"Disputant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her measured walk, and stood gazing at the jet of water in its uprush and myriad sparkling fall. Ellice answered chaffingly yet with an underlying growl; and the dispute threatened to wax warm. But the girl heeded neither disputant, her attention rapt in watching the play of the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... bow. He takes any shape in sentiment or opinion you please to give him, with most obliging disposition. As you think, so he thinks; as you say, so he says. If you deny, he denies; if you affirm, he affirms. He is no wrangler or disputant, no dogmatist or snubber. You may always rely upon having a hearing from him, whatever you say. And observe this, what he is to you, so he is to others, however averse they may be in sentiment to yourself. He is very much of a weathercock-make in his intellect. It seems to be ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... reply" to sceptical arguments. This announcement that readiness was the chief quality sought for in the solutions here given, modifies our inference from the other qualities which those solutions present; and it is but fair to presume that when the Christian disputant is not in a hurry Dr. Cumming would recommend replies less ready and more veracious. Here is an example of what in another place {74} he tells his readers is "change in their pocket . . . a little ready argument which they can employ, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... disputant who had stirred up the monster, his situation was as unenviable as it was comic to the bystanders. He had never before dropped a stone into the great geyser. He was therefore unprepared for the result. One likened him to an unprotected traveler in a heavy rain-storm. For the Bibliotaph's unpremeditated ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... syllogism; enthymeme[obs3], sorites[obs3], dilemma, perilepsis[obs3], a priori reasoning, reductio ad absurdum, horns of a dilemma, argumentum ad hominem [Lat.], comprehensive argument; empirema[obs3], epagoge[obs3]. [person who reasons] reasoner, logician, dialectician; disputant; controversialist, controvertist[obs3]; wrangler, arguer, debater polemic, casuist, rationalist; scientist; eristic[obs3]. logical sequence; good case; correct just reasoning, sound reasoning, valid reasoning, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the Orinoco, and had been friendly to the Dutch but implacable toward the Spaniards, and that their territory was to be considered as virtually Dutch, and, therefore, as having passed finally to England. But the other disputant insisted that it referred to the Brazilians and had no relation to the question with which we had to deal. During two whole sessions this ground was fought over in a legal way by these gentlemen, with great acumen, the rest of us hardly putting in ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... like the logical remark of a disputant in a Socratic dialogue of the Alcibiades type, and Sec.Sec. 31-33 a Socratic mythos to escape from the dilemma; the breakdown of this ideal plus and minus righteousness due to the hardness of men's hearts ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... deadly missile burst Right on the rover, checked his speed, And made him rock like one whose thirst Has frankly caused him to exceed, You must have felt as feels a god To whom whole nations bend the knee— Whichever of the dozen odd Disputant gunners you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... the apology of Rivetus he speaks with all the zeal of a Roman Catholic Disputant, and proves that the Calvinists are Schismatics, and had no mission; that they neither had miracles for them, nor any particular command from God: that the Ministers are factious spirits, who seek only to disturb the State: that their religion is new, and has not antiquity on ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... the disputant might urge, is all very well in the ordinary run of life, but when the great moments come conduct wants another inspiration. Such an one would consider that holiday with a thought to spare for Stella Derrick, who during its passage saw much of Henry Thresk. The actual hour when the test came ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... their literal dulness. Thus in III. 132. 18, a boy of twelve or ten (133. 16), who is divinely precocious, defeats the wise men in disputation at a sacrifice, and in the following section (134. 7 ff.) silences a disputant who is regarded as one of the cleverest priests. The conversation is recorded in full. In what does it consist? The opponent mentions a number of things which are one; the boy replies with a verse that gives pairs of things; the other mentions triads; the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... Council of Constance, which had been held in Germany and under the auspices of its emperor. He now admitted that even a general council could err, and was soon convinced "that we are all Hussites, without knowing it; yes, Paul and St. Augustine were good Hussites." Luther's public encounter with a disputant of European reputation, and the startling admissions which he was compelled to make, first made him realize that he might become the leader in an attack on the Church. He began to see that a great change and ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... we say of amenity? Milton was born a humanist, but the Puritan temper, as we know, mastered him. There is nothing more unlovely and unamiable than Milton the Puritan disputant. Some one answers his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. "I mean not," rejoins Milton, "to dispute philosophy with this pork, who never read any." However, he does reply to him, and throughout the reply Milton's great joke is, that his adversary, who was anonymous, is a serving-man. ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... remark, that we recently listened to a very interesting discussion, at the 'Union' club, between an English traveler of high repute, and a warm Unionist, upon the attitude of England. The former seemed as ardent as was the latter disputant in his abhorrence of the Southern traitors; but he constructed a very fair argument for the consistency of England. Taking for his first position, that foreign nations viewed the Jeff Davis movement as a revolution, self-sustained for ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Peter—"Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my church," &c. Luther took higher and bolder ground, denied the infallibility of councils, and appealed to Scripture as the ultimate authority. Eck had probably the advantage over his antagonist, so far as dialectics were concerned, being a more able disputant; but Luther set at defiance mere scholastic logic, and appealed to an authority which dialectics could not reach. The victory was claimed by both parties; but the result was, that Luther no longer acknowledged the authority of the Roman church, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... whatever kind in so thinking about our ancestors. The intuitive theory of morality, which would be that naturally most opposed to it, has lately taken a new development. It is not now maintained that all men have the same amount of conscience. Indeed, only a most shallow disputant who did not understand even the plainest facts of human nature could ever have maintained it; if men differ in anything they differ in the fineness and the delicacy of their moral intuitions, however we may suppose those ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... in his Life of General Meade, speaks of Halleck and other prominent officials in Washington in these terms: "Possessing much of the skill of the lawyer and disputant, Halleck was without military ability. The Secretary of War, like many other men who exercise vast power, was not great enough to refrain from the use of his authority in matters where his knowledge and experience did not qualify him to form the soundest views. Acting with ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... advanced with stern dignity. The hand accustomed to command, and even tyrannize, was unnerved; but its appearance convinced Sagestus, that he had oftener wielded a thought than a weapon; and that he had silenced, by irresistible conviction, the superficial disputant, and the being, who doubted because he had not strength to believe, who, wavering between different borrowed opinions, first caught at one straw, then at another, unable to settle into any consistency of character. ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... novel on board, and refused to comply; the master-at-arms insisted; she threatened him with the vengeance of the Company, the premier, and the nobility and gentry of the British realm. The master-at-arms, finding he had no chance in argument, doused the glim—pitiable resource of a weak disputant—then basely fled ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... showing wit and ingenuity, superior to the rest of mankind. The same blind adherence to their own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in inforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... builds upon rules of justice confessedly true—each is triumphant so long as he is not obliged to take into consideration any other maxims of justice than those he has selected, but that as soon as their several maxims are brought face to face, each disputant seems to have as much to say for himself as the others. No one can carry out his own notion of justice without trampling upon another equally binding.'[16] This view of the matter, however, can scarcely be regarded as satisfactory. If utilitarian ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... issues would be proportioned to the exact wants of business; and, on the other, that if the state would only restrict them more rigidly business would be kept within proper limits, and all would go well. Each disputant draws from a panic about the same amount of support for his views, because in the great variety of circumstances which surround it there are always some which favor any theory of its origin. In one thing, however, both sets of observers are apt to agree ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... of war may be applied to disputing,—it should be always so managed as to remember that the only true end of it is peace: but generally true disputants are like true sportsmen,—their whole delight is in the pursuit; and a disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... stronghold, is said to have been first introduced by a young girl of humble station, Maria Belandelle, into this part of the country. Strong in her conviction, and anxious to spread the truth, this person, more zealous than prudent, ventured to come forward, in 1534, as antagonist to, and disputant against, a Franciscan friar. However good her arguments might be, the result of the controversy had of course been previously decided on by the strongest party. She was convicted of heresy and impiety, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... to be egotistical; nor to be criticized for being so. It is not pleasant to reveal to high and low, young and old, what has gone on within me from my early years. It is not pleasant to be giving to every shallow or flippant disputant the advantage over me of knowing my most private thoughts, I might even say the intercourse between myself and my Maker. But I do not like to be called to my face a liar and a knave; nor should I be doing my duty to my faith or to my name, if I were to suffer it. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... hair, No power can the impenitent absolve; Nor to repent and will at once consist, By contradiction absolute forbid.'" Oh mis'ry! how I shook myself, when he Seiz'd me, and cried, "Thou haply thought'st me not A disputant in logic so exact." To Minos down he bore me, and the judge Twin'd eight times round his callous back the tail, Which biting with excess of rage, he spake: "This is a guilty soul, that in the fire Must vanish. Hence perdition-doom'd I rove A prey to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... quotation and academic reasoning, modelled after Schaller's older Dissertation, and not worth an abstract. More interesting than itself are eleven pieces of congratulatory Latin verse prefixed to it by college friends of the disputant. In more than one of these Milton is mentioned; but the liveliest mention of him is in a set of Phalaecians signed "Christianus Keck." Phalaecians are not to be attempted in English; but, as the semi-absurd relish of the thing would be lost in prose, the first few lines ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... human nature!" cried the second disputant, folding his arms doggedly, in preparation ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... should be founded, or had furnished a remedy against poison, and it was also an arbiter of disputes.[858] Artemidorus describes how, at a certain place, there were two crows. Persons having a dispute set out two heaps of sweetmeats, one for each disputant. The birds swooped down upon them, eating one and dispersing the other. He whose heap had been scattered won the case.[859] Birds were believed to have guided the migrating Celts, and their flight furnished auguries, because, as Deiotaurus ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... one place, transferring himself to another, and sometimes to a third and a fourth. Some masters were, perhaps, more distinguished in human Science; others in Divinity. Columbkill studied in two or three different schools, and visited others, perhaps as disputant or lecturer—a common custom in later years. Nor should we associate the idea of under-age with the students of whom we speak. Many of them, whether as teachers or learners, or combining both characters together, reached ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... have seen already how religion has been put in peril by the irruption of barbarism, and I am very much afraid that this will happen again." At a Disputation in the University of Wittenberg, the Chancellor addressed a disputant with such epithets as "Hear, thou hog! thou hound! thou fool! or whatever thou art, thou stolid ass!" Another prominent personage of Wittenberg, in a Disputation, became so enraged at hearing Melanchthon addressed as authority ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... discovered that he battled with a disputant who imbibed his faith from the lights of nature, eschewing all subtleties of doctrine, he willingly abandoned a controversy from which he believed neither profit nor credit was to be derived. While the scout was speaking, he had also seated ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... ancestors. But he was a brave and steady citizen, and a warm opposer of Gracchus, as appears from an Oration of Gracchus against him: we have likewise some of Tubero's speeches against Gracchus. He was not indeed a shining Orator: but he was a learned, and a very skilfull disputant. ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... comrades of the Royal Society, he was of opinion that man does not live by science alone, and nothing came amiss to him.... Even in private the alarm of war is sometimes heard, and Mr. Huxley is not a whit less formidable as a disputant across the table than with pen in hand. Yet an angry man must be very angry indeed before he could be angry with this adversary. He disarmed his enemies with an amiable grace that made defeat endurable, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... to have his word/Of contradiction] To have his word of contradiction is no more than, he is used to contradict; and to have his word, that is, not to be opposed. We still say of an obstinate disputant, he will have the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... time I had a very bad opinion of Mr. Miller, and there was no good feeling existing between us. In reply to their communication I said: "You have a number of brethren in Kentucky of equal or superior ability to Mr. Miller, whom I can meet as Christian gentlemen, and when I have the promise of such a disputant, I shall be ready to arrange propositions." They then applied to Mr. Fitch, and a correspondence between us was opened. My purpose then, and ever since in debating with Methodists, was to discuss the system of ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... beat about the bush, he could not collect himself. By degrees he did so, and replied to me in a manner that he doubtless thought would convince me at once. "If the case you suggest were to happen," he said, "and the Pope declaring for one disputant were to excommunicate the other and all his followers, such excommunication would not merely be unjust, it would be false; and it has never been decided that a false excommunication should hinder us from ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... internal convulsion, and his work was first published very shortly after the departure of our forefathers from Leyden. It is well known that in the course of the contest Mr. Robinson more than once appeared, with credit to himself, as a public disputant against Episcopius; and from the manner in which the fact is related by Governor Bradford, it is apparent that the whole English Church at Leyden took a zealous interest in the religious part of the controversy. As strangers in the land, it is presumable ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... did!' sang Linton, sinking into the recess of his chair, and leaning back his head to enjoy the agitation of the other disputant, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... he went from teaching school to sweeping the college floor at Hiram Institute. Here, besides gaining a considerable step in his education, Garfield began to exercise his gifts as a speaker. The debating society of his college found in him its most fluent disputant, and the college became immensely proud of the promising youth, whose reputation as a ready and effective speaker was spreading far ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... Mrs. J. alone; but not now exclusively among heathen idolaters. The affectionate zeal of the disciples rejoiced their hearts; and others, and among them the old disputant, Moung-Shwa-gnong, seemed sincere and hopeful inquirers. Three women, induced by him, also visited Mrs. Judson to learn the way of life. One of these (the one we have before alluded to) was characterized by superior discernment and mental power, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... often as we deduce any positive conclusions from a negative idea, we are involved in darkness, perplexity, and inevitable contradiction. As these difficulties arise from the nature of the subject, they oppress, with the same insuperable weight, the philosophic and the theological disputant; but we may observe two essential and peculiar circumstances, which discriminated the doctrines of the Catholic church from the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... I were a more accomplished disputant, or a more learned person, perhaps I should feel its truth, its usefulness for those who are happy enough to perceive it; but if I find evidence for it which I cannot combat, I also find objections against it which I cannot ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... disputed. Nor was there collision over the necessity of what is called intellectual cultivation. The boy must be taught something of the world in which he was to live; nay, this latter knowledge seemed to be most immediately practical. As each disputant fixed his eye on one or the other aim that end appeared to him to be the most important. Hence, by a natural lapse, they came to treat subjects as antagonistic which were, in fact, parallel and quite consistent. The one called the others godless—the others threw back the aspersion of ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... out. I had counted her clever; I had not reckoned with her powers of reasoning. Influenced as I was by emotion when in her presence, I resorted to a personal application of my opinions—the last and most unfair resort of a disputant. I said I would rather be Anson dead than Mrs. Anson living; I would rather be the active than the passive sinner; the victim, than a part of that great ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... after a process of interrogation, in which Socrates explains to him the nature of a 'simile in multis,' Socrates himself defines figure as 'the accompaniment of colour.' But some one may object that he does not know the meaning of the word 'colour;' and if he is a candid friend, and not a mere disputant, Socrates is willing to furnish him with a simpler and more philosophical definition, into which no disputed word is allowed to intrude: 'Figure is the limit of form.' Meno imperiously insists that he must still have a ...
— Meno • Plato
... attainable, not an oscillation from disgust to admiration, but a well-balanced stable judgment which should allow full value to merits and to defects, and sum up the man as a whole. Something of the sort she tried to suggest; neither disputant would hear of it, and Marchmont went off with an unyielding assertion that the man was a cad, no more and no less than a cad. Dick looked after him with a well-satisfied air; May fancied that opposition and the failure of others to understand ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... was disputing with a Lion which was the stronger of the two, and while they were seeking evidence on the matter in dispute, they came at last to a sepulchre, on which {the human disputant} pointed out a Lion, depicted with his jaws rent asunder by a Man—a striking proof of superior strength. The Lion made answer: "This was painted by a human hand; if Lions knew how to paint, you would see the man undermost. But I will give a more convincing proof of ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... intensity of devotion, he was more idolized than any since his prototype, Henry Clay. With political erudition was blended an eloquence inspiring and fascinating; a nobility of character often displayed as the champion of the weak; a disputant adept in all the mazes of analysis, denunciation, or sarcasm, he had created antipathy as bitter as his affections were unyielding. While Speaker of the House, with his counterpart in eloquence, Roscoe Conkling, he had ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... large eyes glittering blackly in the paleness of his face. Gnulemah, with the serenity of a victorious disputant willing to make ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... another about questions of good and bad. They imagine an abstract moral order in which the objective truth resides; and each tries to prove that this pre-existing order is more accurately reflected in his own ideas than in those of his adversary. It is because one disputant is backed by this overarching abstract order that we think the other should submit. Even so, when it is a question no longer of two finite thinkers, but of God and ourselves,—we follow our usual habit, and imagine a sort of de jure relation, which antedates ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... obscurit; 50 Et sur mes faibles mains fondant leur dlivrance, Il me fit d'un empire accepter l'esprance. A ses desseins secrets tremblante j'obis. Je vins. Mais je cachai ma race et mon pays. Qui pourrait cependant t'exprimer les cabales 55 Que formait en ces lieux ce peuple de rivales, Qui toutes disputant un si grand intrt, Des yeux d'Assurus attendaient leur arrt? Chacune avait sa brigue et de puissants suffrages: L'une d'un sang fameux vantait les avantages; 60 L'autre, pour se parer de superbes ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... let him out. Richardson, wholly occupied with the argument, and regarding the retreat of his opponent as an acknowledgment of defeat, still pressed his point, and even hollowed "more last words" through the coach-window after Sheridan, who, walking quietly home, left the poor disputant responsible for the heavy fare of the coach.] nor a softer enemy to soothe one into ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... dear Julia, that an inaccurate use of words produces such a strange confusion in all reasoning, that in the heat of debate, the combatants, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes, fall promiscuously on both. A skilful disputant knows well how to take advantage of this confusion, and sometimes endeavours to create it. I do not know whether I am to suspect you of such a design; but I ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Havre in 1737, Bernardin, through his imagination, was an Utopian visionary, an idyllic dreamer; through his temper, an angry disputant with society. His life was a fantastic series of adventures. Having read as a boy the story of Crusoe, and listened to the heroic record of the travels and sufferings of Jesuit missionaries, his fancy caught fire; he would seek some undiscovered island in mid-ocean, he would found some ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... partners had a serious row. They quarreled, then fought. Two of the yellow partners killed the third! And now, a serious problem confronted the two survivors of that misunderstanding. What was to be done with the remains of the unsuccessful disputant?" ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... drawing-room. The controversy between the framers of the Church of England in its present state, and the hot gospellers who, with Thomas Cartwright at their head, denied the proposition (not deniable or denied now by any sane and scholarly disputant) that church discipline and government are points left to a great extent undefined in the Scriptures, had gone on for years before Martin appeared. Cartwright and Whitgift had fought, with a certain advantage of warmth and eloquence on Cartwright's side, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... of witness to an altercation in which she took no part was highly displeasing, as being an unimportant secondary post—now rallying her dignity, prepared to utter a discourse which was to prove both parties in the wrong, and to make it clear to each disputant that she had reason to be ashamed of herself, and ought to submit humbly to the superior sense of the individual then addressing her. Fortunately for her audience, she had not harangued above ten minutes when Sarah's ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... in parts of the English Book of Common Prayer. But in {155} general his sentences are long and involved, full of inventions and latinized constructions. Controversy at that day was conducted on scholastic lines. Each disputant, instead of appealing at once to the arguments of expediency and common sense, began with a formidable display of learning, ransacking Greek and Latin authors and the fathers of the Church for opinions in support of his own position. These authorities he ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... earnest desire for the salvation of his opponents. An extraordinary man, younger than himself, full of energy and enthusiasm, entered the lists with him; and in Edward Burrough, very properly called a son of thunder and of consolation, Bunyan found an able disputant. He was talented, pious, and fearless in his Master's work, and became eminently useful in laying the foundation of the Society of Friends. Soon after this he was numbered with the noble army of martyrs at the age of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... gentle hand. I did not notice her movement to her father's side. She was there when I first observed her, with one hand laid upon his temple, and lightly smoothing the hair with a caressing motion. Gradually the high tone of then disputant subsided, and his words had in them less of personal rancour. Still, the discussion went on; and I noticed that the maiden's hand, which rested on the temple when unimpassioned words were spoken, resumed ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur |
