"Debatable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and you will no longer need Inspector D, nor ask aid from the head-office. Here is what the age especially worships, a remedy combining cheapness with efficiency. It may be said that we have no more right to destroy Chiavari than Kagosima, but that question is at least debatable. Are not the headaches of tens of thousands of more avail than the head of one? What becomes of that noble principle, the greatest happiness of the greatest number? The Italians, too, might object: true, but they are neither Americans nor French. They come into the category of states ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... not found much to say of this non-evolutionist of letters, who is neither pure realist nor pure romanticist, and who has no new theory of art. Some, indeed, may have scorned him for the wise taste which refuses to tread the debatable ground common to French fiction. But the reading public has received him with less conscious analysis, and has delighted in him. If he sees only what any clever man may see, and is no profound psychologist, yet he tells what he sees and what he imagines with delightful spirit and delightful ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a debatable proposition,” she replied, and I was angry to find how the mirth I had loved in her could suddenly become so hateful. She half-turned away so that I might not see her face. The thought that she should countenance Pickering in any way tore ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... commission. Atmospheric envelopes slowly en route to the dead letter office of dream pastels demand his whole attention. Painting is crass; he mildly cameos. Tonal nuances—shades of imperceptible difference in the shadowy debatable land between things colored exactly alike—claim his earnest interpretation. When he rarely speaks, it is usually an important contribution to the world's artistic knowledge on some such subject as 'The Influence of Rubens' Grandmother on his Portraits of his Second Wife' ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... visits with her, still permit that good-natured and well-intended social intercourse between young men and women which is so seldom abused, and which has led to so many happy marriages. It is one of the points yet debatable how much liberty should be allowed young ladies. Certainly, however, we do not wish to hold our young girls up to the scorn and ridicule of the novelist or the foreign critic by ignoring what has been a recognized tenet of good manners since society was formed. The fact that ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... kindlier. Even had he possessed any previous scruples about that act, he would have overcome them. As it was, the scruples came only when he thought of that new, chastened, subdued look on her face. Only then did he feel that his trick might be debatable, as to whether it became a gentleman. Only then did he take the trouble to seek justifiable circumstances. Only then did he have a dim sense of what might be the feelings of a girl suddenly stormed into love. He had never been sufficiently in love to know how serious ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... such rigor as to leave no margin whatever for the exercise of free fancy and emotional sway. Both the dreamer, with his indifference to (or downright scorn of) Form; and the pedant, with his narrow conception of it; as well as the ordinary music lover, with his endeavor to discover some less debatable view to adopt for his own everyday use,—need to be reminded that Form in music means simply ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... post brought me your letter of the 29th past. I suppose C——-T——-let off his speech upon the Princess's portion, chiefly to show that he was of the opposition; for otherwise, the point was not debatable, unless as to the quantum, against which something might be said; for the late Princess of Orange (who was the eldest daughter of a king) had no more, and her two sisters but half, if ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... cried the young man, or boy—for he was on the debatable ground of eighteen, when one may be either boy or man, according to one's acts, deeds, or exploits, as it used to say in ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... American merchantmen to increase in numbers until they were able to work such devastation on British commerce as marked the course of the War of 1812. The period allowed the new nation to acquire the strategic mouth of the Mississippi, and to make such inroads of settlers in the debatable land of the Floridas that Britain was unable to secure a permanent footing in them during hostilities. Twenty years carried forward the Old World struggle to a point so near its close that the Americans were able in the end to make surprisingly good ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... attitudes of men to women and of women to men are necessarily determined to a large extent by certain general ideas of relationship, by institutions and conventions. One of the most important and debatable of these is whether we are to consider and treat women as citizens and fellows, or as beings differing mentally from men and grouped in positions of at least material dependence to individual men. Our decision in that direction will affect all our conduct ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... debatable if he had spoken wisely, or had spoken even in consonance with fact, but his outburst had, at least, the saving grace of sincerity. He was pallid now, shaking in every limb, and in his heart was a dull aching. She seemed so incredibly soft and little and childlike, as she looked ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... take out that interest shortly. The road runs through debatable ground from St. Resa to de la Pama. Not an inch of it but what is being hotly contested. But it isn't the regulars that make the trouble, for at present the territory belongs to Peru, though how soon she will lose it is not for me to say. It's the murderous bush-raiders that ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... the gate. In another minute it had reached a point where the tent began to show from behind a clump of bushes. Sally's hand clutched Max's shoulder. Her brother was ill-humouredly surveying the signs of occupancy of the debatable ground. ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... of sight and hearing into by-corners. But the expression of a bird's head depends on the relation of eye to beak, as the getting of its food depends on their practical alliance of power; and the question, for instance, whether peacocks and parrots have musical ears, seems to me not properly debatable unless with due respect to the quality of their voices. It is curious, considering how much, one way or another, we are amused or pleased by the chatter and song of birds, that you will scarcely find in any ornithic manual more than a sentence, if so much, about their hearing; ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... countries have been the adopted children of the great European powers during generations of rulers. Russia assumed guardianship of the nations having a preponderance of Slavic blood; Roumania with its Latin consanguinities was close to France and Italy; Bulgaria, Greece, and Balkan Turkey were debatable regions wherein the diplomats of the rival nations secured temporary victories by ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... in this country to erect windscreens in order to break the force of the wind at the mouth of the shed. These screens are covered with corrugated sheeting, but it is a debatable point as to whether the comparative shelter found at the actual opening of the shed is compensated for by the eddies and air currents which are found between the screens themselves. Experiments have been ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... now on what had been the debatable ground, as much the enemy's as ours, and had not gone far before we were suddenly aware of a group of Spanish horsemen over the hedge of cactus to the left of the road, brightly dressed young fellows wearing ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... of the period was sizzling in the fire, Mr. Meredith recovered enough to pull out his purse and pay up the debatable levy. A moment later the steaming drink was poured into glasses, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of absurd assumptions pass current as fixed and non-debatable standards. We might be free, and we tie ourselves to the slavery of rutted convention. Afraid of ideas, we come to no definite philosophy of life that is the result of clear and ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... into debatable questions, such as the possibility of predetermining the sex of the child to be born, one can find many helpful ways of aiding and benefiting the growing life by autosuggestive means. The mother should avoid with more than ordinary care ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... of comments teeming with humour, and of historic weight. The general introduction gives us a general survey of the graphic pictures of Border quarrels, their simple violence and simple cunning. It enters, for instance, with grave humour into the strong distinction taken in the debatable land between a "freebooter" and a "thief," and the difficulty which the inland counties had in grasping it, and paints for us, with great vivacity, the various Border superstitions. Another commentary on a very amusing ballad, commemorating the manner in which a blind harper stole ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... your head thrice sweet and dear I lay, and spread your hair on either side, And see the new-born woodflowers bashful-eyed Look through the golden tresses here and there. On these debatable borders of the year Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow; And through her bowers the wind's ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... subveniunt. ex l. pupillus. ff. quae in fraud. cred. et ibid. l. non enim. et instit. in prooem.—that when he had smelt, heard, and fully understood—ut ff.si quando paup. fec. l. Agaso. gloss. in verb. olfecit, id est, nasum ad culum posuit—and found that there was anywhere in the country a debatable matter at law, he would incontinently thrust in his advice, and so forwardly intrude his opinion in the business, that he made no bones of making offer, and taking upon him to decide it, how difficult soever it might happen to be, to the full contentment and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... cooked food; all animals do better fed on what they can digest. A lot of people have taken Pottenger's data and mistakenly concluded that humans also should eat only raw food. This idea is debatable. However, the most important result of the cat experiments took years to reveal itself and is not paid much attention to, probably because its implications are very depressing. Dr. Pottenger continued ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... have reached a low estimate of interest and profits, and a high estimate of wages; while others, actuated by a desire to emphasize the power of the capitalist classes, have minimized the share which goes as wages. At the outset of our inquiry, it might seem well to avoid such debatable ground. But the importance of the subject will not permit it to be thus shirked. The following calculation presents what is, in fact, a compromise of various views, and can only claim to be a rough approximation to ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... order, Kent was the frontier exposed to attacks from Picardy, and Durham, the patrimony of St. Cuthbert, lay as a sacred boundary between England and Scotland; Northumberland and Cumberland were still a debatable ground between the two kingdoms. Chester was held by its earls as freely by the sword as the King held England by the crown; no lay vassal in the county held of the King, all of the earl. In Shropshire there were only five lay tenants in capite besides Roger Montgomery; in Kent, Bishop Odo ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... has been in Europe since the war began the question of the importance of fats is no longer debatable. Having practically gone without them, he knows they are important. In Germany it is the lack of fat that is the cause, perhaps, of the most discomfort and makes the German most dissatisfied with his rations. Even when the ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... would be to retire and leave those who had opposed the policy of Conciliation a free stage for any more heroic projects they might contemplate. Mr Redmond still remained indecisive and Mr O'Brien—whether wisely or unwisely will always remain a debatable point with his friends—quietly quitted the stage, resigning his seat in Parliament, withdrawing from the Directory of the United Irish League, and ceasing publication of his weekly newspaper on the ground, as he says himself, that "the authorised national policy ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... the twinkling of an eye, the whole of the Northern slopes of the Kereves Dere Ravine was covered by bright coloured irregular surging crowds, moving in quite another way to the khaki-clad figures on their left:—one moment pouring over the debatable ground like a torrent, anon twisted and turning and flying like multitudes of dead leaves before the pestilent breath of the howitzers. No living man has ever seen so strange a vision as this: in its disarray; ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... time. At last, with appearance of an effort to speak patiently, "Ah," he said, "they tells me times are better now, but I can't see it;" and it was plain enough that he thought our present times the worse. So far as this valley is concerned I incline to agree with him, although in general it is a debatable question. On the one hand, it may be that the things a labourer can buy at a shop for fifteen shillings a week are more in quantity and variety, if not better in quality, than those which his forefathers could produce by their own industry; and to that extent the advantage is with the present times. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... years since this valley was a place choked with jungle, the debatable land and battle-ground of cannibals. Two clans laid claim to it—neither could substantiate the claim, and the roads lay desert, or were only visited by men in arms. It is for this very reason that it wears now so smiling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his mother. She had heard of such things, she had even read a little on the subject, but it had never seemed to her a practical means of communicating. Calling a doctor, for instance, seemed to Lorraine rather far-fetched an application of what was at best but a debatable theory. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... resulting solution of the silicate contains ortho-silicic acid (H{4}SiO{4}) or whether it is a colloidal solution of some other less hydrated acid, such as meta-silicic acid (H{2}SiO{3}), is a matter that is still debatable. It is certain, however, that the gelatinous material which readily separates from such solutions is of the nature of a hydrogel, that is, a colloid which is insoluble in water. This substance when heated to 100 deg.C., or higher, is completely dehydrated, leaving only the anhydride, SiO{2}. ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... with confidence. Such characters and families are to be found in almost every rural district of this country; for, "though grace gangs no' by generation, yet there is sic a thing as a hawk o' a guid nest." I believe in the homely proverb, though some metaphysicians may dispute it, but whether debatable or not in the abstract, William Douglas had the good fortune, as he deemed it, to grow up in the bosom of a family in which the characteristic of worth was cherished and transmitted as ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... by a particular feature of this parable any important doctrine or duty, we may rest assured, when he did undertake to give an explanation, he would not have left that part altogether unexplained. On the whole, I think the earlier portion of the parable is debatable ground; it is left in the shade; there is room for difference of opinion in regard to it. In some aspects it may suggest useful reflections as a picture of the good and evil mingled in the Church; in other aspects it may suggest solemn thoughts as a picture of successive ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... that it should then be done. When he reluctantly produced the document and put it in your equally reluctant hands, you exclaimed: "Would that I had never learned my letters!" O what a speech, how worthy to be heard by all nations, both those who dwell within the Roman Empire, those who enjoy a debatable independence upon its borders, and those who either in will or in deed fight against it! It is a speech which ought to be spoken before a meeting of all mankind, whose words all kings and princes ought to swear to and obey: a speech worthy of the days of human innocence, and worthy to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... society of gentlemen, in which she had formerly taken such pleasure. Richard and Archdeacon Long sat on the verandah, and in moving to and fro, Mary caught a fragment of their talk: they were at the debatable question of table-turning, and her mental comment was a motherly and amused: "That Richard, who is so clever, can interest himself in such nonsense!" Further on, Zara was giving Grindle an account of her voyage ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... was paid off and kicked out. Any self-respecting employer would do the same." The thing had happened overnight, and the men did not at once take a clear line upon what was, after all, a very intricate and debatable occasion. But they came out in a sort of semiofficial strike from all Lord Redcar's collieries beyond the canal that besets Swathinglea. They did so without formal notice, committing a breach of contract by this sudden cessation. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... had known and witnessed. It was, by the way, extremely difficult either to surprise or to steal upon any of Uncle Nathan's private opinions and beliefs about matters and things. He was as shy of all debatable subjects as a fox is of a trap. He usually talked in a circle, just as he hunted moose and caribou, so as not to approach his point too rudely and suddenly. He would keep on the lee side of his interlocutor in spite of all one could do. He was thoroughly good and reliable, but the wild creatures ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... this possibly debatable statement was sufficiently answered by a grunt, for that was all the ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... action and the conduct of our lives. In religion, in politics, in economics, in sociology, what is truth to one man may be error to another. We may adopt a course of action because it seems the more expedient. Debatable questions have two sides to them. In the moral realm that is true which is agreeable to the largest number of competent judges. A mind that could see further and deeper might reverse all our verdicts. ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... yourself, my cousin. Your right is obviously a debatable question; we will waive it, if you please. I have told you already, and now I repeat it for the last time, I will not go with you to the altar, because neither of us has proper affection for the other to warrant such a union; because it would ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... debatable matter, which I don't intend to debate. You are our man. If you won't deny the Brown canard, then we must go ahead ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... dispute about bounds in a transaction under the Land Purchase Act. After all other agencies failed, the landlord's sister called the disputants before her to the disputed spot, stepped the distance of the land debatable, drove her walking-stick into a crevice of the rock (disputes are passionate in opposite ratio to the value of the land) and, collecting stones, built a small cairn round it. "Now men," she said, "in the name of God let this be the bounds." And it was so. "It failed the agent, and it failed ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... rain which falls on one side drains into the Chambal, and so into the Bay of Bengal; that which falls on the other side into the Luni, which discharges itself into the Runn of Cutch. The province is on the border of what may be called the arid "zone''; it is the debatable land between the north-eastern and south-western monsoons, and beyond the influence of either. The south-west monsoon sweeps up the Nerbudda valley from Bombay and crossing the tableland at Neemuch gives copious supplies to Malwa, Jhalawar ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have my full permission to appropriate this story in the next edition of his "Debatable Land between this World and the Next." Should they do so, their readers will doubtless be favoured with an elaborate analysis of the facts, and with a pseudo-philosophic theory about spiritual communion with ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... and predestination, I justify the most debatable assertions, as for instance: that we are converted only through the [62] prevenient grace of God and that we cannot do good except with his aid; that God wills the salvation of all men and that he condemns only those whose will is evil; that he gives ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... glen it was, to which, far back in times unknown to its annals, the family had given its name, taking in return no small portion of its history, and a good deal of the character of its individuals. It lay in the debatable land between highlands and lowlands; most of its inhabitants spoke both Scotch and Gaelic; and there was often to be found in them a notable mingling of the chief characteristics of the widely differing Celt and Teuton. The country produced more barley than wheat, more oats than barley, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... diplomatic covering of ceremony and further presents, the Aztec Emperor's reply may be condensed as "Get thee hence!" And, as if to bear out some royal mandate, the natives disappeared from the vicinity, the supplies were cut off, leaving the Spaniards halting upon this debatable ground, in ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... became a debatable one. Where, when Bok began, the leading prophylactic society in New York could not secure five speaking dates for its single lecturer during a session, it was now put to it to find open dates for over ten speakers. Mothers' clubs, women's ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... believed that there is no transmission of syphilis to the child by its father, the father's share of responsibility for the syphilis lying in his having infected the mother. None the less, it must be conceded that this is still debatable ground, and that quite recently the belief that syphilis can be transmitted by the father has been supported on theoretical ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... unity in which the excellence of the sonnet has always seemed to me mainly to consist." Most lovers of the sonnet would differ here with these masters of the art. Whether the weight of thought and feeling can properly be shifted to a final couplet is another debatable question, and critics will always differ as to the artistic value of the "big" line or "big" word which marks the culmination of emotion in many a sonnet. The strange or violent or sonorous word, however ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Ideal of To-day. Here we are on firm ground. The law we acknowledge, the light we follow,—these may be expressed with entire clearness and confidence. The test they invite is present experiment. Nothing vital shall be staked on far-away history or debatable metaphysics. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... poetry and oratory most differ, and stress unduly the elements of style wherein they have the most in common. Indeed, so completely did any fundamental distinction between poetic and rhetoric become blurred that in the second century Annaeus Florus was able to offer as a debatable question, "Is Virgil an orator or ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... appear to have by any means reached finality in its form, such questions as the angle of impact which the jet should make with the surface of the vane, and the size of the orifice through which the steam should be ejected, being still debatable points. But on one matter there is hardly any room for doubt, and that is that the best way to secure the benefit of the expansive power of steam is to permit it to escape from a pipe having a long series of orifices and to impinge upon a correspondingly numerous ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... Hamlet, and Booth is the princeliest Hamlet that ever trod the stage. If Kean and the elder Booth were more supernal in their lightnings of passion and scorn,—and there are points in "Richelieu" which leave this a debatable question,—Edwin Booth is more equal throughout, has every resource of taste and study at his command; his action is finished to the last, his stage-business perfect, his reading distinct and musical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... year, the debatable ground between spring and summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees and flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the bleak brightness of March. The winds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... to witnessing discomfiture that even when forced into an argument, he is loath to push it to the bitter end. Yet when he does engage in argument, he drives things home with very telling force, especially when writing on debatable points. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... seems to be the only debatable question of fact in the case, i. e., whether Captain Turner was negligent in not literally following the Admiralty advices and, also, in not taking a course different ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... monstrous expansion. Never has war been more powerful, more brutal, more widespread. Never has war been more glorified. In an interesting chapter (Chapter Fourteen), which introduces a number of debatable points, Nicolai shows that in earlier days apologists for war were exceptional. Even among the epic poets of war, those whose song was of heroism, the direct references to war convey fear and disapproval. Delight in ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... to which marine or brackish water conditions of sedimentation are requisite to the later formation of oil, as is suggested in the above quotation, has long been a debatable question. It may be noted that certain oil shales formed in fresh water basins contain abundant organic matter which is undoubtedly suitable for the generation of oil and gas, and that these shales on distillation yield oil essentially like ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... exist. The opponents of the Administration are supposed to dissent from the views held by Lord Metcalfe upon it, though it is not so clear that its supporters altogether adopt them. That this delicate and most debatable subject should furnish the watchwords ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... waiting for him, and, after being duly cautioned by her mother to "be careful," though whether that was of any value or not is possibly debatable, the small, speedy ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... a man. Nor was this to be wondered at; for when before, in all history, do we find a general in command of half a million of men, and in presence of an enemy inferior in numbers and no better disciplined than his own troops, leaving it still debatable, after the better part of a year, whether he is a soldier or no? The question would seem to answer itself in the very asking. Nevertheless, being most profoundly ignorant of the art of war, like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Mr. Moore with 'George's friend from the army'? Mr. Moore remembers he was on debatable ground ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... has been living in Zweibruck, in Weissenburg and such places, in that Debatable French-German region,—which the French are more and more getting stolen to themselves, in late centuries:—generally on the outskirts of France he lives; having now connections of the highest quality with France. He has had fine ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... The bread of bitterness is the food on which men grow to their fullest stature; the waters of bitterness are the debatable ford through which they reach the shores of wisdom; the ashes boldly grasped and eaten without faltering are the price that must be paid for the golden fruit of knowledge. The swimmer cannot tell his strength till he has gone through the wild ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... I say, the Church would concentrate her forces in this inner fortress, the personality of Christ, and quit the debatable ground of historical enquiry, it would be to me and to many an unfeigned relief; but meanwhile, neither scientific critics nor irrational pedants shall invalidate my claim to be of the number of believing Christians. I claim a Christian liberty of thought, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... impartial sovereignty has been employed by His Excellency for partial purposes; that an undue and an unconstitutional exercise of the office of royalty has been employed by His Excellency to influence the public mind, and the decisions of our constitutional tribunals on pending and debatable questions between equally loyal and deserving classes of Her Majesty's subjects in this Province; that His Excellency has also employed the influence of the high office of the Queen's representative to procure and afterwards express his cordial satisfaction at the passing of a Bill, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... a national aspect. It began to be commented on by outside newspapers. Publications close to the administration and thoroughly in sympathy with its forest policies, began gravely to doubt the advisability of pushing these debatable claims at present. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... debatable land was interposed a paved high road, twice as broad as it needed to have been, and furnished with a stone gutter down the centre, into which flowed, from every side, streams not Castalian; while five or six ducks, belonging ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... disposition was to conduct it with the gentlemanly leisure its pretended unimportance allowed—was Lieutenant Hugh Campbell, one of several officers of that name who served in the Highland regiment that had been stationed earlier at Valentine's Hill; he therefore knew the debatable country beyond Kingsbridge as well as I. He was a mere youth, a serious-minded Scot, and of a different sort from Captain Falconer: 'twas one of the elegant captain's ways, and evidence of his breadth of mind, to make friends of men of other kinds ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the west coast of Bali but not in Java, Heilprin avoids the unscientific term line, because he finds his zoological realms divided by "transition regions," which are intermediate in animal types as they are in geographical location.[333] Wallace notes a similar "debatable land" in the Rajputana Desert east of the Indus, which is the border district between the Oriental and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... naturally, by the study of the relations existing between phenomena apparently of very different orders that there can be any hope of reaching the goal; and it is this which justifies the peculiar interest accorded to researches effected in the debatable land between domains hitherto considered ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... the "men of the plain," who had fled from the villages of the Slavs, or (in fewer cases) from the caravans of the Tartars, owing to private feuds, or from love of a freer and more lucrative life than that of the village or the encampment. In this debatable land their numbers increased until, Slavs though they mainly were, they became a menace to the growing power of the Czars. Ivan the Terrible sent expeditions against them, transplanted many of their number, and compelled those who ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... with which the spiritual phenomena are developed. The modus operandi is understood, and the facts have been known some thirty, some a hundred, some several thousand years. Among advanced thinkers psychic science is no more a debatable question than the rotundity of the earth or the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... In that debatable land where the artistic and the convenient meet at the fire-side and the tea-table, English invention, enterprise and solicitude for the comfort and presentability of home shone conspicuous. Domestic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... settlement, which even today preserves its character, it opened the way for a certain number of the refugees to provide for their own needs and it lessened to some extent the congestion of refugees in border towns like Windsor and Sandwich. It is a debatable question whether segregation of these people was wise or not. At that time it seemed almost the only solution of the very pressing problem. After the Civil war many of the Negroes in Canada returned to the United States and those who remained found conditions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... Assyria, which may have been five centuries before she wrote, her statement, however, proves that it came from Persia, and not from Arabia, for Assyria formed an important portion of the Persian Empire under the Sassassian dynasty, and in fact was for some centuries a kind of debatable land, and alternately occupied by the Persians and Romans, according as victory swayed to one side or the other. The term Assyria, then, denoting Persia in general, is used here in a well known figurative sense "per synecdechen," a part taken for the ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... "Department of the Trans-Mississippi"—cut off from the main body of the Confederacy and hemmed in between the Federal army and the deep sea. Another group of States—Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama—became so soon, and remained so long, a debatable land, on which the two armies fought, that they also had scant opportunity for genuine political life. Florida, small and exposed, was absorbed in its gallant achievement of furnishing to the armies a number of soldiers larger than its ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... irritation caused by the appearance of a second edition of Priestley's "Letters to the Inhabitants of Northumberland." Nevertheless the thoughtful and dignified men of the City—men who admired Priestley's broad catholic spirit and brave attitude upon all debatable questions, men who appreciated his scientific attainments, invited him to the following subscription dinner, as announced ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... of the twelfth century, it was inevitable that difficulties should spring up. The boundaries of civil and ecclesiastical law were wholly uncertain, the scientific study of law had hardly begun, and there was much debatable ground which might be won by the most arrogant or the most skilful of the combatants. Every brawl of a few noisy lads in the Oxford streets or at the gates of some cathedral or monastic school was enough to kindle the strife as to the jurisdiction ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... that the country should remain "common," even if the bond of brotherhood had to be riveted by force. He admitted that this necessity would be "an ugly point;" but he was perfectly clear that "the right of a State to secede is not an open or debatable question." He desired that General Scott should be prepared either to "hold or retake" the Southern forts, if need should be, at or after the inauguration; but on his journey to Washington he said to many audiences that he wished no war and no bloodshed, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... amazed than were the Spanish officers to see the steadiness and cool courage with which the Twenty-fourth charged front forward on its tenth company (a difficult thing to do at any time), under the hottest fire. The value of the Negro as a soldier is no longer a debatable question. ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... made towards the close of the meeting the Viceroy agreed to, which was that we should call Persia to account for her alleged encroachments on the debatable ground of Sistan. This, which seemed but an unimportant matter at the time, was one of the chief causes of Sher Ali's subsequent estrangement; for the committee of arbitration which inquired into it decided against the Amir, who never ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... a long shot, Katie," said Mrs. Bates. "Life has made a real woman of you. I kept watchin' you to-day comin' over; an' I was prouder 'an Jehu of you. It's a debatable question whether you have thrown away your time and your money. I say you've got something to show for it that I wish to God the rest of my children had. I want you should brace your back, and stiffen your neck, ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... direction. He pointed to the contemporary growth of civil liberty and religious liberty, and these are conditions of moral improvement. So far his argument coincides in principle with that of French theorists of Progress. But Kant goes on to apply to these data the debatable conception of final causes, and to infer a purpose in the development of humanity. Only this inference is put forward as a hypothesis, not ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... particular class, they had just enough knowledge to render them dogmatic and intolerant. It requires a good deal of information to discover one's own ignorance, but to the consciousness of this the good people had never arrived. They felt they knew as much as necessary, and naturally on the most debatable questions were most assured. Their standpoint was inconceivably narrow. They had the best intentions in the world of doing their duty, but what their duty was they accepted on trust, frivolously. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... made these empty spaces evident. Why then were we not taken into their confidence? Along what lines is investigation most needed? To what problems, what issues, shall we give our attention? What is the debatable ground in this territory? The Commission does not say, and I for one, ascribe the silence to the American preoccupation with immediate, definite, ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... or "penny wise and pound foolish" policy for Bobby to undertake such a long walk, is certainly a debatable question; but as my young readers would probably object to an argument, we will follow him to the city, and let every one settle the point ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... in nature that a man of Shelburne's energetic and practical temperament should long be content to remain in his tent when a Grenville was afield with such (to say the least) debatable measures as the taxation of the colonies and the Regency Bill inscribed upon his banner. His marriage happening to occur just at the time when the famous Stamp Act was in the House of Lords kept Shelburne away from the debates on that measure, to which we may be sure he would, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... was spent by the Committee of Twenty-one in explaining to the Crown Prince exactly what the Widding-Edison invention was. Models and blue prints were shown and American and German experts were called in to explain and discuss all debatable points. And the conclusion, established beyond reasonable doubt, was that German warships could not hope to defend themselves against the Widding-Edison method of torpedo attack. This was admitted by Field Marshal ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... the Old Testament Company was very slight as compared with that of the New Testament Company. The latter Company had, almost in every other verse, to settle upon a text—often involving much that was doubtful and debatable—before they proceeded to the further work of translating. The Old Testament Company, on the contrary, had ready to hand a textus receptus which really deserved the title, and on which, in their preface, they write ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... he awoke his mind was apparently clear. He met Billie's anxious look with a faint, white-lipped smile. To his friend the young fellow had the signs of a very sick man. It was a debatable question whether to risk moving him now or take the almost hopeless chance of escaping detection where ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... Government in India succeeded in gaining the consent of the King of Burmah to the passage through his dominions of a mission combining the necessary strength and limits. Under the command of Major Slade, this little army made its way safely through the debatable land of the Kakhyens and Shans, and, entering the province of Yunnan, penetrated as far into the Chinese empire as the city of Momien. But here its further progress ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... ample knowledge was available, it was a debatable point whether or not the inmates of No. 11 Fortescue Square were saved from an almost maniacal vengeance by the fact that a crisis was precipitated. Winter maintained stoutly that the police must triumph in the long run, whereas Furneaux held, with even ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... order to obtain their plain, they were lowering the mountain-peak, man, and elevating the valley, the animal. Now this levelling of theirs needed proofs, to my mind; and, as I found none in their books, or at any rate only doubtful and highly debatable ones, I did my own observing, in order to arrive at a definite conviction; I sought; ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... in which practical satisfaction is given by symmetrical objects and arrangements. The logical order, then, for our investigation would be: First, the appearance of symmetry in the productions of primitive life, as a (debatable) aesthetic phenomenon emerging from pre-aesthetic conditions; secondly, the experimental study of real symmetry; thirdly, the analysis of geometrical symmetry in art, especially in painting and architecture, by means of which the results of the preceding ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... are to assume that Poe is one of the most debatable figures in our literature. His life may be summed up as a pitiful struggle for a little fame and a little bread. When he died few missed him, and his works were neglected. Following his recognition in Europe came a revival of interest here, during which Poe was absurdly ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... I had fixed for the destruction of the enemy outpost two companies of enemy infantry and three guns marched out of Shmakovka as a reinforcement to the debatable position. I watched through my binoculars their slow movement along the dusty road. I judged what the enemy's intentions were, and knew also that I was powerless to prevent them. He quickly placed his guns in position, and the following day sent a few trial shots at Kalmakoff's position ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... to stay. It is not proper, and my cap at home, too," Katy kept thinking as she fidgeted in her chair, and watched the girl setting the table so cosily for two, and occasionally deferring some debatable point to her as ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... of beauty. I have heard it declared with very impressive spirit, and reasoned with much force, that only one person, or at most only one person and his chosen companion, should be allowed in an art gallery at a time. It is debatable, however, whether this intellectually aristocratic idea is altogether practicable. On the other hand, was it not even Little Billie who found the people at art exhibitions frequently more interesting ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... be taken of Mary's conduct during the next three months depends the whole debatable question of her character. According to the professed champions of that character, this conduct was a tissue of such dastardly imbecility, such heartless irresolution, and such brainless inconsistency as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... arms to seize and hold Akasha. At dawn on the 18th the column started, and the actual invasion of the territory which for ten years had been abandoned to the Dervishes began. The route lay through a wild and rocky country—the debatable ground, desolated by years of war—and the troops straggled into a long procession, and had several times for more than an hour to move in single file over passes and through narrow defiles strewn with the innumerable boulders from which the 'Belly of Stones' has derived its name. The right of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... spreads far inland a fertile region, embracing the whole or part of the Governments of Podolia, Poltava, Kharkof, Kief, Voronei, Don Cossacks, etc., including the districts of what was once known as the "Ukraine," which was for many years debatable land between Poland, Turkey, and Russia, and on which roamed the mongrel bands of the Cossacks, an uncouth population recruited among the many tramps and vagabonds from the northern provinces, mixed with all the races of men with whom they came into contact, settling ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth debatable portion scarcely in any degree affects our judgment of Plato, either as a thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting questions to the scholar and critic, is of little importance ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... the most immature and unpromising efforts, and he has the knack of so handling his own early experience as to make it an encouragement and a stimulus, and not (as the manner of some is) a burden and a bogey. Mr. Morley never obtrudes his own opinions, never introduces debatable matter, never dogmatizes. But he is always ready to pick up the gauntlet, especially if a Tory flings it down; is merciless towards ill-formed assertion, and is the alert and unsparing enemy of what Mr. Ruskin calls "the obscene empires ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... thought he could argue it out with her. She so believed in eugenics, you see—a very radical, compared with Ferguson. It was she who had had no doubt about tow-head. And the love-part of it seemed to him fixed: it didn't occur to him that that was debatable. So he stuck to something that could be discussed. Then—and this was his moment of exceeding folly—he caught at the old episode of the Argentina. That had nothing to do with her present state ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... iron coast was surrounded on three sides, the north, the west, and the south, by a number of rocks and small islets, which fringed it like the trimming of a shawl. Its Phoenician occupiers early converted this debatable territory, half sea half shore, into solid land, by filling up the interstices between the rocks with squared stones and a solid cement as hard as the rock itself, which remains to this day.[436] The north-eastern portion, which has a length of 150 yards by a breadth of 125, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Massachusetts, at the home of his mother-in-law. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. Robert Louis Stevenson had Elliott blood in his veins. "Parts of me," he once wrote, "have shouted the slogan of the Elliotts in the debatable land." If Stevenson's Homeric account of the Four Black Elliotts in "Weir of Hermiston" is historically veracious, we might fancy that one of their descendants would feel his activities somewhat cramped on Beacon Street, Boston. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... In debatable climates, like Ohio, Illinois, Kansas and southward, it is conceded that a great point would be gained by the discovery of some plan—not too expensive—that would make it safe to put away potatoes in the summer, as soon as ripe, so that they would go through the winter without sprouting and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... This debatable question, while instructive as an example of the radical manner in which German women are now beginning to face moral questions, deals only with an isolated point which has hardly yet reached the sphere of practical politics.[64] It is more interesting to ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... a corollary to the above, is the fact that the school, when not watchful of the changes going on without the school, may fail to represent in its curriculum new and important phases of the community life. At the present time, for example, it is a debatable question whether the school curriculum is, in the matter of our industrial life, keeping pace with the changes taking place in the community. It is in this connection that one of the chief dangers of the school text-book is to be found. The text ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... always between wind and water, keeping himself afloat by his bold, sudden strokes and the nervous energy of his play. Hither and thither he would swim over the vast sea of interests in Paris, in quest of some little isle that should be so far a debatable land that he might abide upon it. Clearly Couture was not in ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... and still, as still as those poor dead whose broken bodies rested all about him, where they had fallen, months or days, hours or weeks ago, in those grim contests which the quick were wont insensately to wage for a few charnel yards of that debatable ground. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... your appeal to Vesta not only as a solemn invocation of the Goddess, but also as a sporting chance, I intend to have a definite, unquestionable understanding beforehand on every debatable point. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... insight, he knows that sectional rancor will not long exist in California. Not really, in the war, a divided community, a debatable land, there will be thousands of able, hardy men, used to excitement, spreading over the West. It is a land of easy and liberal opinion. Business and the mine's affairs cause him to visit San Francisco frequently. He reaches out for all men as his friends. Seated in his silent ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... was now careening like a racing-yacht in a squall. We had met opposing currents of air in the debatable area where wind and fog struggled for the mastery. The fog had the mighty trade wind behind it, forcing it landward. Already we were approaching the sand-dunes, the very spot for an easy descent ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... upon them, from which they were awakened by the distant roar of cannon. The village, though no longer a depot for Confederate stores, was not to be given up without a struggle. It now became a sort of debatable ground, and cannonading, more or less distant, told the anxious ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... counter in a game, was once more in possession of the republic. In the course of the following week Maurice laid siege to the city of Meurs, a little farther up the Rhine, which immediately capitulated. Thus the keys to the debatable land of Cleves and Juliers, the scene of the Admiral of Arragon's recent barbarities, were now ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
