"Confute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was wrong in this opinion, so wrong that I confute him by subjoining his own account of what befell, somewhat later ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... drew the attention of women from their fashions. "The ladies of quality here, of late," says a writer from Paris, in 1642, "addict themselves to the study of philosophy, as the men; the ladies esteeming their education defective, if they cannot confute Aristotle and his disciples. The pen has almost supplanted the exercise of the needle; and ladies' closets, formerly the shops of female baubles, toys, and vanities, are now turned to libraries and sanctuaries of learned works. There is a new star risen in the French horizon, whose influence ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... thirty-six to forty-eight hours old, had spent its force, and would soon give place to a serene and lucid atmosphere. I believe the Barometer at no time countenanced this augury, which a brief experience sufficed most signally to confute. Before we had passed Coney Island, it was abundantly certain that our freshening breeze hailed directly from Labrador and the icebergs beyond, and had no idea of changing its quarters. By the time we were fairly outside of Sandy Hook, we were struggling ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... collusion, colossal, comatose, combustible, commendatory, commensurate, commiserate, communal, compatibility, compendium, complaisant, comport, composite, compulsive, compulsory, computation, concatenate, concentric, concessive, concomitant, condign, condiment, condolence, confiscatory, confute, congeal, congenital, conglomerate, congruity, connivance, connoisseur, connubial, consensus, consistence, consort, constriction, construe, contentious, context, contiguity, contiguous, contingent, contortion, contravene, contumacious, contumacy, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... be not the true one, we must despair of ever finding it, and people will go on smoking and 'hearing reason' as long as the world goes round. Robert Hall received a pamphlet denouncing the pipe. He read it, and returned it. 'I cannot, sir, confute your arguments, and I cannot give up smoking,' was his comment. It is loosely asserted that smoking is more prevalent among scholars, intellectualists, and men who live by their brains, than among artisans and subduers of the soil. This is an error. Tobacco is ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... that, Gorgias, was what I was suspecting to be your notion; yet I would not have you wonder if by-and-by I am found repeating a seemingly plain question; for I ask not in order to confute you, but as I was saying that the argument may proceed consecutively, and that we may not get the habit of anticipating and suspecting the meaning of one another's words; I would have you develope your own views in your own way, whatever ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... and idle reasonings the phenomena of this river have put mankind to the expense of. Yet there are people so bigoted to antiquity, as not to pay any regard to the relation of travellers who have been upon the spot, and by the evidence of their eyes can confute all that the ancients have written. It was difficult, it was even impossible, to arrive at the source of the Nile by tracing its channel from the mouth; and all who ever attempted it, having been stopped by the cataracts, and imagining none that followed them could pass farther, have ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... haue faithfully commended to euerlasting posteritie, the stories of the whole world: that by their infinite labours haue aduaunced the knowledge of tongues: to be short, that endeuour themselues to represse the insolencie, confute the slanders, and withstand the vniust violence of others, against themselues, their ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... Okusama! The expression of your face has changed. Heigh-ho! Whither away? Alas! It is plain that she would go to the yashiki of Okumura. Evil her purpose. She would confute the malice spoken by Koume, by parent and child. She would fetch away with her Iemon Dono. Iya! Ho, there! Your honoured judgment strays. She believes in what Gombei has said; that he is with the Okumura. Does she ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... London to Paris. In London he set up for a patriot, and engaged seriously in the disputes and parties of the day, and what was very diverting, sat down for a few weeks to study the laws of England in order to confute Blackstone. His rank, to which his birth entitles him, gives him admittance to court, and the extravagancy of his wit and humor serves to divert and please men in high office, and he consequently at times fancies himself in their ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... convicts who embarked for this country, which articles had been entrusted to the Rev. Mr. Johnson, to be disposed of according to the intention of the subscribers after our arrival, Mr. Johnson wrote to his friends in England to confute this report; and by accounts lately received, it appeared that no such public collection had ever been made; at Mr. Johnson's request, therefore, the governor published a contradiction of the above report in the general orders of the settlement. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... of England, from the usurper Brithric. The biography of the celebrated scholar Alcuin, says that Charlemagne met him in Parma; but Hume is probably right in his statement that he was sent by Offa as the most proper person to meet the Emperor's views in aiding him to confute certain alleged heresies. This scholar was much esteemed and venerated by Charlemagne, and his family, and from his long domestication in his household, and familiarity with his habits and pursuits, could scarcely ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... madam, are the eternal humorist The eternal enemy of the absolute, Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist With your air indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—" And—"Are we then ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... mind are not unappliable to occasions of evil. Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate. Whereof what better witness can ye expect I should produce, than one of your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land, Mr. Selden; whose volume of natural and national laws proves, not only by great authorities brought together, ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... can with Logic absolute The Dronings of the Soberheads confute, Silence the scoffing ones, and in a trice Life's leaden metal into ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... before Niedermeyer; not exactly in triumph, but with the alacrity of all felicitous confutation. He looked at it much longer than was needful to read it, stroking down his beard gravely, and I felt it was not so easy to confute a pupil of the school of Metternich. At last, folding the note and handing it back, "Has your friend mentioned Madame Blumenthal's errand at Wiesbaden?" ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... bishops, and fifteen or sixteen theologians of the Sorbonne, laden with thick folios—the writings of the Fathers of the first five centuries, with which the Cardinal of Lorraine still professed his ability to confute the Reformed.[1147] Again the twelve Huguenot ministers were admitted; but the lay deputies of the churches were excluded.[1148] The discussion was long and desultory. Beza began by replying to the first part of the cardinal's speech, and showed that there ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... setting to work upon it. It is a research. It is a research exactly like a scientific exploration. Each of us will probably get out a lot of truth and a considerable amount of error; the truth will be the same and the errors will confute and disperse each other. But it is clear that there is no simple panacea in this matter, and that only by intentness and persistence shall we disentangle a general conception of the road the peace-desiring multitude ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... testimony has a double value; first, as corroborating the probability of Pope's statement viewed in the light of a fact; and, secondly, as corroborating that same statement viewed in the light of a current story, true or false, and not as a disingenuous fiction put forward by Pope to confute Lord Harvey. ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... John could best combat and confute, both by his words and writings, the subtle and deadly heresies which were especially rife there. "False Christs," such as Simon Magus, the first heretic, Menander, Dositheus, and others, no longer troubled the Infant Church with their blasphemous ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... accumulation of an infinite number of substances, is, properly speaking, not a whole any more than the infinite number itself, whereof one cannot say whether it is even or uneven. That is just what serves to confute those who make of the world a God, or who think of God as the Soul of the world; for the world or the universe cannot be regarded as an animal or as ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... God, he had to justify all His ways to man; that if the good rules at all, it rules absolutely; and that a single exception would confute his optimism. ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider," says Bacon. ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... in one of his great many admirable Pieces, call'd the Muses Looking-glass, makes his whole Moral to be the Vindication of the Stage, and its usefulness, and by shewing the passions in their Kinds, contrives to confute some canting prejudic'd Zealots, whose ignorance and frenzy had conspir'd before to run it down; I will treat the Reader here with ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... certainty there is no other resource. Believe me, therefore, my whole hope rests upon your present compliance. My father, I am certain, by his letter, will now hear neither petition nor defence; on the contrary, he will only enrage at the temerity of offering to confute him. But when he knows you are his daughter, his honour will then be concerned in yours, and it will be as much his desire to have it cleared, as it is now to ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the journal of the Liman campaign Jones's bitterness is pathetically expressed in inflated self-praise, called out by the desire to confute the calumnies of his enemies. "Every one to whom I have the honor to be known," he wrote, "is aware that I am the least selfish of mankind.... This is known to the whole American people.... Have I ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... shut quickly. There was an implied accusation against him in the fervor of her admiration for the wife who had deserted him. He groped for something in self-justification with which to confute Lois Montgomery's daughter. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... 'admitted fact,' how could it 'warrant belief' in the 'coming resurrection'?" [Footnote: The Nineteenth Century, July, 1890.] Mr. Huxley is using Canon Liddon's phrases here; but he is using them to confute those for whom, as he knows very well, Canon Liddon does not speak. Those who say that the story of Jonah is an "admitted reality" may, perhaps, be able to see that it "warrants belief" in the "coming resurrection." To my own mind, even this is by no ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... proof, we have more than enough. Most people have not the time, patience, or ability, to set down quietly with close observation, and investigate the subject thoroughly. Hence it has been found easier to receive error for truth, than to make the exertion necessary to confute it; the more so, because there is no guide to direct the investigation. I shall, therefore, pursue a different course; and for every assertion endeavor to give a test, that the reader may apply and satisfy himself, and trust to no ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... Christendom. Whitelocke's friends were much startled at this news, and the more because of former intelligences of designs of that nature against him, whereof they wrote him word; and he was glad to read the news, and that, through the goodness of God, he was able to confute those reports. They were kept from Whitelocke's wife by the care of his friends, till one in gladness came to give her joy that the ill news of her husband was not true; which brought the whole matter to her knowledge, and herself to great perplexity upon the sudden ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... him hither, that seeing him before my eyes that denied he had defiled my bed, I may confute him with words, and with what ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil, and confute my pen:— To make me own this man of princes peer, This rail-splitter ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... him, but a great deal more; and, what was still more mortifying, he was able, by reference to dates, charters, and other evidence of facts, that, as Burns says, "downa be disputed," to correct many of the vague tales which I had adopted on loose and vulgar tradition, as well as to confute more than one of my favourite theories on the subject of the old monks and their dwellings, which I had sported freely in all the presumption of superior information. And here I cannot but remark, that much of the stranger's arguments and inductions rested upon the authority ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Nestor only mentions the name of Ereuthalion, knowing the present to be an improper time for story-telling; in the seventh book he relates his fight and victory at length. This passage may serve to confute those who charge Nestor with ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... convince any one. After a new world had been discovered, many scattered indications were then found to have foreshown it. "When he promised a new hemisphere," writes Voltaire, "people maintained that it could not exist, and when he had discovered it, that it had been known a long time." It was to confute such detractors that he resorted to the well known expedient for making an egg stand on end; an illustration of the meaning of originality which, by the way, was not itself original, as Brunelleschi had already employed it when his ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... violent outbreak of popular feeling against the Roman Catholics. The forged proclamation he claimed as one of his contrivances: but whether his claim were well founded may be doubted. He delayed to make it so long that we may reasonably suspect him of having waited for the death of those who could confute him; and he produced no evidence but his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... passed for certain, undisputed; It ne'er cam i' their heads to doubt it, Till chiels gat up an' wad confute it, An' ca'd it wrang; An' muckle din there was about it, Baith ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... direction. More fiercely than ever before, his formidable boorish mind drew the startling inferences of his burning faith. Without any reserve he now accepted all the extremes of absolute determinism. In order to confute indeterminism in explicit terms, he was now forced to have recourse to those primitive metaphors of exalted faith striving to express the inexpressible: God's two wills, which do not coincide, God's 'eternal hatred of mankind, a hatred not only on account of demerits and the works ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... vociferous denials, that the robes of the "imperial votaress" were not so unsullied as could be wished. We know how loudly Leicester had complained—we have seen how clearly Walsingham could convict; but Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute: for an absolute sovereign, even without resorting to Philip's syllogisms of axe and faggot, was apt in the sixteenth century to have the best of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... commercial travellers—'drummers' was the word she used—and all through dinner she tried to prove that England, our great and beloved country, rests on nothing but commerce. Teresa was very much annoyed, and left the table before the cheese, saying as she did so: 'There, Miss Lavish, is one who can confute you better than I,' and pointed to that beautiful picture of Lord Tennyson. Then Miss Lavish said: 'Tut! The early Victorians.' Just imagine! 'Tut! The early Victorians.' My sister had gone, and I felt bound to speak. I said: 'Miss Lavish, I am an early Victorian; at least, that is to say, I will ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... wrong if not worse. We should remember, however, that Plato was not considering any altruistic virtue such as kindness, sympathy, benevolence, generosity and the like, but only what nature indicates to be the essential condition of successful association. Thus interpreted, are we prepared to confute the statement? Do we know of any state of society in human or animal life at any time, past or present, of which the contrary of Plato's statement ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... quest, a hopeless one. So reason said. Romance and youth, and the longing that he could not define, rose to confute this sober argument, flushed and eager, ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... Library. Herr Grossmann was delivering an impromptu lecture on the limits of variation from the normal type, when Elmer came in and joined the group of the great Professor's listeners, every one of whom was seeking some conclusive argument to confute their guest's overwhelmingly accurate ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... him to be alarmed at this tenderness forward, and that their truth was not a tribute to virtue, but was contempt of his ignorance. Nevertheless, it was truth; and he felt that it must be his part thereafter to confute the common belief that there is no ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... the Christian religion, and even spent some of his spare hours in this study: on other days, when his ordinary labour was over, he meditated some work in Flemish on religion. The subject which he liked best at that time was Christ's love to mankind: he no doubt intended to confute the extravagant opinions of the Gomarists. He purposed also to write a Commentary on the Sermon ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... bar to countenance him when he was tried at the Horsham assizes. So long did this delusion last that, when George the Third had been some years on the English throne, Voltaire thought it necessary gravely to confute the hypothesis that the man in the iron mask was the Duke ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which I must give you before I begin. When you hear me speak, you must always bear in mind that you are listening to one who has seen history from the inside. I am talking about what my ears have heard and my eyes have seen, so you must not try to confute me by quoting the opinions of some student or man of the pen, who has written a book of history or memoirs. There is much which is unknown by such people, and much which never will be known by the world. For my own ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... door behind. He locked it. He stepped away from the girl, leaving her standing there. She was a picture to confute slander. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... and doth connive to part sense from understanding and mind from body. To be sure, 'twas dark,—and allowing that I was well-nigh intoxicated with love—my brain could truly swear 'twas Sir Julian; and yet this he flung aside doth confute reason, and I must either ponder upon the this and that in endeavouring to conjoin mental and physical forces to sweet amity or give over that reaching wife's estate hath made of me a sordid fool, as hath ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... "Fas est ab hoste doceri," is a step as yet beyond the ability of most controversialists. To admit that your antagonist may have seen some truth not visible to yourself, and to read his work in this sense,—in order to learn, and not merely to confute,—is not yet common. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... obligations to maintain them that they are forced, for the sake of consistency, to adhere to them even though they do not themselves wholly approve of them; we, on the other hand, who pursue only probabilities, and who cannot go beyond that which seems really likely, can confute others without obstinacy, and are prepared to be confuted ourselves without resentment. Besides, if these studies are ever brought home to us, we shall not want even Greek libraries, in which there is an infinite ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... dictate to Philippus, my hump-backed secretary, all that I want said. They regard everyone as a blasphemer and desecrator who thinks that anything written in that roll is erroneous, or even merely human. Plato's doctrines are not amiss, and yet Aristotle had criticised them severely and attempted to confute them. I myself incline to the views of the Stagyrite, you to those of the noble Athenian, and how many good and instructive hours we owe to our discussions over this difference of opinion! And how amusing it is to listen when the Platonists on the one hand and the Aristotelians ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dear sir! seek an explanation with her, and my word on it she will be able to confute the calumnies, or clear up the suspicious circumstances or whatever it may have been that has shaken your confidence in her, and kept ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Stympsons, to pity poor Miss Alison, wonder at her not taking mamma's advice, and say how horrid it is of her to live with her cousins. I've corrected that so often that I take about with me the word 'nephews' written in large text, to confute them, and I've actually taught Cocky to say, 'Nephews aren't Cousins.' Dermot is the only rational person in the neighbourhood. I'm always trying to get him to tell me about you, but he says he can't come up here much without giving a ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... saw your face again; If all the music of your voice were mute As that of a forlorn and broken lute; If only in my dreams I might attain The benediction of your touch, how vain Were Faith to justify the old pursuit Of happiness, or Reason to confute The pessimist philosophy of pain. Yet Love not altogether is unwise, For still the wind would murmur in the corn, And still the sun would splendor all the mere; And I—I could not, dearest, choose but hear Your voice ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... allowance. He has only himself to thank if I have to come upon him for more. Found out about the Blackbird colt, has he? What a bore! And tin I must have out of him by hook or by crook if he cuts up ever so rough. I must send off this bird first by the post to confute Stanhope and make him eat dirt, and then ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... close, damp weather," said Henrietta, surprised at the accurate remembrance, which she could not confute. "She misses the ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could not legally put M.D. against his own name. The next in seniority was entirely adverse to the invaliding, as, without he could invalide too, he would have to go to the West Indies in the place of our surgeon. The youngest was indifferent just then to anything but to confute the other two, and prove the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... this is a truth which we have great need, my friends, to lay to heart. It is of no great consequence that we should practically confute the impotent old sneer about religion as being a gloomy thing. One does not need to mind much what some people say on that matter. The world would call 'the joy of the Lord' gloom, just as much as it calls 'godly sorrow' gloom. But we are losing for ourselves ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... knowledge of Shakespeare's. I have also printed in the Appendix a detailed statement of the precise circumstances under which Shakespeare's sonnets were published by Thomas Thorpe in 1609 (Section V.), and a review of the facts that seem to me to confute the popular theory that Shakespeare was a friend and protege of William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, who has been put forward quite unwarrantably as the hero of the sonnets (Sections VI., VII., VIII.) {ix} I have also included in the Appendix (Sections IX. and X.) a survey of the ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Socrates in his Apology, or Defence before his Judges, as reported by Plato. The oracle having said that there was none wiser than he, he had sought to confute the oracle, and found the wise man of the world foolish through ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... them, as the case now standeth with them? Is there not everywhere in God's Book a flat contradiction to this, in multitudes of promises, of invitations, of examples, and the like? Alas! alas! there will then be there millions of souls to confute this plea; ready, I say, to stand up, and say, 'O! deceived world, heaven swarms with such as were, when they were in the world, to the full as bad as you!' Now, this will kill all plea or excuse, why they should not perish in their sins; yea, the text says they shall see them there. 'There shall ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... &c." Op. Tom. 4. p. 2. p.:256. Middleton's Free Enquiry, p. 158. It is remarkable that the names mentioned by Jerom are the names of the early apologists for Christianity. When the Church got the upper hand however, they found a better way to confute those wicked men, Celsus and Porphyry, than by "slippery problems" and by speaking "not what they thought (to be true) but what was necessary against those who are called Gentiles," viz. by seeking after, and burning carefully their troublesome ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... Argument showing that a Standing Army, with consent of Parliament, is not inconsistent with a Free Government. He was able to boast in his preface that "if books and writings would not, God be thanked the Parliament would confute" his adversaries. Nevertheless, though coming late in the day, Defoe's pamphlet was widely read, and must have helped to ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... whether it may be this night, or no: How then can they contented live, who fear A danger certain, and none knows how near? 790 They err, who for the fear of death dispute, Our gallant actions this mistake confute. Thee, Brutus! Rome's first martyr I must name; The Curtii bravely dived the gulf of flame: Attilius sacrificed himself, to save That faith, which to his barb'rous foes he gave; With the two Scipios did thy ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... confesses that Hobbes is right in the main. The philosopher's reasonings stand on quite another foundation than the scriptural authorities deduced by Filmer. The result therefore is, that Sir Robert had the trouble to confute the very thing he afterwards ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... par amours! And she, too—methinks Brenhilda allows more license than she is wont to do to yonder chattering popinjay. By the rood! I will spring into the apartment, front them with my personal appearance, and confute yonder braggart in a manner ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... write more concerning the culture of it, than of any other tree: Notwithstanding, we have in this country of ours, no less than three sorts, which are all of them easily propagated, and prosper very well, if they are rightly ordered; and therefore I shall not omit to disclose one secret, as well to confute a popular error, as for the instruction ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... reigned in that manner above forty years, falling passionately in love with her own son, she endeavoured to induce him to comply with her criminal desires, and was slain by him: all this, I say, is so void of all appearance of truth, that to go about to confute it would be but losing time. It must however be owned, that almost all the authors who have spoken of Semiramis, give us but a ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... was the hand to which we owe the finer scenes or passages of "Lust's Dominion," the whole of the opening scene bears such apparent witness as requires no evidence to support and would require very conclusive evidence to confute it. The sweet spontaneous luxury of the lines in which the queen strives to seduce her paramour out of sullenness has the very ring of Dekker's melody: the rough and reckless rattle of the abrupt rhymes intended to express a sudden vehemence ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... no shame whatever in the retrospect of their idiocy. To convert a mind is a subject for high rejoicing; to confute a temper isn't worth ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... at once, for Lady Merrifield's safe arrival and Sir Jasper's improvement had just been telegraphed, and there was much rejoicing over the good news. Gillian had nearly made up her mind to confute the enemy by asking why Captain White had left Rockquay; but somehow when it came to the point, she durst not make the venture, and they ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... George Hakewill published in 1627 a folio of six hundred pages to confute "the common error touching Nature's perpetual and universal decay." [Footnote: An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World, consisting in an Examination and Censure of the common Errour, etc. (1627, 1630, 1635).] He and his pedantic book, which ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... "I know absolutely nothing which would either confute or justify your suspicion. Besides, the ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... said the general, appealing to Trudaine. "Have you proofs to confute him? If you have, produce ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... similar controversies on Biblical subjects, his chief aim was not simply to confute his adversary. To demolish once more the legend of the Flood, or the literal truth of the Creation myth, in which a multitude of scholars and critics and educated people generally had ceased to believe, was not an otiose ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... already recognized," said Mr. Rylands. "It was Jane who lied about you, and your return with me will confute ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... originally stated in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Argei." I endeavoured to confute it in the Classical Review, 1902, p. 115 foll., and Wissowa replied in Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 211 foll. Since then my conviction has become stronger that this great scholar is for once wrong. Ennius alluded to the Argei as an institution of Numa, i.e. as primitive (frag. 121, Vahlen, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... you put it that way I cannot confute you. But, oh, Mr. President, is there not some means of building a bridge? I cannot think that honest Southerners would force war ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... superfluous to add any thing to the above testimony. Let the Roman priests of Montreal open the Hotel Dieu Nunnery for our inspection, and thus confute Maria Monk: or, Mr. Conroy is again challenged to institute a criminal process against her, or a civil suit against the publishers of her volume—They dare not place the eloped nun or her booksellers in that 'Inquisition;' ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... in this way knowledge is a gift and is common to all holy persons. The other is a knowledge about matters of belief, whereby one knows not only what one ought to believe, but also how to make the faith known, how to induce others to believe, and confute those who deny the faith. This knowledge is numbered among the gratuitous graces, which are not given to all, but to some. Hence Augustine, after the words quoted, adds: "It is one thing for a man merely to know what he ought to believe, and another to know how to dispense what he believes ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... on hazy grounds that the great avowed philosopher of Shakespeare's day, Francis Bacon, wrote Shakespeare's plays. There is no need to confute the theory, which confutes itself. But, if a confutation were needed, it lies on the surface in the conflicting attitudes which Shakespeare and Bacon assume towards philosophy. There is no mistaking Bacon's attitude. The supreme ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... are certain experiments and considerations which rather confute that easy explanation, or at least make clear that the mystery is not so simple. The work of Steinach, a Viennese investigator, has contributed most to the elucidation of the nonarterial factor in senility. No one has asserted more loudly the importance of the interstitial cells that ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... one bridle-rein and making Buntie, his mustang-pony, pirouette just as the wicked-tempered Briquette sometimes pirouettes when his father is in the saddle. Yet Dinky-Dunk's nerves are a bit ragged and there are times when he's not always just with the boy, though it's not for me to confute what the instinctive genius of childhood has already made reasonably clear to Dinkie's discerning young eye. But I can not, of course, encourage insubordination. All I can do is to ignore the unwelcome and try to crowd it aside ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... remaining in the stomach after so many hours. I think you are enough of a chemist to know that no doctor would dare go on the stand and swear to death from morphine poisoning in the face of such evidence against him. The veriest tyro of an expert toxicologist could too easily confute him." ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... theory that any boy, if rightly trained, can be made into a gentleman and a great man; and in order to confute a friendly objector decides to select from the workhouse a boy to experiment with. He chooses a boy with a bad reputation but with excellent instincts, and adopts him, the story narrating the adventures of the mercurial lad who thus finds himself suddenly lifted several degrees in the social scale. ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... consist of 20,000 or above, are there not more fencible persons in the shires on the north side of Forth? Believe it who please we cannot stop our own consciences, and put out our own eyes. Let the rolls of several shires be looked to, and it shall confute that testimony. Nay, are there not more persons not formerly secluded, in all those shires? What meant the levy appointed immediately after Dunbar? Was not 10,000 foot, and 1,400 horse put upon these shires which are not under the power of the enemy, and yet the rules of exclusion were not abandoned? ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... headship came to me, he added half sadly, as if he feared he had not been sufficiently exacting. After asking Joseph whether he felt himself strong enough to obey so severe a rule, he passed from father to teacher. Every one of us must love truth and make it his purpose to confute those who speak falsehood; to keep his hands from stealing and his soul from unjust gain. He must never conceal anything from a member of the order, nor reveal its secrets to others, even if he should have to suffer ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... their own thinking faculties are much advanced; a power which, for want of some such discipline, many otherwise able men altogether lack; and when they have to answer opponents, only endeavour, by such arguments as they can command, to support the opposite conclusion, scarcely even attempting to confute the reasonings of their antagonists; and, therefore, at the utmost, leaving the question, as far as it depends on ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... American professor** conjectures the above nest to have possibly been that of the Dinornis, the gigantic New Zealand bird, known only by its fossil remains. A very slight knowledge, however, of ornithology, would be sufficient to confute the notion of any struthious bird constructing a nest of this kind, or of a wingless land bird of great size inhabiting an islet only a quarter of a mile in length. Both Mr. Gould and myself have seen nests of the same construction, the work of the ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... brushed. He would have been back in twenty minutes. There was no energy about the poor fellow, unless, perhaps, when he was hunting; but he possessed a readiness which enabled him to lie at a moment's notice with the most perfect ease. Lady Monk did not believe him; but she could not confute him, and therefore ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... be to the lady and her relations, because her alledged unnatural and cruel conduct to her son, and shameful avowal of guilt, were stated in a Life of Savage now lying before me, which came out so early as 1727, and no attempt had been made to confute it, or to punish the authour or printer as a libeller: but for the honour of human nature, we should be glad to find the shocking tale not true; and, from a respectable gentleman[493] connected with the lady's family, I have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... yet Lord Morley rightly called it electrifying. And the same is true of the book which it so gloriously opens. As history and as philosophy, it is neither original nor exact. It derived directly from Locke, and many aspects of the world and thought since Darwin's time confute it. But, however much anticipated, and however much exposed to scientific ridicule, it remains one of the burning books of the world—one of those books which, as Lord Morley said, rank ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... that door—in that darkness where Isabel's own special chairs were, and her own special books, and the two great walnut wardrobes filled with her dresses and wraps? What tragic argument might be there vainly striving to confute the gentle dead? "In God's name, what else could I have done?" For his mother's immutable silence was surely answering him as Isabel in life would never have answered him, and he was beginning to understand how eloquent the dead can be. They cannot ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... a packet of old letters and began turning them over as if in search of one that would confute Terence's suspicions. As he searched, he began to tell a story about an English lord who had trusted him—a great English lord, whose name he ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... as yet most popular in the making of programmes. However, Henry T. Finck says of his sonatas: "As regards the sonatas, I ought to bear MacDowell a decided grudge. After I had written and argued a hundred times that the sonata form was 'played out,' he went to work and wrote four sonatas to confute me. To be sure, I might have my revenge and say they are 'not sonatas'; but they are no more unorthodox than the sonatas of Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Grieg, though they have a freedom of their own which is captivating. They ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... much the better to all men, as less to himself;[77] for no quality sets a man off like this, and commends him more against his will: and he can put up any injury sooner than this (as he calls it) your irony. You shall hear him confute his commenders, and giving reasons how much they are mistaken, and is angry almost if they do not believe him. Nothing threatens him so much as great expectation, which he thinks more prejudicial than your under-opinion, because it is easier to make that false, than this true. He is one that sneaks ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... peace, and too much plenty, curs'd; Who their old monarch eagerly undo, And yet uneasily obey the new. Search, Satire, search; a deep incision make: The poison's strong, the antidote's too weak. 'Tis pointed truth must manage this dispute, And down-right English, Englishmen confute. ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... a Moral Sense in all men, settling questions of right and wrong, as surely as all men know sweet things from bitter by tasting them: these stories, and they could be multiplied by hundreds, abundantly suffice to confute the error. There is no authentic copy of the moral law, printed, framed, and hung up by the hand of Nature, in the inner sanctuary of every human heart. Man has to learn his duties as he learns the principles of health, the laws of mechanics, the construction and navigation of vessels, the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... spirit of difference and contradiction towards all antiquity; undertaking not only to frame new words of science at pleasure, but to confound and extinguish all ancient wisdom; insomuch as he never nameth or mentioneth an ancient author or opinion, but to confute and reprove; wherein for glory, and drawing followers and disciples, he took the right course. For certainly there cometh to pass, and hath place in human truth, that which was noted and pronounced in the highest truth:- Veni in nomine partis, nec recipits me; si quis venerit in nomine suo eum recipietis. ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... frothy seas But to illustrate such hypotheses. With years enough behind his back, Lincoln will take the selfsame track, And prove, hulled fairly to the cob, A mere vagary of Old Prob. 120 Give the right man a solar myth, And he'll confute the sun therewith. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... matters, that the two sets of opinions are incompatible, and that the belief in the unity of origin of man and brutes involves the brutalization and degradation of the former. But is this really so? Could not a sensible child confute by obvious arguments, the shallow rhetoricians who would force this conclusion upon us? Is it, indeed, true, that the Poet, or the Philosopher, or the Artist whose genius is the glory of his age, is degraded from ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... observation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the notion, that bats go down chimneys and gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down upon a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more despatch than I was aware of, but in a ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... This immediately roused a poignant pity and allegiance in Gerald's heart, always shadowed by contempt and by unadmitted enmity. For Gerald was in reaction against Charity; and yet he was dominated by it, it assumed supremacy in the inner life, and he could not confute it. So he was partly subject to that which his father stood for, but he was in reaction against it. Now he could not save himself. A certain pity and grief and tenderness for his father overcame him, in spite of the deeper, more ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... club. Men were going in and out with that feverish excitement which always prevails on the eve of a great parliamentary change. A large majority against the Government was considered to be certain; but there was an idea abroad that Mr. Daubeny had some scheme in his head by which to confute the immediate purport of his enemies. There was nothing to which the audacity of the man was not equal. Some said that he would dissolve the House,—which had hardly as yet been six months sitting. Others were of opinion that he would simply resolve not to vacate his place,—thus defying the majority ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... as here repeated; onely adding this, that they ordinarily traduce Kirk Judicatures, as medling with civill affairs, which as it is no new calumny, but such as hath been cast upon the servants of GOD in former times; so the whole course of proceedings doth manifestly confute the same. ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... Being, but would have unthinking Matter eternal too;) therefore, when did that thinking thing begin to be? If it did never begin to be, then have you always been a thinking thing from eternity; the absurdity whereof I need not confute, till I meet with one who is so void of understanding as to own it. If, therefore, you can allow a thinking thing to be made out of nothing, (as all things that are not eternal must be,) why also can you not allow it possible for a material being to be made out of nothing by an ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... arguments in my mind. I armed myself with their weapons. I felt my heart spring joyously within me as I felt the strength I had acquired, and I sent to the philosopher to visit me, that I might conquer and confute him. He came; but he spoke with pain and reluctance. He saw that I had taken the matter far more deeply to heart than he could have supposed it possible in a courtier and a man of fortune and the world. Little did he know of me or my secret ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... we expect every moment to hear that the rest are got to Scotland; none of our own are come yet. Lord Granville and his faction persist in persuading the King, that it is an affair of no consequence; and for the Duke of Newcastle, he is glad when the rebels make any progress, in order to confute Lord Granville's assertions. The best of our situation is, our strength at sea: the Channel is well guarded, and twelve men-of-war more are arrived from rowley. Vernon, that simple noisy creature, has hit upon a scheme that is of great service; he has ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... in the title of thegn. It has been peremptorily said by more than one writer in periodicals, that I have overrated the erudition of William, in permitting him to know Latin; nay, to have read the Comments of Caesar at the age of eight.—Where these gentlemen find the authorities to confute my statement I know not; all I know is, that in the statement I have followed the original authorities usually deemed the best. And I content myself with referring the disputants to a work not so difficult to procure as (and certainly more ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have said before, to pit oneself against another's praise and reputation is by no means fitting for a public man: however, in important matters, where mistaken praise is injurious and detrimental, it is not amiss to confute it, or rather to divert the hearer to what is better by showing him the difference between true and false merit. Anyone would be glad, I suppose, when vice was abused and censured, to see most people voluntarily keep aloof from it; but if vice should be well thought of, and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... suspected," he says, "that we pass by any chapters because we have no answers at hand, I have thought it best, according to my ability, to confute everything proposed by him, not so much observing the natural order of things, as the order which he has taken himself." (Orig. cont. Cels. I. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... true, has not a word to say of hatred and contempt; he is simply occupied with a theoretical exposition of how certain arrangements, for instance, the three-class suffrage, is pernicious. I am unable to confute this teaching. But I have this to say with respect to the organic unity of human nature, that if the doctrine is true then it follows that every normally constituted working man must come to hate and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... allow even others to quarrel. See in Xenophon's Symposium how many quarrels he settled, how further he endured Thrasymachus and Polus and Callicles; how he tolerated his wife, and how he tolerated his son who attempted to confute him and to cavil with him. For he remembered well that no man has in his power another man's ruling principle. He wished therefore for nothing else than that which was his own. And what is this? Not that this or that man ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... the possession of the kingdom; 2 Chron. xxii, 10, 12. Again, the practice of nations, in owning those for their lawful sovereigns, who, by providence, were put from the actual exercise of their rule and authority, contributes to confute this absurd notion. Thus, the people of Israel, who had risen up for Absalom, do even, when David was out of the land, own him for their king. So, during the Babylonish captivity, there are several ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... bold, nay, even to wild hypotheses, for the power of ordering and grasping the endless details of natural fact which they confer; for the moral stimulus which arises out of the desire to confirm or to confute them; and last, but not least, for the suggestion of paths of fruitful inquiry, which, without them, would never have been followed. From the days of Columbus and Kepler to those of Oken, Lamarck, and Boucher de Perthes, Saul, who, seeking his father's asses, found ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... Newcastle organist"; and before he has done, the memory masters him, and the pedestrian blank verse breaks into a hymn "rough, rude, robustious, homely heart athrob" to Pym the "man of men." Or he calls up Bernard Mandeville to confute the formidable pessimism of his old friend Carlyle—"whose groan I hear, with guffaw at the end disposing of mock—melancholy." Gerard de Lairesse, whose rococo landscapes had interested him as a boy, he introduces only to typify an outworn way of art—the mythic treatment of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them. Read not to contradict and confute, or to believe and take for granted, or to find talk and discourse, but to ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... replied; "depend upon it, no man was ever written down but by himself[748]." 'He observed to me afterwards, that the advantages authors derived from attacks, were chiefly in subjects of taste, where you cannot confute, as so much may be said on either side.[749] He told me he did not know who was the authour of the Adventures of a Guinea[750], but that the bookseller had sent the first volume to him in manuscript, to have his opinion if ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Gentiles, there was no use of alledging the Scriptures, which they beleeved not. The Apostles therefore laboured by Reason to confute their Idolatry; and that done, to perswade them to the faith of Christ, by their testimony of his Life, and Resurrection. So that there could not yet bee any controversie concerning the authority to Interpret Scripture; seeing no man was obliged during his infidelity, to follow ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... speech. A knife shone in his hand, and they heard the ripping sound as it bit through the tough canvas. The outlaws crowded around and began tearing open letters and packages, enlivening their labours by swearing affably at the writers, who seemed to have conspired to confute the prediction of Ben Moody. Not a dollar was found in the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... time, Rachel made her appearance in Miss Williams's little sitting-room. "I am ready to submit to any test that Captain Keith may require to confute himself," she said to Ermine; "and I do so the more readily that with all his mocking language, there is a genuine candour and honesty beneath that would be quite worth convincing. I believe that if once persuaded of the injustice of his suspicions he would in the reaction become a fervent supporter ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... frequently calls the Christian doctrine a secret system [of belief], we must confute him on this point also, since almost the entire world is better acquainted with what Christians preach than with the favourite opinions of philosophers. For who is ignorant of the statement that Jesus was born of a virgin, and that He was ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... to me so civilly, that I ought to write more, I reply in your own words (like the Pamphleteer, who is going to confute you out of your own mouth), What has one to do when turned of fifty, but really to think of finishing? However, I will be candid (for you seem to be so with me), and avow to you, that till four-score-and-ten, whenever ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... done to Mr. Brand—I pray God to forgive both him and his informants, whoever they be. But if the scandal arise solely from Mr. Belford's visits, a very little time will confute it. Mean while, the packet I shall send you, which I sent to Miss Howe, will, I hope, satisfy you, my dear Mrs. Norton, as to my reasons ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... adverse to repeal till we have studied the petitions which are coming in from Ireland. Really, Sir, this is not a subject on which any public man ought to be now making up his mind. My mind is made up. My reasons are such as, I am certain, no petition from Ireland will confute. Those reasons have long been ready to be produced; and, since we are accused of flinching, I will at once produce them. I am prepared to show that the Repeal of the Union would not remove the political and social evils which afflict Ireland, nay, that it would aggravate almost every one ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... concessions of the Gentiles. The more early writers of the church were not making a strict chronological inquiry: but were labouring to convert the heathen. They therefore argue with them upon their own principles; and confute them from their own testimony. The Romans had their Dii Immortales; the Greeks their [Greek: Theoi Athanatoi]: yet acknowledged that they had been men; that they died, and were buried. Cicero owns; [397]ab Euhemero et mortes, et sepulturae demonstrantur deorum. It matters not whether the notion ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... To confute them do I set down these facts of which my knowledge cannot be called in question, and also that you may know the true story of Paola di Santafior—and more particularly that part of it which lies beyond the death ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... she said she could not have believed I would ever have been wanting in my duty to that degree as to wound the memory of the late King, her lord. I had such reasons to offer as she could not herself confute, and therefore referred me to the Cardinal, but I found he understood those things no better than her Majesty. He spoke to me with the haughtiest air in the world, refused to hear my justification, and commanded me in the King's name to retract publicly the next day in full assembly. You may imagine ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... discussing, amongst other problems, the hypothesis of the liquid structure of the terrestrial nucleus. We were agreed that it could not be in a liquid state, for a reason which science has never been able to confute." ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... nails, needles, deposed by other witnesses) might be natural, only raised to a great degree by the subtlety of the devil cooperating with the malice of the witches, employs a well-known argument when he declares ('Religio Medici'), 'Those that to confute their incredulity desire to see apparitions shall questionless never behold any. The devil hath these already in a heresy as capital as witchcraft; and to appear to them were but ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... preface to the fourth tome of the letters of St. Teresa, relates, that an eminent Lutheran minister at Bremen, famous for several works which he had printed against the Catholic church, purchased the life of St. Teresa, written by herself, with a view of attempting to confute it; but, by attentively reading it over, was converted to the Catholic faith, and from that time led a most edifying life. The examples of Mr. Abraham Woodhead and others were not ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... maxim is that of necessity. It prevails, 'not that all men know the law, but because it is an excuse which every man will make, and no man can tell how to confute him.' Selden, (as quoted in the 2d edition of Starkie on Slander, Prelim. Disc., p. 140, note.)" Law Magazine, (London,) ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... degrading of vices, is a charge difficult to confute until we know specifically what vice is meant. Paine has been accused of drunkenness; but by whom? Not by his intimate acquaintances, who would have detected his guilt, but by his enemies who were never in his society, and therefore could know nothing of his habits. ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... political (1790), Condorcet ably extended the same line of argument so as to make it cover the claims of women to all the rights of citizenship.[356] From the nature of the case, however, it is impossible to confute by reason a man who denies that the matter in dispute is within the decision and jurisdiction of reason, and who supposes that his own opinion is placed out of the reach of attack when he declares it to be the unanimous ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... loved the world;" "that is," say they, the "elect world." And what proof do they bring for such an interpretation? None; nay, that is a circumstance which is often forgotten. But we need go no farther than the text itself, to confute that rugged interpretation; only let the grammatical sense of the words be attended unto,—"God so loved the elect world, that whosoever of the elect world believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." Then what is become of the elect world which do not believe in him? According ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... a sigh of relief. She credited herself with having secured Persis's car very neatly. The man might, perhaps, get into trouble, but she could make that up to him by a generous tip. Her one idea was to contradict and confute the disgraceful announcement at its fountain-head. It was providential that the unknown Lord Chilminster's place was so near; but had it been ten times as far off, Jeannette, boiling with justifiable indignation, and with her mind made up to exact reparation, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... circle. But I shall best you." He paced to his throne and resumed his seat. "Let him tell us his tale. I repeat, Geos, that for all his beauty this one is an impostor. When he has spoken I shall confute him. I ask only that in the end he be turned over ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... this world to pay the penalty of crime committed in another state of existence—a doctrine which formed part of the initiation into the mysteries.[3] And Vanini—whom his contemporaries burned, finding that an easier task than to confute him—puts the same thing in a very forcible way. Man, he says, is so full of every kind of misery that, were it not repugnant to the Christian religion, I should venture to affirm that if evil ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... But when the same Father adds,—'In the uncorrected copies ([Greek: en tois adiorthotois antigraphois]) is found "He wept,"' Epiphanius is instructive. Perfectly well aware that the expression is genuine, he goes on to state that 'Irenaeus quoted it in his work against Heresies, when he had to confute the error of the Docetae[495].' 'Nevertheless,' Epiphanius adds, 'the orthodox ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... vnlearned do thus familiarly accompanie the vnbealeuers / They can not chose but they must heare many subtill reasons and see many other thinges which do mutch make against the true religion that they do profes: Which thinges when they se and be not able to disproue and confute / They do it not: And so they ronne into two mischeifs. The furst is / That they ar as it wer witnesses of the blasphemie / and of the reproche that the vnbeleauers do to the truthe: the seconde / that they maie happ to haue summe stinge left sticking in their concience / with which they ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr |
