"Contradiction in terms" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as I am convinced that it is agreeable to you. But a line now and then is comfortable, for, as Lady Macbeth says, "the feast grows cold that is not often cheered," or something of that sort; so a correspondence is awkwardly maintained, and is a contradiction in terms when it is on ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... cannot imagine an unconscious selection—it is for him a contradiction in terms. Did M. Flourens ever visit one of the prettiest watering-places of "la belle France," the Baie d'Arcachon? If so, he will probably have passed through the district of the Landes, and will have had an opportunity of observing the formation of "dunes" ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... province of poetic pleasure, but to the form and length of actual poetry. 'A long poem,' he says, with more truth than most people are quite willing to see, 'is a paradox.' 'I hold,' he says elsewhere, 'that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.' And, after defining his ideal, 'a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour,' he says, very justly, that 'within this limit alone can the highest order of true poetry exist.' In another essay he narrows the duration to 'half an hour, at the very utmost'; ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... consider for a moment what can be meant by a sensation of Space. Does it not look very like a contradiction in terms? Pure Space, if it means anything, means absolute material emptiness and vacuity. How, then, by any possibility can it give rise to a sensation? What sensory organ can it be conceived as affecting? How and in what way can ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... existence of the Monroe Doctrine. In a word, it recognizes every principle and precedent, whether natural or historical, which has from the beginning lain at the foundation of our American polity. It does not attempt the hypocritical contradiction in terms, of pretending to elevate a people into a self-sustaining condition through the leading-string process of "tutelage." It appeals to our historical experience, applying to present conditions the lessons of Hayti, Mexico, and Venezuela. In dealing with those cases, we did not find a great standing ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
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