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More "Refutation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must have some sort of background; and the Letters on the Study of History (1735) was doubtless intended to supply it. Experience is to be the test of truth, since history is philosophy teaching by example. But Bolingbroke's own argument supplies its refutation. His history is an arbitrary selection of instances intended to illustrate the particular ideas which happened to be uppermost in his mind. The Roman consuls were chosen by annual election; whence it is clear that England should have, if not an annual, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... will is a definite physical energy, which can be registered by means of a scale or balance, may appear so incredible that the bare statement of the case would seem to carry with it its own refutation! Yet I firmly believe that this is a fact; that the energy of the will may be registered by means of an instrument I am about to describe; and that any one can prove this,—any one, i.e., who cares to take the time to repeat these ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... sternness in his mild blue eyes as he cast them upon his mother. Those beautiful eyes—the very counterpart of Barbara's, both his and hers the counterpart of Mrs. Hare's. The look had been sufficient refutation without words. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... an example of unanswerable refutation. To show why a man has not one rib less than a woman, it is stated that imperfections are not hereditary; as in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... which, as she understood, he entertained of all female intellect. Being but little inclined, were he even able, to sustain such a heresy, against one who was in her own person such an irresistible refutation of it, Lord Byron had no other refuge from the fair orator's arguments than in assent and silence; and this well-bred deference being, in a sensible woman's eyes, equivalent to concession, they became, from thenceforward, most cordial friends. In recalling some recollections ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... she did reach. That was concerning Bruce. Her first impulse was to go to him and tell him all, in triumphant refutation of his ideas concerning woman in general, and her futility in particular. But as she realized that she was not at the end of her fight, but only at a better-informed beginning, she saw that the day of her triumph over him, if ever ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... regarded as a complete refutation of the position taken by Hume, to wit, that the idea of nature eternally existing in a state of order, without a cause other than the eternally inherent laws of nature, is no more self-contradictory than the idea of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... newspaper writer attacks views which are not acceptable to him, not with argument, or satire, or wit, or direct refutation, but by metaphorically emptying slops, and directing whirlwinds of bad smells upon their supporters. The intention seems to be, not to confute the arguments, but to disgust the advocates. The proceeding is a confession that the views are so evidently correct that they ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... a vindication, a refutation and an apology. It takes up a goodly list of zealous calumniators and cheerful prevaricators and tacks their pelts on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... of the owner's study Lucretia stood forth triumphant; neither the Chestnut nor anything else in the race could beat her. And Jockey McKay—Porter raised his eyes involuntarily, seeking for some occult refutation of the implied dishonesty of the boy he had trusted. He found himself gazing straight into the small shifty eyes of Lucretia's midget rider, and such a hungry, wolfish look of mingled cunning and cupidity was there that Porter ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... reasons, and wherefore that which is now thought cannot be sound? Christ urged it as wherewith to justify himself, that he preached in public; yet writing is more public than preaching; and more easy to refutation, if need be, there being so many whose business and profession merely it is to be the champions of truth; which if they neglect, what can be imputed but their ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... wrong. The ancient legend of the direct creation of man according to a pre-conceived plan and the empty phrases about "design" in the organism are completely shattered by them. It would be difficult to conceive a more thorough refutation of teleology than is furnished by the fact that all the higher animals ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... beautiful, aren't they?" he said, as he laid them in her lap. "Will it surprise you to learn that flowers are a passion with me, and that I am a living refutation of the fallacy that 'there can be nothing very wrong about a man who can cultivate ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... that, in the effect wrought, elude all the senses equally. For the sake of this, their prime office, the rest is many times forgotten or scorned, the tune is disordered and havoc played with the lineaments of the picture, because without these the word can still do its business. The refutation of those critics who, in their analysis of the power of literature, make much of music and picture, is contained in the most moving passages that have found utterance from man. Consider the intensity of a saying like that of St. Paul:- ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... discovery of persuasives (whether ethical, pathetical, or argumentative), arrangement, diction, memory, delivery. And the speech itself consists of six parts: introduction, statement of the case, division of the subject, proof, refutation, and conclusion. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... idea to keep all its other thoughts in harmony therewith. (8) Our opponents are thus driven to admit, in support of their fiction, the absurdities which I have just enumerated; and which are not worthy of rational refutation. ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... 23—'of this Godhead in itself he alone is not imbecile—he alone is not impious who propounds nothing. A man who thus conclusively convicts himself of imbecility and impiety needs no further refutation.' Now the sentence, as I wrote it, and as I find it printed on that very page which the critic refers to and which must have been lying before him while he quoted my words, runs thus:—'Of this Godhead, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... stubbornly at Aaron for a moment, but the doubt that had begun to assert itself in his mind clamored for proof or refutation. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... being scattered broad-cast by the anti-Christian press, in the name and guise of popular science. It is therein that the evil consists. For the discerning reader sees in the book itself, its own best refutation. The pretensions of Haeckel's "consistent and monistic theory of the eternal cosmogenetic process" are best met by pointing to the fact that its most highly accredited and notorious representative has given to the world in exposition and defense of pure Darwinian philosophy, ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... that determined his resolution; and having once already suffered in the cause of liberty, he did not find himself to be disposed to be twice its martyr." I should not have thought these words worthy of refutation had they not been backed by Mr. Forsyth. How did Cicero show his fear? Had he feared—as indeed there was cause enough, when it was difficult for a leading man to keep his throat uncut amid the violence of the times, or a house over his head—might he not have made himself safe by accepting Caesar's ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... tongues! Not openly avowed, to admit of denial and refutation! I wonder the curse of Gomorrah does not descend ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... nothing about Lord Byron's criticism on Walpole, because I thought it, like most of his Lordship's criticism, below refutation. On the drama Lord Byron wrote more nonsense than on any subject. He wanted to have restored the unities. His practice proved as unsuccessful as his theory was absurd. His admiration of the "Mysterious Mother" was of a piece with his thinking Gifford, and Rogers, greater ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... anointed ones who have slain themselves and who stagger proudly into graves (God deliver Himself from their caress!); to the religious ones who wage bloody and tireless wars upon all who do not share their fear of life (Ah, what is God but a despairing refutation of Man?); to the solemn and successful ones who gesture with courteous disdain from the depth of their ornamental coffins (we are all cadavers but let us refrain from congratulating each other too courteously on the fact); to the prim ones who find their secret obscenities mirrored in every careless ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... that she is rendered utterly averse to and incapable of performing those domestic offices, those household duties, so pre-eminently suited to her slender, dexterous busy little fingers? Why, my own wise precious little mother is a living refutation of so grossly absurd and monstrous a dogma! Have not you boxed my ears, because, when stumbling through the 'Anabasis,' my Greek pronunciation tortured your fastidious and correct taste? Did not you tell ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... water stoup at the door, carved figures of the Holy Family, a charming group, on the desk, exquisite etchings of the Christ and the Madonna after the masters, a prie-dieu in the inner room with a group of works of devotion: and Edith had declared him no Catholic. Here was the refutation. ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... anecdote in refutation of the statement made in the prospectus, albeit a superfluity. In 1730 the author of The Seasons republished his Poem to the memory of sir Isaac Newton, with the addition of the lines which follow, and which prove that he was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... paper, for investigation, to the Minister to Genoa, who mentioned its tenor to Nelson. The latter, justly stigmatizing the conduct imputed to him and his officers as "scandalous and infamous," requested a copy of the accusation, in order that by his refutation he might convince the King, that he was "an officer who had ever pursued the road of honour, very different from that to wealth." Having received the copy, he wrote to ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Portland wrote to Hunter early in 1799 requesting him to afford the fullest refutation of a number of charges that had been made against the administration of ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... at her mother, with a quick refutation of this statement of the case in her mind, but something stayed her lips. Mr. Randolph saw and read the look. He put his arm round Daisy and drew her up to him, ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... development of the imagination, to the detriment and loss of the practical powers, and that a genius is therefore a kind of incapable, incompetent being, as far as worldly matters are concerned. The most complete refutation of this notion lies in the fact that the greatest genius the world has known was a successful man in common affairs. While his genius grew in strength, fervour, and executive power, his worldly condition rose as well; ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... language is called the subjunctive. By others, it has been entirely rejected, because all its tenses are compound, and it has been thought the words could as well be parsed separately. Neither of these opinions is sufficiently prevalent, or sufficiently plausible, to deserve a laboured refutation. On the other hand, James White, in his Essay on the English Verb, (London, 1761,) divided this mood into the following five: "the Elective," denoted by may or might; "the Potential," by can or could; "the Determinative" by would; "the Obligative," by should; and "the Compulsive," ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... not sorry, thinking that to leave Gillian free to come home by herself would be the best refutation of Mrs. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by Eusebius, and who appears to have written about the year 212, appeals to the ancient copies of the Scriptures, in refutation of some corrupt readings alleged by the followers of Artemon. (Lardner, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... there was a perfect refutation of the whole theory of secession; that theory falls back upon the idea that the State government is to be its own judge of what constitutes a violation of the Constitution, and act accordingly; but the Embargo law of 1807, when carried up to the Supreme bench, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... be of good cheer; "she never for a moment believed in my guilt; Lilian bore up wonderfully under so terrible a trial; it was an unspeakable comfort to both to receive the visits of a friend so attached to me, and so confident of a triumphant refutation of the hideous calumny under which I now suffered ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis" was published at Frankfort. This masterly treatise begins with a short outline and refutation of the opinions of former anatomists on the movement of the animal fluids and the function of the heart; the author discriminating with care, and anxiously acknowledging the glimpses of the truth to be met with in their writings; as if he ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... a successor of Nagarjuna. A life of his was translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva in A.D. 401-409. The following are his important works: Cata-castra, 'Castra by the Bodhisattva Deva on the refutation of four heretical Hinayana schools mentioned in the Lankatvatara-sutra'; 'Castra by the Bodhisattva Deva on the explanation of the Nirvana by twenty Hinayana teachers mentioned ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... a complete refutation of the assertion so frequently made by ignorant and prejudiced writers that the Indian had no religion excepting what they are pleased to call the meaning less mummeries of the medicine man. This is the very reverse of the truth. The Indian is essentially religious and contemplative, ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... more complete refutation of the telepathic hypothesis would be to get a certain number of fulfilled predictions. The medium could not read events which have not yet occurred, either in the minds of the living or in the "influence" left on objects. Phinuit has often tried his hand at predictions; ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... say in refutation of this man's statement, say it. But no, I see you have not. It is well, sir. You have chosen to enter this town in disguise and with a false story; the inference is plain. You are a spy; and as such you will be shot ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... word while he retained his belief in the existence of the Gods; but either he denied their existence, or he believed that they took no care of man, or that they might be turned from their course by sacrifices and prayers. The remainder of the book is devoted to the refutation of these three classes of unbelievers, and concludes with the means to be taken for their reformation, and the announcement of their punishments if they ...
— Laws • Plato
... the Prince of Wales should visit and remain at Rome incognito. It is also indispensable that when there His Royal Highness should receive no foreigner or stranger alone, so that no reports of pretended conversations with such persons could be circulated without immediate refutation by Colonel Bruce. Lord Malmesbury will instruct Mr Odo Russell to inform His Holiness of your Majesty's intentions ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... desertion that army men despised, make the distinction between deserting and resigning. But the truth was he was more interested in the things Katie had said than in the things which could be called in refutation. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... (405) For a refutation of Walpole's assertion, that Bishop Hayter was a natural son of bishop Blackbourn's, see vol. ii. p. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... naturally, an answer to any assertion must take up more space than the assertion. Fortunately, in this case, we are not driven to any such course; for, as I shall show over and over again, the author has furnished us with the most ample means for his own refutation. No book that I have over read or heard of contains so much which can be met by implication from the pages of the author himself, nor can I imagine any book of such pretensions pervaded with so entire a misconception of the conditions of the problem ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... for the Great Men who have been falsely suspected of Magic," takes a great deal of pains to clear Agrippa from the imputations cast upon him by Delrio, Paulus Jovius, and other such ignorant and prejudiced scribblers. Such stories demanded refutation in the days of Naude, but they may now be safely left to decay in their own absurdity. That they should have attached, however, to the memory of a man, who claimed the power of making iron obey him when he told it to become gold, and who wrote such a work as that upon ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... daylight moments. Mozart always sang them, and how blithely! No one, not Beethoven, not Raphael, not Goethe—to name three widely disparate men of genius—saw life as steadily as the Spaniard. He is a magnificent refutation of the madhouse doctors who swear to you that genius is a disease. Remember, too, that the limitations of Velasquez are clearly defined. Imagination was denied to him, asserts Beruete; he had neither the turbulent temperament of Rubens ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... sophistry contained in the foregoing extracts scarcely needs a serious refutation. 'To say that immediate emancipation will only increase the wretchedness of the slaves, and that we must pursue a system of gradual abolition, is to present to us the double paradox, that we must continue to do evil, in order to cure the evil which we are doing; and that we ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... examination and refutation of the infidel theory of human government foisted into ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... malheureux, quelquefois meme celle du philosophe; n'enlevons pas a la pauvre espece humaine cette consolation, que la Providence divine lui a menagee."[98] He had a distinct dislike for philosophical arguments in refutation of things spiritual, and one day on being asked as to what he considered the nature of the soul, he replied, "Je sais qu'elle est spirituelle et immortelle, et je n'en sais rien de plus "; and when it was suggested to refer the discussion to Fontenelle, with his characteristic ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... which Dr. Gould recapitulates all the charges made against him,—especially where he condenses them in the Index. Better pamphlet-fighting has not been seen since Bentley. The hardship of the matter is, that people are commonly more ready to believe slander than to trouble themselves with reading a refutation of it. It gave us particular satisfaction to see that the American Association for the Advancement of Science had shown its sense of the merits of the quarrel by electing Dr. Gould ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the populace rarely read and did not write. To attack it and calumniate it therefore was a convenient thing, since no refutation need to be feared. I am far from supposing that the historians whose works I have quoted, ever gave way to such considerations; but I affirm, with entire certainty, that they have deceived themselves. In the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... made no answer, for indeed he had not heard her; but she was coming toward him now, her hands outstretched in a wondering way, wistfully, pleadingly, as though to hold back a refutation that would change the dawning light upon her face to dismay and ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... Origen, a Father of the Church, was born about 185. He carried to extremes the celibate life taught in the Gospel; and his "Treatise against Celsus" contains, according to St. Jerome and Eusebius, the refutation of "all the objections which have been made, and all which ever will be made against Christianity." ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... bishop was driven by reference to the works of Legge and Frazer, and for the first time he began to measure the dimensions and power of the modern criticism of church doctrine and observance. Green tea should have lit his way to refutation; instead it lit up the whole inquiry with a light of melancholy confirmation. Neither by night nor by day could the bishop find a proper method of opening a counter attack upon Chasters, who was indisputably ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... of Vulgar Errors, seeming, as it often does, to be a serious refutation of fairy tales—arguing, for instance, against the literal truth of the poetic statement that "The pigeon hath no gall," and such questions as "Whether men weigh heavier dead than alive?" being characteristic questions—is designed, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... purpose of performing his brother's operas; but while the animus of the statement is enough to cause it to be looked upon with suspicion, the fact that none of William Henry Fry's operas was performed at the Astor Place Opera House during the incumbency of Edward Fry is a complete refutation. "Leonora," the only grand opera by a professional critic ever performed in New York, so far as I know, was brought forward at the Academy of Music a good nine years later. Apropos of this admirable and respected predecessor ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... found within the domain of reality, susceptible of demonstration or refutation by the ordinary operations of science; entirely true or entirely false, and, therefore, in the former case, not liable to become obsolete. We proceed after the manner of the investigator of nature. We, too, have our dissecting ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... "On the Brain of the Orang Utang," and forms part of the bitter controversy of this period to which reference occurs in letters to Huxley and elsewhere in these volumes. Rolleston's work is quoted by Huxley ("Man's Place in Nature," page 117) as part of the crushing refutation of Owen's position. Mr. Huxley's letter referred to above is no doubt that in the "Athenaeum," April 13th, 1861, page 498; it is certainly severe, but to those who know Mr. Huxley's "Succinct History of the Controversy," etc. ("Man's Place in Nature," page 113), it ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... period, but subsequently to them. The best materials for a study of their opinions are afforded by the text and commentary[567] of the Katha-vatthu, a treatise attributed to Tissa Moggaliputta, who is said to have been President of the Third Council held under Asoka. It is an examination and refutation of heretical views rather than a description of the bodies that held them but we can judge from it what was the religious atmosphere at the time and the commentary gives some information about various sects. Many centuries later I-ching tells us that during ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... refutation of that term—I will not repeat myself—and what it implied, after fourteen years, comparable to those seven fat kine of Pharaoh's dream, our town can point throughout the length and breadth of our land to its monumental works of art and utility that ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... in due course, Hume's mode of reasoning continues to rule scientific thought even to-day, quite irrespective of the fact that science itself claims to have its philosophical parent in Kant, the very thinker who devoted his life's work to the refutation of Hume. ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... the Index follows the Preface. The appendices of the Small Catechism are omitted, likewise the superscription Appendix of the Catalogus. Our copy of the Heidelberg folio edition of 1582 omits the Catalogus and adds the Apology of the Book of Concord of 1583, as also the Refutation of the Bremen Pastors of the same year. A copy of the Magdeburg quarto edition lying before us has the year 1580 on the title-pages of the Book of Concord, the Epitome, the Declaratio, and the Catalogus. The Preface is followed by three pages, on which Joachim Frederick guarantees ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... that we have. Upon this point Mr Mill sides entirely with Sir W. Hamilton, and considers 'that the latter has rendered good service to philosophy by refuting M. Cousin,' though much of the reasoning employed in such refutation seems to Mr Mill unsound. But Sir W. Hamilton goes further, and affirms that we have no faculties capable of apprehending the Infinite and the Absolute—that both of them are inconceivable to us, and by consequence unknowable. Herein ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... one, the payment of which had devolved on those members of the system who, at the time, were alone capable of paying it. And thence was inferred not only the justice of the measure, but a complete refutation of the arguments drawn from the constitution. If, in point of fact, the debt was in its origin continental and had been transferred to the States for greater facility of payment, there could be no constitutional objection to restoring its ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... determination, and gradually he extracted the whole story from her. He would not listen to the delusion in which she had worked herself into believing, founded upon the negations for which she had sedulously avoided seeking positive refutation, and which had been bolstered up by her imagination and wishes, working on the unsubstantial precedents of novels. She had brought herself absolutely to believe in the imposture, and at a moment when her uncle's condition seemed absolutely to place within her grasp the ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most confidently, and without fear of refutation, assert it to be simply impracticable to induce and obtain from Chinese carpenters that accurate, close, substantial, and lasting workmanship which not only can be, but is derived from the convict artificers under the absolute control of the present able ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... disperse these cloudy doubts, and to analyse and repel these many ambiguous statements?—Once more. A fool can assert, and in a moment, that 'There is no GOD.' But it requires a wise man to refute the lie; and his refutation will probably demand a volume.—I say, it was in vain to urge such considerations as these. "Why does no one reply to these 'Essays and Reviews?'" was asked,—till, I apprehend, pens enough have been unsheathed to ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... sick. Copies of verses, writing desks, trinkets of amber, were exchanged between the friends. Frederic confided his writings to Voltaire; and Voltaire applauded, as if Frederic had been Racine and Bossuet in one. One of his Royal Highness's performances was a refutation of Machiavelli. Voltaire undertook to convey it to the press. It was entitled the Anti-Machiavel, and was an edifying homily against rapacity, perfidy, arbitrary government, unjust war, in short, against almost everything for which its author is ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... great joint debate in 1858 he spoke of Lincoln's having "distinguished himself in Congress by his opposition to the Mexican War, taking the side of the common enemy against his own country." No better refutation of these oft-repeated charges could be made than that given by Lincoln himself on this occasion. "The Judge charges me," he said, "with having, while in Congress, opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican War. I will tell you what he can prove by referring to the record. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... three-fourths of a century as a free and independent Republic, the problem no longer remains to be solved whether man is capable of self-government. The success of our admirable system is a conclusive refutation of the theories of those in other countries who maintain that a "favored few" are born to rule and that the mass of mankind must be governed by force. Subject to no arbitrary or hereditary authority, the people are the only sovereigns recognized ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... his undertaking is in the long array of parallel passages from the prose of Charlotte and of Emily with which he endeavours to support it. For, so far from supporting it, these columns are the most convincing, the most direct and palpable refutation of his theory. If any uncritical reader should desire to see for himself wherein Charlotte and Emily Bronte differed; in what manner, with what incompatible qualities and to what an immeasurable degree the younger sister was pre-eminent, ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... whether his manner of contending is in keeping with the persons and the matter in dispute, for then it would be praiseworthy, hence Tully says (De Rhet. ad Heren. iii) that "contention is a sharp speech suitable for proof and refutation"—or whether it exceeds the demands of the persons and matter in dispute, in which ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of injuring my reputation; but conscious that my political opinions and conduct will stand the test, upon the nicest scrutiny, and having never experienced any diminution of that esteem, respect and warmth of friendship, which my fellow-citizens have ever shown towards me, a refutation of such ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... murmurs were, indeed, heard in certain quarters, and charges of unorthodoxy were formulated vaguely against Colet and others of his party, but these were but the criticisms levelled in all ages against those who are in advance of their time, nor do they require serious refutation. The English Humanists had nothing in common with the neo-pagan writers of the Italian Renaissance as regards religion, and they gave no indication of hostility to Rome. Whatever other influences may have contributed to bring about the religious revolution ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... a Letter written by a Spanish Gentleman to his Friend in England in refutation of sundry Calumnies there falsely bruited among the People, 1589—An Advertisement written to a Secretarie of my Lord Treasurer of Ingland by an Inglish Intelligencer as he passed through Germanie towards Italie; also a Letter written by ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... refers mainly to the first named, in order to attack our statements with theirs—will have to submit, with good grace or bad, to the fact that the rise and development of the family has not taken the course that fits in with their bourgeois prejudices. The refutation that, in the last part of his work, Cunow bestows upon Westermann and Starcke, Ziegler's authorities, are calculated to enlighten their most fanatic followers upon the value of their caviling criticisms of, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... article on the subject, and then she did not know what to believe. It referred to the letter in no measured terms: the writer observed that prima facie the case was very strong and called upon Alec to reply without delay. Big words were used, and there was much talk of a national scandal. An instant refutation was demanded. Lady Kelsey did not know what on earth to do, and her thoughts flew to the dance, the success of which would certainly be imperilled by these revelations. She must have help at once. This business, if it concerned the world in general, ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... said Edith, with a smile calculated to mollify this vehemence, "that you are a standing refutation of your own theory." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... petulance about Schofield's use of hospital steamer for headquarters; inquires about Sherman's treatment of the negro; approves his allotment of sea-island lands to the freedmen; dispatch to Dix, reflecting on Sherman; false implications of; refutation; nine criticisms of Sherman-Johnston Convention considered; objections, really to Lincoln's policy; position against amnesty not sustained by the people; orders Sherman's subordinates not to obey his orders; ignores capitulation, while paroles ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... professions of more egoistic thinkers, which binds together all the parts of his work, from the System of Logic down to his last speech on the Land Question. One of the most striking pages in the Autobiography is that in which he gives his reasons for composing the refutation of Hamilton, and as some of these especially valuable passages in the book seem to be running the risk of neglect in favour of those which happen to furnish material for the idle, pitiful gossip of London society, it may be well ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... their origin in these poetical musings. His study was the kitchen, where his wife's bellows served him for a desk; and he wrote amidst the cries and cradlings of his children. Paine's 'Age of Reason' having appeared about this time and excited much interest, he composed a pamphlet in refutation of its arguments, which was published. He used afterwards to say that it was the 'Age of Reason' that made him an author. Various pamphlets from his pen shortly appeared in rapid succession, and a few years later, while still working at shoemaking, he wrote and published his admirable ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... developed in another work ('Tancred') the views respecting the great house of Israel which he first intimated in 'Coningsby.' No one has attempted to refute them, nor is refutation possible; since all he has done is to examine certain facts in the truth of which all agree, and to draw from them irresistible conclusions which prejudice for a moment may shrink from, but which reason cannot ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... reports circulated in Bath, he had called upon an editor, requesting him to insert the said reports in his paper in order that he might write him a letter to refute them. The editor at once complied, the calumny was printed and published, but Sheridan forgot all about his own refutation, which was applied for in vain till ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... the rights of woman. Why, my dear sisters, the best possible advocacy which you can make is just what you are making day by day. Thousands hear you every week who have all their lives held that women must not speak in public. Such a practical refutation of the dogma which your speaking ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... "A Refutation of an Article in the Edinburgh Review (No. CII.) entitled, 'Sadler's Law of Population, and disproof of Human Superfecundity;' containing also Additional Proofs of the Principle enunciated in that Treatise, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be a refutation of the rumors spread abroad by the king's enemies, that Frederick regarded the success and military talent of his brother ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... their country's errand, and brushing aside the insinuation of his enemies that he was merely seeking political and selfish ends. That is a charge, of course, to which all of our statesmen, from Washington down, have been exposed. Its final refutation comes from examining the entire public career and the character of the person accused. To any one who knew what Roosevelt's life had been, and who knew how poignantly he felt the national dangers and humiliation of the past three years, the idea ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... in one or two short semi-contemptuous sentences, and said no more about them—not, at least, until late in life he wrote his "Erasmus Darwin," and even then his remarks were purely biographical; he did not say one syllable by way of refutation, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... fifth of the seven Paradises made of white diamond; the gardens and the plurality being borrowed from the Talmud. Mohammed's Paradise, by the by, is not a greater failure than Dante's. Only ignorance or pious fraud asserts it to be wholly sensual; and a single verse is sufficient refutation: "Their prayer therein shall be 'Praise unto thee, O. Allah!' and their salutation therein shall be 'Peace!' and the end of their prayer shall be, 'Praise unto God, the Lord of all creatures"' (Koran x. 10-11). See also lvi. 24- 26. It will also be an intellectual ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... entering his library in the vital centre of a delectable refutation of an ignoramus—"I suppose it's no use looking to you for sympathy in a ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... broader field has existed for the exercise of those qualities than the great region west of the Rocky Mountains. We are fortunate in the presence of a gentleman whose young life is already a successful refutation of that opinion, and I turn with confidence to 'The Southerner of the Pacific Slope,' and invite Mr. Hugh C. Wallace, of the State of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... opinion of those who pity and despise the minute analysis of external criticism hardly deserves refutation. There is only one argument for the legitimacy and honourable character of the obscure labours of erudition, but it is a decisive argument: it rests on their indispensability. No erudition, no history. "Non sunt contemnenda quasi parva," ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... requested their excellencies to ask immediately the necessary instructions for their principals. The rest of this long memorial contained a justification of his Britannic majesty's conduct in deviating from the capitulation of Closter-Seven; with a refutation of the arguments adduced, and a retortion of the reproaches levelled against the king of England, in the paper or manifesto composed and published under the direction of the French ministry, and intituled, "A parallel of the conduct of the king of France with that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... so."—A third, "that A ought to be ashamed of himself;" but they did not one of them, on account of this falsehood, think it necessary to avoid him. On the contrary, he was walking arm-in-arm with the men, dancing and flirting with the women just as before, although his slander, and the refutation of it, were ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Sidney College, had taught him (Fuller) the art of memory. Fuller replied that it was not so, for he could not remember that he had ever seen him before; "which, I conceive," adds Fuller, "was a real refutation;" and ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... country were greatly excited: the government had yielded to the pressure; and North was not a man to risk a good place for the sake of justice and humanity. Accordingly, while he was in secret drawing up a refutation of the whole romance of the Popish plot, he declared in public that the truth of the story was as plain as the sun in heaven, and was not ashamed to browbeat, from the seat of judgment, the unfortunate Roman Catholics who were arraigned before him for their lives. He had at length reached the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Encyclopaedia Britannica, the entire series of the Monthly Review, the complete set of the Variorum Classics, and the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, I have read through from beginning to end, deposes, with irrefragable refutation, against your ratiocinative speculations, wherein you seem desirous, by the futile process of analytical dialectics, to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... however Wyclif was far from having advanced to such a position as this. As the most prominent of English scholars it was natural that he should come forward in defence of the independence and freedom of the English Church; and he published a formal refutation of the claims advanced by the Papacy to deal at its will with church property in the form of a report of the Parliamentary debates which we have described. As yet his quarrel was not with the doctrines of Rome but with its practices; and ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... work hardly requires refutation. Every sophism and every falsehood is a damning argument against the Russian cause. Truth, in fact, is outraged in every page of the writing; and one striking instance will suffice. Catharine states ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the memory of his early conflict with the Aristotelians at Pisa, of his scornful and successful refutation of their absurdities. All this made him specially obnoxious to the Aristotelian Jesuits in their double capacity both of priests and of philosophers, and they singled him out ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... the course of the forty years that this little Work has been before the Public, some real, valid refutation of the argument would have been adduced, if any such could ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... 6s. 6d. per cwt., and dividing the sum among five or six men, that a very low arithmetical faculty would not be severely taxed in checking it. There is little doubt that in stating this objection, which scarcely deserves refutation, the simple settlement at landing a cargo of fish, or at paying cash for a week's fishing, is confounded with the very different kind of settlement to which the witnesses are accustomed at present, ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... are primarily intellectual decisions upon stated issues, the going forth of the popular mind to decide between programs presented to it by circumstances, receives a brilliant refutation in the course of the powerful minority that was concentrating around the three great "Jacobins." The subjective side of politics, also the temperamental side, here found expression. Statecraft is an art; creative statesmen ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... capture the pawn with the Q but with the Kt and Black has no satisfactory continuation. If he had castled he could play l5. ... B-Kt2 which now is not available because of: 16. Kt-B6, BxKt; 17. BxB, with an overwhelming advantage in position for White. White's refutation of the text move ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... easy path for the Protestant theologians The difficulties of the older Church.—The papal infallibility fully committed against the Copernican theory Attempts at evasion—first plea: that Galileo was condemned not for affirming the earth's motion, but for supporting it from Scripture Its easy refutation Second plea: that he was condemned not for heresy, but for contumacy Folly of this assertion Third plea: that it was all a quarrel between Aristotelian professors and those favouring the experimental method Fourth plea: that the condemnation ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a woman's college, and her important work on the authorship of Shakespeare's plays had demonstrated, beyond refutation, that the plays had been written by Queen Elizabeth, in collaboration with Sir Walter Raleigh and Lady ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... colored community. When we say, 'our only home,' we speak in a general sense, and do not suppose but in individual cases some may, and will take up a residence under another government, and perhaps in some other quarter of the globe. We are disposed to say something upon this subject now, in refutation of certain positions that have been assumed by a class of men, as the American people are too well aware, and to the reproach of the Christian church and the Christian religion, too, viz.: that we never can rise here, and that no power whatsoever is sufficient to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... Sociology is the most signal and brilliant refutation of the Great Man theory, no one man really killed that theory. The general spread and acceptance of Darwinism has produced an intellectual atmosphere in which such a theory can no more live than a fish can live ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... tried to see some youth whose hand had been cut off, but could not find a single case, although, everybody had heard of such mutilations. The fact that no doctor whom I questioned knew of any case was sufficient refutation, since a person whose hand had been cut off would need something more than a ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... also we have found ourselves called upon to adopt a more critical tone; where we were disposed to dissent from the view taken by the author on particular questions of a controversial kind, or when he is arguing in support, or in refutation, of opposing theories on some points of science not yet satisfactorily ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... came upon the scene towards the end of the sixteenth century. Dirk Vorlkertsz Coornhert had written a very able refutation of the dogma of predestination. The Town Council of Amsterdam ordered Jacob Arminius to Write a book against Coornhert's work. But behold! when Arminius settled down to the task, and read Coornhert's argument carefully, he came to the conclusion that ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... judicious, superannuated as regarded the indispensable activity of martial habits. If he cannot face the toils of military command, said his officers, why does he not retire? Why does he not make room for others? Neither was the campaign of 1813 or 1814 any refutation of this. Infinite are the cases in which the interests of nations or of armies have suffered through the dyspepsy of those who administered them. And above all nations the Romans laid themselves open to this order of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... this no very hopeful inquiry. You may not unnaturally suppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead to no result, save that of entangling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refutation and of verification. If such were really the case, I should have selected some other subject than a "piece of chalk" for my discourse. But, in truth, after much deliberation, I have been unable to think of any topic which would so well enable me to lead you to see how solid is the foundation upon ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of the doctrine in question. On the other hand, it may be so easily refuted by a multitude of considerations, that it exposes the doctrine, in one of its defences, to the triumphant attacks of its adversaries. We shall not exhaust the patience of the reader by dwelling upon the refutation which may be given of such an argument. We shall dismiss it with a single reply, and that we shall give in the language ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... deputized by France (Messrs. Beauregard, Lecesne, and Champion) to the Minister Jan. 8, 1792. (A long and admirable letter, in which the difference between the two parties is exhibited, supported by facts, in refutation of the calumnies of Duprat. The oppressed party is composed not ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in the scientific refutation of the theory of abiogenesis was taken by the Italian Redi, who, in 1668, proved that no maggots were "bred'' in meat on which flies were prevented by wire screens from laying their eggs. From the 17th century onwards it was gradually shown that, at least in the case of all the higher ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... perfect of its kind, and whatever is perfect admits of no Darwinian variations or improvements for the better. And the simple statement of this undeniable proposition is, we submit, a complete refutation of Darwinism. When the waters and the earth were commanded to bring forth abundantly of every living creature and every living thing, "it was so, and God saw that it was good," that is, everything perfect of its kind, and in its kind. With this single limitation as to kind, a rattlesnake ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... of these German theologians to frame a philosophical refutation of the Sermon on the Mount gives us something of a shock; but, practically, this has been the attitude of the church in all the generations. The hopeful sign is that it does now give us a shock to have ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... while under torture, of having intrigued to procure the death of her husband, and her own marriage with his brother. To this accusation the Spanish Princess disdainfully replied that "she should have gained so little by the exchange, that the absurdity of the charge must suffice for its refutation;" but her haughty and indignant retort produced no effect upon her judges. She was commanded thenceforward to reside exclusively at the palaces of the Louvre and St. Germain; without the privilege ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... books, says might be done, Mr. Richard Sims, of the department of manuscripts, says shall be done. His Handbook to the library of the British Museum is a very comprehensive and instructive volume. It is a triumphant refutation of the opinions of those who, to the vast injury of literature, and serious inconvenience of men of letters, slight common sense and real utility in favour of visionary schemes and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... are often so profound and so unerring, as to possess the character of truths supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case of which we speak, could justify its prejudice against Roger Chillingworth by no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation. There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under some other name, which the narrator of the story had now ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lifetime. When it goes the length of affirming that even a great writer's creative activity usually finds not merely central realisation, but absolute exhaustion within the limits of some single work, to reason against it is futile, and length of time affords it the only satisfying refutation. One would think that it could scarcely require to be urged that creative impulse, once existent within a mind, can never wholly depart from it, but must remain to the end, dependent, perhaps, for ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... there were twelve American? Not a fourth part of the casualties amongst the British that there were amongst the United States ships; yet the Americans are an experienced, gallant, and well-conducted race of seamen. These things gave the broadest refutation to such a calumnious charge. It is not wise for a minister of state of Britain to proclaim to the world a character of the bravest and most important class of men of Britain, that disgraces them indelibly, injures the property of their employers, and dishonours the country. The ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... knowledge, preparatory to ministering to others. The survey of a new region, which ordinary works on the history of infidelity rarely touch, may lay bare unsuspected or undetected causes of unbelief; and thus indirectly offer a refutation of it; for intellectual error is refuted, when the origin of it is referred to false systems of thought. The anatomy of error is the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... conceived that the explanation and defence of these laws could furnish forth occupation for his pen and his voice, through whole years of unwearying declamation, or how he can have dreamed that they could be twisted into a refutation of the Christian religion, is a mystery which I never expect ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... to enter into a formal and lengthened refutation of the angel's visit, and to prove, from the style, the anachronisms, and other circumstances, that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... discovered and enlarged the sciences." All this we find in the text; but in the clear intellect of this man of genius a vast number of intervening difficulties started up, and in a copious note the numerous exceptions show that the assumed theory requires no other refutation than what the theorist has himself so abundantly and so judiciously supplied. There is something ludicrous in the result of a theory of genius which would place HOBBES and ERASMUS, those timid and learned recluses, to ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... this melodramatic subject, wilfully rendered obscure, and really incomprehensible, the novelist did his best to tack various illustrations of Catholic repentance. He intended the book to be the glorification of Catholicism, the refutation of Protestantism, the embodiment of virtues private and social in people who bowed themselves to his ideal of faith; the story he used simply as a thread to connect these things together. Consequently, the action is ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... man said nothing, feeling possibly that the entrance of Miss Gething was sufficient refutation of the statement. He was also in anything ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... been contemplated by Pitt and by other English statesmen. That Pitt deliberately planned and fostered the rebellion, as Irishmen have actually asserted, in order to carry out a union is a charge so monstrous as scarcely to demand serious refutation. It is enough to say that he would certainly not have chosen to have Ireland in rebellion at a time so critical for England as the spring of 1798. That the policy of the government both in England and ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... feather, as strong as a mail-phaeton. She is perfectly mild, yet she is clever enough to be sharp if she would. I don't know that clever women are necessarily thought ill-natured, but it is usually taken for granted that amiable women are very limited. Lady Tester is a refutation of the theory, which must have been invented by a vixenish woman who was not clever. She has an adoration for her husband, which absorbs her without in the least making her silly, unless indeed it is silly to be modest, as in this brutal world I sometimes believe. Her modesty is so great ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... and grant without grudging what a certain professor of science demands. Dr. James Martineau says, "In so far as Church belief is still committed to a given kosmogony and natural history of man, it lies open to scientific refutation"; and again, "The whole history of the Genesis of things Religion must unconditionally surrender to the Sciences." [421] In this we willingly concur, for science ought to be, and will be, supreme in its own domain. Bishop Temple ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... could you for one moment believe that those letters could have been written by your nephew Charles? They carried, sir, upon the face of them their own refutation; and I'm only surprised that for one instant you, or any one who knew him, could have believed him ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... the Catholic Church is an overt fact. What are the causes? A distorted vision, born of misrepresentation of facts and misrepresentation of doctrine and practice; the blind prejudice against which our refutation of facts and explanation of principles are of little avail: these are the two main causes to which can be traced this universal opposition. And indeed no one will tax us with exaggeration were we to repeat here what Tertullian wrote in his "Defence of the Church," ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... referring to these forms of opinion was merely to prepare the way for my subsequent observations; I have no intention of dealing with any of them by way of criticism or refutation. This is not the place nor the audience, nor am I the person, for that task. But I have thought that it might not be inappropriate to this occasion if I were to ask you to consider with me, from these words, the attitude of mind and heart to God's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not treating things so unequal unequally. This feeling may, in many cases, amuse the impartial observer, or make him indignant; yet it may, in every case, according to Mr. Russell, be absolutely just. The refutation he gives of egoism would not dissuade any fanatic from exterminating all his enemies with a good conscience; it would merely encourage him to assert that what he was ruthlessly establishing was the absolute ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... blushed indignant refutation of the calumnious charge. Vargrave continued,—"As for me, I shall be delighted to meet any friends of yours, and am greatly obliged for your consideration. We may dismiss the postboys, Howard; and what time ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the Discourse of Vulgar Errors, seeming, as it often does, to be a serious refutation of fairy tales—arguing, for instance, against the literal truth of the poetic statement that "The pigeon hath no gall," and such questions as "Whether men weigh heavier dead than alive?" being characteristic questions—is designed, with much ambition, under its pedantic Greek ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... performing his brother's operas; but while the animus of the statement is enough to cause it to be looked upon with suspicion, the fact that none of William Henry Fry's operas was performed at the Astor Place Opera House during the incumbency of Edward Fry is a complete refutation. "Leonora," the only grand opera by a professional critic ever performed in New York, so far as I know, was brought forward at the Academy of Music a good nine years later. Apropos of this admirable and respected predecessor of mine, a good story was disclosed ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... answer, for indeed he had not heard her; but she was coming toward him now, her hands outstretched in a wondering way, wistfully, pleadingly, as though to hold back a refutation that would change the dawning light upon her face ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... Helvetius's paradoxes, the same fire consumed Voltaire's fine poem on Natural Religion. Less prejudiced authorities thought nearly as ill of the book, as the lawyers of the parliament and the doctors of the Sorbonne had thought. Rousseau pronounced it detestable, wrote notes in refutation of its principles, and was inspired by hatred of its doctrine to compose some of the most fervid pages in the Savoyard Vicar's glowing Profession of Faith.[98] Even Diderot, though his friendly feeling ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... think, were of "gentle blood," which is the expression of the poet himself when describing them in verse. His mother was so undoubtedly; and her illustrious son, in speaking of her to Lord Harvey, at a time when any exaggeration was open to an easy refutation, and writing in a spirit most likely to provoke it, does not scruple to say, with a tone of dignified haughtiness not unbecoming the situation of a filial champion on behalf of an insulted mother, that by birth and descent she was not below that young lady, (one ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... is an example of unanswerable refutation. To show why a man has not one rib less than a woman, it is stated that imperfections are not hereditary; as in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... that the Countess's conduct proved a memorable refutation of cynical philosophy: she rejoiced in the good fortune of him who had offended her! Though he was not crushed and annihilated (as he deserved to be) by the wrong he had done, the great-hearted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... side of the proposition which it advocates, a good brief almost invariably refutes the main arguments of the opposite side. The way in which this refutation is expressed is very important. A brief on the affirmative side of the proposition, "Resolved, That the Panama canal should be built at sea-level," would be weak and ludicrous, if, when answering the argument for the negative that the cost of a sea-level canal would be enormous, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... Sisson, is commendable for its use of that noble but neglected measure, the heroic couplet. Mr. Daas' concluding editorial, "Literature and Politics," is admirable for its concise exposition of the United's new ideals, and its masterly refutation of the common fallacy that political quarrels are necessary to stimulate activity ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... a perfect refutation of the whole theory of secession; that theory falls back upon the idea that the State government is to be its own judge of what constitutes a violation of the Constitution, and act accordingly; but the Embargo law of 1807, when carried up to the Supreme ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... heated infusions of organic matter were not deprived of living beings; Spallanzani (1777) had replied that more careful heating and other precautions prevent the appearance of organisms in the fluid. Various experiments by Schwann, Helmholtz, Schultz, Schroeder, Dusch and others led to the refutation, step by step, of the belief that the more minute organisms, and particularly bacteria, arose de novo in the special cases quoted. Nevertheless, instances were adduced where the most careful heating of yolk of egg, milk, hay-infusions, &c., had failed,—the boiled infusions, &c., ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... must be regarded as a complete refutation of the position taken by Hume, to wit, that the idea of nature eternally existing in a state of order, without a cause other than the eternally inherent laws of nature, is no more self-contradictory than the idea of an eternally-existing and infinite mind, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... book reveals the popularity of the form of reasoning that digests the refutation first, and the original proposition ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... some peculiar strength of nerve, some rare mechanism of frame, and extraordinary assemblage of mental powers, are absolutely requisite for the execution of any noble design. How greatly does it redound to the true glory of Howard to have given in his successful labours the fullest refutation of a prejudice, so inimical to the interest and the honour of human-nature! a prejudice, by whose influence, to use the words ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... the several parties. Mr. Burney asked him then if he had seen Warburton's book against Bolingbroke's philosophy!'No, sir; I have never read Bolingbroke's impiety, and therefore am not interested about its refutation.'" ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sobrino mio," the uncle had said. "Else, pass your remaining days in confinement. There can be no refutation of the charges against you. But, if these doors open again to you, think not ever to sever your connection with the Church of Rome. For, if the Rincon honor should prove inadequate to hold you to your oath, be assured that Rincon justice will follow you until ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... account of his experiments on hybrids. It was Herbert who, as early as 1822, in the fourth volume of the "Horticultural Transactions," and in his work on the Amaryllidaceae, 1837, declared that horticultural experiments have established, beyond the possibility of refutation, that botanical species are only "a higher and more permanent class of varieties." He extended the same view to animals, and believed that single species of each genus were originally created in a highly ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... altogether inferior kind; the whole collection being often such that if an ill-natured critic were to assert that the compilers had degraded and limited the old music in order to set off their own, it would be difficult to meet him with a logical refutation. ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... Wiltshire, and the alleged means by which Chief Justice Sir John Popham acquired its possession. It is told by Aubrey, Sir Walter Scott, and many others, and is too notorious to be here repeated. Let me ask you or your learned correspondents whether there exists any refutation of a charge so seriously detrimental to the character of any judge, and so inconsistent with the reputation which Chief Justice Popham enjoyed among his cotemporaries? See Lord Ellesmere's notice of him in the case of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... opinions were divided on this question. Marsilio Ficino defended astrology, and drew the horoscope of the children of the house, promising the little Giovanni, afterwards Leo X, that he would one day be Pope. Pico della Mirandola, on the other hand, made an epoch in the subject by his famous refutation. He detects in this belief the root of all impiety and immorality. If the astrologer, he maintains, believes in anything at all, he must worship not God, but the planets, from which all good and evil are derived. All other superstitions find a ready instrument in ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... beside the purpose to discuss these ideas to-day or to attempt an elaborate refutation of their claims to acceptance. Time has done its work upon them, and the literary creed of the wits of Queen Anne's day is as antiquated as their periwigs and knee-breeches. Except for purposes of historical investigation ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... the critical moment of 1796, which Jomini singles out for conspicuous eulogium: "It matters not if Moreau gets to Vienna, provided you keep him occupied till I am done with Jourdan." Reasonings like these are strictly general in their bearing, liable to refutation by the special circumstances controlling a particular action; and it may perfectly well be that considerations of urgency, amounting even to impossibility, make them inapplicable to the case before us. Nevertheless, it can scarcely ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated against the Southern and Western States respecting the institution and existence of Slavery among them. By a South Carolinian (Charleston, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... the German's own country after he had driven out the invader. I tried to see some youth whose hand had been cut off, but could not find a single case, although, everybody had heard of such mutilations. The fact that no doctor whom I questioned knew of any case was sufficient refutation, since a person whose hand had been cut off would need something more than a bandage tied on ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... theological controversialists of later times, Josephus sets special store on the Bible book that is most miraculous, because miracle and exact prognostication of the future are for his audience the clearest testimony of God. Hence the predictions of Daniel are the best refutation of the Epicureans, who cast Providence out of life, and do not believe that God has care of human affairs, but say that things move of their own accord, without a ruler ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminondas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given that ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to separate secular rights from spiritual rights, placing the former under the control of the sovereign, and the latter under the control of the universal Church; such pretensions are too frivolous to merit refutation. (58) I cannot however, pass over in silence the fact that such persons are woefully deceived when they seek to support their seditious opinions (I ask pardon for the somewhat harsh epithet) by the example of the Jewish high ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... to the legend. This, the Spanish captain said was quite true, for he had seen the grave himself and the little church erected to their memory, a statement that quite delighted our friend Larkyns, as he was able to throw it in the teeth of Mr Stormcock as soon as he heard it, in refutation of the base calumny of the latter in asserting that he had invented the yarn he told us ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a new debt, but the reacknowledgment of liability for an old one, the payment of which had devolved on those members of the system who, at the time, were alone capable of paying it. And thence was inferred not only the justice of the measure, but a complete refutation of the arguments drawn from the constitution. If, in point of fact, the debt was in its origin continental and had been transferred to the States for greater facility of payment, there could be no constitutional objection to restoring its original ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... eloquence, or discovered and enlarged the sciences." All this we find in the text; but in the clear intellect of this man of genius a vast number of intervening difficulties started up, and in a copious note the numerous exceptions show that the assumed theory requires no other refutation than what the theorist has himself so abundantly and so judiciously supplied. There is something ludicrous in the result of a theory of genius which would place HOBBES and ERASMUS, those timid and learned recluses, to open a campaign with the military invention and ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Caird, 'I'll quote and then refute, Each modern philosophic doot'— And so he did; but each quotation Seem'd to outweigh the refutation. ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... She tried to satisfy herself by thinking that he had acted in much the same way toward her, but it would not answer. Mrs. Hunter's blood-stained face, rendered tenfold more ghastly by the light of the flames, was too strong refutation, and the fact that Mara had remained with Clancy had its sting. She saw Ella and many others ministering to the injured and feeble, and felt that she must redeem her character. When the unconscious man was ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... that the conduct of the negroes everywhere is an everlasting refutation of much of the bitter stuff which is said by the other side. This war would crumble like that, if, with all the white men gone, there were on the plantations faithlessness to trust, hatred, violence, outrage—if there were among us, in Virginia alone, half a million ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... stultifies itself and needs no refutation; certainly not here, as P. Langen in his Plautinische Studien (Berliner Studien, 1886; pp. 90-91) has conclusively proved that the inconsistent is a feature absolutely germane to Plautine style, and has collected an overwhelming mass of "Widerspruche, Inkonsequenzen ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... her ear to his enthusiastic prophecies of the future glories of the kingdom. To the court and to the universities and to the great ecclesiastics he was still a visionary and a needy adventurer; and they quoted, in refutation of his theory, those Scripture texts which were hurled in greater wrath against Galileo when he announced his brilliant discoveries. There are, from some unfathomed reason, always texts found in the sacred ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... favor of neutrality which had been howled down by the mobs. It is inconceivable that such a body could have been completely cowed by rioting in the streets. The unanimous vote of the Italian Senators is sufficient refutation of the Bethmann-Hollweg slur. ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... little or nothing to the happiness of men whether they are governed well or ill, whether they live under fixed and known laws, or at the will of an arbitrary tyrant, is a paradox, the fallacy of which is happily too apparent to need any refutation. Nor is his inference warranted by those particular observations which he makes for the purpose of establishing it. When of Italy he tells us, "that sensual bliss is all this nation knows," how is Italy to be compared either ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... a Father of the Church, was born about 185. He carried to extremes the celibate life taught in the Gospel; and his "Treatise against Celsus" contains, according to St. Jerome and Eusebius, the refutation of "all the objections which have been made, and all which ever will be made against ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... from the enlargement of the mind by wider and more accurate views of the natural universe. As this takes place, the mediaeval beliefs must drop away of themselves, and we now see that this process is actually in operation. So far from devoting a life to the refutation of theological error, I would not bestow upon such an unnecessary and thankless toil the labor of a week ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... have been a profound calamity. While living in retirement, Hamilton was assailed by his Southern enemies, who were supported by their Northern allies, their object being to show that he had acted corruptly while at the head of the Treasury. His reply was as complete a refutation as their earlier calumnies had encountered. He wrote the celebrated Farewell Address of President Washington. On all occasions he was ready with pen and tongue to defend and uphold those political principles in the triumph of which he had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... treatises On the Right Faith, against Nestorius. The first is addressed to the Emperor Theodosius. It contains an enumeration of the heresies against the Incarnation, namely, of Cerinthus, Photinus, Apollinaris, and Nestorius, with a refutation of each, especially the last. The second is inscribed to the princesses Pulcheria, Arcadia, and Marina, the emperor's sisters, all virgins, consecrated to God. This contains the proofs of the Catholic faith against ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... eyes with a sort of scared defiance. The great clawed paws of the beast, the strength and remorseless serenity of that crouching creature with human head, made living by his imagination and the moonlight, seemed to him like a temptation to deny God, like a refutation of human virtue. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... figures of their demands, as these have been summed up by their mess-room calculators, remain implanted in their brains; they have taken root there, and are constantly springing up without any account or refutation being able to extirpate them. No more writings nor speeches—what they want is money: 11,000 livres for the Beaune regiment, 39,500 livres for that of Forez, 44,000 livres for that of Salm, 200,000 livres for that of Chateauvieux, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... up his doctrines, he asserts that "we have some reason to believe that irregular connections between the sexes have, on the whole, exhibited a tendency to increase along with the progress of civilization." The refutation of this libel on civilization—which is widely believed—is one of the main objects of the following pages—is, in fact, one of the main objects of this ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... order, and whom he therefore accounted a renegade. He also wrote several vigorous treatises in defence of separatism and congregational independency, the most important being:—A True Description of the Visible Congregation of the Saints, &c. (1589); A Plain Refutation of Mr Gifford's Booke, intituled A Short Treatise Gainst the Donatistes of England (1590-1591), and A Brief Discovery of the False Church (1591). Others were written in conjunction with his fellow-prisoner, Greenwood. These writings were taken charge of by friends and mostly printed in Holland. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... to the first accusation, we cannot do better than quote the words of the antiquary who has first brought both the calumnious charge and its refutation to light. "The general impression (p. 279) (says that writer) which exists respecting the character of Henry V, and especially whilst Prince of Wales, is so opposed to the idea that he could possibly be suspected of a pecuniary fraud, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... excellence of Americans—an excellence they must be content to share with contemporary nations, however much it may cost them to abandon we know not what bounding ambitions which they have never succeeded in definitely describing in words. Mr. Lowell was a refutation of the fallacy that an American can never be American enough. He ranked with the students and the critics among all nations, and nothing marks his transatlantic conditions except, perhaps, that his scholarliness is a little ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... admit that Scripture is perfect because resting on an endless unbroken tradition; but must we then not admit that texts evidently presupposing the view of duality, as e.g. 'Let him who desires the heavenly world offer the Jyotishtoma-sacrifice'—are liable to refutation?—True, we reply. As in the case of the Udgtri and Pratihartri breaking the chain (not at the same time, but) in succession [FOOTNOTE 26:1], so here also the earlier texts (which refer to duality and transitory rewards) are sublated by the later texts which teach final release, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... then Under-Secretary of State, included in his Indian Budget speech on Aug. 5, 1909, a brief but effective refutation of the "drain" theory:— ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... was brought out at Covent Garden in 1823, when she was thirty-six years old; Macready played the principal part. 'If the play do reach the ninth night,' Miss Mitford writes to Macready, 'it will be a very complete refutation of Mr. Kemble's axiom that no single performer can fill the theatre; for except our pretty Alfonso (Miss Foote) there is only Julian, one and only one. Let him imagine how deeply we feel his exertions and ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... rest satisfied with consulting authorities on your own side only. We shall presently see how important it is to be prepared to meet arguments on the other side; and unless you have read something on that side, you will not know what points you ought to deal with in your refutation. In that event you may leave undisturbed in the minds of your readers points which have all the more significance from your having ignored them. One of the first reasons for wide reading in preparation for an argument is to assure yourself that you have a competent knowledge of the other ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... represents Fagin in the cell, he silently studied it for half an hour, and told me he was tempted to change the whole plot of his story. . . . I consented to let him write up to my designs; and that was the way in which Fagin, Sikes, and Nancy were created." Happily I was able to add the complete refutation of this folly by producing a letter of Dickens written at the time, which proved incontestably that the closing illustrations, including the two specially named in support of the preposterous charge, Sikes and his Dog, and Fagin in his Cell, had not even been seen by Dickens until his ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... it violate our general wish to lead and not to follow (a wish which is surely not immoral if we but lead aright), but if it be treated as every ethical principle must be treated,—namely, as a rule good for all men alike,—its general observance would lead to its practical refutation by bringing about a general deadlock. Each good man hanging back and waiting for orders from the rest, absolute stagnation would ensue. Happy, then, if a few unrighteous ones contribute an initiative which ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... avoided, but likewise the danger of floundering helplessly about in the inviting quicksands of inanity, he preserved silence—wise young man that he was, and trusted to his eyes to express an eloquent refutation. At last, however, something seemed to occur to him. A smile broke ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... his adversary, or compel him to change front, greater results will follow than if the conqueror had been weaker in numbers than the vanquished. The battle of Leuthen may certainly be quoted as a practical refutation of this principle, but we beg permission for once to say what we otherwise do not like, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... spiritual being as such, and which, therefore, seemed to impose upon every individual man the right or rather the duty of living by the witness of his own spirit. Comte saw only the former of these aspects of it. Hence he regarded the French Revolution as a practical refutation of the individualism which grew out of the Protestant movement, and not, as it was in truth, a critical event, which should force men to distinguish and separate its true and its false elements. And he drew from it the lesson that the individual has no moral or religious life ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... The refutation of the Manichean hypothesis is extremely easy if we be permitted to assume that both the principles which it supposes are either of infinite power or of equal power. If they are of infinite power, the supposition of their co-existence involves a contradiction in terms; for the ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... this tapestry has been the subject of three interesting papers, read before the Society of Antiquaries. The first and most important, from the pen of the Abbe de la Rue[89], has for its object the refutation of the opinions of Montfaucon and Lancelot, who, following the commonly received tradition, refer the tapestry to the time of the conquest, and represent it as the work of Queen Matilda and her attendant damsels. The Abbe's principal arguments are derived from the silence ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... maintained his bodily and mental vigour until his death at 86. His writings, distinguished by logical rigour of method and clearness of style, exercised a profound influence in France as well as at home; but his attempted refutation of Berkeley is now generally ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... pleasure. The objection is as foolish as your manner of putting it. It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule. You are puzzled because you cannot get over the idea that pleasures are only of the senses; but, child, a man who dies for his country dies because he likes it as surely as a man eats pickled cabbage because he likes it. It ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... blessed servitude? Canst thou say with a joyful heart, "O Lord, truly I am Thy servant?" He is no hard taskmaster. Would Satan try to teach thee so? Let this be the refutation, "He loved me, and gave Himself for me." True, the yoke is the appointed discipline he employs in training his children for immortality. But be comforted! "It is His tender hand that puts it on, and keeps it on." He will ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... bringing her hand, with the beetle in it, near her perfect lips, she lent it a full warm breath,—enough to have enlivened an Egyptian scarabaeus,—and behold! the beetle spread its wings and whizzed away. Before Balder could recover from this unexpected refutation, the lovely ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Lady Mabel, "and provide me with a refutation of Moodie's theology of destiny: not that I hope to silence him, for controversy is to him the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... repute in the community, of unimpeachable integrity in motives and dealings, influential and respected, men whom it was impossible in New England to treat with neglect or indifference. For this reason it was only the harder to remain silent beneath their published reproach when a refutation was possible. Hating Mr. Adams with an animosity not diminished by the lapse of years since his defection from their party, strong in a consciousness of their own standing before their fellow citizens, the thirteen notables responded with much acrimony to Mr. Adams's unsatisfactory letter. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... "A complete and satisfactory refutation of such an opinion," he continues, "cannot be brought forward at present"; so I suppose we must wait a little longer, but in the meantime we may again remark that, if we admit even occasional communication of changes in the somatic cells ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... itself as to its consequences in the domain of theology has been strangely exaggerated by many, both of its opponents and supporters. This is especially the case with that form of the evolution theory which is associated with the name of Mr. Darwin; and yet neither the refutation nor the demonstration of that doctrine would be necessarily accompanied by the results which are hoped for by one party and ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... that they could not all go together on their country's errand, and brushing aside the insinuation of his enemies that he was merely seeking political and selfish ends. That is a charge, of course, to which all of our statesmen, from Washington down, have been exposed. Its final refutation comes from examining the entire public career and the character of the person accused. To any one who knew what Roosevelt's life had been, and who knew how poignantly he felt the national dangers and humiliation of the past three years, the idea that he was playing politics, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... probably obtain it;—but he could not recommend such a step at the present moment. As to the accusation which had been made against her character, and which had become public through the malice of the editor of The People's Banner, Mr. Forster thought that the best refutation would be found in her return to England. At any rate he would advise no further step at the present moment. Should any further libel appear in the columns of the newspaper, then the question might be again considered. Mr. Forster had ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the growth of an organic citizenship, through the education of the nations themselves to a sense of common duty and a common life. It looks forward, not to the definite establishment, in our day, of the World-State, but only to the definite refutation of the wicked theory of the mutual incompatibility of nations. It looks forward to the expression in the outward order of the world's government of what we may call "the Principle of the Commonwealth," of Lord Acton's great principle of the State composed of free nations, of the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... thought of Aristotle and his Arab commentators to rational discussion. Thus was introduced the second or palmy period of Christian Scholasticism, whose chief industry, we may fairly say, was directed to the refutation of the two leading doctrines of Averroes. Aiming at this, Thomas Aquinas threw the whole dogmatic system of the Church into the forms of Aristotle, and thus produced that colossal system of theology which still prevails ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... formations. They said that each belonged mainly to the Old Red Sandstone period; that the cavern fronts rose in innumerable and wonderfully regular strata high in the air, each stratum about five frog-spans thick, and that in the present discovery lay an overpowering refutation of all received geology; for between every two layers of Old Red Sandstone reposed a thin layer of decomposed limestone; so instead of there having been but one Old Red Sandstone period there had certainly been not less than a hundred ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he said, as he laid them in her lap. "Will it surprise you to learn that flowers are a passion with me, and that I am a living refutation of the fallacy that 'there can be nothing very wrong about a man ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the Life induced Captain Medwin to publish his "Conversations with Lord Byron," a work now chiefly remembered as having called forth from Murray, who was attacked in it, a reply which, as a crashing refutation of personal charges, has seldom been surpassed. [Footnote: Mr. Murray's answer to Medwin's fabrications is published in the Appendix to the 8vo edition of "Lord ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... mercantile profession is incapable of developing the element of greatness in the mind of man, find a perfect refutation in the career of the subject of this memoir, who won his immense fortune by the same traits which would have raised him to eminence as a statesman. It may be thought by some that he has no claim to a place in the list of famous Americans, since he was not only German by birth, but German ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... has been alleged to be peculiar to man. In refutation of this assertion Darwin points to the decorative colours of birds, which are used for display. And to the last objection, that man alone has religion, that he alone has a belief in God, it is answered "that numerous races have existed, and still exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... space of five or six years he is denounced with a unanimity and an incisive vigor that ought to convince him there is something wrong. If he thinks it is his censors, he clings to his opinions with an abiding constancy, while ridicule, obloquy, caricature, burlesque, critical refutation, and personal detraction follow unsparingly upon every expression, for instance, of his belief that romantic fiction is the highest form of fiction, and that the base, sordid, photographic, commonplace school of Tolstoy, Tourgunief, Zola, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... been much too busy with her ladyship's nerves, and too ignorant of French, to gather enough for his refutation, had she wished for it; and, in fact, she had regarded him as the only safeguard of the party, devoutly believing all his reports, and now she was equally willing to magnify her own adventures. What a ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The possession of a moral nature makes me man. Sin is just to act in defiance of and in opposition to that nature. Sin, then, is the only possible case in the universe, falling under our observation, in which a creature can contradict the law of its being. Science has at least given the final refutation of the devil's lie that sin is natural to man. It is the only unnatural thing in the world. It is not non-human, like the actions of animals. The age- long history of the race can never be reversed. I cannot undo the process which has made me man, and act as the ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... prodigious effort of mental strength; but when he commences to speak, and to manage these, with other equally important operations of his own mind at the same moment, the difficulty of succeeding is greatly increased. When he begins to pour forth his refutation in an uninterrupted flow of luminous eloquence;—meeting, combating, and setting aside his opponent's statements and reasonings;—carefully marking, as he goes along, the effect produced upon his hearers, and adapting his arguments to the varying emotions and circumstances of the audience;—withholding, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... affections of the lower bowel, of the bladder, and of the skin, the two last resulting in ischury (Dorsey Gardner's "Quatre Bras, Ligny, and Waterloo," pp. 31-37; O'Connor Morris, pp. 164-166, note). The list is formidable; but it contains its own refutation. A man suffering from these diseases, unless in their earliest and mildest stages, could not have done what Napoleon did. Ischury, if at all pronounced, is a bar to horse exercise. Doubtless his long rides aggravated any trouble that he had in this respect, for Petiet, who was attached ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... covered the entire ground between scepticism and Catholicism. In refutation of Protestantism the principal lectures were: The Church and the Republic; Luther and the Reformation; How and Why I Became a Catholic, or A Search after Rational Christianity; and The State of Religion in the United ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Refutation de la theorie pneumatique et de la nouvelle theorie des chimistes modernes, etc. Paris, 1796. 1 ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... be a general refutation of materialism. To use but a mild epithet, we must conclude that the theory is unphilosophical, seeing that it assumes one thing to be produced by another thing, in spite of an obvious demonstration that the alleged effect is necessarily prior to its ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... for an elaborate refutation of a fallacy respecting which the only wonder is that it should impose on any one. Two answers may be given to it. In the first place, M. Comte might be referred to experience, and to the writings of his countryman M. Cardaillac ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... this infamously false circular roused much indignation among patriotic Americans, and no one believed it a trustworthy statement. The Independent Chronicle, in its issue for August, 1782, had the following refutation: [Footnote: This letter is said to have been written by Captain Manly, five times a prisoner during ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... vast cities and opened for settlement and civilization the boundless prairies of the West. These claims have been persistently repeated by railroad men, though they are so preposterous that they scarcely deserve refutation. The railroad, gradually developed by active minds of the past, and greatly improved by the inventions of hundreds of men in the humbler walks of life, is the common inheritance of all mankind, though no class of people have derived greater ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... Rule is as dead as Queen Anne," declared Mr Chamberlain. These are the kind of declarations usually made in the exuberance of a personal or political triumph, but the passing of the years has a curious knack of giving them emphatic refutation. ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... on with the argument; show her what it was in desertion that army men despised, make the distinction between deserting and resigning. But the truth was he was more interested in the things Katie had said than in the things which could be called in refutation. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... years after this first refutation of Bulow's idea, the concentric retreat of Barclay and Bagration saved the Russian army. Although it did not prevent Napoleon's first success, it was, in the end, the cause ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... appears, and furnishes the root of Mariolatry. We come to appear to the world what we really are. Mary was tempted to place herself above Christ, and so we are not surprised that those who have turned against Christ should join the tempter in placing Mary above her Son. The refutation is the life of Christ, who died for man, and the life of Mary, who never forgot herself in thinking of others. The triumph of Mary was won by submission. Had she revolted against Christ, she had lost all. In the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, the apostle speaks ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... the reader, therefore, be he Western or Oriental, to follow me in a spirit at once critical and sympathetic, challenging my suggestions as much as he will, but rather as a fellow-seeker than as an opponent bent upon refutation. For I am trying to comprehend rather than to judge, and to comprehend as impartially as is compatible with having an attitude ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... grass as a dam against the torrent that sweeps down from the mountains. With your leave, I had rather not argue with you; I should have too many excellent reasons and too few wits to apply them. Besides, you will find your refutation in the Abbe Guenee and twenty other apologists. I will only say that what you quote from Epicurus is foolishness; because God is arraigned in it as if he was a man, with a man's moral code. Well! sir, the sceptics, from Celsus down to Bayle and Voltaire, have ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... other parts of Tragedy having been already discussed. Concerning Thought, we may assume what is said in the Rhetoric, to which inquiry the subject more strictly belongs. Under Thought is included every effect which has to be produced by speech, the subdivisions being,—proof and refutation; the excitation of the feelings, such as pity, fear, anger, and the like; the suggestion of importance or its opposite. Now, it is evident that the dramatic incidents must be treated from the same points of view as the dramatic ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... This is true; but I give them for what they are. I have declared several times, that I did not vouch for their truth, that I repeated them to show how false and ridiculous they were, and to deprive them of the credit they might have with the people; and if I had gone at length into their refutation, I thought it right to let my reader have the pleasure of refuting them, supposing him to possess enough good sense and self-sufficiency, to form his own judgment upon them, and feel the same contempt for such ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... constitute the bone and sinew of the country. In a word, the requisition is signed by more than 30,000 Catholics of every degree. May it not be considered as a great plebiscite? Is it not a proof that the laity and clergy are all of one mind? Is it not a solid refutation of the foolish assertion of some Presbyterians, that the Catholic laity take no interest in the education question, and that, were it not for the priests, the laity would be perfectly satisfied to accept godless instruction for their children? Those ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... seriously have sent me this and written on it: "Raina, to her chocolate cream soldier—a souvenir"? (He exhibits the photograph triumphantly, as if it settled the matter beyond all possibility of refutation.) ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... chaplain to the House of Assembly, the question, "Is the Church of England an established church in Upper Canada?" was again debated in the House of Assembly and discussed in the newspapers. With a view to a calm, dispassionate, and historical refutation of the claims set up by the Episcopal Church on the subject, Dr. Ryerson reprinted in the Guardian of this day, the sixth of a series of letters which he had addressed from Cobourg to Archdeacon Strachan, in May and June, 1828. It covered ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... cheer; "she never for a moment believed in my guilt; Lilian bore up wonderfully under so terrible a trial; it was an unspeakable comfort to both to receive the visits of a friend so attached to me, and so confident of a triumphant refutation of the hideous calumny under which I now suffered ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... believe that inspectors are necessarily the enemies of the human race. Chesterton's theory that middle-class Socialists are people who want to do things to the poor in the direction of regimenting them finds an easy refutation. When, in 1910, the whole of England fell down before the eloquence of Mr. Lloyd George, and consented to the Insurance Bill, the one body of people who stood out and fought that Bill was that middle-class ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... Salem: may her increasing prosperity more and more evince the blessings of popular institutions, founded on the sacred basis of natural and social rights." And at Portsmouth, he gave that town, and added, "may the blessings of republican institutions furnish a refutation of the mistaken and selfish sophistry ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... anger, else why is it that thy mind is not moved at sight of thy brothers and myself (in such distress)? It is said that there is no Kshatriya in the world who is bereft of anger. I now behold in thee, however, a refutation of the proverb! That Kshatriya, O son of Pritha, who discovereth not his energy when the opportunity cometh, is ever disregarded by all creatures! Therefore, O king, thou shouldst not extend thy forgiveness to the foe. Indeed, with thy energy, without doubt, thou, mayst ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... it. In the great joint debate in 1858 he spoke of Lincoln's having "distinguished himself in Congress by his opposition to the Mexican War, taking the side of the common enemy against his own country." No better refutation of these oft-repeated charges could be made than that given by Lincoln himself on this occasion. "The Judge charges me," he said, "with having, while in Congress, opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican War. I will tell ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... as to the authorship of the quotations applies chiefly to those which occur in the 'Refutation of the Heresies' by Hippolytus. This writer begins his account of the Basilidian tenets by saying, 'Let us see here how Basilides along with Isidore and his crew belie Matthias,' [Endnote 191:1] &c. He goes on using for the most ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... monarchs, stood as a rampart between them and the people. He thought St. Thomas of Canterbury a much injured character. He often pointed out that rich tract of country, which extends from St. Omer's to Liege, as a standing refutation of those who asserted that convents and monasteries were inimical to the populousness of a country: he observed, that the whole income of the smaller houses, and two-thirds of the revenues of the greater houses, were constantly spent ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... with paper and pencils, a pole, a chain and a semicircle, measure his fields, calculate the value of his mines, and then proceed to his house in order to take an inventory of his plate and furniture. But this pleasantry, excellent as pleasantry, hardly deserves serious refutation. No person who has a right to give any opinion at all about politics can think that the question, whether two of the greatest empires in the world should be virtually united so as to form one irresistible mass, was a question ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... step in the scientific refutation of the theory of abiogenesis was taken by the Italian Redi, who, in 1668, proved that no maggots were "bred'' in meat on which flies were prevented by wire screens from laying their eggs. From the 17th century onwards it was gradually shown that, at least in the case of all ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... regret that our own ungenerous disparagers of native merit, and exclusive eulogisers of the dead or the alien—of those only 'quos Libitina sacravit,' or whom oceans divide from us—are not now and then open to the same palpable refutation, as they are certainly guilty of the same mean error, in prejudging the whole question, and refusing to listen even to the plain evidence of their own feelings, or, in some cases, to the voice of their ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... suddenly to have grown out of boyishness into manly determination, and gradually he extracted the whole story from her. He would not listen to the delusion in which she had worked herself into believing, founded upon the negations for which she had sedulously avoided seeking positive refutation, and which had been bolstered up by her imagination and wishes, working on the unsubstantial precedents of novels. She had brought herself absolutely to believe in the imposture, and at a moment when her uncle's condition seemed absolutely ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... authority or opinion of one savant against another. Already, amid the currents and eddies of modern opinion, the savants may enjoy the same advantage at the expense of the divines— we mean, of course, on the scientific arena; for the mutual refutation of conflicting theologians on their own ground is no novelty. It is not by way of offset, however, that these divergent or contradictory views are here referred to, but only as an illustration of the fact that the divines are by ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... of a Letter written by a Spanish Gentleman to his Friend in England in refutation of sundry Calumnies there falsely bruited among the People, 1589—An Advertisement written to a Secretarie of my Lord Treasurer of Ingland by an Inglish Intelligencer as he passed through Germanie towards Italie; also a Letter written by the Lord ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... ruin. With such advantages in the worthy doctor's favor, he might have kept the field until some newer extravaganza had made his own obsolete, had not one ugly turn in political affairs given so smashing a refutation to his practical conclusions, and called forth so sudden a rebound of public feeling in the very opposite direction, that a bomb- shell descending right through the whole impression of his book could not more summarily have laid a chancery "injunction" upon ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... reader will be reminded of Lucretius, iii. 979-1036. Smith, however, would not have relished this comparison. He devotes part of one sermon to a refutation of the Epicurean poet, in whom he sees a precursor of his ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the Early Italian Painters. A complete refutation of any charge that the character of their school was neccessarily gloomy will be found in the works of Benozzo Gozzoli, as in his 'Vineyard' where there are some grape-gatherers the most elegant and graceful imaginable; ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Hannibal hauled the ensign down, and then hoisted it reversed, as a signal of distress, and afterwards, when she struck, hauled it down; and that the French hoisted it union down to decoy the Calpe. But, for the refutation of these absurdities, we must refer the reader to the testimony of Colonel Connolly, who was then acting captain of the marines, an officer of the highest character, whose veracity cannot be questioned; and who, moreover, from being the only officer on the poop ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... Protection, which Lord John Russell had stigmatized, in his letter, 'the bane of agriculture.' 'In the history of my noble friend's illustrious family,' he continued, 'I should have thought that he would have found a remarkable refutation of such a notion.' And then he drew a lively sketch of the colossal and patriotic works of the Earls and Dukes of Bedford, 'whereby they had drained and reclaimed three hundred thousand acres of land drowned in water, ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... or traditional argument for Theism; he does not enter into theological controversy. He has not formulated, with any strictness, his conception of God; for he has recognized that an examination of Theism would be of little or no value, which was not prefaced by a refutation of mechanism and materialism, and by the assertion of some spiritual value in the universe. It is to such a labour that Bergson has applied himself; it is only incidentally that we find him making remarks on religious or theological conceptions. His whole philosophy, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... beautiful it seemed! An air of comfort—American, southern comfort—pervaded the whole. The breakfast was brought in by a middle-aged negress, whose tidy appearance, and honest, happy, smiling face presented the best refutation of the gross slanders of our northern brethren. I would that her daguerreotype, as she stood arranging the dishes, could be contrasted with those of the miserable, half-starved seamstresses of Boston and New York, who toil from dawn ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... he had once declared it to be an all-sufficient refutation of the idea of the Fatality, that he had never met with the timber-ship in any of his voyages at sea, so he now seized on the similarly derived conclusion, that the whole claim of the Dream to a supernatural origin stood self-refuted ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... an absolute fact and certainty, impossible of refutation, that when animation ceases in the body and no effort is made to revive it, life ceases and the processes of decay and decomposition ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... of "The People vs. the S. S. Street Railway Company," or in a battle of alleged infringement of patent rights. There are engineering experts, just as there are legal experts, who deem it within their code of ethics to address themselves and their energies toward the refutation of such claims, however wrong or right these claims may be. Engineering is an exact science. It is based on principles hardly refutable. Yet there are engineers who will and can confound these principles before a court of law in such manner ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... lover is the Cardinal de Polignac; but she has, besides, the first Minister and some young men. The Cardinal is accused of having assisted in the refutation of Fitz-Morris's letters, although he has had this very year (1718) a long interview with my son, and has sworn never to engage in anything against his interests, notwithstanding his attachment ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... Index follows the Preface. The appendices of the Small Catechism are omitted, likewise the superscription Appendix of the Catalogus. Our copy of the Heidelberg folio edition of 1582 omits the Catalogus and adds the Apology of the Book of Concord of 1583, as also the Refutation of the Bremen Pastors of the same year. A copy of the Magdeburg quarto edition lying before us has the year 1580 on the title-pages of the Book of Concord, the Epitome, the Declaratio, and the Catalogus. The Preface is followed by three pages, on which Joachim Frederick guarantees ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Homer shows himself not to be a Demodocus, not to be a ballad-singer, which is an essential point in the Wolfian argument. Homer himself refutes Wolf some 2,500 years beforehand, and his is still the best refutation. A careful study of this Eighth Book settles the relation between balladist and poet by a simple presentation of the facts in their proper co-ordination, and also puts the alert reader on the track of the genesis of the Wolfian ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
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