"Polemical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Halle converts. Instead of immediately comforting terrified sinners with the full consolation of the Gospel, they proved them "according to the marks of the state of grace." Graebner: "While Diaconus in Grosshennersdorf, Muhlenberg had already published a polemical tract against Dr. Balthasar Mentzer, who had attacked Pietism, and had pictured the time before the rise of Pietism as a time of darkness, in which God had 'set up a true light here and there, until ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... accretions to which it had given rise. Catholicism, it was thought, if it were to hold the field as a world-wide religion, must be remodelled so as to bring it better into line with the conclusions of modern philosophy. Less attention should be paid to dogma and to polemical discussions, and more to the ethical and natural principles ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... restoration of worthless documents; it is thus evident that "more importance is attached to the materials of study than to its intellectual results." The Rector of Giessen sees in the diffuse style of German scholars and in the bitterness of their polemical writings an effect of the habit they have contracted of "excessive preoccupation with little things."[118] In the same year the same note was sounded, at the University of Bale, by Herr J. v. Pflugk-Harttung. "The highest ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... solitude, none which so instantly enfranchises the mind from the tyranny of mean self-interest or vain and envious polemics. Men do not grow sour and quarrelsome about the Absolute: everything that is polemical is inspired, as Michelet once said, by some temporal and momentary interest. The man who has climbed to the Idalian spring comes down benevolent. He does not grudge this toiling ant his grain, that snarling dog his bone, but is content to live ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... Worms in 1521; taken prisoner and confined in the Wartburg, he there translated the New Testament; later translated the Old Testament, and published a hymn-book; in 1525 married a nun; published numerous polemical pamphlets against the Church; had great influence in the formation of the present literary language ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... my mind there is only one that is serious; I will speak of it in conclusion. Many of the others are raised by persons who have a merely superficial acquaintance with the problem; their arguments are more polemical than scientific. ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... himself soon involved in lawsuits, into the details of which it is needless to go, but in the course of which he published a series of memoirs, or statements of his case for the public at large. These memoirs are among the most vigorous of all polemical writings; they were very clever and very witty; they were vivacious and audacious; they were unfailingly interesting; and they were read as eagerly as the 'Letters of Junius.' Personal at first, the suits soon ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... declined the controversy on the plea of reverence for the memory of his deceased master. This plea the King considered as the subterfuge of a vanquished disputant. [47] Had he been well acquainted with the polemical literature of the preceding century and a half, he would have known that the documents to which he attached so much value might have been composed by any lad of fifteen in the college of Douay, and contained nothing which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have no idea even of opening the question as to what work the Darwinian theory has incited, and in what way the work done has reacted upon the theory; and least of all do we like to meddle with the polemical literature of the subject, already so voluminous that the German bibliographers and booksellers make a separate class of it. But two or three treatises before us, of a minor or incidental sort, suggest a remark or two upon the attitude of mind toward evolutionary ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... book whose history was so full of vicissitudes? Why did the French government, the church, and the literary world so excite themselves about a dictionary? The "Encyclopaedia" had in fact two functions; it was a repository of information and a polemical writing. Condorcet has thus stated the purpose of the book. Diderot, he says, "intended to bring together in a dictionary all that had been discovered in the sciences, what was known of the productions of the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... up St. Michael's rectory and explained first, and smoked companionably with the Major in the library afterward. Further along, there was a one-sided discussion polemical, it being meat and drink to Major Caspar to ensnare a young theologian to his discomfiture in the unaxiomatic field of religion. Ardea was in and out of the library frequently while the discussion was in progress, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the university of St. Andrews, to study under Mr. John Mair, (a man of considerable learning at that time), and had the degree of master of arts conferred upon him, while very young. He excelled in philosophy and polemical divinity, and was admitted into church orders before the usual time appointed by the canons. Then laying aside all unnecessary branches of learning, he betook himself to the reading of the antients, particularly Angustine's and Jerome's works, with whom he was exceedingly pleased. He ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... largely stimulated and to some extent prompted by Europeans and Americans. Not only the writings of English and German scholars, like Max Mueller and Deutsch, helped enormously to revive the interest of educated Hindus in their ancient literature and earlier forms of religion, but it was in the polemical tracts of European writers that the first protagonists of Hindu reaction against Christian influences found their readiest weapons of attack. The campaign was started in 1887 by the Hindu Tract Society of Madras, which set itself first to inflame ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... years. Edgar could do no more than evade difficulties and temporize with problems which imperceptible growth alone could solve; and the idealistic pictures of early England are not drawn from life, but inspired by a belief in good old days and an unconscious appreciation of the polemical value of such a theory in political controversy. Tacitus, a splenetic Roman aristocrat, had satirized the degeneracy of the empire under the guise of a description of the primitive virtues of a Utopian Germany; ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... no friend of polemical writing, and I believe the less we see of it in your friendly periodical, the better it is; but still I must protest against such copying of partially-written judgments, when good information can be got. I say not by stretching out a hand, for the book was already ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... student, rather than to refute the unbeliever. He did not expect to furnish the combatant with ready-made weapons, which would make him omnipotent in conflict; but he hoped to give him some suggestions in reference to the tactics for conducting the contest. The Lectures have a polemical aspect, but they seek to obtain their end by means of the educational. The writer has aimed at assisting the student, in the struggle with his doubts, in the inquiry for truth, in the quiet meditative search for light and knowledge, preparatory to ministering to others. The survey ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... improvement is sustained throughout this curious volume. Probably the intimate study of the Authorized Version of the Bible, which this semi-theological tractate necessitated, had much to do with the clarification of the author's style. At all events, from this time forth, Nash drops, except in polemical passages where his design is provocative, that irritating harshness in volubility which had hitherto marked his manner of writing. Here, for example, is a passage from "Christ's Tears" which is not ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... showing that the most brilliant wit may be the ally of virtue. But, in any case, prudence should have restrained him from encountering Collier. The nonjuror was a man thoroughly fitted by nature, education, and habit for polemical dispute. Congreve's mind, though a mind of no common fertility and vigor, was of a different class. No man understood so well the art of polishing epigrams and repartees into the clearest effulgence, and setting them neatly in easy and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... entirely with the suspicious characters who had all along shown a disrespect to the Protestant form of worship. All the settlers were, however, so busy in erecting dwellings, and cultivating the ground, that no one had time for polemical discussions. ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... champions of the right side; different in character, their oratorical powers were much on a par. Maury represented the clergy, of which body he was a member; Cazales, the noblesse, to whom he belonged. The one, Maury, early trained to struggles of polemical theology, had sharpened and polished in the pulpit the eloquence he was to bring into the tribune. Sprung from the lowest ranks of the people, he only belonged to the ancien regime by his garb, and defended religion and the monarchy as two texts, imposed ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... pronounced him a false brother. A controversy arose which long survived the original combatants. In our own time the cause which Bunyan had defended with rude logic and rhetoric against Kiffin and Danvers was pleaded by Robert Hall with an ingenuity and eloquence such as no polemical ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... their doctrines have a strong resemblance to Presbyterianism. There is, however, an important difference. Presbyterianism has an ecclesiastical organisation and a written creed, and its doctrines have long since become clearly defined by means of public discussion, polemical literature, and general assemblies. The Molokanye, on the contrary, have had no means of developing their fundamental principles and forming their vague religious beliefs into a clearly defined logical system. Their theology is therefore still in a half-fluid state, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... New Essays concerning the Human Understanding Leibnitz develops his theory of knowledge in the form of a polemical commentary to Locke's chief work.[1] According to Descartes some ideas (the pure concepts) are innate, according to Locke none, according to Leibnitz all. Or: according to Descartes some ideas (sensuous perceptions) come from without, according to Locke all do so, according ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... Aberdeen to Lord John Russell. Lord John had the peculiar temperament that is hard to agitate, but easy to nettle. So polemical a reading of former whig pranks nettled him considerably. Why, he asked, should he not say just as reasonably that Mr. Gladstone held up the whigs to odium in 1841 for stripping the farmer of adequate protection; ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... present a graduated system of Christian instruction. (In one passage the Dialogue expressly refers to the Apology.) From Justin's time onward the apologetic polemic of the early Church appears to have adhered throughout to the same method. This consisted in giving the polemical writings directed against the Greeks the form of an introduction to Christian knowledge, and in continuing this instruction still further in ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... better still probably the most important of all the elements! It was certainly a rare good fortune! It couldn't help but make him the observed among observers. This may have occasioned the hue and cry against his polemical essays on government and church to become more frequent and in some ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... these are strange times," observed the president, "when a doctor of divinity and an under-graduate set forth, like a knight-errant and his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of the church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray Heaven, however, there be no encounter in store for us; for I utterly forgot to ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... return, he attended the King in a journey to Scotland, where he exerted himself in support of episcopacy, in opposition to the established ministry there, who were Presbyterians. Having acquired some name in polemical divinity, and being long accustomed to disputations, the King made choice of him to go to the Netherlands, and assist at the synod of Dort, in settling the controverted points of faith, for which that reverend ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... author has no expectant public), and only the most skilful could write of it in a hostile spirit without betraying that some of its strokes had told. An evening newspaper which piqued itself on independence indulged in laughing appreciation of the polemical chapter, and the next day printed a scornful letter from a thinly-disguised correspondent who assailed both book and reviewer. For the moment people talked more of Alfred Yule than they had done since his ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... "O, Ye Times! O, Ye Manners!" is still occasionally given on the stage. Her own Memoirs and her Correspondence with Voltaire, Diderot, and others, furnish invaluable pictures of contemporary views and manners. Her satires, comedies, and journalistic work and polemical articles are most important, however, because most original. In 1769 she began to publish a newspaper called "All Sorts of Things" (or "Varieties"), to which she personally contributed satirical articles attacking abuses—chiefly the lack of culture, and superficiality of ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... no longer remains a single type to portray. The only way of appealing to the public is by strong writing, powerful creations, and by the number of volumes given to the world." Theory-ridden Zola's polemical writings, like those of Richard Wagner's, must be ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... most favourable to the cause of truth to set down these remarks according to the order in which they were suggested to my mind by a consideration of the subject itself, instead of observing the formality of a polemical reply; but if the view which they contain be just, they will be found to involve a refutation of the arguers against poetry, so far at least as regards the first division of the subject. I can readily conjecture what should have moved the gall of some learned and intelligent writers ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... originally stood on the site of the present Royal Hospital, and was founded by Matthew Sutcliffe, Dean of Exeter in 1610, as a school for polemical discussion. It was nicknamed by Laud "Controversy College." King James I. called it after himself, and gave all the timber required for building purposes from Windsor Forest free of charge, and, according to the manner of Princes in those days, issued royal letters inciting his ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... a fool to tell you once you must not come if I did tell you so. I knew better at the time, and did steadily believe, as far as I was concerned, that no polemical mud, however much was thrown, could by any possibility stick to me; for I was purely an observer; had not the smallest personal or partial interest; and merely spoke to the question as a historian; and I knew whoever could see me must see that. But, at the moment, the little pamphlet ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a thinker has suffered somewhat unjustly as a result of his refusal to square his tenets either with democracy or with its opposite. It has been said that ideas were only of use to him so far as they were of polemical service, that the amazing fertility and acuteness of his mind worked only in a not too scrupulous determination to overwhelm his antagonists in the several arguments—on India, or America, on Ireland or on France—which made ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... in some epigrams, but most of all in his Ibis, of which we have an imitation, or perhaps nearly a translation, in Ovid's poem of the same name. On the part of Apollonius there is a passage in the third book of the Argonautica (11. 927-947) which is of a polemical nature and stands out from the context, and the well-known savage epigram upon Callimachus.[1] Various combinations have been attempted by scholars, notably by Couat, in his Poesie Alexandrine, to give a connected account of the quarrel, but we have not data sufficient to determine the order ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... Connecticut are strictly virtuous and to be compared to the prude rather than the European polite lady. They are not permitted to read plays; cannot converse about whist, quadrille or operas; but will freely talk upon the subjects of history, geography, and mathematics. They are great casuists and polemical divines; and I have known not a few of them so well schooled in Greek and Latin as often to put to the blush learned gentlemen." And yet Hannah Adams, writing in her Memoir in 1832, had this to say of educational opportunities in Connecticut during the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Julie had been saying the lightest but the wisest things; she had been touching incidents and personalities known only to the initiated with a restrained gayety which often broke down into a charming shyness, which was ready to be scared away in a moment by a tone—too serious or too polemical—which jarred with the general key of the conversation, which never imposed itself, and was like the ripple on a summer sea. But the summer sea has its depths, and this modest gayety was the mark of ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thought it of great importance, and a necessity of the times, that he should write a book against the Christians, whose opinions were, he knew, making such progress as raised the suspicion that they would prevail over all others, and in a short time become universal. This polemical treatise ran to fifteen books, and "exhibited considerable acquaintance with both the Jewish and the Christian scriptures."[14487] It is now lost, but its general character is well known from the works of Eusebius, Jerome, and others. The style was caustic ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... first great instance of the abuse of publicity to such ends. The polemical writings which a hundred years earlier Poggio and his opponents interchanged, are just as infamous in their tone and purpose, but they were not composed for the press, but for a sort of private circulation. Aretino made all his profit out of a complete ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Son [into our hearts], crying: Abba, Father, that is, making us to cry, Abba, Father."(487) How did St. Augustine come to interpret this simple text in so many different ways? Some think he chose this method to overwhelm the Pelagians and Semipelagians with Scriptural proofs. But this polemical motive can hardly have induced him to becloud an obvious text and invent interpretations which never occurred to any other ecclesiastical writer before or after his time. The conundrum can only be solved by the assumption that Augustine believed in a plurality of literal senses in ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... Symonds passes to the painters: not those great artists of Florence and Venice of whom he has already written, but the Eclectics of Bologna, the Naturalists of Naples and Rome. This chapter is too polemical to be pleasant. The one on music is much better, and Mr. Symonds gives us a most interesting description of the gradual steps by which the Italian genius passed from poetry and painting to melody and song, till the whole of Europe thrilled with ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Browning's thought where it is most significant is often more or less enigmatical if taken by itself: its energetic gestures, unless we see what they are directed against, seem aimless beating the air. His thought, as far as it is polemical, will probably cease to interest future readers. New methods of attack will call forth new methods of defence. Time will make its discreet selection from his writings. And the portion which seems most likely to survive is that which presents in true forms of art the permanent ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the countries of the Entente has been full of citations from German political writers. In England, in particular, the names and works of Bernhardi and of Treitschke have become more familiar than they appear to have been in Germany prior to the war. This method of selecting for polemical purposes certain tendencies of sentiment and theory, and ignoring all others, is one which could be applied, with damaging results, to any country in the world. Mr. Angell has shown in his "Prussianism in England" how it might be applied to ourselves; and a German, no doubt, into whose hands ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... it is this very interpretation of the church, that, according to my conviction, constituted the first and fundamental apostasy; and I hold it for one of the greatest mistakes of our polemical divines, in their controversies with the Romanists, that they trace all the corruptions of the gospel faith ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... of his mind was anything but polemical; he cared not to spend time even over those authors whose attacks on the outposts of science, or whose elaborate reconcilements of old and new, might have afforded him some support. On the other hand, he ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... that very work, wrote a deistical treatise in prose, bearing the same title, and ascribed it with great testimony of respect to "his much-honoured friend, John Dryden, Esquire."[3] Mr. Blount, living in close habits with Dryden, must have known perfectly well how to understand his polemical poem; and, had he supposed it was written under a deep belief of the truth of the English creed, can it be thought he would have inscribed to the author a tract against all revelation?[4] The inference is, therefore, sufficiently plain, that the dedicator knew that ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... but her esteem for this venerable preacher led her occasionally to attend upon his public instructions. Her religion was, in reality, little allied to any system of forms; and, as she has often told me, was founded rather in taste, than in the niceties of polemical discussion. Her mind constitutionally attached itself to the sublime and the amiable. She found an inexpressible delight in the beauties of nature, and in the splendid reveries of the imagination. But nature itself, she thought, would ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... gesture, and language are almost ludicrously familiar. No heroics, not much use of the pathetic; very slight landscape-painting and background; no psychology; there is no systematic attempt to introduce, under the story's disguise, the serious discussion of social, political, or polemical questions. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... for assigning so small a place in my memoirs to what has occupied so much of my life is a double one. In the first place, I was most anxious not be polemical. Politics are synonymous with strife, and if I had written a political biography, it would have become the record of a battle, or rather, of many battles, in which I could hardly have avoided saying hard things both of living and dead people. But that was what I most wanted ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... services to science and humanity, were involved in unsparing denunciations. The work is by no means of the simply humorous character it might be supposed, but is overloaded with notes of the most seriously polemical nature. Much of the history of the subject, indeed, is to be looked for ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... wholesale, not to attack with any argument, good or bad, not to deny or ignore what was solid in the Roman ground, and good and elevated in the Roman system, but admitting all that fairly ought to be admitted, to bring into prominence, not for mere polemical denunciation, but for grave and reasonable and judicial condemnation, all that was extravagant and arrogant in Roman assumptions, and all that was base, corrupt, and unchristian in the popular religion, which, with all its claims ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... culture, entirely lacking independence.' The germ of this great movement towards mental freedom was contained in the general trend of the time, which was striving to free itself from the fetters of the Middle Ages in customs and education as well as dogma. It was chiefly a polemical movement, a fight between contentious savants. The writings of the Humanists at this naively sensuous period were full of the joy of life and love of pleasure; but scarcely any simple feeling for Nature can be found in them, and there was neither poet ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... astrology, such as the reform of the calendar, attracted his attention. His other works consisted of theological essays, ascetic or exegetic, questions of ecclesiastical discipline and reform, and of various polemical writings called forth for the most part by the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... diverted from them. Philo's language points rather to duties which he was compelled to undertake less congenial than those of a member of the Sanhedrin would have been; and probably must refer to the polemical activity which he was called upon to exert in defending his people against misrepresentation and persecution. During the reign of Augustus and the early years of Tiberius (30 B.C.E.-20 C.E.) the Roman provinces were firmly ruled, and the governors were as firmly controlled by the emperor. ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... obligatory observance of Christmas. It was conducted in the newspaper of the town, then published only on two days of the week, and to the multitude of readers appeared more spirited than edifying, as is the case with most polemical disputes. The worthy Episcopal Doctor had asserted on Christmas Day, that the observance of that festival was of universal Christian obligation. The Presbyterian Doctor took up the cudgels to demonstrate, that, although ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... afterward in a Latin translation,[1] it shows that the leading features of his doctrine on this subject were already fixed. With it should be read the chapter in the Large Catechism (1519), and the treatise Von der Wiedertaufe (1538).[2] The treatment is not polemical, but objective and practical. The Anabaptist controversy was still in the future. No objections against Infant Baptism or problems that it suggested were pressing for attention. Nothing more is attempted ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... practical observer of its moral precepts. He read and studied the New Testament, because it contained a compendium of all his every-day duties as a rational and accountable being, and as a member of society, not because it was a magazine of polemical divinity and abstruse doctrines. The evening of such a man's life is calm and tranquil; his death is indeed the death ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... dimly known periods, critics are perhaps most apt to show their defects of temper, and Scott often commented on the acerbity of spirit which such studies seem to induce. "Antiquaries," he said, "are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very points which are least susceptible of proof, and which are least valuable if the truth could be ascertained; and which therefore we would gladly have seen handled with more diffidence and better temper in proportion to their uncertainty."[90] Of Ritson he says many times in one form ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... refugee Flemish physician from Antwerp, who had fled to England from the "abominations of the Roman Antichrist" and the persecutions of the Duke of Alva, John Vander Noodt, published one of those odd miscellanies, fashionable at the time, half moral and poetical, half fiercely polemical, which he called a "Theatre, wherein be represented as well the Miseries and Calamities which follow the voluptuous Worldlings, as also the great Joys and Pleasures which the Faithful do enjoy—an argument both profitable and delectable to all that sincerely love the word of God." This "little ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... time, become so polemical, that every time he opened his mouth out flew a paradox, which he maintained with all the enthusiasm of altercation; but all his paradoxes favoured strong of a partiality for his own country. He undertook to prove that poverty was a blessing to a nation; that oatmeal was preferable ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... remarkable. The first aspires to be for this field what Frazer's Golden Bough is for religious anthropology, and its dictum is: "Beauty is Truth; Truth Beauty." The thesis of the second is that Masonry is founded upon Egyptian eschatology, which may be true; but unfortunately the book is too polemical. Both books partake of the poetry, if not the confusion, of the subject; but not for a world of dust would one clip their wings of fancy and suggestion. Indeed, their union of scholarship and poetry is unique. When the pains of erudition fail to track a ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... any tenet or doctrine in these seminaries, in which every doctrine is matter of dispute and controversy. I was rather surprised to hear the noble viscount opposite—a minister of the crown—express his preference for polemical disputations in the universities. I should have thought that he would have felt it to be his inclination, as well as duty, by all means to protect the universities from such disputes, and from a system fruitful in such controversies; and probably to end in a cessation ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... just as unmalleable and unmanageable as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence, which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists of the age. He had slain men with his own hand, for aught I know,—certainly, they had fallen, like blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe, before the charge to which his spirit ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... can, in mixed companies, argumentative, polemical conversations; which, though they should not, yet certainly do, indispose for a time the contending parties toward each other; and, if the controversy grows warm and noisy, endeavor to put an end to it by some genteel levity or joke. I quieted such ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... was received with enthusiasm, Ginx's Baby was to be incontinently pitched into an arena of polemical warfare. Every one was willing that a committee should fight out the question vicariously; and, therefore, when Mr. Slowboy seconded the amendment, it was ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... A shrewd polemical expression beamed from Father Beret's eyes, and a very expert physiogomist might have suspected duplicity from certain lines about the old ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... boat through the dangers of the channel. Mark Twain is primarily a great artist, only unconsciously a true sociologist. But his power as a sociologist is no less real that it is unconscious, indeed infinitely more real and human and verisimilar that it is not polemical. There is a "sort of contemporaneous posterity" which has registered its verdict that Mark Twain was the greatest humorist of the present era. But there is yet to come that greater posterity of the future which will, I dare say, class Mark Twain as America's greatest, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... stand-point is, in the present state of opinion, to undertake a polemic against exclusive naturalism, an attitude which is itself philosophical, and as such is well known in the history of philosophy as positivism or agnosticism. I have avoided the polemical spirit and method so far as possible, but have, nevertheless, here taken sides against a definite philosophical position. This chapter, together with the Conclusion, is therefore an exception to the purely introductory and expository representation which I have, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Fathers, born at Carthage, the son of a Roman centurion; was well educated; bred a rhetorician; was converted to Christianity, became presbyter of Carthage, and embraced MONTANIST VIEWS (q. v.); wrote numerous works, apologetical, polemical, doctrinal, and practical, the last of an ascetic ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and publicity in general, played in the rebellion of the Netherlands. Through this organ one restless spirit spoke to millions. Besides the lampoons, which for the most part were composed with all the low scurrility and brutality which was the distinguishing character of most of the Protestant polemical writings of the time, works were occasionally published which defended religious liberty in the fullest sense of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Kusumanjali in which he tries to prove the existence of Is'vara (God). This work ought to be read with its commentary Prakas'a by Varddhamana (1225 A.D.) and its sub-commentary Makaranda by Rucidatta (1275 A.D.). Udayana's Atmatattvaviveka is a polemical work against the Buddhists, in which he tries to establish the Nyaya doctrine of soul. In addition to these we have a number of useful works on Nyaya in later times. Of these the following deserve ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Doctor was by no means altogether polemical. After defeating and utterly confounding the fathers who fired their last shot a thousand years ago, and who had not a word to say against his remaining master of the field, he was wont to unbend his mind ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... include yourself among that numerous tribe of Texas titans who can "unhorse" me as easily as turning a hen over; and having accorded you unlimited space in which to acquire momentum, I would certainly dread the shock were I cursed with an atom of polemical pride. Frankly, I wish you success—trust that you can demonstrate beyond a peradventure of a doubt that all my objections to the Single Tax are fallacious, that it is indeed the correct solution of that ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... how it has seen all States come and go, how in the endless change of human things it alone remains unchanged, ever with the same spirit, can we then wonder if many look up to it as the Rock unmoved amid the roaring billows of centuries?" And he adds in a note, "This is not a polemical statement, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... the staunchly loyal tribune of the New World peoples. In these days of flaccid patriotism and moral declension in public life, his example may well stimulate and inspire. In his wholehearted devotion to the hopes as well as to the interests of the Colonies most notable was the polemical fervor with which he espoused their cause and noble the stand he ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... institutions lose their divine prestige; they are simply human works, the fruits of the place and of the moment, and born out of convenience and a covenant. Skepticism enters through all the breaches. With regard to Christianity it at once enters into open hostility, into a bitter and prolonged polemical warfare; for, under the title of a state religion this occupies the ground, censuring free thought, burning writings, exiling, imprisoning or disturbing authors, and everywhere acting as a natural and official adversary. Moreover, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the Caroline period was Jeremy Taylor, whose works are only represented by "The Great Exemplar of Sanctity" (London, 1667), "Ductor Dubitantium" (London, 1696), which is still the chief English treatise on casuistry, and "A Collection of Polemical and Moral Discourses" (London, 1657). The Library contains two editions of the works (1683 and 1716) of Isaac Barrow, whom Charles II. described as "the best scholar in England." Other eminent writers of this ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... heresiarch carefully. The Carmelite now skilfully exposed the weakness of Bucer's arguments, together with his frequent misinterpretation of Scripture and the Fathers, Billick showing himself to be an experienced polemical writer; but the taste and tone of his book are repugnant to modern ideas, and betray the same acrimony which characterises the writings of Luther against Erasmus, and vice versa. Accusations of hatred, cunning, lying, slandering, and double-dealing, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... other items of folklore, ought to be examined into. There is no doubt, however, that by analogy it can be answered, because we have ample evidence, if the writings of reformers may be taken as historical facts and not polemical imaginations, that many very important customs, among the richest as well as the poorest treasures of folklore, have been, so to speak, Christianised by the Church, and that the Church has taken part in and adopted non-Christian customs, the survivors ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... old friend was not now so dear to him as when in old days he would come down to that farm-house, almost as penniless as the curate himself. Then they would walk together for hours along the rock-bound shore, listening to the waves, discussing deep polemical mysteries, sometimes with hot fury, then again with tender, loving charity, but always with a mutual acknowledgement of each other's truth. Now they lived comparatively near together, but no opportunities arose for such discussions. At any rate once a quarter ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... because criticism has so little kept in the pure intellectual sphere, has so little detached itself from practice, has been so directly polemical and controversial, that it has so ill accomplished, in this country, its best spiritual work; which is to keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him towards perfection, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... writings, and furnishes a magazine of arms in all disputes and party controversies. Thus, the strange sculptures on misereres, &c. are ascribed to contests between the secular and regular clergy: and thus Dryden, in his polemical poem of The Hind and the Panther, made these two animals symbolise respectively the Church of Rome and the Church of England, while the Independents, Calvinists, Quakers, Anabaptists, and other sects are characterised as wolves, bears, boars, foxes—all that is odious ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... resorted to, not merely without punishment, but without fear of censure; when I see all this, can I say that morals are improved, because theatres are turned into conventicles, and banquets and revels give place to polemical lectures? The faces of men do indeed assume the appearance of sanctity, but that it is only the appearance is evident, because true piety gives chearful serenity to the countenance, and easy simplicity to the whole carriage. It ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... 1877, Ernest Haeckel, the celebrated embryologist of Jena, delivered at the Congress of Naturalists, which was held at Munich, an eloquent address defending and propagating Darwinism, which was at that time the object of the most bitter polemical attacks. ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... Newtonian outlook were at stake. It was for this reason that his polemics against Newton were so strongly expressed, although he had no fondness for such controversies. In looking back on that part of the Farbenlehre which he had himself called 'Polemical' in the title, he said to Eckermann: 'I by no means disavow my severe dissections of the Newtonian statements; it was necessary at the time and will also have its value hereafter; but at bottom all polemical ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... de Valois, was dead also, after consenting to descend from the throne in order to make way for the mediocre Mary de' Medici. The Catholic champion whom Henry IV. felicitated himself upon being able to oppose to Du Plessis-Mornay in the polemical conferences between the two communions, Cardinal de Perron, was at the point of death. The decay was general, and the same amongst the Protestants as amongst the Catholics; Sully and Mornay held themselves aloof or were barely ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... he wrote more fully conduced to that lofty purpose than his famous "Polemical Essay on the Twin Doctrines of Christian Imperfection and a Death Purgatory"; than which few clearer, more convincing, or more able vindications of Scriptural holiness have ever been written. Can aught be plainer than the definition of Christian ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... readers the foregoing section will appear superfluous, polemical, sophistic—three bad things. I wrote it, and I let it stand, however, because it serves as preface to what I have to say in general about Michelangelo's ideal of form. He was essentially a Romantic as opposed to a Classic artist. That is to say, he sought invariably ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Sedgwick, Leslie, Stephens, Child and Neal. In fiction, they have Cooper, Paulding, Bird, Kennedy, Thomas, Ingraham, and many others. They have, notwithstanding the mosquitoes, produced some very good poets: Bryant, Halleck, Sigourney, Drake, etcetera; and have they not, with a host of polemical writers, Dr Channing, one of their greatest men, and from his moral courage in pointing out their errors, the best friend to his country that America has ever produced! Indeed, to these names we might fairly add their legal writers—Chancellor Kent and Judge Story, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... polemical Erasmus nor the witty humorist had been lost in the erudite divine and the disillusioned reformer. The paper-warrior we would further gladly have dispensed with, but not the humorist, for many treasures of literature. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... the Lutheran Reformation, they were regarded as primitive Protestants who had never swerved from the truth through the darkest ages, and could therefore be adopted with acclamation into the general Reformed communion. The Reformation, indeed; had penetrated into their valleys, rendering them more polemical for their faith, and more fierce against the Church of Rome, than they had been before. They had experienced persecutions through their whole history, and especially after the Reformation; but, on the whole, the two last Dukes of Savoy, and also Christine, daughter of Henry ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... He could only aid that cause by the favour of Elizabeth and James; by his services in Parliament, where, despite his desire for advancement, he conscientiously opposed the Queen. He was obliged to work at such tasks of various sorts, legal and polemical literature, as were set him by people in power. With these three great objects filling his heart, inspiring his ambition, and occupying his energies and time, we cannot easily believe, without direct external evidence, that ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... therefore, notice another obstacle which has hindered our author's popularity, and it is a fault of which the world is daily becoming more and more intolerant. That fault is prolixity. Dr. Owen did not take time to be brief; and in his polemical writings, he was so anxious to leave no cavil unanswered, that he spent, in closing loop-holes, the strength which would have crushed the foe in open battle. No misgiving as to the champion's powers will ever cross the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... e.g., the translation of AEsop's fables by Marie de France was called Ysopet, and Cato's moral maxims had the title Catonet, or Parvus Cato. Modern Fr. pamphlet, borrowed back from English, has always the sense of polemical writing. In Eng. libel, lit. "little book," we see a similar restriction of meaning. A three-quarter portrait of fixed dimensions is called ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... antiquary, and the artist, the man of science, the historian, the herald, and the genealogist, in short, Notes relating to all subjects but such as are, in popular discourse, termed either political or polemical, should meet in our columns in such juxta-position, as to give fair play to any natural attraction or repulsion between them, and so that if there are any hooks and eyes among them, ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... unmoored. The following day Wolff wrote a polemical dissertation in the Figaro and carried away his colleagues. The volume was a brilliant success, thanks to Boule de Suif. Despite the novelty, the honesty of effort, on the part of all, no mention was made of the other stories. Relegated to the second rank, they passed ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of a discussion, and a flavour of unkindness in the reproduction of "winged words," which, however appropriate at the time of their utterance, would find a still more appropriate place in oblivion. Yet, since I could hardly ask those who have honoured me by their polemical attentions to confer lustre on this collection, by permitting me to present their lucubrations along with my own; and since it would be a manifest wrong to them to deprive their, by no means rare, vivacities of language of such justification ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... professor said more in that last sentence than he himself intended, for his lectures were delivered in that temple of plutocracy, the University of Pennsylvania, and paid out of an endowment which specifies that "all polemical subjects ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... discusses unsettled questions takes up every gauntlet thrown down to him, polemical writing will absorb much of his energy. Having a power of work which unfortunately does not suffice for executing with anything like due rapidity the task I have undertaken, I have made it a policy to avoid controversy as much as possible, even at the cost of being seriously misunderstood. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... priests and theologers is but a weak foundation: and transmitted also such a number of contradictory reports, supported all of them by equal authority, that it became absolutely impossible to fix a preference among them. A few volumes, therefore, must contain all the polemical writings of pagan priests: And their whole theology must consist more of traditional stories and superstitious practices than of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... and my heart, thank God, is bent to pursue that which to me is most desirable, viz., holiness. But I need stronger faith to enter in by the blood of Jesus. Union with Him is sweet. This makes one thirst for more. Many temptations assault me, but the reading of Fletcher's Polemical Essay on Christian Perfection has been of advantage to me. I am learning the method of bringing to God those evils and besetments, which seem to be the main hindrances to my progress. I have much cause of ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... universal history, and he has only given the history of the Jews; and there is too much truth in the observation. He never got out of the fetters of his ecclesiastical education; the Jews were the centre round which he supposed all other nations revolved. His mind was polemical, not philosophic; a great theologian, he was but an indifferent historian. In one particular, indeed, his observations are admirable, and, at times, in the highest degree impressive. He never loses sight of the divine superintendence of human ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... their supporters in this country cannot but consider as fair, while the result would be that the Question should not be granted at all under such guarantees; but I think this is scarce to be done by inflaming the topic with all mutual virulence of polemical discussion." ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the author quotes from Heracleitus in Book IX, are not only obscure enough in themselves, but are also rendered all the more obscure by the polemical treatment they are subjected to by the patristic writer. Heracleitus makes the ALL inclusive of all Being and Non-Being, all pairs of opposites, "differentiation and non-differentiation, the generable and ingenerable, mortal and immortal, the Logos and Aeon, and the Father and Son," ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead |
