"Fallible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... house, his Church, shall be ruled, 1 Tim. iii. 14, 15; and all his ordinances, word, sacraments, censures, &c., shall therein be dispensed, 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. (See chap. IV.) Now this Scripture is divinely breathed, or inspired of God—holy men writing not according to the fallible will of man, but the infallible acting of the Holy Ghost, 2 Tim. iii. 16, with 2 Pet. i. ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... extremely embarrassed, when she would justify this new system, and obviate the cavils and objections of the sceptics. She can no longer plead the infallible and irresistible instinct of nature: for that led us to a quite different system, which is acknowledged fallible and even erroneous. And to justify this pretended philosophical system, by a chain of clear and convincing argument, or even any appearance of argument, exceeds the power of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... glitter of a self-glorifying search for faults to the more amiable but less piquant occupation of discovering solid thought, earnest feeling, and poetic fancy. It is well to discourage insipidity, impudent pretension, and every species of affectation; but critics are, like authors, fallible, and not unfrequently present glaring examples of the very faults they condemn. In any case where the knife is needed, let it be used firmly but gently, that, while the patient bleeds, he may feel the wound ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... plain, you must see it. I told you I had crossed to the farther bank. Here is what one finds there: Taking him as God, Jesus is ineffectual. Only as an obviously fallible human man does he become beautiful; only as a man is he dignified, worthy, great—or ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... a familiar name come up in my sittings, and no message of any intimate sort has ever come from the shadow world for me. The messages are intelligent, but below rather than above the average. 'They' always seem very fallible, very human to me, and nothing 'they' do startles me. I have no patience with those who make much of the morbid side of this business. To me it is neither 'theism' nor 'diabolism,' and is neither destruction of an old religion or the basis of a new one—But all this verges ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... Bible stands or falls as a divine book. It falls, as we see, and takes its place with all other human fallible productions. For knowledge, we go to Nature, our universal mother, who gives her Bible to every soul, and preaches her everlasting gospel to ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... situation of France, produced by the Revolution, War with the contiguous Powers was inevitable; sooner or later the evil must have been encountered; and it was of little importance whether England took a share in it somewhat earlier than, by fallible judgments, might be deemed necessary, or not. The frankness with which the faults that were committed have been acknowledged entitles the writer to some regard, when, speaking from an intimate knowledge of the internal state of France ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... forbid that I should commit the sacrilege of arrogating His divine attribute—infallibility—for any human authority, however exalted; or claim it for any amount of proof, presumptive or positive. 'It is because humanity even when most cautious and discriminating is so mournfully fallible and prone to error, that in judging its own frailty, we require the aid and reverently invoke the guidance of Jehovah.' In your solemn deliberations bear in mind this epitome of an opinion, entitled to more than a passing consideration: 'Perhaps ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... fellow-craftsmen. "Truth," he said, "and truth only is our aim." The maxim is one which would probably be unreservedly accepted in theory by the most ardent propagandist who has ever used history as a vehicle for the dissemination of his own views on political, economic, or social questions. For so fallible is human nature that the proclivities of the individual can rarely be entirely submerged by the judicial impartiality of the historian. It is impossible to peruse Mr. Gooch's work without being struck by the fact that, amongst the greatest ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... tastes, his religious opinions. Rowland had an odd feeling at last that she had begun to consider him very exemplary, and that she might make, later, some perturbing discovery. He tried, therefore, to invent something that would prepare her to find him fallible. But he could think of nothing. It only seemed to him that Miss Garland secretly mistrusted him, and that he must leave her to render him the service, after he had gone, of making him the object of a little firm derogation. Mrs. Hudson talked with ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... why, on the other hand, Mr. Macey's official respect should restrain him from subjecting the parson's performance to that criticism with which minds of extraordinary acuteness must necessarily contemplate the doings of their fallible fellow-men. ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... comes in, and sustains the fallible conjectures of our unassisted reason. The Holy Scriptures speak of us as fallen creatures: in almost every page we shall find something that is calculated to abate the loftiness and silence the pretensions of man. ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... an immortal reputation, and to save from the general wreck all that could be saved. To put a good face upon it, let it suffice, not to say all that we think to ourselves, but rely more on our nature than on our fallible reason, which might make us think we could approach death with indifference. The glory of dying with courage, the hope of being regretted, the desire to leave behind us a good reputation, the assurance of being enfranchised from the miseries ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... out of his province. My dear Grace, you grew up in the days of curatolatry, but it won't do; men are fallible even when they preach in a surplice, and you may be thankful to me that you and Fanny are not both led along in a string in the train of Mr. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... white bed, in her black room, Cassy sought it. But the counsel that night brings is not delivered while you toss about. Night waits until you sleep. Then, to the subjective self that never sleeps, the message is delivered. It may be fallible, often it is and, in our scheme of things, what is there that is not? Yet in any dilemma bad advice may be better than none. Then, without transition, the black room changed into an avenue where faces peered and smiled. It was not though for ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... clouds and vapors. Again the audience, but another audience, was assembled; again the tribunal was established; again the court was set; but a tribunal and a court—how different to her! That had been composed of men seeking indeed for truth, but themselves erring and fallible creatures; the witnesses had been full of lies, the judges of darkness. But here was a court composed of heavenly witnesses—here was a righteous tribunal—and then at last a judge that could not be deceived. The judge smote with his eye a person who sought to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... late—it was almost too much to feel, and is too much to speak. So let it pass. You will never act so again, ever dearest—you shall not. If the post sins, why leave the sin to the post; and I will remember for the future, will be ready to remember, how postmen are fallible and how you live at the end of a lane—and not be uneasy about a silence if there should be one unaccounted for. For the Tuesday coming, I shall remember that too—who could forget it?... I put it in the ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... fallible but the spirit of saintless. The Church is infallible not by any talisman but by her saintliness. The Bishop of Rome or of Canterbury will be infallible only if they are saints. The saints are detached from everything and attached to Christ, so that Christ incarnates ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... rated high up in the millions, but he was fallible like the rest. His wealth, compared to Rimrock's was as a hundred dollars to one, but it was spread out a hundred times as far; and with his next dividend, which was due in December, Rimrock would have nearly a million in cash. To Stoddard, at the same time, there would come nearly the same ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... not realize,—poverty, disease, desolation, in the midst of strangers,—and all the woes that, like hungry wolves, attack homeless, isolated women. I earnestly hope that the leprous hand of disaster and defeat may never be laid upon your future, but the most cautious human schemes are fallible—often futile—and if you should be unsuccessful in your programme, and find yourself unable to consummate your plans, I ask you now, by the memory of our friendship, by the sacred memory of the dead, to promise me that you will immediately write and acquaint me with ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... rarely failed to find himself on Sunday evenings by her side in her parlour, where his rights were now so well established that no one presumed to contest his seat, unless it were old Jacobi, who from time to time reminded him that he was fallible and mortal. Occasionally, though not often, Mr. Ratcliffe came at other times, as when he persuaded Mrs. Lee to be present at the Inauguration, and to call on the President's wife. Madeleine and Sybil went to the Capitol ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the teacher, for it strikes at his claim not to knowledge so much as to wisdom, to balance and insight of thought. I venture to say that recent drifts of speculation shew how rapidly the conception of a fallible Christ developes towards that of a wholly imperfect and untrustworthy Christ. And, looking again at the vast phenomenon of the Portrait in the Gospels, I hold that the line of thought which offers by very far the least difficulty, not to faith only but to ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... away her head. He sprang forward to catch her—but she was away, beyond his reach. She ran on ahead and Pats, after a short pursuit, gave up the chase, for his fallible legs were still unfit for speed. With a mocking laugh and a wave of the hand she hastened on toward the cottage. Following more leisurely he watched the graceful figure in the white dress hurrying on before him until it was ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... had shown itself here too. Would the fabric of which the American Ideal was made be strong enough to hold together against the World's new madness? He believed in American institutions. Imperfect though they were, fallible as the human wills which controlled them, they were as near Liberty, Equality, Fraternity as one might yet hope to attain in a form of government this side ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... so many mammoths in glaciers. But my long spun-out intercourse with the Royal Commissioners did have living issue—my Manchurian and Gallipoli notes. Only constant observation of civilian Judges and soldier witnesses could have shown me how fallible is the unaided military memory or have led me by three steps to ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the Bees always erected domes on every planet they colonized, Arthur, but precedent is a fallible tool. And it's even more firmly established that there's no possibility of our rationalizing the motivations of a culture as alien as the Hymenops'—we've been over that argument a hundred times on other ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... by a reference to the general principles of jurisprudence, and the peculiar character of the masonic system. I ask, and should receive no deference to my own unsupported theories—as a man, I am, of course, fallible—and may often have decided erroneously. But I do claim for my arguments all the weight and influence of which they may be deemed worthy, after an attentive and unprejudiced examination. To those who may at first be ready—because I do not agree with all their preconceived opinions—to doubt ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Manders. We are only fallible, and many steps seem to us hazardous at first, that afterwards—(grasps his hand). Welcome, welcome! Really, my dear Oswald—may ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... Meek Wolfe, "and it should not be perverted to defeat the purposes of heavenly wisdom. Azazel must not triumph, though the tribe of the Narragansetts should be swept with the besom of destruction. Truly, we are an erring and a fallible race, Captain Heathcote; and the greater, therefore, the necessity that we submit, without rebellion, to the inward monitors that are implanted, by grace, to teach us ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... lands us in deeper perplexities. Why should the Pope need assessors and advisers? Can Infallibility not walk alone, that it uses crutches? Can an infallible man not know truth from error till first he has collected the votes of fallible bishops? Why should Infallibility seek help, which it cannot in the nature of ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... end of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed. But surely those whom passion or interest has already depraved, have some claim to compassion, from beings equally frail and fallible with themselves. Nor will they long groan in their present afflictions, if none were to refuse them relief, but those that owe their exemption from the same distress only to their ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... a right application of principles, would be perceived to be, not a mere human opinion, but, in reality, an exposition of the will and intentions of a beneficent Creator, and would therefore be felt as carrying with it an authority to which, as the mere dictum of a fallible fellow-creature, it could never be ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Christ should comply in things indifferent with popular errors. A few Words will put the reader in possession of my view. Speaking of the Bible, Phil. says, 'We admit that its separate parts are the work of frail and fallible human beings. We do not seek to build upon it systems of cosmogony, chronology, astronomy, and natural history. We know no reason of internal or external probability which should induce us to believe that such ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... founded upon fallible human judgment. A man believes thus and so, not necessarily because it is so, but because his head is built on a particular pattern or has had a peculiar class of phenomena filtered through it. The average human head, like an egg, or a crock ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... case, where the same attention is not paid. Mr. and Mrs. Bernard took unremitted pains with their children, and felt themselves amply rewarded by their conduct; for though, like other human beings, they were fallible, and, consequently, often did wrong, yet religious principle being the ground-work of their characters, conviction instantly followed the commission of a fault, and ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... blank contradiction only for those who assume a superhuman revelation in Scripture or in church, and then have to reconcile this infallibility with that most fallible groping by which alone mankind gets along. Unembarrassed at least by that difficulty, let us note one natural cause of the imperfect progress of Christianity, namely, the substitution of fancy for clear and ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... arduous trust, were explained on the proper occasion. In the discharge of this trust, I will only say, that I have with good intentions, contributed towards the organization and administration of the government, the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. Not unconscious, in the outset, of the inferiority of my qualifications, experience in my own eyes, perhaps still more in the eyes of others, has strengthened the motives to diffidence of myself; and, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... very fallible and very variable. A little opium, a little alcohol, a blow on the head, or some great emotion will modify their judgment to an incredible degree. Sir Harry Johnston may not be very representative as an exponent of scientific conclusions about the existence ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... understanding, bringing us out of darkness into His marvelous light, renewing the image of God in our soul, and sealing us unto the day of redemption. So that, in truth, what is now "in the sight of God, even the Father," not of fallible men "pure religion and undefiled," would then, have had no being: inasmuch as it wholly depends on those grand principles, "By grace ye are saved through faith"; and "Jesus Christ is of God made unto us wisdom, and ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... value, every citizen has the right to a trial by jury; but by this law the body, the life, the very soul of a man, possibly a free-born citizen, might be consigned to perpetual enslavement on the fallible judgment of a single official. An apparently slight, yet especially odious feature of the law which served in large degree to render it inoperative was that the United-States commissioner, in the event of his remanding the alleged fugitive to slavery, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... both wrong in that quotation, as you no doubt discovered long ago.' Then she gave me the sentence as it is in Cymbeline. She was right, quite right. We were both wrong. Never till her letter came had I looked to see. How vain, how uncertain, and fallible, is man!" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... importance of maintaining the ancient landmarks, quoting the curse of the Scripture on him that removed them, and endeavored to make them see how much of the safety and security of property depended on sticking to them in spite of any amount of fallible human testimony. I thought I had made a good impression. When Brother Bacon came to reply, he told the jury about the Roman god Terminus who watched over boundaries, and after quite an eloquent description, he told the jury: "Brother Hoar always seems to me ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the Bible? 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.' Who is to decide then from what depths of moral degradation the power of God's grace will fail to lift up a human being? Certainly, we mortals, fallible, helpless, sinful, as we must feel ourselves, are not capable of judging. All we have to do is to receive the plain command, and obey it. Oh, there is scope, believe me, for the exertions, not of one missionary only, but of hundreds and thousands of the soldiers of the cross in those ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... less correspond with this; and there are well-known characteristics of human nature that explain how such revulsions of feeling come about. It has never been found difficult to get up a case against those whom the great and powerful have made up their minds to destroy. The best men are fallible and have their weak side. Large bodies of men must contain some unworthy members. A long history can hardly be without blots, mistakes, and crimes. No man's life, if narrowly scrutinized by an unfavorable and prejudiced criticism, but ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... scarcely to be counted as a woman at all, and after having passed by such a succession of people in petticoats digging and hoeing and making dinner, this company of coquettes under arms made quite a surprising feature in the landscape, and convinced us at once of being fallible males. ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... us to conclude that there is such a city as Rome—but a reasoning, that forms a branch of mathematical science. So far is our conviction from being grounded on our confidence in human testimony that it proceeds on our knowledge of its fallible character, and therefore can find no sufficient reason for its coincidence on so vast a scale, but in the real existence of the object. That a thousand lies told by as many several and unconnected individuals ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... it might be well to constrain men to accept it. But the lords of this world are fallible men; and though as units they ought to be and perhaps are better than those others who have fewer advantages, they are much more likely as units to go astray in opinion than the bodies of men whom they ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... job," Fay reiterated, "and more fully objective. Pooh-Bah's set for full precis. Stop worrying about it. He's a dispassionate machine, not a fallible, emotionally disturbed human misled by the will-o'-the-wisp of consciousness. Second matter: Micro Systems is impressed by your contributions to Tickler and will recruit you as a senior consultant with a salary ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... her, hath made him that 160 gracious denial which he is most glad to receive. I am confessor to Angelo, and I know this to be true; therefore prepare yourself to death: do not satisfy your resolution with hopes that are fallible: to-morrow you must die; go to your ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Actual,—SCIENCE. Always old, and must last as long as the Actual. Less fallible than Idealism, but less practically potent, from its ignorance of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... this particular cure for the community's ills has proved to be worse than the sickness, leading to total community dependence on a fallible and perhaps capricious enterprise, pollution of air and water, noise and flood-plain clutter, and frequently the destruction of the local riverside where industries tend to locate unless directed elsewhere. Little of this is necessary now, as a number of ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... daughter tenderly, Mrs. Bright said: "You cannot temporise with forbidden fruit, Honey. Eve did, you know. You are but human, therefore fallible, however good you are trying to be. The time will come when the heart, torn with longing, becomes too weak to resist. Specious arguments are insidious and irresistible, and you will go down. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall! That is why we pray, Lead us not into temptation, ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... distinguishes itself from the other two issuing from the same Christian trunk. With the Protestants, the Bible, which is the Word of God, is the sole spiritual authority; all the others, the Doctors, Fathers, tradition, Popes and Councils, are human and, accordingly, fallible; in fact, these have repeatedly and gravely erred.[5330] The Bible, however, is a text which each reader reads with his own eyes, more or less enlightened and sensitive, with eyes which, in Luther's time, possessed the light and sensibility of the sixteenth ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... appeared and the germs are in the blood is difficult, owing to the rapid changes in our knowledge of the disease, which are taking place almost from day to day. The patient usually presses his physician for an estimate of his chances, and in such cases, after carefully explaining why our knowledge is fallible and subject to change, I usually estimate that for a patient who will absolutely follow the advice of an expert, the prospects are well over ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... as Elsmere turned the pages, the orthodox protest would assert itself, the orthodox arguments make themselves felt as though in mechanical involuntary protest. But their force and vitality was gone. Between the Paul of Anglican theology and the fiery fallible man of genius—so weak logically, so strong in poetry, in rhetoric, in moral passion, whose portrait has been drawn for us by a free and temperate criticism—the rector knew, in a sort of dull way, that his choice ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... proposed increase in the Maynooth endowment and the establishment of non-sectarian colleges were at variance with views he had written and uttered upon the relations of the Church and State. "I am sensible how fallible my judgment is," said Mr. Gladstone, "and how easily I might have erred; but still it has been my conviction that although I was not to fetter my judgment as a member of Parliament by a reference to abstract theories, yet, on the other hand, it was absolutely due to the public ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... was labouring under a gross delusion—that there was no real use in putting Iphigenia to death, and that nothing but superstition made anybody suppose there was. I do not think the case is one less to our purpose on that account, for Utilitarians, like other fallible mortals, are liable to deceive themselves. They never can be quite secure of the genuineness of the utility on which they rely, and in default of positive knowledge they will always be reduced to act, as the Grecian chiefs did, according ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... incapable of telling, if the case be in any degree doubtful, when such particular figures are equal; when such a line is a right one, and such a surface a plain one; but we can form no idea of that proportion, or of these figures, which is firm and invariable. Our appeal is still to the weak and fallible judgment, which we make from the appearance of the objects, and correct by a compass or common measure; and if we join the supposition of any farther correction, it is of such-a-one as is either useless or imaginary. In vain ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... trespass not intentionally upon other people's thoughts, by endeavoring to influence other minds to any action not first made known to them or sought by them. Corporeal and selfish influence is human, fallible, and temporary; but incorporeal impulsion is divine, infallible, and eternal. The student should be most careful not to thrust aside Science, and shade God's window which lets in light, or seek to stand ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... him as he held out that false hope. It could never be! The one unpardonable sin, in the judgment of fallible human creatures like herself, was the sin that Sydney Westerfield had committed. Is there something wrong in human nature? or something wrong in human laws? All that is best and noblest in us feels the influence of love—and the rules of society declare ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... Canaan should suffer a humiliation somewhat commensurate with his offence; and, on the other hand, it was appropriate that he should commend the conduct of his other sons, who sought to hide their father's shame. And all this was done without any inspiration. He simply expressed himself as a fallible man. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... ye leaders of nations! If you possess the truth, show it to us, and we will receive it with gratitude, for we seek it with ardor, and have a great interest in finding it. We are men, and liable to be deceived; but you are also men, and equally fallible. Aid us then in this labyrinth, where the human race has wandered for so many ages; help us to dissipate the illusion of so many prejudices and vicious habits. Amid the shock of so many opinions which dispute for our acceptance, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... absolute truth and justice. For having thrown off the capricious secondary rule of man, we shall not be the less, but the more, under the steadfast, primary rule of God; for having broken the force of human, fallible prescription, we shall the more feel and acknowledge the supremacy of flawless, divine law; for having rejected the tyranny of man's willfulness, we shall submit the more fully to the beneficent power ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... cause and effect, and even invariable sequence became incapable of proof. But when he resolved Cause into a statement of existing conditions that can never be completely known until we have mastered the whole series of physical phenomena, and showed that all human induction is fallible because necessarily imperfect, it became clear that Mill had very little to offer in substitution for those grounds of ordinary belief that he was bent on demolishing. The word Cause is reduced, for ordinary use, to a signification not unlike that which is understood ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... indefectible and holy, Me, it is plain that man, the syncretism of the creation, the point of union of all the potentialities manifested by the creation, physical, organic, mental, and moral; man, perfectible and fallible, does not satisfy the conditions of Divinity as he, from the nature of his mind, must conceive them. Neither is he God, nor ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... ever looked into the existing literature of the supernatural for proof, he will know what I mean. This literature is enormous, but it is practically worthless for evidential purposes. Facts enough are cited, indeed; but the records of them are so fallible and imperfect that at most they lead to the opinion that it may be well to keep a window open upon that quarter ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... pass from the earth while this condition of exaltation endures, the conception is indelibly impressed upon the soul, just as the last earthly view is said to be photographed upon the retina of the dead. The highest earthly relationship is, in its very essence, fleeting, for men are fallible, and living in a world where material wants jostle, and time and change play their ceaseless parts, gradual obliteration comes and disillusion enters. But the memory of a sweet affinity once fully possessed, and snapped by Fate at its supremest moment, can never die ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the aid of immediate revelation, shall undertake to decide upon such subjects, and prescribe 'articles of faith' or 'creeds' to govern the belief or views of others, there will be thousands of well-meaning people who will not have confidence in the productions of these fallible men, and, therefore, frame creeds of their own.... In ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Christianity was, then Jose was forced to admit that he did not. He, weak, frail, fallible, remit sins? Preposterous! What was the true remission of sins but their utter destruction? He change the wafer and wine into the flesh and blood of Jesus? Nay, he was no spiritual thaumaturgus! He could not do even the least of the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... orders. "Give us good men, and they will make us good laws," is the maxim of a demagogue, and is (through the alteration which is commonly perceivable in men, when they have power to work their own wills) exceeding fallible. But "give us good orders, and they will make us good men," is the maxim of a legislator, and the most infallible ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... and exhausting the power of chemical agents, they agree to make a joke of it. It is not so much more wonderful than some of those modern miracles, which leave us to hesitate between the two incredible alternatives that men of science are fallible, or that mankind in general, like Sir Walter Scott's grandmother, are 'awfu' leears.' Every effort is made to reduce the strain upon our credulity to that moderate degree of intensity which may fairly be required from the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... throne, so are his laws and statutes above all the laws and statutes of man. To question these, is to question God himself. But to assume that human laws are above question, is to claim for their fallible authors infallibility. To assume that they are always in conformity with those of God, is presumptuously and impiously to exalt man to an equality with God. Clearly, human laws are not always in such conformity; nor can they ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... The idolatrous admiration with which he had been surrounded until then gave way to disenchantment, disenchantment to bewilderment, and bewilderment to dismay: the national prophet from whom fresh miracles had been expected, was no prophet at all, but a mere mortal—and an uncommonly fallible mortal at that. Nevertheless, while many Greeks found it hard to pardon the Cretan politician for the ruin into which he had so very nearly precipitated them, there were many others who still remained under the ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... used to hear when the High Church party were more formidable than they are at present—much about "the right of private judgment." Why, the eloquent Protestant would say, should I pin my faith upon the Church? the Church is but a congregation of fallible men, no better able to judge than I am. I have a right to my own opinion. It sounds like a paradox to say that free discussion is interfered with by a cause which, above all others, would have been ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... time, the late George Boole, when reflecting on the precise and almost mathematical character of the laws of right thinking as compared with the exceedingly perplexing though perhaps equally determinate laws of actual and fallible thinking, was led to another of those points of view from which Science seems to look out into a region beyond her ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... fault with me,' he said. 'I suppose they are as fallible as I, and so don't judge,' he added, as he waded thigh-deep into the water, thrusting it to hear the ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... certain. When we come to the next chapter we shall consider this difference more closely. In the meantime it is worth while to urge the importance of cultivating scruples on the subject and a keen eye for the intrusion of human, and therefore fallible, opinion into statements of fact. A trustworthy author states the facts as facts, with the authorities for them specifically cited; and where he builds his own opinions on the facts he leaves no doubt as to where fact ends and ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... you may find some of the same belief. But perhaps my fine discovery is a piece of art, and belongs to a character cowardly, intolerant of certain feelings, and apt to self-deception. I don't think so, however; and when I feel what a weak and fallible vessel I was thrust into this hurly-burly, and with what marvellous kindness the wind has been tempered to my frailties, I think I should be a strange kind of ass to feel ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... waxwork had been fixed by the Queen's love in the popular imagination, while the creature whom it represented—the real creature, so full of energy and stress and torment, so mysterious and so unhappy, and so fallible and ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey |
