and personal loyalties—if these things are true, we shall eventually have to take account ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... representatives of both America and England were ignorant of the reality of Europe: Wilson was (as Chesterton often said) a much better man than Lloyd George, but he knew as little of the world which he had come to reconstruct. He was, too, a political doctrinaire preferring "what was not there" in the shape of a League of Nations to the real nations of Poland or Italy. And with the American as with the Welshman international finance stood beside the politicians and whispered in their ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... convinced of his imaginary mission to redress the wrongs of the world than Mr. James Anthony Froude seems to be of his ability to alter the course of events, especially those bearing on the destinies of the Negro in the British West Indies. The doctrinaire style of his utterances, his sublime indifference as to what Negro opinion and feelings may be, on account of his revelations, are uniquely charming. In that portion of his book headed "Social Revolution" our author, with that mixture ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... Voltaire, by a touch of modernism, has rescued it or half-rescued it from this most terrible of limbos. The right triumphs, no doubt; but who cares whether it does or not? And Mr Arnold, with the heroic obstinacy of the doctrinaire, has done nothing to help the effect of a scheme in itself sufficiently uninspiring to the modern reader. When he was at work upon the piece he had "thought and hoped" that it would have what Buddha called "the character of Fixity, that true sign of the law." A not unfriendly critic might have pointed ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... very much amused at the irritable, peevish yet cringing attitude of Pichereau, the Genevan doctrinaire, who sought consolation in the greenroom of the ballet, whilst his five or six daughters sat at home, probably reading some chaste English romance, or practising sacred music within the range of the green ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... affect the immediate moment. Since he is mentally incapable of denying himself the most trivial recreations upon which his wishes have dwelt, restraint is succeeded by despairing, uncontrollable moroseness pathetic in its genuineness. How could such a temperament reflect upon the future? He is no doctrinaire; he does not credit existence after death—"When you dead, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... capacity, must, if need be, override the individual. Yet Comte despises the mere rule of majorities. The majority which he would have rule is that of those who have the scientific mind. We may admit that in this he aims at the supremacy of truth. But, in fact, he prepares the way for a doctrinaire tyranny which, of all forms of government, might easily turn out to be the worst which a ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... with temperament appears to be of its essence; wherefore, I shall not hesitate to make of it a light wherewith to take a hasty look about me. Here are two labels ready to hand—"temperamental" and "doctrinaire." I am under no illusion as to the inadequacy and fallibility of both; neither shall I imagine that, once applied, they are bound to stick. On the contrary, you will see, in a later chapter, how, having dubbed Matisse "temperamental" ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... worship of the Greeks. His reference to his 'strict form' hardly means more than is implied in simplicity of plot, fewness of characters and observance of the unities. He did not write 'The Bride of Messina' in any doctrinaire spirit,—either to reform the German drama, or to furnish a model for imitation. The play is simply an aesthetic experiment; a tentative excursion into a field confessedly 'strange'. What Schiller wished was to produce upon a modern audience, by an original ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... is forced upon one when reading newspapers, particularly during political campaigns. One paper lauds a candidate as a great administrator, while another condemns him as a doctrinaire. One advocates protective tariff and the gold standard, while another urges revenue tariff only and free silver. Among the news columns one article predicts war, while another discerns signs of peace. Russia is at one time pictured as moving fast toward ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... longer to the habits and needs of the proletariat. These men were moved by hatred, disappointed ambition, mistaken patriotism, fanaticism without an ideal, sentimental folly or natural maliciousness—there was all that in them—and even certain doctrinaire points of honor, unwilling to withdraw in the face of danger. They certainly did not lean on the middle class, which trembled, fled or hid itself. They were forced to put in action the real proletariat which had nothing to lose. Well, the proletariat even escaped them to ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert |
