"Polemic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... orchards and empty houses, instead of being there to hear the sermon, and that the drunkards, being rarely church-goers, get little good by the statistics and eloquent appeals of the preacher. Every now and then, however, the Reverend Mr. Fairweather let off a polemic discourse against his neighbor opposite, which waked his people up a little; but it was a languid congregation, at best,—very apt to stay away from meeting in the afternoon, and not at all given ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... critic, and violent polemic on political as well as theological subjects; born at Saxe-Altenburg; regarded the Christian religion as overlaid and obscured by accretions foreign to it; denied the historical truth of the Gospels, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Mr. George is a polemic without a peer, and you say that "no other living man could have made so absurd a theory appear so plausible, deceived hundreds of abler men than himself." Surely there is something very faulty in the position you assume here. If what you say be so, how do you know that you are ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... his attention too much from the luminous field of philosophic disquisition to the sterile regions of polemic divinity, and the still more thorny paths of ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... of articles, sermons, and pamphlets, and raised him without will or further act of his to the high place of the heresiarch. With admirable singleness of mind, he held modestly aloof. 'There is no scholar,' he wrote to a friend, 'less willing or less able to be a polemic. I could not give account of myself if challenged. I delight in telling what I think, but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men,' The year before, his oration on the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... Shakespere, and then towards all other literary craftsmen. William Gifford, his first competent editor, set himself to work to destroy this, and undoubtedly succeeded. But the acrimony with which Gifford tinctured all his literary polemic perhaps rather injured his treatment of the case; even yet it may be doubted whether Ben Jonson has attained anything like his proper place in ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Bonn to study for his Lectures; and the influences of German literature and of the German character and state of society had made a very perceptible change in his views of life. His personal disposition was much softened; he was less militant and polemic; his tastes had begun to turn themselves towards the poetic and contemplative. He attached much less importance than formerly to outward changes; unless accompanied by a better cultivation of the inward nature. He had a strong distaste for the general ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... least curious among the results of this state of things was the war of pamphlets. From Rome, Bologna, and other centres of thought, even from Paris and Frankfort, polemic tractates rained upon the Republic. The vast majority of their authors were on the side of the Vatican, and of this majority the leaders were the two cardinals so eminent in learning and logic, Bellarmine and Baronius; but, single-handed, Sarpi was, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... and Matthew expands the Sermon on the Mount. The general outline is the same in both versions. The main body of both is a laying down the law for Christ's disciples. Luke, however, characteristically omits what is prominent in Matthew, the polemic against Pharisaic righteousness, and the contrast between the moral teaching of Christ and that of the law. These were appropriate in a Gospel which set forth Jesus as the crown of earlier revelation, while Luke is true to the broad humanities of his Gospel, in setting forth rather the universal ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Raff's polemic entirely harmless. Your readers will get a lesson in history from it, for which they can but be grateful to you—and we need not be anxious about Pohl. It will not puzzle him to eat his way ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... controversies in the Eastern Church, though the circumstance of these controversies having been carried on in the Greek language has made the natives of Western Europe attribute them to a philosophic, speculative, and polemic spirit, inherent in the Hellenic mind. A very slight examination of history is sufficient to prove that several of the heresies which disturbed the Eastern Church had their origin in the more profound religious ideas of the oriental nations, and that many ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... been foreseen. Up to this time Clerambault had been inoffensive, confining himself on the whole to moral dissertations. His polemic did not step outside the circle of ideas. It might as well have been applied to Germany, England, or ancient Rome, as to the France of today. To tell the truth, like nine-tenths of his class and profession, he was ignorant of the political facts about which he declaimed, so that ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes. I afterward sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections; they were small chapmen's books, and cheap, 40 or 50 in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way since it was now resolved I should not be ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... relforko. Poise balanci, ekvilibri. Poison veneno. Poisonous venena. Poke the fire inciti la fajron. Poker fajrincitilo. Polar polusa. Pole (wooden) stango. Pole (shaft of car) timono. Pole (geography) poluso. Polecat putoro. Polemic disputo, polemiko. Police polico. Policeman policano. Polish poluri. Polish (substance) polurajxo. Polished (manners) gxentila. Polite gxentila. Politic sagxa. Political politika. Politician politikisto. Politics politiko. Poll (vote) vocxdoni, baloti. Poll (of head) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... was only a regimental surgeon in Benares, but his name was well known amongst his compatriots as a very learned specialist in physiology. The pamphlet was called A Treatise on the Yoga Philosophy, and produced a sensation amongst the representatives of medicine in India, and a lively polemic between the Anglo-Indian and native journalists. Dr. Paul spent thirty-five years in studying the extraordinary facts of Yogism, the existence of which was, for him, beyond all doubt. He not only described them, but explained some of the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... of the Unknown God has been prepared for, and now follows, and with it is bound up a polemic against idolatry. Conciliation is not to be carried so far as to hide the antagonism between the truth and error. We may give non-Christian systems of religion credit for all the good in them, but we are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... His direct polemic against the doctrine of Free-Will consists simply of an attempt to identify it with the notion of Chance in physics. The notion of Chance, he says, is the same with that of Free-Will; the doctrine of Necessary Connection with the dogma of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... were not those of a polemic divine, but of a Christian, concerned for his own salvation ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... of polemic and apologetic literature which Strauss' Leben Jesu called forth, little is at this distance worth the mentioning. Ullmann, who was far more appreciative than most of his adversaries, points out the real weakness of Strauss' work. That weakness ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... make sure that the boys are on their side before they raise the standard of virtue. Nor ought they to summon morality for support of a polemic. Matey Weyburn's object of worship rode superior to a morality puffing its phrasy trumpet. And, somehow, the sacrifice of an enormous number of women to Lord Ormont's glory seemed natural; the very thing that should be, in the case of a first-rate military ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... difference between the maxims of diversity and unity may easily be reconciled and adjusted; although, so long as they are regarded as objective principles, they must occasion not only contradictions and polemic, but place hinderances in the way of the advancement of truth, until some means is discovered of reconciling these conflicting interests, and bringing reason into union and ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... catholicity of critical appreciation. Literary criticism is certainly full of similar intolerance; though when Gautier talks about Racine, or Zola about "Mes Haines," or Mr. Howells about Scott, the polemic temper, the temper most opposed to the critical, is very generally recognized. And in spite of their admirable accomplishment in various branches of literature, these writers will never quite recover from the misfortune ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... as it is, is nothing beside his numberless treatises in dogma and polemic. These were the work of his life, and it is by these posterity has known him. The theologian and the disputer ended by hiding the man in Augustin. To-day, the man perhaps interests us more. And this is a mistake. He himself would not have allowed for a moment that his Confessions ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... priori reasoning, reductio ad absurdum, horns of a dilemma, argumentum ad hominem [Lat.], comprehensive argument; empirema^, epagoge^. [person who reasons] reasoner, logician, dialectician; disputant; controversialist, controvertist^; wrangler, arguer, debater polemic, casuist, rationalist; scientist; eristic^. logical sequence; good case; correct just reasoning, sound reasoning, valid reasoning, cogent reasoning, logical reasoning, forcible reasoning, persuasive reasoning, persuasory reasoning^, consectary ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... philosopher, I scarcely find any passage to alter. I continue to think that the general ideas therein expressed are just, the great social facts properly estimated, the political personages well understood and drawn with fidelity. As an incidental polemic, the work is too positive and harsh; I do not sufficiently consider difficulties and clouds; I condemn situations and parties too strongly; I require too much from men; I have too little temperance, foresight, and patience. At that time I ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the republic, could stand up against it as a deadly competitor in the person of Louis Bonaparte. The fought the aristocracy of finance just the same as did the rest of the bourgeois opposition. The polemic against the budget, which in France, was closely connected with the opposition to the aristocracy of finance, furnished too cheap a popularity and too rich a material for Puritanical leading articles, not ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... light of the tallow candle, to see the little garret room, with its ceiling on one side sloping nearly to the floor, its walls begrimed with smoke, and the bare plaster covered with grotesque pencil-drawings—caricatures of Homeric heroes in the guise of schoolboys, polemic clergymen of the city in the garb of fish-wives militant, and such like. A bed and a small chest of drawers stood under the slope of the roof, and the rest of the room was occupied by a painted table covered with papers, and a chair or two. An old broadsword leaned against the wall in a corner. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... noble time have been. Not Tolstoy, not Ibsen himself, has more profoundly and indignantly felt the injustice of civilization, or more insistently shown the falsity of its fundamental pretensions. He did not make his books a polemic for one cause or another; he was far too wise and sane for that; but when he began to write them they became alive with his sense of what was wrong and false and bad. His tolerance is less than Tolstoy's, because ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that men out of work and starving who attended the meeting would be given a meal. Having been starving only some twenty-four hours I sneered and walked on. My agnosticism was bitter in those days, bitter and polemic. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... above will show the striking analogy between the higher doctrine of Mithraism, and the fundamental teaching of its great rival, a resemblance that was fully admitted, and which became the subject of heated polemic. Greek philosophers did not hesitate to establish a parallel entirely favourable to Mithraism, while Christian apologists insisted that such resemblances were the work of the Devil, a line of argument which, as we have seen above, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... There was nothing commonplace about him; his good and his bad qualities alike were exceptional. It is easy, by suppressing the one or the other, to paint him a hero or a villain. He lends himself readily to polemic; but to depict his character in all its varied aspects, extenuating nothing nor setting down aught in malice, is a task of no little difficulty. It is two centuries and a half since Lord Herbert produced his Life and Reign of Henry VIII.[1] The late Mr. Brewer, in his prefaces to the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... at once that the English-reading public should be grateful for an English rendering of Max Nordau's polemic. It will provide society with a subject that may last as long as the present government.... We read the pages without finding one dull, sometimes in reluctant agreement, sometimes with amused contempt, sometimes with angry ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... of idle and absurd sequestration stands the term polemic. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of all knowledge; so there is of every science. The radical and characteristic idea concerned in this term polemic is found in our own Parliamentary distinction of the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... The interesting polemic which Bjornson's production occasioned has already been discussed at some length. This may be added, however: A play which, according to the poet's confession, influenced his life as this one did, has played an important part in Norwegian ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... this difficulty, or a second which this treatise is calculated to excite. He places the Supper of the Lorde at the head of the numerous productions of Robert Crowley, as if its authorship was perfectly ascertained. But Crowley must have been a precocious polemic if he wrote a theological treatise, like that answered by More, at least a year previously to his entering the university. The date of his admission at Oxford was 1534; he was elected Fellow of Magdalene ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... Greek intellect. The stern and somewhat prosaic rectitude of the Roman broke through such figments of the fancy, and exposed the sore places of the soul itself. The theory of the Conscience, moreover, is part of the Lucretian polemic against false notions of the gods and the pernicious ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... The count's polemic reply was not without effect. The baroness, who had her own views on the matter, was quite as ready to take the field, with as many theoretic and empiric data and recognized authorities as had been her opponent. The count one day would despatch a letter to the manor, ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... his natural deficiencies, she is the first to ridicule and expose them. Her passions, having never been checked, have become exceedingly violent. She converses on politics and divinity with all the fury of a partizan and a polemic; she seems impatient of the trammels of her sex; and her conversation frequently goes beyond the bounds of decency and good manners. One cannot help pitying the lot of Imperitus, who has a large share of good-nature, and who (whatever may be his deficiencies) cannot certainly ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... possessed other accomplishments beside those of the polemic. He was not, it is true, overloaded with the learning of "the schools"—was, in fact, quite ignorant of some of the branches of knowledge which he imparted to his pupils: yet this was never allowed to become apparent, for as we have intimated, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... to a demoralisation which would ultimately limit numbers in the worst way. We shall see directly how nearly he accepts this view. Meanwhile, by insisting upon the need of limitation, he was led to speak often as if limitation by any means was good and the one thing needful, and the polemic against Godwin in the first edition had given prominence to this side of the question. Had he put his views in a different shape, he would perhaps have been so edifying that he would have been disregarded. He certainly avoided that risk, and had whatever advantage is ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... key of his philosophic work, the dominant characteristic of which is comprehensiveness rather than originality. He took the doctrines of Zeno and Cleanthes and crystallized them into a definite system; he further defended them against the attacks of the Academy. His polemic skill earned for him the title of the "Column of the Portico." Diogenes Laertius says, "If the gods use dialectic, they can use none other than that of Chrysippus"; [Greek: ei me gar en Chrysippos, ouk an en Stoa] ("Without Chrysippus, there had been no Porch"). ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... does, and this he does on the present occasion.—v. 5 and 6. He does not, like a vehement polemic, say Jewish ceremonies and rules are all worthless, nor some ceremonies are worthless, and others essential; but he says, the root of the whole matter is charity. If you turn aside from this, all is lost; here at once the controversy closes. So far as any rule fosters the spirit of ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... than elsewhere in this chapter, are we trying to turn the family into a field of ceaseless polemic. No one who knows the stuff of which life is made, the pressure of material cares, the play of passion, the busy energising of the affections, the anxieties of health, and all the other solicitudes, generous or ignoble, which naturally absorb the days of the common multitude of men—is ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... seem. His treatise denying the freedom of the will has given him a European reputation comparable with that enjoyed by Franklin in science and Jefferson in political propaganda. It was really a polemic demonstrating the sovereignty of God, rather than pure theology or metaphysics. Edwards goes beyond Augustine and Calvin in asserting the arbitrary will of the Most High and in "denying to the human will any self-determining power." ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... of faith in writing Jean-Christophe were only concerned with France, if the polemic of it were not directed against a universal evil, there would be no reason for translation. But, like Zarathustra, it is a book for all and none. M. Rolland has written what he believes to be the truth, and as Dr. Johnson observed: "Every man has a right to utter ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... but no culture, without the help of divine grace and the responsive affection on our part which that grace induces, will ever knit men together in a kingdom of God, a spiritual society. As long ago as the second century Celsus understood that. He says in his polemic against Christianity, as quoted by Origen, "If any one suppose that it is possible that the people of Asia and Europe and Africa, Greeks and barbarians, should agree to follow one law, he is hopelessly ignorant."[39] Now, Celsus ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... literary history before the appearance of Ibsen and Bjoernson upon the scene. A sort of parallel might be drawn for American readers by taking two such men as Whitman and Longfellow, opposing them to one another in the most outspoken fashion, assuming for both a sharply polemic manner, and ranging among their respective followers all the other writers of their time. Then imagine the issue between them to be drawn not only in the field of letters, but also in the pulpit, the theatre, and ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... was silent for a moment, and gave token of succumbing to this unexpected polemic strength. Then, taking thought and courage together, "Ye can't say the Bible ain't down on 'strong drink'?" There was no answer from the vanquished, and he went on in the overwhelming miller's voice: "Hil'ry hed better ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and justifying it and all the other proceedings of the Army without any hesitation or compromise. It has some breathings of the Miltonic grandeur; but that is all. For the rest it is a mere party polemic written for the moment; and, as is the case with all pamphlets, the very qualities which gave it its contemporary interest make it unreadable to posterity. Part of it is a sweeping assertion of the inalienable right of the whole people to choose, ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... reference to Montaigne's remark that he has known ladies who would rather lend their honour than their coach; and a dozen other propositions, if possible still more amazing. But when, with no foregone conclusion as to any polemic purpose on Shakspere's part, we restrict ourselves to real parallels of thought and expression; when we find that a certain number of these are actually textual; when we find further that in a single soliloquy in the play there are several reproductions of ideas in the essays, some of them frequently ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... advocated by Mr. Orage and the "New Age," is associated with a polemic against "political" action, and in favor of direct economic action by trade-unions. It shares this with syndicalism, from which most of what is new in it is derived. But I see no reason for this attitude; political and economic ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... frightened out of their opinions, yet they may be persuaded out of them: they may be touched by the affecting earnestness of serious conversation, and allured by the attractive beauty of a consistently serious life. And while a young woman ought to dread the name of a wrangling polemic, it is her duty to aspire after the honourable character of a sincere Christian. But this dignified character she can by no means deserve, if she is ever afraid to avow her principles, or ashamed to defend them. A profligate, who makes it a point to ridicule every thing which comes under the ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... adversary, resting on the deep-seated prejudice of our fellow-countrymen in the United Kingdom, calculated upon establishing his own fame as a keen-sighted polemic, as a shrewd and truth-loving man, upon the fallen reputation of one, who, as he would demonstrate,—yes, that he would,—set little or no value on truth, and who, therefore, would deservedly sink into obscurity, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... tireless polemic which Locke carried on against Descartes. The outraged plain facts had to be defended against sweeping and arbitrary theories. There were no innate ideas or maxims: children were not born murmuring that things equal to ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... poetic humour which is so rare and delightful a thing. And, like all poetic humour, it oscillates between cynicism and passion almost bewilderingly. For a little more of this what pages and pages of jocularity about Bottles and the Rev. Esau Hittall would we not have given! what volumes of polemic with the Guardian and amateur discussions of the Gospel of St John! In the first place, note the metrical structure, the sober level octosyllables of the overture changing suddenly to a dance-measure which, for a wonder in English, almost keeps the true dactylic movement. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Imperial missionary, an inexhaustible supply of fallacious objections. But in the assiduous prosecution of these theological studies, the emperor of the Romans imbibed the illiberal prejudices and passions of a polemic divine. He contracted an irrevocable obligation to maintain and propagate his religious opinions; and whilst he secretly applauded the strength and dexterity with which he wielded the weapons of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... religious dispute which he had held in Latin with two popish priests attached to the Irish chieftain O'Neal. A place in reversion freely bestowed on him by the king at once rewarded the zeal of the young polemic, and encouraged him to desert the profession of the law, in which he had embarked, for ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... is to the last degree unattractive, except to a misanthropic disposition; or to that, perhaps, of a stern theological polemic, when tempted to be pleased with every superfluity of evidence for overwhelming the opposers of the doctrine which asserts the radical corruption of our nature. As spread over a coarse and repulsive moral and physical scenery, it is a subject ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... receptions. But I occasionally heard they were getting on famously. Arthur was composing a piano concerto, and Ellenora engaged upon a novel—a novel, I was told, that would lay bare to its rotten roots the social fabric; and knowing the girl's inherent fund of bitter cleverness I awaited the new-born polemic with gentle impatience. I hoped, however, like the foolish inexperienced old bachelor I am, that her feminine asperity would be tempered by the suavities of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... of the New Testament, and perfectly represents the effects of its principles fully carried out, and acted upon. They never heard of Platonism, or of Pythagoras in their lives, and, consequently, the polemic tricks, and evasions, which have been, as hinted just now, resorted to by Protestant divines, to shift from the shoulders of Christianity to those of Plato or Pythagoras, the obnoxious principles we have been considering, are of no use in this case, as, whatever ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... the Roman literature and Roman civilization and, in the later Renaissance, a powerful engine of progress. Associated with the language is the literature of the Greeks. The epic poems of Homer, the later lyrics, the drama, the history, and the polemic, all had their highest types presented in the Greek literature. Latin and modern German, English and French owe to these great originators a debt of gratitude for every form of modern literature. The architecture of Greece was ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... and expansions appear to have been made on various principles. Sometimes one can see that a passage has been added for the mere poetic enrichment of the text, and to prove that the hand that was writing was not that of a musty polemic, but of an artist, at home in splendours. There is a striking instance in point in Chap. VI. of Book I., where there is interpolated a gratuitously gorgeous myth or fable, which may be entitled Eros and Anteros, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... begin with however, are F. C. S. Schiller's in his 'Studies in Humanism,' especially the essays numbered i, v, vi, vii, xviii and xix. His previous essays and in general the polemic literature of the subject are fully referred to ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... competent to judge of the situation impartially, through direct personal contact throughout his boyhood with the realities of slavery. His object was not the object of the reformer, warped with prejudice and fired by animosity. He saw clearly; for his aim was not polemic, but artistic. Hence it is, I believe, that Mark Twain stands out as, in essence and in fundamentals, a remarkable sociologist. Certain passages in his books on the subject of slavery, as the historian Lecky has declared, are the truest things that have ever been expressed ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... phenomenon. It has not been brought about by controversy. Men are fighting still over the same questions which they began to fight about at the Reformation. Protestant divines have not driven Catholics out of the field, nor Catholics, Protestants. Each polemic writes for his own partisans, and makes no impression ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... however, would have proved but a very indifferent polemic; she seems to have had a certain delicacy in her manners which rather belongs to the fine lady. We cannot but smile at an observation of hers on the Apostles which we find in her letters:—"We read that the apostles, even in the company of their Master, were so rustic and ill-bred, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... is not mentioned in antiquity till quite late under Diocletian, played only a very subordinate part at the best period of the Renaissance. Italy went through the disease earlier, when Petrarch in the fourteenth century confessed, in his polemic against it, that gold-making was a general practice. Since then that particular kind of faith, devotion, and isolation which the practice of alchemy required became more and more rare in Italy, just when Italian and other adepts began to make ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... George Jean Nathan for many years have sung praises of the Moral in the Smart Set. But its production on the English speaking stage still remains an event eagerly to be awaited. Briefly, the play is a polemic against the "men higher up," churchmen, reformers, and ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... acts of his brief ministry, seems to have been that of carrying out the religious reformation which had been demanded by Colet and Erasmus while checking the spirit of revolt against the unity of the Church. His severities against the Protestants, exaggerated as they have been by polemic rancor, remain the one stain on a memory that knows no other. But it was only by a rigid severance of the cause of reform from what seemed to him the cause of revolution that More could hope for a successful issue to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Imaginaire was written when Moliere was suffering from illness; but his energy remained indomitable. The comedy continued that long polemic against the medical faculty which he had sustained in L'Amour Medecin, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, and other plays. Moliere had little faith in any art which professes to mend nature; the physicians ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... was an eloquent preacher and historical writer, and an expert theological polemic of the liberal Catholic school. Of a very different tone is Rochefoucauld, whose Maxims, expressed in pithy language, seek to trace all virtuous action to self-seeking. The French fondness for epigram—for ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... dilettanti of learning, and lastly that the cultured Jew may search out knowledge and truth to their depths, and find them expressed in his holy books and in his religious beliefs and practices. Philo frequently introduces into his philosophical interpretation a polemic against the disintegrating and demoralizing forces which were at work in the Alexandria of his day. His commentary therefore is a strange medley, compounded of idealistic speculation, theology, homiletics, moral denunciation, and polemical rhetoric. The idea, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... "A vastly entertaining polemic. It directs attention to many undoubtedly neglected facts which writers of the North have ignored or minimized."—The New York Times Saturday Review ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... in the town and among our enemies. Since our departure, as our late landlord informs us, a Parisian journalist has arrived at his hotel. This individual, whose name I do not know, at once announced himself as Jack-the-giant-killer, sent down to reinforce with his Parisian vim and vigor the polemic which the local press, subsidized by the "bureau of public ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... of Plato, De Repub., V, was no mere fancy, is proved by the polemic which Aristophanes directs against it in his Ecclesiazuses. See also Aristot., Polit., II, 2, Schn. In the contemporary practice of the Greeks, with the increasing democratization of the state, it became more and more usual for it to bear the expense ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... greater individual creative ability. It was not merely the chance difference of external fortunes that kept them apart, though they never held together after the death of Brentano's wife in 1806, but that each projected his individuality into his literary work rather than into a common polemic ideal. The path-finding and discovery had already been done; in the quieter backwater it was possible to develop well-rounded works of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Scott and Byron. The first, whose Fair Maid of Perth is read as a new book, is praised for his "objective" qualities. The second is pronounced the greatest modern poet of England, but censured for his polemic tendency. Goethe's rapture is kindled ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... mean, covetous, bad man, as George Buchanan well knew; and, according to his nature, he wrote a furious book, 'Ad Vesani calumnias depulsandas.' The punning change of Vesalius into Vesanus (madman) was but a fair and gentle stroke for a polemic, in days in which those who could not kill their enemies with steel or powder, held themselves justified in doing so, if possible, by vituperation, culumny, and every engine of moral torture. But a far more terrible weapon, and one which made Vesalius rage, and it may be for ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... when provoked, he was dangerous to his antagonist; and tho his reasoning might be faulty, he would frequently gain his cause by a flash of wit that took the public, and, as it were, hustled his adversary out of court. But he was not always a victorious polemic. His vehemence in controversy was sometimes too precipitate for his prudence; he would rush into a fight with his armor unfastened, and with only a part of the necessary weapons; and as the late Washington Hunt[44] once exprest it, he could be ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Fortis," interrupted the King, "We have not met this morning, I presume, to indulge in a religious polemic! My power is, as you very truly suggest, merely temporal—yours is spiritual. Yours should be the strongest! Go your way now to your Vicar-General with the straight answer I have given you,—but if by your 'spiritual' power you can persuade the people ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... influence of John Wycliffe, a lecturer there, that a great revival and reforming movement in the church emanated. From about 1370 Wycliffe and others began to agitate for a more earnest religious life. They translated the Bible into English, wrote devotional and polemic tracts, preached throughout the country, spoke and wrote against the evils in the church at the time, then against its accepted form of organization, and finally against its official teachings. They thus became heretics. Thousands were influenced by their ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... Isaac Euchel (1756-1804), became known for his polemic articles against the superstitions and obscurantism of the fanatics of the ghetto. Euchel wrote also a biographical sketch of Mendelssohn, which was published at ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... With respect to the polemic excursus, of course, I chuckle over them most sympathetically, and then say how naughty they are! I have done too much of the same sort of thing not to sympathise entirely with you; and I am much inclined to think that it is a good thing for a man, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... "everyone of these has been destroyed by the care of the Church, and it is remarkable that even the treatise of Firmicus is mutilated at a passage (v.) where he seems to be accusing Christians of following Mithraic usages." While again Professor Murray says, "The polemic literature of Christianity is loud and triumphant; the books of the Pagans ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... in pursuit of which he had spent so much of his life, had taught him a curious gentleness and indirection, and to keep himself in the back-ground; he was careful that you should not scent his opinions upon any subject at all polemic, but he would tell you what he had seen and known. What he had seen and known about spooks was briefly this:—In company with a neighbor he was passing the night with an old recluse who lived somewhere in these woods. Their host was an Englishman, who had the reputation ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... carried him beyond the suave accuracy of his master to the somber veracity of Main-Travelled Roads, Prairie Folks, and Rose of Dutcher's Coolly. This veracity was more than somber; it was deliberate and polemic. Mr. Garland, ardently a radical of the school of Henry George, had enlisted in the crusade against poverty, and he desired to tell the unheeded truth about the frontier farmers and their wives in language which might do something to lift the desperate burdens of their condition. Consequently ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... In a polemic against Mr. Jones his adversary has therefore to combat a dragon with three heads, and the heroic method would be to strike all three of them off at one blow. To effect this it seems to me that one has only to remark that a system which is forced to teach a dialect [a dialect, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... history has inspired—the passages where Shakespeare brings his rays to focus on "this earth, this realm, this England,"—or where the dread of national dishonour has kindled Chatham to an iron glow,—or where Milton rises from the polemic into the prophet, and Burke from the partisan into the philosopher. The armoury of Wordsworth, indeed, was not forged with the same fire as that of these "invincible knights of old." He had not swayed senates, nor directed policies, nor gathered into one ardent bosom all ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Whoever examines his reply to Walker will be struck by the contrast between the feebleness of those parts which are argumentative and defensive, and the vigour of those parts which are rhetorical and aggressive. The Papists were so much galled by the sarcasms and invectives of the young polemic that they raised a cry of treason, and accused him of having, by implication, called ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had kept her so far in the rear of the crowd, now came hobbling on, glided unobserved by the polemic group, and paused on the left brink of the fountain, within a few feet of the two spectators. She was a magnificent old dame, as ever mortal eye beheld. Her spangled shoes and gold-clocked stockings shone gloriously within the spacious circle ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were taken away; when the manufactured history and determinism of the Israelites from the fall of man to the coming of that Messiah, whom the Jews crucified because he failed to bring them their material Kingdom, were discredited; when the polemic and literal interpretations of evangelists had been rejected, and the pious frauds of tampering monks; when the ascetic Buddhism was removed; the cults and mysteries, the dogmas of an ancient naive philosophy ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Marx; and this "Study," while avoiding a personal attack, sought to arouse a racial prejudice that would injure him. He writes to Herzen, a month after the congress at Basel, that he fully realizes that Marx is "the instigator and the leader of all this calumnious and infamous polemic."[20] He was reluctant, however, to attack him personally, and even refers to Marx and Lassalle as "these two Jewish giants," but besides them, he adds, "there was and is a crowd of Jewish pigmies."[21] ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... extremely slender, Casanova had decided to await the expected pardon in the modest but respectable inn where he had stayed in happier years. To make only passing mention of less spiritual amusements, with which he could not wholly dispense—he spent most of his time in writing a polemic against the slanderer Voltaire, hoping that the publication of this document would serve, upon his return to Venice, to give him unchallenged position and prestige in the eyes of ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... semi-political polemic here, but in my practice I have often been amazed to hear my clients complain that they have not the time nor the ability to be patient with their body, to rest it through an illness because they have a job ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... the resistance. Mr. Irving has, in fact, without leave asked or a licence granted, converted the Caledonian Chapel into a Westminster Forum or Debating Society, with the sanctity of religion added to it. Our spirited polemic is not contented to defend the citadel of orthodoxy against all impugners, and shut himself up in texts of Scripture and huge volumes of the Commentators as an impregnable fortress;—he merely makes use of the stronghold of religion as a resting-place, from which he sallies ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... of things, and utters again, in his books, as under a heavenly mandate, the indisputable secrets of moral nature,—with all these grandeurs resting upon him, remains the Lutheran bishop's son; his judgments are those of a Swedish polemic, and his vast enlargements purchased by adamantine limitations. He carries his controversial memory with him, in his visits to the souls. He is like Michel Angelo, who, in his frescoes, put the cardinal who had offended him to roast under a mountain of devils; ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... discussions of textual difficulties. But still I also have in many places formed theories of my own, whether they are right or wrong it will be for scholars to judge. I had no space for entering into any polemic, but it will be found that my interpretations of the systems are different in some cases from those offered by some European scholars who have worked on them and I leave it to those who are acquainted with the literature of the subject to decide which of us ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... only such facts as exist; and should it appear that this history has but two cycles, one of them incomplete, he would be under no obligation to make more. But such is not the case. His "history" is purely a piece of polemic. His aim is to establish a formula for all history, past, present, and to come; and, in this view, the paucity of instances on which his induction rests becomes worthy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... have our weak points and our strong ones. I'm no polemic, I!—I prefer meddling with things that will not bring me into trouble. There was a factory ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... undoubtedly best be compared among English classics with Whiggism in its Relations to Literature, although it is less discursive and does not possess the personal element of that vivacious piece of polemic. In this recurrence of Mr. Strachey to a pellucid stream of prose we see an argument against his own theory of revolt. The procedure of the arts, the mechanical tricks of the trade, do they really improve or decline from age to age? Are they not, in fact, much ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... suppression the doctrines of the sacred numbers continued through all the centuries in religious use, in quiet but strong currents which flowed beside the state church. The sect names, which were invented by polemic theology for the purpose of characterizing methods that were regarded as imitations of the gnostics, are of the most varied kinds; it may be enough to remember that in all those spiritual currents, that like the old German mysticism, the earlier humanism, the so-called natural philosophy, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... as a Latin writer, an historian, a poet, and an ecclesiastical polemic. He wrote a History of Scotland, a Latin version of the Psalms, and a satire called Chamaeleon. He was a man of profound learning and indomitable courage; and when told, just before his death, that the king was incensed at his treatise De Jure ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... be made the vehicle of deeper emotions and interests than perhaps a northern people could ever find in art, pure and simple, it was not like the time that followed it, a "prosaic" age. Enthusiasm burned fierce and clear, displaying itself in the passionate polemic of Milton, in the fanaticism of Bunyan and Fox, hardly more than in the gentle, steadfast search for knowledge in Burton, and the wide and vigilant curiousness of Bacon. Its eager experimentalism tried the impossible; wrote poems and then gave them a weight ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... was not politic; although she sustained her ideas well and displayed much erudition and depth of reason, she is said to have injured her cause by the violence of her polemic. Her immoderate tone and bitter assaults upon the elegant and discerning favorite only detracted from his opponent's favor and grace. Voltaire said: "You could say that the work of M. de La Motte was that of a woman of esprit, while that of Mme. Dacier was ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Thuillier, not disturbed himself, the admission of the "Echo" into the polemic making another Pangloss of him. ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... propriety of the language and the meaning of the orator, but the whole scheme of the laws, customs, and manners of the Athenians. By Doctor Grindal, professor of theology, she was initiated into the subtleties of polemic divinity, to which she gave assiduous application. Such, during the short reign of her brother, was the laudable and tranquil time of her life, and by these occupations and pursuits she was prepared for the great part she was to act on the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... In a polemic in Nos. 39 and 40 of the "Sozialdemokrat" for 1890, which appeared in London, Sophie Nadejde had two articles in which she sought to refute the charges concerning the great inferiority of woman. She says therein that Broca, a well known Parisian physiologist, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... London publisher able to bring out the Poems of Waller (1644), and sufficiently encouraged by their reception to follow them up, in the next year, with the Poems of Mr. John Milton. Are we warranted in inferring that a finer public was beginning to loathe the dreary theological polemic of which it had had a surfeit, and turned to a book of poetry as that which was most unlike the daily garbage, just as a later public absorbed five thousand copies of Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel in the year of Austerlitz? ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... did not listen. He employed himself thinking over practicable answers to the question before the house, and was just in time to avert a polemic about the authenticity of the Bible, a subject on which the General held strong views. "What helps me to an idea of a possible attitude of mind before a resurrection of this sort," he said, "is what sometimes happens when you wake up from a dream years ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... in these ages, seeking after! The true King, as guide of the practical, has ever something of the Pontiff in him,—guide of the spiritual, from which all practice has its rise. This too is a true saying, That the King is head of the Church.—But we will leave the Polemic stuff of a dead century to ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... notice; could pull vegetables, or dig out Hebrew roots, with alternate ease. Notwithstanding their long days of labor, their minds kept their edge, being freshly set by incessant doctrinal disputations. Such, indeed, was the public appetite for controversy that polemic warfare never slumbered. Our view of their character is assisted by a contrast with the English clergy of the same day, and which reveals shameful deformities on the part of the latter—avarice, indolence, and gluttony. Of such, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... author had raised him to a just eminence; but he reigned the dictator and tyrant of the world of literature. The real merit of Warburton was degraded by the pride and presumption with which he pronounced his infallible decrees; in his polemic writings he lashed his antagonists without mercy or moderation; and his servile flatterers, (see the base and malignant Essay on the Delicacy of Friendship,) exalting the master critic far above Aristotle and Longinus, assaulted every modest dissenter who refused to consult ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... should keep some sort of bounds in the democratic and levelling principles which are expected from their titled pulpits. The new evangelists will, I dare say, disappoint the hopes that are conceived of them. They will not become, literally as well as figuratively, polemic divines, nor be disposed so to drill their congregations, that they may, as in former blessed times, preach their doctrines to regiments of dragoons and corps of infantry and artillery. Such arrangements, however favourable to the cause of compulsory freedom, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... up with the usual polemic ability of Milton; but by its very plan and purpose it threw upon him difficulties which no ability could meet. It had that inevitable disadvantage which belongs to all ministerial and secondary works: the order and choice of topics being all determined by the "Eikon," ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... the copyright of my article belongs to the Editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes, without whose permission I can do nothing. As I shall be in Paris before long I will ask him for it, should your polemic attack seem to ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... was based, were those so commonly assumed by the party in Ireland, when it was needful to justify violence and bigotry there; namely, that the Roman Catholic Church, being the true church, should have immunity from polemic charges against its doctrines and worship; and that, as all attacks upon it are sure, amidst a Roman Catholic population, to lead to a breach of the peace, Gavazzi ought to have been punished by the authorities, and the authorities who neglected to do that should ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... attacked the tyranny of the German petty princes, and in the other the intolerance of the Established Church. We may assume that is the reason why Lowell admired them; but Lowell was also too critical and polemic to be wholly a poet,—except on certain occasions. In 1847 he published the "Fable for Critics," the keenest piece of poetical satire since Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,"—keen and even saucy, but perfectly good-humored. About the same ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... that, properly, there is no such thing as an Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich—that the two instruments of 1867 are not only of different date but are essentially independent, each being revocable at will by the power by which it was enacted. An able polemic in opposition to the views of Tisza is to be found in F. Tezner, Ausgleichsrecht und Ausgleichspolitik (Vienna, 1907). ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... and walked slowly back to his seat. He sat down, and with great fatigue evident in his voice, he concluded his polemic. ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
... subject for wonder, or (considering my age) for blame. In reality, to make theology into a captivating study for the young, it must be translated into controversial theology. And in what way could such a polemic interest be evoked except through political partisanship? But such partisanship connects itself naturally with the irritability of sectarianism, and but little with the majestic repose of a church ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... adepts formed an order apart who lived on the food given to them by the laity. The more western accounts of the Manichaeans testify to these features as strongly as do the records from Central Asia and China. Cyril of Jerusalem in his polemic against them[1139] charges them with believing in retributive metempsychosis, he who kills an animal being changed into that animal after death. The Persian king Hormizd is said to have accused Mani of bidding ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... ibn Djanah (among the Jews, R. Jonah), the most eminent representative of the Spanish school, born at Cordova about 985; he studied at Lucena, and died at Saragossa about 1050. Besides small polemic works, he left a long one, "The Book of Detailed Research," including a grammar and a dictionary. Ibn Dianab was an original and profound grammarian. Unfortunately his disciples ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... press, that they might be too occasional and disputatious. I am happy to think that, on the whole, they are not; and that the reader, though he may wonder at its discursiveness, will find the argument pretty free from polemic. Any one who has inherited a library of 17th century theology will agree with me that, of all dust, the ashes of dead controversies ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... has been trying for years to oust him from his position on the Blanley faculty but has been unable to do so because of the provisions of the Faculty Tenure Act of 1963. Most of his remarks were in the nature of a polemic against this law, generally regarded as the college professors' bill of rights. It is to be stated here that other members of the Blanley faculty have unconditionally confirmed the fact that Doctor Chalmers did make the statements attributed to him a month ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... read a lesson not wholly unneeded in the present day. They show how in a department in which it demanded the united life-long labors of a Kepler, Galileo, and Newton to elicit the truth, the hasty guesses of a great theologian, rashly ventured in a polemic spirit, gave form and body to but ludicrous error. It is not after a fashion so impetuous and headlong that the elaborately wrought key must be plied which unlocks the profound mysteries of nature. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... every rank, class, creed, politics, and calling, thus forming another of those sanctuaries, now multiplying in Ireland, where one is safe from the polemic and the partisan. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... could take this remarkable poem of 'Christmas Eve' to its heart, its tolerance, its Catholic spirit, and, more than all, the fealty it exhibits to the Personality who essentially is Lord of Life, what a revolution it would undergo! and what a mass of dogmatic and polemic theology would become utterly obsolete! The most remarkable thing, perhaps, about the vast body of Christian theology which has been developed during the eighteen centuries which have elapsed since Christ ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... the reading of Holmes, who is an energetic writer, and appears to have looked closely into his subject. The least pleasing trait in the work is a polemic spirit which is quite a clog to the inquiry, especially to those who, like myself, have never read the authors Faber, Cunningham, and Frere, whose interpretations he combats. For a clergyman, he certainly ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... mingled with what my mother felt to be paramount tragedy. Far different was Mr. Clowes: holy, visionary, apostolic, he could not be treated disrespectfully. No man could deny him a qualified homage. But for any polemic service he wanted the taste, the training, and the particular sort of erudition required. Neither would such advantages, if he had happened to possess them, have at all availed him in a case like this. Horror, blank horror, seized him upon seeing a woman, a young woman, a woman ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... order of things. Accordingly, we have seen of late that this scriptural dictum—"The poor shall never cease out of the land"—has terminated its career as a truism, (that is, as a truth, either obvious on one hand, or inert on the other,) and has wakened into a polemic or controversial life. People arose who took upon them utterly to deny this scriptural doctrine. Peremptorily they challenged the assertion that poverty must always exist. The Bible said that it was an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various |
