"Disputable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his notes on Shakspeare, he said, 'I despise those who do not see that I am right in the passage where as is repeated, and "asses of great charge" introduced. That on "To be, or not to be," is disputable.'[175] ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... can make four kilometres (two miles and a half) in seven minutes and a half, and not much less, whatever may be said to the contrary. I know that certain time-keepers have marked this distance as having been done in seven minutes, but this I consider disputable, to say the least." M. d'Etreilles cites, however, as an exception to his rules, a horse called Rochester, belonging to the Prince E. de Beauvan, which trotted nineteen miles in one hour without breaking or pacing, but when a return bet was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... far from that; he drinks misery, and he tastes happiness; he mows misery, and he gleans happiness; he journeys in misery, he does but walk in happiness; and, which is worst, his misery is positive and dogmatical, his happiness is but disputable and problematical: all men call misery misery, but happiness changes the name by the taste of man. In this accident that befalls me, now that this sickness declares itself by spots to be a malignant and pestilential disease, if there be a comfort in the declaration, that thereby the physicians ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... their train, and to introduce them, in a thing of so high concern, into the bowels of one's own country. Can there be worse husbandry than to set up so many certain and knowing vices against errors that are only contested and disputable? And are there any worse sorts of vices than those committed against a man's own conscience, and the natural light of his own reason? The Senate, upon the dispute betwixt it and the people about the administration of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... name of Thomas Mustagan, was very much depressed in spirit. While feeling deeply the loss of Edmund, he was very much hurt when the news reached him, that some of the searchers instead of going to God in their perplexity and trouble, had, like King Saul, resorted to such disputable agencies. ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... and answer the kind purpose of her generous mistress." The Lady of Aspramonte signed to the Saxon matron to proceed. She went on accordingly: "The Saxons, dearest lady, of the present day, are neither pagans nor heretics; they are, in the time of keeping Easter, as well as in all other disputable doctrine, humbly obedient to the Pope of Rome; and this our good Bishop well knows, since he upbraided some of the domestics for calling me an old heathen. Yet our names are uncouth in the ears of the Franks, and bear, perhaps, a heathenish sound. If it be not exacted that ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,—barred with brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean, where the surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries in which we have to engage will hardly render ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... Earl of Richmond overcame and slew King Richard III., and was hailed as King on the field of victory. But the destruction of Richard, an indubitable usurper and tyrant, was only the first step in establishing a title to the throne as disputable as ever a monarch put forward. To establish that title, however, was the primary necessity not merely for Henry himself, but in the general interest; which demanded a secure government after half a century ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... one called the others godless—the others threw back the aspersion of bigotry. Then came complication. What was "religion?" Intellectual culture they could agree about—it embraced well-known areas; but this religion divided itself into many disputable fields. These brother Protestants were like country neighbors who must encounter each other at fairs, markets, meets, and balls, and smile and greet, though each, at heart, is looking savagely at the other's landmarks, and most are very likely fighting bitter lawsuits ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... Pisano. They all laid strong hands to the work, and brought it first into aspect above ground; but the foundation had been laid for them by the builders of the Lombardic churches in the valleys of the Adda and the Arno. It is in the sculpture of the round arched churches of North Italy, bearing disputable dates, ranging from the eighth to the twelfth century, that you will find the lowest struck roots of the art of Titian and Raphael. [Footnote: I have said elsewhere, "the root of all art is struck in the thirteenth century." This is quite ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... making faults, by trying to remove them, Ut olim vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur. And indeed, where mere conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger and Lipsius, notwithstanding their wonderful sagacity and erudition, are often vague and disputable, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... sermon? For as the duchess of Suffolk was older than Richard, and consequently would have been involved in the charge of bastardy, could he have declared her son his heir, he who set aside his brother Edward's children for their illegitimacy? Ladies of the least disputable gallantry generally suffer their husbands to beget his heir; and if doubts arise on the legitimacy of their issue, the younger branches seem most liable to suspicion—but a tale so gross could not have passed even on the mob—no ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... Yeats's commerce with dreams and fairies and other spirits has not all been of this evidential and disputable kind. His confessions do not convince us of his magical experiences, but his poems do. Here we have the true narrative of fairyland, the initiation into other-worldly beauty. Here we have the ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... them, either out of contradiction to others, or the pride of singularity, or to make their court, would find out some pretence or other to give the king a fair colour to carry the point: for if the judges but differ in opinion, the clearest thing in the world is made by that means disputable, and truth being once brought in question, the king may then take advantage to expound the law for his own profit; while the judges that stand out will be brought over, either out of fear or modesty; and they being thus gained, all of them may be sent to the bench to give sentence ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... and the Emperor with the like distrust; the Emperor was equally suspicious of both; and thus, on all sides, alarm and animosity had reached their climax. And, as if to crown the whole, at this critical conjuncture by the death of the Duke John William of Juliers, a highly disputable succession became vacant in the territories of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... He lies buried in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. If not the greatest actor of his day, Kynaston was the greatest of the 'boy-actresses.' So exalted was his reputation 'that,' says Downes, 'it has since been disputable among the judicious, whether any woman that succeeded him so sensibly touched the ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... these approaches is disputable. It is displeasing to many, from its formality; but we are persuaded that it is right, because it is a national style, and therefore has in all probability due connection with scene and character: and this connection ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... protest I was not on Bill's side; but then, neither was I on the Vicar's, and there was something in this immoral morning which seemed to say that perhaps, after all, Bill had as much right to the biscuits as the Vicar, and would certainly enjoy them better; and anyhow it was a disputable point, and no business of mine. Nature, who had accepted me for ally, cared little who had the world's biscuits, and assuredly was not going to let any friend of hers waste his time in ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... moreover, 'incarnation' (or embodiment in flesh) is hardly the right word for the vegetative nature of flowers. As forms of life, the flowers mock or deride the grave-worm which battens or makes merry on corruption. The appropriateness of the term 'merry worm' seems very disputable. ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... openly their regret, that decrees so positive, peremptory, and exclusive, should have been adopted. They would have been better satisfied with the terms of communion in the Church to which they still adhered, had individuals been left to their own responsibility on questions of disputable origin and doubtful antiquity, involving rather the subtilty of metaphysical disquisitions, than agreeable to the simplicity of Gospel truth, and essential Christian doctrine. On this point I would ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... surviving contemporaries (Judges ii. 7), and that of Samuel to Saul, each, it may be conjectured, having the normal 40, and the two together certainly reckoning 80 years. For the remaining 80 the most disputable elements are the 71 years of interregna or of foreign dominations, and the 70 of the minor judges. One perceives that these two figures cannot both be counted in,—they are mutually exclusive equivalents. For my own part, I prefer to retain the interregna; they alone, so far as ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... probably not attained all its sharpness and all its illumination until it is expressed in French'. As the French are noted rather for their intelligence than for their imagination, they are the acknowledged masters of prose; and their achievement in poetry is more disputable. As they are governed by the social instinct, their language exhibits the varied refinements of a cultivated society where conversation is held in honour as one of the arts. The English speech, like the English-speaking peoples, is bolder, more energetic, more ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... State, or any others equally high and responsible. The functions conferring the senatorial dignity should be limited to those of a legal, political, or military or naval character. Scientific and literary eminence are too indefinite and disputable: they imply a power of selection, whereas the other qualifications speak for themselves; if the writings by which reputation has been gained are unconnected with politics, they are no evidence of the special qualities required, while, if political, they would enable successive ministries to deluge ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... genuineness of the Epistle bearing this Father's name does not affect the question; for it is confessedly the same document which Eusebius had before him. In Polycarp's Epistle [42:5] also there are several coincidences with our Gospels. There is a hardly disputable embodiment of words occurring in the Acts. There are two or three references to St Paul by name. Once he is directly mentioned as writing to the Philippians. There are obvious quotations from or reminiscences of Romans, ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... and their poverty. An effective national education of the children of the laboring-class is the first thing needful; and, coincidently with this, a system of measures which shall (as the Revolution did in France) extinguish extreme poverty for one whole generation. Without entering into disputable points, it may be asserted without scruple that the aim of all intellectual training for the mass of the people should be to cultivate common sense; to qualify them for forming a sound practical judgment of the circumstances by which they are surrounded. [But] ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... can properly be commended for keeping his EASE SACRED, may perhaps be disputable. To please king and country without sacrificing friendship to any change of times was a very uncommon instance of prudence or felicity, and deserved to be kept separate from so poor a commendation as care of his ease. I wish our poets would attend a little more ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... Scriptures contain the finest and most poetical philosophy. I think they owe it to their affiliation to the oldest philosophies. There are many disputable things in Edouard Schure, but what remains is the divination which made him climb through all doctrine to the infinitely ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... government; against, too, a royal descendant of Hercules; against the general who at Plataea flattered Sparta with a renown to which her absence from Marathon, and her meditated flight from Salamis, gave but disputable pretensions?" ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton |
