"Infallibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... American mathematicians boast of superior infallibility to the French or British. In computing the experiments which were made at Lowell (for a new turbine wheel), it was found that when the gate was fully open, the quantity of water discharged through the guides was seventy per cent. of the theoretical discharge. (An error of thirty ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... great pretensions to infallibility, and on account of this they claim, and obtain, the veneration of the people, by whom they are supported, fed, and clothed. I found the Lamas, as a rule, intelligent, but inhuman, even barbarously cruel and dishonorable. This was ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... incipient baldness—whose wary and slightly weary eyes all impressively suggested the metropolitan atmosphere of high pressure and sophistication from which he had emerged. He had a machine to sell; an amazing machine, endowed with human intelligence and more than human infallibility; for when it made a mistake it stopped. It was designed for the express purpose of eliminating from the payroll the skilled and sharp-eyed women who are known as "drawers-in," who sit all day long under a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sociological standpoint the book is an organized objective mind whose thoughts are accessible to all. The role of the book in social life has long been recognized but not fully appreciated. The Christian church, to be sure, regards the Bible as the word of God. The army does not question the infallibility of the Manual of Arms. Our written Constitution has been termed "the ark of the covenant." The orthodox Socialist appeals in unquestioning faith to the ponderous tomes ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... men to-day form a brotherhood, a hierarchy, which lays claim to infallibility, or rather tacitly ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... commenced amongst the very Apostles, has ever since divided the unity of the Christian body. The perverted ingenuity of successive generations of churchmen has filled the world with theological quibbles, which have naturally enough culminated of late in doctrines of Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility. ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... return to their implied threat bolstered their belief in the infallibility of the Company, their conviction that no independent dared stand up against the might and power ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... last Lavalle was a Catholic of the old school, accepting—he who had looked into the very heart of the lightnings—the dogmas of papal infallibility, of absolution, of confession—of relics great and small. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... it became high time to remember the first clause of that great discovery made by the ancient philosopher, for securing health, riches, and wisdom; the infallibility of which has been for generations verified by the enormous fortunes constantly amassed by chimney-sweepers and other persons who get up early and go to bed betimes. The young ladies accordingly rose, and having taken leave of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... not have troubled, she paid no attention whatever to me, continuing to hold my grandmother's hand and look into the wise, stormy, tender, emphatic, much-enduring old face. And I wondered at my relative, and saw in this marvel one more proof of her own infallibility. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... wherein the free will hath his proper working also. From the result of his whole performance I was confirmed in this opinion; that we must acknowledge the work of both grace and free will in the conversion of a sinner; and so likewise in all other events, the consistency of the infallibility of God's foreknowledge at least (though not with any absolute, but conditional predestination) with the liberty of man's will, and the contingency of inferior causes and effects. These, I say, we must acknowledge for the [Greek: hoti] but for the [Greek: to ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... times will agree," thus appealing to the distant tribunal as James pointed out. All the insane hospitals have their sufferers for conscience's sake, paranoid personalities whose egos have expanded to infallibility and whose ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... as well-informed as her husband would deprive him of this daily source of domestic enjoyment; his lecture would be reduced to discussion, and to discussion in which he might be defeated. To rob him of his oracular infallibility might greatly improve the husband, but it would revolutionize the character of ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... inaccuracy, blunder, misapprehension, falsity, misconception. Associated Words: fallibility, infallibility, fallible, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... recte nemini concessum perhibetur.(931) Their own records let the world know the abominable vices and impieties of popes. Witness Platina, in the life of John X., Benedict IV., John XIII., Boniface VII., John XX., John XXII., Paul II., &c. And further, when our adversaries dispute of the Pope's infallibility, they grant, for his own person, he may be an heretic, only they hold that he cannot err ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that ONE man's conscience doesn't know right from wrong, it is an admission that there are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine of infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is one thing which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... papal infallibility in 1870, the government took the opportunity of declaring that the concordat had lapsed, on the ground that there was a fundamental change in the character of the papacy. Nearly all the Austrian prelates had been opposed to the new doctrine; many of them remained to the end of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... was astonished to find it so nearly perfect. Whatever opinion he had of its errors he would sacrifice to the public good, and he hoped that every member of the convention who still had objections would on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and for the sake of unanimity put his name to this instrument. Hamilton added his plea. A few members, he said, by refusing to sign, might do infinite mischief. No man's ideas could be more remote from the plan than his were known to ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... educated than the majority, having had greater opportunity: a little further seeing, maybe, having had more leisure for thought: but otherwise, no whit superior to any other young, eager woman of the people. This absurd journalistic pose of omniscience, of infallibility—this non-existent garment of supreme wisdom that, like the King's clothes in the fairy story, was donned to hide his nakedness by every strutting nonentity of Fleet Street! She would have no use for it. It should be a friend, a comrade, a fellow-servant of the ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... all manner of fatigues. But, to make amends, the sciences flourish among them. The effendis (that is to say, the learned) do very well deserve this name: They have no more faith in the in inspiration of Mahomet, than in the infallibility of the Pope. They make a frank profession of Deism among themselves, or to those they can trust; and never speak of their law but as of a politic institution, fit now to be observed by wise men, however at first introduced ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... world over—to believe that one can do things better than any one else. But if such importunities prevail, the chances are that books will be misplaced by the very literary expert who has solemnly asserted his infallibility. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... to the Nietzsche student, I should like it to be understood that I make no claim as to its infallibility or indispensability. It represents but an attempt on my part—a very feeble one perhaps—to give the reader what little help I can in surmounting difficulties which a long study of Nietzsche's life and works has enabled me, partially I ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. He will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... came the great crisis in the Roman Catholic world over the promulgation by Pius IX. of the dogma of papal infallibility. Lord Acton, who was in complete sympathy on this subject with Dollinger (q.v.), went to Rome in order to throw all his influence against it, but the step he so much dreaded was not to be averted. The Old Catholic separation followed, but Acton did ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Constance somewhat, although she had come prepared by a childlike faith in Ruskin's infallibility to worship them. She was, however, too frank to attempt to conceal her real impressions, and then Merton consolingly informed her that no person could appreciate a Turner before seeing it many times. One's ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... those assertions," he said, "which can only be denied, and pronounced to be malignant and false. No facts exist to support it. The asserters assume to themselves, and to those who think with them, infallibility. Take their words for it, they are the only honest men in the community." "As far as I know," he said, "there is not a member of the legislature who can properly be called a stockjobber or a paper-dealer. There are several of them who were proprietors of public debt in various ways; some for ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... times attainable has always been recognized by the Christian Church, Apostolic, Catholic, and Protestant. Baptism was called by the Greek fathers, "enlightenment" (Photismos), as by it the believer received the spirit of truth. The Romanist, in the dogma of infallibility, proclaims the perpetual inspiration of a living man; the Protestant Churches in many creeds and doctrinal works extend a substantial infallibility to all true believers, at least to the extent that they can be inspired to recognize, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... their careful general education. Thus they are aware that they are not able to give satisfaction, either to themselves or to others; and from this arises a want of that confidence in their own powers, which should amount almost to a consciousness of infallibility, in order to produce a satisfactory musical performance. This confidence has its foundation in a full, firm, clear, and musical touch, the acquisition of which has been, and is still, too much neglected ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... now see this victim to her own indiscretion breathe her last sad sigh, and expire in all the extremity of penury and wretchedness. The two quacks, whose injudicious treatment, has probably accelerated her death, are vociferously supporting the infallibility of their respective medicines, and each charging the other with having poisoned her. The meagre figure is a portrait of Dr. Misaubin, a foreigner, at that time ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... faith, I have unavoidably created to myself two sorts of enemies: the Papists indeed, more directly, because they have kept the Scriptures from us what they could; and have reserved to themselves a right of interpreting what they have delivered under the pretence of infallibility: and the Fanatics more collaterally, because they have assumed what amounts to an infallibility, in the private spirit; and have detorted those texts of Scripture which are not necessary to salvation, to the damnable uses of sedition, disturbance, and destruction of the civil ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... presumption, on that account, all the learned men who [101] stammeringly have endeavoured to suggest, as far as in them lay, the immobility and the sovereign and eternal efficacy of the understanding, of the will and of the power of God, through the infallibility of divine election and divine relation to all events. Nothing of all that interferes with my surmise that there is some depth which is hidden from us.' This passage of Cajetan is all the more notable since he was an author ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... which necessity forced him to invent and construct for himself, for want of just such a volume. Several of these original inventions will appear in the present work for the first time in book form, and the author can vouch for their excellence, and he might almost say, their infallibility, for in their perfect state he has never yet found them to "miss" in a ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... not exactly like us, and when we read his book we all give thanks that we are not like him, but every trait that he had large, we have in little. Cellini was sincere; he never doubted his own infallibility, but he points out untiringly the fallibilities in various popes and everybody else. When Cellini goes out and kills a man before breakfast, he absolves himself by showing that the man richly deserved his fate. The braggart and bully are really ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... fly. Tell a pope to be reasonable. You must relieve him of his infallibility if you want him to act like a sensible man. Adrian could undertake no reforms, and still besought Erasmus to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... weak as to need republication,(453) which is a greater admission than Tindal made in his extant volume. When however he passes from the decision on the general possibility of revelation to particular historic forms, the Mosaic and Christian, he discredits both. The infallibility of the moral sense is still the canon by which his judgment is determined. On this ground he disbelieves the Jewish religion,(454) selecting successive passages of the national history, such as the sacrifice of Isaac, the oracle of Urim,(455) the ceremonial religious system,(456) as the object of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... identified itself with Capital in all its forms, with the protected monopolists, the trusts and the corporations, that the mass of Labour threatens to support the Democrats; and as the latter party maintains the doctrines of direct government and the infallibility of the majority, the result will be such a financial crisis and such an industrial revolution that the Americans will have at last to admit that their government needs ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... slavery or any other subject. (Laughter.) I would as soon have a Latin priest,—I would as soon have Archbishop Hughes,—I would as soon go to Rome as to Jerusalem or Athens,—I would as soon have the Pope at once in his fallible infallibility,—as ten or twenty, little or big, anti-slavery Doctor-of-Divinity priests, each claiming to give his infallible rendering, however differing from his peer. (Laughter.) I never yet produced this Bible, in its plain unanswerable authority, for the relation ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... has taken the Bible from the throne of infallibility on which Protestantism sought to place it. By a gradual yet benign process, which we were nevertheless at first inclined bitterly to resent, he has opened our eyes to its true character and purpose. Again, he has pronounced his Thou shall not to the natural and yet selfish human desire ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... that the modern world proceeded as before. Something more drastic appeared to be necessary— some bold and striking measure which should concentrate the forces of the faithful, and confound their enemies. The tremendous doctrine of Papal Infallibility, beloved of all good Catholics, seemed to offer just the opening that was required. Let that doctrine be proclaimed, with the assent of the whole Church, an article of faith, and, in the face of such an affirmation, let the modern world do its worst! Accordingly, a General Council— the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... the people. But he did so as a Conservative. He had watched the progress of things, and had perceived that duty called upon him to be the organ of Mr. Daubeny. This duty he performed with great zeal, and with an assumption of consistency and infallibility which was charming. No doubt the somewhat difficult task of veering round without inconsistency, and without flaw to his infallibility, was eased by Mr. Daubeny's newly-declared views on Church matters. The People's Banner could still be a genuine People's Banner in reference ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... he said, "you are so certain sure of the righteousness of your side in this quarrel that you cannot, for your life's sake, for your love's sake, consent to stand neuter and look on, Captain Infallibility?" ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... touched by this singular development of solicitude for his preservation, but could not help saying something in praise of his invention, giving a demonstration of the infallibility of the principle, with several scientific causes of error in working out the practice. He had no doubt it would be all right on another experiment. Seeing that her looks expressed unfeigned alarm ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... condemned the cause of the Church and of humanity, and thrown the weight of his authority into that of Gallicanism. Here again we see how his mental intensity and impatience reduced him to the dilemma which found solution in his apostasy. Holding as he did to the Papal infallibility in a form far more extreme than that subsequently approved by the Vatican Council, he was bound in consistency to accept the Pope's decision as infallible in respect to its expediency and in all its detail. Thus it seemed to him that the ideal for which he had lived was shattered by ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... unkind about him, one horn of the dilemma must be taken. If you admit you were wrong in the first conclusion, you lay yourself open to the suspicion that you are also wrong in the second—that you are one who makes snap judgments. The safer way then is to cling close to the presumption of your own infallibility, without, of course, actually stating it, and claim that your idol has changed, backslidden—fallen. This then lends an aura of virtue to your action, as it shows a wholesome desire on your part not to associate with the base person, and also an altruistic wish to warn the world ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... egotism and caprice. The latter provoke the reader almost as much as the former gives him delight. It disturbs the least critical mind to find the keenest insight in company with the loudest bravado, and the statement of a wise or beautiful thought followed up by a dogmatic assertion of infallibility as harsh as a slap on the face. The indisposition to recognize such a genius comes from the fact that he irritates as well as stimulates the minds he addresses. Everybody reads him, but the fooling he inspires is made up of admiration and exasperation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... who work for wages had more of the wisdom and virtue necessary to the right use of power than has been shown by the aristocratic and mercantile classes, we should not glory much in that fact, or consider that it carried with it any near approach to infallibility. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the world has since accorded him. In our senior year the higher classes competed for the Boylston prizes for English composition. Emerson and I sent in our essays with the rest and were fortunate enough to take the two prizes; but—Alas for the infallibility of academic decisions! Emerson received the second prize. I was of course much pleased with the award of this intelligent committee, and should have been still more gratified had they mentioned that the man who was to be the most original and influential writer born in America was my unsuccessful ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the tribunals of the more northern peoples: there all dissent from Catholic and priestly dogma was believed to be inspired by the powers of hell, deserving a common punishment, whether in the form of denial of transubstantiation, infallibility, of skill in magic, or of the vulgar practice of sorcery. Throughout Europe penalties and prosecutions were being continually enacted. The popes in Italy fulminated abroad their decrees, and the parliaments of France were almost daily ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... Gospelized communities developed into an organized Church, with doctrine, worship, and government based upon God's Word. These primitive Christians were careful to preserve the apostolic simplicity, purity, manner, and substance, of Divine service. The Infallibility of the Bible, the Divinity of Christ, the Inspired Psalmody, and the Presbyterian form of government, were fundamentals in the faith of the Church of Scotland from her youth. She appears exceedingly beautiful in her first love, coming up from the wilderness with her right hand taking firm hold ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... that infallibility is not the property of man, or you may entail disappointment on yourself, by expecting what is never to be found. The best men are sometimes inconsistent with themselves. They are liable to be hurried, by sudden starts of passion, into expressions and actions, which their cooler ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... clearness that was like the breath of infallibility. "Isn't the whole point that you'd ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... will lack nothing but the presence of a perfect charity to turn the nineteenth century into a complete kingdom of heaven. Amongst changes, then, so great and so hopeful—amongst the discoveries of the rights of women, the infallibility of the Pope, and the physical basis of life, it may well be doubted if the great fathers of ancient song would find, if they could come back to us, anything out of the way or ludicrous in a recipe-book ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... came into the room with a note for me which was marked "urgent," and I asked if I might read it. Jack Ward was the only man who ever wanted me in a hurry, and so confident was I in the infallibility of my chemist that I was not thinking of Owen. When I had finished reading the note I found that the conversation had ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... contemporary manners. Fledgling doctors are therein advised to make use of long and unintelligible words, and never to visit a patient without doing something new, lest the latter should say, "He can do nothing without his book." In brief, a reputation for infallibility ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... day and under our own eyes. To suppose that Romanism has reformed is current with intelligent persons, though no supposition could be more erroneous. All those beliefs prevalent in the days of Luther are affirmed at this hour, with the addition of the doctrine of papal infallibility and the immaculate conception. To-day indulgences are sold in the United States, noticeably so in Arizona; and a son of a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, because his name chanced to have a foreign flavor, was written to and offered one year's indulgences ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... be found that the anniversary was commemorated, piously and merrily, by sneering and adoring multitudes For the one did not prevent the other; people caricatured the Church, her hierarchy and ceremonials, but did not doubt her infallibility; they laughed at the devil and feared him. "Priests, deacons, and sub-deacons," says the Pope, are bold enough, on those mad days, "to take part in unbecoming bacchanals, in the presence of the people, whom they ought rather to edify by preaching the Word of God."[761] ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... party constituting the majority of a city, town, or neighbourhood, as well as by the Colony of Massachusetts, against the Parliament or supreme authority of the nation. They had no doubt of their own infallibility; they had no fear that they "should hereafter be of a malignant spirit;" but they thought it very possible that the Parliament might be so, and then it would be for them to fight if they should have "strength sufficient." But after the restoration they ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... called Frederick the "heretical Marchese di Brandenburgo," the king returned the compliment by calling him the "Grand Lama," and delighted himself over the assumed infallibility of the vicegerent of ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... an Englishwoman who has married a French Duke. He is a delightful old fellow, the pink of courtesy, and the model of perfect egotism. A true Parisian, and of course an atheist,—a very polished atheist, too, with a most charming reliance on his own infallibility. His wife writes novels which have a SLIGHT leaning toward Zolaism,—she is an extremely witty woman sarcastic, and cold-blooded enough to be a female Robespierre, yet, on the whole, amusing as a study of what curious nondescript forms the feminine nature can adopt ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... important result of the supreme position accorded to the Papacy was the gradual emergence of the doctrine of papal infallibility. "The Church of Rome," says Gregory VII, "through St. Peter, as it were by some privilege, is from the very beginnings of the faith reckoned by the Holy Fathers the Mother of all the Churches and will so be considered to the very end; for in her no heretic ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... wife to let nothing come in the way of her returning to her place beside her husband, no matter what the difficulties? "'It is not good,' we are told, 'for a man to live alone,' and please remember that there is no such thing as infallibility in human nature. Sometimes temptations are so strong that one needs to be superhuman to withstand them. Why expect too much of Life?" stared up at ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... had hidden her shame in a sanitarium, Mrs. Singleton Corey first learned how it felt to be unsatisfied with herself. Had learned, too, what it meant to have her life emptied of Jack's roisterous personality. She had learned to doubt the infallibility of her own judgments, the justice of her own viewpoints. She had attained a clarity of vision that enabled her to see herself a failure where she had taken it for granted that she was a success. She had failed ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... are generally accepted as truths, without any thought whatever on the subject; so universally accepted, indeed, that it is considered a waste of time to think upon them at all; but which, upon a thorough investigation, might possibly lose some of their old-time infallibility, and the consideration of which might well repay the trouble, by opening a field of thought at once interesting ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... recovers its infallibility in another case. The Meloes, as we have seen, pass without difficulty from the flower to the objects within their reach, whatever these may be, smooth or hairy, living or inanimate. This done, they behave very differently, according as they have chanced to invade the body of an insect or some ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... doctrine of infallibility, these countries are claimed by Rome, and wedded to her, and this doctrine of infallibility makes a divorce impossible. Rome waits only her time to reclaim her supposed own. And this doctrine of infallibility will make it a holy war, hence good ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... attributes that might be predicated. We may say, That the whole is greater than its part, is an axiom in mathematics: That the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone, is a tenet of the Greek Church: The doctrine of the divine right of kings was renounced by Parliament at the Revolution: The infallibility of the Pope has no countenance from Scripture. In all these cases the subject of the predication is an entire proposition. That which these different predicates are affirmed of, is the proposition, "the whole is greater than its part;" the proposition, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the end for which they are undertaken, and the Pope, in spite of his infallibility, will not prevent his persecutions from giving Freemasonry an importance which it would perhaps have never obtained if it had been left alone. Mystery is the essence of man's nature, and whatever presents itself ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... lightning-flash at night, a whole vision: but only for a moment's space. The reader may find also details of interpretation which are open to doubt; if so, he will remember that no man would have shrunk with more horror than Mr. Maurice from the assumption of infallibility. Meanwhile, that the author's manly confidence in the reasonableness of his method will be justified hereafter, I must hope, if the Book of Revelation is to remain, as God grant it may, the political ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... few Confused conferences, where neither party was entirely sincere Customary oaths, to be kept with the customary conscientiousness Deadliest of sins, the liberty of conscience I regard my country's profit, not my own Made no breach in royal and Roman infallibility Neither wished the convocation, while both affected an eagerness Our pot had not gone to the fire as often Peace, in reality, was war in its worst shape Those who "sought to swim between two waters" Volatile word was thought preferable ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... will fly away from the spot where it has been hit, but the savage knows perfectly well the infallibility of his poisons which will bring it to the ground in a few minutes, so he follows the way ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... in Bamberg, Bavaria, professor of Church History in the University of Muenich; head of the old Catholic party in Germany; was at first a zealous Ultramontanist, but changed his opinions and became quite as zealous in opposing, first, the temporal sovereignty, and then the infallibility of the Pope, to his excommunication from the Church; he was a polemic, and as such wrote extensively on theological and ecclesiastical topics; lived to a great age, and was much honoured to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... She had had her troubles. Like other realities, they took on themselves a metaphysical mantle of infallibility, sinking to minor cerebral phenomena for quiet contemplation. She had no notion how they did this. And, it must be added, that they might, had they felt so disposed, have stood as pressing concretions which chafe body and soul—a most disagreeable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... majority of men are not willing to turn good, to renounce the material and sensual rewards under their hands without some definite and concrete guaranty that, if they do so, they are going, to be rewarded hereafter. They demand some sort of infallibility. And when we let go of the infallibility of the Church, we began to slide toward what looked like a bottomless pit, and we clutched at the infallibility of the Bible. And now that has ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in the Erybyggja Saga, by the strange rising and setting, and the wild orbits of new "weirdmoons" of romance. Before we can make up our minds on Scott, we have to remember, or forget, the scornful patronage of one critic, the over-subtlety and exaggerations of another, the more than papal infallibility of a third. Perhaps the best critic would be an intelligent school-boy, with a generous heart and an unspoiled imagination. As his remarks are not accessible, as we must try to judge "Waverley" like readers ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... not have me say I am certain, would you? these are no times for Popery and infallibility; however, I assure you I think him perfectly safe. He has done a foolish and idle trick, but no man is wise always. We must get rid of his fever, and then if his cold remains, with any cough, he may make a little ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... that the methods of the Naval Academy were open to criticism would be to claim for them infallibility. Upon the whole, however, in my time they erred rather on the side of being over-conservative than unduly progressive. Twenty years later, recalling some of our Academy experiences to one of my contemporaries, himself more a man of action ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the way to the mills. But once there the amusement in his eyes rapidly deepened to amazement, for there were few steps in the processes upon which the boy could not talk as fluently and technically as did the mill boss himself. And he knew timber; knew it with the same infallibility which had, even in McLean, always seemed to border upon ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... business and calling, to work out the above-mentioned purpose as circumstances might permit, I have laid no claim to genius, none to infallibility; but I have endeavoured to be accurate, and aspired to be useful; and it is a part of my plan, that the reader of this volume shall never, through my fault, be left in doubt as to the origin of any thing it contains. It is but the duty of an author, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... but Pope. He feels, and his courtiers venture openly to claim for him, not only the royalty which can do no wrong, but the infallibility which can define right and wrong themselves. He resents, we are told upon democratic authority, all pretension ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... provided that they were upright and honourable in their lives. But the result of his liberal and unorthodox thought was to insensibly modify and partially rationalise her own beliefs, and she put on one side as errors the doctrines of eternal punishment, the vicarious atonement, the infallibility of the Bible, the equality of the Son with the Father in the Trinity, and other orthodox beliefs, and rejoiced in her later years in the writings of such men as Jowett, Colenso, and Stanley. The last named, indeed, was her ideal Christian gentleman, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... himself no blind follower of the Vatican; and when he went with a very princely retinue—in part the weakness of his humble origin—to Rome in order to explain why he was unable to subscribe to the dogma of Papal Infallibility, he ravished his audience with a marvellous Latin oration, for he spoke many modern languages but was most thoroughly at home in Latin. Often in conversation he passed from one language to another, in search of what would best express his ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... skills of three independent branches of Government, reserving fundamental sovereignty to the people of this great land. It is only as the temporary representatives and servants of the people that we meet here, we bring no hereditary status or gift of infallibility, and none follows us ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and in divers manners spake in time past unto the Fathers by the Prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son" (Hebrews i:1). He confirmed the Law and the Prophets, therefore all criticism of the Old Testament attacks the authority and infallibility of the Son of God. He also revealed the will of God, made known the Father and the fact of eternal life, and the eternal and conscious punishment of the wicked. He predicted the great future events concerning Himself and His Kingdom, the end of the age and His ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... and tolerant, more fitted to heal the breach between the cultivated and the Church. However, before the Second Empire, an end had been made of that. It cannot be said that the French Church exactly favoured the infallibility. It certainly did not stand against the decree as in the old days it would have done. The decree of infallibility is itself the greatest witness of the steady progress of reaction in the Roman Church. That action, theoretically at least, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... not having been believed on trust, thought the moment had arrived to regain his infallibility, by completing the unfinished sentence. While every one was endeavouring to supply ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... dutifully submissive to religious control; nowhere out of Spain had heresy been treated more cruelly; yet here, too, the Vatican claim was spurned. But the final humiliation took place some years later under Urban VIII.,—the same pontiff who wrecked papal infallibility on Galileo's telescope. He tried to enforce his will on the state of Lucca, which, in the days of Pope Paul, had submitted to the Vatican decrees abjectly; but that little republic now seized the weapons which Sarpi had devised, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... or Methodistic in his tastes. He may have his own theory of the Atonement, his own conception of the meaning of the Sacraments, his own views on Apostolical Succession, and his own belief about the infallibility of the Gospel records. In their judgment, the main essential in a minister is not his orthodox adherence to a creed, but his personal relationship to Jesus Christ. For this reason they are not afraid to allow their candidates for the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... belong to God alone. This the pope has done for ages. Among the blasphemous titles which he has assumed are these: "Lord God the Pope," "King of the World," "Holy Father," "King of kings and Lord of lords," "Vicegerent of the Son of God." For ages he has claimed infallibility, and this claim became a dogma of the church when adopted by the General Council of 1870. Further, he claims power to dispense with God's laws, to forgive sins, to release from purgatory, to damn and to ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... The adventure destroyed from summit to foundation three of my most important Meditations, and the catholic infallibility of my book was assailed in its most essential point. I would gladly have paid to establish the fidelity of the Viscountess V——- a sum as great as very many people would have offered to secure her surrender. But alas! my money will now ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... ignore the moral government of God; that laws were a terror to evil-doers; that philanthropists did not seek to reform the world by mechanical inventions, or elevate society by upholding the majesty of man rather than the majesty of God,—teaching the infallibility of congregated masses of ignorance, inexperience, and conceit. Even in those rude times there were the certitudes of religious faith, of domestic endearments, of patriotic devotion, of respect for parents, of loyalty to rulers, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... fearful view of frail human nature is opened for a searching mind to observe that a man, who professes to have abandoned the pleasures of existence, to have broken through the very first law of nature, to have separated himself from his kind, and to have assumed perfection and infallibility, the attributes of his Creator, devoting the altar at which he serves to the wicked purposes of arraying man against man, and of embruing the hands held up before him at prayer in ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... it may be said, that the Franco-German war changed all this. The Turkish government then no longer feared the French, and hence no longer lent itself to Papal intrigues. The dogma of the Papal Infallibility has been also a severe blow ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... to the human race, and in particular its value for purposes of legislation and social economy, which we are far from denying, there is some risk that lectures like Professor Huxley's at Belfast, dressed up for promiscuous crowds, and produced with the polite scorn of infallibility, in which the destruction of moral responsibility is broadly hinted at as one of the probable results of researches in biology, will do great mischief. For what does it matter, or rather ought it to matter, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... he is really the only inconsistent person. He says, 'I have formed an opinion which is based on experience, and I shall not alter it.' That is tantamount to saying that you have done with experience; it is a claim to have attained infallibility through fallible faculties. Where is the dignity of that? It's just a deification of stupidity and stubbornness and insolence ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... infallibility; some of his conclusions may be erroneous; he believes, however, that future investigation will prove the verity of every proposition that is advanced in this book. These propositions have been formulated ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... fifteen generally does, the want of examining the traditional teachings which had been transmitted to him. Byron felt the necessity of inquiring on what irrevocable proofs the dogmas which he was called upon to believe were based. Holy writ, aided by the infallibility of the teachings of the Church, etc., were adduced as ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... be expected. Nor will they barely make allowances for the errors which may be chargeable on the fallibility to which the convention, as a body of men, were liable; but will keep in mind, that they themselves also are but men, and ought not to assume an infallibility in rejudging the fallible opinions of others. With equal readiness will it be perceived, that besides these inducements to candor, many allowances ought to be made for the difficulties inherent in the very nature of the undertaking referred ...
— The Federalist Papers
... the separation of the spiritual and temporal powers; the function of the spiritual power being concerned with education, and that of the temporal with action, in the wide senses of those terms. The defects of this dual system were due to the irrational theology. But the theory of papal infallibility was a great step in intellectual and social progress, by providing a final jurisdiction, without which society would have been troubled incessantly by contests arising from the vague formulae of dogmas. Here Comte had learned from Joseph de Maistre. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... tones the Bishop put forth the claims of the Church of Rome to infallibility. He spoke of the importance of unity, of the crime of heresy and schism; and, finally, he enlarged on the duty of all Catholics to deliver over to justice all who were in the slightest degree guilty of those crimes. The sermon concluded, the clerk of the tribunal read the ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... pointed out that the public service and the professions are almost entirely filled with what must be called mediocrity; and one of the most potent causes of this unhappy state of affairs is the exquisite infallibility with which a blind system is constantly forcing square pegs into ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... knowledge, with a sincere spirit of belief (which has been wrongly disputed by Lange, Zeller, and Puenjer) a demoniacal pleasure in bringing to light absurdities in the doctrines of faith, with absolute confidence in the infallibility of conscience an entirely pessimistic view of human morality. His strength lies in criticism and polemics, his work in the latter (aside from his hostility to fanaticism and the persecution of those differing in faith) being directed chiefly against optimism and the deistic religion of reason, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... sundry other penal institutions devised by Earthman and Martian for the punishment of offenders against the laws of organized society. And yet they had failed to break his defiant spirit or to convince him of the infallibility of his creed that might makes right. Nor had they taken from him the gorillalike strength that was in his broad squat body, the magnificent brute lustihood that made him a terror to police and citizen alike. Instead, the many periods of incarceration had only served ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... lontano.” (Because we are too far off.) A very new argument against the universal infallibility of the Pope. It took, however; for his opponent mused ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... upon itself to fix by statute the doctrines which should be taught to the people. The distractions created by divided opinions were then dangerous. Individuals did not hesitate to ascribe to themselves the infallibility which they denied to the Church. Everybody was intolerant upon principle, and was ready to cut the throat of an opponent whom his arguments had failed to convince. The State, while it made no pretensions to Divine guidance, was compelled to interfere in self-protection; and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... to dub him Bishop of 'Ngami; which, you know, is one of those places that LIVINGSTONE (is he living, though?) found out. When any body questioned him, the said delegate was immediately to talk 'ngammon Latin; and His Holiness would interpret it to the council, as being the African for infallibility. It's wonderful how well this jolly dog gets on, with his dogmas and dog ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all the doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false. And, perhaps, the same may be justly said of every sect, church, and society of men, when they assume to themselves that infallibility which they deny to the pope ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... the author gives but his own personal opinions upon the subjects discussed, and although the sentiments are expressed with an assurance born of conviction, yet he claims not infallibility. ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... being at fault; William, hard and unyielding, was always perfectly certain of being in the right. It was therefore to be expected that his opinions should generally rule, and that he should construe her readiness to yield and her self-distrust, as proofs that he was not mistaken. Rock-ribbed infallibility could hardly be expected to comprehend the doubts that ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... liable to error; nature and certainty is very hard to come at, and infallibility is ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... humbug and a scoundrel for advocating it." Beacon Street, of course, was aghast at this outburst of blasphemy; and the high circles thereof were speedily closed against the plain-spoken radical who dared to question Mr. Webster's infallibility, and who made, indeed, but small account of the other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... is full of doleful creatures, who move about demanding our sympathy. I have nothing to offer them but doses of logic, and stern commands to move on or fall back. Catholics in distress about Infallibility; Protestants devoting themselves to the dismal task of paring down the dimensions of this miracle, and reducing the credibility of that one—as if any appreciable relief from the burden of faith could be so obtained; sentimental sceptics, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... lengths the principles of the Church of Rome have led their votaries: and who can assert that she is, in any respect, changed? The Romanist denies that the principles of his Church are changed: nay, he must do so, or renounce the doctrine of infallibility, which is incompatible with change: why, then, should Protestants volunteer assertions, respecting the altered character of Popery, when the Papists themselves deny the fact altogether? I may venture to assert that the individual who advances such a statement, is ignorant of ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... felt the need of forming illusions about the alleged weakness of his rival. As he made ready for this great invasion, he hesitated to regard the result as certain; for he no longer was conscious of his infallibility, nor had that military assurance which the force and fire of youth give, nor had he that conviction of success which makes it sure." There had been no lack of warnings. Those of his advisers who knew Russia well, such as the Count of ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... conditions that arise in times of national emergency. The idea that the Press could censor itself is ridiculous. That such a theory should ever have been put forward argues a strange inability to understand the essentials of the subject, and sets up a doctrine of infallibility in the world of journalism for which there ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... probably not any subtle distinction between Real Presence and Transubstantiation, not misgivings as to the exact degree of worship to be paid to the Virgin, not doubts as to the limits of the personal infallibility of the Pope or objections to practical abuses in the Church of Rome—which kept Keble and has kept many a Romanizing clergyman of the Anglican Church from becoming a Roman Catholic. Nor is the reason when analysed one of which Anglican philosophy need be ashamed for to the pretentions of sacerdotal ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Protestant strongholds of the North to the citadel of Authority at Rome, the signs of an Epiphany are equally lacking. The Infallibility which did not save the largest section of Christendom from such crimes as the Inquisition and the massacre of St. Bartholomew has proved itself equally impotent in these latter days. No one could have expected the Pope, who has spiritual children in all lands, to take sides in an international ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... the difficulty of getting rid of these distorting influences and facing such questions in a perfectly dry light, nobody suggests that objective truth on such matters is non-existent or for ever unattainable. A claim for objective validity for the moral judgement does not mean a claim for infallibility on behalf of any individual Conscience. We may make mistakes in Morals just as we may make mistakes in Science, or even in pure Mathematics. If a class of forty small boys are asked to do a sum, they ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... won't make any difference to my action. After all, I'm twenty-five; if I can't begin to manage my life now, you may be sure I never shall. But I know I'm right. I would bet on my infallibility. At present I've only told you half my reasons for resigning, and already ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... prevented from publishing his work by Pope Gregory XVI., on account of its variations from the Vulgate, which had been solemnly sanctioned by the decrees of the Council of Trent and the Church's claims to infallibility. It was further asserted that he finally obtained permission to publish his edition on condition that he inserted within brackets the celebrated text 1 John v. 7, which was wanting in the manuscript. Whether this was true or not, it is certain that what the learned ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Emperor to the Island of Elba regardless of what might have been said. Nevertheless, I may be allowed to say in my own defense, that in this combination of physical and mental sufferings which overwhelmed me all at once, a person must be very sure of infallibility himself to condemn completely this sensitiveness so natural in a man of honor when accused of a fraudulent transaction. This, then, I said to myself, is the recompense for all my care, for the endurance of so much suffering, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of Wyclif in their bearing upon the destruction of the monasteries. Wyclif was designated as the "Gospel Doctor" because he maintained that "the law of Jesus Christ infinitely exceeds all other laws." He held to the right of private judgment in the interpretation of Scripture, and denied the infallibility claimed by the pontiffs. He opposed pilgrimages, held loosely to image-worship and rejected the system of tithing as it was then carried on. Wyclif was also a persistent and public foe of the mendicant friars. The views of this eminent reformer were courageously advocated ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... to go to bed, but he was afraid of oversleeping himself in case Elbridge had neglected to telephone Simpson. But he did not believe this possible, and he had smoothly confided himself to his experience of Elbridge's infallibility, when he started awake at the sound of bells before the front door, and then the titter of the electric bell over his bed in the next room. He thought it was an officer come to arrest him, but he remembered ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... clergy, had been for some time since looked upon in Bohemia with private disgust and open disapprobation; and when the professors Huss, Jerome, and Jacobellus, began to declaim against monks, auricular confession, and the infallibility of the pope, they found a responding echo in the breasts of their hearers; and all that was novel in their doctrines, was the boldness with which they were pronounced, and the logical consistency ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... Benedictus Deus. [Sidenote: January 26, 1564] Pius also caused to be prepared a symbol known as the Tridentine Profession of Faith which was made binding on all priests. Save that it was slightly enlarged in 1877 by the pronouncement on Papal Infallibility, it ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... explanatory attitude to show that the Syllabus does not really mean what to the ordinary reader it unmistakably seems to mean; and the work of explanation is made the more necessary and the more difficult by the decree of papal infallibility, which followed the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... from being swamped in materialism and rationalism. Honor to whom honor is due. But the very prosperity of these Lutherans has made them haughty, self-sufficient, self-righteous. A tone of Pharisaism and of infallibility seems to run through their utterances. They seem not only to believe in an infallible revelation from God, but in themselves as infallible interpreters of that revelation. Every one who does not accept their ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... the Vatican and his influence on the general policy of the Church of Rome. With the accession of Leo XIII. a new order began, and Newman's elevation to the sacred purple seemed to affix the sanction of Infallibility to views and methods against which Manning had waged a Thirty Years' War. Henceforward he felt himself a stranger at the Vatican, and powerless beyond the limits of his ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... both, 1914, an expert declared that "a difference of one-eighth of an inch in the laying on of the fingers made an entirely different impression"; and "judgment was awarded against the bank," which, relying upon the infallibility of the finger record, had brought the action. At any rate, the bertillon is still a potent weapon with the police, and when they want a man for a crime committed, or when they desire to drive out of any given place on ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... introducing descriptions of scenery, literary digressions, and quaint illustrations from his vast stores of reading to the confusion of all definite arrangement. Southey is in the awkward position of a dogmatist defending a compromise. An Anglican claiming infallibility is necessarily inconsistent. His view of toleration, for example, is oddly obscure. He would apparently like to persecute infidels;[152] and yet he wishes to denounce the Catholic church for its persecuting principles. He seems to date the main ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... his successors that French verse completely broke away from the control of those classical rules, the infallibility of which had been first attacked by the Romantics. In order to express the delicate, shifting, and indecisive feelings which he loved so well, Verlaine abolished the last shreds of rhythmical regularity, making his verse a perfectly fluid substance, which he could pour ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... and more difficult to enforce. The tyrant can use the taboo a thousand times more effectively than the citizens of a republic. When he speaks, it is with a prestige that dumbs questioning and makes obedience a habit. Let that infallibility come to be doubted, as in Russia to-day, and natural impulses reassert themselves, the great impositions begin to weaken. The methods of the Chicago Commission would require a tyranny, a powerful, centralized sovereignty which could ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... investigation, frankly confessed his inability to understand what was going on; for his ordinary business, he said, was cattle. A story is told of a metropolitan journal, which illustrates another difficulty the public has in keeping up its confidence in newspaper infallibility. It may not be true for history, but answers for an illustration. The annual November meteors were expected on a certain night. The journal prepared an elaborate article, several columns in length, on meteoric ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... great kindness of heart. It is only those who do not know her, or who have only met her in the conflict of opposing wills, who pronounce her, as some have done, a cold and heartless egotist. Opinionated she may be, because convinced of the general soundness of her ideas, and infallibility of her judgment. If the success of great designs, undertaken and carried through single-handed, furnish warrant for such conviction, she has an ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... approval our best reward. We are often too bold, we do not see all the difficulties that stand in the way of our speculations, we are too apt to forget that, in addition to its general Aryan character, every language has its peculiar genius. Let us all be on our guard against omniscience and infallibility. Only through a frank, honest, and truly brotherly coperation can we hope for a true advancement of knowledge. We all want the same thing; we all are etymologists—that is, lovers of truth. For this, before all things, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... acceptance of authority appear to him in its true colors, as mere private judgment in excelsis, and if he have courage to stand alone face to face with the abyss of the Eternal and Unknowable, let him be content, once for all, not only to renounce the good things promised by 'Infallibility,' but even to bear the bad things which it prophesies; content to follow reason and fact in singleness and honesty of purpose, wherever they may lead, in the sure faith that a hell of honest men will to him be more endurable than a paradise full of angelic shams." There can ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... asked pardon for doubting his infallibility, and promised never again to question his ability to navigate a vessel to any part of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... notorious that people are saved by faith. And there is no faith stronger than that of a bad-tempered woman in her own infallibility. Plainly, this wife of yours is the sort of person who cannot be tolerated by anybody short of the angels. We deduce that your Empress must ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... placed on the throne by the force of opinion, he could not have restored the ancient despotism without exciting universal dissatisfaction. Men seem formerly to have been awed by a conviction of his infallibility, and did not suffer themselves to reason upon the principles of action of a man who dazzled their imaginations by the magnificence of his exploits and the grandeur of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of slowness; but it is this very slowness that constitutes its strength and surety, its almost infallibility. One scarcely knows what a time evidence takes to produce itself. There is no knowing what important testimony investigations apparently ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Then the same family strain inevitably crops out, in the loosely-woven web of defensive presumptive evidence—whose pedigree we trace to the same parentage. God forbid that I should commit the sacrilege of arrogating His divine attribute—infallibility—for any human authority, however exalted; or claim it for any amount of proof, presumptive or positive. 'It is because humanity even when most cautious and discriminating is so mournfully fallible and prone to error, that in judging its own frailty, we require the aid and reverently ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... every serious man was surrounded by a "nimbus" of infallibility; no one had ever enlightened me on the fact that serious-minded men had themselves once been young, and had learned the student jargon of Heidelberg; that this director himself, after a noisy youth, had arrived at the idea that ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... the entire convention, including the grocery-man, adjourned, and accompanied us to the river where the general merits of our boat were thoroughly discussed by lantern light. Also, various conflicting versions of the distance to Bismarck were given—each party being certain of his own infallibility. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt |
