"Polemic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... [This noisy polemic was a mason of the name of James Humphrey: he astonished Cromek by an eloquent dissertation on ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... curious among the results of this state of things was the war of pamphlets. From Rome, Bologna, and other centres of thought, even from Paris and Frankfort, polemic tractates rained upon the Republic. The vast majority of their authors were on the side of the Vatican, and of this majority the leaders were the two cardinals so eminent in learning and logic, Bellarmine and Baronius; but, single-handed, Sarpi was, by general consent, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... six in the morning, rapped on the ceiling for him to come down; and then they would dispute and discuss, sometimes half-days long, about the different tenets of the Christian Sects;—and my Father said, the Prince was perfectly at home in the Polemic Doctrines of the Reformed (Calvinistic) Church, even to the minutest points. As my Father brought him proofs from Scripture, the Prince asked him one time, How he could keep chapter and verse so exactly in his memory? Father ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... than none at all, he kept a strict outlook on the theology of the discourse, which made Mr. Wynn rather nervous. A volume of sermons was altogether interdicted as containing doctrine not quite orthodox; as he proved in five minutes to demonstration, the old gentleman having fled the polemic ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... once that the English-reading public should be grateful for an English rendering of Max Nordau's polemic. It will provide society with a subject that may last as long as the present government.... We read the pages without finding one dull, sometimes in reluctant agreement, sometimes with amused contempt, sometimes with ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... read it to Him who has created me from nothing. If He should condemn me to everlasting damnation, I will say to Him: Lord, have mercy on me, for I have always striven against the wicked world," (the troubadour here alludes to his many polemic poems) "and save me from the torments of hell. The heavenly host will marvel at my speech. And I shall say to God that He sins against His creatures if he delivers them into the hands of the devil. Rather let Him drive away ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... entertaining polemic. It directs attention to many undoubtedly neglected facts which writers of the North have ignored or minimized."—The New York Times ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... faith in writing Jean-Christophe were only concerned with France, if the polemic of it were not directed against a universal evil, there would be no reason for translation. But, like Zarathustra, it is a book for all and none. M. Rolland has written what he believes to be the truth, and as Dr. Johnson observed: "Every man has a right to utter ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... our late landlord informs us, a Parisian journalist has arrived at his hotel. This individual, whose name I do not know, at once announced himself as Jack-the-giant-killer, sent down to reinforce with his Parisian vim and vigor the polemic which the local press, subsidized by the "bureau of public spirit," ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... with eyes, and in the richest symbolic forms, the awful truth of things, and utters again, in his books, as under a heavenly mandate, the indisputable secrets of moral nature,—with all these grandeurs resting upon him, remains the Lutheran bishop's son; his judgments are those of a Swedish polemic, and his vast enlargements purchased by adamantine limitations. He carries his controversial memory with him, in his visits to the souls. He is like Michel Angelo, who, in his frescoes, put the cardinal who had offended him to roast under a mountain ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... polemic excursus, of course, I chuckle over them most sympathetically, and then say how naughty they are! I have done too much of the same sort of thing not to sympathise entirely with you; and I am much ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... architect studies his orders, lays down well-proportioned elaborate plans. Whatever may be the pretended utility of Pneumatology, whatever may be the vaunted advantages of superstitious opinions, the wrangling polemic, the subtle theologian, cannot boast either of toiling, of writing, or of disputing for the advantage of the people, whom, notwithstanding, he contrives to tax, very exorbitantly, for those systems they can ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... man of ascetic countenance and venerable age—one whom Gerard Douw respected much, forasmuch as he was a veteran polemic, though one, perhaps, more dreaded as a combatant than beloved as a Christian—of pure morality, subtle brain, and frozen heart. He entered the chamber which communicated with that in which Rose reclined, and immediately on his arrival she requested ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... towards Shakespere, and then towards all other literary craftsmen. William Gifford, his first competent editor, set himself to work to destroy this, and undoubtedly succeeded. But the acrimony with which Gifford tinctured all his literary polemic perhaps rather injured his treatment of the case; even yet it may be doubted whether Ben Jonson has attained anything like his proper ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... had spent so much of his life, had taught him a curious gentleness and indirection, and to keep himself in the back-ground; he was careful that you should not scent his opinions upon any subject at all polemic, but he would tell you what he had seen and known. What he had seen and known about spooks was briefly this:—In company with a neighbor he was passing the night with an old recluse who lived somewhere in these woods. Their host was an Englishman, who had the reputation of having murdered ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... reach the gate in a greater sweat and with more blisters 'a parte post' than his brother hero, Zuinglius. I guess that the comments of the latter on the Prophets will be found almost sterile in these tiger-lilies and brimstone flowers of polemic rhetoric, compared with the controversy of the former with our Henry VIII., his replies to the Pope's ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Tolstoy, not Ibsen himself, has more profoundly and indignantly felt the injustice of civilization, or more insistently shown the falsity of its fundamental pretensions. He did not make his books a polemic for one cause or another; he was far too wise and sane for that; but when he began to write them they became alive with his sense of what was wrong and false and bad. His tolerance is less than Tolstoy's, because his resignation is not so great; it is for the weak sinners and not for the strong, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and the resistance. Mr. Irving has, in fact, without leave asked or a licence granted, converted the Caledonian Chapel into a Westminster Forum or Debating Society, with the sanctity of religion added to it. Our spirited polemic is not contented to defend the citadel of orthodoxy against all impugners, and shut himself up in texts of Scripture and huge volumes of the Commentators as an impregnable fortress;—he merely makes use of the stronghold of religion as a resting-place, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... waxed stronger while she delivered this polemic. Slowly the churchman's face darkened, as he moved backward ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 179: See Martin Martinius. Abraham Ecchellensis. Maccarius, Theolog. Polemic. Peter Cevaller. Robert de Retz, translator of the Koran. See also the support of this assertion in Jackson's Account of the Empire of Marocco, enlarged edition, published by Cadell and Davies, Strand, from p. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... London, England). There was a "send-off" to give to the retiring member, there was a critical inspection to make of the new candidate, and there was Mr Alfred Hesketh, of London, England, and whatever he might signify. They were big, quiet, expectant fellows, with less sophistication and polemic than their American counterparts, less stolid aggressiveness than their parallels in England, if they have parallels there. They stood, indeed, for the development between the two; they came of the new country but not of the new light; they were democrats who had never ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... wonders whether Edwards's brain was not of ice, so pitiless does it seem. His treatise denying the freedom of the will has given him a European reputation comparable with that enjoyed by Franklin in science and Jefferson in political propaganda. It was really a polemic demonstrating the sovereignty of God, rather than pure theology or metaphysics. Edwards goes beyond Augustine and Calvin in asserting the arbitrary will of the Most High and in "denying to the human will any self-determining power." He has been refuted by events and tendencies, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... supporter, and among other achievements added, as Ricardus Aristarchus, to the confusion of the Dunciad. Ultimately, as Pope's annotator, he produced much laborious and comparatively worthless criticism, and contrived by his immense fighting qualities as a critic and polemic to make a considerable noise in the world. One incident in the friendship of the poet and of the divine is worth recording. In 1741 Pope and Warburton were at Oxford together, and while there the Vice-Chancellor ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... like all poetic humour, it oscillates between cynicism and passion almost bewilderingly. For a little more of this what pages and pages of jocularity about Bottles and the Rev. Esau Hittall would we not have given! what volumes of polemic with the Guardian and amateur discussions of the Gospel of St John! In the first place, note the metrical structure, the sober level octosyllables of the overture changing suddenly to a dance-measure which, for a wonder in English, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... at arm's length by Cromwell, shunned by Harrison and Berry and other chief officers, opposed on all points by shrewd, earnest men, as ready for polemic controversy as for battle with the King's malignants, and who set off against his theological and metaphysical distinctions their own personal experiences and spiritual exercises, he had little to encourage him in his arduous labors. Alone in such a multitude, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... and faithful memory, when I tell him that every word of it, with all its details, has been written in a situation which sternly denied me the use of books bearing on my subject. A few volumes of rhetorical criticism and of polemic divinity, that have not, nor, to my knowledge, could have furnished me with a solitary fact or date, are all the companions of my solitude. Other voice than the voice of the wind I have rarely heard. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... more than elsewhere in this chapter, are we trying to turn the family into a field of ceaseless polemic. No one who knows the stuff of which life is made, the pressure of material cares, the play of passion, the busy energising of the affections, the anxieties of health, and all the other solicitudes, generous or ignoble, which naturally absorb the ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... In a polemic against Mr. Jones his adversary has therefore to combat a dragon with three heads, and the heroic method would be to strike all three of them off at one blow. To effect this it seems to me that one has only to remark that a system which is forced ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... of the author had raised him to a just eminence; but he reigned the dictator and tyrant of the world of literature. The real merit of Warburton was degraded by the pride and presumption with which he pronounced his infallible decrees; in his polemic writings he lashed his antagonists without mercy or moderation; and his servile flatterers, (see the base and malignant Essay on the Delicacy of Friendship,) exalting the master critic far above Aristotle and Longinus, assaulted ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... Rabbi Tarphon (probably the Tryphon of polemic fame) that he was very rich, but gave nothing to the poor. Once Rabbi Akiva met him and said, "Rabbi, dost thou wish me to purchase for thee a town or two?" "I do," said he, and at once gave him four thousand ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... was already gliding up the stairs. She opened the nursery door, and there stood in the middle of the room "Original Sin." Its name after the flesh was Master Reginald. It was half-past six, had been baptized in church, after which every child becomes, according to polemic divines of the day, "a little soul of Christian fire" until it goes to a public school. And there it straddled, two scarlet cheeks puffed out with rage, soft flaxen hair streaming, cerulean eyes glowing, the poker grasped in two chubby fists. It had poked a window in vague ire, and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade |
