"Infallibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have lost your faith in our infallibility," she answered, "your case is hopeless, and I would counsel you to put on the cowl, at once, and hie away to some dull monastery, where you can rail, at leisure, against woman and her deceptive attributes. ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... the time; but it was only long afterwards that I was in a condition to draw from this incident that deduction which inevitably results from it. This deduction is so uncommon and so singular, apparently, that, in spite of its mathematical infallibility, one requires time to grow used to it. It does seem as though there must be some mistake, but mistake there is none. There is merely the fearful mist of error ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... Wassermann test yet be negative. It is equally possible, though unusual, for a negative Wassermann test to be coincident with contagious sores in the mouth or on the genitals. So it is apparent that as an infallible test for syphilis it is not an unqualified success. But infallibility is a rare thing in medicine, and must be replaced in most cases by skilful interpretation of a test based on a knowledge of the sources of error. We understand pretty clearly now that the Wassermann test is only one of the signs of syphilis and that it has quite ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... superintended every sheet as it passed through the press, has ever remained without a rival in typographical inaccuracy. Still more curious was the fact, that the Pope, in the plenitude of pontifical infallibility, prefixed to the first volume a bull of excommunication against any and every printer, who in reprinting the work, should ever make any alteration in the text. To the amazement of the public, however, when the Bible appeared, it swarmed with errors too numerous for an errata. In a multitude of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... had already seen enough of regular troops to doubt their infallibility in wild bush-fighting, and who knew the dangerous nature of the ground they were to traverse, ventured to suggest, that on the following day the Virginia rangers, being accustomed to the country and to Indian warfare, might be thrown in the advance. The proposition ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Richmond made this disaster the occasion of fierce assaults on Jefferson Davis and fresh complaints of the treatment of their favorite General. The dogged persistence with which this group of soreheads proclaimed the infallibility of the genius of the weakest and most ineffective general of the Confederacy was phenomenal. The more miserable Johnston's failures the louder these men shouted his praises. The yellow journals of the South continued to praise this sulking old man until half ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... was dejected or vile, and distressed the heart by its artistic dryness or disgusted it by its trivial realism. Science itself ... began to appear to many what it is in reality, namely, a means, not an end; its prestige declined and its infallibility was questioned.... Above all, it was clear from too evident social symptoms that if science can satisfy some very distinguished minds, it can do nothing to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... singular development of solicitude for his preservation, but could not help saying something in praise of his invention, giving a demonstration of the infallibility of the principle, with several scientific causes of error in working out the practice. He had no doubt it would be all right on another experiment. Seeing that her looks expressed unfeigned alarm at this announcement, he assured her that her kind interest in his safety ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... judgment of Howells's novel; and that I am to have more books for review. I doubt, however, if Mr. Howells will ever reap the benefit of my criticisms, for not long since I read a note from him saying that he never looked into The Gazette. You must already have given offence by doubting his literary infallibility. ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... being secondary, I cannot make the former yield to it, unless some criterion more infallible than partial (if they are not party) meetings can be discovered as the touchstone of public sentiment. If any person on earth could, or the great Power above would, erect the standard of infallibility in political opinions, no being that inhabits this terrestrial globe would resort to it with more eagerness than myself, so long as I remain a servant of the public. But as I have hitherto found no better guide than upright intentions and ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... called Frederick the "heretical Marchese di Brandenburgo," the king returned the compliment by calling him the "Grand Lama," and delighted himself over the assumed infallibility of the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... themselves up as gods or saints, just as a mulatto passes for a white man in Kaffirland. But with all that, he ate meat during Lent, except on Good Friday, never went to confession, believed neither in miracles nor the infallibility of the Pope, and when he attended mass, went to the one at ten o'clock, or to the shortest, the military mass. Although in Madrid he had spoken ill of the religious orders, so as not to be out of harmony with his surroundings, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... puts forward a claim which has been accepted by all competent critics. They declare, and he tacitly assumes, that he is a master of the English language. He claims a sort of infallibility in deciding upon the precise use of words and the merits of various styles. But he explicitly claims something more. He declares that he has used language for purposes to which it has hardly been applied by any prose writers. ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... REST without a REVIEW ON EITHER SIDE"!! "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher!" Will God's word forever remain unvindicated, because of your veto? Your one mistake that I have shown, proves your infallibility. Let me repeat it in connection: In your text, Matt. xii: 39, 40, it states three days and three nights. This itself overthrows the whole of your argument—for three days are just as long as three nights. See how it will work by your rule: Jesus entombed ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... some means falling into the hands of one Lyons, a surgeon, author of a book entitled "The Infallibility of Human Judgment," it occasioned an acquaintance between us. He took great notice of me, called on me often to converse on those subjects, carried me to the Horns, a pale alehouse in —— Lane, Cheapside, and introduced ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... within his little circle of the "great unwashed," is very oracular, and his infallibility a dogma with his followers and readers. How much he himself and his vulgar trash of prose run mad, stand in need of that wholesome reform which some of his English brother-firebrands have been taught in Coldbathfields ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... customs—singular to us—I noted that a popular remedy for illness is to play music and to recite prayers to scare away the devil. An enlightened Moor might think the practices of the Peculiar People quite as strange, and question the infallibility of cure-all pills at thirteen-pence-halfpenny the box. The dead in Morocco are hurried to their graves at a hand-gallop. That, I submit, is no more unreasonable than many English funeral usages, such as incurring debt ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... times will agree," thus appealing to the distant tribunal as James pointed out. All the insane hospitals have their sufferers for conscience's sake, paranoid personalities whose egos have expanded to infallibility and whose consciences ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... noble passages which glorify the continuous life of mankind, link the present by a chain of pieties to the past, conjure up a glowing vision of the social organism, and celebrate the wisdom of our ancestors and the infallibility of the race. There was, indeed, a real opposition of temperament here; but Burke had no monopoly of the historical vision. It is a travesty to suggest that the revolutionary school despised history. Paine, indeed, was a self-taught ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... Constitutions.—Should not unremitting caution be used, least any degree of interference or infringement might take place, either on the rights of the Federal Government on the one side, or those of the several States on the other. Instances of this kind may happen; for infallibility is not the lot of any man or body of men, even the best of them on earth. The human mind in its present state, being very imperfect, is liable to a multitude of errors. Prejudice, that great source of error, often creeps in and takes ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... rebellion swept over me in an instant, beginning with an heretical doubt as to the sanctity of the established order of things—that fetish which has ruled Pan-Americans for two centuries, and which is based upon a blind faith in the infallibility of the prescience of the long-dead framers of the articles of Pan-American federation—and ending in an adamantine determination to defend my honor and my life to the last ditch against the ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... all, in that acrid saying of Mrs. Ferret's about 'sanctified affliction,' though she does know how to make even truth hateful. I haven't learned to believe as you and Mr. Lurton would have me, and yet I have learned not to believe so much in my own infallibility. I have been a high-church skeptic—I thought as much of my own infallibility as poor O'Neill in the next cell does of the Pope's. And I suppose I shall always have a good deal of aggressiveness and uneasiness and all that about me—I am the same restless ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... alone are involved, we may perhaps accept the view that the well considered opinion of the majority is as near as may be to infallibility. But it is very rarely the case that the question of the legitimacy of a property interest can be reduced to a purely moral issue. Usually there are also at stake, technical and broad economic issues in which majority judgment is notoriously fallible. Thus we have ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... Supreme Judge of the Opinions of the Learned, which you had long before assumed, and had exercised with a ferocity and a despotism without example in the Republic of Letters, and hardly to be paralleled among the disciples of Dominic; exacting their opinions to the standard of your infallibility, and prosecuting with implacable hatred every one that presumed to differ from you."—LOWTH'S Letter to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... celebrated questions, Of the infallibility of the Pope, and his right to the deposing power, our author thus expresses himself in one of his letters on Mr. Bower's History of the Popes; "Mr. Bower having been educated in the Catholic schools, could not but know that, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... sorts of enemies: the Papists indeed, more directly, because they have kept the Scriptures from us what they could; and have reserved to themselves a right of interpreting what they have delivered under the pretence of infallibility: and the Fanatics more collaterally, because they have assumed what amounts to an infallibility, in the private spirit; and have detorted those texts of Scripture which are not necessary to salvation, to the damnable uses of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... his name from Francois Marie Arouet to Voltaire, and by that name he has since been known. Voltaire began to think, to doubt, to inquire. He studied the history of the church of the creed. He found that the religion of his time rested on the usurpation of the scriptures—the infallibility of the church—the dreams of insane hermits—the absurdities of the fathers—the mistakes and falsehoods of saints—the hysteria of nuns—the cunning of priests and the stupidity of the people. He found that the Emperor ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... who have subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles, and acknowledged in explicit terms the queen's supremacy, have been the most forward in leading their flocks, "step by step, to the very verge of the precipice." The honour paid to saints, the claim of infallibility for the church, the superstitious use of the sign of the cross, the muttering of the liturgy so as to disguise the language in which it is written, the recommendation of auricular confession, and the administration of penance and absolution, all these ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Stanton and no violation of the right of individual judgment, makes me sick at heart; and still, I don't know what better one could expect when our ranks are now so filled with young women not yet out of bondage to the idea of the infallibility of that book. To every person who really believes in religious freedom, it is no worse to criticise those pages in the Bible which degrade woman than it is to criticise the laws on our statute books which degrade her. Everything ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... latter had, indeed, in its favor, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want of the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual reason: but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and vital condition of all revealed religion—the principle of infallibility; because nothing can live except in virtue of the laws that presided at its birth; and, in consequence, one revelation cannot be continued and confirmed without another. Now, infallibility is nothing but revelation continued by God, or the Word, in the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... infallible. Once ... twice ... he might have ... he almost.... Then suddenly there is a flash ahead ... he sets his teeth, he reaches out with his soul ... masters it, he strains himself up to his infallibility again ... all those people there ... fathers, mothers, children, ... sleeping on their arms full of dreams. He feels as the minister feels, I should think, when the bells have stopped on a Sabbath morning, when he stands in his pulpit alone, alone before God ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... declares the writer's opinion that the Boer discontent is on the increase. Its publication thus—apropos des bottes—nearly two years after it was written, is rather an amusing incident. It certainly gives one the idea that Sir Garnet Wolseley, fearing that his reputation for infallibility might be attacked by scoffers for not having foreseen the Boer rebellion, and perhaps uneasily conscious of other despatches very different in tenor and subsequent in date: and, mindful of the withdrawal of the cavalry regiment by ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... it makes little difference!" she fell into the habit of saying in the earlier years of matronhood, and he interpreted her listless acquiescence in his decrees as faith in the soundness of his judgment, the infallibility of his decisions. No woman of sense and spirit ever becomes an exemplar in unquestioning obedience to a mortal man, unless through apathy—fatal torpor of mind or heart. Of this fact in moral history our respactable barrister was happily ignorant. He was no better versed in the lore of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... upon the grass, goblet in hand, spilling the cold liquor on more than one ankle—whose owners frisked—but not disturbing a muscle in his own long face, which, in the total eclipse of reason, retained its gravity, primness, and infallibility. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... operations of the War, to what purpose are we called to this Council? When he talks of being responsible to the People, he talks the language of the House of Commons; forgets that, at this Board, he is only responsible to the King. However, though he may possibly have convinced himself of his infallibility, still it remains that we should be equally convinced, before we can resign our understandings to his direction, or join with him in the measure he proposes." [BIOG. BRITANNICA (Kippis's; London, 1784), iii. 278. See ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... are so certain sure of the righteousness of your side in this quarrel that you cannot, for your life's sake, for your love's sake, consent to stand neuter and look on, Captain Infallibility?" ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... risks of naval warfare, in which even the greatest geniuses at times groped but blindly. Nelson was not afraid to confess the truth. The French Emperor, however, seems never to have made an admission which would mar his claim to strategic infallibility. Even now, when the Spanish ships were proved to clog the enterprise, he persisted in merely counting numbers, and in asserting that Villeneuve might still neutralize the force of Calder and Cornwallis. These hopes he cherished up to August 23rd, when, as the next chapter will show, he faced ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... and a principle of practical observance, the right to destroy heretics for opinion's sake. The decrees of councils, and the bulls of popes, issued in conformity with those decrees, place this matter beyond a doubt. Persecution, therefore, and popery, are inseparably connected; because claiming infallibility, what she has once done is right for her to do again; yea, must be done under similar circumstances, or the claims of infallibility given up. There is no escaping this conclusion. It is right, therefore, to charge upon ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... his willingness to meet and confer, as the phrase of our day is, with "ministers of a different denomination." But M. Verdier was a charitable man, and partook of none of that bigotry laid often unjustly to the charge of Roman Catholics. He believed that many went to heaven who denied the infallibility of the pope; and feared that many took the downward road who made that dogma the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... corners of the world. If the test of truth lay in a show of hands or a counting of heads, the system of magic might appeal, with far more reason than the Catholic Church, to the proud motto, "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," as the sure and certain credential of its own infallibility. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... If it were true that we who work for wages had more of the wisdom and virtue necessary to the right use of power than has been shown by the aristocratic and mercantile classes, we should not glory much in that fact, or consider that it carried with it any near approach to infallibility. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... this Spirit, is that Vox Populi which the Deity inspires. Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory outcry—transitory though it be for years, local though from a Nation. Still more lamentable is his error who can believe that there is any thing of divine infallibility in the clamour of that small though loud portion of the community, ever governed by factitious influence, which, under the name of the PUBLIC, passes itself, upon the unthinking, for the PEOPLE. Towards the Public, the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... contemporary manners. Fledgling doctors are therein advised to make use of long and unintelligible words, and never to visit a patient without doing something new, lest the latter should say, "He can do nothing without his book." In brief, a reputation for infallibility must ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... an author are very far from infallibility; but, in justification of some degree of confidence, it may be properly observed, that there was never, from the earliest ages, a time in which trade so much engaged the attention of mankind, or commercial gain was sought with such general emulation. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... not attempt to ignore the moral government of God; that laws were a terror to evil-doers; that philanthropists did not seek to reform the world by mechanical inventions, or elevate society by upholding the majesty of man rather than the majesty of God,—teaching the infallibility of congregated masses of ignorance, inexperience, and conceit. Even in those rude times there were the certitudes of religious faith, of domestic endearments, of patriotic devotion, of respect for parents, of loyalty ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... a terno worth having. My dream, coming as it did straight from the blue, must be infallibility itself, and we felt perfectly sure that the three magical numbers would bring a fortune for every one of us, and we all sent out and bought tickets with all the money ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... years since this humble individual had ceased to be the head servant of Madam; and it was Madam's wont to hint, when she condescended to refer to him at all, that her marriage with him had been the one occasion in her life wherein she had failed to act with her usual infallibility. ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... perfectly dry light, nobody suggests that objective truth on such matters is non-existent or for ever unattainable. A claim for objective validity for the moral judgement does not mean a claim for infallibility on behalf of any individual Conscience. We may make mistakes in Morals just as we may make mistakes in Science, or even in pure Mathematics. If a class of forty small boys are asked to do a sum, they will probably not all bring out the same answer: but nobody doubts that ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... night did Margery's thoughts arrange themselves in this manner. At one time she thought that nothing could possibly supersede the infallibility of the Church; at another she saw the complete impossibility of anything being able to stand for a moment against the infallibility of God. The only conclusion at which she could arrive was a determination to read the volume, ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... Church, with doctrine, worship, and government based upon God's Word. These primitive Christians were careful to preserve the apostolic simplicity, purity, manner, and substance, of Divine service. The Infallibility of the Bible, the Divinity of Christ, the Inspired Psalmody, and the Presbyterian form of government, were fundamentals in the faith of the Church of Scotland from her youth. She appears exceedingly beautiful in her first love, coming up from the wilderness with her right ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... "As to the infallibility of what is thus revealed, we must remember that while truth is always infallible, there is a possibility of its recognition or conception being tinged to a greater or less degree, with our erroneous judgements, and as the light, pure in itself, is colored by the glass through which it ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... These did not understand, as they say, the simplest parables or teachings; they were jealous of one another; Peter even denied the Lord; in short, the authors of the Gospels cannot be credited with sinlessness and infallibility, supposing that they ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... was afraid of oversleeping himself in case Elbridge had neglected to telephone Simpson. But he did not believe this possible, and he had smoothly confided himself to his experience of Elbridge's infallibility, when he started awake at the sound of bells before the front door, and then the titter of the electric bell over his bed in the next room. He thought it was an officer come to arrest him, but he remembered that only his household was acquainted with the use of that bell, and then he wondered that ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... heaven," then I am wholly unable to imagine what would fulfil the prediction. Among the blasphemous titles assumed are these: Lord God the Pope, King of the World, Holy Father, King of kings, and Lord of lords, Vicegerent of the Son of God. He claims infallibility (which was backed up by the Ecumenical council of 1870) and has for ages. Further, he claims power to dispense with God's laws, to forgive sins, to release from purgatory, to ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... which was due to Liberty. A demurrer, a motion in abatement, or in arrest of judgment, was canvassed with a deeper interest by the people of the provinces than by even the distinguished Bar, which were arrayed on either side. Mr. O'Connell's infallibility in law engaged the anxious solicitude, the pride, the passions of Ireland. Yet throughout that long trial the question which would test it was not mooted. The indictment was a subtle net-work, which excluded such argument. The objections to the indictment also were ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... more important result of the supreme position accorded to the Papacy was the gradual emergence of the doctrine of papal infallibility. "The Church of Rome," says Gregory VII, "through St. Peter, as it were by some privilege, is from the very beginnings of the faith reckoned by the Holy Fathers the Mother of all the Churches and will so be considered to the very end; for in her no heretic is discerned to have had the rule, ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... Catholics hear aright; if they do not, the Church applies a remedy to their organ of hearing. These surgical operations go under the name of dogmas." The world remembers with what success an operation of this kind was performed on a number of Roman prelates, who questioned the infallibility of the Pope. The dogma was simply declared in 1870, and that put a quietus to all Catholic scruples. Some day the "assumption" of Mary will be proclaimed as a Catholic dogma. We should not feel surprised if ultimately a dogma were published to the effect that the Holy Trinity is a Holy Quartet, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... immersion. They insist that the sacrament of the Lord's supper ought to be administered in both kinds, and they give the sacrament to children immediately after baptism. They grant no indulgences, nor do they lay any claim to the character of infallibility, like the church of Rome. They deny that there is any such place as purgatory; notwithstanding, they pray for the dead, that God would have mercy on them at the general judgment. They practise the invocation of saints; though, they say, they do not ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... conclusion, you lay yourself open to the suspicion that you are also wrong in the second—that you are one who makes snap judgments. The safer way then is to cling close to the presumption of your own infallibility, without, of course, actually stating it, and claim that your idol has changed, backslidden—fallen. This then lends an aura of virtue to your action, as it shows a wholesome desire on your part not to associate with the base person, and also an altruistic wish to warn the world so it shall ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... of spirits and demons, had once gained an extraordinary influence over him by casting some mysterious spell upon him and reducing his will to abject subjection to his own; and this magician, who had recovered his own self-possession, had assured him, with an inimitable air of infallibility, that the fall of the Temple of Serapis would involve no greater catastrophe than that of any old worn-out statue. Since this announcement Medius had laughed at his own alarms; he had recovered his "strong-mindedness," and when Posidonius had given him three tickets ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in its German branch, from yielding to the pressing demands of so many of its subjects, and, after the example of other princes, enriching itself at the expense of a defenceless clergy? It is difficult to credit that a belief in the infallibility of the Romish Church had any greater influence on the pious adherence of this house, than the opposite conviction had on the revolt of the Protestant princes. In fact, several circumstances combined to make the Austrian princes zealous ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Scots, got up another edition, which also did not suit; and finally, that philosophical idiot, King James, prepared the edition which we now have. There are at least one hundred thousand errors in the Old Testament, but everybody sees that it is not enough to invalidate its claim to infallibility. But these errors are gradually being fixed, and hereafter the prophet will be fed by Arabs instead of "ravens," and Samson's three hundred foxes will be three hundred "sheaves" already bound, which were ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... solemnly asserted at Constance, that the pope is bound in certain specified cases to submit to an ecumenical council, and that the latter cannot be translated, prorogued, or dissolved without its own consent. The gift of infallibility, they affirmed, resides in the collective Church. It does not belong to the popes, several of whom have erred concerning the faith. The Church alone has authority to enact laws which are binding on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... faithfully to their arithmetical superstitions. Many a man spends his recreation hours working out the winning numbers by some secret recipe of his own. There are men on the Z. P. who, if you can get them started on the subject of lottery tickets, will keep it up until you run away, showing you the infallibility of their various systems, believing the drawing to be honest, yet oblivious to the fact that both the one and the other cannot be true. Dreams are held in special favor. It is probably safe to assert that one-half the numbers over 1,000 and under ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... that the modern world proceeded as before. Something more drastic appeared to be necessary— some bold and striking measure which should concentrate the forces of the faithful, and confound their enemies. The tremendous doctrine of Papal Infallibility, beloved of all good Catholics, seemed to offer just the opening that was required. Let that doctrine be proclaimed, with the assent of the whole Church, an article of faith, and, in the face of such an affirmation, let ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... to begin with the Moral; for no sensible man will leave the point and purpose of his testimony to the languid curiosity of a spent reader. Dr. Johnson never did so; and who am I to question his literary infallibility? So if you do not take kindly to the solemn rumble of the Johnsonese mail-coach of a sentence in which we set out, receive the purport of it thus: It is of advantage to be on good terms with one's ancestors: Also; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... here—"but whether it forbodes good or ill to them I shall not now determine; only advise them to prepare for the worst!" Pretty good advice in all times of eclipse; and in these days even when there is no eclipse. Mark his modesty: "I do not pretend to Infallibility in my Conjectures, yet (as I said last year) they many times come out too True to make a jest of." Then he goes on: "I have read of a story which Thaurus is said to relate of Andreas Vesalius, a great Astrologer ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... had considered Napoleon the great democratic champion and mainly in the right as far as Austerlitz. Then swollen ambition had ruined everything and, in his opinion, another swollen ambition, though for far less cause, was now bringing equal disaster upon Europe. A belief in one's infallibility might come from achievement or birth, but only the former could win any respect ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and maudlin sentimentality which craves low-browed, long straight-nosed, undraped statuettes in every nook and corner,—or dwarfs the soul and pins it to the surplice of some theologic dogmata claiming infallibility—or coffins the intellect in cramped, shallow, psychological categories,—it bore fruit in a wide-eyed, large-hearted, liberal-minded eclecticism, which, waging no crusade against the various Saladins of modern systems, quietly ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... make any difference to my action. After all, I'm twenty-five; if I can't begin to manage my life now, you may be sure I never shall. But I know I'm right. I would bet on my infallibility. At present I've only told you half my reasons for resigning, and already ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike. But if they have been consulted, and have happened to disapprove, opposition then becomes, in their estimation, an indispensable duty of self-love. They seem to think themselves bound in honor, and by all the motives of personal infallibility, to defeat the success of what has been resolved upon contrary to their sentiments. Men of upright, benevolent tempers have too many opportunities of remarking, with horror, to what desperate lengths this disposition is sometimes carried, and how often the great ...
— The Federalist Papers
... can get, no farther than the following fragment, on which please give me your strictures. In all kinds of poetic composition, I set great store by your opinion; but in sentimental verses, in the poetry of the heart, no Roman Catholic ever set more value on the infallibility of the Holy Father than I ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... ever giving a thought to it. Its ideas? Scraps of truth, picked up here and there and adjusted to the interests and requirements of one class at the expense of the other classes. Its creed was as absurd as every other creed,—the Divine Right of Kings, the Infallibility of the Popes, Universal Suffrage, the Equality of Man,—all equally absurd if one only considers them by their rational value and not in the light of the force by which they are animated. What did ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... believe in the infallibility of the priestcraft you educate the mind of that child to implicitly believe in the officials of the Catholic Church, and when you gain the implicit confidence you have established a belief that cannot be easily eradicated, as this belief has become ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... Slovenes protested against the language of the Caesars, so they protested also against the triumphant spirit of the Caesars in the Church. Bishop Strossmayer opposed the dogma of Papal Infallibility with a sincerity, obstinacy and eloquence which can be compared only with the spirit of the "golden age" of Christian history. In a letter to an old Catholic friend, he wrote: "It is nonsense to say that the Popes cannot live without ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... try this recipe for making friends with a General. I do not venture to guarantee its infallibility, however, for that depends entirely on the General himself, and, to such, rules and ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... foundation than those they opposed: for them, as for their opponents, the question was not to be solved by an appeal to evident truths and experience, but to historical documents and traditions, supposed, to be infallible. For a clear intelligence, there is nothing to choose between the infallibility of oecumenical councils or of Popes, and that of the Bible. Both have been in their time the expression of very worthy and very human sentiments; both are incapable ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... all the folly of despair to doubt of her death on beholding this beautiful creature, it also needed all the infallibility of science ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... occasion Bonaparte was placed on the throne by the force of opinion, he could not have restored the ancient despotism without exciting universal dissatisfaction. Men seem formerly to have been awed by a conviction of his infallibility, and did not suffer themselves to reason upon the principles of action of a man who dazzled their imaginations by the magnificence of his exploits and the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... inexplicable means—possibly another theft—you took the cigar case out of pawn and, like a whipped hound, restored it to me in this feeble, clumsy fashion. You thought to deceive me, Hemlock Jones! More, you thought to destroy my infallibility. Go! I give you your liberty. I shall not summon the three policemen who wait in the adjoining room—but out ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... similar perversion, be claimed by any mob or party constituting the majority of a city, town, or neighbourhood, as well as by the Colony of Massachusetts, against the Parliament or supreme authority of the nation. They had no doubt of their own infallibility; they had no fear that they "should hereafter be of a malignant spirit;" but they thought it very possible that the Parliament might be so, and then it would be for them to fight if they should have "strength sufficient." ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... they be tolerant? Why ask such a question? When was Roman Catholicism tolerant, and where? Is not the whole system of Popery based on intolerance, on infallibility, on strict exclusiveness? Let me give you a few local facts to show ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... LIVINGSTONE (is he living, though?) found out. When any body questioned him, the said delegate was immediately to talk 'ngammon Latin; and His Holiness would interpret it to the council, as being the African for infallibility. It's wonderful how well this jolly dog gets on, with his dogmas and ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... of Rome has never been famed for her tolerance; her energy and indomitable will have been too frequently manifested by the stern behests of imperious authority. The sovereign pontiffs, with their claims of infallibility, have left the Pagan far behind in the ardor of persecution and the more than imperial character of their governments. Julian published edicts of universal toleration; from time to time he assumed ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... was certain that no one could disprove his solutions. Yet these came so often to their own disproof by lapse of time, that I can only think that the good doctor hoped to die before his critical periods came, or was so clever as to trust the infallibility of human weakness. ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... boundless luxury, they are become great enemies to all manner of fatigues. But, to make amends, the sciences flourish among them. The effendis (that is to say, the learned) do very well deserve this name: They have no more faith in the in inspiration of Mahomet, than in the infallibility of the Pope. They make a frank profession of Deism among themselves, or to those they can trust; and never speak of their law but as of a politic institution, fit now to be observed by wise men, however at first introduced ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... at length this reading, in regard to the duty of keeping a promise, he contrasts, at the close of the section, the all but infallibility of common human reason in practice with its helplessness in speculation. Notwithstanding, it finds itself unable to settle the contending claims of Reason and Inclination, and so is driven to devise a practical philosophy, owing to the rise of a 'Natural Dialectic' or tendency ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... to reason, a sure guide; and even where it feels its foothold most strong, it sometimes trips, to the disgrace of the good opinion it had of its own infallibility. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... to imagine me as a youth who no longer believed in the special inspiration of the Scriptures, or in their infallibility, but who was still a Christian as thousands of "liberal" Church people in the present day ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... and deepest despairs of which the human heart is capable. The same instinct which foresees and devises for the loved ones will also recognize their most hidden traits, their utmost possibilities, their inevitable limitations, with a completeness and infallibility akin to that of God Himself. Jane Miller, all her life long, believed in the possibility of Reuben's success; charged his failures to outside occasions, and hoped always in a better day to come. Draxy, early in her childhood, instinctively felt, ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... before in Israel. Nevertheless it is not to be thought that the Sanhedrim had not always that right, which from the time of Esdras is more frequently exercised, of proposing to the people, but that they forebore it in regard of the fulness and infallibility of the law already made, whereby it was needless. Wherefore the function of this Council, which is very rare in a senate, was executive, and consisted in the administration of the law made; and whereas the Council itself is often understood in Scripture by ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... upon him. When we feel that another is to share the self-same fortune with ourselves we judge more severely of our prospects, and withhold our confidence from that delusive magic which appears to shed an infallibility of happiness over our own pathway. Of late years, indeed, there has been much to sadden my intercourse with Monsieur de Miroir. Had not our union been a necessary condition of our life, we must have been estranged ere now. ...
— Monsieur du Miroir (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Emperor to the Island of Elba regardless of what might have been said. Nevertheless, I may be allowed to say in my own defense, that in this combination of physical and mental sufferings which overwhelmed me all at once, a person must be very sure of infallibility himself to condemn completely this sensitiveness so natural in a man of honor when accused of a fraudulent transaction. This, then, I said to myself, is the recompense for all my care, for the endurance of so much suffering, for unbounded devotion, and a refinement of feeling for which the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... undimmed by any shadow of dulness. To Georgy's mind the gothic villa was the very perfection of a dwelling-place. The Barlingford housekeepers were wont to render their homes intolerable by extreme neatness. Georgy still believed in the infallibility of her native town, and the primness of Barlingford reigned supreme in the gothic villa. There were no books scattered on the polished walnut-wood tables in the drawing-room, no cabinets crammed with scraps of old china, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... entitled to support. As the throne of God is above every earthly 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 ever be beyond ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... politics, in the usual sense of the term, it certainly cannot be advisable. Nothing appears to me more disgusting than to see young men rushing into the field of political warfare, and taking sides as fiercely as if they laid claim to infallibility, where their fathers and grandfathers modestly ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... without any thought whatever on the subject; so universally accepted, indeed, that it is considered a waste of time to think upon them at all; but which, upon a thorough investigation, might possibly lose some of their old-time infallibility, and the consideration of which might well repay the trouble, by opening a field of thought ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... inability to understand what was going on; for his ordinary business, he said, was cattle. A story is told of a metropolitan journal, which illustrates another difficulty the public has in keeping up its confidence in newspaper infallibility. It may not be true for history, but answers for an illustration. The annual November meteors were expected on a certain night. The journal prepared an elaborate article, several columns in length, on meteoric displays in general, and on the display of that night ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Until, as in the kindred profession of Medicine, it is impossible to practise without a Bridge degree, nothing can be done to prevent these quacks from laying down the law. All I can do for the present is to point out that there is only one writer who can speak not merely with authority, but with infallibility, upon all matters ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... denouncing the assumption of spiritual superiority over England, in the documents issued from Rome. But what alarmed him more (he said) was the action of clergymen within the Church leading their flocks dangerously near the brink, and recommending for adoption the honour paid to saints, the claim of infallibility for the Church, the superstitious use of the sign of the cross, the muttering of the liturgy so as to disguise the language in which it was said, with the recommendation of auricular confession and the administration of ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... troppo lontano.” (Because we are too far off.) A very new argument against the universal infallibility of the Pope. It took, however; for his opponent mused awhile, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... infallibility is not the property of man, or you may entail disappointment on yourself, by expecting what is never to be found. The best men are sometimes inconsistent with themselves. They are liable to be hurried, by sudden ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... in a dreadful fidget whenever the Little Gentleman says anything that interferes with her own infallibility. She seems to think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the toothache,—and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter the wind blows from, she will catch ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Catholics nor Protestants, could not long retain sufficient prestige to keep its adherents together. The destiny of such a body is written in the history of the 'Old Catholics,' who seceded from Rome because they would not accept the dogma of Papal infallibility. The seceders included many men of high character and intellect, but in numbers and influence they are quite insignificant. The Church of England has only one title to exist, and it is a strong one. It may claim to represent the religion of the English people ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... should have set him down as a little-minded man; a small tyrant in his own way over those dependent on him; a pompous parasite to those above him—a great stickler for the conventional respectabilities of life, and a great believer in his own infallibility. But he was Margaret's father; and I was determined to be pleased ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... of Caesar Borgia is not a thing within the historian's province. Let the controversy go on! It is well worth one's while to read the presentations of the subject from the different points of view. But infallibility will nowhere be found. Mommsen and Curtius in their detailed investigations received applause from those who adhered rigidly to the scientific view of history, but when they addressed the public in their endeavor, it is said, to ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... spasmodic moments of remorse he read his notebook, tremendously buoyed up by an augmenting consciousness of evolution. Faint inner voices warned him at times not to misinterpret his exultant happiness in terms of infallibility and when they called to him he had his moments of humility ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... as though he had condemned the cause of the Church and of humanity, and thrown the weight of his authority into that of Gallicanism. Here again we see how his mental intensity and impatience reduced him to the dilemma which found solution in his apostasy. Holding as he did to the Papal infallibility in a form far more extreme than that subsequently approved by the Vatican Council, he was bound in consistency to accept the Pope's decision as infallible in respect to its expediency and in all its detail. Thus it seemed to ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... single thought or act of his life in this respect. She knew all and had weighed every thing, and flattered herself that their frequent and unreserved conversations had not confirmed his belief in the infallibility of the Church of Rome, and ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... full of doleful creatures, who move about demanding our sympathy. I have nothing to offer them but doses of logic, and stern commands to move on or fall back. Catholics in distress about Infallibility; Protestants devoting themselves to the dismal task of paring down the dimensions of this miracle, and reducing the credibility of that one—as if any appreciable relief from the burden of faith could be so obtained; sentimental sceptics, who, after labouring to demolish what they call the chimera ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... antecedents of the two old women would have seemed mere madness. Had either spectator noted that the bones of the two old faces were the same, she would have condemned her own powers of observation rather than doubt the infallibility of instinctive disbelief, which is the attitude of the vernacular mind not only to what it wishes to be false, but to anything that runs counter to the octave-stretch forlorn—as Elizabeth Browning put it—of its limited experience. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the clock, he found that it was lunch-time. He had not gone, had not committed perjury; but he wrote to a daily paper, pointing out the danger run by the community from the power which a belief in their infallibility places in the hands of the police—how, since they are the sworn abettors of right and justice, their word is almost necessarily taken to be gospel; how one and all they hang together, from mingled interest and esprit de corps. Was it not, he said, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a divine medicine and sovereign balm in Gilead, for although the popish opinion of the infallibility of counsels be worthily rejected and exploded, yet it is not in vain that Christ hath promised he shall be present with an assembly which indeed and in truth meeteth in his name with such an assembly verily he useth to be present, by a spiritual aid and assistance of ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... had been spent in jails and sundry other penal institutions devised by Earthman and Martian for the punishment of offenders against the laws of organized society. And yet they had failed to break his defiant spirit or to convince him of the infallibility of his creed that might makes right. Nor had they taken from him the gorillalike strength that was in his broad squat body, the magnificent brute lustihood that made him a terror to police and citizen alike. Instead, the many periods of incarceration had only served to increase ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... treason, to what lengths the principles of the Church of Rome have led their votaries: and who can assert that she is, in any respect, changed? The Romanist denies that the principles of his Church are changed: nay, he must do so, or renounce the doctrine of infallibility, which is incompatible with change: why, then, should Protestants volunteer assertions, respecting the altered character of Popery, when the Papists themselves deny the fact altogether? I may venture to assert that the individual who ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... startled Constance somewhat, although she had come prepared by a childlike faith in Ruskin's infallibility to worship them. She was, however, too frank to attempt to conceal her real impressions, and then Merton consolingly informed her that no person could appreciate a Turner before seeing it many times. One's first impression is, that over this ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... three that a doubt began to trouble him. It gnawed at his huge moral strength. Like a hidden seepage of water, it undermined (in anticipation) his terrible resolution. It was a sign perhaps of age, a slipping away of the reckless infallibility of youth. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... which was in the mind of every American, and one regarded with as many minds as there were men. That political measure of the day was hated by some, admired by others. This man condemned it, that cried aloud its righteousness and infallibility; one argued for it shrewdly, another declaimed against it loudly. It was alike blessed and condemned. The southern states argued over it, many of the northern states raged at it. It ruined many political ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... at Timothy, but that does not afflict him. So fortified is he in the assurance of his own infallibility, that the scorn of the ignorant is to him but as the rippling of water at ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... darkened. But they left much to be done by their posterity. They lopped off, indeed, some of the branches of Popery, but they left the root and stock when they left us under the domination of human systems and decisions, usurping the infallibility which can be attributed to Revelation alone. They dethroned one usurper only to raise up another; they refused allegiance to the Pope only to place the civil magistrate in the throne of Christ, vested with authority to enact laws and inflict penalties in his kingdom. And if ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... them. Gentle, indulgent reader, if you read this book, doubt not an instant that everything that happens happens for the best; doubt not, for in so doing you would doubt of all you see — our life, our progress, and your own infallibility, which at all hazards must be kept inviolate. Therefore in my imperfect sketch I have not dwelt entirely on the strict concatenation (after the Bradshaw fashion) of the hard facts of the history of the Jesuits. I have not set ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... pierced Mrs. Farron's depression: Vincent had known, Vincent's infallibility was confirmed. She did not know what to say. She sat looking sadly, obliquely at the floor like a person who has been aggrieved. She was wondering whether she should be to her daughter a comrade or a ruler, a confederate or a policeman. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... appears to him in its true colours, as mere private judgment in excelsis, and if he have the courage to stand alone, face to face with the abyss of the eternal and unknowable, let him be content, once for all, not only to renounce the good things promised by "Infallibility," but even to bear the bad things which it prophesies; content to follow reason and fact in singleness and honesty of purpose, wherever they may lead, in the sure faith that a hell of honest men will, to him, be more endurable than a paradise ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... respect. It has already been pointed out that the public service and the professions are almost entirely filled with what must be called mediocrity; and one of the most potent causes of this unhappy state of affairs is the exquisite infallibility with which a blind system is constantly forcing square pegs ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... strongly condemning the book; and by an odd contrast just after, as he was standing in conversation with George Sinclair, O'Connell with evident purpose came up and began to thank him for a most valuable work; for the doctrine of the authority of the church and infallibility in essentials—a great approximation to the church of Rome—an excellent sign in one who if he lived, etc. etc. It did not go far enough for the Roman catholic Archbishop of Tuan; but Dr. Murray, the Archbishop of Dublin, was delighted with it; he termed it an honest book, while as to the charges ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... infallibility, these countries are claimed by Rome, and wedded to her, and this doctrine of infallibility makes a divorce impossible. Rome waits only her time to reclaim her supposed own. And this doctrine of infallibility will make it a holy ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... Noah, at which stage their questions became so searching as to completely confound me; and as no one likes being confounded, and it is especially regrettable when a parent is placed in such a position, I brought the course to an abrupt end by assuming that owl-like air of wisdom peculiar to infallibility in a corner, and telling them that they were too young to understand these things for the present; and they, having a touching faith in the truth of every word I say, gave three contented little purrs of assent, and proposed that we should play ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the other was sure. Fort loved to take a chance; the other, would not act until he was absolutely certain. Billie decided that he was the steadier, the more reliable of the two; also, the least likable, for that very reason. Infallibility is ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... miss the end for which they are undertaken, and the Pope, in spite of his infallibility, will not prevent his persecutions from giving Freemasonry an importance which it would perhaps have never obtained if it had been left alone. Mystery is the essence of man's nature, and whatever presents itself to mankind under a mysterious appearance will always excite curiosity and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... throughout the East to the exclusion of all others. He remained paramount throughout the civilized world until within the last three hundred years. In the records of the College of Physicians of England we read that Dr. Geynes was cited before the college in 1559 for impugning the infallibility of Galen, and was only admitted again into the privileges of his fellowship on acknowledgment of his error, and humble recantation signed with his own hand. Kurt Sprengel has well said that "if the physicians who remained so faithfully attached to Galen's system had inherited his penetrating ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... Christian. But in any case he was well armed against that numerous class of Deistical objections which rested upon an exclusively literal interpretation of Scripture. This is eminently observable in regard of theories of inspiration. To Quakers, as to mystical writers in general, biblical infallibility has never seemed to be a doctrine worth contending for. They have always felt that an admixture of human error is perfectly innocuous where there is a living spirit present to interpret the teaching of Scripture to the hearts of men. But elsewhere, the doctrine of unerring literal inspiration ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... people what God has spoken on the subject of slavery or any other subject. (Laughter.) I would as soon have a Latin priest,—I would as soon have Archbishop Hughes,—I would as soon go to Rome as to Jerusalem or Athens,—I would as soon have the Pope at once in his fallible infallibility,—as ten or twenty, little or big, anti-slavery Doctor-of-Divinity priests, each claiming to give his infallible rendering, however differing from his peer. (Laughter.) I never yet produced this Bible, in its plain unanswerable ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... say that. Of course, all plans will not succeed; for man's judgment is far from possessing the virtue of infallibility. But human reason would be a poor endowment, did it not lead us, in most cases, to right conclusions, if we are careful in our modes ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... bear in mind that I make no claim to infallibility. I am a painter of landscape; out of my own sphere, I become an amateur. You are not ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... the Infallibility and Power of the Town I am very well apprized; therefore I have invited you this Night, that my Proceedings may have the Sanction of your Approbation. for whatever the Town disapproves I shall ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... the world over—to believe that one can do things better than any one else. But if such importunities prevail, the chances are that books will be misplaced by the very literary expert who has solemnly asserted his infallibility. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... pretensions to infallibility, and on account of this they claim, and obtain, the veneration of the people, by whom they are supported, fed, and clothed. I found the Lamas, as a rule, intelligent, but inhuman, even barbarously cruel and dishonorable. This was not my own experience alone. I heard the same from the overridden natives, ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... supineness, of which I have lately talked to you so much, is at an end! there is no heir to such luck as his. The whole people of England can never agree a second time upon the same person for the residence of infallibility; and though so many have found their interest in making Mr. Pelham the fermier-general for their Venality, yet almost all have found too, that it lowered their prices to have but one purchaser. He could ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Association, and so make all knowledge vanish away, there will lack nothing but the presence of a perfect charity to turn the nineteenth century into a complete kingdom of heaven. Amongst changes, then, so great and so hopeful—amongst the discoveries of the rights of women, the infallibility of the Pope, and the physical basis of life, it may well be doubted if the great fathers of ancient song would find, if they could come back to us, anything out of the way or ludicrous in a recipe-book for ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... work? If he recognizes the Irish spade as an institution of his country, as a part of 'home,' you might as well attempt to reason him out of his faith in the Pope, as convince him that his spade is not perfect." Our man, James, believes in the infallibility of both. There is no digging on the farm that his spade is not adapted to. To mark out a drain in the turf by a line, he mounts his spade with one foot, and hops backward on the other, with a celerity surprising to behold. Then he cuts the sod in squares, and, with a sleight of hand, which does not ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... has abandoned altogether that conception of his duty. He seems to me not infrequently to place himself on the judgment-seat with a touch of his old confidence, and to sentence poor authors with sufficient airs of infallibility. Sometimes, indeed, the reflection that he is representing not an invariable tradition but the last new aesthetic doctrine, seems even to give additional keenness to his opinions and to suggest no doubts of his infallibility. And yet there is a change in his position. He admits, or at any rate ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... G.K. answers that possibly Christians have not all got "such an extravagant reverence for English judges as is felt by Mr. Blatchford himself. The experiences of the Founder of Christianity have perhaps left us in a vague doubt of the infallibility of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... rightly into this matter, to determine with any infallibility whether what we call a fault is in very deed a fault, we must previously have settled two points, neither of which may be so readily settled. First, we must have made plain to ourselves what the poet's aim really and truly ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... their part, were confident that the design was to correct the exorbitancies of a rabid Protestantism, and show the world, by direct miracle, the necessity of submitting to the decision of their Church and the infallibility of the supreme Pontiff; who, as they truly alleged, could decide all knotty points quite as well without the Word of God as with it. On being reminded that the writings of the Fathers, on which they laid so much stress as the vouchers of their traditions, were mutilated by the same stroke which ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... fears! "If thy God were good," said Ossian, "he would call Finn into his dun." Yes, the heroic heart is dear to the heroic heart. I would back the intuition of an honest soul for truth against piled-up centuries of theology. But this high spirit is stifled everywhere by a dull infallibility which is yet unsuccessful, on its own part, in awakening inspiration; and, in the absence of original though, we pick over the bones of dead movements, we discuss the personalities of the past, but no one asks the secrets of life or of death. There are despotic hands in politics, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... expression of feature, and a singular habit of looking fixedly and in apparent amazement for a full minute at anyone who happened to address him. These, with a slow ponderous movement of body, a fixed belief in his own infallibility, and an equally firm belief in the unsurpassed perfections of the Betsy Jane, were his chief characteristics; and as he is destined to figure for a very brief period only in the pages of the present history, we need not ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... nearly perfect. Whatever opinion he had of its errors he would sacrifice to the public good, and he hoped that every member of the convention who still had objections would on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and for the sake of unanimity put his name to this instrument. Hamilton added his plea. A few members, he said, by refusing to sign, might do infinite mischief. No man's ideas could be more remote from the plan than his were known to be; but was it possible for a ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... independent branches of Government, reserving fundamental sovereignty to the people of this great land. It is only as the temporary representatives and servants of the people that we meet here, we bring no hereditary status or gift of infallibility, and none follows us from ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Gerald R. Ford • Gerald R. Ford
... must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory out-cry—transitory though it be for years, local though from a Nation. Still more lamentable is his error who can believe that there is anything of divine infallibility in the clamour of that small though loud portion of the community, ever governed by factitious influence, which, under the name of the PUBLIC, passes itself, upon the unthinking, for the PEOPLE. Towards the Public, the Writer hopes that he feels as much deference ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot |
