"Illogical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vouched, nor did it greatly matter. What he could vouch for was the relation of intimacy and confidence between his people and the Queen of Heaven. The fact, conspicuous above all other historical certainties about religion, that the Virgin was by essence illogical, unreasonable and feminine, is the only fact of any ultimate value worth studying, and starts a number of questions that history has shown itself clearly afraid to touch. Protestant and Catholic differ little ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... "Phoenician Elements in the Homeric Poems." Most seductive title! Such a popular touch about it! Think I shall have it printed as a "leaflet" for distribution among Workmen's Clubs and Radical Associations. Might conciliate those well-meaning but illogical Eight-Hour Men. Wonder if KEIRHARDIE would like a copy. What more nicely calculated to cheer the scant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... not how long this lasted—it might have been for hours, as I took no account of time. My mind seemed dazed, incapable of consecutive thought although a thousand illogical conceptions flashed through the brain, each in turn fading away into another, before I was fully aware of its meaning. Occasionally some far-off noise aroused me from lethargy, yet none of these could be identified, except once the mournful cry of a wild ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... the lowest myths. Why, or how, did a silly buffoon, or a confessed 'bogle' arrive at being regarded as a patron of such morality as had been evolved? An hypothesis of the processes involved must be indicated. It is not enough to reply, in general, that the rudimentary human mind is illogical and confused. That is granted; but there must have been a method in its madness. What that method was (from my point of view) I have shown, and it must be as easy for opponents to set forth what, from their point of ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... not at all complicated. It would not have been possible for a woman to have spent her girlhood with the cleverest mother of her day and have emerged from her training either obstinate or illogical. Lady Lothwell listened to as much of the history of Robin as her mother chose to tell her and plainly felt an amiable interest in it. She knew much more detail and gossip concerning Mrs. Gareth-Lawless than the Duchess herself did. She had heard of the child who was kept out of ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... exasperatingly uncertain and illogical about it all. Was it possible that St. Pierre Boulain was playing a huge joke on him? Even that was inconceivable. For there was Carmin Fanchet, a fitting companion for a man like Black Roger, and there was Marie-Anne, who, if it had been a joke, would not have played ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... M. Vandeloup, with a touch of his old airy manner; 'you come to commit suicide and are not afraid; I wish to save you the trouble, and you are, my dear—you are illogical.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... been fully carried out by the Protestants. The Protestant builds his faith on the Bible, but on what does he build his faith in the Bible? Is it not the testimony of the Holy Spirit? He has this support only through the Bible. Certain liberal theologians, like the orthodox, are extremely illogical in their conclusions concerning the word of God. The former will not accept of verbal inspiration, yet they call the Bible a divine book, which, fortunately, could be no better. Though they laugh at ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... occurs in us, with its unchecked illogical stream of images and ideas, moving towards no assigned end, combined in no ordered chain, is merely what we usually call day-dream. But where a definite wish or purpose, an end, dominates this reverie and links up its images and ideas into a cycle, we get in combination all the valuable properties ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... these complaints from the point of view of Henry the son. Whatever may have been the impelling motive, by establishing his sons in nominal independence, Henry the father had clearly put himself in an illogical position from which there was no escape without a division of his power which he could not make when brought to the test. The young king found his refuge in a way thoroughly characteristic of himself and of the age, in the great athletic ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... then be able to do its share towards the conquest of the complex forces of nature, and there will be brought about an intellectual and spiritual quickening that will make our civilization of to-day seem as crude, as selfish and illogical as that of the dark ages seem now ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... quarrelled with people; he always reproved them. "You make a great mistake—and an extremely feminine one—Miss Farringdon, in invariably deducting general rules from individual instances. Believe me, this is a most illogical form of reasoning, and leads to erroneous, and sometimes ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... queer because he himself was perfectly ready to become a Romanist. He seemed, however, to contemplate going over to Rome himself and yet letting his boys be educated in the religion of their immediate ancestors. This may appear illogical, but I dare say it is not so illogical as it looks. Edward, that is to say, regarded himself as having his own body and soul at his own disposal. But his loyalty to the traditions of his family would not permit him to ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... struggled the blood of three races. His father was Scotch, and his mother—Spanish on the spindle side and Irish by way of a most mercurial father—remained an unsolved problem all her days, even to her husband. Her laughter was as illogical as her tears. Her household could never tell what the next hour would bring forth, so ready were her sympathies, so instant her despairs. She lived all her life at the heights or the depths, with never a day of serene, womanly, reasonable action, and when she died ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... a Rock ... for Thou art a Rock.' Is that not illogical? No, for notice that little word, 'to me'—be Thou to me what Thou art in Thyself, and hast been to all generations.' That makes all the difference. It is not merely 'Be what Thou art,' although that would be much, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... above considering the art of cooking potatoes or the question of whether human beings once had tails, and in his theological moods he will expound St. John's Epistles, or the principles of Christianity. The bookman, in fact, is a quite illogical and irresponsible being, who dare not claim that he searches for accurate information in his books as for fine gold, and he has been known to say that that department of books of various kinds which come under the head of "what's ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... his power, could any earnest worshipper of the Virgin doubt for a moment that for one so favoured it would not be done? Such was the reasoning of our forefathers; and the premises granted, who shall call it illogical or irreverent? ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... very illogical and incoherent presentation. I must do better when I come to argue my first case," and he gave a joyous little laugh. For he knew if Doris meant to say him "Nay," she would not let her head droop on his shoulder, or yield to the clasp ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... find out, and who'd mind what he said, if he did find out? He only know'd that it wasn't put right by them what undertook that line of business, and that it didn't come right of itself. And, in brief, his illogical opinion was, that if you couldn't do nothing for him, you had better take nothing from him for doing of it; so far as he could make out, that was about what it come to. Thus, in a prolix, gently-growling, foolish way, did Plornish ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... criticisms of the Communist regime. The fear existed alike among Communists and non-Communists, but it was like the fear of people walking about in a particularly bad thunderstorm. The activities and arrests of the Extraordinary Commission are so haphazard, often so utterly illogical, that it is quite idle for any one to say to himself that by following any given line of conduct he will avoid molestation. Also, there is something in the Russian character which makes any prohibition of discussion almost an invitation to discuss. ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... the attention of the hearer to another subject; suggests an irrelevant fact or makes a remark, which confuses him and gives him something to think about; throws dust into his eyes; states some truth, from which he is quite sure his hearer will draw an illogical and untrue conclusion, and the like. Bishop Butler seems distinctly to sanction such a proceeding, in a passage which ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... habits, and especially some matters of opinion of grave importance, will help to make his character better known. Much questioning followed a brief former reference to his religious belief, but, inconsistent or illogical as the conduct described may be, there is nothing to correct or to modify in my statement of it;[290] and, to what otherwise appeared to be in doubt, explicit answer will be afforded by a letter, written upon the youngest of his children leaving home in September 1868 to join his brother ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Yes, I write the word proudly, victories, for I have been beyond my hopes successful. How well I remember my dear mother's distress at my queer notions, as she called them—her entreaties, her tender illogical protests against my making myself "conspicuous"! Dear mother! I can see now that it was very natural she should have disliked and dreaded my becoming a "strong-minded woman," for anything narrower than her ideas of a woman's education ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... coming from the external world which we have never seen is to explain obscurity by denser darkness. They are spiritual, they come to us without doubt from a spirit, from God. This is possible, it is not illogical, ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... with the same freedom from ill-temper, whether on private or public grounds, as we may hope will be felt by those who will call us ancient! Otherwise, the looking before and after, which is our grand human privilege, is in danger of turning to a sort of other-worldliness, breeding a more illogical indifference or bitterness than was ever bred by the ascetic's contemplation ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... reconciliation between Sylvia and Jermain. The girl was deeply under the impression made by the philosophy of the older woman; she did not for the moment dream of denying its truth; but she stood granite in a perfectly illogical denial of its implications in her own case. She did not consciously revolt against the suggestion that she renew her relations to Jerry Fiske, because with a united action of all her faculties she refused utterly to consider it for an instant. She would no more have been persuaded to ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... opinion, and often a defective grasp of the actual needs, have conduced to measures which inevitably result in an essential contradiction between the needs of the army and the actual end attained, and cannot be justified from the purely military point of view. It would be illogical and irrelevant to continue in these paths so soon as it is recognized that the desired superiority over the enemy cannot be reached ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... is as diverse from the living Lord God, the creator of heaven and earth. Nay, this equivoque on God is as mischievous as it is illogical: it is the sword and buckler ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... use again' a ghost," said he, with a gloomy shake of the head, "but a pistol's a comfortable thing to 'ave in a lonely place—'specially if that place be very dark." Which last, if something illogical, may ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... reasons of policy, reasons of sentiment, reasons of precedent advanced to justify this exclusion; but in all frankness, and with no disrespect intended, I must say that those which have been presented during this debate seem to me trivial, illogical, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... horrible injustice of this woman, but, as he saw life, to yield was all that he could do. To stand in Anna's light, at this late day, when, all his life, he had, without the slightest thought of self, made sacrifices for her, would be too illogical, too utterly absurd. "Madame, I yield," he said. "I know too well what poverty can be—what misery! Yes, Madame, I will go. But sometimes ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... groaned. While Huish was thus airing and exercising his bravado, the man at his side was actually engaged in prayer. Prayer, what for? God knows. But out of his inconsistent, illogical, and agitated spirit, a stream of supplication was poured forth, inarticulate as himself, earnest ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... must now be to make the principles on which our government is founded permeate consistently the mass of society, and to purge out the leaven of aristocratic and Old World ideas. So long as there is an illogical working in our actual life, so long as there is any class denied equal rights with other classes, so long will there ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of this volume to be consistent with one another. Facts have been stated and comments have been written as they occurred to the writers. If they were forced to be consistent with one another it would be using the method of the propagandizer. We prefer to appear inconsistent and possibly illogical rather than to hold back or frame anything to suit the general prejudices of the readers. Take this chapter then with ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... a process of induction," said the Doctor. "If any of my steps are unsound, correct me. You are silent? Then do not, I beseech you, be so vulgarly illogical as to revolt from my conclusion. We have now arrived," he resumed, "at some idea of the composition of the gang—for I incline to the hypothesis of more than one—and we now leave this room, which can disclose ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... say all that can be said, it consents to cure certain ailments, cleanses an ulcer, closes a wound, heals a lung, strengthens or makes supple an arm or leg, or even sets bones, but always as it were by accident, without reason, method or object, in a deceitful, illogical and preposterous fashion. One would set it down as a spoilt child that has been allowed to lay hands on the most tremendous secrets of heaven and earth; it has no suspicion of their power, jumbles them all up together ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... apparently defeated, his own in a war and his distinguished colleagues might misinterpret the spirit which moved him. Nevertheless, he could not refrain from remarking that it appeared to him that a Just Providence had wiped out the United States and therefore it would be illogical if not blasphemous for this august body to admit a delegation ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... only point out, before passing on, that the course which has been adopted towards S. Mark xvi. 9-20, by the latest Editors of the New Testament, is simply illogical. Either they regard these verses as possibly genuine, or else as certainly spurious. If they entertain (as they say they do) a decided opinion that they are not genuine, they ought (if they would be consistent) to banish them from the text.(26) Conversely, since they do not banish ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... there are no happy people to be seen.... Life is a nasty business for everyone. When I am serious I begin to think that people who have an aversion for death are illogical. So far as I understand the order of things, life consists of nothing but horrors, squabbles, and ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... minutes before, but she did not attempt to prove it to him; for, in the first place, she felt instinctively that the most difficult thing in the world is to convince an ignorant person that he has been foolish and illogical in his argument. You may prove this to an intelligent mind that is accustomed to reason, and to weigh the merits of questions, but it is a rare thing to find an uncultured brain that can follow you closely enough to be ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... which permit their possessor to generalise the details afforded by study and experience, and so deduce rules of conduct, his lordship, when he received those frequent appeals which were the necessary consequence of his officious life, became obscure, confused, contradictory, inconsistent, illogical. The oracle ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... with an intransitive verb is irreducible to the idea of possession: indeed, it is illogical. In I have waited, we cannot make the idea expressed by the word waited the object of the verb have or possess. The expression has become a part of language by means of the extension of a false analogy. It is an ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... practice. They show that having passed through such a sieve is no proof of sufficient powdering, not that all ores powdered and so sifted are unfit for assaying. This last would be an absurd and illogical conclusion. ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... little moan of fear. And now, astounded past all belief, Barbara understood. But before she could speak the seeming need of woman reassurance, no matter how illogical, was gone. Amazingly, all in an instant, the living dread disappeared from Miriam's face; she stiffened and threw back her head with that short laugh which contained so little of mirth, so much that was hard to translate. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... three drivers, of whom I was the middle one, and the worst, having on my Livret the note 'conducteur mediocre'. But that is neither here nor there; the story is as follows, and the moral is that the commercial mind is illogical. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... learned and logical of false assumptions, of invalid reasoning, of foregone conclusions, of pride and prejudice and passion. One would say that the result of your profound researches was only to make you more intensely illogical than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... we fathers and philosophers, ask that you retain, for our sakes, beauty of face and form, beauty of raiment, low, modulated voices, and a graceful carriage, faith, hope, and charity, even though you continue to reveal these last-named as at present with sweet, illogical inconsequence. More than this, we cannot do without the tender devotion, the unselfish forethought, the aspiring faith, which, even though we seem to mock and to be blind, saves us from the world and ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... cosmopolitan without losing one's patriotism, I venture respectfully to hope. But I would not have cared then to set myself right with the populace of my native city, either on that or any other point, though I could have done it with a word. It was natural and illogical to scorn the people for believing in my guilt, whilst I allowed them to believe it. Yet I felt against them a sort of lofty anger, and felt myself affronted to think that anybody could regard me as being even ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... may be only a representative of value, but its absence operates marvellously like the want of the value itself, and the primitive people of those days, and especially that class to which the schoolmaster belonged, had a habit, however illogical, of considering it ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... true there was no connection between Mrs. Walker's singing and Woolsey's little bill; that the "THEN, sir," was perfectly illogical on Woolsey's part; but it was a very happy hit for the future fortunes of Mrs. Walker. Who knows what would have come of her debut but for that "Then, sir," and whether a "smashing article" from the Tomahawk might not have ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is considered by Hillyer (Journ. Amer. Chem. Soc., 1903, 524), however, to be quite illogical, for, as he points out, the liberated alkali would be far more likely to recombine with the acid or acid salt from which it has been separated, than to saponify a neutral glyceride, while, further, unsaponifiable greasy matter ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... of the ladies on the street. The fact that both women belonged to a social stratum far above them gave additional license to their tongues; they could never be called in question by anybody who overheard, and were therefore safe to discuss the situation at their will. Condensed into illogical shape, the story was that Jane had met a foreigner who had deserted her, leaving her to care for the child alone; that Lucy had refused to come back to Warehold, had taken what money was coming to her, and, like a sensible woman, had stayed away. That there was not the slightest foundation ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... close corporation which renews itself by its own votes, and such a body of men is always in danger of becoming a mutual admiration society, and if this happens its public utility is at an end. In the present instance the action of the French Academy was illogical, unscientific, ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... them which are but the promptings of their own minds,"[27]—and that this has happened, not only to the convulsionists, but (by the confession of many of the ancient fathers[28]) also to the greatest saints. But he protests against the conclusion, as illogical, that the convulsionists never speak by the spirit of God, because they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... a youth of twenty whom I had seen only two days before, whose manner towards his father struck me as an ideal blending of affectionate comradeship with old-fashioned respect.[E] True, this was in Philadelphia, "the City of Homes," and even there it may have been an exceptional case. I am not so illogical as to pit a single observation against (presumably) a wide induction; I merely offer for what it is ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... candor due to an honorable contemporary.] At this very day, a French and an English economist have reared a Babel of far more elaborate errors on this subject; M. Say, I mean, and Mr. Malthus: both ingenious writers, both eminently illogical,—especially the latter, with whose "confusion worse confounded" on the subject of Value, if reviewed by some unsparing Rhadamanthus of logical justice, I believe that chaos would appear a model of order and light. Yet the very want of logic, which has betrayed these two writers into so many ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to hide from itself! In this mist of hallucination which rises and envelopes us, the whole appearance of life alters. Passion and desire repress the judgment and pervert the conscience. Conclusions that are illogical, expectations that are irrational and confidences that are groundless to the most final and fatal absurdity seem as natural ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Moreover, the "all-depends-on-the-subject" doctrine here, as always, swerves from one fatal difficulty. If, in what pleases poetically, poetical expression is always present, while in only some of what pleases poetically is the subject at the required height, is it not illogical to rule out, as the source of the poetic pleasure, that which is always present in favour of ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... a philosophical method is the last resort and the first condition of a true aesthetics, what is the secret of its failure? For that it has failed seems to be still the consensus of opinion. Simply, I believe and maintain, the unreasonable and illogical demand which, for instance, Fechner makes in the words I have quoted, for just this immediate application of a philosophical definition to concrete cases. Who but an Hegelian philosopher, cries Professor James, ever pretended that reason ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... with tears; she was unhappy, and, as always, this knowledge roused in Maudelain a sort of frenzied pity and a hatred, quite illogical, of all other things existent. She was unhappy, that only he comprehended: and for her to be made ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... was thoroughly illogical, of course; it left the question whether slaves are population or chattels for theorizers to wrangle over, and for future events to decide. It was easy for James Wilson to show that there was neither rhyme nor reason in it: but he subscribed to it, nevertheless, just as ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... wearily at the memory of her illogical act. The doctor nodded sympathetically. It was a fatal moment, the point of decision in her life. He understood ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... priest-authors, but few of them are among the greatest. A priest in politics does not usually hold his head, because politics isn't his place. There are priest-inventors; but somehow we forget the priest in the inventor, and feel that the latter title makes him a little less worthy of the former—rather illogical, is it not? The Abbot Mendel was a scientist, but it is only now that he is coming into his own; and how many know him only as Mendel, forgetting his priestly office? Liszt was a cleric, but few called him Abbe. A priest as a priest can be nothing else. In fact, ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... remember that glass curtains should not be looped back. Inside curtains may be looped when there is no illogical break in the line. It is absurd to hang up curtains against the glass and then draw them away, for glass curtains are supposed to be a protection from the gaze of the passers-by. If you haven't passers-by you can pull your curtains to the side so ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... slowly dwindling of late, and now threatened to die out altogether, the irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing patients up to Fitzpiers's very door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest cause of his unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, the second branch of his sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for the first—a letter from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her again. To bring about their severance still more effectually, she added, she had decided during his absence ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... illogical, he had also been slightly disingenuous. He did not believe that his companion was in love; he had argued the false to learn the true. The true was that Roderick was again, in some degree, under a charm, and that he found ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... the reasons for disbelief are utterly illogical. For instance, one view is this: "I never want to come back to this earth after I once leave it." The fact is, that there could be no return to today's recognized conditions of life. If one were to return to this planet and become reembodied, he would find himself in some other country, ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... uprisings. He may discover many causes and record them duly, but he will always be sensible that others have escaped him. The changing tides of public opinion, the undercurrents of interest, partisanship and caprice, the whirlpools of illogical sentiment or ignorant prejudice, exert forces so complex and numerous, that to observe and appreciate them all, and to estimate the effect of each in raising the storm, is a task beyond the intellect and industry of man. The chronicler of small ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... of the students and Porcupine. Where in thunder would be a peach of damfool who always swipes other people's faults and says "these are mine?" It was a stunt made possible only by Badger. Having made such an illogical statement, he glanced at the teachers in a highly pleased manner. But no one opened his mouth. The teacher of natural history was gazing at the crow which had hopped on the roof of the nearby building. The teacher of Confucius was folding ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... replaced a kind of knot-writing previously in use by a system of hieroglyphics. All this cannot of course be considered as history; but it shows that the authors of later centuries who credited Fu-hi with certain inventions were not quite illogical in starting from the matriarchal chaos, after which he is said to have organized society with occupations corresponding to those of a period of hunting, fishing and herding. This period was bound to be followed by a further ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... financing him... It was illogical, but Sally could not help feeling that when—she had not the optimism to say "if"—he lost his money, she would somehow be under an obligation to him, as if the disaster had been her fault. She disliked, with a whole-hearted intensity, the thought of ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... the torture had come to have the zest of an exhilarating sport. The cries of pain, the distortions of agony under the stones, or the lobster, or suspension, the noting of the curious changes of flesh colour and expression under these punishments, the ready assent to absurdly illogical questions, all this not only amused, but interested Shu[u]zen. The naivete and obstinacy of the fisherman was just of the kind to furnish the best material. The fellow was sturdy of frame, and under skilled hands ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... you wouldn't say such things. Besides seeming to imply a sort of distrust of my love for you, they are illogical; and you know there is nothing I hate ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... some little space to what may be called the legitimate object of his work,—that is, the vindication of the distinctive tariff policy of the Whigs,—and here advocates a good cause in a singularly illogical, bungling way. Most of his book, however, is given up to foolish invective against British machinations in the United States,—an idea which may have been plausible in Jefferson's time, but has long been abandoned to minds of our author's calibre,—and to arguments against the Republican ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... It is an illogical consequence of one human being's ill-treatment that we should fly immediately to another, but that is the way with us. It seemed to Mr. Polly that only a human touch could assuage the smart of his humiliation. Moreover it had for some undefined reason to be a feminine ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... being in everybody's hands during the idle summer month of August. This document is so remarkable as an illustration of the working of that type of Chinese mind which has assimilated some portion of the facts of the modern world and yet remains thoroughly reactionary and illogical, that special attention must be directed to it. Couched in the form of an argument between two individuals —one the inquirer, the other the expounder—it has something of the old Testament about it both in its blind faith and in its ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... hide it or gloss it over; if there was anything ancient, the moonlight would enable us to see it as we wanted to see it. I pity the limited souls who do not believe in moonshine, and use the word contemptuously. One is illogical who contends that moonshine gives a false idea of things; for he is testing the moonshine impression by sunshine. It would be as illogical to say that sunshine gives a false idea of things on the ground that moonshine is the ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... wavered in his theology, Kathryn would have clung like a limpet to the bed-rock of her congenital Baptist faith. And yet, the doctor could not hold Brenton altogether responsible for Kathryn's development. The germs of mental cheapness were in Kathryn's nature, as were the germs of more or less illogical doubtings just as surely inherent in Scott Brenton's brain. He had increased the tendency, not ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... just across the way from the California building, and as an object of artistic analysis it is a most interesting single unit. Personally, I am not enthusiastic over it. It was most decidedly a very illogical idea to select a building to represent Oregon from a country which has nothing whatever in common with this northern state. One could hardly discover a more arid country, devoid of vegetation, particularly of trees, than Greece; and ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... mother's preposterous notion of collecting the rents herself. Alone, she would invent conversations with her mother, silencing the foolish woman with unanswerable sarcastic phrases that utterly destroyed her illogical arguments. She would repeat these phrases, repeat even entire conversations, with pleasure; and, dwelling also with pleasure upon her grievances against her mother, would gradually arrive at a state of dull-glowing resentment. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... that he was coming over to Lonesome Cove and he had not come—why should he, on her account? Between them all was over—why should he? The question was absurd in her mind, and yet the fact that she had expected him, that she so WANTED him, was so illogical and incongruous and vividly true that it raised her to a sitting posture on the log, and she ran her fingers over her forehead and down her dazed face until her chin was in the hollow of her hand, and her startled eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the running water ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... my father, "you reason by synecdoche,—ornamental, but illogical;" and therewith, resolved to hear no more, my father rose and retreated ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to this question. The whole matter of mechanical vocal management rests on pure assumption. No scientific proof has ever been sought for the belief that the voice requires mechanical management. This necessity is always assumed, but the assumption is utterly illogical. The vocal organs adjust themselves for the imitation of tone quality by exactly the same psychological processes as for the imitation of pitch. Neither pitch nor tone quality can be regulated in any other way than by the guidance of ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... smoking of tobacco is an art; an art which, in its proper exercise, requires much care, much prudence, and not a little skill. This is a proposition which must, from its very nature, be startling to non-smokers, and surprising to many smokers. The tobacco hater (invariably an illogical creature, who hates that which he knows not) will hold up hands in amazement, and sniff with the nose in contempt, to whom reply would ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... that Halleck is to take the command of the army, together with Hooker. I almost believe it, because it is nameless, and here all that is illogical ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... most of them it was restricted by custom or local regulation to petty groups of property-holders or taxpayers, to members of the municipal corporations, or even to members of a favored guild. With few exceptions, the borough franchise was illogical, exclusive, and non-expansive. ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... taste so good that you are tempted to take one more about ten times. You fail to chew the nut thoroughly and you crowd it into an already overfilled stomach. Because it happens to be the first thing to come up in case of disaster you jump at the illogical conclusion that your indigestion is due to the nuts. I need not tell you ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... and, as he had the habit of monopolizing the talk when he took any part, it was suggested that I should try my strength against his. Although Emerson had a high opinion of Alcott, he seemed to me a shallow and illogical thinker, and I have always felt that the good opinion of Emerson was due rather to the fact that Alcott presented him with his own ideas served up in forms in which he no longer recognized them, and so appeared to Emerson as original. Such originality as he had was rather ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... importance in the history of mental development. If an individual connects his ideas with difficulty, or can continue to chain them in rational sequence only with the most laborious efforts, he will have either a dull and heavy, or flighty and illogical, mind. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... quarrelled with as illogical, but the feeling that led to it was beautiful beyond question; and, indeed, all her ideas on that ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... the knowledge of this is to come into the secret of power, and to enter into the secret place of Living Spirit. Is it illogical first to call this the unknowable, and then to speak of coming into the knowledge of it? Perhaps so; but no less a writer than St. Paul has set the example; for does he not speak of the final result of all searchings into the heights and depths and lengths and breadths of the inner side of ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... above, and our own word heaven is often employed synonymously with God. There is at first no personification in these expressions. They embrace all unseen agencies, they are void of personality, and yet to the illogical primitive man there is nothing contradictory in making them the object of his prayers. The Mayas had legions of gods; "ku," says their historian,[47-2] "does not signify any particular god; yet their prayers are sometimes ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... this capital of philosophy, spirits are illogical it would seem. How can Macrinus interpret the prophecy that he, who is already on the highest step attainable to us lower ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... expense of printing volumes to be distributed among the members. These, at first limited to 1000, expanded to 1200. Clubs with various objects now thickly followed. Any attempt to classify them as a whole, is apt to resemble Whately's illustration of illogical division—"e.g., if you were to divide 'book' into 'poetical, historical, folio, quarto, French, Latin,'" &c. One of the systems of arrangement is topographical, as the Chetham, "for the purpose of publishing biographical and historical books connected with the counties palatine ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the quick-witted Clarence acquired such a colloquial proficiency from his casual acquaintance with vaqueros and small traders that he was glad to leave the matter in his young kinsman's hands. Again, by one of those illogical sequences which make a lifelong reputation depend upon a single trivial act, Clarence's social status was settled forever at El Refugio Rancho by his picturesque diversion of Flynn's parting gift. The grateful peon to whom the boy had scornfully tossed the coin repeated the act, gesture, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... said Richard Sharp, "I deny your premises, condemn your reasoning as illogical, and reject your ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... foot high, the hardy and ubiquitous purple grass of Naraka grew far more lushly around the edges of the swamps. He felt that it would be a risky business at best to plunge into it after an unknown number of enemy. At the same time he had an illogical determination not to leave the bodies of his men in the hands of the Rumi. He looked at the broad, big-mouthed exaggerations of Irish faces around him, heaved a sigh that came from deep in his chest and ordered, "All right, men. Spread out. Keep low and keep your eyes open. ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... be, but error is often popular. The work is illogical, and not altogether in harmony with facts." Benjamin's criticisms impressed Mr. Watts somewhat, though he thought he was laboring ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... personal matters—matters upon which a lawyer or a doctor should rather be consulted. He himself had never encouraged such confidences. What did he keep curates for? His curates had saved him many a long hour of talk with inconsequent men and illogical women who had come to him with their stories. What were to him the stories of men whose wives were giving them trouble? What were to him the stories of wives who had difficulties with their housemaids or who could not keep ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... of a child or a wife weakens even the best of us illogical," commented Harris. "No man who is mourning a relative has any business to be calling himself ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland |
