"Disputatious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doubting, disputatious spirit—this habit of questioning every thing whenever a quibble can be raised—should continue to advance, where is the law, which, after fighting its way through both houses of the legislature, and, perhaps, escaping the veto, may not be eventually ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Sumner, Garrison, Phillips, and Beecher, with considerable interest; but at no time could he see that the problem was a vital one for him. He did not care to be a soldier or an officer of soldiers; he had no gift for polemics; his mind was not of the disputatious order—not even in the realm of finance. He was concerned only to see what was of vast advantage to him, and to devote all his attention to that. This fratricidal war in the nation could not help him. It really delayed, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... officers forcibly prevented from executing them; he was himself insulted by the mob, and had not, he wrote, "the shadow of authority". There were no troops nearer than New York. Bernard, an upright and fairly able man, though too apt to dispute with his disputatious opponents, was extremely unpopular, for it was known that he advised the ministers to take strong measures. It was his duty to represent the royal authority and to maintain the laws, and he told them that he could do nothing unless he was supported. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... between a man as his antagonists depict him, and as he really is in his own character, may be as wide as the ocean. I was particularly impressed with this fact when I met the Rev. Dr. Ewer of New York, who had been accused of being disputatious and arrogant. Truth was, he was a master in the art of religious defence, wielding a scimitar of sharp edge. I never met a man with more of the childlike, the affable, and the self-sacrificing qualities than Dr. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... often presided at the general sittings. The discussion was perfectly free, without oratorical display or pretension, but serious, profound, varied, detailed, earnest, erudite, and at the same time practical. I have heard Count Berenger, a man of disputatious and independent temper, and a quasi-republican under the Empire, maintain there, with ingenious and imposing subtlety, universal suffrage, and distinctions of qualification for voting, against direct election and the concentrated right of suffrage. MM. Cuvier, Simeon, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... tall man, running to fat: soft-spoken, with a delicate, gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself, having pledged reservists all day long. This was a very different type of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling disputatious fellow at Origny. He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative painter in his youth. There were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he said. And if any one has read Zola's description of the workman's marriage-party visiting the Louvre, they would do well to have heard Bazin ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... matter is complicated enough, and there is occupation for the most disputatious. But I do not think that these disputes very directly affect the argument of ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... for I saw that the man was in an aggressively disputatious humour, and I wanted to have no words with him. "Well, what happened after that? Go on with ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... the space of a good half-hour. Pretty poor stuff, it may seem now, oh, you grown-ups who have lost the magic eyes of childhood, but snickers and shouts and giggles filled the hall while the dialogue lasted. Finally the lay figures waxed so disputatious that Professor O'Reilley consigned them to the darkness of the trunk ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... mother of God and man, the instrument of reproduction, of tender care, of motherhood, the disputatious, groping mind of man agreed to bow, silenced and awed by the ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... you suppose that this disputatious little load of a Marat will hang me?" asked Mirabeau, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... things take their true goodness or their true evil from the end they aim at. And thus it was that our Lord, aiming only at His Father's ends and never at His own, both manifested and attained to a Divine goodness, just as the greedy crowds of Galilee and the disputatious disciples, as long and as far as they made their belly or their honour their end and aim, to that extent fell short of all true goodness, all true satisfaction, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... unlike the real man as seen in his own home or among his intimates. There he was lively, playful, and uniformily good-humoured, full of anecdote, and a good teller of a story.... In conversation he was easy and pleasant, and the reverse of disputatious. Even in the worst of his political difficulties—and he had some pretty hard trials in this way—he had the power of throwing off public cares for the time, and in his house retained his cheerfulness and good-humour.... In matters ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... added those of a sturdy bon-vivant, together with Forrester, and a few who still girt in the lawyer as the prince of the small jest, discharged their witticisms upon the staggering condition of affairs; not forgetting in their assaults the disputatious civilian himself. That worthy, we regret to add, though still unwilling to yield, and still striving to retort, had nevertheless suffered considerable loss of equilibrium. His speeches were more than ever confused, and it was remarked that his eyes danced about ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... my father's "Confession," which he read not long before his death. Having promised to read it, "to try to understand it," and "not to lose my temper," he "started to write a long letter in answer to the 'Confession,' but never finished it... for fear of becoming disputatious." ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... aggression, which, if they were to go on, must make these co-terminous communities instead of being one people of one blood, one faith, one jurisprudence, one in the very principles of civilization themselves—instead of that must make us cavilling, disputatious, foreign countries. The only way to stop that is for the whole people—and remember that the whole people in the final result must be the arbiters—to join in creating one great union government which shall act ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... told him, when they met the next morning, what had passed through her mind that night, her knowledge of Noel Vanstone warned her that one of two results would certainly happen. Either he would be angry and disputatious; would ask for proofs; and, finding none forthcoming, would accuse her of alarming him without a cause, to serve her own jealous end of keeping Magdalen out of the house; or he would be seriously startled, would clamor for the protection of the law, and would warn the Bygraves to stand ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... debated, and presently their dispute attracted the attention of a man with a huge black beard. He rose from where he sat gnawing at a piece of meat and moved grandly toward the disputatious group. They parted at his approach, but a single member continued the debate against even the bearded giant. The bearded one plucked the glittering truncheon from his belt. The disputatious one gasped in fear and flung himself desperately forward. But the bearded man kept ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... were not the men who struck down the solemn and imposing prelacy of England, and vindicated the divine right of men to freedom by tossing the head of an anointed tyrant from the scaffold at Whitehall. It was the so-called schismatics, ranters, and levellers, the disputatious corporals and Anabaptist musketeers, the dread and abhorrence alike of prelate and presbyter, who, under the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... keep strictly to my part and give him no cause to doubt me. He was clearly practising his own part on me, and I must appear to take him literally on his professions. So, presently, I woke up and engaged him in a disputatious conversation about the morality of selling strong liquors. He responded readily, and put the case for alcohol with much point and vehemence. The discussion interested the soldiers, and one of them, to show he was on Linklater's ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... of sense I have in no wise been;—but slave of thought?... And who can say: I have been always free, Lived ever in the light of my own soul?— I cannot; I have lived in wrath and gloom, Fierce, disputatious, ever at war with man, Far from my own soul, far from warmth and light. But I have not grown easy in these bonds— But I have not denied what bonds these were. Yea, I take myself to witness, That I have loved no darkness, Sophisticated no truth, Nursed no delusion, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the whole course of the expedition; but at Tarbet they became more violent than ever. The Committee wished to interfere even with the patriarchal dominion of the Earl over the Campbells, and would not allow him to settle the military rank of his kinsmen by his own authority. While these disputatious meddlers tried to wrest from him his power over the Highlands, they carried on their own correspondence with the Lowlands, and received and sent letters which were never communicated to the nominal General. Hume and his confederates had reserved ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... parties of the same kind, it was first silent, then talking, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogethery, then articulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder it was difficult to get down again without stumbling; and, to crown all, Kinnaird and I had to conduct Sheridan down a damned corkscrew staircase, which had been ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... statements of others. This constitutes Candour. It consists in giving a fair and deliberate hearing to opinions, statements, and arguments, and weighing fairly and honestly their tendency. It is, therefore, opposed to prejudice, blind attachment to preconceived opinions, and that narrow disputatious spirit which delights in captious criticism, and will hear nothing with calmness that is opposed to its own views; which distorts or misrepresents the sentiments of its opponents, ascribing them to unworthy motives, or deducing from them conclusions ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... good minds. But though we cannot explain how they are Three and have a true diversity from one another, so that they are not barely different names and modes; yet we firmly believe that there is but one God.'[245] A jealous and disputatious orthodoxy might be correct in affirming that this exposition of the Trinity was a form of Sabellianism, and one which might perhaps be accepted by some of the Unitarians. It is stated here rather to show on what scanty grounds the opponents of the 'Latitudinarian ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... irresistible chain of premises and conclusions, but the child with a light to his Father's mind; therefore, on the divinity of our Blessed Lord, the Lord's day, the principle of communion, of church discipline, and of literally giving up all—if a man wishes to be disputatious and escape the easy and blessed yoke of Christ's love he may, and therefore will walk in darkness, whilst the child is, in his simplicity, surrounded by ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves
... his sister. Their mother, the widow of that Makimmon whose disputatious temper had been dignified by the epitaph of "heroic sacrifice," had died of a complicity of patent medicines the winter before. An older brother had totally disappeared from the cognizance of Greenstream during Gordon's ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... demonstration; the hot-bloods of the universities, aided by various political enthusiasts, were intent on doing something—and doing it right away. There had been a preliminary meeting at Heidelberg, and this led to the Frankfort Convention; 600 disputatious delegates were going to build a liberal ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke, instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... involuntarily is a contradiction; wherefore he who maintains that injustice is involuntary will deem that the unjust does injustice involuntarily. I too admit that all men do injustice involuntarily, and if any contentious or disputatious person says that men are unjust against their will, and yet that many do injustice willingly, I do not agree with him. But, then, how can I avoid being inconsistent with myself, if you, Cleinias, and you, Megillus, say to ...
— Laws • Plato
... subject of dispute between the governments of Great Britain and America was the right of search. Conflicting interpretations existed between them of the treaty of Washington, which gave rise to a tedious and disputatious correspondence. The year closed, also, before the question was settled; but at the same time, though there were signs of an open rupture between the two governments, yet there were circumstances which gave rise to a well-founded hope, and it has happily proved to be correct, that the swords of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hands of the new proprietor. The son of a miner was compelled to follow the father's occupation.[8] Slavery fixed a brutalising mark on generation after generation that is not yet entirely erased. In the first half of the nineteenth century the knights of the shuttle—intellectual, disputatious, and lyrical—looked down with infinite contempt on the ignorant and boorish slaves of the pick. Poetry has, in consequence, little to say about the digger for coal. The song of "The Collier Laddie," attributed to Burns, is ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... not think the fracture was entirely within the capsular ligament.' John Thompson of Edinburgh, on seeing it, declared 'upon his troth and honor' that it had never been broken. This eminent surgeon, like the disputatious Massachusetts Scotchman, 'always positive and sometimes right,' was in this instance mistaken, as the principle advocated by Dr. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... a disputatious crew Each evening meet; the sot, the cheat, the shrew; Riots are nightly heard:—the curse, the cries Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies, While shrieking children hold each threat'ning hand, ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... something to say the moment they met and they were never through talking when he had to go. They disagreed so often that Mrs. Galland thought they made a business of it. She wondered how real friendship could exist between two such controversialists. They could be seriously disputatious to the point of quarrelling; they could be light-heartedly disputatious to the bantering point, where either was uncertain which side of the argument he ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... always followed his little casual errors of industry followed them still. He could get away from the conveyancer's chambers, but he could not get away from one of the pupils, who had taken a fancy to him,—a tall, serious, raw-boned, hard-working, disputatious pupil, with ideas of his own about reforming the Law of Real Property, who has been the scourge of Mr. Idle's existence ever since the fatal day when he fell into the mistake of attempting to study the law. Before that time his friends were all sociable idlers like ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... worn itself out by its own violence—more especially when the great questions involve a mere difference of opinion as to the results of important measures or the general tendency of the public policy—then, when opposition would only serve to arouse a factious or disputatious spirit, his part is to glide quietly along with the popular movement, acquiescing in and reconciling himself to the condition of affairs till such time as the public sentiment is ripe, and the circumstances fitting for the advocacy and the triumph of his own views; meanwhile ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... was hon fire." (It was a square place left open in the gable for ventilation.) Little knots of people gathered together to talk over and over again the same important subject, and foremost among them, tallest among them, was the General, with his disputatious tongue and his occasional ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Avoid the disputatious. When you greet an acquaintance with "How are you?" and he replies: "On the contrary, how are you?" ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... religious faith, has never been sufficiently considered. It is probable that such a condition has never existed before or since that era of the world. The consequences to Rome were—that the reasoning and disputatious part of her population took refuge from the painful state of doubt in Atheism; amongst the thoughtless and irreflective the consequences were chiefly felt in their morals, which were thus ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... harder as his brain grew soft, He left the hall he could not bring away, And grateful millions blessed the happy day! Whate'er contention in that hall is heard, His sovereign State has still the final word: For disputatious statesmen when they roar Startle the ancient echoes of his snore, Which from their dusty nooks expostulate And close with stormy clamor the debate. To low melodious thunders then they fade; Their murmuring lullabies all ears invade; Peace takes the Chair; ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... which stole from closed shops and warehouses, and hung heavily on the still air. The public-houses had just extinguished their lights, and in the neighbourhood of each was a cluster of lingering men and women, merry or disputatious. Mid-Easter was inviting repose and festivity; to-morrow would see culmination of riot, and after that it would only depend upon pecuniary resources how long the muddled interval between holiday and renewed labour should drag ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... to my dying friend's arguments and admonitions, I think I may venture to say, with a suitable spirit. The arrogant or disputatious passions could not possibly find place in a scene like this. Even if I thought him in the wrong, what but brutal depravity could lead me to endeavour to shake his belief at a time when sickness had made his judgment infirm, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... opinion and sentiment in the character of the individual himself? Is there a fluidity of character in modern democratic societies which contrasts not altogether favourably with the strong solid types of old? Are Englishmen becoming less like Romans, and more like disputatious Greeks? These and many other considerations of the same kind are enough to secure a ready welcome for any thinker who can light up the obscurities ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... have shaped our beliefs, colored our mental processes and controlled our destinies; we see, for example, pessimism opposed to optimism, materialism to spiritualism, realism to idealism, capitalism to socialism, and so on endlessly. Each of the disputatious systems has a large number of followers and each faction looks upon the others as deprived of truth, common sense and knowledge. All of them play with the words "natural law" which they ignorantly presume to have as the basis and content of their ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... galleries, and a pile of gold sufficient to cram a cellar. The family passed as being the most pious of the Roman patriziato, a family of burning faith whose sword had always been at the service of the Church; but if it were the most believing family it was also the most violent, the most disputatious, constantly at war, and so fiercely savage that the anger of the Boccaneras had become proverbial. And thence came their arms, the winged dragon spitting flames, and the fierce, glowing motto, with its play on the name "Bocca sera, Alma rossa" (black mouth, red soul), the mouth darkened ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... significant bearing on that meeting of the Ladies' Aid, for little John Thomas Forrest, dazzled by the offer of three lead-pencils for two rubbers, sold his mother's only pair, and being a cautious child, and not fond of disputatious conversation, did not mention the matter to his mother, but left her to discover her loss herself, which she did the day ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... without sausages, and less florid with beer. Yet on the whole, the aforesaid empty purse aiding, we were filled with not dishonest sentiment, keen as sleuth-hounds on the track of knowledge, and disputatious as only lads of Calvinistic training ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... dialectic method, which he affected, was indeed dropped, and a more harmonious form of art than the Euripidean was created for comedy by Menan'der, when the Athenians, after passing through their disputatious period, had settled down into a tranquil acceptation of the facts of life. Yet this return to harmony of form and purity of perception did not abate the influence of Euripides. Here and there throughout his tragedies he had said, and well said, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... says, in a concatenation accordingly;—the right hand moved as if it were upon bad terms with the left, and the legs showed an inclination to foot it in different and opposite directions. In short, to use an extravagant comparison, the members of Colonel Desborough seemed rather to resemble the disputatious representatives of a federative congress, than the well-ordered union of the orders of the state, in a firm and well-compacted monarchy, where each holds his own place, and all obey the dictates of ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... which everyone must have thought first when stage-poets were subjected to reproof. We repeat: Jonson only intended measuring himself against him who was the greatest of his time. This was fully in accordance with his disputatious inclination. [6] ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... be descended from the acquisitive art in the combative line, through the pugnacious, the controversial, the disputatious arts; and he will be found at last in the eristic section of the latter, and in that division of it which disputes in private for gain about the general principles of ...
— Sophist • Plato
... after the first number of the Anti-Jacobin Magazine and Review was published, with a caricature of Gillray's, in which Coleridge and I were introduced with asses' heads, and Lloyd and Lamb as toad and frog. Lamb got warmed with whatever was on the table, became disputatious, and said things to Godwin which made him quietly say, 'Pray, Mr. Lamb, are you toad or frog?' Mrs. Coleridge will remember the scene, which was to her sufficiently uncomfortable. But the next morning S.T.C. called ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... have them buried with me, I think, for I have not the heart to burn them while I live. Do write. I shall go to the mountains as soon as the weather clears; on the way thither, I marry myself; then I set up my family altar among the pine-woods, 3,000 feet, sir, from the disputatious sea.—I am, dear Weg, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... But the great Mohammedan philosophers, simply accepting the doctrine of the Oneness of God as the only thing of which man can be certain, look upon all the rest as idle fables, having, however, this political use, that they furnish contention, and therefore occupation to disputatious sectarians, and consolation to ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... adds: "I assert this with confidence, though it was not the impression of various persons who saw me in my childhood. They, as I have since found, thought me greatly and disagreeably self-conceited; probably because I was disputatious, and did not scruple to give direct contradictions to things ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Honours, cold Neglect instead! For Respite, disputatious Heirs a Bed Of Thorns for them will furnish. Go, Seek not Here for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... do. Now when one's friend, or oneself, is crotchety, dogmatic, or disputatious, one cannot turn over ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... was the best judge at a horse-race the county afforded; he was occasionally second in a duel of fisticuffs, though he usually contrived to reconcile the adversaries on the turf before any damage was done; he was the arbiter on all controverted points of literature, science, or woodcraft among the disputatious denizens of Clary's Grove, and his decisions were never appealed from. His native tact and humor were invaluable in his work as a peacemaker, and his enormous physical strength, which he always used with a magnanimity rare among giants, placed his off-hand decrees beyond the reach of contemptuous ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... have been born in Abelard's time,—you've such a disputatious spirit. That's I don't know how many times you have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... called MONK Lewis, from his once popular romance of that name, was a good-hearted man, and, like too many of that fraternity, a disagreeable one—verbose, disputatious and paradoxical. His Monk and Castle Spectre elevated him into fame; and he continued to write ghost-stories till, following as he did in the wake of Mrs. Radcliffe, he quite overstocked the market. Lewis visited his estates in Jamaica, and came back perfectly ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... in the town, John Collins by name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another, which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice; and thence, besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of disgusts and, perhaps ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... sailors, the heroes of camp and battleship. The war once over, the displaced types reappeared along with others which are being created to meet new administrative, economic, and ethical problems. The competing church retires its militant and disputatious leaders in an age which gives its applause to apostles of concord, fraternal feeling, and co-operation. At a given time the heroes and traitors of a group reflect its competitions and rivalries with ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... became interested in any matter, he had but to introduce it before the Junto for discussion; straightway each member who belonged to any one of the other societies brought it up in that society. Thus through so many active-minded and disputatious young men interest in the subject speedily percolated through a community of no greater size than Philadelphia. Franklin was the tap-root of the whole growth, and sent his ideas circulating throughout all the widespreading branches. He tells us that in fact he often used this efficient machinery ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... table-cloth the last time they were served, coming to mind, with thoughts of early days. And here I was discussing slavery. Now, while the cranberries were over the fire, making one feel domestic and also bringing back young days, it was impossible to be disputatious, had we been so inclined. The Northern cranberry-meadow and the Southern sugar-plantation seemed mixed up in my feelings on this subject, qualifying and rectifying each other. Perhaps the soothing ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... extensive surface, and here and there had dived deeply. He enchanted the Parson by his comments on Saint Chrysostom; he dazzled Sir Peter with his lore in the antiquities of ancient Britain; he captivated Kenelm by his readiness to enter into that most disputatious of sciences called metaphysics; while for Lady Chillingly, and the three sisters who were invited to meet him, he was more entertaining, but not less instructive. Equally at home in novels and in good books, he gave to the spinsters a list of innocent works in either; while for ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reprobation, and final perseverance. Yet we do not remember a line in his works from which it can be inferred that he was either a Calvinist or an Arminian. While the world was resounding with the noise of a disputatious philosophy and a disputatious theology, the Baconian school, like Allworthy seated between Square and Thwackum, preserved a calm neutrality, half scornful, half benevolent, and content with adding ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... allows, that our reason is more capable of refuting and destroying than of proving and building; that there is scarcely any philosophical or theological matter in respect of which it does not create great difficulties. Thus', he says, 'if one desired to follow it in a disputatious spirit, as far as it can go, one would often be reduced to a state of troublesome perplexity; and in fine, there are doctrines certainly true, which it disputes with insoluble objections.' I think that what ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... the assembly, as regards both his capacity and his character. He is a thorough and industrious worker, and practical in his views and opinions; although his predominantly juristic training and mode of thinking make him at times disputatious, and tend to impede the progress of affairs. In official intercourse he is frank and obliging, so long as his [Bavarian] patriotism, which is high-strung and extremely irritable, is treated with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Like its great Author, when it first made its appearance, it had "neither form nor comeliness" in the eyes of many. It neither met the expectations of the selfish, proud, ambitious Jew, nor of the disputatious, philosophic Greek. To the one "it was a stumbling-block," and to the other "foolishness." And there have been men in every age, who have been unable to find in Christianity all that their preconceived notions had led them to expect in a religion from Heaven. There are men still, even among ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... then occupied ourselves to the 7th in refitting and laying in a stock of wood and water; and had much satisfaction in finding as much bread in our prize as might serve for our long run to Guam, with the aid of the scanty remains of our old stock. After a long disputatious negotiation, it was settled that Mr Fry and Mr Stratton were to take charge of our prize, which we named the Bachelor, though under Captain Dover, but they were not to be contradicted by him in the business, as his business was to see that nothing was done in her contrary to the interest ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... de Bassompiere, in the journal of his embassy, affords another instance of his "English familiarity." He says, "The King of England gave me a long audience, and a very disputatious one. He put himself in a passion, while I, without losing my respect, expressed myself freely. The Duke of Buckingham, when he observed the king and myself very warm, leapt suddenly betwixt his majesty and me, exclaiming, 'I am come to set all to rights betwixt ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... began in 1833 with the first reformed Parliament, and it seemed as fresh for those remote days as for last month. He enjoyed combat for its own sake, not so much from any inborn pugnacity, for he was not disputatious in ordinary conversation, as because it called out his fighting force and stimulated his whole nature. "I am never nervous in reply," he once said, "though I am sometimes nervous in opening a debate." And although his impetuosity ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... float in the wheel, as it struck in the water, echoed with individual distinctness, and the hubbub created thereby, in the otherwise unruffled lake, left its trace visible on the mirrory surface for so great a distance as to justify a disputatious man in questioning whether the term "trackless way" was applicable to the course a vessel had passed over. Here we are, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... returned Dick, taking the hand which was offered him, "good speed to you, if speed you may. But I misdoubt it shrewdly. Y' are too disputatious." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rather with such a destitution of all principle be fit to be called a government? No, sir. It should not be denominated a constitution. It should be called, rather, a collection of topics for everlasting controversy; heads of debate for a disputatious people. It would not be a government. It would not be adequate to any practical good, or fit for any ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... speedily lost all command of my temper, and my impetuous passions whirled me onward at their pleasure. I had sate down sulky and discontented, and disposed to be silent—the wine rendered me loquacious, disputatious, and quarrelsome. I contradicted whatever was asserted, and attacked, without any respect to my uncle's table, both his politics and his religion. The affected moderation of Rashleigh, which he well knew how to qualify with irritating ingredients, was even more provoking to me than ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... collision with me, approached me often with an earnest desire and hope to find some spiritual good in me, but withdrew disappointed, finding me either cold and defensive, or (perhaps they thought) warm and disputatious. Thus, as long as artificial tests of spirituality are allowed to exist, their erroneousness is not easily exposed by the mere wear and tear of life. When the collision of opinion is very strong, two good men may meet, and only be ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... interesting to the last survivor of the Legation of 1861. He thought himself perhaps the only person living who could get full enjoyment of the drama. He carried every scene of it, in a century and a half since the Stamp Act, quite alive in his mind — all the interminable disputes of his disputatious ancestors as far back as the year 1750 — as well as his own insignificance in the Civil War, every step in which had the object of bringing England into an American system. For this they had written libraries ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... has resulted a character equivocal and ambiguous, but peculiarly Porto Rican. The heat of the climate has made them lazy, to which end also the fertility of the soil has conduced; the solitary life of the country residents has rendered them morose and disputatious." ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... have been bitterly contested elections in this country before. Party spirit is always rife, and in such vivid, excitable, disputatious communities as ours are, and I trust always will be, it is the very soul of freedom. To those who reflect upon the means and end of popular government, nothing seems more stupid than in grand generalities to deprecate party spirit. Why, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... malplacxo. Disport ludi. Dispose disponi. Disposable disponebla. Disposition inklino. Dispraise mallauxdi. Disproof refuto. Disprove refuti. Dispute disputo. Dispute (quarrel) malpaci. Disputatious disputa. [Error in book: Disputations] Disqualify malkapabligi. Disquiet maltrankviligi. Disrespectful nerespekta. Disappointment kontrauxajxo. Dissatisfied malkontenta. Dissect dissekcii. Dissection dissekcio. Dissemble hipokriti, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... for that offer of employment there which two years subsequently was made him by Cranmer, whom, in his moderation and earnest desire to avoid a total rupture between the old church and the new life, he then so much resembled. But whatever its merits, the disputatious Cochlaeus—"der gewaffnete mann," as Luther sneeringly terms him—was determined that his opponent should not have the last word in the dispute, and accordingly in August 1534 he published at Leipsic his Apologia pro Scotiae Regno adversus ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... effects were produced by the injection of a parenthesis. Once in an evening sermon in Plymouth Church, when Beecher was urging the reelection of Lincoln and defending the Republican party, a disputatious individual called out from the congregation, "What about Wendell Phillips?" To which Mr. Beecher made the instant answer, "Wendell Phillips is not a Republican. Wendell Phillips is a radical and an independent. What this country needs is not a man of words ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... heresies of this time arose among the Greeks of Asia or Egypt, peoples who were subtle, sophistical, and disputatious. The heresies were usually attempts to explain the mysteries of the Trinity and of the Incarnation. The most significant of these heresies was that of Arius; he taught that Christ was created by God the Father and was not equal ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... decision, to a military government. For such a preparatory government, no slow-paced, methodical, formal, lawyer-like system, still less that of a showy, superficial, trifling, intriguing court, guided by cabals of ladies, or of men like ladies, least of all a philosophic, theoretic, disputatious school of sophistry,—none of these ever will or ever can lay the foundations of an order that can last. Whoever claims a right by birth to govern there must find in his breast, or must conjure up in it, an energy not to be expected, perhaps ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... but the Pilgrims themselves. So we have struck an inconsistency here —one says it was the landing, the other says it was the Pilgrims. It is an inconsistency characteristic of your intractable and disputatious tribe, for you never agree about anything but Boston. Well, then, what do you want to celebrate those Pilgrims for? They were a mighty hard lot—you know it. I grant you, without the slightest unwillingness, that they were a deal more gentle and merciful and just than were the people of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and political station to which they severally belonged. Thus, because the Stoics were more minute than other sects in inculcating the moral and social duties, we find the Roman jurisconsults professing themselves followers of Zeno;[137] the orators, on the contrary, adopted the disputatious system of the later Academics;[138] while Epicurus was the master of the idle and the wealthy. Hence, too, they confined the profession of philosophical science to Greek teachers; considering them the sole proprietors, as it were, of a foreign and expensive luxury, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... utensils, the cool water was tempered with those ingredients which mingle their congenial essences to make up that still seductive drink, a Maryland punch. It warms the heart, but if used too freely it makes a man hot-tempered, disputatious, and belligerent. Amid the patriotic jollity, therefore, when three British soldiers, belated, dusty, and thirsty, came to the spring on their way to the retreating army, their boasting met with an incredulous ...
— The Star-Spangled Banner • John A. Carpenter
... language. A speech may be the delivering of one's sentiments in the simplest way; an oration is an elaborate and prepared speech; a harangue is a vehement appeal to passion, or a speech that has something disputatious and combative in it. A discourse is a set speech on a definite subject, intended to convey ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... heretical herd he classed his companion, Mr. Titus Tyrconnel—Ireland being with him synonymous with superstition and Catholicism—and every Irishman rebellious and schismatical. On this head he was inclined to be disputatious. His prejudices did not prevent him from passing the claret, nor from laughing, as heartily as a plethoric asthma and sense of the decorum due to the occasion would permit, at the quips and quirks of the Irishman, who, he admitted, notwithstanding his heresies, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in October, as these two young men came over Magdalen Bridge after a long disputatious and rather tiring walk to Drayton—they had been talking of Eugenics and the "family"—Benham was almost knocked down by an American trotter driven by Lord Breeze. "Whup there!" said Lord Breeze in a voice deliberately brutal, and Benham, roused from that abstraction ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... unprovoked attack upon our troops in the city they had wrested from the Spaniards, before final action on the treaty. It is easy to say that we ought not to have got into this conflict, and to that I might agree. "I tell you, they can't put you in jail on that charge," said the learned and disputatious counsel to the client who had appealed from his cell for help. "But I am in," was the sufficient answer. The question just then was not what might have been done, but what can be done. I wish to urge that we can only end this conflict by manfully fighting ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... torture a question; take up a side, take up a case. contend, take one's stand upon, insist, lay stress on; infer &c 480. follow from &c (demonstration) 478. Adj. reasoning &c v.; rationalistic; argumentative, controversial, dialectic, polemical; discursory^, discursive; disputatious; Aristotelian^, eristic^, eristical^. debatable, controvertible. logical; relevant &c 23. Adv. for, because, hence, whence, seeing that, since, sith^, then thence so; for that reason, for this reason, for which reason; for as, inasmuch as; whereas, ex ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of Jethro's found great favor in Moses' eyes, for he had been only too well aware of the difficulties and annoyances with which he had had to contend. The people were very disputatious, being willing to spend seventy silverlings in litigation costs for the sake of gaining one silverling, and did their utmost to lengthen their disputes at law. When on say that Moses was about to cast a decision against him, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Their morning had not been less busy than the men's. They had baked corn cakes on hot stones, roasted bear or pork, or broiled venison steaks; and—above all and first of all—they had concocted the great "stew pie" without which a raising could hardly take place. This was a disputatious mixture of deer, hog, and bear—animals which, in life, would surely have companioned each other as ill! It was made in sufficient quantity to last over for supper when the day's labor was done. At supper the men took their ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... nothing," replied the disputatious Overtop. "We only wait for proof. It is easy to find out whether a signal is meant or not. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Among five hundred quarrymen, d'y'see, Mr. Riley, and they mostly young men, there's always plenty of what a man might call loose energy lyin' round—specially after hours and Sundays and holidays; surely too much for any two, or two dozen, disputatious individuals to contend against. And yet, as I said, the easiest, quietest people ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... ridiculous questions.[36] Schwickerath remarks,[37] "It can not and need not be denied that the education imparted by the mediaeval scholastics was in many regards defective. It was at once too dogmatic and disputatious. Literary studies were comparatively neglected; frequently too much importance was attached to purely dialectical subtleties.... The defects of scholasticism became especially manifest in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when much time and energy were wasted in discussing useless ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... worship the cross and adore the mysteries of the true God? Compare now the impotency of the Protestant missionary, squatting in gross comfort with wife and babes among the savages he has come to convert, preaching a disputatious doctrine, wrangling openly with the rival sent by some other sect—compare this impotency with the success that follows the devoted sons of the Church, impressing their proselytes with the mysterious virtue of their continence, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... into the fire. A man can fling a sack of corn into the river. The bank-note may be burnt as a satisfaction of some scruple; the corn may be destroyed as a sacrifice to some god. But whenever there is sacrifice we know there is a single will. Men may be disputatious and doubtful, may divide by very narrow majorities in their debate about how to gain wealth. But men have to be uncommonly unanimous in order to refuse wealth. It wants a very complete committee to burn a bank note in the office grate. It needs a highly religious ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton |
