"Reasoner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been exhibited in the Zoological Park, two stand out with special prominence, by reason of their unusual mental qualities. They differed widely from each other. One was a born actor and imitator, who loved human partnership in his daily affairs. The other was an original thinker and reasoner, with a genius for invention, and at all times impatient of training and restraint. The first was named Rajah, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... bridge of Reason with such quick feet that we pass from the outmost to the inmost and back again in the twinkling of an eye; but the bridge is still there and, retracing our steps more leisurely, we shall find that, viewed from within, Beauty is no less the province of the calm reasoner and analyst. What the poet and the artist seize upon intuitionally, he elaborates gradually, but the result is the same in both cases; for no intuition is true which does not admit of being expanded into a rational sequence of intelligible factors, and no argument is true which does not admit ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... no reply, I take the opportunity of the break in our conversation to say to my readers, that I know there was no satisfactory following out of an argument on either side in the passage of words I have just given. Even the closest reasoner finds it next to impossible to attend to all the suggestions in his own mind, not one of which he is willing to lose, to attend at the same time to everything his antagonist says or suggests, that he may do him justice, and to keep an even course towards his ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... and the Jansenists are disgraced by their resemblance to the heretic. In the mean while, the Protestant Arminians stand aloof, and deride the mutual perplexity of the disputants, (see a curious Review of the Controversy, by Le Clerc, Bibliotheque Universelle, tom. xiv. p. 144-398.) Perhaps a reasoner still more independent may smile in his turn, when he peruses an Arminian Commentary on the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... General Scott gave it credence. The foreboding had touched Lincoln before he left his Illinois home. At Springfield his farewell speech is tinged with shade. At Philadelphia and Harrisburg he spoke of blood-spilling, and used the word "assassination" at the former. He took up the matter like a reasoner. Already the detective brothers, Pinkerton, had an inkling of the doings of the Knights of the Golden Circle, or some such secret society, designing regicide. So, as the Concordance is held as a proof from the variance of the witnesses ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... enthusiast, the poet, and the formularist, the echoes of whose teachings had influenced him even in his obscure home. A start of aversion appeared in his fancy to move them at sight of those other sons of the place, the form in the full-bottomed wig, statesman, rake, reasoner, and sceptic; the smoothly shaven historian so ironically civil to Christianity; with others of the same incredulous temper, who knew each quad as well as the faithful, and took equal freedom in haunting ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... "Certainly they do; not one of your friends has dropt her acquaintance." "If you had gained the Abbe M—— with a bribe of good coffee and cream perhaps you would have succeeded; for he is as deep a reasoner as Dun Scotus or St. Thomas; he arranges and methodizes his arguments in such a manner that they are almost irresistible. Or if by a fine edition of some old classic you had gained the Abbe de la R—— ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... genius was extremely jocular, and the young one very pleasant. You would have imagined you had been at some comedy had you heard our peals of laughter. They, indeed, tried which could 'pepper the highest,' and it is not clear to me that the lexicographer was really the highest reasoner." ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... said, "it is true that Monsieur Choteau has great experience in the fur-trade; but the facts do not correspond with what he has stated,"—(Lucien, you will observe, was a keen reasoner). "Hugot has seen two or three of these skins in Saint Louis. Some one must have found the animals to which these belonged. Moreover, I have heard, as Monsieur Choteau asserts, that they are highly prized by the Indian chiefs, who wear them as robes; and that they are ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... his pupils, the great heathen Reasoner was being questioned and answering questions: in particular respecting the probability that the universal God would be revealed to his creatures. "What a glorious King would he appear!" said one, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the Law there runs a cordial esteem of the great prophet. Luther regards the Law of Moses as divine; it is to him just as much the Word of God as any other portion of the Scriptures. To save their faces in a debate they must concede this point, but they charge Luther with being a most disorderly reasoner, driven about in his public utterances by momentary impulses: He will set up a rule to-day which he knocks down to-morrow. He will cite the same Principle for or against a matter. He is so erratic that ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... Blyden, L.L.D., president of Liberia College, a West Indian, is a scholar of marvellous erudition, a writer of rare abilities, a subtle reasoner, a preacher of charming graces, and one of the foremost Negroes of the world. He is himself the best argument in favor of the Negro's capacity for Christian civilization. He ranks ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... respectability. Longmore was struck first with his looking like a very clever man and then with his looking like a contented one. The combination, as it was expressed in his face, might have arrested the attention of a less exasperated reasoner. He had a slouched hat and a yellow beard, a light easel under one arm, and an unfinished sketch in oils under the other. He stopped and stood talking for some moments to the landlady, while something pleasant played in his face. They were discussing ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... Dante is intense in all things; he has got into the essence of all. His intellectual insight as painter, on occasion too as reasoner, is but the result of all other sorts of intensity. Morally great, above all, we must call him; it is the beginning of all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his love;—as indeed, what are they but the inverse ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the stigma of unscrupulous libertinism. With the blood of his gallant adversary and his country's idol on his hands, the penalties of debt and treason hanging over him, the fertility of an acute intellect wasted on vain expedients,—an outlaw, an adventurer, a plausible reasoner with one sex and fascinating betrayer of the other, poor, bereaved, contemned,—one holy, loyal sentiment lingered in his perverted soul,—love for the fair, gifted, gentle being who called him father. The only disinterested sympathy his letters breathe is for her; and the feeling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... not reasoner enough to persuade you that all women have souls. Very likely in Persia and India they have not. I only want you to believe that there may be women so fortunate as to possess a modicum of immortality. Well, pardon my interruption, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... mind, like those of all truly great men, was open to conviction. He was a quick and powerful reasoner; and a moment's reflection sufficed to remind him of the impotency of his rage. It subsided as quickly as it had been roused. He panted for breath, and looked benignantly round ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... reasoner," said he. "We will suppose for the instant that you are right. Can you give me no hint what means you would adopt to attain ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... grown insolent since I had seized the money; and being desirous to shake off the yoke of a governor, 'Do you know, Mr. Brinon,' said I, 'that I don't like a blockhead to set up for a reasoner? Do you go to supper, if you please; but take care that I have post-horses ready before daybreak.' The moment he mentioned cards and dice, I felt the money burn in my pocket. I was somewhat surprised, however, to find the room where the ordinary was served filled with odd-looking ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and his peculiar way of thinking himself into his idealism has given to the term a richer and more spacious meaning, which combines excellently the Greek and the Hebrew elements. His great ideal is that of manhood. Be a man, he cries aloud, not an artist, not a reasoner, not any other kind or detail of humanity, but be a man. But then that means, Be a creature whose life swings far out beyond this world and its affairs—swings dangerously between heaven and hell. Eternity is in the heart of every man. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... the speech of a glittering orator, guarding unitarians by the arguments that had (or perhaps I should say had not) guarded Irish catholics, Peel and Gladstone made political speeches lofty and sound, and Macaulay the speech of an eloquent scholar and a reasoner, manfully enforcing principles both of law and justice with a luxuriance of illustration all his own, from jurists of imperial Rome, sages of old Greece, Hindoos, Peruvians, Mexicans, and tribunals beyond the Mississippi.[196] ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... had not oppressed his imagination nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original combinations and at once exerted the powers of the scholar, the reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits were too eager to be always cautions. His abilities gave him a haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal or mollify, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... suggestions put forward by various newspapers or private individuals, there were one or two which were feasible enough to attract the attention of the public. One which appeared in The Times, over the signature of an amateur reasoner of some celebrity at that date, attempted to deal with the matter in a critical and semi-scientific manner. An extract must suffice, although the curious can see the whole letter in the issue ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... prosyllogism[obs3], syllogism; enthymeme[obs3], sorites[obs3], dilemma, perilepsis[obs3], a priori reasoning, reductio ad absurdum, horns of a dilemma, argumentum ad hominem [Lat.], comprehensive argument; empirema[obs3], epagoge[obs3]. [person who reasons] reasoner, logician, dialectician; disputant; controversialist, controvertist[obs3]; wrangler, arguer, debater polemic, casuist, rationalist; scientist; eristic[obs3]. logical sequence; good case; correct just reasoning, sound ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... who spoke last, is too great a master of eloquence not to be heard with all the attention which pleasure naturally produces, and a reasoner too formidable not to raise in his hearers all the anxiety which is produced by the fear of being deceived by partial representations, and artful deductions. I am always afraid, my lords, lest errour should appear too much like truth in the ornaments which his lordship's imagination ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... disclosing a new truth to the world, illustrated and enforced his subject by a variety of happy demonstrations. I must add one of them, not only on account of its striking nature, but also because it exemplifies Ptolemy's acuteness. If the earth were flat, said this ingenious reasoner, sunset must necessarily take place at the same instant, no matter in what country the observer may happen to be placed. Ptolemy, however, proved that the time of sunset did vary greatly as the observer's ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... good of God," said the reasoner, but with such a self-satisfied air in his approval, that Marion thought ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... outward vicissitudes as heralded by the newspapers and the local gossip with as much interest and bias and enthusiasm for him as her powerful physical and affectional nature would permit. She was no great reasoner where affection entered in, but shrewd enough without it; and, although she saw him often and he told her much—as much as his natural caution would permit—she yet gathered from the newspapers and private conversation, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... glossed over by elegance. He is neither refined nor pungent; is quite incapable, like the younger Crebillon, of depicting the scapegrace of ability. He is a new-comer, a parvenu in standard society; you see in him a commoner, a powerful reasoner, an indefatigable workman and great artist, introduced, through the customs of the day, at a supper of fashionable livers. He engrosses the conversation, directs the orgy, or in the contagion or on a wager, says more filthy ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... father was a heap more than a clever scientific man," he went on a moment later, "and I get that through his notes, which I well-nigh know by heart. He was a reasoner in those things that had nothing to do with his science. Guess he was dead practical, too, well-nigh a genius that way. As for his courage and patience—well, I guess you've only got to look around you at this old fort. You won't need my hot air to tell you of it. So I'm left guessing ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... woman should not reason correctly as well as a young man. And yet I must confess that, some how or other, a masculine seems to be often attached to the thought of strong reasoning powers in the female sex. To say of such or such a young woman, She is a bold and powerful reasoner—would it not be a little uncommon? Would it be received as a compliment? Would it not be regarded as a little out of the way—and, to coin a ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... named the cause of the disease, and thence inferred the remedy immediately. By many measurements of triangles, one might find their area always equal to their height multiplied by half their base, and one might formulate an empirical law to that effect. But a reasoner saves himself all this trouble, by seeing that it is the essence (pro hac vice) of a triangle to be the half of a parallelogram whose area is the height into the entire base. To see this he must invent additional lines; and the geometer must often draw such to get at ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman |
