"Argue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... overthrown on the morrow, one of the assembly answered in the name of his colleagues. This man, now very old, had formerly been a wonderfully successful exorcist, and, notwithstanding that he was a faithful Christian, he was the leader of a gnostic sect and a diligent student of magic. He proceeded to argue, with all the zeal and vehemence of conviction, that Serapis was the most terrible of all the heathen daemons, and that all the oracles of antiquity, all the prophecies of the seers, and all the conclusions of the Magians and astrologers would be proved false if his fall—which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... against anything that is by nature thick, dense, impenetrable, irrational, has always seemed to me the most disheartening occupation. Majorities, mere numerical majorities, by which the world is governed now, strike me as mere brute force, though to argue against them is no doubt as foolish as arguing against a railway train that is going to crush you. Gladstone could harangue multitudes; so could Disraeli; all honour to them for it. But think of Carlyle or Ruskin ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... lemme tell you: marriage is a contract to which there are two constracting parties. That being clear, I am prepared to argue categorically that your son Charles - who, it appears, is not your son Charles - I am prepared to argue that one party to a contract being null and void, the other party to a contract cannot by law oblige or constrain the first party to constract or bind himself to any contract, except the other ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... by matter?" saith Father. "Matter is a term of this world. I argue not for matter in Heaven as opposed to spirit, but for ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... Christ, as the basis of primitive Christianity. It is vehemently alleged, and we may freely admit that the step is a long one from subjective belief to objective reality. But still it is surely perfectly fair to argue that a given belief is of such a nature that it cannot be supposed to rest on anything less solid than a fact; and this is eminently the case in regard to the belief in Christ's Resurrection. There have been many attempts on the part of those who reject that belief to account for its existence, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Men argue that, if it is right for a man worth fifty or a hundred thousand dollars to swear, it can be overlooked in men who have merely their day's wages. Because they are poor must they be ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... spoke for a moment or two. What the Seneca said was so evident to them that it was useless to argue. "Well, chief, what do you advise yourself?" Harry ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... this measure. The advantages he thought attending it were numerous, and it would argue the utmost folly to neglect them. Contrary to his expectation he found my brother averse to the scheme. Slight efforts, he, at first, thought would subdue his reluctance; but he found this aversion by no means slight. The interest that he took in the happiness ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... somethin' else," Zeb Curry cut in. "If the new boss ever tells you to do a thing his way, you do it an' don't argue none as to whether he knows more about it than you do ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... of a letter, how impossible it is to argue in it. You must therefore take simple statements, and in a week or two, I shall see you, and ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Payne was a more welcome guest than De Burgh, in spite of his unspoken but evident devotion. With Bertie she could speak openly of matters on which she would not touch when with the other. To Bertie she could talk of the mysteries of life, and argue on questions of belief. She was touched by the eagerness he showed to convert her to his own extremely evangelical views, and though differing from him on many points, she deeply respected the sincerity ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... too ill and weary to argue the matter, and Harry left her, as she thought, to repose. No sooner was she gone, however, than the closed lids of Mrs. Basil were opened wide, and revealed a sleepless and unutterable woe. Her sharp, pinched ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... having to pay for it with their lives. You may be quite sure that if anyone had suspected where it was concealed, it would not have been allowed to remain there, and we should find the cache empty. But we may safely argue that they have not found it, since in that case they certainly would not hang about ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... weeks. That was plenty for me. Laws, I was so lonesome! You see, I was full of the knowledge and experience of seventy-two years; the deepest subject those young folks could strike was only a-b-c to me. And to hear them argue—oh, my! it would have been funny, if it hadn't been so pitiful. Well, I was so hungry for the ways and the sober talk I was used to, that I tried to ring in with the old people, but they wouldn't have it. They considered me a conceited young upstart, and ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... him. "We won't argue that again, if you please. If you remember, you had something to say on that subject last night, and I want you to know that I haven't the slightest desire to hear your opinion of me. Won't you sit down?" She invited again, motioning to a chair beside the table, opposite hers. "If you absolutely ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... him: he must perpetually be used ill, or he insults. Besides, I have gained an absolute dominion over him: he must not see, when I bid him wink. If you argue after this, either you love me not, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... dressed down a captain of the Solar Guard in the same tone he used on a green Earthworm. It was legend around the Academy that once, believing he was right, he had broken into the Council Chamber itself to argue his point. He won by a unanimous decision. Nothing, but nothing, had been devised or thought of that could stop "Blast-off" Connel. Every waking moment of his adult life had been spent in the pursuit of more and more knowledge about ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... in such amazement that he no longer had any strength to argue, and left the room convinced that Stover was heroically concealing an ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... to argue with you—to make you more tired than you are already. But if I don't say anything, please don't think I'm agreeing ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... once pretty familiar to me, but which I have nearly forgotten from disuse, with fluency. Of both these phenomena I have such frequent experience in the state between sleeping and waking, that I sometimes argue with myself that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I were, I should not be half so ready. The readiness is not imaginary, because I often recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... This passenger owed service to Albert Kern, of Elizabeth City, N.C. At least Kern, through the oppressive laws of that State, claimed Miles as his personal property. Miles, however, thought differently, but he was not at liberty to argue the case with Kern; for on the "side of the oppressor there was strength." So he resolved, that he would adopt the Underground Rail Road plan. As he was only about twenty-one years of age, he found it much easier to close his affairs with North Carolina, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... at that age when a man knows least and is most vain of his knowledge; and when he is extremely tenacious in defending his opinion upon subjects about which he knows nothing. My father was a hard man for any one to argue with, for he never knew when he was refuted. I sometimes posed him a little, but then he had one argument that always settled the question; he would threaten to knock me down. I believe he at last grew tired of me, because I both out-talked and outrode ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... even in this extremity, refuse to jump overboard without their husbands, but in such cases there must be no hesitancy on the part of the men. Do not argue, but push them overboard, and the life belts will hold them in position in the water until the waiting boats can rescue them. There will be no danger of drowning under those conditions, but be sure to jump as far ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... The most of the Apologists argue against the conception of the natural immortality of the human soul; see Tatian 13; Justin, Dial. 5; ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... to her, and she forgot her cake and began to laugh and talk and argue with sudden animation. The large family seemed to her so warm and various that she forgot to censure them for their taste in pottery. But the personal question between James and Johnnie merged into some argument already, apparently, debated, so that the parts had been distributed among the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... this volley, the ancient servant, sitting unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight, muttered: 'This house is a cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and—priests. Let the boy stop eating mangoes ... but who can argue with a grandmother?' He raised his voice respectfully: 'Sahiba, the hakim sleeps after his meat. He is in ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... of the cultivated classes in the two countries. And it is worthy of note that neither of these critics pays any heed, either explicitly or by implication, to the opinions of the other. They are totally at variance, but they argue along lines so different and so remote that they never come into collision. Mr. Bailey, with the utmost sang-froid, sweeps on one side the whole of the literary tradition of France. It is as if a French critic were to assert that Shakespeare, the Elizabethans, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Wat Tyler and of Jack Straw were invoked to arouse popular panic and fury. Strange as it may now seem, these appeals were successful in their object; they did create a popular panic, and stir up popular passion and fury to the uttermost height. Not even Walpole attempted any longer to argue down the monstrous misrepresentations of his policy. The fury against him and his excise scheme grew hotter every day, and at one time it was positively thought that his life {319} was in danger. Tumultuous crowds of people gathered in and around all the approaches ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... might make a great show and demonstrate by your ingenuity that this fulfilment occurs in Peter or in the pope. You are as mute as a stick when it is time to speak out, and a chatterbox when speech is unnecessary. Have you not learned your logic better than that? You argue your major premises, which no one questions, and assume the correctness of your minor premises, which every one questions, and then you draw the conclusion ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... not my intent to argue against the Biblical legend concerning the origin of Moses, but I think everyone reading it must share my conviction that Moses could not have been a simple Israelite. His education was rather that of a king's son, and it is difficult ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... I should approach this question, if I were in the best possible condition to speak and to argue it, with very grave diffidence, and certainly with the utmost anxiety; for no one can think of it as long and as carefully as I have thought of it without seeing that we are at the beginning, perhaps, of a struggle that may last as long in this country as a similar struggle lasted in what ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... Now, don't argue, my good fellow, but listen to me. We're two gentlemen of the King's household, and one of us has a toothache. The other will order a private room and dinner, and, further, a bottle of the best wine for the sufferer. ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Austria everywhere. What is suffered in Lombardy exceeds what is suffered elsewhere. Now, God be thanked, here is light and hope of deliverance. Still you doubt whether the French are free enough themselves to give freedom! Well, I won't argue the question about what 'freedom' is. We shall be perfectly satisfied here with French universal suffrage and the ballot, the very same democratical government which advanced Liberals are straining for in England. But, however that ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Statesman, April 8, 1916: "My impression is that the annoyance of Clyde manufacturers at the present labour troubles is not wholly free from a certain grim satisfaction. They are not anxious to see carried out the pledge that shop conditions should go back to the pre-war basis, and, they argue, if the men are discredited with the public, it will be all to the good of the employers in the big industrial struggle they look upon as inevitable after the war. They regard this struggle without ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... first that he was mad, and could not believe him till he let me inspect the letter. It was from General D'Argue, informing us that, in consequence of a request from Sir Peter Parker, we had leave to embark on board a cartel for Jamaica. I turned the document over and over again in my hand. There could be no doubt about its genuineness. Ill and weak as we all were, for we still ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... band of young men, followed by three or four girls, ran across the bridge. Suddenly they stopped to argue on which side the boat was to be found. Some chose the left, some the right; those who went to the right sent up a yell of triumph, and paddled into the middle of the water. They first addressed remarks to their companions, and then they admired the moon and stars. A song was demanded, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... boys sat trying to argue the captain and Chris out of their superstitious fears. They might as well have tried ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... argue the point; she contented herself with telling her sister of Wyvis Brand's desire that the story of his wife's separation from him should not be known, and the two girls agreed that it would be better to mention their evening's adventure only ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the point with Mackay. I made him own that he had taken pleasure in reading books otherwise, to his view, insignificant; but he was too wary to advance a step beyond the admission. It was in vain for me to argue that here was pleasure ready-made and running from the spring, whereas his ploughs and butter-churns were but means and mechanisms to give men the necessary food and leisure before they start upon the search for pleasure; he jibbed and ran away from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be evidence &c. n.; evince, show, betoken, tell of; indicate &c. (denote) 550; imply, involve, argue, bespeak, breathe. have weight, carry weight; tell, speak volumes; speak for itself &c. (manifest) 525. rest upon, depend upon; repose on. bear witness &c. n.; give evidence &c. n.; testify, depose, witness, vouch for; sign, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... L's—Log, Lead and Lookout—his shrouded figure swaying to the heave and fall and his eyes fixed straight ahead of him on the double line of boiling foam. He had conned his course and had it charted in his head. There was no time to argue with ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... knew better than to argue with the Muley Cow. But he couldn't help saying to her, "Let's see! You and I are just ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... place in another Gospel,—that, forsaking the expressions proper to the passage before him, he unconsciously adopted the language which properly belongs to a different Evangelist. That to a very limited extent this may have occasionally taken place, I am not concerned to deny: but it would argue incredible inattention to what he was professing to copy, on the one hand,—astonishing familiarity with what he was not professing to copy, on the other,—that a scribe should have been capable of offending largely in this way. But in fact a moderate ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... the logic of it all?" he continued, after a moment's pause. "Yes, it is the logic of it. You may argue that for seven years I've been doing a big work and there's no reason, in spite of what's happened, that I should now abandon it all. But there is. And in your strong old heart you'll know the thing I say is true—if cowardly. During seven ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... to accept this, not altogether as his joy, but as his duty. He could not argue with Peter God when he rose from his sick bed. He would ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... State Street in Boston to guard the homeward passage of Onesimus to the longing Philemon than to have them receiving without a challenge the fugitive Contrabands. It is pleasanter to have B.F. Butler, Esq., argue in favor of the Dred Scott decision than to have General Butler enforcing the Fortress Monroe doctrine. Better to look up to a whole galaxy of stars, and to live under a baker's dozen of stripes, than to dwell in perpetual fear of choosing between the calaboose and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... not argue as an educated person might have done. Egremont's zeal in his various undertakings made no plea for his character, in her mind. To be sure, a more subtle reasoner might have given it as little weight, but that would have been ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... making a beginning of a small book on my Eastern journey, which, if I can persevere, I hope to have ready by next Christmas. I am a very bad hand at writing anything like narrative. I want something to argue on, and then I find it much easier to go ahead. I rather despair, therefore, of making so good a book as Bates's, though I think my subject is better. Like every other traveller, I suppose, I feel dreadfully the want of copious notes on common ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... it in my book here—'Gray's Botany for Young People.' But I can tell you what use it is to us," continued Thorny, crossing his legs in the air and preparing to argue the matter, comfortably lying flat on his back. "We are a Scientific Exploration Society, and we must keep an account of all the plants, animals, minerals and so on, as we come across them. Then suppose we get lost and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... have endeavoured to argue against these suggestions, and to set some of the sentences of blessed Paul against them; but alas! I quickly felt, when I thus did, such arguings as these would return again upon me, Though we made so great a matter of Paul, and of his words, yet how could I tell, but ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... handbag out of her nervous clasp and swung it about on his finger. "You've no particular love for that spot, have you? Besides, as I've told you, my family would make a row. They are an excitable lot. They discuss and argue everlastingly. The only way I can ever put anything through is to go ahead, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... such a one to live and to be found either in city or in country, or yet of other men's charges? or else that a monk ought to lie on the ground, to live hardly with herbs and pease, to study earnestly, to argue, to pray, to work with hand, and fully to bend himself to come to the ministry of the Church? In faith, as soon will the Pharisees and Scribes repair again the temple of God, and restore it unto us a house of prayer instead of a ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... so glad you think so! I shall be delighted if you will really talk to her, and help her to argue out some of her crudities. Indeed she is worth it. But I suppose you will hardly stay here long enough to do her ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now why he had come to Venezuela. This older man had known Inez for years, and to Roddy, arguing from his own state of mind regarding her, the fact was evidence enough that Vega must love her also. He began again, but now quietly, as he would argue ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... argue any further, sank upon a chair with a despairing gesture: "Ah! God, God! I no longer know—and what matters it now that my Dario is in such danger? There's only one thing to be done, he must be saved. How long they are over what they are doing in that room—why ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... before took to be so many varieties of one species, how has he thereby strengthened our conviction that the three forms were designed to have the differences which they actually exhibit? Wherefore, so long as gradated, orderly, and adapted forms in Nature argue design, and at least while the physical cause of variation is utterly unknown and mysterious, we should advise Mr. Darwin to assume, in the philosophy of his hypothesis, that variation has been led along certain beneficial ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... already explained in the alphabet. U is not sounded in the following syllables: que, qui, gue and gui, as Quedar (to remain), Quinta (villa), Guerra (war), Aguila (eagle), unless the u in gue and gui has the diaeresis, as Argueir (to argue), Vergueenza (shame). ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... branching of the stem of a tree. This philosophical naturalist, I may add, has also quite recently shown that the muscles in the larvae of certain insects are very far from uniform. Authors sometimes argue in a circle when they state that important organs never vary; for these same authors practically rank that character as important (as some few naturalists have honestly confessed) which does not vary; and, under this point of view, no instance of an important part varying will ever ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... to argue, as Religion now does, that the whole heavens and the earth, with its twenty miles in thickness of stratified rocks, were made in six actual days, or to interpret "days" ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... "Don't argue, Jane!" exclaimed the duchess, crossly. "And don't drag in the Queen, who has nothing to do with my concert or Velma's throat. I do abominate irrelevance, and you know it! WHY must she have her what—do—you—call—it, just when she was coming to sing here? ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... the end, all efforts to dissipate the mystery which hangs over them; and these we must be content to leave; but many announce that their explanations cannot be very far to seek. Let me instance 'candidate.' Does it not argue an incurious spirit to be content that this word should be given and received by us a hundred times, as at a contested election it is, and we never ask ourselves, What does it mean? why is one offering himself to the choice of his fellows called a 'candidate'? ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... hear some one of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... breathless excitement. It was a sight to see the sophisticated little animal lie like dead and be picked up and handled in a state of seeming lifeless rigidity—a display of self-control that seemed to argue a ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... facts,—inconsistent with what every man of any information, knew to be true in reference to the Scriptures. They all lay open to infidel objections,—unanswerable objections. They made it impossible for a man to argue with the abler and better informed class of infidel assailants with the success and satisfaction desirable. The theories did not admit of a successful defence. And when the theories were refuted, the Bible and Christianity suffered. On searching the Scriptures I found they gave no countenance ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... visible and pressing interests of the community; they are political questions of high and urgent import. If a nation has in any considerable degree gained the habit, and exhibited the capacity, to discuss these questions with freedom, and to decide them with discretion, to argue much on politics and not to argue ruinously, an enormous advance in other kinds of civilisation may confidently be predicted for it. And the reason is a plain deduction from the principles which we have found to guide early civilisation. The first pre-historic ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... disputation {183} on the hypostasis of Christ, and on the two natures in Christ, persuades us, that he lived after the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon; of which councils moreover he uses the identical words, whereas his dissertation on the two wills in Christ seems to argue, that he lived after the spreading of the error of the Monothelites. But (continue these Benedictine editors) we would add here the dissertation of Baronius on this subject, sent to us by our brethren from Rome. That illustrious annotator, indeed, having read only the Latin version of ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... warn the Allies of our resolve to withdraw our troops, they cannot complain of it. Pitt should therefore instruct Lord Auckland to give clear expression to these ideas. Coburg will then probably argue as to the extreme importance of clinching the successes already won, and will therefore urge the Duke of York to besiege Dunkirk, Graveline, and St. Omer, with a view to drawing him on finally towards Paris. But any such proceeding ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the results. The largeness and the perfection of them pointed to a struggle in which poor Jinny must have been torn in pieces. Her very anxiety to conceal the signs of laceration betrayed the extent to which she had been torn. She had not gone so far in her hypocrisy as to argue that the struggle was the cause of the perfection, and you could only conclude that, if the conditions had been perfect, there would have been no end to the vast performances of Jinny. That was ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... and manned a vessel as this to range up alongside of and attack a perfectly defenceless craft like the Indiaman which you surprised in the darkness, monsieur?" demanded I. "But," I continued, "I have no time to argue the point just now. Henderson,"—to the quartermaster—"just jump below and see if you can find a spot where the prisoners may ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... these crosses, said it was their custom, derived from sire and grandsire. This again would argue that a Christian people once ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... business, and thus learned it from the root. In his private life, Simeon was severe and dictatorial. He was one of that class of people who, of a freezing day, will plant themselves directly between you and the fire, and there stand and argue to prove that selfishness is the root of all moral evil. Simeon said he always had thought so; and his neighbors sometimes supposed that nobody could enjoy better experimental advantages for understanding the subject. He was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... stage, show themselves to have combined with other elements of the same kind, so that equally by their gathering tendency and their duration through intervals of apparent darkness, and below the current of what seemed absolute interruption, they argue themselves to be settled in the system. There is no good gift that does not come from God. Almost his greatest is health, with the peace which it inherits, and man must reap this on the same terms as he was told to reap God's ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... ridiculous. He was, contrasted with Cowperwood and his views, so old-fashioned. To think he could be talking of some one coming into their home and stealing her away from him, when she had been so willing to go. What silliness! And yet, why argue? What good could be accomplished, arguing with him here in this way? And so for the moment, she said nothing more—merely looked. But Butler was by no means done. His mood was too stormy even though he was doing his best ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... attention and concentration of the faculties, and leave one not very fit for anything else. You will say that it is bad to be so entirely absorbed in these things, and to that I heartily say Amen!—but you might as well argue with a man who has just mounted the favourite for the "Oaks" that it is a bad thing to ride fast. He admits that, and is off like a shot when the bell rings nevertheless. My bell has rung some time, and thank God the winning ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... tranquillity of a mind which knows not uneasiness, that of a believer who feels sure of always accomplishing all that he wishes to do. It would not have been Montfanon, that is to say, a species of visionary, who loved to argue with Dorsenne, because he knew that in spite of all he was understood, if he had not continued, as they walked along the lighted ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... (That, by the way, was the beginning of the Denver University Law School.) I read my Blackstone, Kent, Parsons—working night and day—and I began really to get some sort of "grasp of the law." Long before I had passed my examinations and been called to the bar, Mr. Thompson would give me demurrers to argue in court; and, having been told that I had only a pretty poor sort of legal mind, I worked twice as hard to make up for my deficiencies. I argued my first case, a damage suit, when I was nineteen. And at last there happened one of those lucky turns common in jury ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... Company v. Mississippi,[31] however, in 1899, the court, evidently yielding to southern public opinion, reversed itself by the decision that an interstate carrier could not run a train through Mississippi without attaching thereto a separate car for Negroes and had the audacity to argue that this is not an interference with interstate commerce.[32] To show how inconsistent this interpretation was one should bear in mind that in Hall v. DeCuir the court had held that this was exactly what a State could not do in that the statute acted not upon ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the beginning and for weeks that Greek has been correcting my pronunciation. There is no use to argue about it. The fellow has no reverence for Noah Webster and besides there are more Greeks, nowadays, than Yankees, and their way is probably getting to be the right way. Sometimes I think it is we who ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... been argued that the saeva indignatio which lacerated his heart was the passion of a mad man. To argue thus seems to us to misunderstand entirely the peculiar qualities of Swift's nature. It was not the mad man that made the passion; it was rather the passion that made the man mad. As we understand him, it seems to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... deliberately created a new form of slavery, and for hundreds of years invested it with a brutality greater than that which existed centuries before. A religion which could tolerate this slavery, argue for it, and fight for it, cannot by any stretch of reasoning be credited with an influence in forwarding emancipation. Christianity no more abolished slavery than it abolished witchcraft, the belief in demonism, or punishment for heresy. It was ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... advised Peter not to tell any one else the strange story he had told her of the dreadful creature without legs or head or tail that had chased him in the Green Forest. Peter knew by that that she didn't believe a word of it, but he was too tired and sleepy to argue with her then, so he settled himself comfortably for ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess
... fairly argue that this very ambiguity was greatly in favour of his doctrine, since if languages had all been constantly undergoing transmutation, there ought often to be a want of real lines of demarcation between them. He might, however, propose that he and his pupils should come to an understanding that two ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... have patience with the idiocy of any one who could calmly suggest slumber at such a time. And Phil—for it was at him that this Parthian shot had been aimed—had evinced remarkable self-control, in that he had refused to argue, but had continued to smile in an aggravatingly superior manner, which had said more plainly than words: "You think you mean it, no doubt, but I, who am wise, know ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... you shall do," he says in the one, "love the earth, and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers of families, read these leaves (his own works) ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... told him to consider himself as under arrest; and hundreds of claymores would instantly have been drawn to protect the murderer. All that was left to the commander under whom these potentates condescended to serve was to argue with them, to supplicate them, to flatter them, to bribe them; and it was only during a short time that any human skill could preserve harmony by these means. For every chief thought himself entitled ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that Christianity was introduced into Britain independently of Rome. As to the precise means employed, he has his choice of ten legends. He may hold with Lane that it is reasonable to suppose one of Paul's ardent converts, burning with fervent zeal, led the Britons to the cross. Or he may argue with others: "What is more natural than to imagine that Joseph of Arimathea, driven from Palestine, sailed away to Britain." In proof of this assumption, we are shown the chapel of St. Joseph, the remains of the oldest Christian church, where the holy-thorn blossoms earlier than in any other ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... those of old can be detected. Without history the essential differences are sure to escape us. Our generation, like all preceding generations of mankind, inevitably takes what it finds largely for granted, and the great mass of men who argue about existing conditions assume a fundamental likeness to past conditions as the basis of their conclusions in regard to the present ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... this seem to her to be so, that notwithstanding her lack of faith in matters beyond proof and knowledge, she never conceived of this passion of hers as having had a beginning, or of being capable of an end. This contradictory woman would argue against the possibility of any future existence, yet she was quite certain that her love for Godfrey had a future existence, and indeed one that was endless. When at length he put it to her that her attitude was most illogical, since that which was dead and dissolved could ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... we shall have! With him to make speeches for Trenchard, and argue in this wonderful way about Free-trade, and tell the farmers all about Canadian ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... much about pistols as you do," said Aleck. "I've shot at a mark with my uncle. But we needn't argue about that." ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... as a great shock to me to hear this. Hitherto I had thought that what was wrong with our native friends was that they believed too much, and this man—this good honest old gaucho we all respected— believed nothing! I tried to argue with him and told him he had said a dreadful thing, since every one knew in his heart that he had an immortal soul and had to be judged after death. He had distressed and even frightened me, but he went on calmly smoking ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... to do it," he said, "an' if I wanted to argue the pint maybe you wouldn't walk off with ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... sons of Noah overspread and peopled the whole earth, is so expressly stated in Scripture, that, had we not to argue against those who unfortunately disbelieve such evidence, we might here stop: let us, however, inquire how far the truth of this declaration is substantiated by other considerations. Enough has been said to show that there is a curious, if not a remarkable, analogy between ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... when Members returned, after Division on Closure, he being, in accordance with the rule, seated and wearing his hat, wanted to argue out the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... and my other occupations notwithstanding) to charge you with having forgotten my reply!! I have even a wild idea that Townshend reproached me, when the last old year was new, with writing to you instead of to him!!! We will argue it out, as well as we can argue anything without poor dear Haldimand, when I come back to Elysee. In any case, however, don't discontinue your annual letter, because it has become an expected and a delightful part ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... something of the sort. But I'm not going to argue these points. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... argue the point, but finding argument of no avail in altering my determination, he insinuated—though not stating as much in positive terms—that he had no prospect of any arrangement being effected regarding my rank other than that ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... promised not to argue and I find myself arguing. My reasoning is too fine for dull wits. I will pass on and come to the brutal ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... monsieur knows as much about the mountains as any of us. He might surprise even you, Stampa. He has climbed the Matterhorn from Zermatt and Breuil. He has come down the rock wall on the Col des Nantillons. How is one to argue with such a voyageur on ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... woman's instinct she hit upon the only possible means of attaining this end. She did not pause to argue that a nature such as Luke's would never ask anything for itself—that it is precisely such as he who have no pride when they ask for another, sacrificing even that for that ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... stature and fine presence, and his beard shone like a cascade of silver. It was not the manner of the young as yet to argue with their elders, and though I might have been a little fluttered by the comely gallant's lofty talk and gaze of daring melancholy, I said good-bye to him in my heart, as I kissed my noble father. Shall I ever cease to thank the Lord that ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... the venerable Abbe Piquet overlooking with deep interest the rude pictorial despatches in the hands of La Corne. Two gentlemen of the law, in furred gowns and bands, stood waiting at one end of the room, with books under their arms and budgets of papers in their hands ready to argue before the Council some knotty point of controversy arising out of the concession of certain fiefs and jurisdictions granted under the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... troubles, for though shee takes liberty upon my Cossen Downing's speeches, yet (Good Sir) let mee not be a foole in Israel. I had many good answers to yesterday's worke [a Fast] and amongst the rest her letter; which (if her owne) doth argue more wisedome than I thought shee had. You have often sayd I could not leave her; what to doe is very considerable. Could I with comfort & credit desist, this seemes best: could I goe on & content myselfe, that were good.... For though I now seeme free agayne, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... diverted from me. His high spirits, his boisterous nonsense, his contempt for all lawful forms and ceremonies which placed impediments in the way of his speedy marriage, were amusingly contrasted by Mr. Engelman's courteous simplicity in trying to argue the question seriously with his ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins |
