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More "Sophistry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I pay, Hard—wrung, acquitted,—his my love alway! Who has my hand, he holds—shall hold—my heart! Truth is my guide,—let sophistry depart! Had Fate been kind, then had Pauline been thine, Heart, faith and duty, linked with bliss divine. In vain had fickle Fortune barred the way, Want had been wealth with thee, my guide, my stay, And poverty had fallen from the wings Of ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... smacked of sophistry to Drake. He had an unreasoned conviction that the girl had a right to learn the ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... calleth sylva and supellex, stuff and variety, to begin with those arts (as if one should learn to weigh or to measure or to paint the wind) doth work but this effect, that the wisdom of those arts, which is great and universal, is almost made contemptible, and is degenerate into childish sophistry and ridiculous affectation. And further, the untimely learning of them hath drawn on by consequence the superficial and unprofitable teaching and writing of them, as fitteth indeed to the capacity of children. Another is a lack I find in the exercises ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... by which he had bound himself to murder Duncan, another art of sophistry by which men have sometimes deluded their consciences, and persuaded themselves that what would be criminal in others is virtuous in them: this argument Shakespeare, whose plan obliged him to make Macbeth yield, has not confuted, though he might easily have shown that a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... a question to decide which involved not only the heart but the mind: if she made a mistake now, she would be at odds with her higher faculties for the rest of her life. She dreaded the sophistry which sat on either side of the subject; and it was a question whether the very strength of her impulse toward the man she had loved for a year was not the strongest argument ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... not there to listen to such a world-old hypothesis—to such a time-worn, long-ago-refuted, bald, feeble, illogical, vicious, patent sophistry—to an ancient, baseless, wearisome, ragged, unfounded, insidious, falsehood originated by women themselves, and by them insinuated, foisted, thrust, spread, and ingeniously promulgated into the ears of mankind ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... set so high a value on English connection. They still admired, as the provincial only can admire; and they worshipped, as the provincial worships; or, at a safe distance. The strange medley of truth, cant, selfishness, sophistry and good faith, that founded the political hostility to the movements of the French revolution, had as ardent believers in this country, as it had in England itself; and this contributed to sustain the sort of feeling ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... will diminish the demand; and a reduced demand will send the price down again. It is not certain, therefore, after all, that the tax will really raise the price." A glance at the diagram will keep us out of such a bog of sophistry and muddle. For if we suppose the amount of the tax per unit of the commodity to be represented by Ss, the curve ss' (drawn, as it is, roughly parallel to SS') will represent the new conditions of supply ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... this unseen substratum is drawn within the world of thought, and becomes itself mere thought. There is no matter, there is no space, save what the mind creates for, and out of itself. Our man of simple apprehension, much bewildered, not at all convinced, breaks from the chain of sophistry, opens wide his eyes, and declares after all that "seeing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... admirable impulses? I can see clearly enough where the contributor was astray in this reasoning, but I can also understand how one accustomed to value realities only as they resembled fables should be won with such pensive sophistry; and I can certainly sympathize with his feeling that the mariner's failure to reappear according to appointment added its final and most agreeable charm to the whole affair, and completed the mystery from which the man emerged and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... which Cicero and his friends discuss is, the endurance of pain. Is it an unmixed evil? Can anything console the sufferer? Cicero at once condemns the sophistry of Epicurus. The wise man cannot pretend indifference to pain; it is enough that he endure it with courage, since, beyond all question, it is sharp, bitter, and hard to bear. And what is this courage? Partly excitement, partly ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... Washington, Esq." Washington refused to receive it. The address was afterward changed to "George Washington, &c., &c." The messenger endeavored to show that this bore any meaning which might be desired. But Washington understood the sophistry and refused any communication which did not distinctly recognize his position as commander ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... it was that he regarded all modern philosophy as sensuous naturalism; and if reason sometimes seemed to him suspicious, it was because he often confounded it with sophistry, which reasons indeed, but ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... conceive how Dona Leonor de Cisneros had been induced apparently to abandon the faith to which she had so long adhered. Falsehoods and devices of all sorts had been employed to induce her to make her peace with Rome. Every argument which sophistry could invent had been brought forward to shake her belief. There was a rack, with other fearful tortures, and the stake, on the one hand, and forgiveness and reconciliation with the Church on the other—ay, and a happy life with her Antonio. When at last the inquisitors found her stubborn, they ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... a common besetting sin of the young male; invariably, I almost think, if he has the artistic temperament. Yet I do not think it presents itself to his mind in its nudity, but comes clothed with that sophistry in which youth, the most thoroughgoing of philosophes, is so ingenious. Consideration for the beloved object, it is called—yes! beloved indeed, though, such is the paradox in the order of things, but one of the several vestals of the sacred ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... sordid wedlock to governments and thrones, numbered among her servants a host of the worldly and the proud, whose service of God was but the service of themselves,—and many, too, who, in the sophistry of the human heart, thought themselves true soldiers of Heaven, while earthly pride, interest, and passion were the life-springs of their zeal. This mighty Church of Rome, in her imposing march along the high road of history, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... not improper to add that all this talk about expenditure of vitality is full of sophistry. Lecturers and writers speak of our stock of vitality as if it were a vault of gold, upon which you cannot draw without lessening the quantity. Whereas, it is rather like the mind or heart, enlarging by action, gaining ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... woman," he wrote. "None of your puny breed of modern femininity, but a remnant left over from the heroic ages,—a primitive woman, grand and vast of spirit, capable of true and steadfast wifehood. No sophistry about her; no knowledge even that there is sophistry. Heavens! man, do you remember the rondeaux and triolets I used to write to those pretty creatures back East? It would take a Saga man of the old Norseland ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... still our power behind the throne; he left out our copy on mechanical grounds, and put it in for our modesty and sophistry. In his broad, hot room, all flaring with gas, he stood at a flat stone like a surgeon, and took forms to pieces and dissected huge columns of pregnant metal, and paid off the hands with fabulous amounts of uncurrent ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... these generous dreams, he had won free trade and given the multitude cheap bread, and in a highly ingenious piece of sophistry he explains, by the aid of the gospel of Evolution, how men are united by their common hunger, and thrust apart by their conflicting ideas. But Hohenstiel knows very well that his intrenchments are not unassailable; ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... force of this exposition, the ardent advocates of the Colonization Society will undoubtedly attempt to evade the ground of controversy, and lead uncautious minds astray in a labyrinth of sophistry. But the question is not, whether the climate of Africa is salubrious, nor whether the mortality among the emigrants has been excessive, nor whether the colony is in a prosperous condition, nor whether the transportation of our whole colored population can be effected in thirty years or three ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... the other must be false, that is, it must be either asserting what Christ denied; or else denying what Christ asserted. They cannot, under any circumstances, be described as true Churches. This is not sophistry or subtilty. It is common-sense. Christ promised unity in promising truth; since truth is one. Is Christ divided? asks St. Paul. No! ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... for he had taken the first step in that tortuous and corrupting path, which eventually leads to the destruction of all those generous and noble sentiments, which can only flourish apart from the sophistry and fictions of selfishness. He would have rejoiced to have been as light of heart as at the moment he handed his fair-haired partner into the gondola that night; but his head had pressed the pillow for many hours, before sleep drew a veil over the solemn trifling with ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... wear out life in a course of action which leads neither to wealth nor honors? Why turn away from pleasures which lie near us to follow after ideal things? These are questions which force themselves upon us; and it requires faith and courage not to be shaken by this sophistry. Visions of ideal life float before young eyes, and if to be attracted by what is high and fair were enough, it were not difficult to be saint, sage, or hero; but when we perceive that the way to the best is the road of toil and drudgery, that we must labor long and accomplish ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... that I have not Patience to reason upon such an uncharitable Supposition. I know very well, Sir, that I am addressing my self to a Man of Parts, a Master in Logick, and a subtle Metaphysician, not to be imposed upon by Sophistry or false Pretences: Therefore I beg of you, carefully to examine what I have said hitherto, and you'll be convinced; that my not believing you to have read The Fable of the Bees, can proceed from Nothing but the good Opinion I ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... a half sob, that vibrated with the obstinate resentment of a child that knows it is to be argued out of its instincts by adult sophistry. What had ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... this with that strong display of fervour for which I was remarkable at my years, and expected old Barnet to be utterly confounded; but he only shook his head, and, with the most provoking grin, said: "There he goes! Sickan sublime and ridiculous sophistry I never heard come out of another mouth but ane. There needs nae aiths to be sworn afore the session wha is your father, young goodman. I ne'er, for my part, saw a son sac like a dad, sin' my een first opened." ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... and unrestrained reading was making them; her passion for happiness and for truth, her restless intelligence, were prematurely forming her character. There was no one in authority to tell her—check, guide, or direct her in the revolt from dogmatism, pedantry, sophistry and conventionalism. And by this path youthful intelligence inevitably passes, incredulous of snare and pitfall where lie the bones of many a savant under magic blossoms nourished ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... everywhere known as a debater of singular skill. His mind was fertile in resources. He was master of logic. No man perceived more quickly than he the strength or the weakness of an argument, and no one excelled him in the use of sophistry and fallacy. Where he could not elucidate a point to his own advantage, he would fatally becloud it for his opponent. In that peculiar style of debate, which, in its intensity, resembles a physical contest, he had no equal. He spoke with extraordinary readiness. There was no halting ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... searching through three thick volumes would decide. In these volumes I find, augmenting as we go on, declarations about the character and power of "the Church" which have a suspicious appearance. The suspicion is increased by that curious piece of sophistry, No. 87, on religious reserve. The queer paradoxes of that tract leave us in doubt as to everything but this, that the church(man) is not bound to give his whole counsel in all things, and not bound to say what the things are in which he does not give it. It is likely enough ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... looking into her eyes, scarce mindful of her insinuating arts of love. He was fascinated with her, it is true; but it was with her beauty, flattery and sophistry, ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... clothing? The braying donkey whose ears stick out is less troublesome. What manner of man is it that has discovered an improvement on Christian Science, a "met- aphysical healing" by which error destroys error, and would gather all sorts into a "national convention" by [25] the sophistry that such is the true fold for Christian heal- ers, since the good shepherd cares ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... which Hayward and some of his reviewers have instituted in advance against the possibility of a good and faithful metrical translation of a poem like Faust, they seem to the present translator full of paradox and sophistry. For instance, take this assertion of one of the reviewers: "The sacred and mysterious union of thought with verse, twin-born and immortally wedded from the moment of their common birth, can never be understood by those who desire verse translations of good poetry." If the ...
— Faust • Goethe
... believes in itself, and extorts from the world the same homage. If it believed in its own being, would it seek to hide it under the semblance of an alien being and look for its salvation in hypocrisy and sophistry? The modern ancien regime is merely the comedian of a world order whose real heroes ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... principle in her bosom, that it exhibited itself in all her conversation, and seemed to be the governing motive of all her actions. And when she had once discovered the truth and the right, at which she appeared to arrive with intuitive quickness, no wheedling or sophistry could blind her to their force; and no inducements could be offered sufficient to cause her to waver in their support. And yet this peculiar trait, as deeply seated as it was, and as firmly as it was ever exercised, was so beautifully ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... renewed the attempt at domination commenced by his predecessor Victor. His opponents deserved far greater credit for the sturdy independence with which they upheld their individual rights than for the scriptural skill with which they unmasked the sophistry of a delusive theory; for all their reasonings were enervated and vitiated by their stupid admission of the claims of the chair of Peter as the rock on which the Church was supposed to rest. [358:3] This second effort of Rome to establish her ascendancy was, indeed, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... men call sinning entered not without His will. Nay, our wisest have asserted that, as shade enhances light, Evil is but good perverted, wrong is but the foil of right. Banish sickness, then you banish joy for health to all that live; Slay all sin, all good must vanish, good being but comparative. Sophistry, you say—yet listen: look you skyward, there 'tis known Worlds on worlds in myriads glisten—larger, lovelier than our own— This has been, and this still shall be, here as there, in sun or star; These things are to be and will be, those things were to be and are. Man in man's ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... in which we were. I inquired as to the condition of things at Clawbonny, and was gratified with the report. Everybody expected me. I had no tenantry to come forth to meet me,—nor were American tenants much addicted to such practices, even when they were to be found: though the miserable sophistry on the subject of landlord and tenant,—one of the most useful and humanizing relations of civilized life,—did not then exist among us, that I am sorry to find is now getting into vogue. In that day, it was not thought 'liberty' to violate the fair covenants of a lease; ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... passion, Vera, with all its sophistry and its deviations. You are practising the arts of a Jesuit. Remember that you yourself bade me, only yesterday, not to leave you. Will you curse me for not yielding to you? On whom does the responsibility rest? Tell me who ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... shrug. Had George been less absorbed in his own mental discomforts, he would have discovered there and then that the matter of his speech, not the manner of his delivery, was what held his wife's attention. No longer could rounded periods and eloquent sophistry hide from her ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... Massachusetts. I offer them freely, without undertaking to specify, to all who have supported the great cause of the supremacy of the law. The heart of the people has proven again sound and true. No misrepresentation has blinded them, no sophistry has turned them. They have listened to the truth and followed it. They have again disappointed those who distrusted them. They have turned away from those who sought to play upon their selfishness. They have justified those who trusted them. They have justified America. The ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... sometimes don't know how to answer the simplest questions. I'm a plain tanner who never in my life studied sophistry, yet I know why ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... A moral theory that is merely coercive and arbitrary, therefore, is not in a genuine sense moral. A morality, to justify itself, must appeal to the heart of man. The good which it recommends must be a good which man can without sophistry approve. And the good for which man can whole-heartedly strive is not determined by logic, but, in the last analysis, by biology. Human beings cannot freely call good that to which they have no spontaneous prompting. Those ascetics who have denied the flesh may have displayed a certain degree ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... you pay me? Hum! What can you offer me—a good place?" Or suggested him knocking him over the head. Then we should have had a drastic representation of the depraved derelicts. Description is wanted, not sophistry. Philosophising and quibbling over personality is a poor expedient, and one ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... theories whose names are legion, gilded with sophistry and what Jesus had not, namely, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... at once ensued placed the Papal Government in a position of great embarrassment. Its traditions and policy forbade it to admit any other than the flat figure of the earth, as revealed in the Scriptures. Concealment of the facts was impossible, sophistry was unavailing. Commercial prosperity now left Venice as well as Genoa. The front of Europe was changed. Maritime power had departed from the Mediterranean countries, and passed to those ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... my short encounter with the Socinian that satisfied me respecting the Athanasian creed. I felt that had I taken up its bold assertions and established every one of them, as now I did, by scripture, no sophistry could have staggered my faith, though it had been but a reasoning, not a saving faith, in that high doctrine of the coexistent, coequal Trinity. I did not then know—for of all church history I was ignorant—that its original object was not so much to establish a truth, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... opinions—for one unshackled, uncontaminated strain—one Io paean to Liberty—one burst of indignation against tyrants and sycophants, who subject other countries to slavery by force, and prepare their own for it by servile sophistry, as we see the huge serpent lick over its trembling, helpless victim with its slime and poison, before it devours it! On every stanza so penned would be written the word RECREANT! Every taunt, every reproach, every note of exultation at restored light and freedom, would recall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... truth. I beg you never to lose sight of this motive, for it is essential to intellectual dignity. Force of thought may be put forth for other purposes,—to amass wealth for selfish gratification, to give the individual power over others, to blind others, to weave a web of sophistry, to cast a deceitful lustre on vice, to make the worse appear the better cause. But energy of thought so employed, is suicidal. The intellect, in becoming a pander to vice, a tool of the passions, an advocate of lies, becomes not only degraded, but diseased. It loses the capacity ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... hasty, or forced process. If his object is merely to find proof-texts in support of the doctrines he already believes, such paradoxes will afford him nothing but barren difficulties, and a sphere for the exercise of sophistry and misplaced ingenuity. But if he can bear to admit his ignorance, and is willing to examine these difficulties in order to correct his own errors, enlarge his own views, and learn something really new, he will often find here the clew ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... had heard this at second hand, if he had read it, or if it had related to someone other than himself, he would have detected the sophistry of it. But, exhilarated by wine and intoxicated by ambition, he saw nothing but a pledge to deal ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... can be relieved. These considerations constrain me to take another wife. This wife shall be under your control in every respect and ever second to you in my affections." She listened to his narrative in painful anxiety and endeavored to reclaim him from his wicked purpose, refuting all his sophistry by expressions of her unaffected conjugal affection. He left her to meditate. She became more industrious and treated him more tenderly than before. She tried every means in her power to dissuade him from the execution of his ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... which we strike upon the forbidden pleasure, the further back the rebound after the stroke. When sin tempts—when there hangs glittering before a man the golden fruit which he knows that he ought not to touch—then, amidst the noise of passion or the sophistry of desire, conscience is silenced for a little while. No man sins without knowing that it is wrong, without knowing that in the long run it is a mistake; but at the instant, in the delirium of yielding, as in moments of high physical excitement, he is blind and deaf, deaf to the voice of reason, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... striving to push the advantage. He went on speaking earnestly; he demonstrated that this marriage which had proved so disastrous was in truth no marriage, and that its annulment was just and right, for where there was no love, he argued, there could be no marriage. With all the sophistry; with all the subtle arguments of which he was master—and they were neither weak nor few—he assailed her. Every power of his brilliant intellect, every weapon of his mental armory, all the force of his indomitable will ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... her father, would not only greatly mar his mother's happiness, but in all probability lead to a renewal of the intimacy between his father and Gurley; an event which he himself felt was to be deprecated. But the Demon of Sophistry, who first taught self-deceiving man how to make "the wish father to the thought," here interposing, whispered to the incipient lover that his father had reformed, and why not then Gaut Gurley? This reasoning, however, could not be made to satisfy his judgment; and again commenced the struggle between ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... interest of Philip, assumed to be identical with the welfare of his people, he took up arms against the tyrant who was sacrificing both. This mask of loyalty would never save his head from the block, as he well knew, but some spirits lofty as his own, might perhaps be influenced by a noble sophistry, which sought to strengthen the cause of the people by ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... obsolete modes of speech. The article which it attacks was 'A Dissertation on Debt and Debtors', where the subject was, I imagine, treated in the orthodox way: and he expends all his paradox in showing that indebtedness is a necessary condition of human life, and all his sophistry in confusing it with the abstract sense of obligation. It is, perhaps, scarcely fair to call attention to such a mere argumentative and literary freak; but there is something so comical in a defence of debt, however transparent, proceeding from a man to whom never in his life a ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... an example of the perverting tendency of narrow and domineering interests in the domain of ethics. With many commendable points, there is, in that work, much ignoble truckling to the dominant and influential few, and a deal of shabby sophistry in defending abuses that the few were ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... They are remarkably quick at discerning and appreciating whatever is manly and honourable. They are, by nature and habit, methodical and orderly; and they feel the value of all that is regular and respectable. They may occasionally be deceived by sophistry, and excited into turbulence by public distresses and the misrepresentations of designing men; but open their eyes, and they will eventually rally round the landmarks of steady truth and deliberate good sense. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... to say against the lucidity of the paragraph, nor any thing to urge, at all likely to avail, against the prosecution of Van's designs upon the lady's hand and fifteen thousand florins, with "two months' conge and other advantages." No possible sophistry, to which I was equal, could prove the marriage to be against his interest; and as to trying him on the tack of delicacy—"imposition on an unprotected woman,—degrading dependence on her exertions," and so forth—I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... city, greatly loved To talk with Tycho of the strange new dreams Copernicus had kindled. Did this earth Move? Was the sun the centre of our scheme? And Tycho told him, there is but one way To know the truth, and that's to sweep aside All the dark cobwebs of old sophistry, And watch and learn that moving alphabet, Each smallest silver character inscribed Upon the skies themselves, noting them down, Till on a day we find them taking shape In phrases, with a meaning; ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... David's Moabite descent, and maintain that on account of it he could not be admitted into the congregation of Israel. Samuel and other prominent men had to bring to bear all the weight of their authority to shield David against the consequences of Doeg's sophistry. (103) ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... hour of questions and reasoning, with inferences drawn and rejected, and a display of sophistry that would do credit to a more fully fledged lawyer than Arthur is ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... orders of a king of France who had not been without good fortune. Pomponne came into office in 1671 and left it in 1679, so that he was not compromised by the derisive claim of devolution, or by the yet more hollow sophistry of reunion, by which Lewis now proceeded to push his advantage. His dismissal announced to the nations what they had to look for. It meant that the profit of Nimeguen was not enough, that the greatness of the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... The glaring sophistry of Satan's citation of scripture was unworthy a categorical reply; his doctrine deserved neither logic nor argument; his misapplication of the written word was nullified by scripture that was germane; the lines of the psalmist ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... humbled by the conviction, that an irresistible impulse had compelled him to desert his sophistry, and stand forth in his real character before one who had the ear of the Protector, and whose religious persuasion had not prevented his advancement, or his being regarded as a man of extraordinary mental attainments, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... only insisting upon religious obedience to Law. I am preaching the texts before me. Such obedience is a religious duty. It is the will of God. I appeal to the texts. They proclaim the Law of God. Peaceful subjection to government is his law; and men are guilty of sophistry and falsehood, when, to excuse wicked evasion of Law or violent resistance, they pretend to appeal to what they call "the higher laws of God." There are no such higher laws. The texts before me are his law. If one man has a moral right, either cunningly to evade or openly ...
— The Religious Duty of Obedience to Law • Ichabod S. Spencer
... which Hotspur might have spoken, we have the sophistry of the thinker poetically expressed, and not one word from the hot, high-couraged soldier. Indeed, in the last four lines from the bookish "we read" to the end, we have the gentle poet in love with desperate extremities. The passage ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... overwrought and harassed condition, the sophistry illuded her; she was sensible only of the menace his words distilled. She saw herself tricked and trapped, meshed in a web of damning circumstance; everything was against her—appearances, the hands of all men, the cruel accident that ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... dissertations on materiality, and abstruse investigations of useless subjects, they are mere literary legerdemain. Their disputations being usually built on an undefinable chimera, are solved by a paradox. Instead of exercising their power of reason they exert their powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide every subject with such casuistical minuteness, that those who are not convinced, are almost invariably confounded. This custom, it must be granted, is not quite so prevalent as it once was: a general ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... obloquy, and spite Expire e're morn, the mushroom of a night! Transient as vapours glimm'ring thro' the glades, Half-form'd and idle, as the dreams of maids, Vain as the sick man's vow, or young man's sigh, Third-nights of Bards, or H——'s sophistry. ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... fiendish thoughts that rage and plot To bring about my ruin. Hence! avaunt! Or else in pity tell me what you want. I cannot live, and yet I would not die! My hopes are blighted! Where, oh whither shall I fly? 'Tis past! I'll cease to daily with vain sophistry, And try the virtue of a ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... human philosophy are inadequate to grasp the Principle of Christian Science, or to demonstrate it. Revelation shows this Principle, and will rescue reason from the thrall of error. Revelation must subdue the sophistry of intellect, and spiritualize consciousness with the dictum and the demonstration of Truth and Love. Christian Science Mind-healing can only be gained by working from a purely Christian standpoint. Then it heals ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... of those operations and passions of the mind in which they originate, or by which they act; with one or more striking instances annexed to each, from authors of high estimation, and to each instance of false reasoning, the manner in which the sophistry is to be detected, and the words in which it may ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... ancestors. If this progress of learning towards popularity has engendered (as it must be owned that it has) a multitude of superficial and most mischievous sciolists, the antidote must come from the same quarter with the disease. Popular reason can alone correct popular sophistry. ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... at last to look into that handsome eager face. For a moment he was at a loss; then he had recourse to sophistry. "Am I a coward that I should refuse all ways but sure ones?" he demanded in a withering tone. "Or art thou a coward who can counsel ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... whose powers soon made themselves felt. In the Examiner, and in a crowd of pamphlets and periodicals which followed in its train, the humour of the poet Prior, the bitter irony of Swift, an Irish writer who was now forcing his way into fame, as well as St. John's own brilliant sophistry, spent themselves on the abuse of the war and of its general. "Six millions of supplies and almost fifty millions of debt!" Swift wrote bitterly; "the High Allies have been the ruin of us!" Marlborough was ridiculed and reviled, even his courage was called in question; he was charged with ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... Chandos; "I have no wish to hear your defense, you can neither deny nor explain the fact that you spent a day with my husband on the river; all the sophistry in the world cannot deny that fact, and that ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... the taking, even if he had a legal and moral right to take her (not that he attempted to justify himself now by any such sophistry). She could not be faithful, it seemed, even to a chosen lover. The man into whose eyes she gazed with such obvious complaisance was not the man she lived with in that house on the river bank. Hollister had ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... recollection. One thing he did hope, hope sincerely—that Lucy did not care for him. That she liked him very much, and had been on most confidential terms with him, he knew; but he did hope her liking went no deeper. Strange sophistry! how it will deceive the human heart! how prone we are to admit it! Lionel was honest enough in his hope now: but, not many hours before, he had been hugging his heart with the delusion ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... their rights and duties; it is with that in view we must settle the terms of their readmission. It is idle to apply to 1866 the word-twisting of 1860. The Rebel communities which began the war are not the same communities which were recognized as States in the Union before the war occurred. No sophistry that perplexes the brain of the people can prevent this fact being felt in their hearts. The proposition that States can plunge into rebellion, and, after waging against the government a war which is put down only at the expense of enormous sacrifices of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... incredible to him that any Governor of Virginia should display so open a disregard of the ordinary rules of courtesy and hospitality. To drag in their political differences at such a time, when he had come beneath the other's roof merely to render him an unavoidable service! To stoop to the pettifogging sophistry of the agitator simply because his opponent had reluctantly yielded him ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... true and a phantom diffuse peritonitis, said young man is not in line for saving life; on the contrary, he is liable to mismanage and meet with as great a failure, and be the cause of as unnecessary a death as was the good doctor from whom we are quoting and of whose medical sophistry I am trying to give the true ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... creature who spreads evil and misery. And Elsa's was also a simple and untutored soul, even though in her calmer temperament the wilder passions of men had found no echo. True and steadfast in love, her mind was too simple to grasp at sophistry, to argue about right or wrong; her feelings were her guide, and even while Andor—burning with love and impatience—argued and clung desperately to his own point of view, she felt only the desire to comfort and to succour—above all, to love—she ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Jennie. "That's sophistry! They all voted for you so you wouldn't be without support. Each wanted you to have just one vote. Nobody wanted you elected. They were all ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... courage." Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. Above all let us dream no dreams and tell no lies, but go our way, wherever we may land, with our eyes open and our heads erect. If death ends all, we cannot meet it better. If not, let us enter the next scene with no sophistry in our mouths and no masks ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to be a string of platitudes with no definite application to facts. They are fit only for the platform, or only for the professor's lecture-room. Mill's treatise, according to his most famous antagonist, was a mere bundle of pretentious sophistry. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... of their founders; and out of this train of cumulative evidence, the multiplied groups of cases clustering about individuals, the deadly results of autopsies, the inoculation by fluids from the living patient, the murderous poison of hospitals,—does there not result a conclusion that laughs all sophistry to scorn, and renders ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mere sophistry, Catherine," said Mrs. Arrowpoint. "Because you don't wish to marry a nobleman, you are not obliged to marry a mountebank or ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... at times was greatly excited, the cry and tumult were so great and incessant. The Presbyterians were most decided against the Baptists and Methodists, and used all the powers of either reason or sophistry to prove their errors, or, at least, to make the people think they were in error. On the other hand, the Baptists and Methodists in their turn were equally zealous in endeavoring to establish their own tenets and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... tool or a principal, was foremost in every work of contemporary mischief. The love of office, and a passion for public speaking, were, doubtless, the predominant feelings of his soul. To gratify the former, he became the instrument of others, and thence the sophistry of his eloquence and the insincerity of his character; while, in the proud display of his acknowledged powers as an orator, he was stimulated not less by vanity, than by the virtuous rivalry of Fox. As a financier, he played the part of ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... her faded face; It fled—and deeper paleness took its place; Then a cold shudder thrill'd her—and, at last, Her lip a smile of bitter sarcasm cast, As if she scorned herself, that she could be A moment lulled by that sweet sophistry; For in that little minute memory's sting Gave word and look, sigh, gesture—every thing, To bid these dear delusive phantoms fly, And fix her fears in ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... "and, Miss Leavenworth, it is this thing which makes your cousin's position absolutely dangerous. It is a fact that, left unexplained, must ever link her name with infamy; a bit of circumstantial evidence no sophistry can smother, and no denial obliterate. Only her hitherto spotless reputation, and the efforts of one who, notwithstanding appearances, believes in her innocence, keeps her so long from the clutch of the officers of justice. That key, and the silence preserved by her in regard to it, is sinking ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... replied to this sophistry, which had done duty so often and had been successful so often in their case as in others, by calling upon their Deputies to resign. Laferre neglected to do so. He was too greatly occupied with his opportunity. He went down to "address his ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... clear-headed ever to entertain for an instant: and he was singularly ingenious in discovering blunders in all the acts of the republic, when they conflicted with the policy of Great Britain. In short, his talents were necessary, perhaps, to reconcile so much sophistry, or to render that reasonably plausible that was so fundamentally false. After the peace of 1815, John Effingham went abroad for the second time, and he hurried through England with the eagerness of strong affection; an affection that owed ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... had been brought into the discussion of a great scientific theme, he would confess that if the alternatives were a descent on the one hand from a respectable monkey, or on the other from a Bishop of the Church of England who could stoop to misrepresentation and sophistry and who had attempted in that presence to throw discredit upon a man who had given his life to the cause of science, then if forced to decide he would declare in favor ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... is the business of criticism not only to keep watch over the vagaries of philosophy, but to do the duty of police in the whole world of thought. Wherever it espies sophistry or superstition they are to be bidden to stand; nay, they are to be followed to their very dens and there apprehended and exterminated, as Othello smothered Desdemona, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... and offers of service at the feet of a happy woman is at once an impertinence to her and a shame to yourself. But to pour forth such worship, such offers of service, at the feet of an unhappy woman—age-old sophistry, so often ruling the speech and actions of men to their fatal undoing!—this is praiseworthy and legitimate, a matter not of privilege merely, but of obligation to whoso would claim to be ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... he had succeeded in proving to his relatives that neither arms nor agriculture were his vocation; for we next find him on his way to St. Andrews, "to hear John Major who was then teaching dialectics or rather sophistry." Here he would seem to have studied for two years; taking his degree in 1525 at the age of nineteen. After this he followed Major to France, whether for love of his master, or with the idea that Major's interest as a doctor of the Sorbonne might ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... spoliation in our hearts. Yes; but he does not prevent the repression of abuses by the resistance of those who suffer from them. Sophistry paralyzes this resistance. The sword which malice puts in the assailant's hand would be powerless, if sophistry did not break the shield upon the arm of the assailed; and it is with good reason that Malebranche has inscribed at the opening of his book, "Error is the cause ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... he sees spread with wrecks, is natural to the sailor. I had before my eye so many critical adventures ended in miscarriage, that caution was forced upon me. I encountered in every page wit struggling with its own sophistry, and learning confused by the multiplicity of its views. I was forced to censure those whom I admired, and could not but reflect, while I was dispossessing their emendations, how soon the same fate might happen to my own, and how many ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... show exactly how far the United States Supreme Court, supposed to be an impartial tribunal and generally held in such high esteem and treated with such reverential fear, has been guilty of inconsistency and sophistry in its effort to support this autocracy in defiance of the well established principles of interpretation for construing the constitutions and laws of States and in utter disregard of the supremacy of Congress in the exercise of the powers granted ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the line of business yielded profits, that act, whether cheating, robbing or slaughtering, was justified by some sophistry or other. Astor did not debauch, spoliate, and incite slaughter because he took pleasure in doing them. Perhaps—to extend charitable judgment—he would have preferred to avoid them. But they were all part of the formulated necessities of business which ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... most interesting lectures which I ever listened to was one before the Economic League of San Francisco on the "Dialectics of Socialism." The lecturer was a very acute man, who would not for one moment be deceived by the sophistry of my Socrates and Phaedo, but, who, himself, made willing captives of his hearers by similar methods. I was unable to hear all his address, but when I reluctantly left, it appeared to me that he was expecting to ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... T. Sophistry! Does the weaker sex dishonour itself by every action which does not become the stronger? Or can a man do everything which is proper in a woman? Which is appointed by nature to be the support ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... prepared to see him keep a decorous distance from her. I felt he was acting upon deliberation; that he was trusting to the power of his insinuating address, his sophistry, to break down barriers. It was as if he felt himself at greater advantage, making no emotional demonstrations, so allaying her fears, giving her time to think; for it was clear he hoped to master her intelligence, so ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and what I felt, was like a refreshing shower falling upon earth that had been dried for ages. It has not made me unhappy; I have felt ever since humble. I have longed for virtue: I hope to be truly virtuous; to let sophistry fly from my mind; not to be enthusiastic and foolish but only to be so far religious as will lead to virtue. There seems nothing so ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... "No, that is sophistry," her clear, straight glance was on him searchingly. "You tell me that a statesman must be first a politician; that a politician must consort with rowdies, ballot-box stuffers, gamblers—even thieves. David Broderick, you're wrong. Women have their ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... lodgings in the household of a widow who had a daughter. The widow courted the fine young painter-man—courted him for the daughter. The daughter married him. A strong, simple man, unversed in the sophistry of society, loves the first woman he meets, provided, of course, she shows toward him a bit of soft, feminine sympathy. This accounts for the ease with which very young men so often fall in love with middle-aged ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... thought proper to make this Experiment with very slender hopes of success indeed, since Recourse to the Law is at best a desperate effort. I have now laid open my affairs to you without Disguise and Stated the Facts as they appear, declining all Comments, or the use of any Sophistry to palliate my application, or urge my request. All I desire is a speedy Answer, whether ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... mar, Nor sophistry distract; No parrying counsel jar With the eternal fact;— Keep watch, my soul, in fear, The Judge ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... outlaws, and is jealous of the appointment of Marmaduke as chief. His revenge is a determination to make Marmaduke as guilty as himself. Marmaduke is in love with Idonea, and Oswald, partly by inventing lies about her blind father, Herbert, and partly by dexterous sophistry derived from Political Justice, endeavours to persuade Marmaduke to kill him. Marmaduke hesitates, but is finally overpowered. Although he cannot himself murder Herbert, he draws him to a desolate moor and ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... play,[7] "The Editor," grapples with an equally modern and timely subject, viz., the license of the press. With terrible vividness he shows the misery, ruin, and degradation which result from the present journalistic practice of misrepresentation, sophistry, and defamation. It is a very dark picture he draws, with scarcely a gleam of light. The satire is savage; and the quiver of wrath is perceptible in many a sledge-hammer phrase. You feel that Bjoernson himself has suffered from the terrorism which he here describes, and you would surmise ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... cites with admiration, and to which he seems to have applied for relief whenever he felt harassed and discouraged in public business. But here this great man was interested by the subject he discusses, and by the whole course of his experience and conduct, to refute the dogmas of that pusillanimous sophistry and selfish indulgence by bringing forward the most glorious examples and achievements of patriotism. In this strain he had doubtless commenced his exordium, and in this strain we find him continuing it at the point in which the palimpsest becomes legible. He then proceeds ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... heartily into the subject, and of all the thousands of political speeches I have heard it was the most effective. It was eloquent, but it was far more than that; it was HONESTLY argumentative; there was no sophistry of any sort; every subject was taken up fairly and every point dealt with thoroughly. One could see the supports of the Greenback party vanishing as he went on. His manner was the very opposite of Mr. Conkling's: it was kindly, hearty, as of neighbor with neighbor,—indeed, every person present, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... debated for a moment whether it were not wrong to distrust the power of truth and virtue, and not to let Mr. Clifton see I could demolish the audacious sophistry by which he had endeavoured to confound and overwhelm me. But my ideas were deranged, and I could not collect sufficient fortitude. Oh how dangerous is this confusion of the judgment, and how desirable that heavenly ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... statesman, to be concerned in supporting an impious thing in the world. The way that some may take to prove it impious, is, because it will tend highly to the interest of swearing.—But this I take to be plain downright sophistry, and playing upon words: If this be called the Swearing project, or the Oath-act, the increase of swearing will be very much for the benefit and interest of swearing, (i.e.) to the subscribers in the fund to be raised by this fruitful Swearing-act, if it should be ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... settlements, the French especially, since the Company have thought proper to stand forth in their real character in the exercise of the dewanny. From that period the government of these provinces has been wholly theirs; nor can all the subtleties and distinctions of political sophistry conceal the possession of power, where the exercise of it is openly practised and universally felt in its operation. In deference to the commands of the Company, we have generally endeavored, in all our correspondence with foreigners, to evade the direct avowal of our possessing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... woman made no complaint. Hitherto the brightness of her attire and the size of her hats had been held to atone for her lack of figure and the roomy comfort of her boots, but Mr. Jobson, infected with new ideas, refused to listen to such sophistry. He went shopping with Dorothy; and the Sunday after, when Mrs. Jobson went for an airing with him, she walked in boots with heels two inches high and toes that ended in a point. A waist that had disappeared some years before was recaptured and placed in durance vile; and ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... to spoil young pilgrims with sophistry. He attacked Mr. Greatheart with a club; but Greatheart pierced him under the fifth rib, and then cut off his head.—Bunyan, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to be the wife of a man she did not love in order that she might the more easily find consolation in himself afterwards, had the wit to see that she needed some of his sophistry, though not enough to know exactly why. It was perfectly true. Her churchgoing was an ointment. It could soothe but not heal her. Sanchia had a mind. To do wrong by the world because it had seemed right to her was not to be remedied by doing a right by it now, which to her reasoning would glare ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... within him, and to foster all that was selfish and false. He had said to himself a dozen times during that week that he never could be happy with Lily Dale, and that he never could make her happy. And then he had used the old sophistry in his endeavour to teach himself that it was right to do that which he wished to do. Would it not be better for Lily that he should desert her, than marry her against the dictates of his own heart? And if he really did not ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... inclined. Whereas, if the oath which he accounted inviolable was once publicly known, no party with whom he might have occasion to contract, would have rested satisfied with any other. Louis XI of France practised the same sophistry, for he also had a peculiar species of oath, the only one which he was ever known to respect, and which, therefore, he was very unwilling to pledge. The only engagement which that wily tyrant accounted binding upon him, was an oath by the Holy Cross of ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... not betray Him—that was Judas's act—Peter denied Him—Thomas doubted—Pilate pronounced sentence—it must be a figment to say that these were our acts; we did not watch Him like the Pharisees, nor circumvent Him like the Scribes and lawyers; by what possible sophistry can we be involved in the complicity of that guilt? The savage of New Zealand who never heard of Him, the learned Egyptian and the voluptuous Assyrian who died before He came; how was it the sin ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... ourselves straight, even when we see the road with all plainness as it lies out before us; and clever men must be good enough to find something else to amuse themselves with, instead of dusting our eyes with sophistry. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... be modified but cannot be essentially changed. It is not possible to impart to the dog the habits of the wolf, nor to the ape those of the sheep. This position cannot be refuted. Sophistry may for a while delude, but the mind reposes upon ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... the pickpocket was illumined by the never- to-be-forgotten smile of guilelessness that so ably stood him in hand in moments of peril. The humor of it gradually succumbed to the satirical leer that always came to translate his strange sophistry into something more expressive than mere words. He was plainly enjoying the effect of his magic invasion. To make the puzzle all the more startling, Mr. Cronk was attired in one of David's loose dressing-gowns. He wore a pair ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... simply a synonym For—waste of tissue! What doctor will dare Tell his poor patients so? I'll put my tin on him! Rest? Recreation? Pick-up? Change of air? All question-begging fudge-phrases of sophistry! Let city-toilers who're fagged or "run down," Autumnal quiet (in home or in office), try; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... former, in a patriarchal government, followed of course; and the extent of the power delegated to the one could not in justice be withheld from the other. And for the better allaying of any scruples that might be supposed to arise in men's consciences, it was easy to invent any piece of sophistry to serve by way of justification for those unnatural parents who might feel themselves disposed, or who from want might be induced, to part with their children into perpetual slavery. A son, says ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother—the giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any wilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these principles considered themselves not only at liberty to use all means against society, the enemy; but honour or scruples of any sort among themselves were tabooed. A naturally honourable man like Giannoli was, of course, free from the danger of falling victim to such perverted sophistry. But the manner in which these doctrines succeeded in perverting the minds of fairly intelligent and well-meaning men is illustrated ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... we were. I inquired as to the condition of things at Clawbonny, and was gratified with the report. Everybody expected me. I had no tenantry to come forth to meet me,—nor were American tenants much addicted to such practices, even when they were to be found: though the miserable sophistry on the subject of landlord and tenant,—one of the most useful and humanizing relations of civilized life,—did not then exist among us, that I am sorry to find is now getting into vogue. In that day, it was not thought 'liberty' to violate the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... the hideous sophistry. For Nino is a good boy, and believes very much in heaven, as well as in a couple of other places. Benoni's quick brown eyes saw the movement, and understood it, for he laughed longer yet, ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... any religion has been to the highest thoughts of any people Socialism is, and more, to those who conceive it aright. Without blinding us to our own weaknesses and wickednesses, without offering to us any sophistry or cajoling us with any fallacy, it enthrones love above the universe, gives us Hope for all who are downtrodden and restores to us Faith in the eternal fitness of things. Socialism is indeed a religion—demanding deeds as well as words. Not until professing socialists ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... advance in price will diminish the demand; and a reduced demand will send the price down again. It is not certain, therefore, after all, that the tax will really raise the price." A glance at the diagram will keep us out of such a bog of sophistry and muddle. For if we suppose the amount of the tax per unit of the commodity to be represented by Ss, the curve ss' (drawn, as it is, roughly parallel to SS') will represent the new conditions of supply after the tax has been imposed. The new ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... all that was selfish and false. He had said to himself a dozen times during that week that he never could be happy with Lily Dale, and that he never could make her happy. And then he had used the old sophistry in his endeavour to teach himself that it was right to do that which he wished to do. Would it not be better for Lily that he should desert her, than marry her against the dictates of his own heart? And if he really did not love her, would he not be committing a greater crime in marrying ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... more violent the blow with which we strike upon the forbidden pleasure, the further back the rebound after the stroke. When sin tempts—when there hangs glittering before a man the golden fruit which he knows that he ought not to touch—then, amidst the noise of passion or the sophistry of desire, conscience is silenced for a little while. No man sins without knowing that it is wrong, without knowing that in the long run it is a mistake; but at the instant, in the delirium of yielding, as in moments of high physical excitement, he is blind and deaf, deaf to the voice of reason, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... for this lawbreaker to foresee that in about one hundred years the whole whisky business in its beverage aspects would be prohibited by law in the United States, and that the sophistry he used would be employed by multitudes in denying the eighteenth amendment ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... be, in the last analysis, what you yourselves are. Let no sophistry blind you to the truth of that. There are rhythms in the world of space which we find only in the architecture of the past, and enamoured of their beauty we repeat them over and over (off the key for the most part), on the principle that all the songs have been sung; ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... his short phase of doubt had been succeeded by an abundant inflow of faith in her intentions. It satisfied his inner craving for harmony that her face and spirit should, after all, so corroborate and complete each other; that it needed no moral sophistry to adjust her acts to her appearance, her words to the promise of her smile. But her immediate confidence in him, her resolve to support him in his avowed insubordination, to ignore, with the royal license of her sex, all that was irregular ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... open a disregard of the ordinary rules of courtesy and hospitality. To drag in their political differences at such a time, when he had come beneath the other's roof merely to render him an unavoidable service! To stoop to the pettifogging sophistry of the agitator simply because his opponent had reluctantly ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... were needed, he would be candid. Sophistry was worse than useless with a woman of Elsie's type. The only way to win her was to be transparently honest. To Christobal, after an experience of a generation of Chileans, this came as ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... neither time nor material for unravelling all the complexities of motive, or for distinguishing mere libertinage from grave and deliberate moral misjudgment; it is protecting itself as much as it is condemning the offenders. On all this, then, we need have neither sophistry nor cant. But those who seek something deeper than a verdict for the honest working purpose of leaving cards and inviting to dinner, may feel, as has been observed by a contemporary writer, that men and women are more fairly ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... mind I should have been miserable indeed; but no such thought fretted me. I was only hurt that he could have brought himself to believe anything against me, that he should have listened to her false sophistry and not have asked for my explanation; but, as I remembered that love was prone to jealousy and not above suspicion, I soon ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... under aristocratic influences, and still living in the midst of them; but if she had any prejudice against color, I was never made aware of it; and as for the system of slavery, she had a most hearty dislike of it. No sophistry of Southerners could blind her to its enormity. She was a person of excellent principles and a noble heart. To me, from that hour to the present, she has been a true and sympathizing friend. Blessings be ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... Jew and flung him out of his presence as so much carrion; yet the impotence that truth so often feels, caught and meshed in the coils of subtlety—the desperate disadvantage at which Right is so often placed, when met by the cunning science and sophistry of Wrong—held the Seraph in their net now. He saw his own rashness, he saw how his actions could be construed till they cast a slur even on the man he defended; he saw how legally he was in error, how legally the gallant vengeance ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Greek criterion for Indian chronology, Prof. Weber (op. cit.) finds Greek influence—his universal solvent—in the development of India's religion, philosophy, literature, astronomy, medicine, architecture, &c. To support this fallacy the most tortuous sophistry, the most absurd etymological deductions are resorted to. If one fact more than another has been set at rest by comparative mythology, it is that their fundamental religious ideas, and most of their gods, were derived by the Greeks from religions ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... experience of nature, neither encumbered by the subtleties of policy nor the sophistry of the schools, was evident to every honest ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... to decide which involved not only the heart but the mind: if she made a mistake now, she would be at odds with her higher faculties for the rest of her life. She dreaded the sophistry which sat on either side of the subject; and it was a question whether the very strength of her impulse toward the man she had loved for a year was not the strongest ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Romans, proud both ways, full of startling confessions and self-revelations that would not surprise us if they were slipped into the pages of Nietzsche, tormented by an intellectual conscience that demanded an argued case even at the cost of sophistry, with all sorts of fine qualities and occasional illuminations, but always hopelessly in the toils of Sin, Death, and Logic, which had no power over Jesus. As we have seen, it was by introducing this ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... but not in practice. "To lie is to degrade and besmirch oneself," we say, and yet all civilized life becomes one huge lie. We accustom ourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the practice of a double-faced morality. And since the brain is ill at ease among lies, we cheat ourselves with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry become the second ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... Library, formed for the most part of Greek books, and presided over by Greek librarians. The school of Alexandria had its poets, its grammarians, and philosophers; but its poetry lacked the fire of genius, and its grammatical productions were more remarkable for sophistry and subtlety, than for soundness and depth of research. In the philosophy of Alexandria, the Eastern and Western systems combined, and this ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... coquette, dally, play mud-pies, with a passion the sacredest in subjection, the shamefulest in mutiny, and the deepest and most perilous to tamper with, in our nature. As hotly alive in the nethermost cavern of his heart as in that of the vilest rogue there is a kennel of hounds to which one word of sophistry is as the call to the chase, and such a word I believed my companion had knowingly spoken. I was gone as wanton-tipsy as any low-flung fool, and actually fancied myself invited to be valiant by this transparent embodiment of passion ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... played in the Californian conspiracy, although he had long since acquitted her of the betrayal of any nearer trust. But there was a fateful similarity in the two cases. There was no doubt that this Lieutenant Wainwright was a traitor in the camp,—that he had succumbed to the usual sophistry of his class in regard to his superior allegiance to his native State. But was there the inducement of another emotion, or was the photograph only the souvenir of a fascinating priestess of rebellion, whom the dead man had met? There was perhaps less of feeling than scorn ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... full Indian chief's costume, drew crowds away from the parchesi sociables and government ownership conversaziones. While at the football college in the East he had acquired quantities of rhetoric and the art of calisthenics and sophistry in his classes, and when he stood up in the red wagon and explained to the farmers, eloquent, about chilblains and hyperaesthesia of the cranium, Jeff couldn't hand out the Indian Remedy fast enough ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... Cicero calleth sylva and supellex, stuff and variety, to begin with those arts (as if one should learn to weigh or to measure or to paint the wind) doth work but this effect, that the wisdom of those arts, which is great and universal, is almost made contemptible, and is degenerate into childish sophistry and ridiculous affectation. And further, the untimely learning of them hath drawn on by consequence the superficial and unprofitable teaching and writing of them, as fitteth indeed to the capacity of children. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... what comes. Above all let us dream no dreams and tell no lies, but go our way, wherever we may land, with our eyes open and our heads erect. If death ends all, we cannot meet it better. If not, let us enter the next scene with no sophistry in our mouths and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... fault of Dogmatism was its absolute reliance on the wisdom of Hippocrates, and Methodism was marred by its insufficiency and sophistry. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... listen with attention, and offered nothing against the reasoning of OMAR, yet secretly despised it as sophistry; which cunning only had rendered specious; and which he was unable to confute, merely because it was subtil, and not because it was true: he had been led, by his passions, first to love, and then to adopt different opinions; and as ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... what other reasonable thing can be done? Had Philippe d'Orleans not been a caput mortuum! But of him, known as one defunct, no man now dreams. "Depose it not; say that it is inviolable, that it was spirited away, was enleve; at any cost of sophistry and solecism, reestablish it!" so answer with loud vehemence all manner of Constitutional Royalists; as all your Pure Royalists do naturally likewise, with low vehemence, and rage compressed by fear, still more passionately answer. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... never having attempted any deeds of arms, I am youngest to perform any martial exploits, knowing better how to survey my lands than to charge my lance: my brother Fernandyne he is at Paris poring on a few papers, having more insight into sophistry and principles of philosophy, than any warlike endeavors; but thou, Rosader, the youngest in years but the eldest in valor, art a man of strength, and darest do what honor allows thee. Take thou my father's lance, his sword, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... through the darkness upon me. Hunched up in the deck chair, with his legs crossed under him, he was like an animated Buddha venting a dark philosophy and seeking to undermine my mental balance with his sophistry. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... marriage. How often did the better feelings of my nature recoil from such an act of villainy—how often was my project abandoned, how often resumed at the alternate bidding of passion and of virtue! I will not repeat the idle sophistry which served to complete my wilful blindness; nor dare I degrade myself in your eyes by a confession of the tissue of contemptible fraud and hypocrisy into which I was necessarily betrayed by the execution of my dark designs. Oh! Helen—this heart of mine was once honest, once good and true ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... when the minds of the rest of Europe were tolerably pacified in a religious respect, became the scene of theological controversies full of sophistry and bitterness, the natural consequence of the incipient oppression of the dissidents. The literature was overwhelmed with pamphlets, stuffed with a shallow scholastic erudition, and written in a style both bombastic and vulgar. But the influence of the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... at Athens about the middle or latter part of April, 469 B.C. He commanded more admiration and reverence than any other individual of ancient or modern times. By his ability and purity he emerged from a barbaric sophistry into the purest form of religion that was ever invented by man, it was nearer like that of Christ than was ever reached by mortal before. The object of his entire philosophy was the attainment of correct ideas concerning ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... had added in an irritated tone: "The Jews themselves are responsible for the pogroms. By joining the Nihilists they thereby deprive the Government of the possibility of sheltering them against violence." The sophistry of the Minister was refuted on the spot by his own confession that the Balta pogrom was due to "a false rumor charging the Jews with having undermined the local Greek-Orthodox church," in other words, that the cause of the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... relating to the works of the "veritable mound-builders" as to leave no hiatus into which the theory of a lost race or a "Toltec occupation" can possibly be thrust. It forms an unbroken chain connecting the mound-builders and historical Indians which no sophistry or reasoning can break. Not only are these graves found in mounds of considerable size, but they are also connected with one of the most noted groups in the United States, namely, the one on Colonel Tumlin's place, near Cartersville, Ga., known as the Etowah mounds, of which ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... thing in your eyes that you want it for yourself—consequently when you show kindness and sympathy for others you are obeying the same motive as the cynic, himself, who having small sympathy for others, prefers the frank gratification of his own ego. This, of course, is pure sophistry. But if any mind is so kinked that it must reason that way, there is a simple answer which will suffice to bring it through the question to the main point. Whenever the pleasure to be derived by an individual comes to him through sympathy and ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... circumstance, indeed, that Catulus and the other heads of the senatorial party accused the leader of the democrats of complicity in the anarchist plot, and that the latter as senator spoke and voted against the brutal judicial murder contemplated by the oligarchy, could only be urged by partisan sophistry as any valid proof of his participation in the plans of Catilina. But a series of other facts is of more weight. According to express and irrefragable testimonies it was especially Crassus and Caesar that supported the candidature of Catilina for the consulship. When ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... God-fearing," she continued, fervently. "In the solitudes of a spiritual Mount Sinai, he has received the tablets of the Lord, and bends every energy to their fulfillment. He, too, foresees—not with an eye like Clay's, clear only at intervals—and clouded by vanity, ambition, and sophistry, at other seasons—he, too, foresees the coming of our doom! His clear vision embraces anarchy, dissension, civil war, with all its attendant horrors, as the consequence of man's injustice; and, like Moses, he beholds ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... own heart is, after all, the best reply to the sophistry just noticed. No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question. It is not more incomprehensible than distinctive. There lives no man who at some ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... touched to the quick the woeful state of his own time: "These so many errors," saith he, "require and look for Antichrist." Gerson complaineth, that in his days all the substance and efficacy of sacred divinity was brought unto a glorious contention and ostentation of wits, and to very sophistry. The friars of Lyons, men, as touching the manner of their life, not to be misliked, were wont boldly to affirm, that the Romish Church (from whence alone all counsel and order was then sought) was the very same "harlot of Babylon and rout of devils," whereof is prophesied ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... but the sophistry here is plain enough, although it is not always detected. Great genius and force of character undoubtedly make their own career. But because Walter Scott was dull at school, is a parent to see with joy that his son is a dunce? ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... don't know how to answer the simplest questions. I'm a plain tanner who never in my life studied sophistry, yet I know why I must ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... victim of sophistry—sophistry of the most dangerous kind. I can't argue with you, but I pity you, ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... you the credit and the reward of doing your duty as you engaged, and yet you mixed the business up with some extremely dirty work no sophistry of yours or mine will dare defend. You took our money, MacTaggart—and you sold us! Sit down, sit down and listen like a man! You sold us; there's the long and the short of it, and you sold our friends at Versailles to ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Christendom; and Stephen boldly renewed the attempt at domination commenced by his predecessor Victor. His opponents deserved far greater credit for the sturdy independence with which they upheld their individual rights than for the scriptural skill with which they unmasked the sophistry of a delusive theory; for all their reasonings were enervated and vitiated by their stupid admission of the claims of the chair of Peter as the rock on which the Church was supposed to rest. [358:3] This second effort of Rome to establish her ascendancy was, indeed, a ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... this plausible argument. The Catholics say that no Protestant can be saved, but the Protestants admit that a Catholic may be, if in heart honest, just, and true. The sophistry of the plea in behalf of an insincere renunciation of faith is too palpable to influence any mind but one eager to be convinced. The king was counseled to obey the Decalogue, which forbids false witness, while at the ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... protestant churches, and the decrees which had been, from time to time, made in favour of the protestants. But the investigation of these things was carried on with the most manifest partiality; old charters were wrested to a wrong sense, and sophistry was used to pervert the meaning of every thing, which tended ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... But these interpreters could neither enact nor execute the laws of the republic; and the judges might disregard the authority of the Scaevolas themselves, which was often overthrown by the eloquence or sophistry of an ingenious pleader. [60] Augustus and Tiberius were the first to adopt, as a useful engine, the science of the civilians; and their servile labors accommodated the old system to the spirit ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... if Marian had but stood there with the grave, earnest, heartfelt voice that repelled all sophistry with the wonted "I don't know," if the dark eyes had been there to look with contempt on all but the "right," and to fill with tears, the more touching because so rare, as her tenderness, her deep feeling would have been called out by the sensation of seeing and aiding a friend to struggle nobly ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Was it so great a sin if the friendship of George Fairfax was dear to her? if the few happy hours of her life were those she spent in his company? But such special pleading as this was the poorest sophistry; at heart she was conscious that it was so. A woman has a double conscience, as it were—a holy of holies within the temple of her mind, to which falsehood cannot enter. She may refuse to lift the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... at her imploringly, as if he would willingly have taken a lie from her lips, knowing it to be one, and have made of it, by some sort of sophistry, a valid denial. However, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... there is no more curious quality in its degradation than a sort of carelessness, at once of hurry and fatigue, with which it flings down its argument—or rather its refusal to argue. It does not even write sophistry: it writes anything. It does not so much poison the reader's mind as simply assume that the reader hasn't got one. For instance, one of these papers printed an article on Sir Stuart Samuel, who, having broken the great Liberal statute against corruption, will actually, ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... divided as you directed, except on one occasion; never voted against your friends, only in that affair.—But, sir, I hope you will not so exert your influence as to insist upon my supporting a measure by an obvious, prostituted sophistry, in direct opposition to ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... performances now and again when they draw in their chairs to dinner. Indeed, a good meal and a bottle of wine is an answer to most standard works upon the question. When a man's heart warms to his viands, he forgets a great deal of sophistry, and soars into a rosy zone of contemplation. Death may be knocking at the door, like the Commander's statue;[15] we have something else in hand, thank God, and let him knock. Passing bells are ringing all the world over. All the world over, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sardonic, satellite, saturnine, schism, scurrilous, sectarian, secular, sedative, sedentary, seditious, sedulous, segregate, seismograph, senescent, sententious, septuagenarian, sequester, sibilant, similitude, sinecure, sinuous, solicitous, solstice, somnolent, sophisticated, sophistry, sorcery, spasmodic, specious, spirituelle, splenetic, spontaneity, sporadic, spurious, stipend, stipulate, stoical, stricture, stringency, stultify, stupendous, sublimity, suborn, subpoena, subsidiary, subsidy, substratum, subtend, subterfuge, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... coming Council as 'a sort of standing committee of the French, or even of the universal, Church,'[3] had become a reactionary and retarding power. It opposed Humanism, and was the stronghold of the method of teaching which the new generation knew as 'Sophistry.' It opposed Reuchlin, and was preparing to oppose Luther, and to urge against its own most distinguished pupils the law of penal fire. It continued to oppose the despotism of the Pope, but it did so rather from the standpoint of a narrow and nationalist Gallicanism, ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... that of the people is counted as nothing. Great events are not achieved for us, though it is by us that they are principally accomplished; by the arms, the sweat, the lives of the people. Books tell me so much that they inform me of nothing. Sophistry, the bane of freemen, launches forth in all her deceiving attire! After all, most men reason from passions; and shall such an ignorant individual as I am decide, and say this side is right, that side is wrong? Sentiment and feeling are the only ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... issue of an unlimited quantity of paper bills, the predecessors of the assignats of the mother country, was strongly advocated by Bigot, who supported his views with a degree of financial sophistry which showed that he had effectively mastered the science of delusion and fraud of which Law had been the great teacher in France, and the Mississippi scheme, the prototype of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... offers of service at the feet of a happy woman is at once an impertinence to her and a shame to yourself. But to pour forth such worship, such offers of service, at the feet of an unhappy woman—age-old sophistry, so often ruling the speech and actions of men to their fatal undoing!—this is praiseworthy and legitimate, a matter not of privilege merely, but of obligation to whoso would claim to be ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to be courted? O, are you she? [TO PHILAUTIA.] "Well, madam, or sweet lady, it is so, I do love you in some sort, do you conceive? and though I am no monsieur, nor no signior, and do want, as they say, logic and sophistry, and good words, to tell you why it is so; yet by this hand and by that candle it is so: and though I be no book-worm, nor one that deals by art, to give you rhetoric and causes, why it should be so, or make it good it is so? yet, d—n me, but I know ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... application of such rules as require the verb and pronoun to conform to the sense intended; and, where there is no apparent impropriety in adopting either number, there is no occasion to raise a scruple as to which is right. To cut knots by dogmatism, and to tie them by sophistry, are employments equally vain. It cannot be denied that there are in every multitude both a unity and a plurality, one or the other of which must be preferred as the principle of concord for the verb or the pronoun, or for both. Nor is the number of nouns small, or their use unfrequent, which, according ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... admirable essay on Rops, wrote, "Car il n'y a de reellement obscenes que les gens chastes"; which is a neat bit of special pleading and quite sophistical. Rops did not lead the life of a saint, though his devotion to his art was Balzacian. It would be a more subtle sophistry to quote Paul Bourget's aphorism. "There is," he writes, "from the metaphysical observer's point of view, neither disease nor health of the soul; there are only psychological states." The etats ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... If he was right in his suspicion that a signal had been given by the lady to the stranger, it was exceedingly probable that he had discovered not only the fair inmate of the robbers' den, but one of the gang itself, or at least a confederate and ally. Yet far from deterring him, in that ingenious sophistry with which he was apt to treat his romance, he now looked upon his adventure as a practical pursuit in the interests of law and justice. It was true that it was said that the band of road agents had been dispersed; it ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... a while to think, not pausing that she might answer her aunt's sophistry, which she hardly noticed, but that she might consider, if it were possible, what it was that she was about to do;—that there might be left a moment to her before she had surrendered herself for ever to her doom. And then she spoke. "Aunt Charlotte," she said, "if you will get up I will do ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... bitter distress and wrath, she broke into a storm of sobs. Were they caused by passion against her husband, or by those bold and shameless words? Alas! Alas! Francis Levison applied himself to soothe her with all the sweet and dangerous sophistry of ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Cicero and his friends discuss is, the endurance of pain. Is it an unmixed evil? Can anything console the sufferer? Cicero at once condemns the sophistry of Epicurus. The wise man cannot pretend indifference to pain; it is enough that he endure it with courage, since, beyond all question, it is sharp, bitter, and hard to bear. And what is this courage? Partly excitement, partly the impulse of honour or of shame, ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... sank. I was not there to listen to such a world-old hypothesis—to such a time-worn, long-ago-refuted, bald, feeble, illogical, vicious, patent sophistry—to an ancient, baseless, wearisome, ragged, unfounded, insidious, falsehood originated by women themselves, and by them insinuated, foisted, thrust, spread, and ingeniously promulgated into the ears of mankind by underhanded, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... men, indeed, than Luther there have been. Some of these have also made attempts to introduce needed reforms in the corrupt Roman Church. Rome met their learned and labored arguments with the consummate skill of a past master in sophistry. Those learned efforts came to naught. Rome will never be reformed by human learning and scholarship. Scholars are rarely men of action. It is because Professor Luther taught and acted that Rome hates him. He would have been permitted to lecture in peace whatever he wished—others in the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... or allowed the hearer to lose him. When in a playful mood he chose to use the weapons of the sophist, the ablest men feared the ticklish game and fought shy, and where the line lay between truth and error it was impossible to find out; and he was equally skilful in unravelling the sophistry of others, dissecting it asunder with the keenest relish and with exquisite skill. When he seriously undertook to assert and defend the truth, he was irresistible, and it was vain to oppose him. Excessive ingenuity has been laid at his door; but, while conceding that his long ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... a man immersed in study, of whom it was noted that he turned aside from the worm in his path,—so I have allowed to him whatever contrasts with his inexpiable crime have been recorded on sufficient authority. But I have invariably taken care that the crime itself should stand stripped of every sophistry, and hideous to the perpetrator as well as to the world. Allowing all by which attention to his biography may explain the tremendous paradox of fearful guilt in a man aspiring after knowledge, and not generally inhumane; allowing that the crime came upon him in the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him? Did the marquis wish to spare the son of an old friend? Besides"—his glance again seeking the envelope—"it is my privilege to learn whether I have fought with a gentleman or a renegade." But even as he meditated, he felt the sophistry of this last argument, while through his brain ran the undercurrent: "He has wooed her—won her, perhaps!" Passion, rather than injured hauteur, stirred him. At the same time a great indignation filled his breast; how Saint-Prosper had tricked ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any wilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... with noble aspirations, such as anger and hatred against injustice, cruelty, and dishonesty, sorrow and lamentation for human frailty, mirth and joy for the welfare of follow-beings, pity and sympathy for suffering creatures. The same change purifies our intellect. Scepticism and sophistry give way to firm conviction; criticism and hypothesis to right judgment; and inference and ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... Moral Philosophy in Greece"[905] without feeling that his vindication of Plato is complete and unanswerable: "Plato never represents the Sophists as teaching a lax morality to their disciples. He does not make sophistry to consist in holding wicked opinions; he represents them as only too orthodox in general,[906] but capable of giving utterance to immoral paradoxes for the sake of vanity. Sophistry rather tampers and trifles with the moral convictions than directly attacks them." The Sophists were wanting in ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... like cloud-scud witches that have caught fire at their skirts from the torches of marsh-fire radicals. They cited for his arrest the titled millionaire who made a slide for the idiots of the kingdom; they stigmatized our liberty as a sophistry, unless we have in it the sustaining element of justice; and where is the justice that punishes his country for any fatal course a mad young Croesus may take! They shackled the hands of testators, who endangered the salvation ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and rough cotton-wood boards for seats, was our meeting place last night here; and a perfect jam it was, with men crowded outside at all the windows. Two very brave young Kentuckian sprigs of the law had the courage to argue or present sophistry on the other side. The meeting continued until eleven o'clock. To-day we go to Ellsworth, the very last trading post on the frontier. A car load of wounded soldiers went East on the train this morning; but the fight ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... silent and nothing interfered with his thoughts, his anxious mind ran over all that had passed, and turn it which way he would, it still seemed wrong. What with this feeling, and the fear of making his grandfather angry, Louis felt very uncomfortable; and then came Reginald's sophistry, and Louis almost argued himself into the belief that his brother was right and he too scrupulous: and when he tried to pray for direction he did not feel sincere, for he was conscious of a wish to ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... one great and irresistible stream. On this very account the privilege of influencing an assembled crowd is exposed to most dangerous abuses. As one may disinterestedly animate them, for the noblest and best of purposes, so another may entangle them in the deceitful meshes of sophistry, and dazzle them by the glare of a false magnanimity, whose vainglorious crimes may be painted as virtues and even as sacrifices. Beneath the delightful charms of oratory and poetry, the poison steals imperceptibly ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... to receive it. The address was afterward changed to "George Washington, &c., &c." The messenger endeavored to show that this bore any meaning which might be desired. But Washington understood the sophistry and refused any communication which did not distinctly recognize his position as ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... ratiocinate. It shines in his vocabulary like a jewel in a muck-heap. And, even so, he continually misapplies it. For you must have observed he uses it as a sort of taunt, in the sense of to ergotise, implying, as it were—the poor, dear fellow!—a vein of sophistry. As for his cruelty to Jean-Marie, it must be forgiven him—it is not his nature, it is the nature of his life. A man who deals with money, my dear, is a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not be (return'd Don Henrique) my Honour, my Friendship forbids it. No (she return'd) your Honour requires it; and if your Friendship opposes your Honour, it can have no sure and solid Foundation. Female Sophistry! (cry'd Henrique;) but you need no Art nor Artifice, Ardelia, to make me love you: Love you! (pursu'd he:) By that bright Sun, the Light and Heat of all the World, you are my only Light and Heat—Oh, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... and sin. Surely Christ has not failed! And yet—and yet—what shall we say? And what shall we say of God's fatherhood? Shall we say as some do that as Judge He must do cruel things which as Father He would shrink from? God forbid! The Judge and the Father are one. Men would never use such sophistry about the character of God if it were put into plain words. "Ye must ken," said a godly old Scotchman, "that the Almighty may often have to do in His offeeshial capacity what He would scorn to do as a private individual!" I quote this not with flippancy but with stern indignation. That ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... Madhyamikas or school of the middle doctrine, though the European reader is tempted to say that their theories are extreme to the point of being a reductio ad absurdum of the whole system. Yet though much of their logic seems late and useless sophistry, its affinity to early Buddhism cannot be denied. The fourfold proposition that the answer to certain questions cannot be any of the statements "is," "is not," "both is and is not," "neither is nor is not," is part of the earliest ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... except by his own choice. You might have been master of the vineyard, but you have preferred to have the vineyard master you. Confronted with an uncongenial task, you slunk away from it and shielded yourself behind the sophistry that the work was unworthy of you. As if any work ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... said, "and I think that any woman who doesn't is just confusing issues, and taking refuge in sophistry. I wouldn't give that"—she snapped an energetic forefinger, "for all your silly, smug little ideas of economic independence and service to the race, and all that tommy-rot. There is only one service a woman can do to her race, and that is to take hold of the problems of love and marriage,—and ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... indulgences of the later companions of his luxury, and exposed their hollow fascinations; his sensitive fastidiousness kept him clean among vulgar temptations; his clear perceptions were never blinded by selfish sophistry. Meantime his feeling for Susy remained unchanged. Pride had kept him from seeking the Peytons. His present visit was as unpremeditated as Peyton's invitation had been unlooked for by him. Yet he had not allowed himself to be ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... impossible, for this reason, that, in the view of the Positive Philosophy, all knowledge of causes is absolutely excluded; nay, he admits that Theology is inevitable if we inquire into causes at all. We know of no simpler or more effectual method of dealing with his specious sophistry on this subject, than by showing that, if his general principle be conclusive against the knowledge of God, it is equally conclusive against the knowledge of any other being or cause; just as Sir James Mackintosh dealt with the skeptical philosophy ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... thoroughly sincere men,—lovers of the word of democracy, and doers of it also, honest and hearty in their worship of liberty, who are still hoping that the antagonism which slavery presents to democracy will be perceived by the people, in spite of the sophistry and appeals to prejudice by which interested partisans have hitherto succeeded in deceiving them. We believe with such that the mass of the democratic voters of the free States are in reality friends ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of cumulative evidence, the multiplied groups of cases clustering about individuals, the deadly results of autopsies, the inoculation by fluids from the living patient, the murderous poison of hospitals,—does there not result a conclusion that laughs all sophistry to scorn, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... felt. In the Examiner, and in a crowd of pamphlets and periodicals which followed in its train, the humour of the poet Prior, the bitter irony of Swift, an Irish writer who was now forcing his way into fame, as well as St. John's own brilliant sophistry, spent themselves on the abuse of the war and of its general. "Six millions of supplies and almost fifty millions of debt!" Swift wrote bitterly; "the High Allies have been the ruin of us!" Marlborough ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... the most murderous "dynamite toys"—who, called before the Senate of the United States anxious to adopt means for the repression of a too free trade in such implements, found an argument that ought to become immortalized for its cynical sophistry—"My machines," that expert is reported to have said—"are quite harmless to look at; as they may be manufactured in the shape of oranges, hats, boats, and anything one likes.... Criminal is he who murders people by ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... strength with her fully. The first attempt had been to make her an accomplice by sophistry; by destroying her faith in Christianity, and confusing her sense of right and wrong, to bring her into the ranks of those convenient women who regard the marriage-tie only as a friendly alliance to cover licence ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Reynolds, he is "unconscious of having omitted any enquiry likely to lead him aright."—P. 320. He may have made the enquiry without using the information—a practice not inconsistent in such a biographer. For instance, when he assumes, that in the portrait of Beattie, the figures of Scepticism, Sophistry, and Infidelity, represent Hume, Voltaire, and Gibbon; remarking, that they have survived the "insult of Reynolds." An enquiry from Northcote ought to have led him to conclude otherwise, for Northcote, who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... interest would make me act faithfully towards him, for my fortunes are bound up in his. But am I entitled, I, who can lose nothing, am I entitled to play with other men's fortunes? Am I all this time deceiving myself with some wretched sophistry? Am I, then, an intellectual Don Juan, reckless of human minds, as he was of human bodies; a spiritual libertine? But why this wild declamation? Whatever I have done, it is too late to recede; even this very moment delay ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... in supporting an impious thing in the world. The way that some may take to prove it impious, is, because it will tend highly to the interest of swearing.—But this I take to be plain downright sophistry, and playing upon words: If this be called the Swearing project, or the Oath-act, the increase of swearing will be very much for the benefit and interest of swearing, (i.e.) to the subscribers in the fund to be raised by ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Yes, that debt I pay, Hard—wrung, acquitted,—his my love alway! Who has my hand, he holds—shall hold—my heart! Truth is my guide,—let sophistry depart! Had Fate been kind, then had Pauline been thine, Heart, faith and duty, linked with bliss divine. In vain had fickle Fortune barred the way, Want had been wealth with thee, my guide, my stay, And poverty had fallen from the wings Of soaring love, who mocks ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... mountain woman," he wrote. "None of your puny breed of modern femininity, but a remnant left over from the heroic ages,—a primitive woman, grand and vast of spirit, capable of true and steadfast wifehood. No sophistry about her; no knowledge even that there is sophistry. Heavens! man, do you remember the rondeaux and triolets I used to write to those pretty creatures back East? It would take a Saga man of the old Norseland to ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... phenomenon of human reason meets us—a perfectly natural antithetic, which does not require to be sought for by subtle sophistry, but into which reason of itself unavoidably falls. It is thereby preserved, to be sure, from the slumber of a fancied conviction—which a merely one-sided illusion produces; but it is at the same time compelled, either, on the one hand, to abandon itself to a despairing scepticism, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... more probable. But even that was doubtful. Her trenchant remark about civilization wasn't the product of a conditioned mind. But why was he worrying about her attitudes? They weren't important—she wasn't even human. He shook his head. That was a sophistry. The fact that she wasn't human had nothing to do with the importance of her attitude. "I suppose there is a reason," he agreed. "But I don't know it. I haven't been here long enough to know anything about ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... like furies armed with fiery scourges, seemed determined to drive him to despair. As he combated these horrible recollections with distracted feelings, but with a resolved mind, he became aware that his arguments were answered by the sophistry of another, and that the dispute was no longer confined to his own thoughts. The Author of Evil was present in the room with him in bodily shape, and, potent with spirits of a melancholy cast, was impressing upon him the desperation of his state, and urging suicide as the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... Ronald Keith's wife; he will never be happy as your husband. I know how you are trying to delude yourself; I know you are trying to believe you will love him and be happy by-and-by. Don't indulge such sophistry any longer; don't be led away by your own ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... thirsty for a word from her, thirsty with the pitiable thirst of the shipwrecked sailor who knows a swallow of salt water will but increase his torture, and who craves it, none the less. Long since, he had forfeited his right to her friendship—no sophistry could blind him to that. Moreover the ocean of degradation not only lay behind him; it lay in front as well. It was as he had told Barclay. He stood upon an island, not the mainland, of redemption, ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... he had abandoned these generous dreams, he had won free trade and given the multitude cheap bread, and in a highly ingenious piece of sophistry he explains, by the aid of the gospel of Evolution, how men are united by their common hunger, and thrust apart by their conflicting ideas. But Hohenstiel knows very well that his intrenchments are not unassailable; and he goes ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... complexion wan, expression pensive, and the entire propriety of the toilette disarranged and degagee. The stuff that he has perpetrated is happily no longer present to his memory, and neither placeman's sophistry nor patriot's rant will be likely in any way to interfere with his repose. Intense fatigue, whether intellectual or manual, however, is not the best security for sound slumber at any hour, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... SOPHISTRY, n. The controversial method of an opponent, distinguished from one's own by superior insincerity and fooling. This method is that of the later Sophists, a Grecian sect of philosophers who began by teaching wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable—when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us—that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... and that fact will be presented by and by, in its place. This does not touch the point. Jesus was here, giving instruction to his [30]followers, both Jew and Gentile, respecting the Sabbath which they would have to do with. It is immaterial what kind of sophistry is presented to overthrow the point, nothing can touch it short of proving it a mistranslation. Jesus did here recognize the perpetuity of the seventh day Sabbath. And John will continue to make all men liars ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... LION.—Blush, brother, blush; such sophistry is only worthy of the Common Pleas, where I know you picked it up. To be sure, if both of us were the most abandoned of beasts, we surely should have some excuse for our wickedness in the profligate company we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... acquaintances. On that account he urged so strongly that she should be brought into relation with Miss Lant, and, if possible, with certain of Miss Lant's friends. All very well, had not the reasoning been utterly insincere. It might have applied to another person; in Jane's case it was mere sophistry. Her nature was home-keeping; to force her into alliance with conscious philanthropists was to set her in the falsest position conceivable; striving to mould herself to the desires of those she loved, she would suffer patiently ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... know that this is no new thing. There is no novelty in the situation of a girl giving herself to a man whom she despises, for the sake of his money. The records of the Divorce Court teem with such cases. For the battered honour of my father I am going to lose my own. Be silent—no sophistry of yours can hide the brutal truth. I hate that man from the bottom of my soul, and he knows it. And yet his one desire is to marry me. In ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... Romola would have been sensitive to the appeal at the beginning of Savonarola's speech; but at this moment she was so utterly in antagonism with him, that what he called perplexity seemed to her sophistry and doubleness; and as he went on, his words only fed that flame of indignation, which now again, more fully than ever before, lit up the memory of all his mistakes, and made her trust in him seem to have been a purblind delusion. She spoke almost ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... tricks, in personating opposite characters to whom prayers and profane utterances are of equi-value; surcharged with a passion for lyrical narrations; one whose every attitude is instinct with the schemes of specious reasoning, sophistry, pride, pleasure, wit, subtle convivialities; a boundless disbeliever, one who thinks that all private life will end in the all-consuming self-love of God."—Page 13. On page 13 he says further of them, that they are "never resting, never satisfied with life, often amusing themselves ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... expressed, would not be believed Feeling, however, the want of consolation in their misfortunes Future effects dreaded from its past enormities God is only the invention of fear Gold, changes black to white, guilt to innocence Hail their sophistry and imposture as inspiration Invention of new tortures and improved racks Labour as much as possible in the dark Misfortunes and proscription would not only inspire courage My means were the boundaries of my wants Not suspected of any vices, but all his virtues are negative ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... regard her and her criminal male partners as anything less than the red-handed slayers of good women. While the eye doctors attribute one-fourth of blindness, particularly of helpless babies, to the same source, we cannot quote except to condemn, this sophistry that makes the worse appear the better cause and garlands the woman whose pursuit is death itself, suicide and murder ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... considered themselves not only at liberty to use all means against society, the enemy; but honour or scruples of any sort among themselves were tabooed. A naturally honourable man like Giannoli was, of course, free from the danger of falling victim to such perverted sophistry. But the manner in which these doctrines succeeded in perverting the minds of fairly intelligent and well-meaning men is illustrated ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... for a coward had he held back; that he took up his weapon in self-defence precisely as a man levels his gun at the house-breaker or the midnight assassin;—the expounder of the law has still been proof against sophistry which, once accepted, must tend inevitably to social disorganization. The deliberate resolution to kill a fellow-creature has nothing to do with self-defence. To destroy another in cold blood is murder in the sight of the law, and can assume no other aspect. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... crafty words shall mar, Nor sophistry distract; No parrying counsel jar With the eternal fact;— Keep watch, my soul, in fear, The ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... opponent. His great art was to throw dust in the eyes of the jury, and make them believe that there was neither force nor sense nor anything else in the arguments of the opposite counsel. He never met a position, nor answered an argument, but threw around them the mist of sophistry, and thus weakened their force. He was the prince of plausibilities. He was always on the right side (in his own opinion), ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... characterizes this people. Where others only see sand and reefs, not worth the trouble of cultivation, the Englishman discovers some productive germ that with his indefatigable energy brings forth a thousand fold. Nor is Colonial work, industrial activity and commercial thrift disturbed by bureaucratic sophistry or immoderate fiscal pretentions, that so frequently suffocate the most promising and audacious undertakings ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... manner would he attempt to reason himself out of these dreadful visitations, by the shallow sophistry ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... with Kant's dictum, that the intuition of duty implies a God of necessity, is foolish enough to say "that this feeling of obligation rather excludes than compels the belief in a divine legislator;" which is a very discreditable piece of sophistry. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... of excess. The duller English sense may not catch all the finer edges of a style which it may yet feel to be exquisite in its general clearness, harmony, and point; the absurdities of verbal argument and of Jesuit sophistry may sometimes pall upon the attention, and hardly raise a smile at this time of day. It is the fate of even the finest polemical literature to grow dead as it grows old; yet none can doubt the immortality of the genius which has so long given life to ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... unconcerned canst hear the mighty crack: Pit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurled, Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world. Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through, He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew: Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain, The creature's at his dirty work again, Throned in the centre of his thin designs, Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines! Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer, Lost the arched eyebrow, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... until the moment in which he goes to rest in the bosom of the earth? To us, Who having no thirst for dominion, seek to cultivate in man all the noble attributes given by the Creator, to us who teach clearly and without sophistry and gross superstitions the plan of salvation as it is found in the word of God; or to this legion of corrupt and hypocritical parasites, corruptors of youth, whose character they seek to debase and villify by ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... the war; the only excuse is that the middle-aged clergyman is talking to himself. There are deep things in us and you know what they are as well as I do. We have great faith, though yours at present is uncrystallized; we have a terrible honesty that all our sophistry cannot destroy and, above all, a childlike simplicity that keeps us ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... marked feature of his intellect allied itself closely with credulity, for it was directed against reason itself; and though he has expressed in admirable language many true and beautiful thoughts, the glamour of his style too often concealed much weakness and uncertainty of judgment and much sophistry ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... the discussion further. However, George Borrow, who had not said a word hitherto, entered into the discussion, opening fire on the clergyman in a very unexpected manner, and giving him such a setting down as the hearers, at any rate, never forgot. All the sophistry about the non-natural meaning of terms was held up by Borrow to ridicule, and the clergyman was beaten at every point. 'Never,' says my friend, 'did I hear one man give another such a dressing ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... clergy had misused their wealth, or were neglectful of their duties, as the English monks were in the time of Henry VIII. This Church property had been held so sacred, that Louis XIV. in his greatest necessities never presumed to appropriate any part of it. The sophistry that it belonged to the nation, and therefore that the representatives of the nation had a right to take it, probably deceived nobody. It was necessary to give some excuse or reason for such a wholesale robbery, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Greece had ended in sophistry and atheism, ethical investigations, it thus appears, had borne no better fruit. Both systems, when carried to their consequences, had been found to be not only useless to society, but actually ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... shall they rot—Ambition's honoured fools! Yes, Honour decks the turf that wraps their clay! Vain Sophistry! in these behold the tools, The broken tools, that tyrants cast away By myriads, when they dare to pave their way With human hearts—to what?—a dream alone. Can despots compass aught that hails their sway? Or call with truth one span of ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... business yielded profits, that act, whether cheating, robbing or slaughtering, was justified by some sophistry or other. Astor did not debauch, spoliate, and incite slaughter because he took pleasure in doing them. Perhaps—to extend charitable judgment—he would have preferred to avoid them. But they were all part of the formulated necessities of business which largely decreed that the exercise ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... It seems so often that Heaven lets fall its choicest gifts into hands that must be taught to hold them. Listen again. You forgot that repentant sin must not compromise, but look up, for redemption, to the purest and best. You went to her with the fine-spun sophistry that peace could be found in a mutual guilt; and she, fearful of losing what her heart so craved, thought it worth the price to buy it with a desperate, pure, beautiful lie. I have known her since the day she was born; she is as innocent and unsullied in life and deed as a holy saint. In that ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... do not mistake sophistry for reason. Surely, if power belonged only to the poor—and the poor, or the comparatively poor, always compose the mass—they would exercise it in a way to strip the rich of ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Character, the Character of an honest Man, that I have not Patience to reason upon such an uncharitable Supposition. I know very well, Sir, that I am addressing my self to a Man of Parts, a Master in Logick, and a subtle Metaphysician, not to be imposed upon by Sophistry or false Pretences: Therefore I beg of you, carefully to examine what I have said hitherto, and you'll be convinced; that my not believing you to have read The Fable of the Bees, can proceed from ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... It is not, I fear, many weeks off. Will they let the casuists quibble away the very words, and adulterate the generous spirit of the constitution? When a measure passes by the proper authorities, shall it be stopped by force? Sophistry may change the form of the question, may hide some of the consequences, and may dupe some into an opinion of its moderation when triumphant; yet the fact will speak for itself. The government can not go to the halves. It would be another, a worse government, if the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... stood at the polling place with two tickets in his hand— one, license; the other, "No License." Sophistry, policy, avarice said: "Vote License." Conscience echoed: "No License." After a moment's hesitation, he threw from him the No License ticket and put the ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... materiality, and abstruse investigations of useless subjects, they are mere literary legerdemain. Their disputations being usually built on an undefinable chimera, are solved by a paradox. Instead of exercising their power of reason they exert their powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide every subject with such casuistical minuteness, that those who are not convinced, are almost invariably confounded. This custom, it must be granted, is not quite so prevalent as it once was: a general spirit of reform is rapidly diffusing itself; and though I have heard ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... seemed to accept the idea of the substitution with alacrity. He had practically decided against Jones in the matter of the pearls. Now he listened carefully to the arguments of the prosecution and cut Colby short when he raised objections to their sophistry. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... of reason there are more difficulties in denying a providence in all the circumstances connected with our Saviour's incarnation, than in allowing its active agency; and that here, the doctrine which is most consolatory is most true. Sophistry may attempt to poison or to stop the streams of spiritual comfort, but they will nevertheless flow with ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... run after an active man, who has the start of you: to jump out of a carriage; to take your pistols; and THEN, your hammer. THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE." By heavens! does it not make a man's blood boil, to read such blundering, blood-seeking sophistry? This man, when it suits him, shows that Rey would be slow in his motions; and when it suits him, declares that Rey ought to be quick; declares ex cathedra, what pace Rey should go, and what direction he should take; shows, in a breath, that he must have run faster than Peytel; and then, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
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