"Reasoning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 1586, the trial was held in the hall of Fotheringay castle. Alone, "without one counsellor on her side among so many," Mary conducted the whole of her own defence with courage incomparable and unsurpassable ability. Pathos and indignation, subtlety and simplicity, personal appeal and political reasoning, were the alternate weapons with which she fought against all odds of evidence or inference, and disputed step by step every inch of debatable ground. She repeatedly insisted on the production of proof in her own handwriting as to her complicity with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... as if to leave the room but Miss Craven stood squarely in front of him, her chin raised stubbornly. She knew now that she was face to face with something even more terrible than she had imagined. He had avoided a definite answer. By all reasoning she should have accepted his rebuff but intuition, stronger than reason, impelled her. If he went now it would be the end. She knew that positively. The question could never be opened up again. She could not let it ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... we say to the doctrine of the fall of man as the ground of inflicting endless misery on the human race? A man to be punished for what he could not help! He was expected to be called to account for Adam's sin. It is singular to notice that the reasoning of the wolf with the lamb should be transferred to the dealings of the Creator with his creatures. "You stirred the brook up and made my drinking-place muddy." "But, please your wolfship, I couldn't do that, for I stirred the water far down ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his friend's reasoning, and, after agreeing to meet Witherspoon in the Astor Rotunda each evening until the sailing of the "Fuerst Bismarck," he proceeded to the office to take up the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... once conceded as just, this reasoning cannot be refuted. Discussed in economic literature since before the day of Adam Smith, it has withstood every form of assault. If it has not been acted on in the Old World, it is because the wage-workers there, ignorant and in general deprived of the right to vote, ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... equal attention. By healthful mental discipline is not meant that kind of superficial "cramming" and memorizing which constitute the training of the average school, but sound culture; a directing of the mind from facts to underlying principles; a development of the reasoning powers so as to bring the emotions and passions into subjection; the acquirement of the power to concentrate the mind, one of the best methods of cultivating self-control,—these are some of the objects and results of sound culture of ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... explosion. Your orders have been carried out. And yet the ikon is untouched; it's whole. That's all I have to say. It's the plain, simple statement of fact. Yet you come here with your arguments and try to get away from those facts by mere reasoning. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... outward sense in such rites—practices—and ordinances of Religion—as deviate from simplicity and wholesome piety; how they converted them to instruments of nobler use; and raised them to a conformity with things truly divine. The same reasoning might have been carried into the customs of civil life and their accompanying imagery, wherever these also were inconsistent with the dignity of man; and like effects of exaltation and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... out that man's wife? They are stopping at the same hotel as I am, and the lady is one of those in view." After a few minutes' observation, I was successful in indicating the lady correctly. My friend was curious to know by what method of reasoning I had arrived at the ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... contemptible adversary, utterly beneath his notice, and only to be tackled and submitted to an exemplary punishment after the recapture of the galleon had been achieved. And, should I prove correct in this line of reasoning, he would run away to leeward after the galleon, when I should have him exactly where I wanted him, namely, to leeward of the schooner, when it would be my business to see that he did not again get ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... conceptions, are rarely withheld from men of genius. If the circumstances of Fortune are unfavourable, Nature instructs them to draw assistance immediately from herself, by endowing them with the faculty of perceiving a fitness and correspondence in things which no force of reasoning, founded on the experience of others, could enable them to discover. This aptness is, perhaps, the surest indication of the possession of original talent. There are minds of a high class to which the world, in the latitude of its expressions, often ascribes genius, but which possess only a ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... know that practical scale making will permit but two pure intervals (unison and octave), but you have yet to learn the scientific reasons why this is so. To do this, requires a little mathematical reasoning. ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... literal or physical sense of the word heart is not that which is here intended. In these dialects this word has a richer metaphorical meaning than in our tongue. It stands for all the psychical powers, the memory, will and reasoning faculties, the life, the spirit, the soul. It would be more correct to render these names the 'Spirit' or 'Soul' of the lake, etc., than the 'Heart.' They indicate a dimly understood sense of the unity of ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... not a word! To-morrow we sail for Plymouth Sound: thence for Brittany. Hist! We be all King's men aboard the Godsend, tho' hearing nought I says little. Yet I have my reasoning heresies, holding the Lord's Anointed to be an anointed rogue, but nevertheless to be serv'd: just as aboard the Godsend I be Cap'n Billy an' you plain Jack, be your virtues what they may. An' the conclusion is—damn all mutineers an' rebels! ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... swear by Heaven that, lowly creature as I am, a lost vote, a nothing, voiceless and helpless in public affairs, I am not going to stand the imputation that that sort of reasoning represents the average mental quality of Westminster—outside Parliament, that is. Most of my neighbours in St. James's Court, for example, have quite large pieces of head above their eyebrows. Read these above sentences over and ponder their significance—so ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... was only half an hour or so ahead of us. She got off at least an hour ahead of us; and if we have not been gaining on her, she ought to be about ten miles ahead," argued Washburn. I was willing to accept his logic, for we had been over the reasoning times enough to understand the case in ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... revival of letters Popes and Princes offered large rewards for the recovery of the ancient classics. III. The labours of Bracciolini as a bookfinder. IV. Belief put about by the professional bookfinders that MSS. were soonest found in obscure convents in barbarous lands. V. How this reasoning throws the door open to fraud and forgery. VI. The bands of bookfinders consisted of men of genius in every department of literature and science. VII. Bracciolini endeavours to escape from forging the Annals by forging the whole lost History of ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... find a sense of gratitude;" "Never believe a word a native says," are only too well known in Filipinia. The Spanish influence has been responsible for most of the defects as well as for the merits of the native character. Then, the peculiar fashion of the Oriental mind forbids his reasoning according to the Occidental standards. Cause and effect are hazy terms to him, and the justification of the means is not regarded seriously. His thefts are in a way consistent with his system of philosophy. You are so rich, and he so poor. The Filipino ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... would do to us when he "cotched" us she never specified, probably reasoning that the unknown was always more terrible than the known. My private opinion in those days was that he would boil us in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... endeavored by fair reasoning and earnest entreaty to win this perverse and turbulent man from his career. Roldan answered with hardihood and defiance, professing to oppose only the tyranny and misrule of the Adelantado, but to be ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... clear evidence of the mental condition caused by that situation. There can be no doubt that in a blizzard a man has not only to safeguard the circulation in his limbs, but must struggle with a sluggishness of brain and an absence of reasoning power which is far more likely to ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... head, angry with himself that he should feel shame at the confession when his savage reasoning told him he was right in despising work. But this was followed by another thought. This beautiful little creature was some man's child. She was one ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... Duryodhana, Karna said, 'It doth not seem to me, O Duryodhana, that thy reasoning is well-founded. O perpetuator of the Kuru race, no method will succeed against the Pandavas. O brave prince, thou hast before, by various subtle means, striven to carry out thy wishes. But ever hast thou failed to slay thy foes. They were then living near thee, O king! They ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... had expanded with the progress of liberty. All ardent minds had eagerly embraced it, Mirabeau himself having set the example when he descended from the tribune. He wrote his letters to his constituents in the Courrier de Provence. Camille Desmoulins, a young man of great talent but weak reasoning powers, threw into his lucubrations for the press the feverish tumult of his thoughts. Brissot, Gorsas, Carra, Prudhomme, Freron, Danton, Fauchet, Condorcet, edited democratic journals: they began by demanding the abolition of royalty, "the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... done into wood, gold, silver, brass, cloth, skin, etc. And Bezaleel needed as much special inspiration to reveal the truth in wood, gold, silver, brass, etc., as the apostle or prophet needs it to reveal the Word of God with pen and ink on parchment. There is much reasoning in these days about inspiration that appears at first sight very learned, but that will not bear much rigid scrutiny or candid comparison with the exact statements of the Word of God. There is nothing in the Bible more inspired ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... weight in gold at managing negroes. And she did conceive the project, too; and her helping hand was felt like a quickening spring, giving new life to the physical being. That the influence might not be lost upon others of her sex in the same sphere of life, she was ever reasoning upon the result of female sympathy. She felt that, were it exercised properly, it could raise up the menial slave, awaken his inert energies, give him those moral guides which elevate his passive nature, and regenerate that manhood which ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... height, and looked haughtily about him. They who grinned began laughing. And now, at last, it was come Colonel Singelsby's turn to feel as Sandy Graff had felt—as though all that was happening to him was happening in some hideous nightmare dream. As in a dream, the balancing weights of reasoning and morality began to melt before the heat of that which burned within; as in a dream, the uncurbed inner motives began to strive furiously. Then a sudden fierce anger, quite like the savage irrational anger of an ugly dream, flamed up quickly ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... before us is one of the few men who not only think for themselves, nut whose thoughts deserve attention. His essay on "The Law of the Territories" was distinguished not more by its sound reasoning than by the candor of its statements and the calmness of its tone and temper. If his later essay, on "The Laws of Race, as connected with Slavery," be on the whole less satisfactory, this is to be attributed, not to any want in it of the same qualities ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... even if accompanied, as it often is, by a direct attack upon the judicial fairness and motives of the occupants of the bench; for if the law is but the essence of common sense, the protest of many average men may evidence a defect in a judicial conclusion, though based on the nicest legal reasoning and profoundest learning. The two important elements of moral character in a judge are an earnest desire to reach a just conclusion and courage to enforce it. In so far as fear of public comment does not affect the courage of a judge, but only spurs him ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... March 9, 1888, we read of a block of limestone, said to have fallen near Middleburg, Florida. It was exhibited at the Sub-tropical Exposition, at Jacksonville. The writer, in Science, denies that it fell from the sky. His reasoning is: ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Knowledge shall, perhaps, add to their Infelicity, and bewilder them into Labyrinths of Error, Darkness, Distraction and Uncertainty of every thing but their own evil State. Milton has thus represented the fallen Angels reasoning together in a kind of Respite from their Torments, and creating to themselves a new Disquiet amidst their very Amusements; he could not properly have described the Sports of condemned Spirits, without that Cast of Horror and Melancholy he has ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... but his lordship, nevertheless, condescended to demonstrate that he played his own money at the time, and what he lost found its way into the bank, with which 'he was not at all connected.' This reasoning satisfied the suspicious young commoner (poor easy man!); an apology was given; and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of this habit consists in the disorder of excess, which is called intoxication. Intoxication may exist in different degrees and stages; it is the state of a man who loses, to any extent, control over his reasoning faculties through the effects of alcohol. There is evil and sin the moment the brain is affected; when reason totters and falls from its throne in the soul, then the crime is consummated. When a man says and does and thinks what in ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... "Your Ladyship's reasoning is perfect. I propose to visit them in turn, beginning with Calisto. I shouldn't be at all surprised if we found something interesting on them. You know they're quite little worlds of themselves. They're all bigger than our ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... marriage. The worldly mother had, for once, a full and swelling heart. For her this was the crowning moment. In one sense this fashionable crowd had been pitted against her and she had won. What to her had been the pleading of a daughter, the importunity of a father, the reasoning of a few old-fashioned friends? The groom, who represented so much and so little in this ceremony, had entered the church with head held high, had faced his bride with gratified smile and the altar ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... calculated to serve him with a man so reckless as Lord Rochester: they were more likely to cause him to be sacrificed than to be saved. Rochester appears to have acted as if he thought so. He doubtless employed the murderer's reasoning, that "dead men tell no tales," when, after receiving letters of this description, he complained to his paramour of the delay. Weston was spurred on to consummate the atrocity; and the patience of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... tried my hand at scientific reasoning. But when I say ten years for forgetting anything, that's pathological diagnosis, and not personal. I try to reason that time will cure any inorganic disease just as time cures the sting of death. ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... this without reasoning it out in his simple mind. He understood with a heart as reckless as their own, but with a brain that had long since gathered strength from the gentle wisdom of the man who was a sort of foster-father to him. He did not pity. He felt he had no right to pity, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... the revolutionary exaltation of the triumphant crowd, Avilov's cool tolerant reasoning had shaken them. Toward the end, the cries and hisses died away, and when he finished there ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... fact, Ned thought he knew, but the thing was so incomprehensible to him that he doubted, for a time, his own reasoning. It was now nine o'clock, and it seemed to him that the time for action had come. Whether he was right in his deductions or not, he could not afford to ignore the plans he had made for the night. He did not like the idea of accepting responsibility for the important move he was ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... was experimenting. Peter and Anna had smoked together and it had looked comradely. Perhaps, without reasoning it out, Harmony was experimenting toward the end of establishing her relations with Peter still further on friendly and comradely grounds. Two men might smoke together; a man and a woman might smoke together as friends. According to Harmony's ideas, a girl paring potatoes might inspire sentiment, ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... He was, after all, a little disappointed. Mr. Coulson was obviously a man of common sense. His words were clearly pronounced, and his reasoning sound. They had reached the courtyard of the hotel now, and the reporter began to express ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he was not yet quite settled in his mind about the parallel between thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon had interested him by some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps his wits were simply muddled by so much unfamiliar reasoning; but whatever the cause, he somehow yearned to convert the young man to a better way of thinking, and could not make up his mind to drive him forth ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... that his four thousand dollars represented only a trifling part of the investment required to yield this seventy-six thousand dollars' profit. Yet, after all, there was no flaw in Applerod's commercial reasoning. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... not contain his indignation against this fallacious reasoning. He knew that his words might lose him a thousand livres; nevertheless he said bravely: "Monsieur le Marquis, it is such men as yourself who make the age what it is; it is philosophy such as yours that corrupts ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... reasoning tone, "come in. Strike a light if you want to: and take a look around. There's a lot of your friends here. There's Jim Carson over in the corner, and Donald Macomber, and Marcus ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... English, and dedicated to Charles II., "An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, as the same is held forth and preached by the People called in scorn Quakers," a great work, the leading thesis of which is that Divine Truth is not matter of reasoning, but intuition, and patent to the understanding of every ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... dreams caused by haschich or the somewhat sickly visions that come from opium; it was an amazing acuteness of reasoning, a new way of seeing, judging, and appreciating the things of life, and with the certainty, the absolute consciousness that ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... examiners jibbed at his strictly phonetic spelling. He tells me he has given up being an A.D.C. and has taken to vine-growing, because if people are up in the world they always drink freely, and if they are 'down on their luck' they drink all the more to drown care. The reasoning appeared to ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... reasoning had lessened my apprehensions as to the Wednesday, it added to those I had of meeting Mr. Lovelace—now, as it seemed, not only the nearest, but the heaviest evil; principally indeed because nearest; for ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... D.D., has published a work, in which, he labors hard to prove the sinfulness of American slavery from its evils. It was the design of the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, to prove the sinfulness of slavery from its evils; or otherwise, its abuses. If this mode of reasoning is allowable in one case, it is so in another, and by this mode of reasoning I can prove the sinfulness of every institution beneath the sun, social, civil and religions. It is in fact the argument principally relied on by skeptics to invalidate ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... that as Alton would not have received the message had he come when she expected him, it would not make any great difference if he did not hear it until their return. Miss Deringham did not remember by what reasoning she arrived at that result, but it seemed to her distinctly more fitting that Miss Townshead should be the ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... said her friends, and some, who had no claim to the title said the same—the tone and manner making all the difference in the sense of the declaration. She would not for much, have been guilty of giving dancing or card parties in her own house, though by some mysterious process of reasoning, she had convinced herself that she could quite innocently make one of such parties in the houses of other people. So there was only music and conversation, and a simple game or two for the very young people. Graeme and Rosie, and Will too, enjoyed ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... strange to see them reasoning in this manner, these outcasts from life, tattered, drunken with vodki and wickedness, filthy and forlorn. Such conversations rejoiced the Captain's heart. They gave him an opportunity of speaking more, and therefore he thought himself ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... honest with himself when he said that he felt it was time to go back to Ashurst to make his aunts a visit. He had been restless and absent-minded very often since that flying trip in the early spring. In spite of his sternest reasoning, hope was beginning to grow up in his heart again. Dick Forsythe had not come to Ashurst, and Helen said plainly that she knew Lois was not engaged to him. So why should not Gifford ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... father wanted to marry again for, Tom never could make out. His lack of training and limited powers of expression did not indeed permit him any distinct reasoning on the matter, but the feeling was there—a dull resentment which found its only vent and satisfaction in stolid rudeness to his stepmother and the persecution of Nance and ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... slunk back to his sofa in the chimney corner. The reasoning and the inward fury of the young man, who had just received a lecture from his friend Godeschal, silenced the imbecile mind ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... generous ardour had first taken hold of the most active and important part, and if I may be allowed to call it, the heart of this body, from thence was on one side by a quick passage, and in its more refined parts, communicated through the blood to the contemplative, and reasoning, the head, which it inspired with noble thoughts and resolutions; and on the other, to the inferior extremities, which were thereby rendered more expedite and readier to obey the dictates of the head in a rougher method of opposition, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... not obey you, Guillaume.... I will stay, and as all my reasoning cannot save you from your insanity, fire your mine, and I will die ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... following pages; by the number of which he may judge how very much I respect his objection, and by the variety of those proofs which I shall employ to induce him to part with it; and to recognize in its stead certain feelings, concealed and covered over perhaps, but not erazed, by time, reasoning, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... reasoning, my boy; and the experience of some years in the diplomatic world. This creature is a monster without heart or consideration for anything or anyone. She is not nearly so dangerous in the open as when she has the dark to protect her. ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... cage until you think you've made enormous progress; and you haven't. Dear, listen to me; what you honestly believe to be unselfish and high-minded adherence to principle, is nothing but the circling reasoning of a hurt mind—an intelligence still numbed from shock, a mental and physical life forced by sheer courage into mechanical routine. . . . Wait a moment; there is nobody else to say this to you; and if I did not love you I would not interfere with this great mistake you are ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... usually found in minds which have a presentiment of impending calamity. The general himself, besides feeling that he was deserted by his allies, and that the forces of the enemy were so much augmented, was disposed from conjecture and reasoning rather to a suspicion that some defeat had been sustained, than to any favourable hopes. "For how could Hasdrubal and Mago bring up their troops without opposition, unless they had terminated their part of the war? How was it that his brother ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... Anthony, Howe—all the lovely lecturers—discourse, they forget the platform which is plane, and discuss the "sphere" which is mysterious. Can it possibly be that it is because these amiable gentlewomen are always going round? Or is it because they cannot help reasoning in a circle? Or is there some occult relation between spheres and hoops? Or has the wedding-ring something to do with it? It should be understood, that these are questions addressed solely to male mathematicians; for Mr. P. is unlike ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... will live; but whether he will gain his full reasoning powers is a matter the future alone ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... nothing to object to this reasoning which left her at perfect freedom, and disarmed her of all suspicion. "On these terms, mademoiselle," said she, "I accept your offer, and thank you with all my heart. But who will ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... unfortunate Rossi was to lose his life later in the attempt to reform the papal government. Cavour repeats that literature would be the only promising opening, and for literature he feels no vocation; he has a reasoning, not an inventive head; he does not possess a grain of imagination; in his whole life he had never been able to construct even the smallest story to amuse a child; at best he would be a third-class literary man, ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... lights, the which in kind and size May be remark'd of different aspects; If rare or dense of that were cause alone, One single virtue then would be in all, Alike distributed, or more, or less. Different virtues needs must be the fruits Of formal principles, and these, save one, Will by thy reasoning be destroy'd. Beside, If rarity were of that dusk the cause, Which thou inquirest, either in some part That planet must throughout be void, nor fed With its own matter; or, as bodies share Their fat and leanness, in like manner this Must in its volume ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... acquaintance with logic and the learned languages was indispensable as a first step in the prosecution of all the branches of science, especially of medicine; and the skill with which Harvey avails himself of the scholastic form of reasoning in his great work on the Circulation, with the elegant Latin style of all his writings, particularly of his latest work on the Generation of Animals, affords a sufficient proof of his diligence ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... to compose himself by reasoning, the further he was from succeeding. He walked away a dozen steps, to lose himself in the fog; then, all of a sudden, he found himself on his knees beside the two sleeping children. Once he wished to kiss Petit-Pierre, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... Mackinac to a possession perfectly useless, renders probable the evacuation of Fort Niagara, and takes from the enemy half his motive for continuing the naval conflict on Lake Ontario. On the other hand, take Mackinac, and what is gained but Mackinac itself?"[292] The reasoning was indisputable, although Armstrong acquiesced in the decision of the Cabinet. The main feature of the plan adopted, the reduction of Burlington Heights and a successful advance on York, was of doubtful issue; but, if successful, the vital end of the chain upon which Mackinac depended ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... and madness. And I am the diseased limb, and it is you who have lopped it off—" He went on with increasing vehemence, regardless of the supplications of his terrified auditors, in a fervid tirade that abounded with symbols and striking images. It was the untainted, the reasoning, the substantial portion of France, the peasantry, the tillers of the soil, those who had always kept close contact with their mother Earth, that was suppressing the outbreak of the crazed, exasperated part, the part that had been vitiated ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... therefore, having risen again and mechanically taken his seat in the porch to await her return, he was startled by hearing HER voice in the shadow of the lower porch, accompanied by a hurried tapping against the door of the old couple. The half-reasoning man arose, and would have moved towards it, but suddenly he stopped rigidly, with white and parted lips and vacantly ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... dining, and teaing, With appetite nought can appease, And quite a young Reasoning Being When called on to yawn and ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... are merely following the natural course of events, obeying some immutable law legislated by some higher being who watches over the cosmos and dictates what shall be and what shall not be. If this is true it means that there has been a flaw in my reasoning, for I believed that the life of each plane degenerated in company with the degeneration of its plane of existence, which would obey the same evolutional laws which govern the life upon it. I am quite satisfied that ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... in the form of plain lectures; it holds the interest from the first chapter, and its logical reasoning cannot be gainsaid."—Chautauquan. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... run off like a coward, he had brought her to this calamity—and he could not rise under it. Joan realized that he had long labored under stress of morbid emotion. Only a supreme effort could lift him out of it to strong and reasoning equilibrium, and that ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... centre of all my enterprises; the engine that, by her prudence, reduced me to that happy compass I was in, from the most extravagant and ruinous project that filled my head, and did more to guide my rambling genius than a mother's tears, a father's instructions, a friend's counsel, or all my own reasoning powers could do. I was happy in listening to her, and in being moved by her entreaties; and to the last degree desolate and dislocated in the world by the loss ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... choose, so typical of the women's literal mind "I don't see what this has to do with it!" How many arguments have been knocked over (I won't say knocked down) by these few words! For if we men try to put the spaciousness of all experiences into our reasoning and would fain put the Infinite itself into our love, it isn't, as some writer has remarked, "It isn't women's doing." Oh no. They don't care for these things. That sort of aspiration is not much in their way; and it shall be a funny world, the world of their arranging, where the Irrelevant ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... that your reasoning will not help to save your friend," answered the councillor, a little scornfully. "Let me beg that Mr. Ashley be not again interrupted to ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... of my agreeing. It may be a matter of getting through or not getting through—now. If they've had eighteen months, or even twelve...!" The colonel's fingers balled into a fist. "And they won't be delayed by any humanitarian reasoning——" ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... anonymous communication, and, in short, to pass through all those phases of contradiction and indecision to which I suppose very few hurried people are strangers. Still, the reference to Provis by name mastered everything. I reasoned as I had reasoned already without knowing it,—if that be reasoning,—in case any harm should befall him through my not going, how could ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... to his class—having had the sense to choose that pearl in an oyster-shell, Elizabeth Hand—might also have the sense so appreciate her, and go on loving her to the end of his days, Anyhow, he loved her now, and she loved him; and it was useless reasoning ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... them in despair, for what was she to reply to such reasoning as this? Before she could make up her mind, their spokesman said that a white man, Ibubesi, who said that he had often spoken with her, asked leave to visit ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... was a comfort, too, to see Those dogs that from him ne'er would rove, And always eyed him reverently, With glances of depending love. They know not of that eminence Which marks him to my reasoning sense; They know but that he is a man, And still to them is kind, and glads ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... life and conversation to history, this reasoning acquires new force, when we observe, that all those great actions and sentiments, which have become the admiration of mankind, are founded on nothing but pride and self-esteem. Go, says Alexander the Great to his soldiers, when they refused to follow him to the Indies, go tell your countrymen, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... essential for him to know is himself; the second, his hearers or readers—what is the order of progress in their enlightenment. Even logical development of a subject is subsidiary to the practical psychological order. Formal logic, the analysis of the process of reasoning, is a cultural study rather than a practical one, save in criticism both of one's own work and another's. More cultural, and at the same time more practical, is the study of exact reasoning in the form ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... off to take an observation of the sun, and on that process being completed, he almost invariably found his men in a more tractable condition! Occasionally we read of quiet remonstrance or grave reasoning, and frequently of hearty encouragement and wise counsel, but never of violence, although he was sorely tried. Perchance they knew that he was dangerous to trifle with! We cannot tell, but certainly he seems to have been a splendid ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... and Privateersmen, by George Fitzhugh of Virginia—as arrogant, weak, and Sophomorical as Southern would-be 'literary' articles usually are—is written in a vein of reasoning so oddly illogical as to almost induce suspicion as to the sanity of the author. Let the reader take, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Perkins, somewhat carried away by this course of reasoning, "you haven't been what we hoped—there is no denying that; but knowing that you were disappointing us, why couldn't you have made a ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... he had so laboriously made plain to the jury of view proved a total loss of perspicacious reasoning, for the land was forthwith condemned and the road opened, any oil-boring company being allowed by law a right of way thirty feet wide. The heavy hauling of the oil company had already made a tolerable wagon track, and the passing ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... otherwise, who gives to the public, not what it says it wants but what it ought to have, is in the long run the victor. The deep preference is for the good thing, the real thing, the right. It is not intelligent. It does not go with thinking and reasoning. It does not pretend to have grounds of belief. It simply responds. But upon the stage the actor who is able to reach it is omnipotent. Jefferson conspicuously is an actor who appeals to the deep, instinctive, natural preference of humanity, and who reaches it, arouses ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... superficial drainage is more regular from cleared than from wooded ground, and that clearing diminishes rather than augments the intensity of inundations. Neither of these conclusions appears to be warranted by their data or their reasoning, and they rest partly upon facts, which, truly interpreted, are not inconsistent with the received opinions on these subjects, partly upon assumptions which are contradicted by experience. Two of these latter are, first, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... want to be such a circus," the niece continued, reasoning perfectly, "I don't see what you always keep leadin' all of 'em on all the time just the ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... the city editor, drily, "that Gallegher's reasoning has impressed you; and I also see that before the week is out all of my young men will be under bonds for assaulting innocent pedestrians whose only offence is that they ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... encouraged, brought out the old coney, his wife, and seven young ones,—all, like the callenders in the 'Arabian Nights' Entertainments,' blind of one eye, and that the same eye. The question was, on which side of the island was the rabbit's hole? With a very little reasoning and comparing, it was found that from its position, the keen blast must have produced this effect. The oddest part of this story is, that it is true, but I do not expect ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the reasoning of Ned. I have always looked upon the American law as erroneous in principle, and too severe in its penalties. Erroneous in principle, as piracy is a crime against the law of nations, and it is not ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... would soon start for the Solomon, had set out earlier than he expected, and was now crossing above us. I set my compass, and, finding we were nearly on the line where Brown would cross, readily fell in with Nelson's reasoning. So sure was I that the guns we had heard were Colonel Brown's soldiers out hunting that I proposed we should saddle up and go to them. This move came near proving fatal to us, as will presently appear. We rode boldly up the stream, in broad daylight, some five miles, when, not finding ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... breathing was distinctly audible, and the curtain shook during the contest, which was mainly physical, although Mrs. Almayer's voice was heard in angry remonstrance with its usual want of strictly logical reasoning, but with the well-known richness ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... consciousness. Here is one who is a philosopher in and through his poetry. He is a philosopher in so far as the detail of his appreciation finds fundamental justification in a world-view. From the immanence of "the universal heart" there follows, not through any mediate reasoning, but by the immediate experience of its propriety, a conception of that which is of supreme worth in life. The highest and best of which life is capable is contemplation, or the consciousness of the universal indwelling ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... conclusions of pure abstract reasoning about Time, we may see many instances of the relativity of Time in our everyday experiences. We all know that when we are interested Time seems to pass rapidly, and when we are bored it drags along in ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... five pounds for this purpose. He told me it was impossible, as we had barely enough for the journey to China. As I left him I wondered why I seemed to have these gifts so definitely laid upon me to send away, when there was no money. Reasoning that if the thing were really of the Lord he could himself give me what he wished me to send, I put the matter ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... acknowledge it, and, in his own person, was the first object on which to exercise a wish hitherto unknown to her, to be herself loving and lovable. The boy's firm faith, which was not to be shaken by any reasoning or by any of the myths which she knew, touched her deeply and led to her asking Hannah what was the real bearing of one and another of his statements. It had always seemed a comfort to her that the miseries of our earthly life would come to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... no other conclusion," said Father Waite. "But, that granted, a flood of deductions pours in that sends human beliefs and reasoning helter-skelter. For an infinite mind would eventually disintegrate if it were ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... head-quarters of General Washington. I turned my back suddenly upon it. The last place on earth where I would wish to think of Washington is at the grave of Andre. I know that military men not only sanction but applaud the deed; and, reasoning according to the maxims of war, I am well aware how much can be said in his defence. That Washington considered it a duty, the discharge of which was most painful to him, I doubt not. But, thank God, the instincts of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... through the hazard of a visit to Chelsea Town Hall, had become obsessed by a single idea, an idea which his natural apprehensions had well nourished. A common phenomenon! George had met before the man obsessed by one idea, with his crude reasoning, his impatience, and his flashing eye. As for himself he did not pretend to be an expert in politics; he had no time for politics; but he was interested in them, and held strong views about them; and among his ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... those doors up and down the hall, which would be hers? There was no reasoning which could help him in the midst of that puzzle. He walked to what he judged to be the middle of the hall, turned to his right, and opened the first door. A hinge creaked, but it was no louder than the rustle of silk ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... John Locke hath said, this is after all much a matter of clear reasoning. There come into this problem two chief questions: First, who shall pay the expense of the recoinage? Shall the Government pay the expense, or shall the owner of the coin, who is to obtain good coin ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Heart! and thy distress Reasoning I ponder with a scornful smile And probe thy sore wound sternly, though the while Swoln be mine eye and dim with heaviness. Why didst thou listen to Hope's whisper bland? 5 Or, listening, why forget the healing tale, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in black and white, apparently; remember, more than that, the terrible and physically demoralising strain she has been under in the line of duty. No human mind can remain healthy very long under such circumstances; no reasoning can be normal. The small daily vexations, the wear and tear of nerve tissue, the insufficient sleep and nourishment, the close confinement in the hospital atmosphere, the sights, sounds, odours, the excitement, the anxiety—all combine to distort reason and undermine ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... The usual reasoning as to the ability of women also overlooks the fact that many women are larger and stronger than many men, and some of them possessed of tremendous energy, will, wit, endurance, and sagacity. This type appears in all classes ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... nature. Therefore by reason in Luther, or rather in his translator, you must understand the reasoning faculty:—that is, the logical intellect, or the intellectual understanding. For the understanding is in all respects a medial and mediate faculty, and has therefore two extremities or poles, the ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... night; And that with us the seasons of the sky They thus alternately divide, and thus Do pass the night coequal to our days, But a vain error has given these dreams to fools, Which they've embraced with reasoning perverse For centre none can be where world is still Boundless, nor yet, if now a centre were, Could aught take there a fixed position more Than for some other cause 'tmight be dislodged. For all of room and space we call the void Must both through centre and non-centre yield Alike to weights ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... had been turning over the possibilities of Sorenson's course. Rather by pursuing what would be the man's line of reasoning than by depending on chance, he had come to the quick decision to turn back once again to the office. Sorenson would so act as would best serve his immediate escape and that ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... simple, too, that he was astonished that he had sought it so long. And from that moment this poor soft-hearted weakling, whose wretched brain was unhinged, gave proof of iron will and sovereign heroism, assisted by the clearest reasoning, the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... reasoning of the mourner. It was the reasoning of a finite creature. Ah! if she could but have looked into the workings of that infinite Heart she was ungenerously upbraiding, how differently would she have ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... acquittal. I should dare appeal to the numerous and respectable audiences, which at different times and in different places honoured my lecture rooms with their attendance, whether the points of view from which the subjects treated of were surveyed,—whether the grounds of my reasoning were such, as they had heard or read elsewhere, or have since found in previous publications. I can conscientiously declare, that the complete success of the REMORSE on the first night of its representation did not give me as great or as heart-felt a pleasure, as the observation that the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... since your appointment is not till noon, and it wants three hours of that yet." "I do not mind that," said I; "persons of honour and of their word are rather before their time than after. But I forget that by reasoning with you, I give into the faults of you prattling barbers; have done, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... that she should have promised Hicks to practice a song with him, and no process of reasoning could have made it otherwise. The imaginary opponent with whom he scornfully argued the matter had not a word for himself. Neither could the young girl answer anything to the cutting speeches which he mentally made ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... That was Warden's reasoning. Perhaps it was faulty, for it hinged upon the vagaries of a wanton character who could not be depended upon. But Warden had ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... interests of the Holy See, but he was reconciled to the loss of provinces, and he required religious liberty at Rome. Lamoriciere was defeated in September 1860, and in February the fortress of Gaeta, which had become the last Roman outwork, fell. Then Lacordaire, disturbed in his reasoning by the logic of events, and by an earnest appeal to his priestly conscience, as his biographer says: "ebranle un moment par une lettre eloquente," broke away ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... is a species of delusion quite popular at the present time. Every era of the world has cherished similar delusions, for the mass of the human race, even in what are considered the educated classes, are so unfamiliar with the processes of exact reasoning that they fall a ready prey to quacks of all kinds. The fundamental idea of the mind cure system is that there is no such thing as sickness. Disease, says one of their apostles, is an error of the mind, the result of fear. Fear is only faith inverted ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... looked gravely down at him. "Proud, Son?" he asked, in the peculiar way he had of reasoning with the Little Chap. "Have you reached the age of five because of anything you have done? Or did you acquire the trousers with ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various |
