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More "Cavil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the telephone. Whatever later dissatisfaction I may have had with Great-grandfather, let me state it fairly and honestly, he is at least a punctual man. Every time I called he came right away without delay. Let those who are inclined to cavil at the methods of the Spiritualists reflect how impossible it would be to secure such punctuality on anything but a basis ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... object, the troopers wonder at these precautions, though not so much as might be expected. They are accustomed to receive mysterious commands, and obey them without cavil or question. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... which every one partakes; and though this affection and regard be, in reality, gratitude, not self-love, yet a distinction, even of this obvious nature, may not readily be made by superficial reasoners; and there is room, at least, to support the cavil and dispute for a moment. But as qualities, which tend only to the utility of their possessor, without any reference to us, or to the community, are yet esteemed and valued; by what theory or system can we account for this sentiment from self-love, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... now more accustom'd to travel; And less inclin'd, therefore, at trifles to cavil: So, cheerfully lends his smooth wings to the breeze, And with rapture extols ev'ry prospect he sees. O'er many a bank, with sweet violets spread, Green field, blooming garden, and hyacinth-bed; Thro' daisy-deck'd vallies, o'er ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... used to go over the whole question day after day, entreating me to believe; but I saw the one flaw in the theory, and I refused to be convinced till the actual existence of Willie Hughes, a boy-actor of Elizabethan days, had been placed beyond the reach of doubt or cavil. ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... of high renown, (the late Dr. Johnson,) who has severely scrutinized the epitaphs of Pope, might cavil in this sublime inscription at the words "repair to Maru," since the reader must already be at Maru before he could ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... to prove a party position and maintain a party's interests. Surely, if Christ died for all men, if his resurrection is the pledge of ours, and if our inability to believe it involves our perdition, the fact should have been established beyond all cavil. Christ should have stood before Pilate who sentenced him to be crucified; he should have confronted the Sanhedrim who compassed his death; he might even have walked about freely amongst the Jews during the forty days (more or less) during ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... understand this ever so distinctly, we are still at the beginning of a knowledge of what constitutes Science. When do we know that we have a Fact? How are we to be sure that our proof is not defective? By what means shall it be certain, beyond the cavil of a doubt, that the right Laws or Principles, and no more than those warranted by the Facts, are deduced? These and some other questions must be definitely settled before we can thoroughly comprehend the nature of Science, and the consideration of which brings us, in the first place, to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... visits as these are a thousand times more instructive and interesting than long papers read at scientific meetings. They afford the best opportunity for interchange of ideas, and directly produce an emphatic result; for one cannot cavil about what he has seen with his eyes and felt with ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... men spoke the truth, while the Cura, probably, did not; and hoping to catch him in his own snare, if such had been laid, asked the guides their terms, which, though high, he agreed to at once, without cavil. They said it would take us eight days to reach the part of the sierra described in the letter, and that we might have to wait on the summit several days more, before the weather would afford a clear view. They would be ready in two days; they had just returned across the mountains ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... elsewhere found in the larger specimens, and by no means very often in the smaller. Hardly even in As You Like It, certainly not in the Arcadia, do the crook and the pipe get less in the way than they do here. A minor cavil has been urged—that the "shepherds" and the "knights," the "shepherdesses" and the "nymphs" are very little distinguishable from each other; but why should they be? Urfe had sufficient art to throw over all these things an air of glamour which, to those who ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... undelightful is the ceaseless hum, to him who musing walks at noon." The entomologist has laboured hard to show us that the insect has no voice, and that the "drowsy hum" is made by the wings; a fact which, being beyond all cavil, puts to the blush the old-world story of Plutarch, who tells us that when Terpander was playing upon the lyre, at the Olympic games, and had enraptured his audience to the highest pitch of enthusiasm a string of his instrument broke, and a cicada or grasshopper perched on the bridge ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... Bishop of Hippo or of the Apostle to the Gentiles? Is Mr. Gladstone, of all people in the world, disposed to ignore the founders of Greek philosophy, to say nothing of Indian sages to whom evolution was a familiar notion ages before Paul of Tarsus was born? But it is ungrateful to cavil at even the most oblique admission of the possible value of one of those affirmations of natural science which really may be said to be "a demonstrated conclusion and established fact." I note it with pleasure, if only for ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Until she love me, till I know, beyond The cavil of a doubt, that she is mine— Wholly, past question—do you think that I Could so afflict the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... make its pupils pious Roman Catholics. The parish priest at Brienne had administered the sacraments to a number of the boys, including the young Corsican, who appears to have submitted without cavil to the severe religious training of the Paris school: chapel with mass at half-past six in the morning, grace before and after all meals, and chapel again a quarter before nine in the evening; on holidays, catechism for new students; Sundays, catechism and high mass, and vespers with confession ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... as well, if not better, the later success of the young blind seeker after knowledge is practically assured; for, as I have said, in mental attainment, at least, the blind child is the peer of the child with eyesight,—here, beyond cavil, ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... lessons of morality; but as to the conduct of the whole, it does not appear to be of a piece; every vision seems a distinct rhapsody, and does not carry on either one single action or a series of many; but we ought rather to wonder at its beauties than cavil at its defects; and if the poetical design is broken, the moral is entire, which, is uniformly the advancement of piety, and reformation of the Roman clergy. The piece before us is entitled the Vision of Piers the Plowman, and I shall quote that particular part ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... the 'Serviens ad Legem,' Mr. Sergeant Manning raises question concerning the antiquity of guineas and half-guineas, with the following remarks:—"Should any cavil be raised against this jocular allusion, on the ground that guineas and half-guineas were unknown to sergeants who flourished in the sixteenth century, the objector might be reminded, that in antique records, instances occur in which the 'guianois ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... of the Free States, grown sick unto death of the rule of the Slave-power in the General Government, arose in their political might, and shook off this "Old Man of the Sea," electing, beyond cavil and by the Constitutional mode, to the Presidential office, a man who thoroughly represented in himself their conscience, on the one hand, which instinctively revolted against human Slavery as a wrong ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... ever fought for liberty and justice, it was the Cheyennes. If any ever demonstrated their physical and moral courage beyond cavil, it was this race of purely American heroes, among whom ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... malevolence could cavil at the trivial errors which the very best scholars are daily found to commit, but the case is widely different when those errors are so numerous as totally to destroy the value of a work. Iam ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... glaring halo about the head of two who could claim personal acquaintance with the great war chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted Tail?—who had actually been to ride and hunt with that then just dawning demigod of American boyhood,—Buffalo Bill? Sneer and scoff and cavil as did their little rivals for a time, calumny was crushed and scoffers blighted that wonderful March morning when, before the whole assembled school, there suddenly appeared that paragon of plainsmen, that idol of all well-bred young ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... document became at length an indisputable authority for the price of cats throughout all Italy. As often as Milord committed a new assassination, and the attempt was made to extort from us more than two pauls as the price of blood, we drew this document from our pocket, and proved beyond a cavil that two pauls was what we were accustomed to pay on such occasions, and obstinate indeed must have been the man or woman who did not yield to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... light ahead. She went again and yet again to see Daisy, and each visit added to her tranquillity of mind. Daisy was wonderfully brisk for an invalid, and her baby was an endless source of interest. Even Lady Bassett could not cavil when her charge spoke of going to nursery tea at Mrs. Musgrave's. She made no attempt to check the ripening friendship, though Muriel was subtly aware that she did not ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Vienna I have never tasted such soups, such sauce, such delicate and suggestive flavors. My entire existence has been revolutionized by the experience. I am no longer the lonely and unhappy man you discovered at this gate a short month ago. I can not cavil at an America that furnishes me with such food as I ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... sweetness of the Devil, When he put on the Cherub to perplex[305] Eve, and paved (God knows how) the road to evil; The Sun himself was scarce more free from specks Than she from aught at which the eye could cavil; Yet, somehow, there was something somewhere wanting, As if she ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... of this third campaign it is perhaps appropriate to point out that Germany was now to achieve that complete military success that had been denied to her in France and Russia, she was to win a victory in the military sense which was beyond cavil, but she was this time to lose the political profit she had hoped, because she had mistaken the importance in the minds of her enemies of the Balkan field and fatally overestimated the war weariness of the peoples that opposed her. At the Golden Horn ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... circumstances, am I not only warranted in these remarks, but imperiously called upon to make them? What other mode remained to set the public mind at ease? I have now stated what must for ever hereafter preclude all possibility for cavil on one part, or anxiety on the other. I alone have possessed the private and important papers of Colonel Burr; and I pledge my honour that every one of them, so far as I know and believe, that could have injured the feelings of a female or those of her friends, is destroyed. In order to leave ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... rather disposed to cavil at this picture, and was laying down her knitting to begin, but ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of her book—that all True Love is absolutely permanent and indestructible, untried by circumstance and untouched by time; and this opinion is, she says, indorsed by every woman who has ever been in love. Thus fortified, the conclusion seems beyond cavil. If, therefore, any incidents here recorded appear to conflict with it, we must imitate the discretion of Plato and say, either these persons were not Sons of the Gods—that is. True Lovers—or they did not do such things. Unfortunately, however, ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... far-reaching faculties we possess; and it may all be worthy of our eulogiums, until we compare ourselves in these, as in other particulars, with Him who produced them. Then, indeed, the utter insignificance of our means becomes too apparent to admit of a cavil. We know that we are born, and that we die; science has been able to grapple with all the phenomena of these two great physical facts, with the exception of the most material of all—those which should tell us what is life, and what is ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... owing in great measure to a misprint, has been doubted. It is enough to state here that it was intended by express legislation to reserve all powers to the Imperial Parliament, and had the Bill gone into Committee the question would have been placed beyond the reach of cavil by a slight alteration in the wording of the clause. This summary may be concluded by the statement that the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords over actions and suits arising in Ireland (except in respect of constitutional ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... decisions of this very council is specified and renewed by the Trent decrees. The church of Rome has declared, therefore, by her last council,—a council, too, by which all her doctrines were unalterably fixed,—that the Lateran council is to be received by all her members; and, as if to prevent all cavil on the subject, and also to prevent any Romanist from saying that this council was not a general one, and consequently not binding on the church, the council of Trent has expressly designated it a general council. ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... the family of Lot was unworthy to be saved, Noah unworthy to have lived, Saul a great criminal, and David a terrible man; that he had tried to understand everything, but that now he accepts everything without cavil or criticism. Truly, a Catholic might say, "See the glorious peace and repose which our faith brings to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... of creation—he was but one amongst ninety-nine unfallen and unsinful—but because he was so wretched, because he was so small, because he had gone so far away from God; therefore, the seeking love came after him, and would draw him to itself.' That, I think, is answer enough to the cavil. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... themselves to be simpletons that I trust they will not resent my calling them such. If however, they abandon all claim to the comradeship that has been so much prated about, swearing by the Three Kings of Cologne faithfully to follow me, and obey my every word without cavil or argument, I will pardon them, but the first man who rebels will show that my clemency has been misplaced, and I can assure them that it shall not be exercised again. Captain, your sailors are familiar with knotted ropes. Bid them release ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... price, seemed revealed to me most beautifully: that he could save every body I at once saw; that he would save me, never even took the form of a question. Those who have received the gospel by man's preaching may doubt and cavil; I took it simply from the Bible, in the words that God's wisdom teacheth, and thus I argued: "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners: I am a sinner; I want to be saved: he will save me." There is no presumption in taking God ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Vain cavil! all that is hath come either by Mir'acle or by Law;— Why waste on this your hate and fear, why waste on that your love ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... as she finished her narrative, "you will understand why it is that I cannot, must not, will not, neglect him! As soon as he can bear visitors I must be admitted to his room, to do for him all that a young sister might do for her brother; no one could reasonably cavil at that. Papa, Ishmael believes in me more than anyone else in the world does. He thinks more highly of me than others do. He knows that there is something better in me than this mere outside beauty that others praise so foolishly. And I would not like to lose his good opinion, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... have produced discontent of late years, I would mention our forest laws and sanitary regulations, our legislative and fiscal systems—measures so necessary that no one interested in the prosperity of India could cavil at their introduction, but which are so absolutely foreign to Native ideas, that it is essential they should be applied with the utmost gentleness ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... "Don't cavil at a word when you know it to be true," said Barrington, energetically. "The constitution of the country requires that she should submit to dictation. Can it come safely from any other quarter than that of a majority of the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... ornithichnites or fossil bird-tracks of Dr. Hitchcock, but with less regularity or apparent design than is displayed by those remarkable geological monuments. These are rather the non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum. Resolved to leave no door open to cavil, I first of all attempted the elucidation of this remarkable example of lithick literature by the ordinary modes, but with no adequate return for my labour. I then considered myself amply justified in resorting to that heroick treatment the felicity of which, as applied by the great Bentley to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... unreasoning tears. He was her youngest. He was so big, so handsome, so like Tom,—yet so different! She did not believe that Tom could really see anything to cavil at in Lance's presence, in his changed personality. Tom, she thought, was secretly as proud of Lance as she was, and only pretended to sneer at him to hide that pride. The constraint would soon wear off, and Lance would be one ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed, Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in? What do I think of the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars. Well, but St. Peter's? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture! No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum. Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement, This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea? Yet of solidity much, but of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... churchyard ornament, to braid The charnel of putridity, and part The spot where what was mortal had been laid, With all thy native coldness in his heart? Thou sure wert not the stone—let critics cavil!— Of quack M.D. who lectur'd on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... sacrifice for Guy in hope of doing him good, how great, no one knew, and yet withall she had failed in her object. He looked at her as the world always judges of Christians; not by profession but practise. However, it may sneer and cavil at doctrine, the world is not slow to recognize and respect the character that like pure gold carries with it not ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... There were three girls in the family—Mary, Everina and Eliza—all above the average in intelligence. Whether there is any such thing in Nature as justice for the individual is a question, but cosmic justice is beyond cavil. The stupidity of a parent is often a very precious factor in the evolution of his children. He teaches them by antithesis. So if a man can not be useful and strong, all is not lost: he can still serve humanity as a horrible example—like the honest ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... flavors came out of the pots! Years on years I was laughed at for maintaining that no range ever turned out things to equal open-hearth cookery. But it took paper bags to prove beyond cavil the truth of my contention. Even paper-bagging does not quite match the open-hearth process, though there is the same secret of superiority, namely, cooking things in their own essence by the agency of hot air. The sealed and loaded ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... for you to say, gentlemen," said the foreman. "I shouldn't want to have it go abroad that we had not acted formally, if there was any one disposed to cavil." ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... the Seine and Garonne, corresponding with the provinces of Normandy, Brittany, Maine, Anjou, Poitiers, the Isle of France, and the Orleannois, was Keltic, has never been doubted. The evidence of Caesar is express; and there is neither objection nor cavil to set against it. There it is, where, at the present moment, the Keltic Breton of Brittany continues to be the language of the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... you no more to say? Do you come here Always to scold, and cavil, and complain? Seems nothing ever right to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... army list in hand, Where he found a new "Field Marshal;" And when he saw this high command Conferred on his Highness of Cumberland,[47] "Oh! were I prone to cavil—or were I not the Devil, I should say this was somewhat partial; 190 Since the only wounds that this Warrior gat, Were from God knows whom—and the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... to despair of having an heir, to cut entirely off the claim of so wicked a brother. Having once began to stir in the affair, it was soon brought to a conclusion.—The fact was incontestable, and proved by witnesses, whose credit left no room for cavil; a bill of divorce was granted on very easy terms, and the gallant fined in so large a penalty, that he was obliged to quit the kingdom, to avoid ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... which the several events took place. The remaining facts, which the succeeding books will set forth, we will, as far as our talent permits, explain with the greatest accuracy, without fearing those who may be inclined to cavil at our work as too long; for brevity is only to be praised when, while it puts an end to unseasonable delays, it suppresses ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... from it; that determination wears an aspect of scepticism, which, however much soever it may be unintentional in the mind of the writer, yet cannot but produce an evil impression on those who are already predisposed to carp and cavil at the evidences ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... it's historical. Oh, I see. You object to the word, not to the allegation. Well, I won't cavil about that. All my sympathy just now is concentrated on one unfortunate Britisher. My dear, let the ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... Ceriani, Volkmar, and other students of kindred power and spirit. Researches and discussions in this department are still pushed with the greatest zeal; and it is confidently believed that in a few years the views adopted in the present writing will be established beyond all cavil from any fair minded critic. Then all the steps will have been clearly defined in the development of that doctrine of the great Day of the Lord, which, beginning with a poetic picture of a Jewish overthrow of the Gentiles, through ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... traveler's hospitality; but Armitage, he was forced to admit, bore all the marks of a gentleman. He had, to be sure, followed Shirley about, but even the young man's manner in this was hardly a matter at which he could cavil. And there was something altogether likable in Armitage; his very composure was attractive to Claiborne; and the bold lines of his figure were not wasted on the young officer. In the silence, while they smoked, he noted the perfect taste that marked Armitage's belongings, which to him meant more, ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... the word, fair Hebe. I am ravished in an ecstacy of admiration. Never was paradox so finely maintained. I might cavil and contest it, but I prefer to keep silence ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to the kernels on an ear of Indian corn. Once more: Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant, with all his knowledge and valuable qualities, and will "cavil on the ninth part of a hair," if it will give him a chance to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... The cavil of Mr. Froude about English gentlemen reading messages penned by black prime ministers applies with double force to English barristers (who are gentlemen by statute) receiving the law from the lips ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... the scope and nature of this reform are so little understood and that so many things not included within its plan are called by its name. When cavil yields more fully to examination, the system will have large additions to the number ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... not care; I'll give thrice so much land Away to any well-deserving friend; But in the way of bargain, mark ye me, I'll cavil on the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Francesco Baldassare Paglia, and in 1700 appeared Giusto Fontanini's elaborate defence[182]. To each chapter of this work is prefixed a passage from Grimaldi's address, which is then laboriously refuted. The Duke's attack is puerile cavil, and in spite of the reputed ability of its author the defence must be admitted to be ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... garments, uninjured), made a flapping leap for the roof of Fulcher's stables, put her foot through a weak place in the tiles, and descended, so to speak, out of the infinite into the contemplative quiet of Mr. Bumps the paralytic—who, it is now proved beyond all cavil, did, on this one occasion in his life, get down the entire length of his garden and indoors without any assistance whatever, bolt the door after him, and immediately relapse again into Christian resignation and ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... taken, is beyond cavil, unless the attempt to explain scientifically how any designed result ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... showing the care of the Government for the laboring man. My dogs are well fed, are kept clean, dry, healthy and amused, and are carefully looked after in every way. But they are still dogs. They have no soul or any right or power of self-determination. So recent events show beyond cavil that the German workingman, from the standpoint of the State and Government, was in reality a political dog. He existed only for the good of the divinely constituted State and its God-given princely proprietors, and ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... man was left, of any caste or shade of nativity, to utter a word to gainsay or cavil with the noble and high public manner in which these proceedings were done. The blood-relatives of the Indian found that the two nations, actuated by a sense of their kindness and real friendship for years, had remembered them in the day of their prosperity. The large number of Indian ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... impossible to cavil; but when Raphael, in conversation with Adam, describes the formation ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... it, emaciated as she was. Her condition need not be described in detail, but she was very near her death, as the medical evidence, and that of a midwife (who consoled Mrs. Canning on one point), proves beyond possibility of cavil. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... I shall be forgiven a hard word if I call this a perfect cavil. I readily own there hath been an old custom, time out of mind, for people to assemble in the churches every Sunday, and that shops are still frequently shut, in order, as it is conceived, to preserve the memory of that ancient practice; but how this can prove a hindrance to business ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... when a cavil is made against the best thing in the whole play; and I would willingly part with anything else but ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... inserted portions have choked the original form so completely that it is impossible to determine at first sight whether a Jewish or a Christian legend is under examination. I believe, however, that the pseudepigraphic material made use of by me is Jewish beyond the cavil of a doubt, and therefore it could not have been left out of account in a ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... character only by such vigor of vital Gothic energy in other parts as shall cause the roof to be forgotten, thrown off like an eschar from the living frame. Nevertheless, we must always admit that it may be forgotten, and that if the Gothic seal be indeed set firmly on the walls, we are not to cavil at the forms reserved for the tiles and leads. For, observe, as our definition at present stands, being understood of large roofs only, it will allow a conical glass-furnace to be a Gothic building, but will not allow so much, either of the Duomo of Florence, or the Baptistery ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the Jews and Turks ridicule our doctrine, as if we taught the existence of three brothers in heaven, it does not signify. Might I also cavil were it to serve any purpose here. But they do us wrong and falsify our teaching; for we do not conceive of the Trinity as in the nature of three men or of three angels. We regard it as one divine essence, an intimacy surpassing ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... arbitrary power, we will insert here a mass of testimony, detailing a large number of affrays, lynchings, assassinations, &c., &c., which have taken place in various parts of the slave states within a brief period—and to leave no room for cavil on the subject, these extracts will be made exclusively from newspapers published in the slave states, and generally in the immediate vicinity of the tragedies described. They will not be made second hand from northern papers, but from ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 'twere, Joconde replied, All cavil then we quickly could decide; Precedence would no doubt with you remain: But this is quite another case 'tis plain; And equity demands that we agree, By lot to settle which the ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... literature which are handed down to us are "possessions forever." Whatever be the limitations of our social inheritance, as instruments for the solution of our difficulties, those finished products which constitute the "best that has been known and thought" in the world are beyond cavil. They may not solve our problems, but they immensely enrich and broaden our lives. They are enjoyed because they are intrinsically beautiful, but also because they widen men's sympathies and broaden the scope of contemporary purposes ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... rings,— That unrelieved, our whole life long, Each hour, in passing, hoarsely sings. In very terror I at morn awake, Upon the verge of bitter weeping, To see the day of disappointment break, To no one hope of mine—not one—its promise keeping:— That even each joy's presentiment With wilful cavil would diminish, With grinning masks of life prevent My mind its fairest work to finish! Then, too, when night descends, how anxiously Upon my couch of sleep I lay me: There, also, comes no rest to me, But some wild dream is sent ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... of Great Britain. They are Mohammedan negroes, who have made, or affect to have made, the laws of the prophet their peculiar study; and if I may judge from their harangues, which I frequently attended, I believe, that in the forensic qualifications of procrastination and cavil, and the arts of confounding and perplexing a cause, they are not always surpassed by the ablest pleaders in Europe. While I was at Pisania, a cause was heard which furnished the Mohammedan lawyers with ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... of the noble duke, which has been so much the subject of cavil, it is the offspring of a manly mind, pouring out its honest opinions with an earnestness characteristic of sincerity, and with a zeal too warm to stand upon nice and scrupulous expression. I am sure that it contains nothing but what the noble duke really thought. I am sure ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... is, that, on the average, each individual is one ten-thousandth part subject to a fate in his private constitution. There is the difference, and it does not seem to me insignificant. Our way to the cases of crime is now somewhat more clear; for it is already established beyond cavil that the mere fact of an average, to which, without any discriminations, our philosopher appeals with such confidence, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... doubt, expected that the brethren would rejoice with him in the extension of the Gospel to 'the Gentiles,' but his reception in Jerusalem was very unlike his hopes. The critics did not venture to cavil at his preaching to Gentiles. Probably none of them had any objection to such being welcomed into the Church, for they can scarcely have wished to make the door into it narrower than that into the synagogue, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... something to say to me which was of some moment. After some very kind expressions, he asked me if I would be very honest to him, and give a sincere answer to one thing he would desire of me. After some little cavil at the word 'sincere,' and asking him if I had ever given him any answers which were not sincere, I promised him I would. Why, then, his request was, he said, to let him see my purse. I immediately put my hand into my pocket, and, laughing to him, pulled it out, and there was in it three guineas ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... wine for them to pour. Than they good knights were never / better served before, And had there not in secret / been lurking treachery, Then were the entertainers / from every cause of cavil free. ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... wish to vie with Mr. Allen's unrivalled polemic amiability and be as conciliatory as possible, I will not cavil at his facts or try to magnify the chasm between an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Napoleon and the average level of their respective tribes. Let it be as small as Mr. Allen thinks. All that I object to is that he should think the mere size of a difference ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... coherency and reasonableness of the books may induce us to consider them as reliable; or, if the latter points be lacking from the supernatural character of the occurrences related, yet the evidence of authenticity may be so overwhelming as to place the accuracy of the accounts beyond cavil. But if external evidence be wanting, and internal evidence be fatal to the truthfulness of the writings, then it will become our duty to remove them from the temple of history, and to place them in the fairy gardens of fancy ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... "I never cavil about interest," said M. Clergeot; "only—" He looked slyly at Noel scratching his chin violently, a movement which in him indicated how insensibly his brain was at work. "Only," he continued, "I should very much like to know what ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... 'Anywhere; I'd not cavil about the road. Don't you know that I have days when "don't care" masters me—when I'd do ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... vast a design without the instigation of his brethren, not only in Granada, but throughout all Andalusia,—would it not be right to obtain from him his confession, and that of the maiden, within the camp, so that we may have broad and undeniable evidence, whereon to act, and to still all cavil, that may come not only from the godless, but even from the too tender scruples of the righteous? Even the queen—whom the saints ever guard!—hath ever too soft a heart ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... father of her children, and that was enough. At least we are allowed to see in Mr. Booth no qualities other than these, and in her no imagination even of any other qualities. To put what I mean out of reach of cavil, compare Imogen and Amelia, and the difference will ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... terribly militated against the effective employment of the battalion as a first-class fighting unit. Individually, the men were all right, but the battalion record in certain respects was held to be very faulty. I have no wish to cavil at the War Office authorities' honest desire to serve the public and yet temper their judgment with mercy to individuals. But the case was one where they should not have temporised in any way. As matters turned ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... we look into the characters of this tribe of infidels, we generally find they are made up of pride, spleen and cavil: It is indeed no wonder that men, who are uneasy to themselves, should be so to the rest of the world; and how is it possible for a man to be otherwise than uneasy in himself, who is in danger every moment of losing his entire existence, and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... inaccuracies, and that its statements are directly opposed to the so-called natural sciences. They say that it doesn't even relate historical events accurately. But, after all, the Bible is just the record of the unfoldment in the human consciousness of the concept of God. Why cavil at it when it contains, as we must see, a revelation of the full formula for salvation, which, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... long silence. Norwegian periodicals—there is not to this day a book on Shakespeare by a Norwegian—contain not a single contribution to Shakespearean criticism till 1880, when a church paper, Luthersk Ugeskrift[11] published an article which proved beyond cavil that Shakespeare is good and safe reading for Lutheran Christians. The writer admits that Shakespeare probably had several irregular love-affairs both before and after marriage, but as he grew older his heart turned to the comforts of religion, and in his epitaph ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... Spirit! No, rather be dumb for ever, unless at least thou canst—but away, away this talk! Not now will we dispute and cavil; not now will we judge harshly of each other. Thou, regarding me as an apostate! and I all sorrow and shame for thee as an idolater. No, my sister, let us avoid such topics and such thoughts. In ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... to me. I have been living for twelve days exclusively upon milk; a healing diet, I dare say, but I have come to weary of the taste and sight of it, and its effect upon me is the reverse of stimulation. But I am in no wise inclined to cavil, for I am entirely free from pain at the moment; the weather is perfectly glorious, and my neighbours, Blades and his wife, are in their homely fashion extremely ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... early part of the seventeenth century, and one of the leaves in that roll contained a contemporary and authenticated official return of the royal furniture lost by the blowing up of the King's residence. Among other items, this leaf proved, beyond the possibility of further cavil, that the bed which stood in Darnley's room was, up to the time of his death, unchanged, and was not, as alleged by Mary's enemies, an old and worthless piece of furniture, but, on the contrary, was "a bed of ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... there be a technical defect for the purposes of a name in France, in the fact that we unfortunately hold Repentigny of a foreign power, I am ready—and indeed from this time forth intend—to recur to another name about which no petty cavil can rise—for we are not so poor in titles as to be confined to one—the original illustrious name of my family—LeCour de Lincy. You, sir, have my attestation by the herald, in the strictest form, and some of you, gentlemen officers, know under what ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... being published in a French translation, a Parisian critic—I am almost certain it was M. Gustave Kahn in the "Gil Blas"—giving me a short notice, summed up his rapid impression of the writer's quality in the words un puissant reveur. So be it! Who could cavil at the words of a friendly reader? Yet perhaps not such an unconditional dreamer as all that. I will make bold to say that neither at sea nor ashore have I ever lost the sense of responsibility. There is more than one sort of intoxication. Even before the most seductive reveries I ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... Guinea?" said the man in gray; "where is he? Let us at once find him, and refute beyond cavil this injurious hypothesis." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... man should avow his longing. And she pitied Bower with a great pity. Deep down in her heart was a suspicion that they might have been happy together had they met sooner. She would never have loved him,—she knew that now beyond cavil,—but if they were married she must have striven to make life pleasant for him, while she drifted down the smooth stream of existence free from either abiding joys or ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... conciliates all and some, stops cavil in a trice: "The humble holy heart that holds of new-born pride no spice! He's just the saint to choose for Pope!" ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... facts beyond cavil or dispute or reversion. One is that God's laws cannot be broken. We are not trying to say that they should not be broken; or that they cannot be broken with impunity; or that if broken we shall be punished. They simply cannot be broken—they ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... those believed to have saved some precious inheritance from harm do not yet, perhaps will never, include heroes of labor struggles for equal right and mutual justice. Yet the history of industrial changes shows beyond cavil or doubt that in this field, as in others, he who would be free himself must win his freedom. The basic principle of the Trade Union, the right and usefulness of collective bargaining, inheres in the conditions of machine-dominated and capitalized industry. In ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... generous in this. The record shows beyond any cavil that Goodrich was the first and most constant friend of Hawthorne in the way of helping him to get his work before the public; he was also interested in him, thoughtful for him, and gave him hack work to do, which, though it be a lowly is a true service, however unwelcome the task ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... meeting there with some few of John Ovy's people, amongst whom Richard Greenaway declared the truth; which they attentively heard, and did not oppose, which at that time of day we reckoned was pretty well, for many were apt to cavil. ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... very angry indeed was established beyond cavil. However, Mr. Wilton was apparently quite capable of taking care of himself ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... basis of complete demonstration, and instead of being witnessed by only a select few, may now, by the use of my hive, be familiar sights to any bee keeper, who prefers to acquaint himself with facts, rather than to cavil and sneer at ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... nothing, I see, is the sum of our learning, To the very core of my heart 'tis burning. 'Tis true I'm more clever than all the foplings, Doctors, Magisters, Authors, and Popelings; Am plagued by no scruple, nor doubt, nor cavil, Nor lingering fear of hell or devil— What then? all pleasure is fled forever; To know one thing I vainly endeavor, There's nothing wherein one fellow-creature Could be mended or bettered with me for a teacher. And then, too, ...
— Faust • Goethe
... out of it. I am the savant untamed; they the savants civilized. Doctors cavil at the learned. False science is the excrement of the true, and is employed to the destruction of philosophers. Philosophers, as they produce sophists, produce their own scourge. Of the dung of the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... leading lady. He informed her that she must be down at the stables every morning at eight o'clock to inspect the horses and see them fed and watered. As a matter of fact the inspection should have been one of his own duties, but the girl was not likely to cavil at any little additional work that had not been exactly specified in her contract. Besides, if she did, he could soon make it uncomfortable for her. Arithelli made no objection. Though she hated getting up early she would never have grudged a sacrifice of comfort ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... is to go beyond. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne, and the mitre in the name of the attar; it is to ill-treat the thing which one is dragging, it is to kick over the traces; it is to cavil at the fagot on the score of the amount of cooking received by heretics; it is to reproach the idol with its small amount of idolatry; it is to insult through excess of respect; it is to discover that the Pope is not sufficiently papish, that ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... shower Of radiant tears! Thou tender cruelty! Gay smiling martyrdom! Shall I forbid thee? Limit thy depth by mine own shallowness? Thy courage by my weakness? Where thou darest, I'll shudder and submit. I kneel here spell-bound Before my bleeding Saviour's living likeness To worship, not to cavil: I had dreamt of such things, Dim heard in legends, while my pitiful blood Tingled through every vein, and wept, and swore 'Twas beautiful, 'twas Christ-like—had I thought That thou ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... accomplished, yet, when the task is well accomplished, an appreciative unanimity seems to prevail regarding the result. We all agree in praising Sir Frederick Burton's administration; and yet how easy it would be to cavil! Why has he not bought an Ingres, a Corot, a Courbet, a Troyon? Why has he showed such excessive partiality for squint-eyed Italian saints? Sir Frederick Burton would answer: "In collecting, like in everything else, you must choose a line. I chose to consider the National ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... did you ever find the epithet 'good,' applied to the title of Doctor? Had you called me 'learned Doctor,' or 'grave Doctor,' or 'noble Doctor,' it might be allowable, because they belong to the profession. But, not to cavil at trifles, you talk of my 'spring-velvet coat,' and advise me to wear it the first day in the year, — that is, in the middle of winter! — a spring-velvet in the middle of winter!!! That would be a solecism ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... doctors or healers. I believe I could fill a volume by the mere enumeration of the diabolical and absurd nostrums offered by knaves to heal men who profess to hold in ridicule the Chinese doctors. I mention but a few, and when I tell you, as a truth beyond cavil, that the most extraordinary of these healers, the most impossible, have the largest following, you can see what I mean by the credulity of the people as a whole. Christian Science doctors have a following of ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... is to be seen on both sides alike. Her nose was perfect;—not Grecian, nor Roman, nor Egyptian,—but simply English, only just not retrousse. There were those who said her mouth was a thought too wide, and her teeth too perfect,—but they were of that class of critics to whom it is a necessity to cavil rather than to kiss. Added to all this there was a childishness of manner about her of which, though she herself was somewhat ashamed, all others were enamoured. It was not the childishness of very youthful years,—for she had already reached ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... note, will flee him.' Thus they buzzed, Self-praised, and knowing not that simpleness Is sacred soil, and sown with royal seed, The heroic seed and saintly. Mitred once Such gibes no more assailed him: one short month Sufficed the petty cavil to confute; One month well chronicled in book which verse Late born, alas, in vain would emulate. At once he called to mind the days that were; His wanderings in Northumbrian glens; the hearths That welcomed ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... highest admiration was reserved for the Bishop of Chester's 'Exposition of the Gospel of St. Matthew.' "It is a very fine book indeed. Just the sort of one I like; which is just plain and comprehensible and full of truth and good feeling. It is not one of those learned books in which you have to cavil at almost every paragraph. Lehzen gave it me on the Sunday that I took the Sacrament." A few weeks previously she had been confirmed, and she described the event as follows: "I felt that my confirmation was one of the most solemn and important events and ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... with the proposition that the bulky products of the West must be carried by water and not by rail, and will state a few facts that in our humble opinion will place this proposition beyond all cavil. So for as figures can be obtained, and correct calculations made, it has been demonstrated that freight cannot be moved on American railroads for less than one cent per ton per mile. This is actually the first cost, even in the coal regions of Pennsylvania. It is therefore fair to presume ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... fashion of successful people, to cavil because his success was not more complete. How the time was wasting here in this uncomfortable interlude! Why could he not have discovered Leander's whereabouts earlier, and by now be jogging along the road home with the boy by his ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of cavil in Marion's voice. Her eyes were earnest and serious; and she waited, as one waits in honest perplexity, to have a puzzle solved. But she was known as one who held dangerous, even infidel notions, and Mr. Pembrook, bewildered as to how to answer her, seemed ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... may feel inclined to cavil with this association on Elsie's part of "immortal beings," as they would style her parents, and the recollection she cherishes of a "dead brute," because, forsooth, they hold that her four-footed favourite had no soul; but were these gentry to broach the subject ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... termination of his task was an ultimate certainty had been a consolation mighty and sustaining. Such an uninteresting undertaking could not last forever, he told himself over and over again; nothing ever did. And now with ironic conformity to law, his philosophy had turned on him, demonstrating beyond cavil that not only did the things one longed to be free of come to a sure finality but so did those one pined to ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... little to be doubted, that it is almost the only truth we are sure of, and such a truth as we meet with in every object, in every occurrence, and in every thought. If we look into the characters of this tribe of infidels, we generally find they are made up of pride, spleen, and cavil: it is indeed no wonder that men who are uneasy to themselves, should be so to the rest of the world; and how is it possible for a man to be otherwise than uneasy in himself, who is in danger every moment of losing his entire existence and ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... patience and acuteness with which he has examined the confused and so often conflicting records of that time, or of the incomparable skill with which he has brought them into a clear continuous narrative. To glean after Macaulay is indeed a barren task. So far, then, from affecting to cavil at his work, I must acknowledge that without his help this little book would have been still less. Yet I do think he has been hard upon Claverhouse. Perhaps the scheme of his history did not require, or even allow him, to examine ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... see that he doubted she did not see them right, and somehow contrived also to make her hear his reasons. It was done with the art of a master and the steady aim of a general who has a great field to win. Faith did not want to hear his suggestions of doubt and cavil. She remembered Mr. Linden's advice long ago given; repeated it to herself every day; and sought to meet Dr. Harrison only with the sling stone of truth and let his weapons of artificial warfare alone. Truly she "had not proved these," and "could not ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Volney's Ruins of Empire, The Sorrows of Werther, and Paradise Lost. The monster overhears the lessons, and ponders on this unique library, but, as he pleads his own cause the more eloquently because he knows Satan's passionate outbursts of defiance and self-pity, who would cavil at the method by which he is made to acquire his knowledge? "The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth amidst the universal stillness. All save I were at rest or ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... or ostracism served to wound my self-respect, it nevertheless had its special advantage for me, for in epochs less glorious or less brilliant (that is to say, in times of failure), they could never cavil at advice or counsel which I had given, nor blame me for the shortcomings of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... mistake me, Lionel. I will go just so far in this matter as may be necessary to avoid open disapproval. If I appear to approve it, that the world may not cavil and you complain, it will be little more than an appearance. I will call upon your intended wife, but the call will be one of etiquette, of formal ceremony: you must not expect me to get into the habit of repeating it. I shall never ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... he will allow responsible concerns to carry them into practice under such limitations as may be necessary to sustain the basic object, but without any payment to him except for the actual expense incurred. The hypercritical may cavil and say that, as a manufacturer of cement, Edison will be benefited. True, but as ANY good Portland cement can be used, and no restrictions as to source of supply are enforced, he, or rather his company, will be merely one ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... cavil at portions of the first part of my work, I was fully convinced, and as there are many observations quite new to most of them, they are by them considered to be false; but the United States, as I have before observed, comprehend ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... mirrored a hundred moods, and back of them all a sweet womanly tenderness to make every mood a new and rare delight. Toinette!—never before was woman's name so pleasant to my lips. Ignorant as I was in mysteries of the heart, I knew not clearly whether I loved her, though this I knew beyond cavil,—no savage hand should ever touch her while I lived; and if I had to fight each step of the path from that accursed spot to Wayne, I swore within my heart she should come safe through. Her gentle memory was with me when all the rest yielded to the drowsy god, and in ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... disturbance in every part of the country, in the course of which troops had been called out in several states, and civil war had been narrowly averted at least half a dozen times, had proved this beyond all cavil. With almost any other people than the Americans civil war would have come already. With all the vast future interests that were involved in these quarrels looming up before their keen, sagacious minds, it was a wonder that ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... too thirsty by now to cavil at anything even remotely resembling water, so he drank his fill while Akut stood with raised head, alert for any danger. Before the ape drank he cautioned the boy to be watchful; but as he drank he raised his head from time to time to ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... largely in a tale, yet it is always important. The author must know his countryside, whether real or imaginary, like his hand; the distances, the points of the compass, the place of the sun's rising, the behaviour of the moon, should all be beyond cavil. And how troublesome the moon is! I have come to grief over the moon in "Prince Otto," and, so soon as that was pointed out to me, adopted a precaution which I recommend to other men—I never write now without an almanac. With an almanac and the map of the country, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... It is ungrateful to cavil at this moralizing and didactic temper, which animates a large part of the nation and is responsible for much of the British achievement. But its place is in the world of action not in that of letters, and it does not produce the greatest literature ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... more than 200,000 women to Congress and to their State Legislature during the past winter, are expressions of popular sympathy and approval, everywhere throughout the land, and ought to silence the cavil of our opponents that "women do ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the rules one can conceive of justice that a virtuous action should be thus rewarded. Perhaps you will say that His ways are inscrutable, and, that as we have neither the power, nor have we the right to attempt to read them, so we should not venture to cavil at His ordinances, but humbly believe that the ultimate result will be for our benefit. I believe it is so, lady; or it may be for a punishment; but it is bitter, very bitter, oftentimes to bear. But I ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... communings. Of a certainty she could not at all times satisfy my soul, which thirsted for knowledge, though she never failed to calm it; for I stood firm in the faith, and all she could tell me of God's revelation to man I accepted gladly, without doubt or cavil. She had taught us that faith and knowledge are things apart, and I felt that there could be no more peace for my soul if I suffered knowledge to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Miss Johnson's nature, but free from sentimentality; and even a carping critic will find little to cavil at in her productions. If fault should be found with any of them it would probably be with such a narrative as "Wolverine." It "bites," like all her Indian pieces, and conveys a definite meaning. But, written in the conventional slang of the frontier, it jars with her other work, ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... course the great Michelangelo, with whom the immaculate Vittoria condescended to indulge in one of those cold platonic pseudo-passions which constituted the true divino amore of the idealists of the Renaissance. So here was nothing to cavil at, nothing to arouse base suspicion. Considered the greatest man and the greatest woman in all Italy, both were of mature age, he in the sixties and she in the forties, when Michelangelo first professed himself seized with a pure but unquenchable love and devotion ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... cashier : kasisto. cast : jxeti, (metal) fandi. castle : kastelo. catch : kapti. caterpillar : rauxpo. cathedral : katedralo. cattle : bruto, brutoj. cauliflower : florbrasiko. cause : kauxz'i, -o; -igi; afero. caution : averti; singardemo. cave : kaverno. cavil : cxikani. caw : graki. ceiling : plafono. celebrate : festi, soleni, celery : celerio. cell : cxelo, cxambreto. cellar : kelo. censor : cenzuristo. censure : riprocxi. ceremony : ceremonio, soleno. certain : certa; kelkaj; ia. chaff ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... in effecting that determination," to establish this beyond the possibility of cavil or denial, we have told here once again his inspiring story. The fact that as late as 1913, the Legislature of California appropriated $10,000 to place a bust of Starr King in our National Capitol at Washington would seem to indicate that the people ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... and the Puritan austerity of the moment might be banished from domestic cookery. At an opportune moment, therefore, he sold out his interests in the article which had brought him in colossal wealth at a critical juncture, and placed his financial reputation beyond the reach of cavil. As for Leonore, who was now an heiress on a far greater scale than ever before, he naturally found her something a vast deal higher in the husband market than a two-hundred-a-year poster designer. ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Malthus's error in regard to the different ratios of progression as a mathematical error; but the other error he calls logical. This may seem to lead to nothing important: it is however not for any purpose of verbal cavil that I object to this distinction, and contend that both errors are logical. For a little consideration will convince the reader that he, who thinks the first error mathematical, will inevitably miss the true point ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... plague her with communings. Of a certainty she could not at all times satisfy my soul, which thirsted for knowledge, though she never failed to calm it; for I stood firm in the faith, and all she could tell me of God's revelation to man I accepted gladly, without doubt or cavil. She had taught us that faith and knowledge are things apart, and I felt that there could be no more peace for my soul if I suffered knowledge to meddle ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... would not whistle. It is one of those mannish tricks of hers which give a wrong impression. Her father ought to stop it; but he is so fond of the girl, and thinks her so altogether perfect and beyond cavil, that he lets everything go. She needs to have some one stronger than herself come into her life. I wonder if he ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... you ever find the epithet 'good,' applied to the title of Doctor? Had you called me 'learned Doctor,' or 'grave Doctor,' or 'noble Doctor,' it might be allowable, because they belong to the profession. But, not to cavil at trifles, you talk of my 'spring-velvet coat,' and advise me to wear it the first day in the year, — that is, in the middle of winter! — a spring-velvet in the middle of winter!!! That would be a solecism indeed! and yet, to increase the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... sensitive, and was too satisfied at having gained his object to cavil at Mark's manner of yielding. 'Very well; that's settled,' he said. 'I'm glad you've come to your senses, I'm sure. We'll have you on the Woolsack yet, and we'll say no more about ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... it, Miss Clinton, by saying it was necessary," said he steadily. "There are other distinguished men here who are further distinguishing themselves by toeing the mark without complaint or cavil. Mr. Landover was appealed to on three distinct occasions by Captain Trigger and the committee. He ignored all private appeals—and commands. The time had come for a show-down. It was either Landover and his little band of sycophants, or me and the entire company of men ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the memorandum of the noble duke, which has been so much the subject of cavil, it is the offspring of a manly mind, pouring out its honest opinions with an earnestness characteristic of sincerity, and with a zeal too warm to stand upon nice and scrupulous expression. I am sure that it contains nothing but what the noble duke really thought. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... order to take away the word of God. Men don't believe in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but we have it sealed in the New Testament. "As, it was in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah." They don't believe in Lot's wife, but He says, "Remember Lot's wife." So there is not a thing that men to-day cavil at but the Son of God indorses. They don't believe, in the swallowing of Jonah. They say it is impossible that a whale could swallow Jonah—its throat is too small. They forget that the whale was prepared for Jonah; as the colored woman said, "Why, God could ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... there is a long silence. Norwegian periodicals—there is not to this day a book on Shakespeare by a Norwegian—contain not a single contribution to Shakespearean criticism till 1880, when a church paper, Luthersk Ugeskrift[11] published an article which proved beyond cavil that Shakespeare is good and safe reading for Lutheran Christians. The writer admits that Shakespeare probably had several irregular love-affairs both before and after marriage, but as he grew older his heart turned to the comforts of religion, and in his epitaph he commends his soul to ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... devoted to the charms of Dona Carmen Montijo, and still not do them justice. Enough to say, that they are beyond cavil. There are men in San Francisco who would dare death for her sake, if sure of her smile to speak approval of the deed; ay, one who would for as ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Baldassare Paglia, and in 1700 appeared Giusto Fontanini's elaborate defence[182]. To each chapter of this work is prefixed a passage from Grimaldi's address, which is then laboriously refuted. The Duke's attack is puerile cavil, and in spite of the reputed ability of its author the defence must be admitted to be much ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the outset of this third campaign it is perhaps appropriate to point out that Germany was now to achieve that complete military success that had been denied to her in France and Russia, she was to win a victory in the military sense which was beyond cavil, but she was this time to lose the political profit she had hoped, because she had mistaken the importance in the minds of her enemies of the Balkan field and fatally overestimated the war weariness of the peoples that opposed her. At the Golden Horn she was to find ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... introduces this cavil to combat it, but still maintains that travellers may be allowed to amuse themselves with the beauties of the country they are ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... brilliant commentator, and the slightest tinge of chemistry should have kept him from suggesting that the conversion of water into wine at Cana was but the acceleration of a natural process. A smattering of optics would have prevented Dr. Williams from repeating the old cavil of Voltaire, that light could not have been made before the sun. A moderate reflection upon the laws of speech and the method of Genesis would have restrained Huxley from sneering at the 'marvelous flexibility' of the Hebrew tongue in the word 'day,' and a New York audience from ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... student's hearing the best music at concert and recital as often as possible, and on the value and incentive supplied by a musical atmosphere in the home and, on leaving him, I could not help but feel that what he had said in our interview, his reflections and observations based on an artistry beyond cavil, and an authoritative experience, would be well worth pondering by every serious student of the instrument. For Franz Kneisel ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... them. By reading the argumentative passages I learned that somehow (I knew not how) children could be produced or not produced as desired; and in this stage of the matter it seemed to me so admirable that it should be so that I wondered why there should be cavil. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... thought George McDonald a little audacious, though I like him in the main. There is a fallacy in this cavil, you may depend. Some years ago, when I was a little befogged by plausible talk, Dr. Skinner came to our house, got into one of his best moods, and preached a regular sermon on the glory of God, that set me all right again. I am not skilled in ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... conceive of justice that a virtuous action should be thus rewarded. Perhaps you will say that His ways are inscrutable, and, that as we have neither the power, nor have we the right to attempt to read them, so we should not venture to cavil at His ordinances, but humbly believe that the ultimate result will be for our benefit. I believe it is so, lady; or it may be for a punishment; but it is bitter, very bitter, oftentimes to bear. But I am wandering from my story. We could watch the progress of ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... whirlwind, refreshing, but I argue nothing from it; there is nothing real in the freedom of thought at the West,—it is from the position of men's lives, not the state of their minds. So soon as they have time, unless they grow better meanwhile, they will cavil and criticise, and judge other men by their own standard, and outrage the law of love every way, just as they do ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... He brought in a cigarette, left the door open behind him and stood smiling down at her with the peculiarly complacent look that characterizes a married man of forty when he finds himself dressed beyond cavil in the complete evening harness of civilization, ten minutes ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... music, and of literature which are handed down to us are "possessions forever." Whatever be the limitations of our social inheritance, as instruments for the solution of our difficulties, those finished products which constitute the "best that has been known and thought" in the world are beyond cavil. They may not solve our problems, but they immensely enrich and broaden our lives. They are enjoyed because they are intrinsically beautiful, but also because they widen men's sympathies and broaden the scope of contemporary ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... once again, farewell, thou Minstrel Harp! Yet, once again, forgive my feeble sway, And little reck I of the censure sharp May idly cavil at an idle lay. Much have I owed thy strains on life's long way, Through secret woes the world has never known, When on the weary night dawned wearier day, And bitterer was the grief devoured alone.— That I o'erlive such ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... to the work. We are not disposed to enter into the question in any spirit of censure. We know too well the innumerable difficulties with which the Executive Committee have had to contend in arranging the contents of the enormous building, to cavil at any decision they may have arrived at; but we have now had the opportunity of seeing two very beautiful works of English industry which would have been a credit to ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... any credence, and to put a quietus on such unscrupulous pretenses, Mr. J. V. Brower, a scientific surveyor, under the auspices of the Minnesota Historical Society, has recently made exhaustive researches, surveys and maps of the region, and established beyond doubt or cavil the entire authenticity of Schoolcraft's discovery. Gen. James H. Baker, once surveyor general of the State of Minnesota, and a distinguished member of the same society, under its appointment, prepared an elaborate paper on the subject, in which is collected and presented all the facts, history ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company, were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm up and spill their souls ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... recalled her every word and look, felt again the trembling of her hand—for him—on the Coupee, heard again the tremors of her voice as she urged him to safety. And those sweet ingenuous kisses she had given him! Yes, indeed, he had much to be grateful for, if some things to cavil at, in fortune's dealings. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... this Caledonian is a self-conceited pedant, aukward, rude, and disputacious — He has had the benefit of a school-education, seems to have read a good number of books, his memory is tenacious, and he pretends to speak several different languages; but he is so addicted to wrangling, that he will cavil at the clearest truths, and, in the pride of argumentation, attempt to reconcile contradictions — Whether his address and qualifications are really of that stamp which is agreeable to the taste of our aunt, Mrs Tabitha, or that indefatigable maiden is determined to shoot ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... settling the Barrier Treaty, as the Queen desired; and in one of the first general conferences, they would not suffer the British secretary to take the minutes, but nominated some Dutch professor for that office, which the Queen refused, and resented their behaviour as an useless cavil, intended only to shew their want of respect. The British plenipotentiaries had great reason to suspect, that the Dutch were, at this time, privately endeavouring to engage in some separate measures with France, by the intervention ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... an' Tutt an' Cherokee an' Monte an' the rest of the Wolfville outfit is fallin' like November's leaves, them Red Dog bandits is fadin' jest as fast. If anything, they're fadin' faster. They're too p'lite or too proodent to cavil at the presence of Spellin' Book Ben, an' by third drink time after we starts thar's no gents left standin' except that Wells-Fargo book-keep sharp for Red Dog, an' Spellin' Book for us. It's give an' take between ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... throng. Whether mine host has to consult the taste of his client, or whether the latter has simply to accept what is proffered, is not absolutely decided; probably they are both imbued with a belief in the necessity of solid fare, regarding it as a solemn truth beyond all possibility of cavil. ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... picnic depends for its success to quite a peculiar degree upon the weather. But on the day of the Admiral's merry-making, this was, beyond cavil, kind. Four boats started from the Town Quay; four boats—alas!—could by this time contain the cumeelfo of Troy; for everybody who was anybody had been invited, and nobody (with the exception of the Honourable Frederic, who could not leave his telescope) had refused. Sam Buzza did not ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 'are doctrine is rather of a puzzler; but you seem to think you've got the run on't. I should re'ly like to know what business you have to think you know better than other folks about it;" and, though he would cavil most courageously at all George's explanations, yet you might perceive, through all, that he was inly uplifted to hear how his ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was left, of any caste or shade of nativity, to utter a word to gainsay or cavil with the noble and high public manner in which these proceedings were done. The blood-relatives of the Indian found that the two nations, actuated by a sense of their kindness and real friendship for years, had remembered them in the day of their prosperity. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... is termed organic dis- ease as certainly as it produces hysteria, and it must re- 177:3 linquish all its errors, sicknesses, and sins. I have demonstrated this beyond all cavil. The evidence of divine Mind's healing power and abso- 177:6 lute control is to me as certain as the evidence of my ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... hazard a guess, talk at random. reason ill, falsely &c. adj.; misjudge &c. 481; paralogize[obs3]. take on faith, take as a given; assume (supposition) 514. pervert, quibble; equivocate, mystify, evade, elude; gloss over, varnish; misteach &c. 538[obs3]; mislead &c. (error) 495; cavil, refine, subtilize[obs3], split hairs; misrepresent &c. (lie) 544. beg the question, reason in a circle, reason in circles, assume the conclusion. cut blocks with a razor, beat about the bush, play fast and loose, play fast and loose with the facts, blow hot and cold, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... hole in the ground, and had idled in town since Thanksgiving. He was a cowboy (vaquero was the name they used in those pleasant valleys) and so was his friend. And he had found a cowboy's paradise, and a welcome which a king could not cavil at. Would Jack stake himself to a horse and outfit, and come to Palo Alto till the snow was well out of the mountains and they could ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... nation, your government, your town and townspeople, else you would not so often scold them! Otherwise, why do you let us call them yours? Because they belong to you? No, because you belong to them. Beyond cavil you are your own, but beyond cavil, too, you are theirs; their purchased possession, paid for long, long in ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... dear creature, I will, if you desire it, and if Captain Tomlinson will engage that Mr. Harlowe shall keep them absolutely a secret; that I may not be subjected to the cavil and controul of any others of a family that have ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... some, stops cavil in a trice: "The humble holy heart that holds of new-born pride no spice! He's just the saint to choose for Pope!" Each ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... shall be forgiven a hard word if I call this a perfect cavil. I readily own there hath been an old custom, time out of mind, for people to assemble in the churches every Sunday, and that shops are still frequently shut, in order, as it is conceived, to preserve the memory of that ancient ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... of this victory, establishing his supremacy beyond cavil, should have satisfied the King, especially as this was not the mating season and there could be no question of rivalry. But his heart was bursting with injury, and his thirst for vengeance was raging to be glutted. As the vanquished bulls struggled to recover their feet, he bounded upon the ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... genius" of the Bible cause and of himself. The incident did no good to the already bickering relations between Borrow and the Rev. A. Brandram, the Secretary. Evidently Borrow's character jarred upon Brandram, who took revenge by a tone of facetious cavil and several criticisms upon Borrow's ways, upon his confident masculine tone, for example, his "passionate" prayer, and his confession of superstitious obedience to an ominous dream. Brandram even took the trouble to remind Borrow ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... are common to all types. The "missing fourth side" of the room is a commonplace recognized by all. If we ourselves are never in the habit of communicating the contents of our letters, as we write, to a doubtless appreciative atmosphere, we never cavil at such an act on the stage. The stage whisper and aside, too, we accept with benevolent indulgence; but it is worth noting that in the attempted verisimilitude of the modern "legitimate" drama, the aside has well nigh vanished. As we go down the scale through light ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... scholar and the patriot coalesced in the mind of Camden, prompting him to rescue and conserve the materials of English history and note the fading traditions,—a purely antiquarian service, which only those can appreciate who seek authentic data of the far past. Such as cavil at the legal tone and crude arrangement of Clarendon are none the less his debtors for specific memoirs, the personal element of history; and while Burnet has been vigorously repudiated by standard historians, he continues, and justly, to be a prolific authority. It is conceded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... abroad there is no comfort, That a man must journey home for 't— You have heard that whiskered wheeze, Have you not? 'Tis a commonplace to cavil At the "luxuries of travel," For in travel lack ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... produced discontent of late years, I would mention our forest laws and sanitary regulations, our legislative and fiscal systems—measures so necessary that no one interested in the prosperity of India could cavil at their introduction, but which are so absolutely foreign to Native ideas, that it is essential they should be applied with the utmost gentleness ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... kastelo. catch : kapti. caterpillar : rauxpo. cathedral : katedralo. cattle : bruto, brutoj. cauliflower : florbrasiko. cause : kauxz'i, -o; -igi; afero. caution : averti; singardemo. cave : kaverno. cavil : cxikani. caw : graki. ceiling : plafono. celebrate : festi, soleni, celery : celerio. cell : cxelo, cxambreto. cellar : kelo. censor : cenzuristo. censure : riprocxi. ceremony : ceremonio, soleno. certain : certa; kelkaj; ia. chaff : grenventumajxo. chaffinch : ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... authority which Thorpe, breathing heavily over the unwonted exercise and hoping for nothing so much as that they would henceforth take things easy, thought intolerable. He was amazed that the two brothers should take without cavil the arbitrary orders of this elderly peasant. He bade Lord Plowden proceed to a certain point in one direction, and that nobleman, followed by his valet with the gun and the stool, set meekly off without a word. Balder, with equal docility, vaulted the gate, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... there is, to say the least, a strong presumption, not that the composer is wrong, but that the rule needs modifying. The great composer goes first and invents new effects: it is the business of the theorist not to cavil at every novelty, but to follow modestly behind and make his rules conform to the practice of the master. [Compare Professor Prout's ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... so-called natural sciences. They say that it doesn't even relate historical events accurately. But, after all, the Bible is just the record of the unfoldment in the human consciousness of the concept of God. Why cavil at it when it contains, as we must see, a revelation of the full formula for salvation, which, as you ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to squar' himse'f. 'I'd as soon think of distrustin' that Laredo divorce of my former he'pmeet! An' as the sheriff drives off two hundred head of my cattle by way of alimony, I deems the fact of that sep'ration as fixed beyond cavil. No, Colonel, you has my fullest confidence. I'd go doubtin' the evenhanded jestice of Cherokee's faro ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... unrelieved, our whole life long, Each hour, in passing, hoarsely sings. In very terror I at morn awake, Upon the verge of bitter weeping, To see the day of disappointment break, To no one hope of mine—not one—its promise keeping:— That even each joy's presentiment With wilful cavil would diminish, With grinning masks of life prevent My mind its fairest work to finish! Then, too, when night descends, how anxiously Upon my couch of sleep I lay me: There, also, comes no rest to ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the moment might be banished from domestic cookery. At an opportune moment, therefore, he sold out his interests in the article which had brought him in colossal wealth at a critical juncture, and placed his financial reputation beyond the reach of cavil. As for Leonore, who was now an heiress on a far greater scale than ever before, he naturally found her something a vast deal higher in the husband market than a two-hundred-a-year poster designer. Mark Spayley, the brainmouse who ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... principles as matter from which to draw conclusions; but with practice she became an adept in the art of describing the one while at the same time withholding the other, so that her conversation interested Colonel Colquhoun without, however, giving him anything to cavil at. It was like a dish exactly suited to his taste, but delicate to insipidity because his palate was hardened to pepper. When she returned from Switzerland she gave him details of her own doings which were interesting enough to take him out of himself, until one day, when, unfortunately, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... and though this affection and regard be, in reality, gratitude, not self-love, yet a distinction, even of this obvious nature, may not readily be made by superficial reasoners; and there is room, at least, to support the cavil and dispute for a moment. But as qualities, which tend only to the utility of their possessor, without any reference to us, or to the community, are yet esteemed and valued; by what theory or system can we account for this ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... inference is, that, on the average, each individual is one ten-thousandth part subject to a fate in his private constitution. There is the difference, and it does not seem to me insignificant. Our way to the cases of crime is now somewhat more clear; for it is already established beyond cavil that the mere fact of an average, to which, without any discriminations, our philosopher appeals with such confidence, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... does the artist belong. He replies that he belongs to none, but was brought up a Catholic, and his wife a Protestant, and the differences which in later life severed each from their early teaching caused them to meet on common ground. But the intense Christian feeling of these drawings is beyond cavil or dispute: they again and again bring home to the heart the vital truths of the Faith with irresistible force, and the artist ever expresses the Christianity, not perhaps of the theologian, but of the honest and ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... approaching the garishly lighted exterior of the dance hall now, lit a cigarette. The plan, if successful, placed the guilt without question or cavil upon Klanner, but that was not all—strong as that motive might be, Clarke had had still another in view, and one that perhaps took precedence over the first. Hunchback Joe had defined it clearly enough. The documents would have been valueless to ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... meddling, knaves, 'tis said, there are, As such will still be prating, who presume To carp and cavil at his royal right; Therefore, I hold it fitting, with the soonest, T' appoint the order of the coronation; So to approve our duty to the king, And stay the ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... some few of John Ovy's people, amongst whom Richard Greenaway declared the truth; which they attentively heard, and did not oppose, which at that time of day we reckoned was pretty well, for many were apt to cavil. ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... slight and small-featured with observant grey eyes and a good deal of detached humour. Since the incubation of his first unsuccessful play, he had argued out every character and situation with her; when feminine psychology was in dispute, her ruling was accepted without cavil. More than once, as they splashed conversationally through the Lashmar woods, he had felt that she gave even a self-sufficient bachelor something that he lacked and would always lack; and, whenever the ubiquitous, dry celibacy of the Thespian smoking-room ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... that giggle gang you call the Market Research Group have been groping around like so many blind mice. How would you like to know in advance, beyond any cavil, the exact future reaction to any product, new, old or sea-changed—or to any campaign to ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... virtue of the right of occupancy, and that this production is therefore illegitimate. Indeed, if labor is the sole basis of property, I cease to be proprietor of my field as soon as I receive rent for it from another. This we have shown beyond all cavil. It is the same with all capital; so that to put capital in an enterprise, is, by the law's decision, to exchange it for an equivalent sum in products. I will not enter again upon this now useless discussion, since I propose, in the following chapter, to exhaust the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... excellent lawyers, and know how to spin out a case or involve it in a labyrinth of figures of speech. Mungo Park, who frequently heard these special pleaders, says that in the forensic qualifications of procrastination and cavil, and the arts of confounding and perplexing a cause, they are not easily surpassed by the ablest pleaders in Europe. The following may serve as an example of their talent:—An ass had got loose and broken ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... It seems not improbable that these areas may represent deposits formed by some kind of matter ejected from the craters, but whether of ancient or modern date, it is, of course, impossible to determine. Future observers will perhaps be in a better position to decide the question without cavil, if such eruptions should again take place. Like the larger enclosures, these smaller objects frequently encroach upon each other— crater-ring overlapping crater-ring, as in the case of Thebit, where a large crater, which has interfered with the continuity ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... the subjects which they celebrated, and of the men by whom they were uttered. There was a delicate propriety in the feeling which excluded from the list of toasts the names of the living poets, with the great and glorious exceptions of Wordsworth and Moore, now beyond all cavil at the head of the literature of their respective countries. Their presence, though ardently hoped for, was hardly to be expected on this occasion; for their advanced years, and the distant journey ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... sin which is always at hand to enter an objection against this or that promise that by the Spirit of God is brought to our heart to comfort us; and if the poor coming sinner is not aware of it, it will, by some evasion, slight, trick, or cavil, quickly wrest from him the promise again, and he shall have but little ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... they looked imposing in the light of the lantern, though I was more than a little doubtful about some of them going off without blowing themselves up. But it was no time to cavil about small matters like that, and I said nothing about this to Agnes Anne, who, for her part, continued to glance along the barrel of "King George" at the stone door with the fixity of my father viewing a star through ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... allowed the custom-house officers to tumble out the contents of her little valise, and satisfied, without cavil, all their demands, and answered without hesitation all the questions put ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... on long journeys, and these would entail the expenditure of a good deal of money. Moreover, it was necessary to find a man who would not be afraid of the work attached to the undertaking, and on whose judgment one could rely without doubt or cavil. Owing to the fact that the expenses up to the present had far exceeded the initial calculations, and since it seemed impossible to engage the right sort of man to place in charge of the work, the publisher had become first sceptical ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... them; any who followed his mode of argumentation, his subjects of disquisition, or his course of life; any who would subdue the malignant passions or coerce the looser; any who would abstain from calumny or from cavil; any who would devote his days to the glory of his country, or, what is easier and perhaps wiser, to his own well-founded contentment and well-merited repose. Xenophon, the best of them, offered up sacrifices, believed in oracles, consulted soothsayers, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... having the theoretical keep pace and touch with the practical. It has been a grave fault with many writers on horological matters that they did not make and measure the abstractions which they delineated on paper. We do not mean by this to endorse the cavil we so often hear—"Oh, that is all right in theory, but it will not work in practice." If theory is right, practice must conform to it. The trouble with many theories is, they do not contain all the elements ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... 1860—when the people of the Free States, grown sick unto death of the rule of the Slave-power in the General Government, arose in their political might, and shook off this "Old Man of the Sea," electing, beyond cavil and by the Constitutional mode, to the Presidential office, a man who thoroughly represented in himself their conscience, on the one hand, which instinctively revolted against human Slavery as a wrong committed against the laws ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... whereas the ignoble tricks and sentimentalities of lesser men are infinitely propagated. Despite a popular delusion that the sons of great men are always dolts, the fact is that intellectual superiority is inheritable, quite as easily as bodily strength; and that fact has been established beyond cavil by the laborious inquiries of Galton, Pearson and the other anthropometricians of the English school. If such men as Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, Spencer, and Nietzsche had married and begotten sons, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... with me the other morning, and we were talking over the Hanoverians, as every body does. I complimented him very sincerely on his master's great bravery and success: he answered very modestly and sensibly, that he was glad amidst all the clamours, that there had been no cavil to be found with the subsidy paid to his King. Prince Lobkowitz makes a great figure, and has all my wishes and blessings for having put Tuscany ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the legislation vague. Then, as the appropriation money falls in, the qualifications rise and the salaries rise. No one will object because no one will appreciate it but administrators past or future ... and they never cavil at money. [He remains lost in the beauty ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... letter, deposited it on a table before the chief entrance, and then reported the facts to the Empress. This ended the ceremony. The haughty condescension of the Chinese despatch does not appear to have offended the Japanese, nor did they cavil at the omission of one important ideograph from the title applied to their Empress. China's greatness seems to have been fully recognized. When, a month later, the envoy took his departure, the same Imoko was deputed to accompany him, bearing ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Beyond cavil, this portly and handsome volume makes good the claim which is set forth on the title-page. The revision which the old edition has undergone is manifestly a most thorough one, extending to every department of the work, and to its minutest details. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... about her, she had at last begun to see light ahead. She went again and yet again to see Daisy, and each visit added to her tranquillity of mind. Daisy was wonderfully brisk for an invalid, and her baby was an endless source of interest. Even Lady Bassett could not cavil when her charge spoke of going to nursery tea at Mrs. Musgrave's. She made no attempt to check the ripening friendship, though Muriel was subtly aware that she ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Sobersides, the minister of Pumpkinville, where I lived in my youth, was one of the metaphysical divines of the old school, and could cavil upon the ninth part of a hair about entities and quiddities, nominalism and realism, free-will and necessity, with which sort of learning he used to stuff his sermons and astound his learned hearers, the bumpkins. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... met in Miss Johnson's nature, but free from sentimentality; and even a carping critic will find little to cavil at in her productions. If fault should be found with any of them it would probably be with such a narrative as "Wolverine." It "bites," like all her Indian pieces, and conveys a definite meaning. ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... realities that are being quietly and potently assumed and affirmed to-day throughout the world. Of course the language of assertion will vary with each individual, but this is immaterial. The essences affirmed are beyond cavil. Other illustrations might be given, but they would be mere phases of that one breath of new hope and courage that is stirring in every land, to "spread contagion on mankind," of the "life ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... at bottom, two sides. It is, in the first place, achieved by a narrow definition of the purpose of the state. To Locke the State is little more than a negative institution, a kind of gigantic limited liability company; and if we are inclined to cavil at such restraint, we may perhaps remember that even to neo-Hegelians like Green and Bosanquet this negative sense is rarely absent, in the interest of individual exertion. But for Locke the real guarantee of right lies in another ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... that "not undelightful is the ceaseless hum, to him who musing walks at noon." The entomologist has laboured hard to show us that the insect has no voice, and that the "drowsy hum" is made by the wings; a fact which, being beyond all cavil, puts to the blush the old-world story of Plutarch, who tells us that when Terpander was playing upon the lyre, at the Olympic games, and had enraptured his audience to the highest pitch of enthusiasm ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... be forgotten, thrown off like an eschar from the living frame. Nevertheless, we must always admit that it may be forgotten, and that if the Gothic seal be indeed set firmly on the walls, we are not to cavil at the forms reserved for the tiles and leads. For, observe, as our definition at present stands, being understood of large roofs only, it will allow a conical glass-furnace to be a Gothic building, but will not allow ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... whose natural coquetry of curl was austerely sleeked away, was of a composition so harshly ugly that more worldly-minded women shuddered at the sight. The worldly-minded, indeed, were prone to the criticism that the material of Mrs. Weatherwax's garments was beyond cavil, but this surely was her own concern. It were sheer impertinence to finger the texture of ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... got it," he said, slowly, "this something which we all want, and for the greater part never find. He has got it. To see and recognize it early is a great thing," he continued, earnestly. "To disbelieve in it in early life, and cavil at all the caricatures and imitations, and only come to find out its reality comparatively later on, is a great misfortune—a ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... what the stone is to the pulp of the peach, what the cob is to the kernels on an ear of Indian corn. Once more: Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant, with all his knowledge and valuable qualities, and will "cavil on the ninth part of a hair," if it will give him a chance to show off ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... answered his lordship, and I saw he had crossed to the doorway and stood with his back to us. "Diana," he continued after a moment, "in this world of change, of doubt and uncertainty, one thing is very sure and beyond all cavil and dispute: Peregrine loves you far better than he loves himself, since he is strong enough to forego so much of present happiness for your future welfare. He honours me by placing you in my charge, I who love you as a daughter ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... absolutely permanent and indestructible, untried by circumstance and untouched by time; and this opinion is, she says, indorsed by every woman who has ever been in love. Thus fortified, the conclusion seems beyond cavil. If, therefore, any incidents here recorded appear to conflict with it, we must imitate the discretion of Plato and say, either these persons were not Sons of the Gods—that is. True Lovers—or they did not do such things. Unfortunately, however, ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... less scrupled to leave these remarks to cavil or to sarcasm, because this fiction is probably the last with which I shall trespass upon the Public, and I am desirous that it shall contain, at least, my avowal of the principles upon which it and its ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... necessary to proceed to the investigation of the second point of the discussion, the agents and surveyors of both parties proceeded as a matter of course to the point marked in 1798 as the source of the St. Croix.[44] This point is therefore fixed and established beyond the possibility of cavil, and the faith of both Governments is pledged that it shall ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... more to say? Do you come here Always to scold, and cavil, and complain? Seems nothing ever right to you ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... will accept this small declamation, but take upon you the defense of it, for as much as being dedicated to you, it is now no longer mine but yours. But perhaps there will not be wanting some wranglers that may cavil and charge me, partly that these toys are lighter than may become a divine, and partly more biting than may beseem the modesty of a Christian, and consequently exclaim that I resemble the ancient comedy, or another Lucian, and snarl at everything. But I would have them whom the lightness or foolery ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... of the Virginia school—men who "would cavil for the ninth part of a hair"—affirmed in general terms, that this Government was established with the view of regulating our external affairs, leaving all internal matters to be regulated by the States; and then, descending to particulars, declared, that, while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... tales, and art, copiously illustrates the same mental phenomenon. Saints, God, our Lord, and the Virgin, all play ludicrous and immoral parts in Christian folk-tales. This is Mythology, and here is, beyond all cavil, a late corruption of Religion. Here, where we know the history of a creed, Religion is early, and these myths are late. Other examples of American divine ideas might be given, such as the extraordinary hymns in which the Zunis address the Eternal, Ahonawilona. ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... be unfair to cavil at the absence of a martial bearing in men, who, having followed other professions all their lives, so lately and suddenly took up that of arms. In this singular war, whole regiments have been sent into action (as at Antietam) without even an hour's practice ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... a devil and is mad." Festus said with a loud voice, "Paul, thou art beside thyself." And Nordau shouts in a voice more heady than that of Pilate, more throaty than that of Festus, "Mad—Whitman was—mad beyond the cavil of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... collection of fables was, in the sixth century of our era, brought from India to Persia, and by means of various translations naturalized among Persians, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, and all the rest, admits of no doubt or cavil. Several thousand years have passed between those two migrations, and to mix them up together, to suppose that Comparative Mythology has anything to do with the migration of such fables as that of Perrette, would be an anachronism of a ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... cruel cavil through his brain and pulses went; To his heart an icy coldness, to his ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... the only solid footing, among the ancients. They, at any rate, knew what they wanted in art, and we do not. It is this uncertainty which is disheartening, and not hostile criticism. How often have I felt this when reading words of disparagement or of cavil: that it is the uncertainty as to what is really to be aimed at which makes our difficulty, not the dissatisfaction of the critic, who himself suffers from the same uncertainty. Non me tua fervida terrent Dicta; ... Dii me terrent, et Jupiter hostis.[20] ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... unreasonable ground of unpopularity with her female friends. Emerson alludes to her dangerous reputation for satire, which, in addition to her great scholarship, made the women dislike one who despised them, and the men cavil at her as 'carrying too many guns.' A fragment from a letter in her sixteenth year will illustrate her pursuits at that period:—'I rise a little before five, walk an hour, and then practise on the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... automobile is not really a chauffeur, neither is he who minds and cares for the engine; he is a mecanicien and nothing else—in France and elsewhere. We needed a word for the individual who busies himself with, or drives an automobile, and so we have adapted the word chauffeur. Purists may cavil, but nevertheless the word is better than driver, or motor-man (which is the quintessence of snobbery), ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... and vulgar, like the coarser set of his own countrymen, with whom he had occasionally been brought in contact, he was so manifestly uncivilized in many material points, as to put his claim to gentility much beyond a cavil, and ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Miss Milner it was so united. Yet let not our over-scrupulous readers be misled, and extend their idea of her virtue so as to magnify it beyond that which frail mortals commonly possess; nor must they cavil, if, on a nearer view, they find it less—but let them consider, that if she had more faults than generally belong to others, she ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... living for twelve days exclusively upon milk; a healing diet, I dare say, but I have come to weary of the taste and sight of it, and its effect upon me is the reverse of stimulation. But I am in no wise inclined to cavil, for I am entirely free from pain at the moment; the weather is perfectly glorious, and my neighbours, Blades and his wife, are in their homely fashion extremely kind ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... were covered with minute feathers, as indeed they are on the upper surface and that they dived after fish, upon which they fed, and on which they fed their young, which were hatched in nests constructed of fishbones.[2] There is nothing to cavil at in these statements, unless it be that which asserts that the nests were constructed of fishbones, for this is not in accordance with the observations of contemporary naturalists, who tell us that the nests of the Cape Penguin ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... we shall prove beyond the possibility of cavil, is the hitherto unexplained 'purge' in 'The Return from Parnassus,' which 'our fellow Shakspere' administered to Ben Jonson in return for the 'pill' destined for himself in 'The Poetaster.' After the publication ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Americans would cavil at portions of the first part of my work, I was fully convinced, and as there are many observations quite new to most of them, they are by them considered to be false; but the United States, as I have before observed, comprehend ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of the seventeenth century, and one of the leaves in that roll contained a contemporary and authenticated official return of the royal furniture lost by the blowing up of the King's residence. Among other items, this leaf proved, beyond the possibility of further cavil, that the bed which stood in Darnley's room was, up to the time of his death, unchanged, and was not, as alleged by Mary's enemies, an old and worthless piece of furniture, but, on the contrary, was "a bed of violet velvet, with double hangings, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... and soldiers were in the field, he was in arms in the town, and wherever by him there was a Diabolonian found, they were forced to feel the weight of his heavy hand, and also the edge of his penetrating sword: many therefore of the Diabolonians he wounded, as the Lord Cavil, the Lord Brisk, the Lord Pragmatic, and the Lord Murmur; several also of the meaner sort he did sorely maim; though there cannot at this time an account be given you of any that he slew outright. The cause, or rather ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... demonstrated the practicability and feasibility of his plans, he will allow responsible concerns to carry them into practice under such limitations as may be necessary to sustain the basic object, but without any payment to him except for the actual expense incurred. The hypercritical may cavil and say that, as a manufacturer of cement, Edison will be benefited. True, but as ANY good Portland cement can be used, and no restrictions as to source of supply are enforced, he, or rather his company, will be merely one of ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... saw the unquestionable markings. Such visits as these are a thousand times more instructive and interesting than long papers read at scientific meetings. They afford the best opportunity for interchange of ideas, and directly produce an emphatic result; for one cannot cavil about what he has seen with his eyes ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... that had favoured him so far would doubtless go further—if he let it alone. These thoughts sprang at once into his reflection, but were barely entertained before nobler ones displaced them. As a Christian gentleman he knew what he ought to do without cavil and without delay, and he rose to follow the benignant justice of his conscience. Into this obedience, however, there entered an hesitation of a second of time, and that infinitesimal period was sufficient for ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... Bard perceiving his piece cavil'd at By partial critics, and his adversaries Misrepresenting what we're now to play, Pleads his own cause: and you shall be the judges, Whether he merits praise or condemnation. The Synapothnescontes is a piece By Diphilus, a comedy which Plautus, Having translated, call'd COMMORIENTES. ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... that night, the doctor told my sister and me that, whatever the greater world might think of the sin at Wayfarer's Tickle, whether innocuous or virulent, Jagger was beyond cavil flagrantly corrupting our poor folk, who were simple-hearted and easy to persuade: that he was, indeed, a nuisance which must be abated, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... de Banville? How far away they make the past seem! Poor Sainte-Beuve, that bust yonder is but a poor reward for a life of toil, a modest tribute to his encyclopædic brain! His works, however, are his best monument; he would be the last to repine or cavil. ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... broad shoulders; he had a sweet temper; he was the father of her children, and that was enough. At least we are allowed to see in Mr. Booth no qualities other than these, and in her no imagination even of any other qualities. To put what I mean out of reach of cavil, compare Imogen and Amelia, and the difference will ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... for light as instinctively as young plants turn to the sun. But I must not forget that it is not I whom you have come to hear; and all I might say, if I had to vindicate the fame of our guest from disparagement or cavil, would seem but tedious and commonplace when addressed to those who know that his career has passed beyond the ordeal of contemporaneous criticism, and that in the applause of foreign nations it has found a foretaste of the judgment ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the characters of this tribe of infidels, we generally find they are made up of pride, spleen and cavil: It is indeed no wonder that men, who are uneasy to themselves, should be so to the rest of the world; and how is it possible for a man to be otherwise than uneasy in himself, who is in danger every moment of losing his entire ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... potent factor in effecting that determination," to establish this beyond the possibility of cavil or denial, we have told here once again his inspiring story. The fact that as late as 1913, the Legislature of California appropriated $10,000 to place a bust of Starr King in our National Capitol at Washington would seem to indicate that the people have resolved that ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... instances sufficient on record to prove this to have been the case; and where this evidence of persons so objected to and proscribed, has been the sole means of the conviction to death of the accused, surely it could afford no room for cavil that a jury should in part be composed of persons, whose conduct during the term of their punishment has been such as to give general satisfaction, and who have proved by their conduct that they have reformed their dispositions, corrected ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... one so much in reality as it is a mere cavil; that "Art never assents to false opinions, because it can not be constituted as such without precepts, which are always true; but rhetoric assents to what is false, therefore it is not an art." I admit that sometimes rhetoric says false things instead of true, but it does not follow that it assents ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... not unreasonable ground of unpopularity with her female friends. Emerson alludes to her dangerous reputation for satire, which, in addition to her great scholarship, made the women dislike one who despised them, and the men cavil at her as 'carrying too many guns.' A fragment from a letter in her sixteenth year will illustrate her pursuits at that period:—'I rise a little before five, walk an hour, and then practise on the piano till seven, when we breakfast. Next, I read French—Sismondi's Literature of Southern Europe—till ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... he said, slowly, "this something which we all want, and for the greater part never find. He has got it. To see and recognize it early is a great thing," he continued, earnestly. "To disbelieve in it in early life, and cavil at all the caricatures and imitations, and only come to find out its reality comparatively later on, is a great ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... translation since "the frailty of men is such that the diversity thereof may breed and bring forth manyfold inconveniences as when wilful and heady folks shall confer upon the diversity of the said translations";[162] the translators of the version of 1611 have to "answer a third cavil ... against us, for altering and amending our translations so oft";[163] but the conception of progress was generally accepted, and finds fit expression in the preface to the Authorized Version: "Yet for all that, as nothing is begun and perfected at the same ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... replied, All cavil then we quickly could decide; Precedence would no doubt with you remain: But this is quite another case 'tis plain; And equity demands that we agree, By lot to settle which ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... with me, Coleridge. I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament, our best guide, is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... further employment of this much vaunted agency. That there have been perplexities I am fully aware. Having given the subject such careful thought, I am not disposed either to minimize obstacles or to cavil ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... proprietor only by virtue of the right of occupancy, and that this production is therefore illegitimate. Indeed, if labor is the sole basis of property, I cease to be proprietor of my field as soon as I receive rent for it from another. This we have shown beyond all cavil. It is the same with all capital; so that to put capital in an enterprise, is, by the law's decision, to exchange it for an equivalent sum in products. I will not enter again upon this now useless discussion, since I propose, in the following ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... longer quite safe—to cavil at the unique structure of The Ring and the Book. But this unique structure, which probably never deterred a reader who had once got under way, answers in the most exact and expressive way to Browning's aims. The subject is not the story ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Geneve, 1865; Advis et Devis des Lengnes, etc., 1865, which were edited by the late J. J. Chaponniere, and, after his death, by M. Gustave Revilliod, has placed his reputation as historian, satirist, philosopher, beyond doubt or cavil. One quotation must suffice. He is contrasting the Protestants with the Catholics (Advis et Devis de la Source de Lidolatrie, Geneva, 1856, p. 159): "Et nous disons que les prebstres rongent les mortz et est vray; mais nous faisons ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... has stood to me in the relation of father-in-law, and I don't care to express mine too definitely. He is wise enough to know that when you leave him, his chance of practice is gone. But I don't advise you to cavil with the terms. I should ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to his own advantage. The fate that had favoured him so far would doubtless go further—if he let it alone. These thoughts sprang at once into his reflection, but were barely entertained before nobler ones displaced them. As a Christian gentleman he knew what he ought to do without cavil and without delay, and he rose to follow the benignant justice of his conscience. Into this obedience, however, there entered an hesitation of a second of time, and that infinitesimal period was sufficient for his ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... no comfort, That a man must journey home for 't— You have heard that whiskered wheeze, Have you not? 'Tis a commonplace to cavil At the "luxuries of travel," For in travel lack of ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... one cavil with these beautiful expressions, this outpouring of genius? If such there be, his heart and understanding must be sadly warped, any appeal would be in vain, for him the Veil of Isis could never be lifted. After a careful study of Shelley's works I can find nothing to warrant the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... ages departed, Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in? What do I think of the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars. Well, but St. Peter's? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture! No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum. Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement, This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea? Yet of solidity much, but of splendor little is extant: "Brickwork I found ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... all seem ridiculous absurdity, and they would readily laugh if any one would begin. A few, possessed of some natural shrewdness, would set themselves to catch at something for exception, with unadroit aim, but with good will for cavil. While perhaps one or two, of better disposition, imperfectly descrying at moments something true and important in what was said, and convinced of the friendly intention of the speaker, might feel a transient regret for what they would with honest shame call the stupidity of their own minds, accompanied ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... sort of exclusion or ostracism served to wound my self-respect, it nevertheless had its special advantage for me, for in epochs less glorious or less brilliant (that is to say, in times of failure), they could never cavil at advice or counsel which I had given, nor blame me for the shortcomings ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... to sit in a high place. We would acquiesce in that admirable Constitution (pride and envy of, &c.) which made us chiefs and the world our inferiors; we would not cavil particularly at that notion of hereditary superiority which brought many simple people cringing to our knees. May be we would rally round the Corn-Laws; we would make a stand against the Reform Bill; we would die rather than repeal the Acts against Catholics ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... we have here made is no other than Human Nature. Nor do I fear that my sensible reader, though most luxurious in his taste, will start, cavil, or be offended, because I have named but one article. The tortoise—as the alderman of Bristol, well learned in eating, knows by much experience—besides the delicious calipash and calipee, contains many different ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... longer than I intended on this objection, which would indeed weigh something in a Spiritual Court;- -but I am not to defend our poet there. The next, I think, is but a cavil, though the cry is great against him, and hath continued from the time of Macrobius to this present age; I hinted it before. They lay no less than want of invention to his charge—a capital charge, I must acknowledge; for a poet is a maker, as the word ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... may say—to admit of these invidious reservations. It is not as if some Apelles had picked out here a lip—and there a chin—out of the collected ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. It is a symmetrical whole. We challenge the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or parcel of the countenance in question; to say that this, or that, is improperly placed. We are convinced that true ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true beauty, is the result of harmony. Like that too it reigns without a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Conrady, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... that the definitive treaty had been finally settled at Amiens, on the 27th of March, by the plenipotentiaries of England, France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic. The treaty, as it transpires, is the source of general cavil. It leaves to France all her conquests, while England restores every thing except Ceylon and Trinidad; the one a Dutch colony, and the other a Spanish; both powers having been our Allies at the commencement of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Lewis worked steadily forward to a goal that he knew his father could not cavil at. He knew it instinctively. His grasp steadied to expression with repression, or, as one of his envious, but honest, competitors put it, genius had bowed ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... the charge of a judicious governess, a very small establishment being kept for them, and the earl paying them impromptu and flying visits. Generous and benevolent she was, timid and sensitive to a degree, gentle, and considerate to all. Do not cavil at her being thus praised—admire and love her whilst you may, she is worthy of it now, in her innocent girlhood; the time will come when such praise would be misplaced. Could the fate that was to overtake his child have been foreseen by the earl, he would have ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... militated against the effective employment of the battalion as a first-class fighting unit. Individually, the men were all right, but the battalion record in certain respects was held to be very faulty. I have no wish to cavil at the War Office authorities' honest desire to serve the public and yet temper their judgment with mercy to individuals. But the case was one where they should not have temporised in any way. As matters turned out, the Royal Irish Fusiliers were very angry at ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... the price of cats throughout all Italy. As often as Milord committed a new assassination, and the attempt was made to extort from us more than two pauls as the price of blood, we drew this document from our pocket, and proved beyond a cavil that two pauls was what we were accustomed to pay on such occasions, and obstinate indeed must have been the man or woman who did not yield to such a weight ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... This disposition to cavil at received axioms has beset me through life. No sooner does a truth present itself than I want to see it on its other side. If I hear the Devil spoken ill of, I puzzle myself to find what can be said in his favor. The man who thus halts between conflicting opinions, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... appoint another man without consulting him at all.—February 28th.] I have read the pamphlet written against Hampden, and though some of his expressions are perhaps imprudent as giving occasion to malicious cavil, it contains no grave matter, and nothing to support an accusation of heterodoxy. If he had been a Tory instead of a Liberal in politics, we should probably have heard ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... mistresses of that art to be found in the country. And even if she had not completely mastered the art of keeping house, Thaddeus was confident that all would go well with them, for their waitress was a jewel, inherited from Bessie's mother, and the cook, though somewhat advanced in years, was beyond cavil, having been known to the family of Thaddeus for a longer period than Thaddeus himself had been. The only uncertain quantity in the household was Norah, the up-stairs girl, who was not only new, but auburn-haired ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... to vie with Mr. Allen's unrivalled polemic amiability and be as conciliatory as possible, I will not cavil at his facts or try to magnify the chasm between an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Napoleon and the average level of their respective tribes. Let it be as small as Mr. Allen thinks. All that I object to is that he should think the mere size ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... this great common effort there should be no discord and dispute. This is no time to cavil or to question the standard set by this universal agreement. It is time for patience and understanding and cooperation. The workers of this country have rights under this law which cannot be taken from them, and nobody will be permitted to whittle them away, ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... comprehension, for surely it is against all the rules one can conceive of justice that a virtuous action should be thus rewarded. Perhaps you will say that His ways are inscrutable, and, that as we have neither the power, nor have we the right to attempt to read them, so we should not venture to cavil at His ordinances, but humbly believe that the ultimate result will be for our benefit. I believe it is so, lady; or it may be for a punishment; but it is bitter, very bitter, oftentimes to bear. But I am wandering from my story. We could watch the ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... promised for his favorite weapon, he did prove beyond cavil the efficiency of Old Sal. Time after time the roar or the double roar of his fusee was heard, audible even over the thunder of the hoofs; and quite usually the hunk of lead, driven into heart or lights, low down, soon brought down the game, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... their object, the troopers wonder at these precautions, though not so much as might be expected. They are accustomed to receive mysterious commands, and obey them without cavil or question. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... you to say, gentlemen," said the foreman. "I shouldn't want to have it go abroad that we had not acted formally, if there was any one disposed to cavil." ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... To have produced works of genius, and to find them neglected or treated with scorn is one of the heaviest trials of human patience. We exaggerate our own merits when they are denied by others, and are apt to grudge and cavil at every particle of praise bestowed on those to whom we feel a conscious superiority. In mere self-defence we turn against the world, when it turns against us; brood over the undeserved slights we receive; and thus the genial current of the soul is stopped, or vents itself ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... out, then, with the proposition that the bulky products of the West must be carried by water and not by rail, and will state a few facts that in our humble opinion will place this proposition beyond all cavil. So for as figures can be obtained, and correct calculations made, it has been demonstrated that freight cannot be moved on American railroads for less than one cent per ton per mile. This is actually the first cost, even in the coal regions ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... Clinton, by saying it was necessary," said he steadily. "There are other distinguished men here who are further distinguishing themselves by toeing the mark without complaint or cavil. Mr. Landover was appealed to on three distinct occasions by Captain Trigger and the committee. He ignored all private appeals—and commands. The time had come for a show-down. It was either Landover and his little band of sycophants, or me and the entire ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... good deal of detached humour. Since the incubation of his first unsuccessful play, he had argued out every character and situation with her; when feminine psychology was in dispute, her ruling was accepted without cavil. More than once, as they splashed conversationally through the Lashmar woods, he had felt that she gave even a self-sufficient bachelor something that he lacked and would always lack; and, whenever the ubiquitous, dry celibacy of the Thespian smoking-room ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... What nation was the first established here, Settled for centuries, with title sound? You know that people, the Miamies, well. Long ere the white man tripped his anchors cold, To cast them by the glowing western isles, They lived upon these lands in peace, and none Dared cavil at their claim. We bought from them, For such equivalent to largess joined, That every man was hampered with our goods, And stumbled on profusion. But give ear! Jealous lest aught might fail of honesty— Lest one lean interest or poor shade of right Should point at us—we ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... man. My dogs are well fed, are kept clean, dry, healthy and amused, and are carefully looked after in every way. But they are still dogs. They have no soul or any right or power of self-determination. So recent events show beyond cavil that the German workingman, from the standpoint of the State and Government, was in reality a political dog. He existed only for the good of the divinely constituted State and its God-given princely proprietors, and as such was used and sacrificed for the imperial and national ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... which he brought to a complicated and disheartening task.[16] Lord John Russell was, in fact, in some directions not only in advance of his party but of his times; and, though it has long been the fashion to cavil at his Irish policy, it ought not to be forgotten, in common fairness, that he not only passed the Encumbered Estates Act of 1848, but sought to introduce the principle of compensation to tenants for the improvements which they had made on their holdings. Vested interests proved, however, too powerful, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... had better not reckon that a divorce," he warned them between two mouthfuls. "You had better go to Reb Shemuel, the maiden's father, and let him arrange the Gett beyond reach of cavil." ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... with proceedings to stop the work. He owned the marsh on the opposite side of the creek, and he claimed that the building of the new dike would so alter the channel that his property would be endangered. Will presently proved to him, beyond cavil, that the slight deflection of the currents would only throw the scouring force of the stream against a point of rocky upland, some hundreds of yards below his marsh, where it could not possibly do any harm. ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... declared, "If such great moths were to become extinct in Madagascar, assuredly this Angraecum would become extinct." I am not aware that Darwin's fine argument has yet been clinched by the discovery of that insect. But cavil has ceased. Long before his death a sphinx moth arrived from South Brazil which shows a proboscis between ten and eleven inches long—very nearly equal, therefore, to the task of probing the nectary of Angraecum sesquipidale. And we ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... with contemptuous incredulity are accused of mere prejudice. Nevertheless, I cannot help being convinced that if communications between the dead and the living were part of the nature of things, they would have been established long ago beyond cavil. For there are few things which men have wished more eagerly to believe. It is no doubt just possible that among the vibrations of the fundamental ingredients of our world—those attenuated forms of matter ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Even her husband discovered it. He brought in a cigarette, left the door open behind him and stood smiling down at her with the peculiarly complacent look that characterizes a married man of forty when he finds himself dressed beyond cavil in the complete evening harness of civilization, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... compositions: it is inferior, not indeed in ease, but in simplicity and antique rigour of language, to the common version used in the Kirk of Scotland. Burns had admitted "Death and Dr. Hornbook" into Creech's edition, and probably desired to balance it with something at which the devout could not cavil.] ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... creature, I will, if you desire it, and if Captain Tomlinson will engage that Mr. Harlowe shall keep them absolutely a secret; that I may not be subjected to the cavil and controul of any others of a family that have used ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... felt herself but as a menial servant: such command has beauty if united with sense and virtue. In Miss Milner it was so united. Yet let not our over-scrupulous readers be misled, and extend their idea of her virtue so as to magnify it beyond that which frail mortals commonly possess; nor must they cavil, if, on a nearer view, they find it less—but let them consider, that if she had more faults than generally belong to others, she had likewise ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... life on the physical and moral frontier was less than they had imagined would be a humiliating confession of failure; and worse than a confession of failure; for God had appointed this refuge for them, and not to abide in it in all contentment would be to cavil at his purpose, to question his decree. With the instinct of true pioneers they therefore idealized the barren wilderness, pronouncing its air most healing, its soil most fertile; and with unfailing ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... there is such pain—such sinning." Yet look again—behold how much is right! And He who formed the world from its beginning Knows how to guide it upward to the light. Your task, O man, is not to carp and cavil At God's achievements, but with purpose strong To cling to good, and turn away from evil. That is the way ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... awful!" said Nekhludoff to the lawyer, as they entered the waiting-room. "In the plainest possible case they cavil at ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... and some, stops cavil in a trice: "The humble holy heart that holds of new-born pride no spice! He's just the saint to choose for Pope!" Each ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of these exercises did Buonaparte excel. It was the avowed purpose of the institution to make its pupils pious Roman Catholics. The parish priest at Brienne had administered the sacraments to a number of the boys, including the young Corsican, who appears to have submitted without cavil to the severe religious training of the Paris school: chapel with mass at half-past six in the morning, grace before and after all meals, and chapel again a quarter before nine in the evening; on holidays, catechism for new ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... distress within. It is too late to cavil on doctrinal points, when we must unite in defence of things more important than the mere ceremonies of religion. It is indeed singular, that we are called together to deliberate, not on the God we adore, for in that we are agreed; not about the king we obey, for ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... lighted exterior of the dance hall now, lit a cigarette. The plan, if successful, placed the guilt without question or cavil upon Klanner, but that was not all—strong as that motive might be, Clarke had had still another in view, and one that perhaps took precedence over the first. Hunchback Joe had defined it clearly enough. ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... to go beyond. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne, and the mitre in the name of the attar; it is to ill-treat the thing which one is dragging, it is to kick over the traces; it is to cavil at the fagot on the score of the amount of cooking received by heretics; it is to reproach the idol with its small amount of idolatry; it is to insult through excess of respect; it is to discover that the Pope is not sufficiently papish, that the King is not sufficiently ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... broke without profitably altering the situation—the strict confinement of his entire person, the black darkness and profound silence, made a body of evidence impossible to controvert and he accepted it without cavil. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... dwelt in the Provinces would be ever grateful to their preserver for the result. They had no eyes for the picture which the Spanish party painted of an imaginary triumph of De Thermos and its effects. However the envious might cavil, now that the blow had been struck, the popular heart remained warm as ever, and refused to throw down the idol which had so recently been ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... well pleased to find that I live in your memory at all to cavil with your reason for ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... authorities. It is but just to state, however, that though this particular story lacks corroboration, in ransacking the Spanish archives of Upper California I have met with many more surprising and incredible stories, attested and supported to a degree that would have placed this legend beyond a cavil or doubt. I have, also, never lost faith in the legend myself, and in so doing have profited much from the examples of divers grant-claimants, who have often jostled me in their more practical researches, and who have my sincere sympathy ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... than kites or hawks; Men, if they note, will flee him.' Thus they buzzed, Self-praised, and knowing not that simpleness Is sacred soil, and sown with royal seed, The heroic seed and saintly. Mitred once Such gibes no more assailed him: one short month Sufficed the petty cavil to confute; One month well chronicled in book which verse Late born, alas, in vain would emulate. At once he called to mind the days that were; His wanderings in Northumbrian glens; the hearths That welcomed him so joyously; at once Within his breast the heart parental yearned; He longed to see his ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... of the prolonged controversy re suzerainty forced upon England would be to denote a lack of honour, which is not of unfrequent occurrence when one party to a contract seeks by cavil and legal quibble to evade compliance with some of its conditions, simply because the written terms appear to afford scope for doing so. But the principal reason of the Transvaal contention proceeded from the project of gaining over some strong foreign ally who would see an obstacle, ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... fought for liberty and justice, it was the Cheyennes. If any ever demonstrated their physical and moral courage beyond cavil, it was this race of purely American heroes, among whom Little Wolf was ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... better occupied in learning the peculiarities of the life in which her future would be cast. It was possible they would find her an apt pupil. Of this they could not complain, that she was untravelled; for she had ridden a horse, bareback, half across the continent. They could not cavil at her education, for she knew several languages—aboriginal languages—of the North. She had merely to learn the dialect of English society, and how to carry with acceptable form the costumes of the race to which she was going. Her own costume was picturesque, but it might appear unusual ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... News.—"The seventeenth-century version of the fables, by Sir Roger l'Estrange, with its pleasant quaintness of language, lends itself, and how delightfully, to its setting of illustration; and it would surely be a child hard to please who would cavil ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... the register in which the proceedings on the question at issue were recorded. Villeray was directed to carry it to him. The records had been cautiously made; and, after studying them carefully, he could find nothing at which to cavil. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... of English adventurers, who never did the Republic of France and her people any real harm, I have actually been the means of unmasking many a royalist plot before you, and of bringing many persistent conspirators to the guillotine. I am surprised that you should cavil at the price I am asking this time for the very important information with which I am able to furnish you, whilst you have often paid me similar sums for work which was a great deal less difficult to do. In order to serve your government effectually, both in England and in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... assumed now an authority which Thorpe, breathing heavily over the unwonted exercise and hoping for nothing so much as that they would henceforth take things easy, thought intolerable. He was amazed that the two brothers should take without cavil the arbitrary orders of this elderly peasant. He bade Lord Plowden proceed to a certain point in one direction, and that nobleman, followed by his valet with the gun and the stool, set meekly off without a word. Balder, with equal ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... (it has been said) would not evade disputation, if a man could find his interest in disputing it: such is the spirit of cavil. But I, upon a very opposite ground, assert that there is not one page of prose that could be selected from the best writer in the English language (far less in the German) which, upon a sufficient interest arising, would not furnish matter, simply through its defects in ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... series of triumphs that Father Louis Thomassin, Priest of the Oratory, issued his Universal Hebrew Glossary. In this, to use his own language, "the divinity, antiquity, and perpetuity of the Hebrew tongue, with its letters, accents, and other characters," are established forever and beyond all cavil, by proofs drawn from all peoples, kindreds, and nations under the sun. This superb, thousand-columned folio was issued from the royal press, and is one of the most imposing monuments of human piety and folly—taking rank with the treatises of Fromundus against Galileo, of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... seems stale and old, Often she sits and sighs; Life to me is a tale untold, Each day is a glad surprise. Dell will marry, of course, some day, After her belleship is run; She will cavil the matter in worldly way And wed Dame Fortune's son But, ah, well! sweet to tell, I shall not dally and choose like Dell, For I love ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... which patriotism pays to those believed to have saved some precious inheritance from harm do not yet, perhaps will never, include heroes of labor struggles for equal right and mutual justice. Yet the history of industrial changes shows beyond cavil or doubt that in this field, as in others, he who would be free himself must win his freedom. The basic principle of the Trade Union, the right and usefulness of collective bargaining, inheres in the conditions of machine-dominated and capitalized ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... I accept Lessing's words, but cavil at your interpretation of them. His reverence for Beauty embraced not merely physical and material types, but that nobler, grander beauty which centres in pure ethics and ontology; and a religion that seeks no higher forms than those of clay,—whether Himalayas or 'Greek ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... ten-thousandth part subject to a fate in his private constitution. There is the difference, and it does not seem to me insignificant. Our way to the cases of crime is now somewhat more clear; for it is already established beyond cavil that the mere fact of an average, to which, without any discriminations, our philosopher appeals with such confidence, proves ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... from it; there is nothing real in the freedom of thought at the West,—it is from the position of men's lives, not the state of their minds. So soon as they have time, unless they grow better meanwhile, they will cavil and criticise, and judge other men by their own standard, and outrage the law of love every way, just ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... belonged to him. Jack Tier was useful on board a vessel, though his want of stature and force rendered him less so than was common with sea-faring men. His proper sphere certainly had been the cabins, where his usefulness was beyond all cavil; but he was now very serviceable to Mulford on the deck of the schooner. The first two days, Mrs. Budd had been left on the islet, to look to the concerns of the kitchen, while Mulford, accompanied by Rose, Biddy and Jack Tier, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... sufficiency of viands, and savoury enough to satisfy men who had just come out of the Acordada. There was cold mutton, ham, and venison, maize bread, and "guesas de Guatemala," with a variety of fruit to follow. Verily a supper at which even a gourmand might not cavil; though it was but the debris of a dinner, which seemed to have been partaken of by a ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... property shall not be taken for public uses without just compensation" is a fundamental provision of the Constitution of the United States, which is itself a part of the Constitution of every State of the Union; and the right of private ownership in land is defined and protected beyond doubt or cavil in New York under the State Constitution. An Act passed in 1830 provides and declares that all lands within the State "are allodial, so that, subject only to the liability to escheat, the entire and absolute property ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... suits us ill to cavil each with each. I might retort. I only say to thee ITS slaves we are: ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... now have been well; but Griselda had a pernicious habit of recurring to any slight words of blame which had been used by her friends. Her husband had congratulated her upon having attained the perfection of the art of disputing, since she could cavil about straws. This reproach rankled in her mind. There are certain diseased states of the body, in which the slightest wound festers, and becomes incurable. It is the same with the mind; and our heroine's was in this ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... am almost certain it was M. Gustave Kahn in the "Gil Blas"—giving me a short notice, summed up his rapid impression of the writer's quality in the words un puissant reveur. So be it! Who could cavil at the words of a friendly reader? Yet perhaps not such an unconditional dreamer as all that. I will make bold to say that neither at sea nor ashore have I ever lost the sense of responsibility. There is more than one sort of intoxication. Even before the most seductive reveries I have remained ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... would fall in with the proposition that morality does not require from man that he should give up taking life or inflicting physical suffering. And he would not cavil with the statement that man should put reasonable limits to the amount of suffering he inflicts, and confine this within as narrow a range as possible—always requiring for the death or suffering inflicted some ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... suspect it so He was covered with confusion It was a just rebuke A pleasing instance of this It lends dignity to life She has a desultory liking for music It seems incredible A kind of detached ideal It blunts the finer sensibilities Beyond question or cavil A well-founded suspicion It has elicited great praise They are landmarks in memory Superhuman vigor and activity A venerable and interesting figure It is curious and interesting Gives the impression of aloofness Perfectly void of offence Regard ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... into the characters of this tribe of infidels, we generally find they are made up of pride, spleen and cavil: It is indeed no wonder that men, who are uneasy to themselves, should be so to the rest of the world; and how is it possible for a man to be otherwise than uneasy in himself, who is in danger every moment of losing his entire existence, and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... contrived to let her see that he doubted she did not see them right, and somehow contrived also to make her hear his reasons. It was done with the art of a master and the steady aim of a general who has a great field to win. Faith did not want to hear his suggestions of doubt and cavil. She remembered Mr. Linden's advice long ago given; repeated it to herself every day; and sought to meet Dr. Harrison only with the sling stone of truth and let his weapons of artificial warfare alone. Truly she "had not proved these," and "could not go with them." But whatever effect her sling ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... her children, and that was enough. At least we are allowed to see in Mr. Booth no qualities other than these, and in her no imagination even of any other qualities. To put what I mean out of reach of cavil, compare Imogen and Amelia, and the difference ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... devotion to her young lover, he is delighted, and becomes so interested in the entertainment he is giving them, that he forgets the plot against his life, although the hour of his danger has arrived. It is true the father stoops to listening, but his purpose is so worthy, no one is inclined to cavil at his watchfulness, and, in any event, his exceeding care but justifies the feeling that his love for Miranda is the mainspring of his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the conclusion that the effects of individual experience are not cumulatively hereditary we shall cease to cavil at the fact that there has been no anatomical or structural progress in the human body or brain since the time when men first became social and civilised beings, that is to say, since they first began to work ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... complain of the regularity in itself, though she did cavil at the actual arrangements, and they were altered all round to please her, and she showed a certain contempt for her teacher in the studies she resumed with her mother; but after the dictionary, encyclopaedia and other authorities, including Mr. Ogilvie, proved almost uniformly to be against ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Bishop of Chester's 'Exposition of the Gospel of St. Matthew.' "It is a very fine book indeed. Just the sort of one I like; which is just plain and comprehensible and full of truth and good feeling. It is not one of those learned books in which you have to cavil at almost every paragraph. Lehzen gave it me on the Sunday that I took the Sacrament." A few weeks previously she had been confirmed, and she described the event as follows: "I felt that my confirmation was one of the most solemn and important ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... occasion at first, seem now little affected by it. Those who are too much familiarized with scenes of wretchedness, as well as those to whom they are unknown, are not often very susceptible; and I am sometimes disposed to cavil with our natures, that the sufferings which ought to excite our benevolence, and the prosperity that enables us to relieve them, should ever have a contrary effect. Yet this is so true, that I have scarcely ever observed even the poor considerate towards each other—and the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... of Nelson must have been distasteful and open to censure; but no such reservations dimmed the splendour of Southey's tribute to the public hero who gave his life in the act of establishing, beyond reach of dispute or cavil, the throne of England as Queen of ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... early or late! I hurl my challenging gauntlet full in the face of Fate! Fate may make wreck of a future—how can she alter the past? I have tasted the sweets of life's chalice—why shrink from the lees at the last? How should I cavil at aught that shall come—I stand with your head on my breast— I have fought as I might—I have gained you, beloved ... to God's mercy the rest! Tho' the heavens darken above me and the sky be shrunk ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... has told us, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." This doctrine concerning faith, is incessantly inculcated by the Apostle Paul (Ephes. ii), "Ye are saved by grace, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God," not of works, &c. And, lest any one should cavil at our interpretation, and charge it with novelty, we state that this whole matter is supported by the testimony of the fathers. For Augustine devotes many volumes to the defence of grace, and the righteousness of faith, in opposition to the merit of good ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... Booty-Players:) Herein we may see the World moralized, or emblematically described, where most are short, over, wide or wrong-Byassed, and few justle in to the Mistress Fortune: On one side we find Heraclitus and his Followers fret, vex, rail, swear and cavil at every thing; on the other side Democritus, and his Company rejoice and laugh, as if they were created for that purpose. On one side you may see the Mimick screwing and twisting his Body into several Postures, which he perswades himself adds either ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... Indeed all animal life is spared, from religious convictions, except such as is brought to the altar. We finally got safely back to our quarters, at the Kaiser-i-Hind Hotel, far too well pleased with our trip to Ambar to cavil ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... You are always believing something is wrong. You knew very well, long ago, that the best part of me had belonged to some one else. You swore it didn't matter. But to-night, because there's absolutely nothing else you can cavil at, you drag it up again—in spite of your promises. I have always been frank with you. Do you thank me for it? No, it's been my old fault of giving everything, when it would have been wiser to keep something back, or at least to pretend to. I might have taken a lesson ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... to ask how you became possessed of the guilty secret which I had kept from every one—even from my wife—but to offer you such explanation and confession as you have a right to demand from me. I do not cavil about that right—I admit that you possess it, without desiring further proof than your actions, your merciless words, and the Bracelet in your possession, have ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... exceedingly strange that the scope and nature of this reform are so little understood and that so many things not included within its plan are called by its name. When cavil yields more fully to examination, the system will have large additions to the number ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... to die!" resumed the bishop. "He a mortal like to us! Death was not for him intended, though communis omnibus. Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus!" ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... cowardice—is our gain. Chopin put his patriotism, his wrath and his heroism into his Polonaises. That is why we have them now, instead of Chopin having been the target of some black-browed Russian. Chopin was psychically brave; let us not cavil at the almost miraculous delicacy of his organization. He wrote letters to his parents and to Matuszyriski, but they are not despairing— at least not to the former. He pretended gayety and had great hopes ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Heaven," continued the Master, "nor cavil at men; while I stoop to learn and aspire to penetrate into things that are high; yet 'tis Heaven alone knows ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... furniture, old pictures, and objects of vertu. They are now, however, found everywhere in the city, and most of them are on the Grand Canal, where they heap together marvelous collections, and establish authenticities beyond cavil. "Is it an original?" asked a young lady who was visiting one of their shops, as she paused before an attributive Veronese, or—what know I?—perhaps ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... said Hayden with the gallantry expected of him. This Venus Victrix was not so critical as to cavil at the manifest effort in his tones. Let it be forced or spontaneous, a compliment ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... feel inclined to cavil with this association on Elsie's part of "immortal beings," as they would style her parents, and the recollection she cherishes of a "dead brute," because, forsooth, they hold that her four-footed favourite had no soul; but were these gentry to broach ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... sad circumstance of the tragedy in which the wounded boy dragged himself home, to suffer the suspicion and neglect of his guardian till death attested his good faith beyond cavil. He said this was the hardest thing to bear in all his story, and that he would like to have a look into the soul of the dull, unkind wretch who had so misread his charge. He was going on with an inquiry that pleased him much, when his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... one passes he drops his head Shading his face in his black felt hat, While the hard girl hardens; nothing is said, There is nothing to wonder or cavil at. ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... than one Cicero or Plutarch. Not that I am wholly against them neither; but because, by the reading of the one, I find myself become better; whereas, I rise from the other, I know not how coldly affected to Virtue, but most violently inclin'd to Cavil and Contention; therefore never fear to propose ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... expectation of far less friendly audiences out of London than those I had hitherto made my appeals to. None of the personal interest that was felt for me there existed elsewhere, and I had to encounter the usual opposition, always prepared to cavil, in the provinces, at the metropolitan verdict of merit, as a mere exhibition of independent judgment; and to make good to the expectations of the country critics the highly laudatory reports of the London press, by which the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Middlesex or Lancashire agricultural; but Wiltshire and Suffolk were to be preserved inviolable to the plough,—and the apples of Devonshire were still to have their sway. Every town in the three kingdoms with a certain population was to have two members. But here there was much room for cavil,—as all men knew would be the case. Who shall say what is a town, or where shall be its limits? Bits of counties might be borrowed, so as to lessen the Conservatism of the county without endangering the Liberalism ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... wiser way, usually, is in speech. Letters are seldom expressive of what really passes in the mind of a man; or, if expressive, seem foolish, since deep feelings are liable to exaggeration. Every written word may be the theme of cavil. Study, care, which avail in every other species of composition, are death to the lover's effusion. A few sentences, spoken in earnest, and broken by emotion, are more eloquent than pages of sentiment, both to ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... is, to say the least, a strong presumption, not that the composer is wrong, but that the rule needs modifying. The great composer goes first and invents new effects: it is the business of the theorist not to cavil at every novelty, but to follow modestly behind and make his rules conform to the practice of the master. [Compare Professor Prout's ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... earnestness that I took refuge in silence. I could see just where a man of Parton's temperament—which was cold and eminently judicial even when his affections were concerned—could find that in Barker at which to cavil, but, for all that, I could not sympathize with the extreme view he took of his character. I have known many a man upon whose face nature has set the stamp of the villain much more deeply than it was impressed upon Barker's countenance, who has lived a life most irreproachable, whose every act ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... not, my dear nephew, lengthen a long letter, by endeavouring to point out the precise meaning of these expressions. You may understand from them, that charity is patient of ill-usage; that instead of being suspicious and disposed to cavil and carp at every thing, it is open and ingenuous, ready to give men credit for speaking the truth, when there is no good reason to think otherwise; and that it is disposed to hope the best, to think as favourably as ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... of this devotion, which proves to any religious American mind, beyond possible cavil, its serious and practical reality, is the money it cost. According to statistics, in the single century between 1170 and 1270, the French built eighty cathedrals and nearly five hundred churches of the cathedral class, which would have ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... necessary to go on long journeys, and these would entail the expenditure of a good deal of money. Moreover, it was necessary to find a man who would not be afraid of the work attached to the undertaking, and on whose judgment one could rely without doubt or cavil. Owing to the fact that the expenses up to the present had far exceeded the initial calculations, and since it seemed impossible to engage the right sort of man to place in charge of the work, the publisher had become first sceptical and then positive; positive that he ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... suffering, that a race whose nature and traditions were alike positivistic could for the time being find it sweet to wash its hands among the innocent, to love the beauty of the Lord's house, and to praise him for ever and ever. It was agreed and settled beyond cavil that God loved his people and continually blessed them, and yet in the world of men tribulation after tribulation did not cease to fall upon them. There was no issue but to assert (what so chastened a spirit could now understand) that tribulation endured for the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... down at the stables every morning at eight o'clock to inspect the horses and see them fed and watered. As a matter of fact the inspection should have been one of his own duties, but the girl was not likely to cavil at any little additional work that had not been exactly specified in her contract. Besides, if she did, he could soon make it uncomfortable for her. Arithelli made no objection. Though she hated getting up early she would never have grudged a sacrifice ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... hours. Wherefore you will not only with good will accept this small declamation, but take upon you the defense of it, for as much as being dedicated to you, it is now no longer mine but yours. But perhaps there will not be wanting some wranglers that may cavil and charge me, partly that these toys are lighter than may become a divine, and partly more biting than may beseem the modesty of a Christian, and consequently exclaim that I resemble the ancient comedy, or another Lucian, and snarl at everything. But I would have them whom the lightness or ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... dress cut into shreds because her husband's pride did not choose that she should accept a gift; or watched the children's coloured shoes thrown on the fire, with no money in her purse to get new ones; or listened to her husband's cavil at the too frequent arrival of his children; or heard the firing of his pistol-shots at the out-house doors, the necessary vent of a passion not to be wreaked in words. She was patient, brave, lonely, and silent. But Mr. Wemyss Reid, who has had unexampled facilities for studying the Bronte papers, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Belgium it is only natural that Edith Cavil should have a prominent place. To be sure King Albert and his queen and others are there. As in Belgium the first casualties occurred it is fitting that here alone is seen a wounded man and the Red Cross workers are caring for him as he lies upon a stretcher. ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... and if the higher notes broke in a crack which told of age or misuse, or both together, the lower ran clear and full, and the tune ran on with a rollicking, careless awing which showed that, whoever might cavil, the singer had at least one ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... thus demonstrated beyond cavil, though nobody paid any particular attention to the demonstration. As for Allen, he had vanished; he was heard ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... think so, when a cavil is made against the best thing in the whole play; and I would willingly part with anything else but those ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the destruction that was spread for our feet was no more and no other than the craft of a woman and a light o' love. But me-thinks the answer to that is, that the instruments whereby it may please Heaven to work out its purposes are not of our choosing, but of Heaven's; and those that cavil may recall, to their own abashment, how one that was of the same way of life as our Vittoria was permitted by celestial grace to be a minister unto holiness. I will not venture to say that Monna Vittoria did that which she did do with any very conscious thought of serving Heaven. Nay, more, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Turks ridicule our doctrine, as if we taught the existence of three brothers in heaven, it does not signify. Might I also cavil were it to serve any purpose here. But they do us wrong and falsify our teaching; for we do not conceive of the Trinity as in the nature of three men or of three angels. We regard it as one divine essence, an intimacy surpassing any earthly unity. The ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... partially realized. The Republican party has borne the brunt, and accomplished the appointed evolutions of progress; and the Republican party has deserved well of the American people, of history and of humanity. And the children and grandchildren of those who to-day cavil, defile and stone the party, they hereafter will bless the Republican party, who, with noble consciousness can say to the spirit of light and of duty: Nunc dimitte ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... seemed to myself to find the only sure guidance, the only solid footing, among the ancients. They, at any rate, knew what they wanted in Art, and we do not. It is this uncertainty which is disheartening, and not hostile criticism. How often have I felt this when reading words of disparagement or of cavil: that it is the uncertainty as to what is really to be aimed at which makes our difficulty, not the dissatisfaction of the critic, who himself suffers from the same uncertainty. Non me tua fervida terrent Dicta; Dii me ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the full consciousness of this truth, attested beyond cavil by the inhuman subjection of the Negro to the arrogant and oppressive will of those who held peculiar notions about his "proper status," the Federal Government hesitated to go the full length of its ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... too little generous in this. The record shows beyond any cavil that Goodrich was the first and most constant friend of Hawthorne in the way of helping him to get his work before the public; he was also interested in him, thoughtful for him, and gave him hack work to do, which, though it be a lowly is a true service, however unwelcome ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... overweight; his saddle was well fitting and well placed, as also was his large and broad-reined snaffle; his own costume of black coat, leathers, and tops was in perfect keeping, and even to his heavy-handled hunting-whip I could find nothing to cavil at. As he rode up he paid his respects to the ladies in his usual free and easy manner, expressed some surprise, but no regret, at hearing that he was late, and never deigning any notice of Matthew or myself, took his place beside Miss Dashwood, with whom ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... only by such vigor of vital Gothic energy in other parts as shall cause the roof to be forgotten, thrown off like an eschar from the living frame. Nevertheless, we must always admit that it may be forgotten, and that if the Gothic seal be indeed set firmly on the walls, we are not to cavil at the forms reserved for the tiles and leads. For, observe, as our definition at present stands, being understood of large roofs only, it will allow a conical glass-furnace to be a Gothic building, but will not allow so much, either of the Duomo of Florence, or the Baptistery of Pisa. We must ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... concluding lines, is an unconscious expression of the form in which he conceived human duty. The "And so, please God, a gentleman," was the cardinal clause in his creed and all his work proves it. It is wiser to be thankful that a man of genius was at hand to voice the view, than to cavil at its narrow outook. In literature, in-look is quite as important. Thackeray drew what he felt and saw, and like Jane Austen, is to be understood within his limitations. Nor did he ever forget that, because pleasure-giving was the object of his art, it was his duty so to present life as to make ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... of course, and very absurd. If we can accept the four words, why not accept all six? If we credit the head of the text, why cavil at the tail? Sometimes the absurdity of such irrational behavior will break upon a man and set him laughing at his own stupidity. Mr. Spurgeon had some such experience. 'Gentlemen,' he said, one Friday afternoon, in an ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... devotion, which proves to any religious American mind, beyond possible cavil, its serious and practical reality, is the money it cost. According to statistics, in the single century between 1170 and 1270, the French built eighty cathedrals and nearly five hundred churches of the cathedral class, which would have cost, according to an estimate made in ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... physical and moral frontier was less than they had imagined would be a humiliating confession of failure; and worse than a confession of failure; for God had appointed this refuge for them, and not to abide in it in all contentment would be to cavil at his purpose, to question his decree. With the instinct of true pioneers they therefore idealized the barren wilderness, pronouncing its air most healing, its soil most fertile; and with unfailing optimism proving, by the very sufferings they endured, how practicable, how spacious and ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... from wishing to cavil at the pleasure, replied, "I can easily believe it. Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they are intelligent may be well worth listening to. Such varieties of human nature as they are in the habit of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... became necessary to proceed to the investigation of the second point of the discussion, the agents and surveyors of both parties proceeded as a matter of course to the point marked in 1798 as the source of the St. Croix.[44] This point is therefore fixed and established beyond the possibility of cavil, and the faith of both Governments is pledged that ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... her husband discovered it. He brought in a cigarette, left the door open behind him and stood smiling down at her with the peculiarly complacent look that characterizes a married man of forty when he finds himself dressed beyond cavil in the complete evening harness of civilization, ten minutes before ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... thought of going. My mother, being well acquainted with the internal economy of a man-of-war, had provided me with a chest of very moderate dimensions, at which no First-Lieutenant, however strict, could cavil. It and I were deposited at the hotel, and the waiter, seeing the kind way in which the Captain treated me, must have taken me for a young lord at least, and ordered the porter ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... three-and-forty years of age, had no reason to despair of having an heir, to cut entirely off the claim of so wicked a brother. Having once began to stir in the affair, it was soon brought to a conclusion.—The fact was incontestable, and proved by witnesses, whose credit left no room for cavil; a bill of divorce was granted on very easy terms, and the gallant fined in so large a penalty, that he was obliged to quit the kingdom, to avoid ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... length, presenting, in his own terse, humorous, glowing, vigorous, convincing way, all sides of this chameleon-hued question; now analyzing the amendment and the laws to enforce it, turning aside here to answer the cavil of some carping critic, then to demolish and bury some blatant political defender of the whisky element; arraigning the Governor, Senate and House of Representatives for their gingerly treatment of ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... define to be the healthy act of a man's mind. It is a mysterious indescribable process, that of getting to believe;—indescribable, as all vital acts are. We have our mind given us, not that it may cavil and argue, but that it may see into something, give us clear belief and understanding about something, whereon we are then to proceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. Certainly we do not rush out, clutch-up the first thing we find, and straightway believe that! All ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... arranged to do him honour. And among those who, on that day, bore arms, were men of every tongue that is spoken between the steppes of Tartary, eastward, towards the Pacific ocean. The great truth that was pronounced on that occasion—I do not fear to utter it—was, let who will cavil, la solidarite des peuples—the sublime truth that all men are brothers—that all nations, too, are brethren, and are responsible for ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... may draw on me the host of judges and divines. They may cavil, but cannot refute it. Those who read Prisot's opinion with a candid view to understand, and not to chicane it, cannot mistake its meaning. The reports in the Year-books were taken very short. The opinions ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... not whistle. It is one of those mannish tricks of hers which give a wrong impression. Her father ought to stop it; but he is so fond of the girl, and thinks her so altogether perfect and beyond cavil, that he lets everything go. She needs to have some one stronger than herself come into her life. I ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... same vocabulary, then we might, through universal training in that vocabulary, have an universal language. How could such a convention be assembled? The truth is, the origin of language or speech is neither natural or conventional, but imitative, and it is a fact, beyond the possibility of cavil, that the thing must have existed before it could have been imitated. With whom did it exist? "We think by words, and infants think by things." ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... been said) would not evade disputation, if a man could find his interest in disputing it: such is the spirit of cavil. But I, upon a very opposite ground, assert that there is not one page of prose that could be selected from the best writer in the English language (far less in the German) which, upon a sufficient interest arising, would not furnish matter, simply ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... he is giving them, that he forgets the plot against his life, although the hour of his danger has arrived. It is true the father stoops to listening, but his purpose is so worthy, no one is inclined to cavil at his watchfulness, and, in any event, his exceeding care but justifies the feeling that his love for Miranda is the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... inviolable to the plough,—and the apples of Devonshire were still to have their sway. Every town in the three kingdoms with a certain population was to have two members. But here there was much room for cavil,—as all men knew would be the case. Who shall say what is a town, or where shall be its limits? Bits of counties might be borrowed, so as to lessen the Conservatism of the county without endangering the Liberalism of the borough. And then there were the ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... chair, dropping an empty shoe with a thump, but, being of the West, without cavil or waste of wind, he stretched his hands above his head, balancing on one foot to keep his unshod member from the damp floor. He had unbuckled his belt, and now, loosened by the movement, his overalls seemed bent on sinking floorward in an ecstasy of abashment at ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Cavil, jealousy and partisan intrigue, in which he and the cause finally went down together, had not yet done their work. There were many murmurers at real, many growlers at supposed, errors; but no opposition party—truer to itself and its interests than to the cause—had ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Burns "auld Clootie, Nick, or Hornie," or, according to others, in a broader set form of speech, "the devil in hell," that is, the "devil of a devil," or in scriptural phraseology, the "great red dragon," the "Devil or Satan." But we shall not cavil on this mighty potentate's name; much less dispute his identity, notwithstanding the doubt that has been broached, whether the said devil be a real or an imaginary personage, in the shape, form, and with the faculties that have been ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the Muse's revel, Begad, I wish you at the devil! In vain my verse I plane and bevel, Like Banville's rhyming devotees; In vain by many an artful swivel Lug in my meaning by degrees; I'm sure to hear my Henley cavil; And grovelling prostrate on my knees, Devote his body to the seas, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... softness of her sex, Her features all the sweetness of the Devil, When he put on the Cherub to perplex[305] Eve, and paved (God knows how) the road to evil; The Sun himself was scarce more free from specks Than she from aught at which the eye could cavil; Yet, somehow, there was something somewhere wanting, As if she rather ordered ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... argument; and his impartiality in as freely inserting the several answers. I shall here subjoin some extracts from the seventeenth volume of this work, which I think suitable to my purpose. To which I have added, in order to obviate every pretence for cavil, a list of the authors quoted in the following essay, with their respective dates, in comparison with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... that sin which is always at hand to enter an objection against this or that promise that by the Spirit of God is brought to our heart to comfort us; and if the poor coming sinner is not aware of it, it will, by some evasion, slight, trick, or cavil, quickly wrest from him the promise again, and he shall have but little ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... conceal his triumph, as he would seat himself in his chair, and begin with, "George, that 'are doctrine is rather of a puzzler; but you seem to think you've got the run on't. I should re'ly like to know what business you have to think you know better than other folks about it;" and, though he would cavil most courageously at all George's explanations, yet you might perceive, through all, that he was inly uplifted to hear how ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had established their political nationality beyond cavil, and taken a positive rank among the powers of the civilized world, they still remained subject to reproach, that in the worlds of Art, Science, and Literature, they had no national existence. Admitting, or, at any rate, feeling, the truth of this taunt, they bestirred themselves resolutely ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... don't believe in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but we have it sealed in the New Testament. "As, it was in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah." They don't believe in Lot's wife, but He says, "Remember Lot's wife." So there is not a thing that men to-day cavil at but the Son of God indorses. They don't believe, in the swallowing of Jonah. They say it is impossible that a whale could swallow Jonah—its throat is too small. They forget that the whale was prepared for Jonah; ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... our story:—That this most intense and vital sentiment should find expression whenever the repressive power of the conquering people was removed was most natural; that it would be fanned into a white heat by the freedman's enfranchisement was beyond cavil; and that Red Wing should escape such manifestations of the general abhorrence of the work of development there going on was not to be expected, even by its most ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... inconsistencies, of gross inaccuracies, and that its statements are directly opposed to the so-called natural sciences. They say that it doesn't even relate historical events accurately. But, after all, the Bible is just the record of the unfoldment in the human consciousness of the concept of God. Why cavil at it when it contains, as we must see, a revelation of the full formula for salvation, which, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of which every one partakes; and though this affection and regard be, in reality, gratitude, not self-love, yet a distinction, even of this obvious nature, may not readily be made by superficial reasoners; and there is room, at least, to support the cavil and dispute for a moment. But as qualities, which tend only to the utility of their possessor, without any reference to us, or to the community, are yet esteemed and valued; by what theory or system can we account for this sentiment from self-love, or deduce it from that ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... letter and stared out over the roof-tops. He couldn't afford to be a philanthropist. A rather sweeping idea had flashed into his mind as he read that missive. His horizon was continually expanding. Money, beyond cavil, was the key to many doors, a necessity if a man's eyes were fixed upon much that was desirable. If he could make money selling machines for Groya Motors Inc., why not for himself? ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... us ill to cavil each with each. I might retort. I only say to thee ITS slaves we are: ITS ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... standard for their navy, to reproach Germany for maintaining her army at a similar standard. Had she not done so the peace of Europe would not have been preserved, nor is it possible on any ground of right or justice to cavil at Germany's purpose to be able in case of need to defend herself at sea. The German Admiral Rosendahl, discussing the British and German navies and the proposals for disarmament, wrote in the Deutsche Revue ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... of fables was, in the sixth century of our era, brought from India to Persia, and by means of various translations naturalized among Persians, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, and all the rest, admits of no doubt or cavil. Several thousand years have passed between those two migrations, and to mix them up together, to suppose that Comparative Mythology has anything to do with the migration of such fables as that of Perrette, would be an anachronism of ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... a carriage stop in the street, or steps in the ante-chamber; the door had itself opened noiselessly. The count appeared, dressed with the greatest simplicity, but the most fastidious dandy could have found nothing to cavil at in his toilet. Every article of dress—hat, coat, gloves, and boots—was from the first makers. He seemed scarcely five and thirty. But what struck everybody was his extreme resemblance to the portrait Debray had drawn. The count advanced, smiling, into ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Such is the might of suffering, that a race whose nature and traditions were alike positivistic could for the time being find it sweet to wash its hands among the innocent, to love the beauty of the Lord's house, and to praise him for ever and ever. It was agreed and settled beyond cavil that God loved his people and continually blessed them, and yet in the world of men tribulation after tribulation did not cease to fall upon them. There was no issue but to assert (what so chastened a spirit could now understand) that tribulation endured for the Lord ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... witnessed the horrors of Vise and Louvain. These men educated and guided public opinion. Republican or Democrat it mattered not—they set out to determine from the material before them what was Right and what was Wrong. Once convinced that the Hun was a menace they made their readers understand beyond cavil just what that menace meant. So I claim that the editors of the United States are entitled to high rank among the Defenders of Democracy. When the history of the war, or rather a just analysis of its causes and effects, comes to be written I shall be much mistaken if the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... rapacious soldiery. They who dwelt in the Provinces would be ever grateful to their preserver for the result. They had no eyes for the picture which the Spanish party painted of an imaginary triumph of De Thermos and its effects. However the envious might cavil, now that the blow had been struck, the popular heart remained warm as ever, and refused to throw down the idol which had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... always expired with the Sovereign. A paper had indeed been circulated, in which the logic of a small sharp pettifogger was employed to prove that writs, issued in the joint names of William and Mary, ceased to be of force as soon as William reigned alone. But this paltry cavil had completely failed. It had not even been mentioned in the Lower House, and had been mentioned in the Upper only to be contemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy of the City swelled the procession. The banners of England and France, Scotland ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... vegetarians. The new word, however, is likely to find considerable extension, and if any provider for the public maw should choose hereafter to call his dining-saloon a Carnivorium, none would have a right to cavil at him on philological grounds, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... home on a shutter, slain by divine vengeance as a blasphemer. A timid minority, without quite venturing to question the truth of the incident—for they naturally did not care to run the risk of going home on shutters themselves—nevertheless shewed a certain disposition to cavil at those who exulted in it; and something approaching to an argument began. At last it was alleged by the most evangelical of the disputants that Charles Bradlaugh, the most formidable atheist on the ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... side" of the room is a commonplace recognized by all. If we ourselves are never in the habit of communicating the contents of our letters, as we write, to a doubtless appreciative atmosphere, we never cavil at such an act on the stage. The stage whisper and aside, too, we accept with benevolent indulgence; but it is worth noting that in the attempted verisimilitude of the modern "legitimate" drama, the aside has well nigh vanished. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... the head of two who could claim personal acquaintance with the great war chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted Tail?—who had actually been to ride and hunt with that then just dawning demigod of American boyhood,—Buffalo Bill? Sneer and scoff and cavil as did their little rivals for a time, calumny was crushed and scoffers blighted that wonderful March morning when, before the whole assembled school, there suddenly appeared that paragon of plainsmen, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... is essential for us to know concerning himself and his government of our world, is revealed in this Holy Volume; and if there are some things in the moral government of God, which we cannot comprehend, we have no right to cavil. "The Judge of all the earth ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... answered before the same society by Francesco Baldassare Paglia, and in 1700 appeared Giusto Fontanini's elaborate defence[182]. To each chapter of this work is prefixed a passage from Grimaldi's address, which is then laboriously refuted. The Duke's attack is puerile cavil, and in spite of the reputed ability of its author the defence must be admitted to be much on the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... time to heal, and when it did heal, a scar remained that kept its place for many years after. But he did not suffer for nought. The incident was productive of good in two directions. It established Bert's character for courage beyond all cavil, and it put an end to the unseemly rows between the schools. The two masters held a consultation, as a result of which they announced to their schools that any boys found taking part in such disturbances in ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... the other members of the congregation would heap upon her. Mr. Marston, I do wish you would keep your face serious. There is nothing to laugh at in this matter. A worthy old man tries to do a worthy work, his fellow-servants cavil at him, and his master, who should encourage him, laughs at him for ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of action, this mind-evolving force may not have generated beings of almost infinite capacities—even a monarch who sways a scepter over more worlds than one—EVEN A GOD. Why should material philosophy cavil at the creeds which teach a righteous judgment to come? Have not the judicial elements of oxygen, carbon and hydrogen combined to organize on one planet at least courts of equity and judgment seats, and crystalized into prison walls and hand-cuffs the gallows and the hangman? Upon the established ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... opposition to it. These ukases are ranged in their appropriate numerical titles, and there are at least five hundred thousand of them—whether imperial or senatorial, all legally binding. What memory could stand such a burden, or what might legal cavil ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... delightful harmony, but it seemed that the books and the pictures were chosen to match them. The man talking, in the great carved armchair by the fire, fitted the place. His vigorous, pleasant face looked prosperous, and so kindly was his air that one might not cavil at a lack of subtler qualities. He drew a long breath as he brought out the last words of the story ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... is such pain—such sinning." Yet look again—behold how much is right! And He who formed the world from its beginning Knows how to guide it upward to the light. Your task, O man, is not to carp and cavil At God's achievements, but with purpose strong To cling to good, and turn away from evil. That is the way to help the ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... she in sympathy. She was fond of poetry and of music; indeed, to sum up her character in as few words as possible, she was everything that so critical a dreamer of the ideal as Mr. Augustus Richards could have wished for, nor was there one weak spot in the armor of her character at which he could cavil. ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... if this be true, man must have inherited from his prehuman ancestors this instinct along with the others. That he extended this knowledge through observation and practice, and came early to make extensive use of drugs in the treatment of disease, is placed beyond cavil through the observation of the various existing barbaric tribes, nearly all of whom practice elaborate systems of therapeutics. We shall have occasion to see that even within historic times the particular therapeutic measures ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... his own advantage. The fate that had favoured him so far would doubtless go further—if he let it alone. These thoughts sprang at once into his reflection, but were barely entertained before nobler ones displaced them. As a Christian gentleman he knew what he ought to do without cavil and without delay, and he rose to follow the benignant justice of his conscience. Into this obedience, however, there entered an hesitation of a second of time, and that infinitesimal period was ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... no means just; and besides, a later act, that which repealed the triennial law, had determined, that it was necessary to hold parliaments only once in three years. Such weight, however was put on this cavil, that Buckingham, Shaftesbury, Salisbury, and Wharton, insisted strenuously in the house of peers on the invalidity of the parliament, and the nullity of all its future acts. For such dangerous positions they were sent to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... known, for from various reasons the town on the five hundred acre tract was never begun. In short, while the Moravians were risking much personal discomfort, there was nothing in their plan which could possibly injure others, and the cavil and abuse of their opposers was as uncalled for as is many a ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... of a hero of everyday life, whose love of truth, clothing of modesty, and innate pluck, carry him, naturally, from poverty to affluence. George Andrews is an example of character with nothing to cavil at, and stands as a good instance of chivalry ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... disappointment was, Mr. Neal was not embittered. There was one thing that he knew now beyond all cavil or doubt: he knew that he should find the man with the good face. He knew that he should eventually meet him somewhere, sometime, and come to know him. How Mr. Neal longed for that time words cannot describe, but his settled faith that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... where did you ever find the epithet 'good,' applied to the title of doctor? Had you called me 'learned doctor,' or 'grave doctor,' or 'noble doctor,' it might be allowable, because they belong to the profession. But, not to cavil at trifles, you talk of 'my spring-velvet coat,' and advise me to wear it the first day in the year, that is, in the middle of winter!—a spring-velvet coat in the middle of winter!!! That would be a solecism indeed! and yet to increase the inconsistence, in another part of your ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... having raised twenty millions of people to a level of thought where they can appreciate this cardinal truth, and can believe no sacrifice too great for its defence and establishment, then democracy will have vindicated itself beyond all chance of future cavil. Here, we think, is a Cause the experience of whose vicissitudes and the grandeur of whose triumph will be able to give us heroes and statesmen. The Slave-Power must be humbled, must be punished,—so humbled and so punished ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... and would not have divined that he would pass them all over and appoint another man without consulting him at all.—February 28th.] I have read the pamphlet written against Hampden, and though some of his expressions are perhaps imprudent as giving occasion to malicious cavil, it contains no grave matter, and nothing to support an accusation of heterodoxy. If he had been a Tory instead of a Liberal in politics, we should probably have ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... and the 'autocrat of the breakfast table,' who frowns coldly upon the efforts of his young wife in the culinary line and carries off her biscuits to serve as paper weights. The scoffer at occidental table manners will cease to cavil at the genial westerner who eats vegetables with a knife, pie with a spoon, and drinks his coffee from the saucer, a napkin tucked in graceful folds ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... digress for a moment. The intellectual minds, the material scientists, who cavil at the "science of the stars," declaring it to be mere fortune-telling, consequently false, do but air their ignorance of this most profound subject, not knowing that it embraces and contains all sciences, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... granite slabs and masses. Before it burnt a purple-glass lamp, hung by chains of native smithy-work, rather incongruously heavy, I thought. But who was I to cavil at this jewel of a ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... on the testimony of Orosius Paulus)—this Dio, I say, makes mention of a later king of theirs named Telefus. Let no one say that this name is quite foreign to the Gothic tongue, and let no one who is ignorant cavil at the fact that the tribes of men make use of many names, even as the Romans borrow from the Macedonians, the Greeks from the Romans, the Sarmatians from the Germans, and the Goths frequently from the Huns. This Telefus, then, a son of Hercules ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... am I not only warranted in these remarks, but imperiously called upon to make them? What other mode remained to set the public mind at ease? I have now stated what must for ever hereafter preclude all possibility for cavil on one part, or anxiety on the other. I alone have possessed the private and important papers of Colonel Burr; and I pledge my honour that every one of them, so far as I know and believe, that could have injured the feelings of a female ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... action should be thus rewarded. Perhaps you will say that His ways are inscrutable, and, that as we have neither the power, nor have we the right to attempt to read them, so we should not venture to cavil at His ordinances, but humbly believe that the ultimate result will be for our benefit. I believe it is so, lady; or it may be for a punishment; but it is bitter, very bitter, oftentimes to bear. But I am wandering from my story. We could watch the progress ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... thronged with visitors, grouped before the painting. Silence, such as is rarely met with amongst a numerous collection of amateurs, reigned throughout the crowd. Assuming the knowing and supercilious look of an acknowledged connoisseur, he approached the picture, prepared to cavil and find fault, or, at best, to damn with faint praise. But the canting phrase of conventional criticism died away upon his lips at the sight he there beheld. Faultless, pure, gracious, and beautiful as some fair and virgin bride was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Betters, Crafty Matchers, and base Booty-Players:) Herein we may see the World moralized, or emblematically described, where most are short, over, wide or wrong-Byassed, and few justle in to the Mistress Fortune: On one side we find Heraclitus and his Followers fret, vex, rail, swear and cavil at every thing; on the other side Democritus, and his Company rejoice and laugh, as if they were created for that purpose. On one side you may see the Mimick screwing and twisting his Body into several Postures, which he perswades himself adds ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... and in addition he did much original research and was greatly distinguished as a scientist. His chief contribution to science was his studies of the electron and his monumental work on the "Identification of Matter and Energy," wherein he established, beyond cavil and for all time, that the ultimate unit of matter and the ultimate unit of force were identical. This idea had been earlier advanced, but not demonstrated, by Sir Oliver Lodge and other students in the new ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... to plague her with communings. Of a certainty she could not at all times satisfy my soul, which thirsted for knowledge, though she never failed to calm it; for I stood firm in the faith, and all she could tell me of God's revelation to man I accepted gladly, without doubt or cavil. She had taught us that faith and knowledge are things apart, and I felt that there could be no more peace for my soul if I suffered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sylphs, in ghosts, in witches, in were-wolfs, than to believe in the magical or impossible action of the spirit upon the body? As soon as we admit of such a God, there are no longer fables or visions which can not be believed. The theologians treat men like children, who never cavil about the possibilities of the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... could not disguise from myself the extreme difficulty I should experience in resisting my brother's claim. So far as my utter want of all legal knowledge would allow me to decide, I could perceive nothing in the will itself which would admit of a lawyer's successful cavil: my reasons for suspicion, so conclusive to myself, would seem nugatory to a judge. My uncle was known as a humourist; and prove that a man differs from others in one thing, and the world will believe that he differs from them in a thousand. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... profitably altering the situation—the strict confinement of his entire person, the black darkness and profound silence, made a body of evidence impossible to controvert and he accepted it without cavil. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... exhausted itself. How far a movement is made by the fortuitous synchronisation of a number of good artists, and how far the artists are helped to the creation of significant form by the pervasion of some underlying spirit of the age, is a question that can never be decided beyond cavil. But however the credit is to be apportioned—and I suspect it should be divided about equally—we are justified, I think, looking at the history of art as a whole, in regarding such periods of fertility as distinct parts of that whole. Primarily, it is as a period of fertility in good art and artists ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... ador'd Angel, the bright, the charming Lady H—— were Fools; but what will not those Savages, call'd Critics, do, whose barbarous Nature enclines them to trample on the brightest Characters, and to cavil on the ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... the minister of Pumpkinville, where I lived in my youth, was one of the metaphysical divines of the old school, and could cavil upon the ninth part of a hair about entities and quiddities, nominalism and realism, free-will and necessity, with which sort of learning he used to stuff his sermons and astound his learned hearers, the bumpkins. They never doubted that ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... do not wish to cavil or carp or rub it in in any way. I will merely remark that you pretty nearly landed us in the soup, and pass on to more congenial topics. Didn't you know we ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the existence of the Mahatmas. I know of none who took up this inquiry in right earnest and were not rewarded for their labours with knowledge, certainty. In spite of all this there are plenty of people who carp and cavil but will not take the trouble of proving the thing for themselves. Both by Europeans and a section of our own countrymen—the too Europeanized graduates of Universities—the existence of the Mahatmas is looked upon with incredulity and distrust, to give it no harder name. The position of the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... demonstrated beyond cavil, though nobody paid any particular attention to the demonstration. As for Allen, he had vanished; he was ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... the prisoner; but if it escaped into a crack or crevice of the apartment, as spiders often do when assailed, all doubt of its guilty connection with the person accused of witchcraft was removed: it was set down as, beyond question or cavil, her veritable imp; and the evidence of her confederacy with Satan was thenceforward regarded as complete. The books of law and other learned writings, as well as the practice of courts in the old countries, recognized this doctrine of transformation ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... succeeded in purchasing, after much talk, a pair of moccasins that Hazel conceded to be a work of art, what with the dainty pattern of beads and the ornamentation of colored porcupine quills. Her feminine soul could not cavil when Bill thrust them in the pocket of her coat, even if her mind was set against accepting any peace tokens at ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... unfallen and unsinful—but because he was so wretched, because he was so small, because he had gone so far away from God; therefore, the seeking love came after him, and would draw him to itself.' That, I think, is answer enough to the cavil. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of this word is contested; some derive it from the French broyer, "to grind;" others from brocader, to cavil or riggle; others deduce broker from a trader broken, and that from the Saxon broc, "misfortune," which is often the true reason of a man's breaking. In which view, a broker is a broken trader, by misfortune; and it is said that none but such were formerly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... project, prolonged their debate."—"It finds [i.e., the mind finds,] that to act thus, would gratify one passion; and that not to act, or to act otherwise, would gratify another."—"But further, to cavil and object, upon any subject, is much easier than to clear up difficulties." Are not these expressions much better English than the foregoing quotations? And if so, have we not reason to conclude that the adoption of participles in such instances ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of a woman and a light o' love. But me-thinks the answer to that is, that the instruments whereby it may please Heaven to work out its purposes are not of our choosing, but of Heaven's; and those that cavil may recall, to their own abashment, how one that was of the same way of life as our Vittoria was permitted by celestial grace to be a minister unto holiness. I will not venture to say that Monna Vittoria ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... mean to cavil, only other folks will, and he may bring all the lambs of Jacob Behmen about his ears. However, I hope he will bring it to a conclusion, though Milton is ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Caledonian is a self-conceited pedant, aukward, rude, and disputacious — He has had the benefit of a school-education, seems to have read a good number of books, his memory is tenacious, and he pretends to speak several different languages; but he is so addicted to wrangling, that he will cavil at the clearest truths, and, in the pride of argumentation, attempt to reconcile contradictions — Whether his address and qualifications are really of that stamp which is agreeable to the taste of our aunt, Mrs Tabitha, or that indefatigable maiden is determined ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... denying this fact, which is equally evident in his daily life, his education of his children, his conduct to his servants and dependants, his employment of time, his favorite aims in life, and in everything he does or says, in brief. And of course there are plenty who cavil at his peculiar views, and who cannot at all understand his unconventional ways, and his apparent want of all worldly wisdom in the general conduct of his affairs. And yet, somehow, these affairs prosper. Although he declined a valuable appointment for his son, and preferred that he should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... well-nigh stealthy, with something of the movement of other denizens of the forest, unless they were crossed and aroused, and then, like those other denizens, they were fierce almost beyond belief. A small cavil might make a great quarrel, and pistols would flash as quick ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... virtue. In Miss Milner it was so united. Yet let not our over-scrupulous readers be misled, and extend their idea of her virtue so as to magnify it beyond that which frail mortals commonly possess; nor must they cavil, if, on a nearer view, they find it less—but let them consider, that if she had more faults than generally belong to others, she ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... all their dialects of jabberers, And tug at both ends of the saw, To tear down Government and Law. For as two cheats, that play one game, 155 Are both defeated of their aim; So those who play a game of state, And only cavil in debate, Although there's nothing lost or won, The publick bus'ness is undone; 160 Which still the longer 'tis in doing, Becomes the surer ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... place, and took place that evening," I insisted. "The bit of paste shown us at the inquest was never the gem Mrs. Fairbrother wore on entering the alcove. Besides, where all is sensation, why cavil at one more improbability? Mr. Grey may have come over to America for no other reason. He is known as a collector, and when a man ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... the brunt, and accomplished the appointed evolutions of progress; and the Republican party has deserved well of the American people, of history and of humanity. And the children and grandchildren of those who to-day cavil, defile and stone the party, they hereafter will bless the Republican party, who, with noble consciousness can say to the spirit of light and of duty: Nunc dimitte in pacem ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Norwegian periodicals—there is not to this day a book on Shakespeare by a Norwegian—contain not a single contribution to Shakespearean criticism till 1880, when a church paper, Luthersk Ugeskrift[11] published an article which proved beyond cavil that Shakespeare is good and safe reading for Lutheran Christians. The writer admits that Shakespeare probably had several irregular love-affairs both before and after marriage, but as he grew older his heart turned to the comforts of religion, and in his epitaph he commends ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... possession of the capital, was to send to the different cities, proclaiming the revolution which had taken place, and demanding the recognition of the young Almagro as governor of Peru. Where the summons was accompanied by a military force, as at Truxillo and Arequipa, it was obeyed without much cavil. But in other cities a colder assent was given, and in some the requisition was treated with contempt. In Cuzco, the place of most importance next to Lima, a considerable number of the Almagro faction secured the ascendency of their party; and such of the magistracy ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... ad Legem,' Mr. Sergeant Manning raises question concerning the antiquity of guineas and half-guineas, with the following remarks:—"Should any cavil be raised against this jocular allusion, on the ground that guineas and half-guineas were unknown to sergeants who flourished in the sixteenth century, the objector might be reminded, that in antique records, instances occur in which the 'guianois d'or,' issued from the ducal ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... such evident earnestness that I took refuge in silence. I could see just where a man of Parton's temperament—which was cold and eminently judicial even when his affections were concerned—could find that in Barker at which to cavil, but, for all that, I could not sympathize with the extreme view he took of his character. I have known many a man upon whose face nature has set the stamp of the villain much more deeply than it was impressed upon Barker's countenance, ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... say Parisian. Outside of Paris or Vienna I have never tasted such soups, such sauce, such delicate and suggestive flavors. My entire existence has been revolutionized by the experience. I am no longer the lonely and unhappy man you discovered at this gate a short month ago. I can not cavil at an America that furnishes me with such food as ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... for all he had bent his back laboriously all summer over a hole in the ground, and had idled in town since Thanksgiving. He was a cowboy (vaquero was the name they used in those pleasant valleys) and so was his friend. And he had found a cowboy's paradise, and a welcome which a king could not cavil at. Would Jack stake himself to a horse and outfit, and come to Palo Alto till the snow was well out of the mountains and they could go back to ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... then, with the proposition that the bulky products of the West must be carried by water and not by rail, and will state a few facts that in our humble opinion will place this proposition beyond all cavil. So for as figures can be obtained, and correct calculations made, it has been demonstrated that freight cannot be moved on American railroads for less than one cent per ton per mile. This is actually the first cost, even in the coal regions of Pennsylvania. It is therefore ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... dead and forgotten ages since. It may be over every game there watches the forgotten forerunners of the players, and that chess is indeed a dead game, a haunted game, played out centuries ago, even, as beyond all cavil, is ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... dread that her wealth might invest her with charms not intrinsic, had made Leo unusually distrustful of the motives of her numerous suitors. That Leighton Douglass loved the woman, not the heiress, she knew beyond the possibility of cavil or doubt, and when, after mature deliberation, she promised her hand to Mr. Dunbar, she had felt equally sure that no mercenary consideration biased his choice or ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a hundred moods, and back of them all a sweet womanly tenderness to make every mood a new and rare delight. Toinette!—never before was woman's name so pleasant to my lips. Ignorant as I was in mysteries of the heart, I knew not clearly whether I loved her, though this I knew beyond cavil,—no savage hand should ever touch her while I lived; and if I had to fight each step of the path from that accursed spot to Wayne, I swore within my heart she should come safe through. Her gentle memory was with me when all the rest ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... understand me so; for although nothing is so common as to use a part for the whole; yet if you should be out of humour with a bad dinner, a bad lodging, an ill-dressed shirt, or an ill-printed book, you might be disposed to cavil, and object, that in critical precision of language, (supposing a man to walk slow) he could not be said to have dirtied his shoes, no more than a boarding-school girl, who has cut her finger in paring an apple, could be said to ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... on a table before the chief entrance, and then reported the facts to the Empress. This ended the ceremony. The haughty condescension of the Chinese despatch does not appear to have offended the Japanese, nor did they cavil at the omission of one important ideograph from the title applied to their Empress. China's greatness seems to have been fully recognized. When, a month later, the envoy took his departure, the same Imoko was deputed to accompany him, bearing a despatch* in which, to China's simple "greeting," ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... were given but three months in the officer's Training camp; many of them had served as non-commissioned officers in one of the four colored regiments. But not one word of criticism or complaint of them has reached us. Their adaptability to their new duties is beyond cavil. Their efficiency, bravery—leadership, are all unquestioned ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... said Nekhludoff to the lawyer, as they entered the waiting-room. "In the plainest possible case they cavil at idle forms. ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... refreshing, but I argue nothing from it; there is nothing real in the freedom of thought at the West,—it is from the position of men's lives, not the state of their minds. So soon as they have time, unless they grow better meanwhile, they will cavil and criticise, and judge other men by their own standard, and outrage the law of love every way, just as they ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... I wish to vie with Mr. Allen's unrivalled polemic amiability and be as conciliatory as possible, I will not cavil at his facts or try to magnify the chasm between an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Napoleon and the average level of their respective tribes. Let it be as small as Mr. Allen thinks. All that I object to is that he should think the mere size of a difference is capable of deciding ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... and red is my badge, because it suits my dark face best. Cavil not at my robe, Hugh, for it is the only dowry you will get with Eve Clavering. How shall we go? By the Walberswick ferry? ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... 'went in' to dinner, to the strains of the Roast Beef of Old England. It was a right jovial feast, and the most cordial good-fellowship prevailed. He would have been a cynical epicurean who would have criticised the appointments; the banquet itself was above all cavil. Rummaging among some old papers the other day, I found the menu, which deserves to be quoted: 'Soup—Julienne. Fish—Whitebait (from the Cabul River). Entrees—Cotelettes aux Champignons, Poulets a la Mayonaise. Joints—Ham and fowls, roast beef, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... judicious governess, a very small establishment being kept for them, and the earl paying them impromptu and flying visits. Generous and benevolent she was, timid and sensitive to a degree, gentle, and considerate to all. Do not cavil at her being thus praised—admire and love her whilst you may, she is worthy of it now, in her innocent girlhood; the time will come when such praise would be misplaced. Could the fate that was to overtake his child have been foreseen by ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of the Capulets, and this tomb being found in the middle of the garden, was easily recognized as that of Juliet. Its genuineness, as well as its employment in the ruse of the lovers, was proven beyond cavil by a slight hollow cut for the head to rest in, and a hole at the foot "to breathe through," as the boy said. Does not the fact that this relic has to be protected from the depredations of travellers, who could otherwise carry it away piecemeal, speak eloquently ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... many of us in the War Office were a little inclined to cavil at our Chief's deliberation in the matter of demanding a system of national service, when the country had arrived at the stage where expansion of the fighting forces was no longer hopelessly retarded by lack of war material. But, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... or hawks; Men, if they note, will flee him.' Thus they buzzed, Self-praised, and knowing not that simpleness Is sacred soil, and sown with royal seed, The heroic seed and saintly. Mitred once Such gibes no more assailed him: one short month Sufficed the petty cavil to confute; One month well chronicled in book which verse Late born, alas, in vain would emulate. At once he called to mind the days that were; His wanderings in Northumbrian glens; the hearths That welcomed ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... views. To have produced works of genius, and to find them neglected or treated with scorn is one of the heaviest trials of human patience. We exaggerate our own merits when they are denied by others, and are apt to grudge and cavil at every particle of praise bestowed on those to whom we feel a conscious superiority. In mere self-defence we turn against the world, when it turns against us; brood over the undeserved slights we receive; and thus the genial current of the soul is stopped, or vents itself ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... knowledge of Elizabeth. A little wine was mulled; the girl could not swallow it, emaciated as she was. Her condition need not be described in detail, but she was very near her death, as the medical evidence, and that of a midwife (who consoled Mrs. Canning on one point), proves beyond possibility of cavil. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... count the lines which on reperusal of this great tragic poem I find apt for illustrative quotation, or suggestive of a tributary comment: but enough has already been cited to prove beyond all chance of cavil from any student worthy of the name that the place of Cyril Tourneur is not among minor poets, nor his genius of such a temper as naturally to attract the sympathy or arouse the enthusiasm of their admirers; that among the comrades or the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... conduct of the whole, it does not appear to be of a piece; every vision seems a distinct rhapsody, and does not carry on either one single action or a series of many; but we ought rather to wonder at its beauties than cavil at its defects; and if the poetical design is broken, the moral is entire, which, is uniformly the advancement of piety, and reformation of the Roman clergy. The piece before us is entitled the Vision of Piers the Plowman, and I shall ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... throng of hurrying people, and everywhere the same abundance of flowers for sale, in pots, in baskets, in bunches, making the whole air of the streets sweet. Then they came to the hotel, and were shown to their rooms,—high up, airy, and nicely furnished, though Imogen was at first disposed to cavil at the ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... the surface; but they show us how awfully complicated the phenomenon is. All young geologists have a great turn for speculation; I have burned my fingers pretty sharply in that way, and am now perhaps become over-cautious; and feel inclined to cavil at speculation when the direct and immediate effect of a cause in question cannot be shown. How neatly you draw your diagrams; I wish you would turn your attention to real sections of the earth's crust, and then speculate to your heart's content ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... most great, And thou, Eternal Fate: What way soe'er thy will doth bid me travel That way I'll follow without fret or cavil. {237} Or if I evil be And spurn thy high decree, Even so I still shall follow, soon ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... nothing from it; there is nothing real in the freedom of thought at the West,—it is from the position of men's lives, not the state of their minds. So soon as they have time, unless they grow better meanwhile, they will cavil and criticise, and judge other men by their own standard, and outrage the law of love every way, just as they do ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... I will, if you desire it, and if Captain Tomlinson will engage that Mr. Harlowe shall keep them absolutely a secret; that I may not be subjected to the cavil and controul of any others of a family that have used me so ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... hoarsely sings. In very terror I at morn awake, Upon the verge of bitter weeping, To see the day of disappointment break, To no one hope of mine—not one—its promise keeping:— That even each joy's presentiment With wilful cavil would diminish, With grinning masks of life prevent My mind its fairest work to finish! Then, too, when night descends, how anxiously Upon my couch of sleep I lay me: There, also, comes no rest to me, But some wild dream is sent to fray me. The God that ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... well; but Griselda had a pernicious habit of recurring to any slight words of blame which had been used by her friends. Her husband had congratulated her upon having attained the perfection of the art of disputing, since she could cavil about straws. This reproach rankled in her mind. There are certain diseased states of the body, in which the slightest wound festers, and becomes incurable. It is the same with the mind; and our heroine's was in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... as the Queen desired; and in one of the first general conferences, they would not suffer the British secretary to take the minutes, but nominated some Dutch professor for that office, which the Queen refused, and resented their behaviour as an useless cavil, intended only to shew their want of respect. The British plenipotentiaries had great reason to suspect, that the Dutch were, at this time, privately endeavouring to engage in some separate measures with France, by the intervention of one Molo, a busy factious agent at Amsterdam, who had been ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... 1865; Advis et Devis des Lengnes, etc., 1865, which were edited by the late J. J. Chaponniere, and, after his death, by M. Gustave Revilliod, has placed his reputation as historian, satirist, philosopher, beyond doubt or cavil. One quotation must suffice. He is contrasting the Protestants with the Catholics (Advis et Devis de la Source de Lidolatrie, Geneva, 1856, p. 159): "Et nous disons que les prebstres rongent les mortz et est vray; mais nous faisons bien pys, car nous rongeons les vifz. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... odd stir on shore. A cab whirled up furiously and two more youths, shapely, handsome, and fashionable, twins beyond cavil and noticeably older than their twenty years, visibly rich in fine qualities but as visibly reckless as to what they did with them, sprang out, flushed and imperious, to wave the Votaress. One of her guards ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... which had not yet witnessed the power of the Gospel to fashion society afresh, and to build up domestic life on a new and more enduring basis;—at a time when the greatest laxity of morals prevailed, and the enemies of the Gospel were known to be on the look out for grounds of cavil against Christianity and its Author;—what wonder if some were found to remove the pericope de adultera from their copies, lest it should be pleaded in extenuation of breaches of the seventh commandment? The very subject-matter, I say, of St. John viii. ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... that, which to our best understandings we conceived might most tend to the preservation of Peace and Unity in the Church; the procuring of Reverence, and exciting of Piety and Devotion in the Public Worship of God; and the cutting off occasion from them that seek occasion of cavil or quarrel against the Liturgy of the Church. And as to the several variations from the former Book, whether by Alteration, Addition, or otherwise, it shall suffice to give this general account, That most of the Alterations were made, either first, for ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... as their own existence; and judging from their declarations, they have no more doubt of the fact, than they have of the summer's sunshine, and the winter's frost and snow. Of what value, therefore, is the cavil of ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... is Guinea?" said the man in gray; "where is he? Let us at once find him, and refute beyond cavil this injurious hypothesis." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... been laid on any article of commerce in time of peace; but the crisis was difficult, the danger to the tranquillity of the kingdom was great and undeniable, the necessity for instant action seemed urgent, and probably few would have been inclined to cavil at Lord Chatham's assertion, that the embargo "was an act of power which, during the recess of Parliament, was justifiable on the ground of necessity," had the ministry at once called Parliament together ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... a hero of everyday life, whose love of truth, clothing of modesty, and innate pluck, carry him, naturally, from poverty to affluence. George Andrews is an example of character with nothing to cavil at, and stands as a good instance of chivalry in domestic ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... hunted, and his sketches reveal to us the capacity he had for seeing the beauty and grace of natural objects. Were a visit to be paid to the British Museum, his handicraft, rude when compared to modern art, could be seen in the fragments beyond all cavil ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... not cavil, therefore, at nature's indifference to the sage. It is only because we are not yet wise enough that this indifference seems strange; for the first duty of wisdom is to throw into light the humbleness of the place in the universe that is filled ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... wroth! That one Day I kept silence, but the morrow morn I sought my parents, told that tale of scorn And claimed the truth; and they rose in their pride And smote the mocker.... Aye, they satisfied All my desire; yet still the cavil gnawed My heart, and still the story crept abroad. At last I rose—my father knew not, nor My mother—and went forth to Pytho's floor To ask. And God in that for which I came Rejected me, but round me, like a flame, His voice flashed other answers, ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... time was too critical for divided leadership. It was the sort of appeal that any European Premier might have made upon "going to the country," and the President ended with the statement that "I am your servant and will accept your judgment without cavil." ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... perceiving his piece cavil'd at By partial critics, and his adversaries Misrepresenting what we're now to play, Pleads his own cause: and you shall be the judges, Whether he merits praise or condemnation. The Synapothnescontes is a piece By Diphilus, a comedy which Plautus, Having ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... managing this war, the draft, foreign relations, and planning a reconstruction of the Union, all at once. I never knew with what a tyrannous authority he rules the Cabinet, until now. The most important things he decides and there is no cavil. I am growing more convinced that the good of the country demands that he should be kept where he is till this thing is over. There is no man in the country so wise, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... seldom sweet-tempered; and Laura formed no exception. Pin, her most frequent companion, had to bear the brunt of her acrimony: hence the two were soon at war again. For Pin was tactless, and took small heed of her sister's grumpy moods, save to cavil at them. Laura's buttoned-upness, for instance, and her love of solitude, were perverse leanings to Pin's mind; and she spoke out against them with the assurance of one who has public opinion at his back. Laura retaliated by falling foul of little personal traits in Pin: a nervous habit ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... more that his faults and follies sink into ashes before the divine fire of his genius, and we still have the gold. Inconsistent, paradoxical, preposterous—why, yes, of course! Still he is the greatest poet of passion the world has ever seen—don't cavil—passion's ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... the spring of 1855, at Tunbridge Wells; and it seems the work has just come out. It was in my opinion an extremely well done thing, and more likely, as far as it went, if not to be extremely popular, at least to be received without cavil than anything he had written. If there is a very favorable review in The Athenaeum ... it may tend to disarm the critics, and partly influence opinion of his larger ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... removed from its character as the diabolical confederate of the prisoner; but if it escaped into a crack or crevice of the apartment, as spiders often do when assailed, all doubt of its guilty connection with the person accused of witchcraft was removed: it was set down as, beyond question or cavil, her veritable imp; and the evidence of her confederacy with Satan was thenceforward regarded as complete. The books of law and other learned writings, as well as the practice of courts in the old countries, recognized this doctrine of transformation into the shapes ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... escorting a very pretty woman. He thinks it adds to his prestige. Whereas, in point of fact, his fellow-men are saying merely "Who's that appalling fellow with her?" or "Why does she go about with that ass So-and-So?" Such cavil may in part be envy. But it is a fact that no man, howsoever graced, can shine in juxtaposition to a very pretty woman. The Duke himself cut a poor figure beside Zuleika. Yet not one of all the undergraduates felt she could ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... been on this occasion at first, seem now little affected by it. Those who are too much familiarized with scenes of wretchedness, as well as those to whom they are unknown, are not often very susceptible; and I am sometimes disposed to cavil with our natures, that the sufferings which ought to excite our benevolence, and the prosperity that enables us to relieve them, should ever have a contrary effect. Yet this is so true, that I have scarcely ever observed even the poor considerate ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... it over to an outsider, there's nothing they can cavil at. Let 'em try to make a row later, and try to dispute good ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... startled at the peculiar character of his employer, and in a way slightly disgusted, but he was not in a position to cavil or feel squeamish over apparent lack of honesty, and resolved ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... some babblers who, though ignorant of all mathematics, take upon them to judge of these things, and dare to blame and cavil at my work, because of some passage of Scripture which they have wrested to their own purpose, I regard them not, and will not scruple to hold their judgment ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... implicit assent. It does not pretend to be divine; it is human, but the Church has hallowed it, and the Church ever acts under the influence of the Divine Spirit. St. Athanasius was by far the greatest man that ever existed. If you cavil at his creed, you will soon cavil at other symbols. I was prepared for infidelity in London, but I confess, my dear Ferrars, you alarm me. I was in hopes that your early education would have ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... of his plans, he will allow responsible concerns to carry them into practice under such limitations as may be necessary to sustain the basic object, but without any payment to him except for the actual expense incurred. The hypercritical may cavil and say that, as a manufacturer of cement, Edison will be benefited. True, but as ANY good Portland cement can be used, and no restrictions as to source of supply are enforced, he, or rather his company, will be merely one of ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... interminable speakers, they make excellent lawyers, and know how to spin out a case or involve it in a labyrinth of figures of speech. Mungo Park, who frequently heard these special pleaders, says that in the forensic qualifications of procrastination and cavil, and the arts of confounding and perplexing a cause, they are not easily surpassed by the ablest pleaders in Europe. The following may serve as an example of their talent:—An ass had got loose and broken ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... such command has beauty if united with sense and virtue. In Miss Milner it was so united. Yet let not our over-scrupulous readers be misled, and extend their idea of her virtue so as to magnify it beyond that which frail mortals commonly possess; nor must they cavil, if, on a nearer view, they find it less—but let them consider, that if she had more faults than generally belong to others, she had ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... be distinguished from each other, and of the same name. The improbability becomes by this means doubled: but when once we have lent ourselves to the first, which certainly borders on the incredible, we shall not perhaps be disposed to cavil at the second; and if the spectator is to be entertained by mere perplexities they cannot be too much varied. In such pieces we must, to give to the senses at least an appearance of truth, always pre-suppose that ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... point out methods for initiating young people in the rudiments of knowledge, and of giving them a clear and distinct view of those principles upon which they are founded. No preceptor, who has had experience, will cavil at the superficial knowledge of a boy of twelve or thirteen upon these subjects; he will perceive, that the general view, which we wish to give our pupils of the useful arts and sciences, must certainly ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... Lessing's words, but cavil at your interpretation of them. His reverence for Beauty embraced not merely physical and material types, but that nobler, grander beauty which centres in pure ethics and ontology; and a religion that seeks no ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... beyond cavil, unless the attempt to explain scientifically how any designed result is ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... discovered it. He brought in a cigarette, left the door open behind him and stood smiling down at her with the peculiarly complacent look that characterizes a married man of forty when he finds himself dressed beyond cavil in the complete evening harness of civilization, ten minutes before ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and that this production is therefore illegitimate. Indeed, if labor is the sole basis of property, I cease to be proprietor of my field as soon as I receive rent for it from another. This we have shown beyond all cavil. It is the same with all capital; so that to put capital in an enterprise, is, by the law's decision, to exchange it for an equivalent sum in products. I will not enter again upon this now useless discussion, since I propose, in the following chapter, to exhaust ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... the girth. Upon it was printed in golden letters the legend, 'Pro libertate et religione nostra.' These horse-soldiers were made up of yeomen's and farmers' sons, unused to discipline, and having a high regard for themselves as volunteers, which caused them to cavil and argue over every order. For this cause, though not wanting in natural courage, they did little service during the war, and were a hindrance rather than a help ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to cavil, only other folks will, and he may bring all the lambs of Jacob Behmen about his ears. However, I hope he will bring it to a conclusion, though Milton ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of the Dismal Swamp is to become the great centre of attraction there can be no reasonable doubt. Recent demonstrations in that direction go to prove beyond cavil the fact. The visit of John Boyle O'Reilly, editor of the Boston Herald, Mr. Mosely, of Washington, and several other distinguished persons, go to prove the fact. Contiguous as it is to the celebrated Magnolia ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... and nerves have been laid bare for months, to quiver with agony and respond with headlong violence, when imperilled character, property and life, hang upon the fiat of his courageous promptitude? The doubters may cavil over the philosophy, but I think I may remain content with the fact. I did my duty—dreadful ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... knowledge.[163] Devoting all work to me, with (thy) mind directed to self, engage in battle, without desire, without affection and with thy (heart's) weakness dispelled.[164] Those men who always follow this opinion of mine with faith and without cavil attain to final emancipation even by work. But they who cavil at and do not follow this opinion of mine, know, that, bereft of all knowledge and without discrimination, they are ruined. Even a wise man acts according to his own nature. All living beings follow (their own) nature. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is mad." Festus said with a loud voice, "Paul, thou art beside thyself." And Nordau shouts in a voice more heady than that of Pilate, more throaty than that of Festus, "Mad—Whitman was—mad beyond the cavil of a doubt!" ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... VI. claimed to rule his ancient kingdom, and whose portraits still frown grimly upon the walls of the gallery of Holyrood. Now Oldbuck, a shrewd and suspicious man, and no respecter of divine hereditary right, was apt to cavil at this sacred list, and to affirm, that the procession of the posterity of Fergus through the pages of Scottish history, was as vain and unsubstantial as the gleamy pageant of the descendants of Banquo through the cavern ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... lily, solemn, carol, very, spirit, coral, borough, manor, tenant, minute, honor, punish, clamor, blemish, limit, comet, pumice, chapel, leper, triple, copy, habit, rebel, tribute, probate, heifer, profit, cavil, revel, drivel, novel, hovel, city, pity, british, critic, madam, credit, idiom, body, study, tacit, licit, hazard, ezad, lizard, closet, bosom, vicar, liquor, liquid, ...
— A Minniature ov Inglish Orthoggraphy • James Elphinston
... Ritner! her "Friends" at thy warning shall stand Erect for the truth, like their ancestral band; Forgetting the feuds and the strife of past time, Counting coldness injustice, and silence a crime; Turning back front the cavil of creeds, to unite Once again for the poor in defence of the Right; Breasting calmly, but firmly, the full tide of Wrong, Overwhelmed, but not borne on its surges along; Unappalled by the danger, the shame, and the pain, And counting ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... vagaries," had been the "evil genius" of the Bible cause and of himself. The incident did no good to the already bickering relations between Borrow and the Rev. A. Brandram, the Secretary. Evidently Borrow's character jarred upon Brandram, who took revenge by a tone of facetious cavil and several criticisms upon Borrow's ways, upon his confident masculine tone, for example, his "passionate" prayer, and his confession of superstitious obedience to an ominous dream. Brandram even took the trouble to remind Borrow that when it came to distribution ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... to satisfy men who had just come out of the Acordada. There was cold mutton, ham, and venison, maize bread, and "guesas de Guatemala," with a variety of fruit to follow. Verily a supper at which even a gourmand might not cavil; though it was but the debris of a dinner, which seemed to have been partaken of by a ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... "Beyond a cavil; as may be seen by divers particulars in his outward conformation, viz: in the shape of the head, the muscles of the arms and of the legs, the air and gait, besides sundry other signs, that are familiar ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... [T: Nor, to obey.] [W: me. Remord] Of these two emendations, I believe, Theobald's will have the greater number of suffrages; it has at least mine. The objection against the propriety of the declaration in Iago is a cavil; he does not say that he has no principle of remorse, but that it shall not operate against Othello's commands. To obey shall be in me, for I will obey you, is a mode of expression not worth the pains here taken to introduce it; and the word remords has not in the quotation the meaning ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Buonaparte excel. It was the avowed purpose of the institution to make its pupils pious Roman Catholics. The parish priest at Brienne had administered the sacraments to a number of the boys, including the young Corsican, who appears to have submitted without cavil to the severe religious training of the Paris school: chapel with mass at half-past six in the morning, grace before and after all meals, and chapel again a quarter before nine in the evening; on holidays, catechism for new students; Sundays, catechism and high mass, and vespers with ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... not at all times satisfy my soul, which thirsted for knowledge, though she never failed to calm it; for I stood firm in the faith, and all she could tell me of God's revelation to man I accepted gladly, without doubt or cavil. She had taught us that faith and knowledge are things apart, and I felt that there could be no more peace for my soul if I suffered knowledge ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... became at length an indisputable authority for the price of cats throughout all Italy. As often as Milord committed a new assassination, and the attempt was made to extort from us more than two pauls as the price of blood, we drew this document from our pocket, and proved beyond a cavil that two pauls was what we were accustomed to pay on such occasions, and obstinate indeed must have been the man or woman who did not yield to such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... guilty of such a heinous offense; but I could never make out a legal justification of my course, nor has it ever been done, sir, until you, on the floor of Congress, at the late session, established it beyond the possibility of cavil or doubt. I thank you, sir, for that speech. It has relieved my mind from the only circumstance that rested painfully upon it. Throughout my whole life I never performed an official act which I viewed as a violation of the Constitution of my ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... fresh look into my carpet-bags, mainly (I understand) for Tobacco! When any tide-waiter finds more of that about me than the chronic ill breeding of traveling smokers compels me to carry in my clothes, he is welcome to confiscate all I possess. But they found nothing here to cavil at, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... part of the seventeenth century, and one of the leaves in that roll contained a contemporary and authenticated official return of the royal furniture lost by the blowing up of the King's residence. Among other items, this leaf proved, beyond the possibility of further cavil, that the bed which stood in Darnley's room was, up to the time of his death, unchanged, and was not, as alleged by Mary's enemies, an old and worthless piece of furniture, but, on the contrary, was "a bed of violet velvet, with double hangings, braided ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... the craft of a woman and a light o' love. But me-thinks the answer to that is, that the instruments whereby it may please Heaven to work out its purposes are not of our choosing, but of Heaven's; and those that cavil may recall, to their own abashment, how one that was of the same way of life as our Vittoria was permitted by celestial grace to be a minister unto holiness. I will not venture to say that Monna Vittoria did that which she did do with any very conscious thought ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the other hand, when he desired a piece of legislation or an important administrative novelty, he preferred that it should be backed up by the sanction, or promoted by the apparently spontaneous action, of the Senate. It then bore a better appearance, and was less open to cavil. The people are no longer consulted at all in such matters. They have no say in them, for they have neither plebiscite nor ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... most rigid economists will not cavil at the latest addition to our financial burdens. The PENSIONS MINISTER announced an addition of close on two millions a year to the annual charge. The increase is chiefly for a much-needed improvement in the allowances made to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... illogical, of course, and very absurd. If we can accept the four words, why not accept all six? If we credit the head of the text, why cavil at the tail? Sometimes the absurdity of such irrational behavior will break upon a man and set him laughing at his own stupidity. Mr. Spurgeon had some such experience. 'Gentlemen,' he said, one Friday afternoon, in an address to his students, 'Gentlemen, ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... tasted such soups, such sauce, such delicate and suggestive flavors. My entire existence has been revolutionized by the experience. I am no longer the lonely and unhappy man you discovered at this gate a short month ago. I can not cavil at an America that furnishes me with such food as I get in ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... To the ingenious mind of Fournier an elaborate one occurred. If he could perform it, not only would his hypothesis be established and confirmed beyond all cavil, but a, field of scientific research also be opened such as was yet undreamed of. However, for this experiment subjects were needed. Brutes, beasts of the field? Not so: that were easy to achieve. Human beings, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... edited by Edward Arber. On Montague Road, Birmingham, England, 1884. Capt. Smith's account of the settling of Jamestown and the struggle of the colonists there was for many years accepted without cavil by historians. His story of his own heroism and of the wickedness of his colleagues has been embodied in almost every American school history. Mr. Charles Dean, in 1860, was the first to question Smith's veracity, and since that date many historians have taken the ground that his works ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... establishing his supremacy beyond cavil, should have satisfied the King, especially as this was not the mating season and there could be no question of rivalry. But his heart was bursting with injury, and his thirst for vengeance was raging to be glutted. As the vanquished bulls struggled to recover ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... scrupled to leave these remarks to cavil or to sarcasm, because this fiction is probably the last with which I shall trespass upon the Public, and I am desirous that it shall contain, at least, my avowal of the principles upon which it and its later predecessors have been composed. You know ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the great evil of having in a formulary of worship too many things that have to be laboriously explained, it might be well if in the Litany the adjective "sudden," which ever since Hooker's day has given perpetual occasion for cavil, were to yield to "untimely," or some like word more suggestive than "sudden" of the thought clumsily expressed in the "Chapel Liturgy" by the awkward phrase, "death ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... a Trojan picnic depends for its success to quite a peculiar degree upon the weather. But on the day of the Admiral's merry-making, this was, beyond cavil, kind. Four boats started from the Town Quay; four boats—alas!—could by this time contain the cumeelfo of Troy; for everybody who was anybody had been invited, and nobody (with the exception of the Honourable Frederic, who could not leave his telescope) had refused. Sam Buzza did not start ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... second point of the discussion, the agents and surveyors of both parties proceeded as a matter of course to the point marked in 1798 as the source of the St. Croix.[44] This point is therefore fixed and established beyond the possibility of cavil, and the faith of both Governments is pledged that it ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... the word of God. Men don't believe in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but we have it sealed in the New Testament. "As, it was in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah." They don't believe in Lot's wife, but He says, "Remember Lot's wife." So there is not a thing that men to-day cavil at but the Son of God indorses. They don't believe, in the swallowing of Jonah. They say it is impossible that a whale could swallow Jonah—its throat is too small. They forget that the whale was prepared for Jonah; as the colored woman said, "Why, God could prepare a man to swallow ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... know The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel, Where lie those happier hills and meadows low; Ah! if beyond the spirit's inmost cavil Aught of that country could we surely know, Who would ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... questionable narratives—proof that an event may have happened is evidence that it did happen—is to be accepted, surely Hasisadra's story is "confirmed by modern scientific investigation" beyond all cavil. However, it may be well to pause before adopting this conclusion, because the original story, of which I have set forth only the broad outlines, contains a great many statements which rest upon just the same foundation as those cited, and yet are hardly likely to meet with general acceptance. ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... periodicals—there is not to this day a book on Shakespeare by a Norwegian—contain not a single contribution to Shakespearean criticism till 1880, when a church paper, Luthersk Ugeskrift[11] published an article which proved beyond cavil that Shakespeare is good and safe reading for Lutheran Christians. The writer admits that Shakespeare probably had several irregular love-affairs both before and after marriage, but as he grew older his heart turned to the comforts of religion, and in his ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... favour of the rightness of what was most pleasant, and that the onus of proving that it was not right lay with those who disputed its being so. I have said more than once that he believed in his own depravity; never was there a little mortal more ready to accept without cavil whatever he was told by those who were in authority over him: he thought, at least, that he believed it, for as yet he knew nothing of that other Ernest that dwelt within him, and was so much stronger and more real than the Ernest of ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... now started for the first time, I dare say, to the amazement of the reader, as to the amazement of everybody, that Tacitus is, and has been, for century after century, wrongly accredited with the authorship of the Annals. It is to dispel all cavil about this, that I have examined the History and the Annals from every imaginable point of view, so as to enable the reader to see the two works as clearly as they can be seen—not that the reader has seen them as clearly as objects ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... being indeed an elaborate but puerile fiction basely invented by a baffled enemy with the object of discrediting our enlightened army in the eyes of neutral Powers. Any of these was good enough, but what now appears is better. Exact measurements have since demonstrated beyond all question of cavil that Rheims Cathedral had been built with mathematical accuracy to shield our contemptible enemy's trenches around Chalons from our best gun positions outside Laon. This act of treachery proves that, instead of Germany being the aggressor, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... or, according to others, in a broader set form of speech, "the devil in hell," that is, the "devil of a devil," or in scriptural phraseology, the "great red dragon," the "Devil or Satan." But we shall not cavil on this mighty potentate's name; much less dispute his identity, notwithstanding the doubt that has been broached, whether the said devil be a real or an imaginary personage, in the shape, form, and with the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... who dwelt in the Provinces would be ever grateful to their preserver for the result. They had no eyes for the picture which the Spanish party painted of an imaginary triumph of De Thermos and its effects. However the envious might cavil, now that the blow had been struck, the popular heart remained warm as ever, and refused to throw down the idol which had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... those who were concerned in them, in the order in which the several events took place. The remaining facts, which the succeeding books will set forth, we will, as far as our talent permits, explain with the greatest accuracy, without fearing those who may be inclined to cavil at our work as too long; for brevity is only to be praised when, while it puts an end to unseasonable delays, it suppresses ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... no pedant that I should cavil at Mr. JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY'S re-adjustment of history. It was all for our delight that Claude Duval, instead of perishing on the scaffold, should escape from prison, have his freedom confirmed by the KING'S pardon, confound everybody else's knavish tricks and marry the lady of his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... that for some time past it has been the practice riot to use the word "pauper" in official documents when it was possible to use another expression; and no well-conditioned person will cavil at the spirit which has prompted the use of a less invidious substitute. But surely the process might be carried a good deal further. The practice of giving a dog a bad name is not only condemned by the proverbial philosophy of the ancients but by the most emancipated of the orthopsychical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... seems to dictate that we should still stand aloof, and maintain our present attitude, if not until Mexico itself, or one of the great foreign powers, shall recognize the independence of the new Government, at least until the lapse of time or the course of events shall have proved, beyond cavil or dispute, the ability of the people of that country to maintain their separate sovereignty, and to uphold the Government constituted by them. Neither of the contending parties can justly complain of this course. By pursuing it, we are but carrying out the long-established ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... and denunciation of war seemed more consistent with the dignity of the Roman people, both before and now, especially when Saguntum was destroyed, than to cavil in words about the obligation of treaties. For if it was a subject for a controversy of words, in what was the treaty of Hasdrubal to be compared with the former treaty of Lutatius, which was altered? Since in the treaty of Lutatius, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... that you know so well, in pitting her wits against the brains of the mighty; perhaps she has a cynic soul that finds a savage joy in running down the faults of the seemingly faultless—running them to earth and taking her profit therefrom. Who are you, Marcus Gard, to cavil at the lust of conquest—to sneer at the controlling ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... word-use fits and fixes so that still Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain Innominate as first, yet, free again, Is no less recognized the absolute Fact underlying that same other fact Concerning which no cavil can dispute Our nomenclature when we call it "Mind"— Something not Matter)—"Soul," who seeks shall find Distinct beneath that something. You exact An illustrative image? ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... every day. The first night at Argeles was spent without it, but on the evening of the following day a packet was brought into the drawing-room, where we were assembled, and at the magical word "bread" every eye brightened, and every face relaxed into a smile. Let no one cavil. This was one of the episodes that link Argeles to us with ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... is futile to cavil or carp At Sir ALFRED, whose surname is SHARPE; For he soothes us or stings As the nightingale sings, Or as angels perform on ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... miracle on me wrought, in the streets I would straight make known: "When this marvel of mine is heard, without cavil shall men receive Any legend of haloed saint, staring up through the sealed stone!" So I spake in the trodden ways; but ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... That the Americans would cavil at portions of the first part of my work, I was fully convinced, and as there are many observations quite new to most of them, they are by them considered to be false; but the United States, as I have before observed, comprehend an immense extent of territory, with a population ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... truth, called for more detailed and dogmatic teaching than had at first been needed. [Sidenote: Dwells on our Lord's Divinity,] Hence in place of an account of our Lord's Human Birth, St. John sets forth His Eternal Godhead and wonderful Incarnation, leaving no space for unbelief or cavil, when he proclaims for the instruction of the Church, that "the Word was God," and yet that He also "was made Flesh." [Sidenote: and on the two Sacraments.] Again, the last Gospel does not bring before us the Institution of the two great Sacraments of the ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... chauffeur, neither is he who minds and cares for the engine; he is a mecanicien and nothing else—in France and elsewhere. We needed a word for the individual who busies himself with, or drives an automobile, and so we have adapted the word chauffeur. Purists may cavil, but nevertheless the word is better than driver, or motor-man (which is the quintessence of ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... needna cast up what ye did. I never asked you, onyway. Ye ken you and Wat hauled me awa' wi' you against my wull,' said Liz rather angrily, being in a mood to cavil at trifles. 'I kent hoo it wad be, but I'll tak' jolly guid care ye dinna get anither chance o' castin' up onything ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Preservative had given them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company, were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm up and spill their ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... peach, what the cob is to the kernels on an ear of Indian corn. Once more: Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant, with all his knowledge and valuable qualities, and will "cavil on the ninth part of a hair," if it will give him a chance to show ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cynic's scoff, is in the eye of the beholder, or in an angle of vision—mere product of lime-light, point of view, desire—but Beulah Sands's was beauty beyond cavil, superior to all analysis, as definite as the evening star against the twilight sky. In height medium, girlish, but with a figure maturely modelled, charmingly full and rounded, yet by very perfection ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... used to say, "I have been in many situations of fear and danger in the course of my life, but never did I pray with so much agony before or since; for then, as now, it was clear beyond a cavil that I had actually beheld the phantom ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... no woman can feel it an outrage that a man should avow his longing. And she pitied Bower with a great pity. Deep down in her heart was a suspicion that they might have been happy together had they met sooner. She would never have loved him,—she knew that now beyond cavil,—but if they were married she must have striven to make life pleasant for him, while she drifted down the smooth stream of existence free from either ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... with your argument, and establish it beyound cavil that he is a mere imitator with an appearance of genius. The concise grand style of the eighteenth century is lacking; you show that the author substitutes events for sentiments. Action and stir is not life; he gives you pictures, but ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... 1451 millions by eighteen years, it appears that 80 millions a year was raised; and, taking the legitimate expenditure of the country, during those eighteen years, at an average of 45 millions a-year, a sum so high as to preclude all cavil, it appears that the country raised and expended eighteen times the difference between 45 and 80 millions, that is 630 millions; notwithstanding which expenditure, let it be observed, the country got richer and richer every ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... the eunuchs scurrying back. There was a wish to split up the party for a few minutes so that no one would know what the others were doing. I knew I should immensely annoy the eunuchs by going towards the women's quarters. Well, I would not cavil.... ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... think it should not. But really people are very foolish to cavil over such matters. If I might have my way, I would pay no attention to them. I would go my way, do as I please and let such people think as ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... because her husband's pride did not choose that she should accept a gift; or watched the children's coloured shoes thrown on the fire, with no money in her purse to get new ones; or listened to her husband's cavil at the too frequent arrival of his children; or heard the firing of his pistol-shots at the out-house doors, the necessary vent of a passion not to be wreaked in words. She was patient, brave, lonely, and silent. But Mr. Wemyss Reid, who has had unexampled ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... and a constant fraternal familiarity; the which, at once for your honour and service and for mine own, is, certes, most pleasing to me. Lest, however, for overlong usance aught should grow thereof that might issue in tediousness, and that none may avail to cavil at our overlong tarriance,—each of us, moreover, having had his or her share of the honour that yet resideth in myself,—I hold it meet, an it be your pleasure, that we now return whence we came; more by token that, if you consider aright, our ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... knew enough already, personally or by questions easily answered in every quarter, to supply any links which were wanting in the rapid explanations of the legate. Nevertheless, that nothing might remain liable to misapprehension or cavil, a short manifesto was this night circulated by the new government, from which the following facts ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... but we find by our woeful experience, that to subtle wits it is a cause of much more contention and variance, and scarce any conveyance so accurately penned by one, which another will not find a crack in, or cavil at; if any one word be misplaced, any little error, all is disannulled. That which is a law today, is none tomorrow; that which is sound in one man's opinion, is most faulty to another; that in conclusion, here is nothing amongst us but contention and confusion, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... I'll give thrice so much land Away to any well-deserving friend; But in the way of bargain, mark ye me, I'll cavil on the ninth part ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... the right course would steer, Know well each ancient's proper character, His fable subject scope in every page, Religion, country, genius of his age Without all these at once before your eyes, Cavil you may, but never criticise. Be Homers works your study and delight, Read them by day and meditate by night, Thence form your judgment thence your maxims bring And trace the muses upward to their spring. Still with itself compared, his text peruse, And ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... blood, took away all semblance of overweight; his saddle was well fitting and well placed, as also was his large and broad-reined snaffle; his own costume of black coat, leathers, and tops was in perfect keeping, and even to his heavy-handled hunting-whip I could find nothing to cavil at. As he rode up he paid his respects to the ladies in his usual free and easy manner, expressed some surprise, but no regret, at hearing that he was late, and never deigning any notice of Matthew or myself, took his place beside ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... West Indies," &c., &c., and many of the publications of the Hakluyt Society, some idea may be formed of the magnitude of the undertaking. I trust the notes and illustrations I have appended may prove useful to students and ordinary readers; I can assure any who may be disposed to cavil at their brevity that many a line has cost me hours of research. In conclusion, a short account of the previous editions of Hakluyt's Voyages may be ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... upon the habits of these poor innocent vegetarians. The new word, however, is likely to find considerable extension, and if any provider for the public maw should choose hereafter to call his dining-saloon a Carnivorium, none would have a right to cavil at him on ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... of successful people, to cavil because his success was not more complete. How the time was wasting here in this uncomfortable interlude! Why could he not have discovered Leander's whereabouts earlier, and by now be jogging along the road home with the boy by his side? Why had he not bethought himself of the ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... fervor of an ancient crusader; his eye on heaven, his steps turned towards the Holy Sepulchre, for a chance to go; a time and place to die, HIS was a distinct and marked patriotism; quite alone in "splendid isolation" but shining like the sun; unstreaked with doubt; unmixed with cavil or question, which, finally given reign on many a spot of strife in "Sunny France"; the Stars and Stripes above him; a prayer in his heart; a song upon his lips, spelt death, but death glorious; where he ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... unnatural in the poetry of the ancients as in that of John Milton. The charge appears very plausible and damaging at first sight. We notice it in order to exhibit De Quincey's marvellous sagacity in detecting the true relation of things: he utterly dissipated the force of the cavil by simply stating the actual bearings of the two classes of poetry. Ancient poetry was darkly austere and practical; the imagination was fettered by a grim austerity; the merely passionate—that which proceeds ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... affection and regard be, in reality, gratitude, not self-love, yet a distinction, even of this obvious nature, may not readily be made by superficial reasoners; and there is room, at least, to support the cavil and dispute for a moment. But as qualities, which tend only to the utility of their possessor, without any reference to us, or to the community, are yet esteemed and valued; by what theory or system can we account for this sentiment from self-love, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... jxeti, (metal) fandi. castle : kastelo. catch : kapti. caterpillar : rauxpo. cathedral : katedralo. cattle : bruto, brutoj. cauliflower : florbrasiko. cause : kauxz'i, -o; -igi; afero. caution : averti; singardemo. cave : kaverno. cavil : cxikani. caw : graki. ceiling : plafono. celebrate : festi, soleni, celery : celerio. cell : cxelo, cxambreto. cellar : kelo. censor : cenzuristo. censure : riprocxi. ceremony : ceremonio, soleno. certain : certa; kelkaj; ia. chaff : grenventumajxo. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... you, helping you to preserve safely that which in the gracious years of youth spring-time and love with exquisite throes bred in your unconscious heart, that you may store and treasure it, and it may not be lost!"—"But who—" Walther asks, inclined to cavil where anything is concerned which relates to the master-singers, "Who created these rules which stand in such high honour?"—"They were sorely-needy masters," Sachs in his moved tones continues the charming lesson, "spirits heavily weighted with the weariness ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... with this country. Its Minister is in London—a man honourable by family, as you know, in America, his father and his grandfather having held the office of President of the Republic. You have your own Minister just returned to Washington. Is this hypocrisy? Are you, because you can cavil at certain things which the North, the United States Government, has done or has not done, are you eagerly to throw the influence of your opinion into a movement which is to ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... in the town, and wherever by him there was a Diabolonian found, they were forced to feel the weight of his heavy hand, and also the edge of his penetrating sword: many therefore of the Diabolonians he wounded, as the Lord Cavil, the Lord Brisk, the Lord Pragmatic, and the Lord Murmur; several also of the meaner sort he did sorely maim; though there cannot at this time an account be given you of any that he slew outright. The cause, or rather the advantage that my Lord Willbewill had at this time to do thus, ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... castaway wine-pots. Ye gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed, Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in? What do I think of the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars. Well, but St. Peter's? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture! No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum. Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement, This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea? Yet of solidity much, but of splendor little is extant: "Brickwork I found thee, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... is inclined to under-estimate the imagination. Men cavil at castle-building. The pragmatist jeers at reveries. Men believe in stores, and goods in them; in factories, and wealth by them; men believe in houses and horses, but not in ideals. Nevertheless, thoughts and dreams are the stuff out of which towns and cities are builded. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... invidious reservations. It is not as if some Apelles had picked out here a lip—and there a chin—out of the collected ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. It is a symmetrical whole. We challenge the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or parcel of the countenance in question; to say that this, or that, is improperly placed. We are convinced that true ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true beauty, is the result of harmony. Like ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... officially proclaimed himself Protector in the year 679 B.C., which is one of the fixed dates in Chinese history about which there is no cavil or doubt, He soon found himself embroiled in war with the Tartars, who were raiding both the state to his north in the Peking plain, and also the minor state, south of the Yellow River, that his predecessor has protected specially in 688. This was the state of Wei (imperial clan), ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... capable of having raised twenty millions of people to a level of thought where they can appreciate this cardinal truth, and can believe no sacrifice too great for its defence and establishment, then democracy will have vindicated itself beyond all chance of future cavil. Here, we think, is a Cause the experience of whose vicissitudes and the grandeur of whose triumph will be able to give us heroes and statesmen. The Slave-Power must be humbled, must be punished,—so humbled and so punished as to be a warning forever; but Slavery is an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... party has borne the brunt, and accomplished the appointed evolutions of progress; and the Republican party has deserved well of the American people, of history and of humanity. And the children and grandchildren of those who to-day cavil, defile and stone the party, they hereafter will bless the Republican party, who, with noble consciousness can say to the spirit of light and of duty: Nunc dimitte in ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... title sound? You know that people, the Miamies, well. Long ere the white man tripped his anchors cold, To cast them by the glowing western isles, They lived upon these lands in peace, and none Dared cavil at their claim. We bought from them, For such equivalent to largess joined, That every man was hampered with our goods, And stumbled on profusion. But give ear! Jealous lest aught might fail of honesty— Lest one lean interest or poor shade of right Should point at us—we made the ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... seen on both sides alike. Her nose was perfect;—not Grecian, nor Roman, nor Egyptian,—but simply English, only just not retrousse. There were those who said her mouth was a thought too wide, and her teeth too perfect,—but they were of that class of critics to whom it is a necessity to cavil rather than to kiss. Added to all this there was a childishness of manner about her of which, though she herself was somewhat ashamed, all others were enamoured. It was not the childishness of very youthful years,—for she had already reached the mature age of twenty-one; but the half-doubting, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... published in a French translation, a Parisian critic—I am almost certain it was M. Gustave Kahn in the "Gil Blas"—giving me a short notice, summed up his rapid impression of the writer's quality in the words un puissant reveur. So be it! Who could cavil at the words of a friendly reader? Yet perhaps not such an unconditional dreamer as all that. I will make bold to say that neither at sea nor ashore have I ever lost the sense of responsibility. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... seems by no means just; and besides, a later act, that which repealed the triennial law, had determined, that it was necessary to hold parliaments only once in three years. Such weight, however was put on this cavil, that Buckingham, Shaftesbury, Salisbury, and Wharton, insisted strenuously in the house of peers on the invalidity of the parliament, and the nullity of all its future acts. For such dangerous positions they were sent to the Tower, there to remain during ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... which her future would be cast. It was possible they would find her an apt pupil. Of this they could not complain, that she was untravelled; for she had ridden a horse, bareback, half across the continent. They could not cavil at her education, for she knew several languages—aboriginal languages—of the North. She had merely to learn the dialect of English society, and how to carry with acceptable form the costumes of the race to which she was going. Her own costume was picturesque, but it might appear unusual in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... belonged. The writer, while he knew how much of what he had done was purely accidental, felt the reproach to be one that, in a measure, was just. As the only atonement in his power, he determined to inflict a second book, whose subject should admit of no cavil, not only on the world, but on himself. He chose patriotism for his theme; and to those who read this introduction and the book itself, it is scarcely necessary to add, that he took the hero of the anecdote just related as the best ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... alike positivistic could for the time being find it sweet to wash its hands among the innocent, to love the beauty of the Lord's house, and to praise him for ever and ever. It was agreed and settled beyond cavil that God loved his people and continually blessed them, and yet in the world of men tribulation after tribulation did not cease to fall upon them. There was no issue but to assert (what so chastened a spirit could now understand) that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the argumentative passages I learned that somehow (I knew not how) children could be produced or not produced as desired; and in this stage of the matter it seemed to me so admirable that it should be so that I wondered why there should be cavil. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Hayden with the gallantry expected of him. This Venus Victrix was not so critical as to cavil at the manifest effort in his tones. Let it be forced or spontaneous, a compliment ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... high renown, (the late Dr. Johnson,) who has severely scrutinized the epitaphs of Pope, might cavil in this sublime inscription at the words "repair to Maru," since the reader must already be at Maru before he could peruse ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
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