"Casuist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sight of the bare spot of ground which extended along the foot of the monastery, Athos had been waiting about five minutes, and twelve o'clock was striking. He was, then, as punctual as the Samaritan woman, and the most rigorous casuist with regard to duels could have nothing ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it. But what was her astonishment when they came to bring her the priest! He was in coloured clothes, a silk doublet, flowing peruke, and boots and spurs. The lady in waiting rated him severely, and was tempted to send him back. But Bossuet—a far greater casuist than she—decided that in these urgent cases one need hold much less to forms. They were contented with taking away the spurs from this amphibious personage; they pushed him into a confessional,—the curtain of which he was careful to draw before himself,—and ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Almighty. Whatever the cruelty of the slave-trade, or the severity of slavery on the continents or islands of America, we should still, in regard to its supposed consequences, be wiser, perhaps, to say with that great and simple Casuist Who gave the world the Christian religion: "Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things? or those eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and slew ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... band prevail! Shall not "conquer" in the issue prove a Synonym for "fail"? "Banded Unions persecute," and Federated Money Bags Will not prove a jot or tittle juster. Fools! Haul down those flags! Competition is not conflict. So the Grand Old Casuist says, Speaking with the sager caution of his earlier calmer days. True! Athletic rivals straining at the tense tough-stranded rope, Strain in friendly competition, ruin not their aim or hope; But a lethal Tug of War 'twixt "federated" foemen blind. With a chasm at their feet, and each ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... study of those noble arts by which right and wrong may be confounded; by which reason may be blinded, when we have a mind to escape from her inspection, and caprice and appetite instated in uncontrolled command and boundless dominion! Such a casuist may surely engage with certainty of success in vindication of an entertainment which in an instant gives confidence to the timorous and kindles ardour in the cold, an entertainment where the vigilance of jealousy has so often ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... little casuist. I am glad you like her. It shows that you are human. There are strange creatures in the woods and wilds ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... can hardly distinguish or disentangle the appeal to his reason from the lure to his interests—here a text, and there a dowry!—here Protestantism, there Jemima!—Own, my friend, that the soberest casuist would see double under the inebriating effects produced by so mixing his polemical liquors. Appeal, my good Mr. Dale, from Philip drunken to Philip sober!—from Riccabocca intoxicated with the assurance of your excellent lady, that he is ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... man of one idea, and that a false one. He was a gigantic crank,—an arch-Jesuit, indifferent to means so long as he could bring about his end; and he became not merely a casuist, but a dictatorial and arrogant politician. He defied that patriotic burst of public opinion which had compelled him to change his ground, that mighty wave of thought, no more to be resisted than a storm upon the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... M.A. at Oxford. As catechist at his college he read lectures on the Decalogue, which, both on their delivery and on their publication (in 1630), created much interest. He also gained much reputation as a casuist. After a residence in the north as chaplain to Henry Hastings, earl of Huntingdon, President of the North, he was made vicar of St Giles's, Cripplegate, in 1588, and there delivered his striking sermons on the temptation in the wilderness and the Lord's prayer. In a great sermon ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... aid of instruction, would have been staggered by the character of this extraordinary inhabitant of the frontier. His feelings appeared to possess the freshness and nature of the forest in which he passed so much of his time; and no casuist could have made clearer decisions in matters relating to right and wrong; and yet he was not without his prejudices, which, though few, and colored by the character and usages of the individual, were deep-rooted, and almost formed a part of his nature. But the most striking ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... mischief, and that some knavish trick lurked under the whole. He therefore opened the box carefully for fear that a mouse or rat should be concealed within. When he beheld the wondrous cup, which he had seen at Vence, he was dreadfully shocked, for Monsieur Hautmartin was a skilful casuist, and knew that the inventions and devices of the human heart are evil from our youth upward. He saw at once that Colin designed this cup as a means of bringing misfortune upon Marietta: perhaps to give out, when it should ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... modern Caesars have most liberally construed! I am a poor casuist, Sir; nor do I think the loyal commander of the Coquette would wish to uphold all that sophistry can invent on such a subject. If we begin with potentates, for instance, we shall find the Most Christian King bent on appropriating ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... they argued, but Nehemiah still went about repeating his rival prophecies. The more zealous of the Sabbatians, angry at the pertinacious and pugnacious casuist, would have done him a mischief, but the Prophet of Lemberg thought it prudent to escape to Adrianople. Here in revenge he sought audience with ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... No casuist observer could have thought that the nine apparently light-headed and careless party who now wended their way to Blackheath Station, looking as if they were not up to anything in particular, were really an Antiquarian ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... "Casuist!" was all the answer vouchsafed to him; and baffled—but not yet defeated—he went out into the May sunlight, quite determined, for once in his life, to take by storm the citadel that ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... say to that! Ah, you casuist! He must have been with the Jesuits, somewhere, Ivan. Oh, you stinking Jesuit, who taught you? But you're talking nonsense, you casuist, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Don't cry, Grigory, we'll reduce him to smoke and ashes in a moment. Tell me this, O ass; ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Toby was not a casuist—that he knew of, at least—and I don't mean to say that when he began to take to the Bells, and to knit up his first rough acquaintance with them into something of a closer and more delicate woof, he passed through these considerations one by one, or held any formal review or great field-day ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... retired ferryman. My second appearance was explained by the statement that I had got off the road, and wandering in the woods, had come round to the same place. This was literally true, though I must admit it did not give to him an impression of the whole truth. A rigid casuist might question the truthfulness of my statement to the Secession ferryman; but a man fleeing for his life, and hunted by a relentless enemy, has not much time to settle questions ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... dear, because he has no taste for social companionable life, has he therefore a right to damp the spirit of it in those that have? I intend to consult some learned casuist on ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... of Ferrari's covered the rules given by Tartaglia to Cardan, and how far it relieved Cardan of the obligation of secresy, is a problem fitted for the consideration of the mathematician and the casuist severally.[105] An apologist of Cardan might affirm that he cannot be held to have acted in bad faith in publishing the result of Ferrari's discovery. If this discovery included and even went beyond Tartaglia's, so much the worse for Tartaglia. ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... that night in a flutter of happiness—a happiness so sweet and strange and yet so vague that she could not have analysed it even had she been casuist enough to try to do so. But she was content to accept the fact as a fact; beyond that she cared nothing. No syllable of love had been spoken between her and George: they had passed what to an outsider would have seemed a very common-place afternoon. They had talked together—not sentiment, but ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... so far as to call it a doubtful case? One that a casuist could argue either way?" Beaumaroy was ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... favouritism among the commandments, was not clear to John. Indeed, the thing did not trouble him. He was no casuist. He only knew that the way was clear to Miriam Gale, and he went to her the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Peter, with a comical grimace. "Was fuer a casuist! What a swindler you'd make! I wonder you have the face to deny the debt. Well, and how did you leave Frau Sauer-Kraut?" he said, deeming it prudent ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... draw upon themselves ruin in things temporal, may there not be some atom of divine wisdom at the heart of the folly, which is itself indestructible, and which ensures for them a welfare out of time and space? Prophet and casuist—Browning is both; and to each he will endeavour to be just; but his heart must give a casting vote, and this cannot be in favour of the casuist. Every self-transcending passion has in it a divine promise and pledge; even the passion of the senses if it has hidden within it one spark ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... indignant denunciation of his lovers at the close, apparently for not violating the vows of marriage, is puzzling to readers who do not appreciate the extreme subtlety of Browning's use of figure. He was at once too much and too little of a casuist,—too habituated to fine distinctions and too unaware of the pitfalls they often present to others,—to understand that in condemning his lovers for wanting the energy to commit a crime he could be supposed to imply approval of the crime ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... order to wrest from his doctor permission to sin with a good conscience. Some day will be told, by him who may have the courage to tell it, an astounding tale of the cowardly things done, and the shameful tricks so basely ventured by the casuist who wished to keep his penitent. From Navarro to Escobar the strangest bargains were continually made at the wife's expense, and some little wrangling went on after that. But all this would not do. The casuist was conquered, was altogether a coward. From Zoccoli to ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... and who could be perpetually before the scene, as a protagonist should be. He is particularly suited, by our received ideas of his energy and restlessness, for the principal character. The devil of the German patriarch's Faust is, after all, but a profligate casuist; and the high poetical tone of sublimity of Milton's Satan is no less to be avoided in a delineation that has truth and nature for its inspiration. In short, the devil, the true romantic devil, must speak, as the devil would naturally speak, under ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... closer home to himself, our divinity student puts this acute difficulty to his spiritual casuist: Whether a man of God, and especially a minister of Christ, can be right who does not love God for Himself, for His nature and for His character solely and purely, and apart altogether from all His benefactions both in nature and ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... not know, Had landed there not long ago, And taught them "Bother!" also, "Blow!" (Of wickedness the germs). No need to use a casuist's pen To prove that they were merchantmen; No sailor of the Royal N. ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... something more required than the virtues of courage and generosity. A knight-errant ought to understand the sciences, to be master of ethics or morality, to be well versed in theology, a complete casuist, and minutely acquainted with the laws of his country. He should not only be patient of cold, hunger, and fatigue, righteous, just, and valiant, but also chaste, religious, temperate, polite, and conversable; ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Roma.(785) I mentioned this to my lord, but he thinks that the tender manner of her wording it, takes off that exception; however, he thinks it better that you should write for advice to your commanding officer. That will be very late, and you will probably have determined before. You see what a casuist I am in ceremony; I leave the question more perplexed than ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... of the modestest of men, almost shrinking in his diffidence and nervous self-distrust, an under-graduate who is mildly excited about an ingenious line of reasoning, a wit who loves to play tricks with the subtlety of a curiously agile brain, a casuist who sees quickly the chinks in the armour of an adversary. But with all his boyishness, and charm, and humility, and engaging cleverness, there is a light in his eyes too feverish for peace of mind. I cannot prevent myself from thinking that his secession, which was ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... indebted to Denis Lambin, a worthy Greek scholar of the sixteenth century, whom his adversaries accused of sluggish movement and wearisome diffuseness in style. Every reader of Pascal's Provincial Letters will remember Escobar, the great casuist among the Jesuits, whose convenient subterfuges for the relaxation of the moral law have there been made famous. To the notoriety which he thus acquired he owes his introduction into the French language; where 'escobarder' is used in the sense ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... heavens themselves seemed to be shielding us and working for us. Do the heavens generally shield accessories after the fact, and ladies who have shortened the careers of their lords? These questions I leave to the casuist, the meteorologist, the compilers of weather forecasts, and other constituted authorities on matters connected with theology and the ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... "Oh, you casuist!" I said. And I said nothing more because at that moment Mrs. Fyne stepped out into the porch. We rose together at her appearance. Her clear, colourless, unflinching glance enveloped us both critically. I sustained the chill smilingly, but Fyne stooped at once to release the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... speaks here with all the coolness and judgment of a skilful casuist. "The essence of a lawful vow, is a lawful purpose, and the vow of which the end is wrong must not ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... but he had something of Baudelaire's taste for hideous and shocking aspects of lust. One is not surprised to find among his poems that "heroical epistle of Sappho to Philaenis," in which he makes himself the casuist of forbidden things. His studies of sensuality, however, are for the most part normal, even in their grossness. There was in him more of the Yahoo than of the decadent. There was an excremental element in his genius as in the genius of that other gloomy dean, Jonathan Swift. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... himself, therefore, with great decorum, heard mass in Wimbledon Church at Easter, and, for the better ordering of his spiritual concerns, took a priest into his house. Dr. Nares, whose simplicity passes that of any casuist with whom we are acquainted, vindicates his hero by assuring us that this was not superstition, but pure unmixed hypocrisy. "That he did in some manner conform, we shall not be able, in the face of existing ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... obstacle to his marriage with Anne arising out of his relations with Mary Boleyn, were very different matters; and in this light the breach between England and Rome might be represented as caused by a novel extension of papal claims. Henry, however, was a casuist concerned exclusively with his own case. He maintained merely that the particular dispensation, granted for his marriage with Catherine, was null and void. As a concession to others, he condescended ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... lashes, and six months in irons![129] Such atrocious neglect of the first principles of equity, is a sad set-off against the license of indiscriminate pardons. The Roman judge was a far better casuist: "For it seemeth to me unreasonable, to send a prisoner, and not withal to signify ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... chance to turn her. Mr. Tickletext was much of the opinion of the celebrated casuist Bauny, who, in his Theologia Moralis, tractatus iv, De Poenitentia, quaestio 14, writes: 'Licitum est cuilibet lupanar ingredi ad odium peccati ingerendum meretricibus, etsi metus sit, et vero etiam verisimilitudo non parva se peccaturum eo quod malo suo saepe sit expertus, blandis se ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... thought, vexed, "I am even more affected than I had imagined. Here am I arguing with myself like a very casuist!" ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Henry the Fourth, the more odious usurpation of Richard the Third, had produced no schism in the Church. As soon as the usurper was firm in his seat, Bishops had done homage to him for their domains: Convocations had presented addresses to him, and granted him supplies; nor had any casuist ever pronounced that such submission to a prince in possession was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Botanic Gardens. My lord, I wish you good morning; but before I go, accept my thanks for your kindness to my young friend. I assure you he will be a useful man; for he is even now no indifferent casuist." ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... worded, would bind the Sovereign in his executive capacity only. This was indeed evident from the very nature of the transaction. Any compact may be annulled by the free consent of the party who alone is entitled to claim the performance. It was never doubted by the most rigid casuist that a debtor, who has bound himself under the most awful imprecations to pay a debt, may lawfully withhold payment if the creditor is willing to cancel the obligation. And it is equally clear that no assurance, exacted from a King by the Estates of his kingdom, can bind him ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the worse for a ghostly adviser at hand,' my father said to me with his quaintest air of gravity and humour mixed, which was not insincerely grave, for the humour was unconscious. 'An accredited casuist may frequently be a treasure. And I avow it, I like to travel with my ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... oath was made to them, and by consequence it was in their power to release the obligation that did arise from it to themselves.—Swift. Bad casuist. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... dread, the blue dusk whence The cresseted houses of the stars surprise The heart with their mysterious horoscopes, I know the issues ere great battles begin, The ashen values of bright-burning hopes, The ultimate hours of sacrifice or sin. Do I obey the Wisdom? If I list, I too, beloved, can play the casuist. ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... scarcely restrain a smile, as he listened to this defence; and when the fair casuist swore by all the gods, and by the Erinnys, that she had spoken truly, Anaxagoras looked up involuntarily, with an expression of child-like astonishment. Alcibiades promptly corroborated her statement. Plato, being called to testify, gravely remarked ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... word, Julia, you are quite a casuist on this subject. Does love, then, between the sexes depend on this congenial sympathy and ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... by more intimate ties with those around us, (oftentimes, I fear me, for purposes of worldly advancement, as well as encouragement in holy living); and, lo! a very slight difference of opinion—a sublety whereon a casuist shall batter his brains for days in vain—shall build up a wall of exclusion, especially if there be some within the enchanted circle who are jealous of our influence ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... ceremonies from those entertained at Rome, did not seem to him at all incompatible with the precepts of Jesus. Hanging, drowning, burning and butchering heretics were the legitimate deductions of his theology. He was no casuist nor pretender to holiness: but in those days every man was devout, and Alexander looked with honest horror upon the impiety of the heretics, whom he persecuted and massacred. He attended mass regularly—in the winter mornings by ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... privileged and proud possessor Of lineal vantage he; Of perorating witchery no professor, Or casuist subtlety. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... inevitably lacks variety. That, on the other hand, is one of the three great qualities in which Johnson's talk is supreme. Without often aiming at being instructive it is not only nearly always interesting but with an amazing variety of interest. The theologian, the moral philosopher, the casuist, the scholar, the politician, the economist, the lawyer, the clergyman, the schoolmaster, the author, above all the amateur of life, all find in it abundance of food for their own particular tastes. Each of them—notably ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... Frederic(311) with four hundred thousand commentators, are reading new lectures—and I should say, thank God, to One another, if the four hundred thousand commentators were not in worse danger than they.(312) Louis XVI. is grown a casuist compared to those partitioners. Well, let US Simple individuals keep our honesty, and bless our stars that we have not armies at our command, lest we should divide kingdoms that are at our biens'eance! What a dreadful thing it is for such a wicked ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... appetites, they gladly accept the indulgence, without desiring to detect the fallacy or the reasoning: and indeed many, I might say most people, are not able to do it; which makes the publication of such quibblings and refinements the more pernicious. I am no skillful casuist nor subtle disputant; and yet I would undertake to justify and qualify the profession of a highwayman, step by step, and so plausibly, as to make many ignorant people embrace the profession, as an innocent, if not even a laudable one; and puzzle people of some degree of knowledge, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... advised to follow his example. Surely he was better employed in plying the trades of tinker and smith than in having recourse to vice, in running after milk-maids for example. Running after milk-maids is by no means an ungenteel rural diversion; but let any one ask some respectable casuist (the Bishop of London for example), whether Lavengro was not far better employed, when in the country, at tinkering and smithery than he would have been in running after all the milkmaids in Cheshire, though tinkering is in ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... first Onset after this Rupture has too great a Place in this Resolution. Mrs. Freeman has a very pretty Sister; suppose I delivered him up, and articled with the Mother for her for bringing him home. If he has not Courage to stand it, (you are a great Casuist) is it such an ill thing to bring my self off, as well as I can? What makes me doubt my Man, is, that I find he thinks it reasonable to expostulate at least with her; and Capt. SENTREY will tell you, if you let your Orders be disputed, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... opinion to offer in regard to the shield which efficacious grace and the palladium of the faith may form for dangerous tendencies; for Catholics, that is a matter for the casuist or the confessor to decide; but, as far as Delsarte is concerned, had he beaten down Satan in a way to rouse the jealousy of St. Michael, had he made the heathen Socrates give precedence to him in patience, wisdom and firmness, I should regard that ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... man, because he desired to watch him, because, if he found the chance, he was willing to set him in the dock. To smoke his tobacco and drink his liquor in those circumstances had undoubtedly an air of treachery. In a while he hardened himself, and closed his ears to all casuist pleadings, whether for or against the course he had adopted. He would clear his father if he could, and if there were any mere hope of doing it, he would watch this fellow as a cat watches a mouse, and would go on doing it until both ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Instead of laying it down as a broad principle that men must keep their word, they taught them how to lie with spiritual impunity and with credit to their reputation as sons of the Church. Thus the inventive genius of the casuist, bent on dissecting immorality and reducing it to classes; the interrogative ingenuity of the confessor, pruriently inquisitive into private experience; the apologetic subtlety of the director, eager ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... seriously ashamed at the exposure; but as she seated herself down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I could have wished it had been—any other book. We read on very sociably for a few pages; and, not finding the author much to her taste, she got up, and—went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for there was one between us) was the property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... for the truth; nor how far the {238} charge of moral obliquity and double dealing, often brought against it, can be satisfactorily met. But suppose for a moment that we grant (what is not the case) that in the metaphysical disquisitions of the experienced casuist such a distinction might be maintained, how can we expect it to be recognized, and felt, and acted upon by the large body of Christians? Abstractedly considered, such an interpretation in a religious act of daily recurrence by the mass of unlearned believers would, I conceive, appear to reflecting ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... as I have been relating, is compleatly obtain'd in these Regions, where the Arts and Excellencies of sublime Reasonings are carried up to all the extraordinaries of banishing Scruples, reconciling Contradictions, uniting Opposites, and all the necessary Circumstances requir'd in a compleat Casuist. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... and no state of things genuine reliability. Fifine at the Fair, like Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, is one of Browning's apologetic soliloquies—the soliloquy of an epicurean who seeks half-playfully to justify upon moral grounds an infidelity into which he afterwards actually falls. This casuist, like all Browning's casuists, is given many noble outbursts and sincere moments, and therefore apparently the poem is called cynical. It is difficult to understand what particular connection there is between seeing good in nobody and seeing good ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... Eliot's dictum that we are, each one of us, but an omnibus carrying down the traits of our ancestors, does not appear at all to hold here. This fanciful realist, this naive-wistful humorist, this dreamy mystical casuist, crossed by the innocent bohemian, this serious and genial essayist, in whom the deep thought was hidden by the gracious play of wit and phantasy, came, on the father's side, of a stock of what the world regarded as a quiet, ingenious, demure, practical, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... each individual ought on the whole to allot to this purpose, or to fix in every particular instance, on any determinate measure, and mode of contribution. To the one case no less than to the other, we may apply the maxim of an eminent writer; "An honest heart is the best casuist." He who every where but in Religion is warm and animated, there only phlegmatic and cold, can hardly expect (especially if this coldness be not the subject of unfeigned humiliation and sorrow) that his plea on the ground of natural temper should be admitted; any more than that ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... I must not pass in silence, being an argument of Dr. Sanderson's piety, great ability, and judgment, as a casuist. Discoursing with an honourable person[1] (whose piety I value more than his nobility and learning, though both be great) about a case of conscience concerning oath and vows, their nature and obligation; in which, for some particular reasons, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... to be present with His sacrament, inasmuch as He is alway with His people to the end of time. But as I am not skilful in matters of such nicety, I would ask of this reverend casuist, who is more able to answer in questions of such weight than I; who am, as I said before, unlearned in disputed points; and truly I am in nothing more wishful than to come at a right knowledge and understanding of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... searchingly at the countenance of the royal casuist, who bore her scrutiny without flinching, and, with a slight clearing ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Jesuit casuist Escobar led the way, and rarely had been seen such exquisite hair-splitting. But his efforts were not received with the gratitude they perhaps deserved. Pascal, revolting at their moral effect, attacked them unsparingly in his Provincial Letters, citing especially ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... world had done with these miserable sophistries, and these spurious distinctions between murder by wholesale and by retail, and it soon will have done with them. I, by your hand, killed Dornovitch in his sleep. That was murder, says the legal casuist. You read this morning in the Times how one of the Russian war-balloons went the night before last and hung in the darkness over a sleeping town on the Austrian frontier, and dropped dynamite shells upon it, killing and ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... chance for it. He scrupled & scrupled about it, and at last (to use his own words) "tampered" with Godwin to know whether the thing was honest or not. Godwin said nay to it, & Allen rejected the living! Could the blindest Poor Papish have bowed more servilely to his Priest or Casuist? Why sleep the Watchman's answers to that Godwin? I beg you will not delay to alter, if you mean to keep, those last lines I sent you. Do that, & ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... between frugality and avarice, between liberality and prodigality? Who has ever been able to say how far mercy to offenders ought to be carried, and where it ceases to deserve the name of mercy and becomes a pernicious weakness? What casuist, what lawyer, has ever been able nicely to mark the limits of the right of selfdefence? All our jurists bold that a certain quantity of risk to life or limb justifies a man in shooting or stabbing an assailant: but they have ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the doctor, a great superiority over the priest. There were no priests except at Jerusalem, and even there, reduced to functions entirely ritual, almost, like our parish priests, excluded from preaching, they were surpassed by the orator of the synagogue, the casuist, and the sofer or scribe, although the latter was only a layman. The celebrated men of the Talmud were not priests; they were learned men according to the ideas of the time. The high priesthood of Jerusalem held, it is true, a very elevated rank in the nation; but it was by ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... brilliant casuist in the Widow Chupin's hovel, who was so full of confidence in himself, and so earnest in expounding his theories to simple Father Absinthe—Lecoq hung his head abashed and did not utter a word. But he felt neither ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... joy's parent, and joy begets mirth, Should the subtlest casuist or sophist on earth Contradict me, I'd call him an ass and a calf, And boldly insist once for all, That the only criterion of pleasure's to laugh, And sing tol de rol, loi de ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... latter; for no human authority can take away the condition of scandal from that which otherwise should be scandal, because nullus homo potest vel charitati, vel conscientiis nostris imperare, vel periculum scandali dati prestare, saith a learned Casuist.(358) ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... quoth the abbess, turning casuist in the distress they were under, are held by the confessor of our convent to be either mortal or venial: there is no further division. Now a venial sin being the slightest and least of all sins—being halved—by taking either only the half of it, and leaving the rest—or, by taking it all, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... perfection of this character has been called in question, we think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interesting than according to rules; amiable tho not faultless. The ethical delineations of "that noble and liberal casuist"—as Shakespeare has been well called—do not exhibit the drab-colored Quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from "The Whole Duty of Man" or from "The Academy of Compliments!" We confess we are a little ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... 80 advocates in Filipinas. The majority have studied in Manila in the same manner as they did a century ago in Espana. It might be said that they belong to the casuist school. The preparation for any lawsuit is consequential and the superfluous writs innumerable, as our system has always been to open all the doors to the innocence of the natives; and many of the advocates ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... your wits, O casuist?" he cried mockingly. "Where are your doctrines? 'Vengeance is mine, saith ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the old frank, Joliffe; well victualled too. How the knave solved my point of conscience!—the dullest of them is a special casuist where the question concerns profit. Look out if there are not some of our own ragged regiment lurking about, to whom a bellyful would be a God-send, Joceline. Then his fence, Joceline, though the fellow foins well, very sufficient well. But thou saw'st ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the end pursued Stevenson—he could not, wholly or at once, shake off the bonds in which he had bound himself to his first love, and it was the romanticist crossed by the casuist, and the mystic—Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Markheim and Will of the Mill, insisted on his acknowledging them in his work up to the end. The modified creature at the end of Mr Zangwill was modified too directly by the egotistic ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... against reality," against that false reality of daily life which is a mere drapery of civilisation, and has nothing to do with the primitive reality of nature. The realistic drama begins with Euripides; and Euripides, the casuist, the friend of Socrates (whom Nietzsche qualifies as the true decadent, an "instrument of decomposition," the slayer of art, the father of modern science), brings tragedy to an end, as he substitutes pathos for action, thought ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... no casuist, but merely a believer, and Ithuel applied the end of the flask to his mouth, at that moment, from an old habit of drinking out of jugs and bottles, the Genoese made no answer; keeping his eyes on the flask, which, by the length of time it remained at the other's mouth, appeared ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... this character has been called in question, we think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interesting than according to rules; amiable, though not faultless. The ethical delineations of "that noble and liberal casuist" (as Shakspeare has been well called) do not exhibit the drab-coloured quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from The Whole Duty of Man, or from The Academy of Compliments! We confess we are a little shocked at the want of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of my heart, traced by nature in characters which nothing can efface. I need only consult myself with regard to what I wish to do; what I feel to be right is right, what I feel to be wrong is wrong; conscience is the best casuist; and it is only when we haggle with conscience that we have recourse to the subtleties of argument. Our first duty is towards ourself; yet how often does the voice of others tell us that in seeking our good at the expense of others we are doing ill? ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... not casuist enough in these matters to understand the subtle distinction you make, with the true Percival emphasis, between loving and falling in love. But I suppose I am to understand by loving, loving as half the world do ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... this speech, notwithstanding the mouth it came from, caused Miss Matthews to suppress much of the indignation which began to arise at the former; and she answered with a smile, "Sir, you are a great casuist in these matters; but we need argue no longer concerning them; for, if fifty pounds would save my life, I assure you I could not command that sum. The little money I have in my pocket is all I can call my own; and I apprehend, in ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... made them promise to let him know how they got along. He would help a little, he said; in his mind he was figuring how much he ought to do. How far shall a man go in relieving the starvation about him, before he can enjoy his meals in a well-appointed club? What casuist will work out this problem—telling him the percentage he shall relieve of the starvation he happens personally to know about, the percentage of that which he sees on the streets, the percentage of that about which he ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... the active members of the Supreme Council to scathing criticism. The Rumanians asked their Entente friends in private to outline the policy which they were accused of countering, and were told in reply that it was beyond the power of the most ingenious hair-splitting casuist to define or describe. "As for us," wrote one of the stanchest supporters of the Entente in French journalism, "who have followed with attention the labors and the utterances, written and oral, of the Four, the Five, the Ten, of the Supreme and Superior ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... arrogance insinuates that a bountiful Nature created these animals simply for our service, assuredly bountiful Nature left them in ignorance of the fact. And it is to the sportsman and the colt-breaker that we must apply, if we wish to know whose victims are the most willing. Not to the cockney casuist, whose knowledge of the stag is confined to his venison, and who never trusts himself on the horse till it has been "long trained, in shackles, to procession pace." If he did, he would find that the unfettered four-year-old shows precisely the ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... not swear to his having come by his money with absolute honesty—since indeed the case was one for the most subtle casuist—Israel knew not what to reply. This honest confusion confirmed the farmer, who with many abusive epithets drove him into the road, telling him that he might thank himself that he did not arrest him on ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... grave by lying still.' This preying upon itself of the brain is but one significant indication of a temperament, neurotic enough indeed, but in which the neurosis is still that of the curious observer, the intellectual casuist, rather than of the artist. A wonderful piece of self-analysis, worthy of St. Augustine, which occurs in one of his funeral sermons, gives poignant expression to what must doubtless have been a common condition of so sensitive a brain. 'I throw ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... reconcile people to monarchy and set back the clock of progress. The valuable princes, the desirable princes, are the czars and their sort. By their mere dumb presence in the world they cover with derision every argument that can be invented in favor of royalty by the most ingenious casuist. In his time the husband of this princess was valuable. He led a degraded life, he ended it with his own hand in circumstances and surroundings of a hideous sort, and was buried like ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... him opportunity of honorably declaring it. Now circumstances betrayed him into an avowal of his passion; and he was not without the indignant feeling that Ninitta's act had freed him from all obligations to her. It might have required an ingenious casuist to arrive logically at the conclusion that an injury which the Italian had done to another released him from his plighted word, but the person injured was the woman he loved, and he blindly felt that Ninitta had struck at himself ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... he said, "you've presented a problem that would give any casuist pause, and it's beyond my powers without some further thought. Your doubt, as I now understand it, is not of immortality, but of mortality; and there I can't meet you in argument without entirely forsaking my own ground. If ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... the election contest cost me were expended in support of our excellent constitution, and that I ought to be rewarded for my patriotism. His offers are liberal, and peace is concluded. We must now vere about, and this was the business for which I wanted you. A good casuist you know, Mr. Trevor, can defend both sides of a question; and I have no doubt but that you will appear with as much brilliancy, as a panegyrist, as you have ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... which is proved to Demonstration that Two is more than Five, and that Three is less than One.—"The Knotty Question Discussed," wherein is proved that under certain circumstances, Wrong is Right, and Right is Wrong, by a Casuist of the Sorbonne.—"A New Plan of the English Possessions in America," with the Limits properly settled, by Jeffery Amherst, Geographer to his Britannick Majesty.—"The Theory of Sea-fighting reduced to Practice," by E. Boscawen, Mariner.—"A Treatise on the Construction of Bridges," by I. ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... could not say to himself that if the promises had been extorted for Mary Garland's sake, his present attention to them was equally disinterested; and so he had to admit that he was indeed faint-hearted. He may perhaps be deemed too narrow a casuist, but we have repeated more than once that he was solidly burdened with ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... in the Cathedral may have been my fancy," he said,—"But the discord in the world sounds clear and is NOT imagination. A casuist in religion may say 'It was to be';—that heresies and dissensions were prophesied by Christ, when He said 'Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold';—but this does not excuse the Church from the sin of neglect, if any neglects ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... fantasy, Zorn is kin to him in his ironic, witty way of saying things about his friends and in front of their faces. Consider that large plate of Renan. Has any one so told the truth concerning the ex-seminarian, casuist, and marvellous prose writer of France? The large, loosely modelled head with its fleshy curves, its super-subtle mouth of orator, the gaze veiled, the bland, pontifical expression, the expression of the man who spoke of "the mania of certitude"—here is Ernest Renan, voluptuous ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker |
