"Controversialist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by asking one plain question—If all the scholastic wealth with which St. Thomas has enriched the world lay embedded in the mind of a Missionary priest: if he more than rivalled Suarez as a casuist, and Bellarmine as a controversialist, yet if he failed to acquire a mastery over the only instrument by which he could bring to bear the riches of his own intellect on the minds of those around him, of what value is all the ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... suspected of regarding either the politics or the theology of Collier with partiality; but we believe him to have been as honest and courageous a man as ever lived. We will go further, and say that, though passionate and often wrongheaded, he was a singularly fair controversialist, candid, generous, too high-spirited to take mean advantages even in the most exciting disputes, and pure from all taint of personal malevolence. It must also be admitted that his opinions on ecclesiastical and political affairs, though in themselves absurd ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and by the numerous conversions which he worked. But, indeed Lerins was a hive whence swarmed forth the teachers and apostles of Southern Gaul. Hence came the modest Vincent of Lerins, the first controversialist of his time, who at the head of his greatest work inscribed a touching testimony of his love for that poor little isle where he had spent so many years, and learned so much. Salvian, also, the "Master of Bishops," as he was called, though himself ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... was he an able and accomplished mariner, prominent among that chivalry of the sea who held the perilous verge of Christendom against the Mussuhuan. He claimed other laurels than those of the sword. He was a scholar, a linguist, a controversialist, potent with the tongue and with the pen, commanding in presence, eloquent and persuasive in discourse. Yet this Crichton of France had proved himself an associate nowise desirable. His sleepless intellect was matched with a spirit ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... never claimed more than was his right. For many years after his invention was a proved success, almost to the day of his death, he was compelled to fight for his rights; but he was a good fighter, a skilled controversialist, and he has won out ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... fun Chesterton is an easy master. It makes him a fearsome controversialist on the platform or in his favourite lists, the columns of a newspaper. But he uses his strength a little tyrannously. He is an adept at begging the question. The lost art called ignoratio elenchi has ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... supporters as to the depraved condition of the Church at this period; so that we need not believe the allegations or their opponents that a chief inducement to join heretical sects lay in the greater scope for the indulgence of sin. Charges of immorality against opponents were the stock-in-trade of the controversialist, while the greatest authorities in the Church allow that heresy lived upon the scandals and negligences of the Church. Moreover, based as they were upon opposition to the existing organisation, the doctrines ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... he said to a learned controversialist, "ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost." But he was a man of forty before his dream became fact. Drawn from his retirement in Gloucestershire by the news of Luther's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Dunne, of Athenry, is an acute observer and a shrewd political controversialist. He said: "The people about here, the poor folks such as the small farmers and labourers, have really no opinion at all. They know nothing of Home Rule, one way or the other. If they say anything, it is to the effect that they will obtain some advantage in connection with the land. Beyond ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... learned to keep his own counsel and to mask his intentions; he never even seemed frank. Though wilful and quarrelsome, he kept guard over his tongue, but, pen in hand, became an evasive, obstinate controversialist with a coldly-used power of exasperation. He learned to work apart, and practised it so long that he became unable to co-operate, on equal terms, with any fellow-labourer. He would lead, or would go alone. Moreover, so far as persons went, his antipathies ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... augment the world's misery, incited Orosius to show the same thing in a compendium of profane history also. Orosius began his work in the year 410, when Augustine had got through ten books of his, and he finished it about the year 416. Like a good old-fashioned controversialist, he made very light of the argument of terror from the sack of Rome by Alaric, so representing the event that King Alfred, in his translation, thus abridged ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... the Montanists, fiery, impulsive, the strong preacher, the vigorous writer, the bold controversialist, organized a sect which survived him, though finally disorganized through the influence of Augustine, the master theologian of the early Church, indeed ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... writing. As Knox had announced six years earlier, that, "as touching the chief points of religion, I neither will give place to man or angel . . . teaching the contrair to that which ye have heard," a controversialist who thought it worth while to criticise the Confession must have deemed himself at least an archangel. Two years later, written criticism was offered, as we shall see, with a demand for a written reply. The critic escaped ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... member should discharge the office of Library-Keeper "not above once in seaven yeares." The Library-Keeper elected in that year was Mr., afterwards Dr., John Collinges, a well-known Presbyterian divine, who was a prolific writer and a keen controversialist. Apparently the office was to be held for a year, and the first three Library-Keepers held the office for that period, but afterwards the usual period was two years. The Minute Book records the appointment of the following thirty-six Library Keepers who held office during the years ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... say where exactly Chesterton finds a place in literature. Is it as an essayist? Is it as a novelist? Is it as a historian? Is it as a critic? If it is as a novelist, then it is as a writer of peculiar phantasy; if it is as an essayist, it is as a brilliant controversialist; if it is as a historian, it is as a unique critic of history; if it is as a critic, it is as a broad-minded one of not only past great authors but ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... stronghold where antiquarian controversy rests. Beaten in affixing the origin of any art elsewhere, the controversialist enshrines himself within the Great Wall, and is allowed to repose in peace. Opponents, like Arabs, give up the chase when these gates close, though possibly with as little reason as the children of the desert evince when they quietly succumb ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... hash of old abuse of me), Owen gives to the author a new resume of his brain doctrine; and I thought you would like to hear of this. He ends with a delightful sentence. "No science affords more scope or easier ground for the caviller and controversialist; and these do good by preventing scholars from giving more force to generalisations than the master propounding them does, or meant his readers ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... misanthropic. So it is with our existing divisions. They keep out of each other's way; the Tory paper and the Radical paper do not answer each other; they ignore each other. Genuine controversy, fair cut and thrust before a common audience, has become in our special epoch very rare. For the sincere controversialist is above all things a good listener. The really burning enthusiast never interrupts; he listens to the enemy's arguments as eagerly as a spy would listen to the enemy's arrangements. But if you ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... and controversialist. His unlatinised name was Aless or Alane, and he was b. at Edinburgh and ed. at St. Andrews, where he became a canon. Originally a strong and able defender of the Romish doctrines, he was chosen to argue with Patrick Hamilton, the proto-martyr of the Reformation in Scotland, with the object ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... among the Congregational Churches in New England, which before 1819 apparently had come to be regarded by both parties as remediless, Channing took the side of the opposition to Calvinistic orthodoxy. He developed qualities as controversialist and leader which the gentler aspect of his early years had hardly led men to suspect. This American liberal movement had been referred to by Belsham as related to English Unitarianism. After 1815, in ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... the effect of the room on Jack, as he watched it on every new-comer, showed his surprise and pleasure that this young man in cowboy regalia understood some things besides camps and trails; and this very fact made him answer in the vigorous and enjoyed combatancy of the born controversialist. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... clergy, as the London clergy stood in general repute at the head of their class throughout England. They occupied the higher posts at the two Universities. No English divine save Jeremy Taylor rivalled Howe as a preacher. No parson was so renowned a controversialist or so indefatigable a parish priest as Baxter. And behind these men stood a fifth of the whole body of the clergy, men whose zeal and labour had diffused throughout the country a greater appearance of piety and religion than ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... business is, that I should not have been present except for Robert Chambers. I had heard of the Bishop's intention to utilise the occasion. I knew he had the reputation of being a first-class controversialist, and I was quite aware that if he played his cards properly, we should have little chance, with such an audience, of making an efficient defence. Moreover, I was very tired, and wanted to join my wife at her brother-in-law's country house near Reading, on the Saturday. On the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... dog down.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that manner. One mind is a vice, and holds fast; there's a good memory. Another is a file; and he is a disputant, a controversialist. Another is a razor; and he is sarcastical.' We talked of Whitefield. He said he was at the same college with him[84], and knew him before he began to be better than other people (smiling;) that he believed he sincerely meant well, but had a mixture of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... have it thought that he derived his title from a wife, and when Parliament met on November 7 he obtained from it a recognition of his own right to the throne, though it would have puzzled the most acute controversialist to discover in what that right consisted. Parliament, therefore, contented itself with declaring that the inheritance of the crown was to 'be, rest, and abide in King Henry VII. and his heirs,' without giving any reasons why it was to be so.[36] As far as the House of Lords was concerned the attendance ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... of a collection like this, one's heart is touched with something of the same vague pathos that dims the eye in a graveyard. What a necrology of notability! How many a controversialist who made a great stir in his day, how many a once rising genius, how many a withering satirist, lies here shrunk all away to the tombstone immortality of a name and date! Think of the aspirations, the dreams, the hopes, the toil, the confidence (of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... pathetic, but more than slightly ludicrous, and he appears to have been greatly henpecked as well as obliged to lead an uncongenial life at a country living. In 1585 he was made Master of the Temple, and held that post for seven years, distinguishing himself both as a preacher and a controversialist. But neither was this his vocation; and the last nine years of his life were spent, it would seem more congenially, in two other country livings, first in Wiltshire, then in Kent. He died in 1600. The first four books of the Ecclesiastical Polity were published in 1594, the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... a man of distinction as preacher, poet, and controversialist. His sermons were sermons in the good, old-fashioned sense of the term. His poems were the despair of the critics, but won him a wide reputation. He was an adept in what Whistler called the gentle art of making enemies. Though more familiar with the inside of a pulpit, ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... that 'Law's Letters have never been answered and may, indeed, be regarded as unanswerable.' Law was also the most powerful assailant of Warburton's Divine Legation, which he opposed with a burning zeal that was not always wise. But as a controversialist he was an infinitely stronger man than his opponent, and unlike Warburton, he never debased controversy by scurrility, which the bishop generally found a ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... matters not who or what is the subject,—let it be a long-established reputation, like that of M. Guizot; a youthful aspirant, such as M. Hyppolite Rigault and many others; a brother critic, like M. Prevost-Paradol; a fanatical controversialist, like M. Veuillot; a personal friend, like M. Flaubert; or a bitter and unscrupulous assailant, like M. de Pontmartin,—the treatment is ever the same, sincere, impartial, unaffected. "To say nothing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... seraphic singer of the Nativity and of Paradise is a tribute which seems to savor of audacity. It is hard to conceive of Emerson as "an expert swordsman" like Milton. It is impossible to think of him as an abusive controversialist as Milton was in his controversy with Salmasius. But though Emerson never betrayed it to the offence of others, he must have been conscious, like Milton, of "a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness," which was as a shield about his inner nature. Charles ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... her was not in the least the controversialist and the man of letters—it was the priest, the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
