"Confute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him, said: "Embrace me, my dear marshal; I am glad to see you. I want no explanation or justification: I have honoured and esteemed you as the bravest of the brave."—"Sire, the newspapers have told a heap of lies, which I wish to confute: my conduct has ever been that of a good soldier, and a good Frenchman."—"I know it, and accordingly never doubted your attachment."—"You were right, Sire. Your Majesty may always depend upon me, when my country is concerned.... It is for my country I ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... more; and, what was still more mortifying, he was able, by reference to dates, charters, and other evidence of facts, that, as Burns says, "downa be disputed," to correct many of the vague tales which I had adopted on loose and vulgar tradition, as well as to confute more than one of my favourite theories on the subject of the old monks and their dwellings, which I had sported freely in all the presumption of superior information. And here I cannot but remark, that much of the stranger's arguments and inductions ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... was rough, and his tongue had a keen Shropshire tang, which indeed it never lost, giving thereby evidence to confute those who afterwards claimed for him kinship with a noble family. In truth Benbow was the son of an honest tanner of our town, and took no shame of his origin: his greatness was above such pettiness of spirit. He had run away to sea at an early age, and for some ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... familiarly accompanie the vnbealeuers / They can not chose but they must heare many subtill reasons and see many other thinges which do mutch make against the true religion that they do profes: Which thinges when they se and be not able to disproue and confute / They do it not: And so they ronne into two mischeifs. The furst is / That they ar as it wer witnesses of the blasphemie / and of the reproche that the vnbeleauers do to the truthe: the seconde / ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... Martinus Polonus, confessor to Gregory X., and the tale was generally believed till the Reformation. There is a German miracle-play on the subject, called The Canonization of Pope Joan (1480). David Blondel, a Calvinist divine, has written a book to confute ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to be alarmed at this tenderness forward, and that their truth was not a tribute to virtue, but was contempt of his ignorance. Nevertheless, it was truth; and he felt that it must be his part thereafter to confute the common belief that there ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... Morley rightly called it electrifying. And the same is true of the book which it so gloriously opens. As history and as philosophy, it is neither original nor exact. It derived directly from Locke, and many aspects of the world and thought since Darwin's time confute it. But, however much anticipated, and however much exposed to scientific ridicule, it remains one of the burning books of the world—one of those books which, as Lord Morley said, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... a-whirl, and doth connive to part sense from understanding and mind from body. To be sure, 'twas dark,—and allowing that I was well-nigh intoxicated with love—my brain could truly swear 'twas Sir Julian; and yet this he flung aside doth confute reason, and I must either ponder upon the this and that in endeavouring to conjoin mental and physical forces to sweet amity or give over that reaching wife's estate hath made of me a sordid fool, ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... pretends to say so has the reputation to be a notorious liar among persons whom I know to be of undoubted credit. Now, Mr. Veal is more of a gentleman than to say she lies, but says a bad husband has crazed her; but she needs only present herself, and it will effectually confute that pretence. Mr. Veal says he asked his sister on her death-bed whether she had a mind to dispose of anything. And she said no. Now the things which Mrs. Veal's apparition would have disposed of were so trifling, and nothing of justice aimed ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... said this with an air of conscious respectability and high standing, which might readily impose upon strangers. But, by bad luck, what he had said was heard by a person able to confute him. ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF A PROPER ATTITUDE OF MIND IS CAUTION.—Always realize the possibility of error both in another and in yourself. Be on your guard against intentional or unintentional deception. As Bacon said, "Read not to contradict and to confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."[3] The author you are reading may have made a mistake, or may be trying to mislead you. "When we think of the ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... Lansdowne, Viscount God erich, the Earl of Westmoreland, Earl Grey, and Lord Plunkett. The lord-chancellor had a difficult task to perform. He was among those who up to this period had earnestly refuted all the pleas of concession which were now brought forward, and he had now to confute all these refutations. As late as last year he had declared his conviction, that emancipation, though accompanied by weighty securities, was pregnant with danger to the constitution and establishment; and he now declared his equally conscientious conviction, that emancipation, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... quest, a hopeless one. So reason said. Romance and youth, and the longing that he could not define, rose to confute this sober argument, flushed and eager, violet ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... from their fashions. "The ladies of quality here, of late," says a writer from Paris, in 1642, "addict themselves to the study of philosophy, as the men; the ladies esteeming their education defective, if they cannot confute Aristotle and his disciples. The pen has almost supplanted the exercise of the needle; and ladies' closets, formerly the shops of female baubles, toys, and vanities, are now turned to libraries and sanctuaries of learned works. There ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... we count the greedy race, The knaves fill up the greater space. 'Tis a gross error, held in schools, That Fortune always favours fools. 120 In play it never bears dispute; That doctrine these felled oaks confute. Then why to me such rancour show? 'Tis folly, Pan, that is thy foe. By me his late estate he won, But he by ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... been close, damp weather," said Henrietta, surprised at the accurate remembrance, which she could not confute. "She misses the cold ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "be diligent to study the law, that thou mayest know how to confute the Epicurean; consider also in whose presence thou art laboring, for the Master of thy work is faithful to pay thee the reward of ...
— Hebrew Literature
... in Shakespeare's quartos and folios, half the occupation of Shakespeare scholarship would have been lacking. Sometimes the original manuscript turns up—unfortunately not in Shakespeare's case—to confute some or all of the ingenious editors. A learned professor changed the word "unbodied" in Shelley's "Skylark" to "embodied," and some critics approved the change; but the poet's manuscript in the Harvard University Library makes the former reading clear beyond question. ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... easily solved, if (as I said) we teach youth to judge aright and to give the better saying preference. But if we chance to meet with any absurd passages without any others at their heels to confute them, we are then to overthrow them with such others as elsewhere are to be found in the same author. Nor must we be offended with the poet or grieved at him, but only at the speeches themselves, which he utters either according ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... can with Logic absolute The Dronings of the Soberheads confute, Silence the scoffing ones, and in a trice Life's leaden ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... the door behind. He locked it. He stepped away from the girl, leaving her standing there. She was a picture to confute slander. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... daughter shall complain, Send Gilbert's wooden argument again. If still you wonder that I take a wife From the unpolish'd walks of humble life, I'll tell you on what ground my love began, And let the wise confute it if they can. I saw a girl, with nature's untaught grace, Turn from my ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... apparently the purpose of the writer to convey the impression that his period of waiting had been passed without pleasure; but yet we may easily confute him with another quotation from The Lantern-Bearers. "One pleasure at least," says Stevenson, "he tasted to the full—his work is there to prove it—the keen pleasure of successful literary composition." Was this honorable author ever moved to ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... chase, the cares of governing, the fatigues of war, Akbar had no recreation to be compared to the pleasure of listening to the discussions between his much regarded friend and the bigoted Muhammadan doctors of law and religion who strove to confute him. These discourses constituted a great event in his reign. It is impossible to understand the character of Akbar without referring to them somewhat minutely. Akbar did not suddenly imbibe those principles of toleration and of equal government for all, the enforcement of which marks ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... ordinarily traduce Kirk Judicatures, as medling with civill affairs, which as it is no new calumny, but such as hath been cast upon the servants of GOD in former times; so the whole course of proceedings doth manifestly confute the same. ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... for the maxim is that of necessity. It prevails, 'not that all men know the law, but because it is an excuse which every man will make, and no man can tell how to confute him.' Selden, (as quoted in the 2d edition of Starkie on Slander, Prelim. Disc., p. 140, note.)" Law Magazine, (London,) vol. 27, ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... my father, toweringly: 'I have used the power placed in my hands by Providence to overcome the hesitations of a gentleman whose illustrious rank predisposes him to sacrifice his daughter's happiness to his pride of birth and station. Can any one confute me when I assert that the princess ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his spare hours in this study: on other days, when his ordinary labour was over, he meditated some work in Flemish on religion. The subject which he liked best at that time was Christ's love to mankind: he no doubt intended to confute the extravagant opinions of the Gomarists. He purposed also to write a Commentary on the ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... that animals are conscious, but after all you cannot directly observe their consciousness, and you cannot logically confute those philosophers {9} who have contended that the animal was an unconscious automaton. Still less can you be sure in detail what is the animal's sensation or state of mind at any time; to get at that, you would need a trustworthy report from the animal himself. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... certain experiments and considerations which rather confute that easy explanation, or at least make clear that the mystery is not so simple. The work of Steinach, a Viennese investigator, has contributed most to the elucidation of the nonarterial factor in senility. No one has asserted more loudly the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... have thy skill thought universal, Though thy dull ear be to music untrue; Then, whilst we strive to confute the Rehearsal, Prithee leave thrashing of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... 45: Changes its sex.—Ver. 408. Pliny mentions it as a vulgar belief that the hyaena is male and female in alternate years. Aristotle took the pains to confute this ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... they that haue faithfully commended to euerlasting posteritie, the stories of the whole world: that by their infinite labours haue aduaunced the knowledge of tongues: to be short, that endeuour themselues to represse the insolencie, confute the slanders, and withstand the vniust violence of others, against themselues, their Nation or ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... foolishness the world is governed. He finds that there is quackery in legislation as in everything else; that rulers have their whims and errors as well as other men, and are not so wonderfully superior as he had imagined, since even he may occasionally confute them in argument. Thus awe subsides into confidence, confidence inspires familiarity, and familiarity produces contempt. Such was the case, say they, with William the Testy. By making himself too easy of access, he enabled every scrub-politician to measure wits ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... for his fraud, his followers maintained him in luxury. Several of them appeared at the bar to countenance him when he was tried at the Horsham assizes. So long did this delusion last that, when George the Third had been some years on the English throne, Voltaire thought it necessary gravely to confute the hypothesis that the man in the iron mask was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of granting arms to any one for a large fee, and of stealing forty or fifty heraldic books from the college library. There was also Ralph Brooke, York Herald in the same reign, a malicious and ignorant man, who attempted to confute some of Camden's genealogies in the "Britannia." He broke open and stole some muniments from the office, and finally, for two felonies, was burnt in the hand ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... impudence of that hypocrisy which reconciled goodness and villainy, and made it possible for men to be saints and devils both together; whereby religion became ruinous to itself, and faith became instructed to confute and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... amongst the class of learners by their own experience. He would ask me, whether it be the ultimate end of my philosophy to try experiments, or to be happy. And what answer should I make? I have none ready. Common sense stares me in the face, and my feelings, even at this instant, alas! confute my system. I shall pay too dear yet for some of my experiments. 'Sois grand homme, et sois malheureux,' is, I am afraid, the law of nature, or rather the decree of the world. Your ladyship will not read this without ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... been openly confuted, and also that the Accused of Heresy might as well have been admitted to reason their Articles with Counsel, whether they were heresy or no[t], as the Accused of Treason against the King is admitted to his Council to confute his cause and Articles, whether they be treason or not, they should never have murdered nor prisoned so many good Christian ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... especially such as were Ministers in the congregation, should (by often reading, and meditation in God's word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth; and further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) might continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... he gave it, and his words came irregularly by twos and threes. "It may be hard—for some while—to make her see the—the necessity. Women fight for their own by instinct—right or wrong, they do not ask themselves. If you reason, they will seize upon any sophistry to confute you—to persuade themselves. Doubtless the instinct comes from God; but to men, sometimes, it makes ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... time, patience, or ability, to set down quietly with close observation, and investigate the subject thoroughly. Hence it has been found easier to receive error for truth, than to make the exertion necessary to confute it; the more so, because there is no guide to direct the investigation. I shall, therefore, pursue a different course; and for every assertion endeavor to give a test, that the reader may apply and satisfy ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... times this deadly hostility to art was not extinct; for when a proposal was made gratuitously to decorate our places of worship by a series of religious pictures, and English artists, in pure devotion to Art, zealous to confute the Continental calumniators, asked only for walls to cover, George the Third highly approved of the plan. The design was put aside, as some had a notion that the cultivation of the fine arts in our naked churches ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... The expression of your face has changed. Heigh-ho! Whither away? Alas! It is plain that she would go to the yashiki of Okumura. Evil her purpose. She would confute the malice spoken by Koume, by parent and child. She would fetch away with her Iemon Dono. Iya! Ho, there! Your honoured judgment strays. She believes in what Gombei has said; that he is with the Okumura. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... lofty steps; nor did he breathe freely till he found himself alone under the huge elms of the silent close. Here he walked long and slowly, thinking on his case with a troubled air, and trying in vain to confute the archdeacon's argument. He then went home, resolved to bear it all,—ignominy, suspense, disgrace, self-doubt, and heart-burning,— and to do as those would have him, who he still believed were most fit and most able ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... with their six thousand errata, like the false Duessa, covered their crafty deformity with a fair raiment; for when the great Selden, in the assembly of divines, delighted to confute them in their own learning, he would say, as Whitelock reports, when they had cited a text to prove their assertion, "Perhaps in your little pocket-bible with gilt leaves," which they would often pull ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... yet descend more particularly to confute our opposites' several answers and defences, which they have used against our argument of scandal. And I begin with our Lord Chancellor: "As for the godly amongst us (saith he(397)), we are sorry they should be grieved; but it is their own ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... the benefit of the convicts who embarked for this country, which articles had been entrusted to the Rev. Mr. Johnson, to be disposed of according to the intention of the subscribers after our arrival, Mr. Johnson wrote to his friends in England to confute this report; and by accounts lately received, it appeared that no such public collection had ever been made; at Mr. Johnson's request, therefore, the governor published a contradiction of the above report in the general orders ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... originally stated in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Argei." I endeavoured to confute it in the Classical Review, 1902, p. 115 foll., and Wissowa replied in Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 211 foll. Since then my conviction has become stronger that this great scholar is for once wrong. Ennius alluded to the Argei as an institution of Numa, i.e. as primitive (frag. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... overcome; he must exhibit once in the Academy. The Academicians would be satisfied with that. Mr. Jones did exhibit in the Academy; he was elected on the strength of this one exhibit. He has never exhibited since. These are the facts: confute them who may, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... debate with you, to confute your errors. One thing only will I add, before dismissing you to ponder what I have uttered. It is in your power to prove your return to reason and the dignity of a Roman; I need not say how; the occasion will surely ere long present itself, and leave ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... luxurant branches, and to take the little foxes which spoil the wines. Many whose duty, by virtue of their office, is to give warning from Zion's walls, as watchmen entrusted with the city of God, neglect to discover, and from the scriptures to confute these errors, or to show their flocks by doctrine or writing the danger of being tainted with them. And as suitable endeavours have been wanting effectually to extirpate heresy and error, so schism, ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... madam, are the eternal humorist The eternal enemy of the absolute, Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist With your air indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—" And—"Are we then ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... Aphrodite rose from frothy seas But to illustrate such hypotheses. With years enough behind his back, Lincoln will take the selfsame track, And prove, hulled fairly to the cob, A mere vagary of Old Prob. 120 Give the right man a solar myth, And he'll confute the sun therewith. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... if the world has been as justly, as it has always been firmly, persuaded that the people of Italy are effete in point of good faith. I have seen much to justify this opinion, and something also to confute it; and as long as Garibaldi lives, I shall not let myself believe that a race which could produce a man so signally truthful and single-hearted is a race of liars and cheats. I think the student of their ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... into talk at once, for Lady Merrifield's safe arrival and Sir Jasper's improvement had just been telegraphed, and there was much rejoicing over the good news. Gillian had nearly made up her mind to confute the enemy by asking why Captain White had left Rockquay; but somehow when it came to the point, she durst not make the venture, and they skimmed upon ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... classes in America, and they may even be foolish enough to believe it—for there are lots of very foolish politicians and preachers in the world! You may even hear a short-sighted labor leader say the same thing, but you know very well, my friend, that they are wrong. You may not be able to confute them in debate, not having their skill in wordy warfare; but your experience, your common sense, convince you that they are wrong. And all the greatest political economists are on your side. I could fill a volume with quotations from the writings of the most learned ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... antiquity; undertaking not only to frame new words of science at pleasure, but to confound and extinguish all ancient wisdom; insomuch as he never nameth or mentioneth an ancient author or opinion, but to confute and reprove; wherein for glory, and drawing followers and disciples, he took the right course. For certainly there cometh to pass, and hath place in human truth, that which was noted and pronounced in the highest truth:- Veni in nomine partis, nec ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... burned a settlement a little higher up the stream. Not content with this Caligulesque apostolate to the Guaycurus, the Bishop longed for serious occupation, and caused it to be rumoured about the city that he did nothing except by the direct authority of the Holy Ghost, an allegation hard to confute, and if allowed, likely to lead to difficulties ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... years, falling passionately in love with her own son, she endeavoured to induce him to comply with her criminal desires, and was slain by him: all this, I say, is so void of all appearance of truth, that to go about to confute it would be but losing time. It must however be owned, that almost all the authors who have spoken of Semiramis, give us but a disadvantageous idea ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... enemy's army to consist of 20,000 or above, are there not more fencible persons in the shires on the north side of Forth? Believe it who please we cannot stop our own consciences, and put out our own eyes. Let the rolls of several shires be looked to, and it shall confute that testimony. Nay, are there not more persons not formerly secluded, in all those shires? What meant the levy appointed immediately after Dunbar? Was not 10,000 foot, and 1,400 horse put upon these shires which are not under the power of the enemy, and yet the rules of exclusion ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... are scores of arguments that would confute and overwhelm this somewhat gloomy view. The statistics of Japan, for instance, are as beautiful and fit as neatly as the woodwork of her houses. By these it would be possible ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... and which bearing a definite sense, are selected for the purpose of that composition, which we term the process of thinking. To this connexion we are directed by the knowledge we possess of any particular subject, when we are intently occupied in its investigation, with a view to confute or confirm it, or by a more successful effort to arrive at discovery: and these acts of thought involve the continuation of meaning by the addition of words ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... Terence had always been good-natured? She remembered oddly after many years a day when he had turned away from the glazing eyes of a wood-pigeon he had shot. What use to tell such things to his daughter, whose life was laid in ruins by that sin of his youth? Those tragical eyes would confute her in the midst of her excuses. She could not yet make any plea for forgiveness ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... of St. Teresa, relates, that an eminent Lutheran minister at Bremen, famous for several works which he had printed against the Catholic church, purchased the life of St. Teresa, written by herself, with a view of attempting to confute it; but, by attentively reading it over, was converted to the Catholic faith, and from that time led a most edifying life. The examples of Mr. Abraham Woodhead and others were ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... previous evening they had learned by heart a poem of their great poet, Jacob Catz, and that they were probably on their way to some agricultural convention of which the programme was in their pockets, where with arguments drawn from their modest experience they would confute the propositions of some scientific farmer from Goes or Middelburg. Ludovico Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman, the author of an excellent work on the Netherlands printed in Antwerp in the sixteenth century, says that there was hardly a man or woman in Zealand who did not speak ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... of the Sphere, to prooue all partes of the worlde habitable, and thereby to confute the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... was wrong in this opinion, so wrong that I confute him by subjoining his own account of what befell, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... shall, indeed, have an honoured place in my poor Collection whenever the public taste calls for a new edition. But the original, what would I not give to have it in my hands, to touch the very parchment which came from the press of my revered ancestor, and, gloating on the crabbed letters, confute MacCribb to his face ipso visu et tactu of so inestimable a rarity. Exchanges—or "swaps," as the vulgar call them—are not unknown among our fraternity. Ask what you will for this treasure, to the ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... say, has been so far influenced by this error that he cherishes it himself, or, more accurately, entertains it with shame. Most of his windy idealism is no more than a reaction against it—an evidence of an effort to confute it and live it down. He is never more sweetly flattered than when some politician eager for votes or some evangelist itching for a good plate tells him that he is actually a soaring altruist, and the only real one in the world. This is the surest way to fetch him; he never fails ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... no complaint. In these words there was too much of indifference for a complaint. This simple soul thought according to her understanding—thought and proceeded to form a certain conclusion which she expressed aloud, and which I could not confute for fear of contradicting myself. Therefore I was silent, and she, as if she had not noticed me, ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... he has brought Shakspeare, to a tragical conclusion. Mr. Pope suggests the last choice of a subject for writing a book, by making the Nonsense of others his argument; while his own puts it out of any writer's power to confute him." In another fling at Pope, he gives the reason why Mr. Pope adds the dirty dialect to that of the water, and is in love with the Nymphs of Fleet ditch; and in a lecture on the spleen he announced "an anatomical discovery, that Mr. Pope's spleen ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the martial believers who despised and hated the best free research men, and who knew himself in a position to confute them. He possessed some elements of culture, and had early had thoroughly drilled into him what, in comparison with the views of later times on History and Religion, was narrow and antiquated in Voltaire's education, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... to confute or verify the conjectures of all the authors who had preceded me, by new experiments, I acquired the knowledge of new facts, but these were apparently so contradictory as to render the solution of the problem still more difficult. ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... and the doge, employed a negro boy to help him in his office. This little black boy was believed to be an imp of Satan, and went by the name of the "printer's devil." In order to protect him from persecution, and confute a foolish superstition, Manutius made a public exhibition of the boy, and announced that "any one who doubted him to be flesh and blood might come forward and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Dr. Blanchard resigned and Mrs. Hannah J. Bailey was elected president, as she said, "because it was thought best to have a woman at the head of the organization in order to confute the argument, then often advanced by the legislators, that women do not want the ballot." Mrs. Bailey's term of office expired in 1897, by her own request. In the six years of her leadership, six public conventions took place, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... afterwards, short of an oath—but to her amazement the unexpected, which so rarely happened in the case of Cyrus, happened at that minute. Human nature, which she had treated almost as a science, proved suddenly that it was not even an art. One of those glaring inconsistencies which confute every theory and overturn all psychology was ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... opened and shut quickly. There was an implied accusation against him in the fervor of her admiration for the wife who had deserted him. He groped for something in self-justification with which to confute ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... warning which I must give you before I begin. When you hear me speak, you must always bear in mind that you are listening to one who has seen history from the inside. I am talking about what my ears have heard and my eyes have seen, so you must not try to confute me by quoting the opinions of some student or man of the pen, who has written a book of history or memoirs. There is much which is unknown by such people, and much which never will be known by the world. ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reasoners ought to be perfectly dispassionate, and ready to allow all the force of the arguments, they are to confute. But more especially those, who are to argue in behalf of Christianity, ought carefully to preserve the spirit of it in their manner of expressing themselves. I have so much honour for the Christian clergy, that I ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... the same Father adds,—'In the uncorrected copies ([Greek: en tois adiorthotois antigraphois]) is found "He wept,"' Epiphanius is instructive. Perfectly well aware that the expression is genuine, he goes on to state that 'Irenaeus quoted it in his work against Heresies, when he had to confute the error of the Docetae[495].' 'Nevertheless,' Epiphanius adds, 'the orthodox through ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... that, Gorgias, was what I was suspecting to be your notion; yet I would not have you wonder if by-and-by I am found repeating a seemingly plain question; for I ask not in order to confute you, but as I was saying that the argument may proceed consecutively, and that we may not get the habit of anticipating and suspecting the meaning of one another's words; I would have you develope your own views in your own way, whatever may ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... was in Logic a great critic, Profoundly skill'd in Analytic; He could distinguish and divide A hair 'twixt south and southwest side; On either side he would dispute, Confute, change hands, and still confute; He'd undertake to prove by force Of argument, a man's no horse; He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a Lord may be an owl; A calf an Alderman, a goose a Justice, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... disproof, conviction, redargution[obs3], invalidation; exposure, exposition; clincher; retort; reductio ad absurdum; knock down argument, tu quoque argument[Lat]; sockdolager * [obs3][U. S.]. correction &c. 527a; dissuasion &c. 616. V. confute, refute, disprove; parry, negative, controvert, rebut, confound, disconfirm, redargue[obs3], expose, show the fallacy of, defeat; demolish, break &c. (destroy) 162; overthrow, overturn scatter to the winds, explode, invalidate; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... similar controversies on Biblical subjects, his chief aim was not simply to confute his adversary. To demolish once more the legend of the Flood, or the literal truth of the Creation myth, in which a multitude of scholars and critics and educated people generally had ceased to believe, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... of the tide there is little above half the height of a man. See Essay on the Old Test. Append. p. 239, 240. So vain and groundless are these and the like evasions and subterfuges of our modern sceptics and unbelievers, and so certainly do thorough inquiries and authentic evidence disprove and confute such evasions and subterfuges upon ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... research. It is a research exactly like a scientific exploration. Each of us will probably get out a lot of truth and a considerable amount of error; the truth will be the same and the errors will confute and disperse each other. But it is clear that there is no simple panacea in this matter, and that only by intentness and persistence shall we disentangle a general conception of the road the peace-desiring ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... it: "If Jonah's three days' residence in the whale is not an 'admitted fact,' how could it 'warrant belief' in the 'coming resurrection'?" [Footnote: The Nineteenth Century, July, 1890.] Mr. Huxley is using Canon Liddon's phrases here; but he is using them to confute those for whom, as he knows very well, Canon Liddon does not speak. Those who say that the story of Jonah is an "admitted reality" may, perhaps, be able to see that it "warrants belief" in the "coming resurrection." To my own mind, even this is by no means clear. I do not ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... art, or improve upon any thing of their Saxon predecessors. The instance of the building before us, which is said by its monastic historians to have been raised between the years 1117 and 1250, is sufficient evidence to confute the reasoning, or rather dogmatic assertions, of those who wish to exalt the Saxons by depreciating the Normans: and we have a still stronger confutation of this theory in the style and general character ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... said Annette, with a tragic gesture of the hand, 'hear me. The window of our dressing-room happens—just happens, by God's providence to confute a fool—to command a view of Dr. Laurent's door. I saw you go in; I could even hear you knock. Do you think you ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Mine earnest vehement botcher, And deacon also, I cannot dispute with you: But if you get you not away the sooner, I shall confute you with ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... Richard asked his uncle in full council how old he was. "Your highness," replied Gloucester, "is in your twenty-second year." "Then," said Richard, "I must be old enough to manage my own affairs, as every heir is at liberty to do when he is twenty-one." No attempt having been made to confute this argument, Richard dismissed the council, and ruled once more ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... stage gave "Old Fortunatus" to the world of readers was the hand to which we owe the finer scenes or passages of "Lust's Dominion," the whole of the opening scene bears such apparent witness as requires no evidence to support and would require very conclusive evidence to confute it. The sweet spontaneous luxury of the lines in which the queen strives to seduce her paramour out of sullenness has the very ring of Dekker's melody: the rough and reckless rattle of the abrupt rhymes intended to express a sudden vehemence of change ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in return, the Lord meets him. And he does not quote the scripture for logical purposes—to confute Satan intellectually, but as giving even Satan the reason of his conduct. Satan quotes Scripture as a verbal authority; our Lord meets him with a Scripture by the truth in which he ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... Jove's own land, Yet would I with my sword make Jove to stoop. I will confute those blind geographers That make a triple region in the world, Excluding regions which I mean to trace, And with this pen [233] reduce them to a map, Calling the provinces, cities, and towns, After ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... feared, notwithstanding her frequent and vociferous denials, that the robes of the "imperial votaress" were not so unsullied as could be wished. We know how loudly Leicester had complained—we have seen how clearly Walsingham could convict; but Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute: for an absolute sovereign, even without resorting to Philip's syllogisms of axe and faggot, was apt in the sixteenth century to have the best of an argument with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... were already recognized," said Mr. Rylands. "It was Jane who lied about you, and your return with me will confute her slanders." ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Whitelocke's friends were much startled at this news, and the more because of former intelligences of designs of that nature against him, whereof they wrote him word; and he was glad to read the news, and that, through the goodness of God, he was able to confute those reports. They were kept from Whitelocke's wife by the care of his friends, till one in gladness came to give her joy that the ill news of her husband was not true; which brought the whole matter to her knowledge, and herself to great perplexity upon ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... obligations to maintain them that they are forced, for the sake of consistency, to adhere to them even though they do not themselves wholly approve of them; we, on the other hand, who pursue only probabilities, and who cannot go beyond that which seems really likely, can confute others without obstinacy, and are prepared to be confuted ourselves without resentment. Besides, if these studies are ever brought home to us, we shall not want even Greek libraries, in which there is an infinite ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... a packet of old letters and began turning them over as if in search of one that would confute Terence's suspicions. As he searched, he began to tell a story about an English lord who had trusted him—a great English lord, whose name ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... him! I don't care where he's hid away from me, I shall find him yet," thought Mat, still holding with dogged and desperate obstinacy to his first superstition, in spite of every fresh sign that appeared to confute it. ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... however offensive it might be to the lady and her relations, because her alledged unnatural and cruel conduct to her son, and shameful avowal of guilt, were stated in a Life of Savage now lying before me, which came out so early as 1727, and no attempt had been made to confute it, or to punish the authour or printer as a libeller: but for the honour of human nature, we should be glad to find the shocking tale not true; and, from a respectable gentleman[493] connected with the lady's family, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... LOGIC a great critic, 65 Profoundly skill'd in analytic; He could distinguish, and divide A hair 'twixt south, and south-west side: On either which he would dispute, Confute, change hands, and still confute, 70 He'd undertake to prove, by force Of argument, a man's no horse; He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a lord may be an owl, A calf an alderman, a goose a justice, 75 And rooks Committee-men and Trustees. He'd run in debt by disputation, And pay with ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... still held that it was a barefaced forgery, entirely due to Flinders himself, and that Dolores could show that she had no knowledge of it, and he had gone down in the fly expecting to come home triumphant, and confute his sister Jane, who persisted in being mournfully sagacious. And he was indignant in proportion to the confidence he had misplaced; grieved, too, for his brother's sake, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... subside, would he not perceive the flagrancy of his injustice and hasten to atone for it? Did it not become my character to testify resentment for language and treatment so opprobrious? Wrapped up in the consciousness of innocence, and confiding in the influence of time and reflection to confute so groundless a charge, it was my province ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... that County, for concurring with the Fanatic party in opposing the Court. COLE'S MSS.] and another stranger, and Creed and I fell a- talking; they of the errours and corruption of the Navy, and great expence thereof, not knowing who I was, which at last I did undertake to confute, and disabuse them: and they took it very well, and I hope it was to good purpose, they being Parliament- men. Creed and I and Captn. Ferrers to the Parke, and there walked finely, seeing people slide, we talking all the while; and Captn. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... or matter escape some touch of these smiling railers. But for Erasmus and Agrippa, they had another foundation than the superficial part would promise. Marry, these other pleasant fault-finders, who will correct the verb, before they understand the noun, and confute others' knowledge before they confirm their own: I would have them only remember, that scoffing cometh not of wisdom. So as the best title in true English they get with their merriments is to be called good fools: for so have our grave forefathers ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... morality, but elsewhere in a special work he admits that science as a whole is harmful. He holds that only a few people should have to do with it, in order that the tradition of human knowledge may not perish, and particularly that there may be no want of intellectual athletes to confute the sophisms of the heretics. For all others, grammar, morals, and religious teaching ('litterae sacrae') suffice. Culture and education would thus return wholly into the charge of the monks, and as, in his opinion, the 'most learned and the most pious' are to rule over the States ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the penalty of crime committed in another state of existence—a doctrine which formed part of the initiation into the mysteries.[3] And Vanini—whom his contemporaries burned, finding that an easier task than to confute him—puts the same thing in a very forcible way. Man, he says, is so full of every kind of misery that, were it not repugnant to the Christian religion, I should venture to affirm that if evil spirits exist at all, they have posed into human form and are now atoning for their ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... infidelity. The myth of incredulity that gathered round his memory and made him hated in the Middle Ages, has been traced with exquisite delicacy by Renan,[141] who shows that his name became a rallying point for freethinkers. Scholars like Petrarch were eager to confute his sect, and artists used him as a symbol of materialistic disbelief. Thus we meet with Averroes among the lost souls in the Pisan Campo Santo, distinguished as usual by his turban and long beard. On the other hand, the frank acceptance of pagan philosophy, insofar as it could be accommodated ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... of ours, no less than three sorts, which are all of them easily propagated, and prosper very well, if they are rightly ordered; and therefore I shall not omit to disclose one secret, as well to confute a popular error, as for the instruction of ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... peace of the castle by circulating these idle notions, should be rigorously punished, and banished his dominions. They shrunk back at his reproof, and were silent. 'Bring a torch,' said the marquis, 'and shew me to the dungeon. I will once more condescend to confute you.' ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... sigh of relief. She credited herself with having secured Persis's car very neatly. The man might, perhaps, get into trouble, but she could make that up to him by a generous tip. Her one idea was to contradict and confute the disgraceful announcement at its fountain-head. It was providential that the unknown Lord Chilminster's place was so near; but had it been ten times as far off, Jeannette, boiling with justifiable indignation, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... energy about the poor fellow, unless, perhaps, when he was hunting; but he possessed a readiness which enabled him to lie at a moment's notice with the most perfect ease. Lady Monk did not believe him; but she could not confute him, and therefore she let ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... beating time to the simple but stirring old march of Avison "whilom of Newcastle organist"; and before he has done, the memory masters him, and the pedestrian blank verse breaks into a hymn "rough, rude, robustious, homely heart athrob" to Pym the "man of men." Or he calls up Bernard Mandeville to confute the formidable pessimism of his old friend Carlyle—"whose groan I hear, with guffaw at the end disposing of mock—melancholy." Gerard de Lairesse, whose rococo landscapes had interested him as a boy, he introduces only to typify an outworn way of art—the mythic treatment of nature; but he illustrates ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... your aunt, and all your kin—besides myself. Don't you know that all male children are begotten for the express purpose of being graduates? and that even I am an A.M., [4] though how I became so the Public Orator only can resolve. Besides, you are to be a priest; and to confute Sir William Drummond's late book about the Bible [5] (printed, but not published), and all other infidels whatever. Now leave Master H.'s gig, and Master S.'s Sapphics, and become as immortal as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... poet's gift of perpetual youth, the spring of life and fancy that keeps men young. He has not grown a day older since this time five years. I found he had taken a great deal of trouble about me, recommended me strenuously, brought forward my papers on foreign policy, and been at much pains to confute that report that was afloat against me. He treated my appointment as a personal favour; and he is a man of weight now. You were right, Theodora; it would have been abominable to sulk in our corner, because we had ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... can with Logic absolute The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute: The Sovereign Alchemist that in a trice Life's leaden metal ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... of this river have put mankind to the expense of. Yet there are people so bigoted to antiquity, as not to pay any regard to the relation of travellers who have been upon the spot, and by the evidence of their eyes can confute all that the ancients have written. It was difficult, it was even impossible, to arrive at the source of the Nile by tracing its channel from the mouth; and all who ever attempted it, having been stopped by the cataracts, and imagining none that ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... should make so much noise; but since I am engaged, I take myself obliged in honour to go on in my lucubrations, and by the help of these arts of which I am master, as well as my skill in astrological speculations, I shall, as I see occasion, proceed to confute other dead men, who pretend to be in being, that they are actually deceased. I therefore give all men fair warning to mend their manners, for I shall from time to time print bills of mortality; and I beg the pardon of all such who shall be named ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... theory that any boy, if rightly trained, can be made into a gentleman and a great man; and in order to confute a friendly objector decides to select from the workhouse a boy to experiment with. He chooses a boy with a bad reputation but with excellent instincts, and adopts him, the story narrating the adventures of the mercurial lad who thus finds himself ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... against his own name. The next in seniority was entirely adverse to the invaliding, as, without he could invalide too, he would have to go to the West Indies in the place of our surgeon. The youngest was indifferent just then to anything but to confute the other two, and prove the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... such discipline, many otherwise able men altogether lack; and when they have to answer opponents, only endeavour, by such arguments as they can command, to support the opposite conclusion, scarcely even attempting to confute the reasonings of their antagonists; and, therefore, at the utmost, leaving the question, as far as it depends on ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... not worse. We should remember, however, that Plato was not considering any altruistic virtue such as kindness, sympathy, benevolence, generosity and the like, but only what nature indicates to be the essential condition of successful association. Thus interpreted, are we prepared to confute the statement? Do we know of any state of society in human or animal life at any time, past or present, of which the contrary of Plato's statement ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... replies To questions put to suit him, Would not, I think, have looked so wise With Lesbia to confute him; He would more probably have bade ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... time, Rachel made her appearance in Miss Williams's little sitting-room. "I am ready to submit to any test that Captain Keith may require to confute himself," she said to Ermine; "and I do so the more readily that with all his mocking language, there is a genuine candour and honesty beneath that would be quite worth convincing. I believe that if once persuaded of the injustice of his suspicions he would in the reaction become ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... monarch eagerly undo, And yet uneasily obey the new. Search, Satire, search; a deep incision make: The poison's strong, the antidote's too weak. 'Tis pointed truth must manage this dispute, And down-right English, Englishmen confute. ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... declined the office assigned him, it was given to Mr. Molineux, one of the commissioners of the Admiralty, who engaged in it with no great inclination to favour me; but, however, thought one of the instruments, which, to confirm my own opinion, and to confute Mr. Whiston's, I had exhibited to the Admiralty, so curious or useful, that he surreptitiously copied it on paper, and clandestinely endeavoured to have it imitated by a workman ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... allowance. He has only himself to thank if I have to come upon him for more. Found out about the Blackbird colt, has he? What a bore! And tin I must have out of him by hook or by crook if he cuts up ever so rough. I must send off this bird first by the post to confute Stanhope and make him eat dirt, and then see what's to ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge |
