"Controversial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confidence in some, and weaken prejudice in others; to ascertain who are our avowed enemies, and who are such in disguise; to become acquainted with the mode of thinking and feeling, with the springs of action, and with the way of access to the heart; to begin publicly to discuss controversial subjects with the dignitaries of the Church, and to commence giving religious instruction to the common people; to be allowed to have a hand in directing the studies and in controlling the education of the young; ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... 'they' do startles me. I have no patience with those who make much of the morbid side of this business. To me it is neither 'theism' nor 'diabolism,' and is neither destruction of an old religion or the basis of a new one—But all this verges on the controversial, and is not good for our psychic. Let's sing some good old tune, like 'Suwanee River' or 'Lily Dale.' We must keep to the genial side of conversation. Spread your hands wide on the table and be as comfortable ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... etc., may each be an answer to some word or movement. A reply is an unfolding, and ordinarily implies thought and intelligence. A rejoinder is strictly an answer to a reply, tho often used in the general sense of answer, but always with the implication of something more or less controversial or opposed, tho lacking the conclusiveness implied in answer; an answer, in the full sense, to a charge, an argument, or an objection is adequate, and finally refutes and disposes of it; a reply or rejoinder may be quite ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the renal organ and duct has very considerable controversial interest.* In Figure 13, Sheet 22, a diagrammatic cross-section, of an embryo is shown. I. is the intestine, coe. the coelom, s.c. the spinal cord; n.c. the notochord, surrounded by n.s., the notochordal ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... symbolic name was "Dimas Alang"—Tagalog for "Noli Me Tangere"—and his nom de plume in some of his controversial publications. The use of that name by one of his companions on the railroad trip to Tarlac entirely mystified a station master, as appears in the secret report of the espionage of that trip, which just preceded his deportation to Dapitan. ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... you have produced; "With all deference to what that very learned and most ingenious person, in his Letter to a Friend in the Country, hath advanced." Very well, sir; for, besides that, it may sell more of the Letter: all controversial writers should begin with complimenting their adversaries, as prize-fighters kiss before they engage. Let it be finished with all speed. Well, Mr Dash, have ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... quaker-like a suit of drab and dove-colour. You were meant by nature for the sunshine and the summer; you shall not be worried and chilled and killed with doses of heterodox political economy and controversial ethics. Better even a country rectory (though with a bad Late Perpendicular church), and flowers, and picnics, and lawn-tennis, and village small-talk, and the squire's dinner-parties, than bread and cheese ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... would benefit if the present absurd division between them ceased to exist. Children under fourteen require similar discipline whatever their social status: even if the subjects taught are to differ somewhat—a matter which is controversial and need not be discussed here—the teachers need similar training and the same kind and amount of academic education. Until these are secured, there can be no real equality of opportunity for the elementary school child: only the very best intellects in the class of 60 can hope ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... which may deepen into love; but devotion and awe are plants hard to rear in our harsh climate; besides, can it be well denied that there is something in a huge collection of the ancient learning, of mediaeval folios, of controversial pamphlets, and in the thick black dust these things so woefully collect, provocative of listlessness and enervation and of a certain Solomonic dissatisfaction? The two writers of modern times, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... thinks that the volume originally belonged to Dulwich College. Towards the end of the XVIIth century Cartwright, the actor, bequeathed to the College a number of MS. plays, which the College authorities in the middle of the last century exchanged (horrendum dictu!) for tomes of controversial divinity. Of all the plays left by the actor only one[280]—and that imperfect—remains. The late Lord Charlemont was a friend of Malone, and it is well known that Malone had many of the Dulwich documents in his possession for years. Mr. Warner's theory is that Malone ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... dead, and death, as the Roman poet says, can alone confess of what small atoms we are made. The opponents of Ibsen largely exhibited the permanent qualities of the populace; that is, their instincts were right and their reasons wrong. They made the complete controversial mistake of calling Ibsen a pessimist; whereas, indeed, his chief weakness is a rather childish confidence in mere nature and freedom, and a blindness (either of experience or of culture) in the matter of original sin. In this sense Ibsen is not so much a ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... gaol. He was then flogged and degraded from the priesthood. But the zeal of the Anglican clergy displayed. They were Jed by a united Phalanx, in the van of which appeared a rank of steady and skillful veterans, Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Prideaux, Patrick, Tenison, Wake. Great numbers of controversial tracts against Popery were issued ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... controversy was not achieved without cost, since, as an incident of it, he spent twenty years in banishment. His admirers credit him with "a deep mind, invincible courage, and living faith," but as his orations and discourses were largely controversial, the interest which now attaches to them is chiefly historical. The following was preached from the seventh and eighth verses of the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... He was being intolerably worried, and he was ill and unable to sustain his positions. This doubt, this sudden discovery of controversial unsoundness, was only one aspect of his general neurasthenia. It had been creeping into his mind since the "Light Unden the Altar" controversy. Now suddenly it had leapt upon him from ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... newspapers followed, into the details of which it is not necessary to go. The Federalists, with the tide going steadily against them, had the good luck to secure the aid of a pen which had no match in Europe. The greatest master of English controversial prose that ever lived was at that time in America. Normally, perhaps, his sympathies would have been with the Democrats. But love of England was ever the deepest and most compelling passion of the man who habitually abused her institutions so roundly. The ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... remarks, in their survey of previous attempts at an English translation of the Bible, and in their attitude to such a translation, have never been pointed out. Without wishing to intrude myself into controversial matters on which no one is entitled to speak who has not made a special study of the subject, I would fain again draw attention to the fact that whereas we have a definite statement by Caxton[7] that the Polychronicon 'was englisshed by one Trevisa, vicarye of barkley, ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... gray-goose shaft; for it shines with the gleam of tempered steel. An exactness of knowledge that defines all its landmarks, how is it master of the situation. A precision of speech, born of clear thinking, what controversial battlefields of sulphurous smoke and scattering fire might it prevent. He has been called a public benefactor who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before. He is as great a benefactor, who in an age of verbiage makes one word perform the function of two. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... it. Indeed all conversations with us had a tendency to become controversial. Over and above which there was truth in Keziah's saying, "The young gentlemen argle-bargles fit to deave a body's head; and dear knows what it's ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... passages in the Acts, such as xviii. 15; xxiii. 29; xxv. 9; xxvi. 28, 32; xxviii. 31. Claudius Lysias writes to the governor of Judaea that Paul was accused by his fellow-citizens, not of crimes deserving punishment, but on some controversial point concerning their law. In Rome itself the apostle could preach the gospel with freedom, even when in custody, or under police supervision.[145] And as it was lawful for a Roman citizen to embrace the Jewish persuasion, and give up the religion of his fathers, he was equally free to embrace ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... of Andrew Marvell, Esq., Poetical, Controversial, and Political: containing many Original Letters, Poems, and Tracts never before printed, with a New Life. By Captain Edward Thompson. In three volumes. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... great love for the Church which made him take pen in hand. Varied as were the subjects on which he wrote, his writings, whether controversial, dogmatic, devotional or even light and entertaining, had but one single aim and end—the instruction of mankind and ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... labour on portraits painted by other men, in order to bring them into harmony with the collection that Philip was making. It is difficult to deal with this matter within limited space because the details are distinctly controversial, but it is as well to remember that some of the portraits attributed to Velazquez in the Prado Gallery are of people who were dead before Velazquez was painting, so they could not have sat for him; and in the days of Philip IV. it was considered no ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... acknowledge that this provision is controversial. It is as distasteful to me as I suspect it is to you. In its defence, let me treat the Greek letter and math formula cases separately. Using LaTeX encoding for Greek letters is purely a stopgap until Unicode comes into common use on enough ...
— People of Africa • Edith A. How
... prerogative of the emperor as he had been accustomed to exercise it. For, in the first place, they were no longer free agents, and Tungche had himself to be considered in any arrangement for the reception of foreign envoys. The discussion of the question assumed a controversial character, in which stress was laid on the one side upon the necessity of the kotow even in a modified form, while on the other it was pointed out that the least concession was as objectionable as the greatest, and that China would benefit by the complete ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... In the days when controversial literature was fashionable in England, and the strife between Protestantism and Catholicism possessed some interest for the public, we remember with considerable amusement the manner in which the champions on either side conducted the attack. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... think that the more nicely the subject was investigated, the more perplexed it would appear, and was on the point of forming a resolution to go to heaven in my own way, without meddling or involving myself in the inextricable labyrinth of controversial dispute, when I received and perused this excellent treatise, which finally cleared up the mists which my ignorance had conjured around me, and clearly pointed out ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... difficult proposition for Rudolph to handle. His innate caution, his respect for law and, under his bullying exterior, a certain physical cowardice, made him slow to move in the direction Rudolph was urging. He was controversial. He liked to argue over the beer and schnitzel Rudolph bought. And Rudolph ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... costlier lute than her own, in return for her father's help with the idioms. Also he borrowed some of Dom Diego's own works, issued anonymously from the printing presses of Amsterdam; and from his new friend's "Paradise of Earthly Vanity," and other oddly entitled volumes of controversial theology, the young enthusiast sucked instruction and confirmation of his doubts. To Dom Diego's Portuguese fellow-citizens the old gentleman was the author of an erudite essay on the treatment of phthisis, emphatically denouncing ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... rationalism of Woolston, may each and all, no doubt, have furnished Voltaire with arguments and suggestions, but they cannot have seriously influenced his thought. Bolingbroke was a more important figure, and he was in close personal relation with Voltaire; but his controversial writings were clumsy and superficial to an extraordinary degree. As Voltaire himself said, 'in his works there are many leaves and little fruit; distorted expressions and periods intolerably long.' Tindal and Middleton were more vigorous; but ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the ferule's stings, Colds in the head, or fifty other things, Transformed the helpless Hebrew thrice a week To guttural Pequot or resounding Greek, The vibrant accent skipping here and there Just as it pleased invention or despair; No controversial Hebraist was the Dame; With or without the points pleased her the same. If any tyro found a name too tough, And looked at her, pride furnished skill enough; She nerved her larynx for the desperate thing, And cleared the five-barred syllables ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... has passed since the catastrophe to France, the cause of it is still controversial. It is certain that the conduct of Marshal Soult, who was second in command, gave reason for suspicion. An old corporal told the Emperor that he was to "be assured that Soult was betraying him." General Vandamme was reported to have gone over ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... decency, the utility, and the necessity of scrupulously preserving the appearances of both. When I say the appearances of religion, I do not mean that you should talk or act like a missionary or an enthusiast, nor that you should take up a controversial cudgel against whoever attacks the sect you are of; this would be both useless and unbecoming your age; but I mean that you should by no means seem to approve, encourage, or applaud, those libertine ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... volume on natural philosophy, consisting in part of his lectures before the Royal Institution, published in 1807; but even then they failed to bring conviction to the philosophic world. Indeed, they did not even arouse a controversial spirit, as his first papers ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... seemed as if Mr. PROTHERO, in moving the second reading of the Corn Production Bill, was going to adopt the modern attitude of insouciance, for he spoke of it as "bristling with controversial points" (as if it were intended to promote the growth of quite another kind of corn), and observed that he himself had originally been opposed to State interference with agriculture. But he soon warmed to his work, and spoke with all the zeal of the convert. Among his most appreciative ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... of his own mind working on the scanty data furnished him by Middleton. By one of those accidents which usually happen in such cases, he made the acquaintance of a young gentleman who had already embraced Catholicism, and who was well provided with controversial tracts in favour of Romanism. Among these were the two works of Bossuet, the Exposition of Catholic Doctrine and the History of the Protestant Variations. Gibbon says: "I read, I applauded, I believed, and surely I fell by a noble hand. I have ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... their references with them and, sometimes under a new name, to repeat the process there. She was of opinion that the age of consent ought to be raised to eighteen at least, a course for which there is much to be said. Also she thought, and this is more controversial, that when any young girl has been seduced under promise of marriage, the seducer should be liable to punishment under the criminal law. Of course, one of the difficulties here would be to prove the promise of marriage beyond ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... not infrequently received effective advertisement by being publicly condemned and burnt, with the result that the few copies which escaped acquired an adventitious interest and influence. Considering the violence of the invective often conspicuous in them, and the extravagance of the controversial methods usually adopted, the treatment they met with can hardly be condemned as oppressive; whether it was politic is another question. The modern English view generally is that such repressive acts tend ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... when, in 1517, he published his first independent work, the Explanation of the Seven Penitential Psalms. On Oct 31 of the same year he published his 95 Theses against Indulgences. These were indeed intended as controversial theses for theologians, but at the same time it is well known that Luther was moved by his duty toward his congregation to declare his position in this matter and to put in issue the whole question as to the right and wrong of indulgences by means of his theses. His sermon ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... to indicate that every elder should be a public instructor occurs in only one other instance in the New Testament; and in that case it is used in a connexion which serves to illustrate its meaning. Paul there states that whilst such as minister to the Lord should avoid a controversial spirit, they should at the same time be willing to supply explanations to objectors, and to furnish them with information. "The servant of the Lord," says he, "must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... if he sought to shun the discussion opened by his adversaries, he was influenced by wise forbearance, and not at all by any fear of the consequences to himself. A dispassionate observer could have seen that behind this moderate, rather deprecatory letter there was an abundant reserve of controversial material held for the moment in check. But his adversaries were not dispassionate; on the contrary they were greatly excited and were honestly convinced of the perfect goodness of their cause. They were men of the highest character in public and private life, deservedly of ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... that British seamen, manufacturers, and merchants too, would hurry over to them."[70] These statements, drawn from Adams's association with many men, reflect so exactly the line of argument in the best known of the many controversial pamphlets published about that time,—Lord Sheffield's "Observations on the Commerce of the American States,"—as to prove that it represented correctly a preponderant popular feeling, not only adverse to the restoration of the colonial privileges contemplated by ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... in a graceful old age. To the last his mind remained alert and active. He busied himself with the classical and theological studies which had been the delight of his young manhood, and the relaxation of his active years. His translations, his controversial pamphlets, his letters on public questions, showed the refinement and vigor of his remarkable intellect. When he died the English-speaking world paid a universal tribute of respect to ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... learned volumes, are "no good for reading." The books of the College library are delightful, indeed, to look at; rows upon rows of big irregular volumes, with tarnished tooling and faded gilding on the sun-scorched backs. What are they? old editions of classics, old volumes of controversial divinity, folios of the Fathers, topographical treatises, cumbrous philosophers, pamphlets from which, like dry ashes, the heat of the fire that warmed them once has fled. Take one down: it is an agreeable sight enough; there is a gentle scent of antiquity; the bumpy ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is attached to a long list of books and pamphlets. Some of these are of a controversial character; the author was a stout Huguenot, fond of denouncing the Pope; oftentimes alarmed at plots against himself on account of his religion, and now publishing a letter of remonstrance to his three daughters who, in opposition to his will, had entered a nunnery in Paris. Other works relate ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... all deeply versed in the black-letter books, old plays, pamphlets, manuscript records and catalogues of that age, but also from the fallacious and unsatisfactory nature of the facts and assumptions on which the evidence rests. In that age, when the press was chiefly occupied with controversial or practical divinity,—when the law, the church and the state engrossed all honour and respectability,—when a degree of disgrace, 'levior quaedam infamiae macula', was attached to the publication of poetry, and even to have sported with the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... a subject of such delicacy. I should wish you to give your excellent {p.227} talents fair play, and to ride this race without carrying any superfluous weight; and I am so well acquainted with my old friend the public, that I could bet a thousand pounds to a shilling, that the preface (if that controversial part of it is not cancelled) will greatly ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... subject, and at any rate we shall at least be on the sure ground of having before us all that has been said on the matter by the Church fathers. Having cited these authorities, I shall attempt to submit them to a critical examination, and so eliminate all accretions, hearsay and controversial opinions, and thus sift out what reliable residue is possible. Finally, my task will be to show that Simon taught a system of Theosophy, which instead of deserving our condemnation should rather excite our admiration, and that, instead of being a common impostor and impious ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... "new" career with a novel whose central theme was a subject of distaste at best—more likely revulsion—to the vast majority of the reading public? Perhaps the nature of the novel itself led him to consider publishing it anonymously, although we know he was not averse to controversial subjects. In his first book, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, which he thought had the best plot of all his novels, the principal female character is seduced by a scoundrel and dies giving birth to ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... ton aiona kai ex aiona kai eti], which would mean "for eternity and still longer," if the strict rendering eternity were enforced. At the same time a suspicion as to the honesty of our translation presented itself in Micah v. 2, a controversial text, often used to prove the past eternity of the Son of God; where the translators give us,—"whose goings forth have been from everlasting," though the Hebrew is the same as they elsewhere render from days ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... sin no more, and the children who had not yet learned to sin, croaked forth responses that might have come from the choral frogs in Aristophanes; and there was a long sermon a propos to nothing which could possibly interest the congregation,—being, in fact, some controversial homily which Mr. Dumdrum had composed and preached years before. And when this discourse was over, there was a loud universal grunt, as if of relief and thanksgiving, and a great clatter of shoes, and the old hobbled, and the young scrambled, to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... errors of others, to commit fresh mistakes of their own. In the skilful criticism of M. Renan's work on the Apostles, in No. 29 of the "Fortnightly Review" there is now and then a vulnerable spot through which a controversial shaft may perhaps ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... papers, his ideas of South African affairs—or any other affairs—from the Yellow Press, will be misled into all manner of absurdities and errors. The statements of party politicians and party newspapers on most controversial subjects are prejudiced and inaccurate; but there is no subject upon which the professional misleaders of the people are so untrustworthy and so disingenuous as they are upon the subject of Socialism."[26] A leading Socialist organ complained: ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... forces that he dreams he is directing; it is a high theme, but Tolstoy cannot leave it to make its own effect. He, whose power of making a story tell itself is unsurpassed, is capable of thrusting into his book interminable chapters of comment and explanation, chapters in the manner of a controversial pamphlet, lest the argument of his drama should be missed. But the reader at last takes an easy way with these maddening interruptions; wherever "the historians" are mentioned he knows that several pages can be turned at once; Tolstoy may be left to belabour the conventional theories of ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... question, ventilate a question, torture a question; take up a side, take up a case. contend, take one's stand upon, insist, lay stress on; infer &c. 480. follow from &c. (demonstration) 478. Adj. reasoning &c. v.; rationalistic; argumentative, controversial, dialectic, polemical; discursory[obs3], discursive; disputatious; Aristotelian[obs3], eristic[obs3], eristical[obs3]. debatable, controvertible. logical; relevant &c. 23. Adv. for, because, hence, whence, seeing that, since, sith[obs3], then thence so; for that reason, for this reason, for which ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... proceeding?—some sentence easily handled, some commonplace of the moralist, some copybook maxim, I care not what. 'Contentment breeds Happiness'—That is a proposition with which you can hardly quarrel; sententious, sedate, obviously true; provoking delirious advocacy as little as controversial heat; in short a very fair touchstone. Now hear how the lyric treats it, in ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... so little kept in the pure intellectual sphere, has so little detached itself from practice, has been so directly polemical and controversial, that it has so ill accomplished, in this country, its best spiritual work; which is to keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the absolute beauty ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 25th. 1909, and, much more fully than elsewhere in John M. Synge, by M. Maurice Bourgeois, the French authority on Synge, whose book is the best extant record of the man's career. A good many critical and controversial books and articles of varying power and bitterness have appeared about him. A short Life of him by myself, was published in a supplementary volume of the Dictionary of National Biography in 1912. The people who ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... their minds, and rendered their whole conversation, which otherwise would have been pleasing and instructive, perfectly disgusting. A spirit of cabal, intrigue, and proselytism pervaded all their thoughts, words, and actions. And as controversial zeal soon turns its thoughts on force, they began to insinuate themselves into a correspondence with foreign princes,—in hopes, through their authority, which at first they flattered, they might bring about the changes they had in view. To them ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... South Africa to redirect Lesotho's abundant water supply into a rapidly growing area in South Africa; while it is the largest infrastructure project in southern Africa, it is also the most costly and controversial; objections to the project include claims that it forces people from their homes, submerges farmlands, and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... either oral or written; because error when assailed by the truth, will always make more or less resistance. The life of the greatest moral hero of the sixteenth century, to whom Christianity is so hugely indebted, was almost entirely expended in controversial efforts; and even the mild and peace-loving Melancthon, though he advised his aged mother not to trouble herself about religious controversies, himself felt it his duty to devote much of his time, his learning, ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... and persistently discussed as in New England in the colonial period. The long sermons of the clergymen were usually learned and elaborate arguments of doctrinal points, bristling with quotations from the Bible, or from famous books of controversial divinity, and in the long winter evenings the questions thus raised afforded the occasion for lively debate in every household. The clergy were, as a rule, men of learning, able to read both Old and New Testaments in the original languages, and familiar with the best that had ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... dusted, which was but a decent thing to do, but in no way polished, extending from the year '98 to the year '20, a thin array (for such a stretch of time) of really innocent attitudes: Conrad literary, Conrad political, Conrad reminiscent, Conrad controversial. Well, yes! A one-man show—or is it merely the show ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... inadvertently given me the reason and origin of all controversial writings. They flow not from a love of truth or a regard for science, but from envy and ill-will. Setting aside the evil of malignity—always hurtful to ourselves, not always to others—there is weakness in the argument you have adduced. When a writer is praised above his merits in his own ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... controversial pamphlets on the East India Company which were published in 1615, it appears that up to this year they had employed only twenty-four ships; four of which had been lost; the largest was 1293 tons, and the smallest 150. Their principal imports were still pepper, cloves, mace, and nutmegs, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... hath not such a high place in the minds and practice of Christians now, as it hath in the roll of the parts and members of the new man here set down. Here it is above all. With us it is below all, even below every apprehension of doubtful truths. An agreement in the conception of any poor petty controversial matter of the times, is made the badge of Christianity, and set in an eminent place above all which the apostle mentions, in the 12th verse, "bowels of mercies, kindness, gentleness, humbleness of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Dick, "you raise a question of an exceedingly controversial character. I admit, of course, that at the first blush, and regarding the matter superficially—if I may say so—it certainly would seem that I had taken an unfair advantage of those fellows by compelling them ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... one who has not read it can conceive how clear, how convincing, and how well adapted to our present needs are these controversial 'leaves.'"—Tablet. ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... and if they were not, I should be precluded from dealing with them by the fact that I intend to avoid as far as possible matters which concern living men, unless these are non-contentious. Horas non numero nisi serenas. Again, and even if it were desirable to add fresh fuel to the controversial fire, I could not, speaking generally, add to ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... in my area is pretty controversial. (You can appreciate that, especially since Bergbottom at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute bombarded you with criticisms of your theories.) Different and actually contradictory results have been obtained for the same substance in the same organism, e. g. alkaline phosphatase in the frog liver ...
— On Handling the Data • M. I. Mayfield
... writings, religious and controversial, will not explain the immense and dominating effect Newman produced upon his contemporaries. That effect was due to the irresistible magic of his personality. He was manifestly one of the Saints of God, and his presence brought with it ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... decorum. This hysterical horror of poor Pope's not very well ascertained, and never fully proved amours (for even Cibber owns that he prevented the somewhat perilous adventure in which Pope was embarking) sounds very virtuous in a controversial pamphlet; but all men of the world who know what life is, or at least what it was to them in their youth, must laugh at such a ludicrous foundation of the charge of "a libertine sort of love;" while the more serious will look upon those who bring forward such charges upon ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the great moving forces of life contain elements hitherto disregarded. Rousseau sounded his thesis, Pestalozzi began to teach, and but a little later on, Froebel expounded his tenets. We need not be concerned as to the controversial disputation of rival schools of pedagogues whose claims for one ignore the merits of the other. A new thought came into being, and both Pestalozzi and Froebel contributed to its diffusion—whether in the form of Pestalozzi's ideal, "I must do ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... were busy marshaling their forces behind the President's war program, which included the controversial Conscription and Espionage Bills, then pending, and did not relish having our question so vivid in the public mind. Even when the rank and file of Congress ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... Eternal God? Dost thou think to escape his fierce wrath and dreadful vengeance for thy ungodly and illegal persecution of his poor children? I tell thee, no. Better were it for thee thou hadst never been born." And so on, in the controversial dialect of the time, calling the vice-chancellor a "poor mushroom," and abusing him generally. Elsewhere, in a retrospect which I shall presently quote at length, he refers to his university experiences: "Of my persecution at Oxford, and how the Lord sustained me in the midst of that hellish darkness ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... she first went to Helen Keller, Miss Sullivan found herself and her pupil the centre of a stupendous fiction. Then the educators all over the world said their say and for the most part did not help matters. There grew up a mass of controversial matter which it is amusing to read now. Teachers of the deaf proved a priori that what Miss Sullivan had done could not be, and some discredit was reflected on her statements, because they were surrounded by the vague eloquence of Mr. Anagnos. Thus the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... has read much and carefully, and he has thus been enabled to acquire great skill in arranging and clothing his facts; but the reader of his books will find in them no contribution to positive knowledge. The works of men who make contributions of that kind are necessarily controversial and distasteful to the reader; for which reason they find few readers, and never pay their authors. Turn now to our own authors, Prescott and Bancroft, who have furnished us with historical works of so great excellence, and you will find a state of things precisely similar. They have ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... the present, it is desirable to avoid all controversial remarks; but I hope to be excused in offering a few words in regard to what has been considered a ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... (then independent) and for seven years at Geneva, whence he was called to the pastorate of the Walloon Reformed Church in Middelburg, Zeeland. At Middelburg he became embroiled with the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, because of controversial writings and because, filled with zeal to reform the Reformed Church in the Netherlands and to awaken it from its formalism, he carried his own congregation into positions and practices manifestly tending ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... clerical pupil to St. Ambrose's with the greatest energy, and perhaps somewhat less judgment than if Mr. Dutton had been at hand. Being without natural taste for intellectual pursuits, unless drawn into them by his surroundings, he had dropped them entirely, and read nothing but the ephemeral controversial literature of his party, and not much of that, for he was teaching, preaching, exhorting, throughout his spare time; while the vicar was in too great need of help to insist on deepening the source from which his zealous ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like to have their hands free. It might be suggested, on the other hand, that they keep their hands for the handles of many machines. And that the hand on a handle is less free than the hand on a stick or even a tool. But these again are controversial questions and I am ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... it caused her to stop short in the middle of the broad walk, while she looked at him with shining eyes. "See here, Mr. Ransom, do you know what strikes me?" she exclaimed. "The interest you take in me isn't really controversial—a bit. It's quite personal!" She was the most extraordinary girl; she could speak such words as those without the smallest look of added consciousness coming into her face, without the least supposable intention of coquetry, or any visible purpose of ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... minds occasionally labour. I have known my Right Hon. friend for many years; we have sat on this Bench together in Opposition, and have worked in the same Ministry, and I confess it is a little shocking to me to hear him accused of tendency to enter upon controversial topics. I am myself a man of peace, and do not readily assume an attitude of reproof; but, as Mr. HENRY ARTHUR WILSON said when he stood over the improvised Baccarat-table with a piece of chalk in his hand, the line must be drawn somewhere, and I am inclined to rule it at the place where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... ills, feeble health has its compensations, especially for those who unite restless vanity and ambition to a feminine desire for sympathy. It has been much the habit of Mr. Stephens to date controversial epistles from "a sick chamber," as do ladies in a delicate situation. A diplomatist of the last century, the Chevalier D'Eon, by usurping the privileges of the opposite sex, inspired ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... who aimed so high in his profession as to post over his door a sign reading "The Moral Centre of the Intellectual Universe." This establishment was notably full of old editions of books of English history and controversial theology. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... pieces, which may be called didactic or controversial poems—"Religio Laici" and "The Hind and Panther." The chief power of the former is in its admirable combination of two things, often dissociated—reason and rhyme; and its chief interest lies in the light it casts upon Dryden's uncertainty of religious view. The thought ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the sort of ability on which the success of his closetings depended. We find Baillie holding, in his simplicity, that in order to draw the heart of the King from Episcopacy, nothing more could be necessary than just fairly to submit to him some sound controversial work, arranged on the plan of the good man's own Ladensium; and urging on Sharpe, that a few able divines should be employed in getting up a compilation for the express purpose. Sharpe writes in return, in a style sufficiently quiet, that His Majesty, in his ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... was now offered Susan—to speak on the controversial subject of coeducation before the State Teachers' Association, which only a few years before had been shocked by the sound of a woman's voice. Deeply concerned over her ability to write the speech, she at once appealed to Elizabeth Stanton, "Do you please ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... an edict for the destruction of Tyndale's English bible, with all the controversial works on both sides of which it had been the fertile parent, an injunction that "the kingdom should be purged and cleansed of all religious plays, interludes, rhymes, ballads, and songs, which are equally pestiferous and noisome to the peace of the church." During ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... West, I paid the usual visit to the place, and requested a free expression of views as to the suitability of the books that had been given. One venerable old native, with eyes of fire, called out: "This Paisley Library has one fatal lack: it contains no works on controversial divinity." I ventured to hint that perhaps the omission was intentional, but that he absolutely refused ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the purpose and hope that some seeking heart may be helped that these pages are penned. The author has purposely avoided all controversial matter. We would not assume the role of the doctrinaire even were we capable of it. "Not controversy, not theology, but to save souls," as Lyman Beecher ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... from their numbers and insolence, were most to be feared. With this view, he had tacitly taken into his protection the Lutherans, as the weaker and more peaceable party, having moreover invited for them, from Germany, spiritual teachers, who, by controversial sermons, might keep up the mutual hatred of the two bodies. He encouraged the Lutherans in the vain idea that the king thought more favorably of their religious creed than that of the Calvinists, and exhorted them to be careful how they damaged ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of disallowance, the third expedient for curbing the provinces, was exercised with {71} some freedom down to 1888. In that year a Quebec measure, the Jesuits' Estates Act, with a highly controversial preamble calculated to provoke a war of creeds, was not disallowed, although protests were carried past parliament to the governor-general personally. The incident directed attention to the previous practice at Ottawa ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... first of a series describing the home and social life of various European peoples—a series long needed and sure to receive a warm welcome. Her style is frank, vivacious, entertaining, captivating, just the kind for a book which is not at all statistical, political, or controversial. A special excellence of her book, reminding one of Mr. Whiteing's, lies in her continual contrast of the English and the French, and she thus sums up her praises: 'The English are admirable: the French ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... distribution, communications, education, science. Then what? The question became increasingly interesting following recent visits not only to Moscow and Leningrad but also to various other capital cities of the Soviet complex. A controversial subject? Indeed it is. You can't get much more controversial than this in the world today. But this is science fiction, and ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the greater part of the literature of consanguineous marriage is of a controversial rather than of a scientific nature, and a search for statistical evidence for either side of the discussion reveals surprisingly little that is worthy of the name. Yet men of high scientific standing have repeatedly made most dogmatic assertions in ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... one-man stories, portrait studies of eccentric characters in a remote or restricted environment, to group subjects, chosen from centres of life and culture in Christiania. Redaktoer Lynge—redaktoer, of course, means "editor"—deals largely with political manoeuvres and intrigues, the bitter controversial politics of Norway prior to the dissolution of the Union with Sweden. Ny Jord gives an unflattering picture of the academic, literary, and artistic youth of the capital, idlers for the most part, arrogant, unscrupulous, self-important, and full of disdain for the mere citizens and merchants ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... to observe the acrimony which the most eminent scholars have infused frequently in their controversial writings. The politeness of the present times has in some degree softened the malignity of the man, in the dignity of the author; but this is by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... invites his readers to accompany him to that town to see what they can discover, and he retails a good deal of lively scandal about the rope-maker's sons. "Have with you" is perhaps the smartest and is certainly the most readable of Nash's controversial volumes. It gives us, too, some interesting fragments of autobiography. Harvey had accused him of "prostituting his pen like a courtisan," and Nash makes this curious and not ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... striving to convert the Jews, repeatedly had conferences with the rabbis of a controversial character, which often led to quarrels, and aggravated the lot of the Jewish community. If Catholic proselystism succeeded in completely detaching a few individuals or a few families from the Israelitish ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... "exhaustive"; history, races, religious castes and forms of local government are all intimately surveyed; the chapters on the India Office and (especially) the army in India will command wide attention both among experts and the general public. Naturally the word "experts" brings me to the controversial side of the subject, the much discussed Montagu-Chelmsford Report, concerning which the late C.-in-C. holds views that might fairly be described as pronounced. Where authorities differ the honest reviewer can but record ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... magnificent work of art. It was a temple—a fane of devotion or of science, which, when consecrated to the Creator, is devotion of the loftiest order, for it exhibits His attributes purely, free from the masquerade attire and blasphemous caricature of controversial creeds, and has the seal and signature of His own hand to sanction its aspirations. It was an equi-angular temple, built of polished sapphire, or of some resplendent blue stone, which, like it, displayed ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Pious (986, 996), and on each occasion succeeded in warding off a threatened papal interdict. He was killed at La Reole in 1004, in endeavouring to quell a monkish revolt. He wrote an Epitomie de vitis Romanorum pontificum, besides controversial treatises, letters, &c. (see Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 139). His life, written by his disciple Aimoin of Fleury, in which much of Abbon's correspondence was reproduced, is of great importance as a source for the reign ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the extinction of any exclusively insectivorous species. On her own very high authority we know that the insect supply is not diminishing, that the injurious kinds alone are able to inflict an annual loss equal to 10,000,000 on the British farmer. To put aside this controversial matter, the sparrow with all his faults is a pleasant merry little fellow; in many towns he is the sole representative of wild bird life, and is therefore a great deal to us—especially in the metropolis, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... system, St. Peter deemed it obligatory on us to be able and 'ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you,' how doubly imperative is that duty in this controversial age, when the popular formula has been adopted, 'to doubt, to inquire, to discover;' when the hammer of the geologist pounds into dust the idols of tradition, and the lenses of astronomy pierce the blue wastes of space, which in our childhood we fondly believed were the habitat ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Reverend Elias Howle, and the works written and the sermons preached by them, showed the British Dissenter where he could find mental pabulum. Hard by would be a little casement hung with emblems, with medals and rosaries with little paltry prints of saints gilt and painted, and books of controversial theology, by which the faithful of the Roman opinion might learn a short way to deal with Protestants, at a penny apiece, or ninepence the dozen for distribution; whilst in the very next window you ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... contemporaries. Whatever he read, with the assistance of a commonplace-book, he accurately remembered, and could readily turn to account; and, though his library was contained in a closet of five feet square, he was abundantly well informed on every ordinary topic of conversation. He was fond of controversial discussion, and wielded both argument and wit with a power alarming to every antagonist. Though keen in debate, he was however possessed of a most imperturbable suavity of temper. His conversation was of a playful cast, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and the personal behaviour of certain officials, who can be at once identified. Although the book is not without interest as a true account of hazardous and stirring frontier duties, we are bound to repeat our warning that this abuse of the novel for controversial purposes is not only unfair, but profoundly inartistic. No literary success, but failure and the confusion ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... shall be welcome. You may perhaps distrust me, when I say 'tis also my favourite topic; but mine is the religion of the bosom. I hate the very idea of a controversial divinity; as I firmly believe, that every honest upright man, of whatever sect, will be accepted of the Deity. If your verses, as you seem to hint, contain censure, except you want an occasion to break with me, don't send them. I have a little infirmity in my disposition, that where I fondly ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... object of the survey would be to keep Catholics who live out of the radius of parish life, in constant touch with the Church, its teaching, its sacraments and its authority. The mailing of Catholic literature pamphlets, devotional and controversial, and newspapers, the teaching of catechism by correspondence, as is practised in certain districts of Minnesota, the selection of teachers for foreign districts and of boys for higher education, the establishment of a central Catholic Bureau of information in ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... Cranmer in connection with the 1st Liturgy of Edward VI. Returning to Leipsic he passed the remainder of his days in peace and honour, and was twice elected Rector of the University. His writings were both exegetical and controversial, but chiefly the latter. They include Expositio Libri Psalmorum Davidis (1550). His controversial works refer to such subjects as the translation of the Bible into the ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... conflicting metaphysical systems—All this is literally and amply borne out by the many inconsistencies and contradictions which Mr Mill has brought to view in the preceding chapters. It would appear that the controversial disposition was powerful with Sir W. Hamilton, and that a present impulse of that sort (as has been said respecting Bayle, Burke, and others) not only served to provoke new intellectual combinations in his mind, but also exercised a ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... appeared in a new light, and commanded immediate attention by the publication of his "Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age,"—a remarkable work in three large octavo volumes, which called into the controversial field of Greek history a host of critics, like Mr. Freeman, who yet conceded to Mr. Gladstone wonderful classical learning, and the more wonderful as he was preoccupied with affairs of State, and without the supposed leisure for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... in a controversy. He had no fear of that fiery dragon of scorching breath—the newspaper press—while Vernon was his right hand man; and as he intended to enter Parliament, he foresaw the greater need of him. Furthermore, he liked his cousin to date his own controversial writings, on classical subjects, from Patterne Hall. It caused his house to shine in a foreign field; proved the service of scholarship by giving it a flavour of a bookish aristocracy that, though not so well worth having, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... chief points of dissonance; but in scattered settlements of recent formation these distinctions were rather matters of recollection than of practice. There were no diocesan, no presbyterial or other courts. In the towns the denominations maintained their exclusive forms and separate teachers; but controversial divinity was excluded by common consent from rural ministrations; and wherever christian ministers presented themselves in this character they were welcome, and in any other almost unknown. It was not possible, or perhaps desirable, that ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... was printed, he wrote back a letter (September 29, 1873) which is characterised by the same feeling. It expresses his thanks for the book, "and many more for the kind expression of feeling in the preface. If you had intended to set an example to the Philistines of the way in which controversial differences may be maintained without any decrease of sympathy, you could not ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... devotion of his mistress. By this means it lies in the power of every fine woman to secure at least half-a-dozen able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. The female world are likewise indispensably necessary in the best causes to manage the controversial part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to refute them. Arguments out of a pretty mouth ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... the verse, the reading requires first to be established. Instead of the reading [Hebrew: iqrav] which is found in the text, and which is the third pers. Sing. with the Suffix, several MSS. (compare De Rossi), have the third pers. Plur. [Hebrew: iqrav]. Several controversial writers, such as Raim. Martini, Pug. Fid. p. 517, and Galatinus, iii. 9, p. 126, (The Jews of our time assert that here Jeremiah did not say "they shall call," [Hebrew: iqrav], as we read it, but "he shall call him," ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... encountered. As such it will be considered further on. For the present the fact to be noted is that the authorized reviewers are both in honor and in duty bound to keep themselves absolutely clear of controversial bias. The movement is not a movement to alter in any slightest respect the dogmatic teaching of the Church, not a movement to unsettle foundations, not a movement toward disowning or repudiating our past, but simply and only an endeavor to make the Common Prayer, if possible (and we are far from ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... possible to understand certain recently published passages (Ibid., vol. iii. page 798) I have either partially or wholly again fallen into error. It is consolatory to me that others find Professor Owen's controversial writings as difficult to understand and to reconcile with each other, as I do. As far as the mere enunciation of the principle of natural selection is concerned, it is quite immaterial whether or not Professor Owen preceded ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... excitement and bewilderment produced by the first stirrings of the Reformation upon enthusiastic minds. He had studied the Vulgate, made out something of the Greek Testament, read all fragments of the Fathers that came in his way, and also all the controversial "tractates," Latin or Dutch, that he could meet with, and attended many a secret conference between Lucas and his friends, when men, coming from Holland or Germany, communicated accounts of the lectures and sermons of Dr. Martin Luther, which ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of the American mistress as being a missionary one, we are far from recommending any controversial interference with the religious faith of our servants. It is far better to incite them to be good Christians in their own way than to run the risk of shaking their faith in all religion by pointing out to them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... continues throughout the electoral period, and, if the outcome is doubtful, tends to increase rather than to diminish in intensity. Appeals to the voters are made principally through public speaking, the controversial and illustrated press, the circulation of pamphlets and handbills, parades and mass-meetings, and the generous use of placards, cartoons, and other devices designed to attract and focus attention. Plans are laid, arguments are formulated, and (p. 095) leadership in public ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... in particular suffers, at the door of this training. His painful elaboration of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, his insistence upon the dialectic, and his continual use of the Hegelian philosophical expressions are due to his earlier controversial experiences. Still, on the other hand, his patient investigation of actual facts, his insistence on the value of positive knowledge as compared with abstract theory, and his diligent and persistent use of blue-books and statistics, were in a ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... hand, Marshall scoffed at the idea that the citizen of a State might bring an original action against another State in the Supreme Court. His dissections of Mason's and Henry's arguments frequently exhibit controversial skill of a high order. From Henry, indeed, Marshall drew a notable tribute to his talent, which was at the same time proof of his ability to ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... calling into this wilderness, it is not strange that their chief literary staples were sermons and tracts in controversial theology. Multitudes of these were written and published by the divines of the first generation, such as John Cotton, Thomas Shepard, John Norton, Peter Bulkley, and Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford, of whom it was finely said that "when he was doing his Master's ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... gracious a reception in the Synagogue. There, Maimonides' philosophic system conjured up violent storms. The whole of an epoch, that following Maimonides' death, was absorbed in the conflict between philosophy and tradition. Controversial pamphlets without number have come down to us from those days. Enthusiasts eulogized, zealots decried. Maimonides' ambiguous expressions about bodily resurrection, seeming to indicate that he did not subscribe to the article of the creed on that subject, caused particularly acrimonious polemics. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... other superstition than red letters in the front or titles, were condemned to the fire . . . Such books wherein appeared angles were thought sufficient to be destroyed, because accounted Papish or diabolical, or both." A cart- load of MSS., lucubrations of the Fellows of Merton, chiefly in controversial divinity, was taken away; but, by the good services of one Herks, a Dutchman, many books were preserved, and, later, entered the Bodleian Library. The world can spare the controversial manuscripts of the Fellows of Merton, but who knows ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... of the "Provincial Letters," their wit and their controversial effectiveness, the specimens given will have afforded readers some approximate idea. We must deny ourselves the gratification of presenting a brief passage, which we had selected and translated for the purpose, to exemplify from the ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... or discourses upon this subject may be more or less unacceptable to some on account of their controversial aspect. This disadvantage cannot always be avoided. Controversy is not always agreeable, yet it is often necessary. Error must be opposed, and truth defended. What I have to say, is designed chiefly for the benefit of the younger ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... Mr. Keble wrote his Life of Bishop Wilson, making two visits to the Isle of Man to study the situation and the documents there preserved; various of the "Plain Sermons"; some controversial pamphlets defending the cause of the Church; and above all, the treatise on "Eucharistic Adoration." He assisted Dr. J. M. Neale in drawing up the Salisbury Hymnal, a precursor of Hymns Ancient and Modern, and contributed several hymns, especially those for Rogation days, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... martyr, and Bishop of Worcester, who was educated at Christ College, Cambridge, and was one of the first reformers of the Church of England, at a controversial conference, being out-talked by younger divines, and out-argued by those who were more studied in the fathers, said, "I cannot talk for my religion, but I am ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... of religious education in elementary schools has long been the centre of a perfect whirlpool of controversial talk. The greater part of this talk is, to speak plainly, blatant cant. Every candidate for a seat in the House of Commons thinks it incumbent upon him to say something about religious education, but not one in ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... strictly to the time spent in reading Scripture. A few questions, or a remark in the course of a secular lesson, often shows them what is the most important of all matters in our minds. Nothing positively controversial is taught; that is to say, no contemptuous expressions about the religion of any of the children are allowed, and the plainest truths of the Gospel specially set forward; but occasionally something comes into the lesson which shows to an intelligent learner the vanity of the superstitions ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... ungluecklich und die Tugend am Ende gluecklich sein laesst."[22] It is on the basis of this premise that he awards the comic crown to the Cap.[23] His extravagant encomium called forth from a contemporary a long controversial letter which Lessing published in the second edition with a reply so feeble that he distinctly leaves his adversary the honors of the field. How much better the diagnosis of Madame Dacier, who is quoted by Lessing! In the introduction to her translations ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... of the controversial evidence which may be used to bridge this gap between the first use of gears and the fully-developed mechanical clock we must examine the other side of this gap. Recent research on the history of early mechanical clocks has demonstrated certain ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... possessed of certain conclusions in respect of all branches of that science,[1608] as Maitravaruni, that foremost of Rishis, was seated the king approaching him with joined hands, asked him in humble words, well pronounced and sweet and destitute of all controversial spirit, the question,—O holy one, I desire to hear, of Supreme and Eternal Brahma by attaining to which men of wisdom have not to come back. I desire also to know that which is called Destructible and That into which this universe enters ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... all his soul and strength, Marnix passed the fifteen years yet remaining to him. Death surprised him at last, at Leyden, in the year 1598, while steadily laboring upon his Flemish translation of the Old Testament, and upon the great political, theological, controversial, and satirical work on the differences of religion, which remains the most stately, though unfinished, monument of his literary genius. At the age of sixty he went at last to the repose which he had denied to himself ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of diseases, with other interesting collateral topics. Riolanus, however, still remained unconvinced; and his second rejoinder was treated by Harvey with contemptuous silence. He had already exhausted the subject in the two excellent controversial pieces just mentioned, the last of which is said to have been written at Oxford about 1645; and he never resumed the discussion in print. Time had now come to the assistance of argument, and his discovery ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... The controversial literature of this period is not pleasant reading. The socialists and anarchists were literally at each other's throats, and the spirit of malignity that actuated many of their assaults upon each other is revolting ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... literary activity prevailed; among the more remarkable works of this period was the Shestodnev, or Hexameron, of John the exarch, an account of the creation. A little later the heresy of the Bogomils gave an impulse to controversial writing. The principal champions of orthodoxy were St Kosmas and the monk Athanas of Jerusalem; among the Bogomils the Questions of St Ivan Bogosloff, a work containing a description of the beginning and the end ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... long since returned with the work-basket, but stood with it in her hands, not daring to interrupt the gentleman, and listening to his discourse with as much patience and as little comprehension as if it had been one of the controversial sermons upon Ritualism with which on great occasions Mr. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and others—are actually to be found contending for the barren honour of having invented that terrible nuisance of a catch-phrase, "Three Acres and a Cow!" Strange and morbid perversion of ambition! As well fight for the deep discredit of having been the first to hit upon such kindred controversial horrors as the boring and question-begging "gags" of "Law and Order," "Patriot first, and Party-man afterwards," "Hand over to the tender mercies, &c.," "Disintegration of the Empire," or even that most hackneyed of political phrases, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... elaborate one than, his Sterling in the way of biography pure and simple. It is perhaps, though less delectable, not less admirable in its style than the other in its own. But it has, of course, the drawback of carrying with it a distinctly controversial character and, indeed, intention. We have more recently had at least two examples of the fullest possible comment with the least possible controversy in Mr. Tovey's "Gray," and of less voluminous but excellently adequate editing ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... 1649) are in the Library, was born at Cambridge, became rector of St. Peter Hungate, Norwich, in 1636, and afterwards settled at Yarmouth. John Collinges, a Presbyterian, who came to Norwich in 1646, published controversial and devotional tracts and sermons. He is only represented by "A Short Discourse against Transubstantiation" (London, 1675), and "On the Intercourse of Divine Love" (1676), but the Local Collection of the Public Library contains many of his writings. "The Notion ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... such discussion shortly after the opening of the clinic in Holloway told me that, while there was division of opinion on the general subject, the feeling of the meeting was overwhelming against the particular teaching given at the clinic, as undesirable and actively mischievous. The subject is controversial, and I profess to do no more than record ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... how much activity is called for on a fast is controversial. Natural Hygienists in the Herbert Shelton tradition insist that all fasters absolutely must have complete bed rest, with no books, no TV, no visitors, no enemas, no exercise, no music, and of course no food, not even a cup of herb tea. In my many years of conducting people ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... treatises, destined to teach the rudiments of human knowledge. Most of these books are written in Europe; the Americans reprint them, adapting them to their own country. Next comes an enormous quantity of religious works, Bibles, sermons, edifying anecdotes, controversial divinity, and reports of charitable societies; lastly, appears the long catalogue of political pamphlets. In America, parties do not write books to combat each others' opinions, but pamphlets which are circulated for a day with incredible rapidity, and then expire. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... committed to his charge. He was by no means a reticent man, he liked sympathy, and soon got into the habit of confiding in me for want of a better friend. Thus as he began to take a most earnest interest in parish work, and in schemes for the benefit of the people, our Sunday conversations became less controversial, and we gossiped about schools and school-treats, cricket-clubs, drunken fathers, slattern mothers, and spoiled children, and how the evening hymn "went" after the sermon on Sunday, like district visitors at a parish tea-party. ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the conversation to a less controversial plane met with no encouragement. Private Buncle, refusing to be appeased, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... theology and controversial divinity, commentaries, and polyglots, sets of the fathers, and sermons, which might each furnish forth ten brief discourses of modern date, books of science, ancient and modern, classical authors in their best and rarest forms; such formed the late bishop's venerable library, and over such ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... with the controversial treatises, the Elevations sur les Mysteres and the Meditations sur l'Evangile were written at Meaux, drawing the bishop away to the serener regions of supreme faith. There might he have chanced to meet those Reformers, as determined as he in the strife, as attached, at bottom, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... detailed, about each of Mr. Browning's works; information sufficient to the purpose I have in view, which is to induce those who have hitherto deprived themselves of a stimulating pleasure to deprive themselves of it no longer. Further, my aim is in no sense controversial. In a book whose sole purpose is to serve as an introduction to the study of a single one of our contemporary poets, I have consciously and carefully refrained from instituting comparisons—which I deprecate as, to say the least, unnecessary—between the poet in question ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... Rodd's Princes of Achaia.) It is hardly to be imagined that he would keep the matter dark because, if he mentioned it, people would think Dandolo acted throughout from motives of personal vengeance. This would be to regard Villehardouin a- a very astute controversial ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... entirely hospitable to me now, for my tales of the Indian and the miner had created a friendlier spirit among their readers. My later themes were, happily, quite outside the controversial belt. Concerned less with the hopeless drudgery, and more with the epic side of western life, I found myself almost popular. My critics, once off their guard, were able to praise, cautiously it is true, but to praise. Some of them ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Commons, Monday, March 16.—House of Commons really looked to-night as if it meant fighting. No lack of matter for quarrel. Even before public business was reached, Orders bristled with Motions raising controversial points. Lord CHUNNEL-TANNEL, that man of peace, was to the fore; his Bill, extending Manchester. Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway into London via Lord's Cricket Ground, down for Second Reading. That redoubtable Parliamentary ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... Cicero's great biographer. "Conyers Middleton," he says, "is a name that cannot be mentioned without an expression of disgust." The cause of this was that Middleton, a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England, and a Cambridge man, differed from other Cambridge clergymen on controversial points and church questions. Bentley was his great opponent—and as Bentley was a stout fighter, so was Middleton. Middleton, on the whole, got the worst of it, because Bentley was the stronger combatant; but he seems to ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... enjoyment, and not with a view to exhibit their zeal before the world. So far as numbers are concerned, I believe our clergymen, when called on to make a showing, have never had occasion to blush, if comparisons were drawn between the free and slave States. And although our presses do not teem with controversial pamphlets, nor our pulpits shake with excommunicating thunders, the daily walk of our religious communicants furnishes, apparently, as little food for gossip as is to be found in most other regions. It may be regarded as a mark of our want of excitability—though that is a quality accredited to ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... has been difficult and sometimes thankless and controversial. But it has been constructive and it has been necessary, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter • Jimmy Carter
... author's controversial methods, take his observations on my alleged attempt to account for the metamorphosis of Daphne into a laurel tree. When I read these remarks (i. p. 4) I said, 'Mr. Max Muller vanquishes me there,' for he gave no reference to my statement. I had ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... drawn controversial swords almost at sight of each other and for the hour and a half that they were together the combat raged mightily, to the unmixed satisfaction of both participants. The feelings of the bystanders were perhaps more diverse, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Christian Fathers to show that the truths of ancient philosophy were borrowed from Scripture are due in some cases to ignorance and in some to a want of perfect honesty in controversial dealing. That Gideon (Jerubbaal) is identical with the priest Hierombalos who supplied information to Sanchoniathon, the Berytian; that Thales pieced together a philosophy from fragments of Jewish truth learned in Phoenicia; that Pythagoras and Democritus availed themselves of Hebraic traditions, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... May. But people of advanced minds had got it into their heads that their doctrines were to be attacked, so they went and made a hubbub in the sacred cause of freedom of thought and speech. The truth is, that controversial topics, political topics, ought not to be brought into plays, much less into sermons. Tennyson meant Edgar for "nothing thorough, nothing sincere." He is that venomous thing, the prig-scoundrel: he does not suit the stage, and his place, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang |
