"Disputant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is pliable as an elastic bow. He takes any shape in sentiment or opinion you please to give him, with most obliging disposition. As you think, so he thinks; as you say, so he says. If you deny, he denies; if you affirm, he affirms. He is no wrangler or disputant, no dogmatist or snubber. You may always rely upon having a hearing from him, whatever you say. And observe this, what he is to you, so he is to others, however averse they may be in sentiment to yourself. He is very much of a weathercock-make in his intellect. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... faith. Now an orthodox professor will admit that the deist was perfectly right, and only tries to persuade himself that arguments from facts are superfluous. The supposed foundation is gone: the superstructure is not to be affected. What the keenest disputant now seeks to show is, not that the truth of the records can be established beyond reasonable doubt; but that no absolute contradiction in terms is involved in supposing that they correspond more ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... and influences of a classical education and academic pursuits, scarcely had a year elapsed from the commencement of my literary and political adventures before my mind sank into a state of thorough disgust and despondency, both with regard to the disputes and the parties disputant. With more than poetic feeling ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of meeting with something portentous or dangerous. Nor can he defend a dogma better than he communes with men; for he knows not that which attacks it. He supposes it to be a set of book arguments, whereas it is something lying very deep in the heart of the disputant, into which he ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... dilemma, perilepsis^, a priori reasoning, reductio ad absurdum, horns of a dilemma, argumentum ad hominem [Lat.], comprehensive argument; empirema^, epagoge^. [person who reasons] reasoner, logician, dialectician; disputant; controversialist, controvertist^; wrangler, arguer, debater polemic, casuist, rationalist; scientist; eristic^. logical sequence; good case; correct just reasoning, sound reasoning, valid reasoning, cogent reasoning, logical reasoning, forcible reasoning, persuasive reasoning, persuasory ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... dying hour! Thou clear Vicegerent of thy Father's power! And, while, within a grateful heart, I own My hopes to view Thee on thy heavenly throne. With all thy merits on my soul imprest, May faith's firm wings convey me to thy breast! Such, friendly disputant of studious mind! Ever to good, in active life, inclind! Such are my thoughts, my views, my hopes, my creed, Adverse, I own, to those, for which you plead! And which, to speak without reserve, I deem A rash surmise, a dark Socinian dream! ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... with candour interfer'd; She thought that oft the god of love appear'd, Good husbands playfully to fret and vex, Sometimes to rally couples: then perplex; But warmer as the conversation grew, She, anxious that each disputant might view Herself victorious, (or believe it so,) Exclaim'd, if either of you wish to show Who's in the right, with argument have done, And let us practise some new scheme of fun, To dupe our husbands; she who don't succeed Shall pay a forfeit; all replied, "Agreed." But then, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... tallest—the Paumotuan averaging a good inch shorter, and not even handsome; the Marquesan open-handed, inert, insensible to religion, childishly self-indulgent—the Paumotuan greedy, hardy, enterprising, a religious disputant, and with a trace of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man, whatever you may have been at Oxford University you are no disputant now. Your resolution to be virtuous for a week won't last a day unless you strengthen it. And what strengthens the ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... the foregoing a letter from Dr. Whewell[395] to Mr. James Smith. The Master of Trinity was conspicuous as a rough customer, an intellectual bully, an overbearing disputant: the character was as well established as that of Sam Johnson. But there was a marked difference. It was said of Johnson that if his pistol missed fire, he would knock you down with the butt end of it: but Whewell, in like case, always acknowledged the miss, and loaded again or not, as ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... nature!" exclaimed the third disputant, soliloquizing with a supercilious expression ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Philip Henry Gosse, than of religious believers as such.[226] The study of theologians more considerable and even more typically conservative than Liddon does not confirm the description of religious intolerance given in good faith, but in serious ignorance, by a disputant so acute, so observant and so candid as Huxley. Something hid from each other's knowledge the devoted pilgrims in two great ways of thought. The truth may be, that naturalists took their view of what creation ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... above remarks were true. Still, Dr. Berg was almost a gentleman compared with Dr. McCalla, and he was vastly more of a scholar and debater, far as he was from being a model disputant. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... swallowed up in the mission of natural philosopher; but, on the other hand, to pause resolutely at any one stage of this public examination, and to refuse all further advance, would be, in the popular opinion, to retreat as a baffled disputant from insane paradoxes which he had not been able to support. One step taken in that direction was fatal, whether the great envoy retreated from his own words to leave behind the impression that he was defeated as a rash ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... merciless logic, cut right through the sophistries of Mr. Douglass; and although the latter gentleman threw bouquets at the audience, and indulged in the most exquisite word-painting, he was compelled to leave the field a vanquished disputant. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... dessert. At the close of the second day the trio dined at the baronet's table, when it appeared that, struck by the simplicity of the previous day's dinner, and rightly attributing the absence of luxuries to the narrowness of the host's purse, the wealthy disputant had resolved not to attempt to influence the umpire by giving him a superior repast. Sitting at another table the trio dined on exactly the same fare,—three fried soles, a roast leg of mutton, and vegetables; three pancakes, three pieces of cheese, three small ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... trader, and his wares are either imported or home-made, like those of other retail traders; his art is thus deprived of the character of a liberal profession. But the most distinguishing characteristic of him is, that he is a disputant, and higgles over an argument. A feature of the Eristic here seems to blend with Plato's usual description of the Sophists, who in the early dialogues, and in the Republic, are frequently depicted as endeavouring ...
— Sophist • Plato
... the apology of Rivetus he speaks with all the zeal of a Roman Catholic Disputant, and proves that the Calvinists are Schismatics, and had no mission; that they neither had miracles for them, nor any particular command from God: that the Ministers are factious spirits, who seek only to disturb the State: that their religion is new, and has not antiquity on its side. ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... rash and lost his temper, Wesley was certainly irritating. But the details of the unfortunate quarrel may be found in any history of Wesley or Whitefield. It is a far pleasanter task to record that in course of time the breach was entirely healed, though neither disputant receded one jot from his opinions. No man was ever more ready to confess his faults, no man ever had a larger heart or was actuated by a truer spirit of Christian charity than George Whitefield. Never was there a man of a more forgiving temper than John Wesley. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Paine.[142] Porson and Boswell encountered him in drinking matches and were both left under the table.[143] The house was thus a small centre of intellectual life, though the symposia were not altogether such as became philosophers. Horne Tooke was a keen and shrewd disputant, well able to impress weaker natures. His neighbour, Sir Francis Burdett, became his political disciple, and in later years was accepted as the radical leader. Tooke died at ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... and glanced towards the window. "But I see a more formidable disputant for my conqueror to encounter is coming into the field,—one whose profession it is to substitute some other romance for that ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... edge away from the conversation, caught his attention at the same moment. His face hardened, and in his nasal voice he dealt a swift epigram at Mr. Wishart, which for the moment left the young disputant floundering. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... position of witness to an altercation in which she took no part was highly displeasing, as being an unimportant secondary post—now rallying her dignity, prepared to utter a discourse which was to prove both parties in the wrong, and to make it clear to each disputant that she had reason to be ashamed of herself, and ought to submit humbly to the superior sense of the individual then addressing her. Fortunately for her audience, she had not harangued above ten minutes when Sarah's entrance with the tea-tray called ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... these, and even minuter points of accentual scansion, have been regarded by Mr. Coleridge as worthy of study and observation. We do not, of course, mean that rules of this kind were always in his mind while composing, any more than that an expert disputant is always thinking of the distinctions of mood and figure, whilst arguing; but we certainly believe that Mr. Coleridge has almost from the commencement of his poetic life looked upon versification as constituting in ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Sismondi well remarks, their very ignorance and brutality made them the more easily the tools of the Roman clergy: 'Cette haute veneration pour l'Eglise, et leur severe orthodoxie, d'autant plus facile a conserver que, ne faisant aucune etude, et ne disputant jamais sur la foi, ils ne connaissaient pas meme les questions controversees, leur donnerent dans le clerge de puissants auxiliaires. Les Francs se montrerent disposes a hair les Ariens, a les combattres, et ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... See Mr. Long's introduction to these orations. "All this I admit," says Mr. Long, speaking of some possible disputant; "but he will never convince any man of sense that the first of Roman writers, a man of good understanding, and a master of eloquence, put together such tasteless, feeble, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... certain, that since he had refused assisting the Church, considered as a civil institution, in the night of her calamity, he had no right to bask in her sunshine. After this declaration, Dr. Beaumont's respect for the rights of conscience made him for ever renounce the character of a disputant; but during all the hardships to which Non-conformists were exposed he steadily supported that of a friend. Barton found, in the parsonage at Ribblesdale, a safe, honourable, and happy asylum from the tempest which ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... a treat to hear Mr. Naseby defending the Church of England in a volley of oaths, or supporting ascetic morals with an enthusiasm not entirely innocent of port wine. Dick used to wax indignant, and none the less so because, as his father was a skilful disputant, he found himself not seldom in the wrong. On these occasions, he would redouble in energy, and declare that black was white, and blue yellow, with much conviction and heat of manner; but in the morning such a licence of debate weighed upon him like a crime, and he would seek out his father, where ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... daughter's errors, the captain slipped them, kings, queens and knaves, high, low, jack and the game, without regard to rank, into the lady's work-basket. As soon as this feat was successfully performed, a sign was given to the commodore that the conspiracy was effected, and that disputant in theology gradually began to give ground, while he continued to maintain that jumping the rope was a sin, though it might be one of a nominal class. There is little doubt, had he possessed a smattering of phrases, a greater command of biblical learning, and more zeal, that the fisherman ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... fluency, that the thing was utterly impossible, and altogether inconsistent with eternal predestination. The arguments of the latter prevailed, and the laird was driven to sullen silence. But, to the women's utter surprise, as the conquering disputant passed, he made a signal of recognizance through the brambles to them, as formerly, and, that he might expose his associate fully, and in his true colours, he led him back, wards and forwards by the women more than twenty times, making him to confess both the crimes that he had done and ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... by Mr. Lindsay himself, as the next heir to a property to which claim was laid by the head of a county family of wealth. Probabilities were altogether in his favour, when he gave up the contest upon the offer of a comfortable annuity from the disputant. To leave his schooling and his possible estate together, and sit down comfortably by his own fireside, with the means of buying books, and within reach of a good old library—that of King's College by preference—was ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... angry disputant who was about to reply; and, turning his horse down Rue Saint Honore, called on his friends to follow him. He rode slowly, to give time to all to join him at the Barrier, and then issued his orders that those who yielded obedience to him, should ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... field of statesmanship and in intensity of devotion, he was more idolized than any since his prototype, Henry Clay. With political erudition was blended an eloquence inspiring and fascinating; a nobility of character often displayed as the champion of the weak; a disputant adept in all the mazes of analysis, denunciation, or sarcasm, he had created antipathy as bitter as his affections were unyielding. While Speaker of the House, with his counterpart in eloquence, Roscoe Conkling, he had many tilts. One of the most noted and probably ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... the general tenor of the arguments addressed by believers to sceptics and opponents. Foremost of all, emblazoned at the head of every column, loudest shouted by every triumphant disputant, held up as paramount to all other considerations, stretched like an impenetrable shield to protect the weakest advocate of the great cause against the weapons of the adversary, was that omnipotent monosyllable ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... into the priestly function, by study of the Sacred Scriptures, he imagined to himself the answers which one of the modern school of heresy might return to him—the victorious refutation which should lay the disputant prostrate at the Confessor's mercy—and the healing, yet awful exhortation, which, under pain of refusing the last consolations of religion, he designed to make to the penitent, conjuring her, as she loved her own soul's welfare, to disclose to him what she knew ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... between the framers of the Church of England in its present state, and the hot gospellers who, with Thomas Cartwright at their head, denied the proposition (not deniable or denied now by any sane and scholarly disputant) that church discipline and government are points left to a great extent undefined in the Scriptures, had gone on for years before Martin appeared. Cartwright and Whitgift had fought, with a certain advantage of warmth and eloquence on Cartwright's ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... his large eyes glittering blackly in the paleness of his face. Gnulemah, with the serenity of a victorious disputant willing to make ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... to the rest of mankind. The same blind adherence to their own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in inforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... moral or religious interest, such as "What is Death?" "The Theory of a Soul," "The Ethics of Belief," or "Is God Unknowable," in which wide scope was given to the emotions as well as the intellect of each disputant. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Even the grave and reverend Westminster Review found "after reading what the Lord Chief Justice himself characterises as Mr. Foote's very striking and able speech, that the editor of the Freethinker is very far from being the vulgar and uneducated disputant which the Spectator appears to have supposed him." Other Liberal papers, like the Pall Mall Gazette and the Referee, that had at first joined in the chorus of execration over the fallen "blasphemer," now found that my ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... against poison, and it was also an arbiter of disputes.[858] Artemidorus describes how, at a certain place, there were two crows. Persons having a dispute set out two heaps of sweetmeats, one for each disputant. The birds swooped down upon them, eating one and dispersing the other. He whose heap had been scattered won the case.[859] Birds were believed to have guided the migrating Celts, and their flight furnished auguries, because, as Deiotaurus gravely said, birds ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... to revelation, if I were a more accomplished disputant, or a more learned person, perhaps I should feel its truth, its usefulness for those who are happy enough to perceive it; but if I find evidence for it which I cannot combat, I also find objections against it which I cannot ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Culture. Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, and of wealth as a means of power, culture corrects the theory of success. A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, a disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success. For performance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... deadly missile burst Right on the rover, checked his speed, And made him rock like one whose thirst Has frankly caused him to exceed, You must have felt as feels a god To whom whole nations bend the knee— Whichever of the dozen odd Disputant gunners ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... on board, and refused to comply; the master-at-arms insisted; she threatened him with the vengeance of the Company, the premier, and the nobility and gentry of the British realm. The master-at-arms, finding he had no chance in argument, doused the glim—pitiable resource of a weak disputant—then basely ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... remark of a disputant in a Socratic dialogue of the Alcibiades type, and Sec.Sec. 31-33 a Socratic mythos to escape from the dilemma; the breakdown of this ideal plus and minus righteousness due to the hardness of men's hearts and ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... Bernardin, through his imagination, was an Utopian visionary, an idyllic dreamer; through his temper, an angry disputant with society. His life was a fantastic series of adventures. Having read as a boy the story of Crusoe, and listened to the heroic record of the travels and sufferings of Jesuit missionaries, his fancy caught fire; he would seek some undiscovered island in mid-ocean, he would found ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... nor to be criticised for being so. It is not pleasant to reveal to high and low, young and old, what has gone on within me from my early years. It is not pleasant to be giving to every shallow or flippant disputant the advantage over me of knowing my most private thoughts, I might even say the intercourse between myself and my Maker. But I do not like to be called to my face a liar and a knave: nor should I ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Evelyn differed at any time in opinion with a disputant, the suavity of his manners was so conciliatory that opposition, from him, was sometimes better received than agreement, and coincidence, from other people. This suavity, by the by, is a delightful art. Would it were better understood, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... have his word/Of contradiction] To have his word of contradiction is no more than, he is used to contradict; and to have his word, that is, not to be opposed. We still say of an obstinate disputant, he will ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... awestruck, "was this: a week ago the three Chinese partners had a serious row. They quarreled, then fought. Two of the yellow partners killed the third! And now, a serious problem confronted the two survivors of that misunderstanding. What was to be done with the remains of the unsuccessful disputant?" ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... they were told this was no ordinary disputation, no common controversy, where all were alike entitled to license of ingress; that the disputant was no undistinguished scholar, whose renown did not extend beyond his own trifling sphere, and whose opinions, therefore, few would care to hear and still fewer to oppugn, but a foreigner of high rank, in high favor and fashion, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... That type of disputant is still with us, and is still supporting his beliefs with the same tactics. And it is successful with some. There is a certain snobbishness in human nature that makes it seek the association of well-known names and shun all of those with an ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... is said to have been first introduced by a young girl of humble station, Maria Belandelle, into this part of the country. Strong in her conviction, and anxious to spread the truth, this person, more zealous than prudent, ventured to come forward, in 1534, as antagonist to, and disputant against, a Franciscan friar. However good her arguments might be, the result of the controversy had of course been previously decided on by the strongest party. She was convicted of heresy and impiety, and condemned to the stake; which righteous judgment was carried into effect, and ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... coarse, as in his childhood, when Jesus could still send him into the herd of swine. Or else they make him subtle as a logician of the schools, or a fault-finding lawyer. If he had been no better than this compound of beast and disputant,—if he had only lived in the mire or on fine-drawn quibbles about nothing, he would very soon ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... authority; and, after a momentary lapse into fatalism, he gained with increasing years an increasing trust in the overruling providence of God. Adhering to none of all the religions in the colonies, he yet devoutly, though without form, adhered to religion. But though famous as a disputant, and having a natural aptitude for metaphysics, he obeyed the tendency of his age, and sought by observation to win an insight into the mysteries of being. The best observers praise his method most. He so sincerely loved truth, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... owners of industries which had formerly belonged to men who had traded with Burridge. He saw his grocery trade dwindle and sink, while with age his religiosity grew, and he began to be little more than a petty disputant, one constantly arguing as to whether the interpretation of the Bible as handed down from the pulpit of what he now considered his recalcitrant church was sound or not. When those who years before had followed him obediently ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... be bound with the first. It is in a juvenile and dry style of quotation and academic reasoning, modelled after Schaller's older Dissertation, and not worth an abstract. More interesting than itself are eleven pieces of congratulatory Latin verse prefixed to it by college friends of the disputant. In more than one of these Milton is mentioned; but the liveliest mention of him is in a set of Phalaecians signed "Christianus Keck." Phalaecians are not to be attempted in English; but, as the semi-absurd relish of the thing would be lost in prose, the first ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... they were giving him a hard time of it was patent. But I will say, as you shall see, that he matched their subtlety with equal subtlety; and from what I saw of him I have little doubt but what he would have confounded many a disputant ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... contested were trivial enough. Colman, Aidan's successor at Holy Island, pleaded for the Irish fashion of the tonsure, and for the Irish time of keeping Easter: Wilfrid pleaded for the Roman. The one disputant appealed to the authority of Columba, the other to that of St. Peter. "You own," cried the king at last to Colman, "that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven—has He given such power to Columba?" ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... to submit disputes to arbitration is sound and practical because it has always a sanction. Its application is automatically ensured, by means of the intervention of the Council; in no case can it be thrown on one side through the ill-will of one of the disputant States. The awards to which it leads are always accompanied by a sanction, adapted to the circumstances of the case and more or less severe according to the degree of resistance offered to ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... English Book of Common Prayer. But in {155} general his sentences are long and involved, full of inventions and latinized constructions. Controversy at that day was conducted on scholastic lines. Each disputant, instead of appealing at once to the arguments of expediency and common sense, began with a formidable display of learning, ransacking Greek and Latin authors and the fathers of the Church for opinions in ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... dignity. The hand accustomed to command, and even tyrannize, was unnerved; but its appearance convinced Sagestus, that he had oftener wielded a thought than a weapon; and that he had silenced, by irresistible conviction, the superficial disputant, and the being, who doubted because he had not strength to believe, who, wavering between different borrowed opinions, first caught at one straw, then at another, unable to settle into any consistency of character. After gazing a few moments, Sagestus turned away exclaiming, How are the stately ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... case independent or absolute being necessarily the nominative, it follows that the objective, if it occur after an interjection, must be the object of something which is capable of governing it. If any disputant, by supposing ellipses, will make objectives of what I call nominatives absolute, so be it; but I insist that interjections, in fact, never "require" or "govern" one case more than an other. So Peirce, and Kirkham, and Ingersoll, with pointed ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... good jest, and you will do me a favour to let me know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful a dispute." At this the spider, having swelled himself into the size and posture of a disputant, began his argument in the true spirit of controversy, with resolution to be heartily scurrilous and angry, to urge on his own reasons without the least regard to the answers or objections of his opposite, and fully predetermined in his mind ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... justice confessedly true—each is triumphant so long as he is not obliged to take into consideration any other maxims of justice than those he has selected, but that as soon as their several maxims are brought face to face, each disputant seems to have as much to say for himself as the others. No one can carry out his own notion of justice without trampling upon another equally binding.'[16] This view of the matter, however, can scarcely ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... later than Marvell (June 1645), and was probably a harder reader, we are told that "the strength of his studies lay in the metaphysics and in those subtle authors for many years which rendered him an irrefragable disputant de quolibet ente, and whilst he was but senior freshman he was found in the bachelor schools, disputing ably with the best of the senior sophisters." Robinson despised the old-fashioned Ethics and Physics, but with the new Cartesian or Experimental ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the wounded dignity of the company was answered by a common murmur. Scipio, who was prepared to maintain, and would have maintained, his professional opinion, after his positive and peculiar manner, against any disputant, had not the heart to resist so general an evidence of the impropriety of his presence. Without uttering a word in vindication or apology, he folded his arms, and walked out of the house, with the submission and meekness of one who ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... in a few days to have the honour of waiting on you, and of discussing in person with you both the points on which we agree and those on which we differ. Whether you will think me, what I mean to be, a fair disputant, I know not; I can venture to promise you will not find me an irascible one. In the meantime I have the honour to be, with the highest respect and esteem, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... and sometimes to a third and a fourth. Some masters were, perhaps, more distinguished in human Science; others in Divinity. Columbkill studied in two or three different schools, and visited others, perhaps as disputant or lecturer—a common custom in later years. Nor should we associate the idea of under-age with the students of whom we speak. Many of them, whether as teachers or learners, or combining both characters together, reached ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... it was almost always another who introduced them. Unlike some of his comrades of the Royal Society, he was of opinion that man does not live by science alone, and nothing came amiss to him.... Even in private the alarm of war is sometimes heard, and Mr. Huxley is not a whit less formidable as a disputant across the table than with pen in hand. Yet an angry man must be very angry indeed before he could be angry with this adversary. He disarmed his enemies with an amiable grace that made defeat endurable, if ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... The young disputant prevailed, and, in 1760, he was sent to William and Mary College. He remained there two years. His acquirements, during this time, though probably not so great as Mr. Randall would have us believe, must have been large. He had equal aptitude for the classics and mathematics. In ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... midnight when the little group assembled in the dining room of the Beaubien cottage to resume their interrupted discussions. Hitt and Haynerd were the last to arrive. They found Doctor Morton eagerly awaiting them. With him had come, not without some reluctance, his prickly disputant, Reverend Patterson Moore, and another friend and colleague, Doctor Siler, whose interest in these unique gatherings had been aroused ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... word, then, you must be a very subtle disputant:—because, sir, I happened just then to be giving ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... Monosyllogism is a syllogism considered as standing alone or without relation to other arguments. But, of course, a disputant may be asking to prove the premises of any syllogism; in which case other syllogisms may be advanced for that purpose. When the conclusion of one syllogism is used to prove another, we have a chain-argument which, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... causeth those fits." The Quakers could hardly have been as angry as they were, nor their books have been so many and their writers so voluble during twenty years and longer, if Muggleton had not been a disputant to be dreaded, and a prophet with the faculty of drawing others ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... lamentation, which one or two of the assistants chorussed with a deep groan, our hero thought it unnecessary to make any reply. Whereupon Mr. Gilfillan, resolving that he should be a hearer at least, if not a disputant, proceeded in ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Aristotle's division. The reason is plain. His object was to enumerate the various modes in which a sophist might snatch an apparent victory, whereas by openly violating any of the laws of syllogism a disputant would be simply ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... Julia, that an inaccurate use of words produces such a strange confusion in all reasoning, that in the heat of debate, the combatants, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes, fall promiscuously on both. A skilful disputant knows well how to take advantage of this confusion, and sometimes endeavours to create it. I do not know whether I am to suspect you of such a design; but I ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... far as that goes," commented Mr. Kirk, fortified by the entry of a new disputant into the argument, "that even Nero had ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Pennypacker, in his Life of General Meade, speaks of Halleck and other prominent officials in Washington in these terms: "Possessing much of the skill of the lawyer and disputant, Halleck was without military ability. The Secretary of War, like many other men who exercise vast power, was not great enough to refrain from the use of his authority in matters where his knowledge and experience did not qualify ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Baptists fell upon the Quakers, with pamphlet and sermon; the latter replied in the same way. One of the most conspicuous of the Baptist disputants was the famous Jeremy Ives, with whom our friend Ellwood seems to have had a good deal of trouble. "His name," says Ellwood, "was up for a topping Disputant. He was well, read in the fallacies of logic, and was ready in framing syllogisms. His chief art lay in tickling the humor of rude, unlearned, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the puritans being set aside, the poet must, finally, meet the objection of his third disputant, the philosopher, the one accuser whose charges the poet is wont to treat with respect. What validity, the philosopher asks, can be claimed for apprehension of truth, of the good-beautiful, secured not through the intellect, but through emotion? What proof has the poet that feeling is as unerring ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... please, an effusion of sentiment, a chant of faith. In a world more and more given to judging trees by their fruits, we should err if we dismissed this sentiment, this faith, too lightly. Flaubert may have been a better disputant; he had a talent for writing. George Sand may have chosen her side with a truer instinct; she had a genius for living. This faith of hers sustained well the shocks of many long years, and this sentiment made ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... progress had been achieved, and men began to think it a good thing to seem tolerant. The succeeding Fragments were to test this liberality and reveal the flimsiness of the stuff of which it was made. When the unknown disputant began to declare "the impossibility of a revelation upon which all men can rest a solid faith," and when he began to criticize the evidences of Christ's resurrection, such a storm burst out in the theological world of Germany as had not been witnessed ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... ideas will win, no matter what the opposition to them. Better change the arena of conflict. A single champion of an idea would once challenge a doubter and prove his hypothesis by the blood of the disputant; you do the same thing on a great scale. The Southern people—very good people as you and I have cause to know—think the constitution gives them the right, or rather cannot take away the right, to withdraw from ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... more cautious disputant, thought it substantial truth to say that Rome never burnt heretics, there were things as false in his own early writings. If Moehler, in the religious wars, diverted attention from Catholic to Protestant atrocities, he took the example from his friend's book, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Royal Society, and an enthusiast for the new philosophy, had kindled the anger of the peripatetic, who was his neighbour, and who had the reputation of being the invincible disputant of his county.[260] Some, who had in vain contended with Glanvill, now contrived to inveigle the modern philosopher into an interview with ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... disputed. Nor was there collision over the necessity of what is called intellectual cultivation. The boy must be taught something of the world in which he was to live; nay, this latter knowledge seemed to be most immediately practical. As each disputant fixed his eye on one or the other aim that end appeared to him to be the most important. Hence, by a natural lapse, they came to treat subjects as antagonistic which were, in fact, parallel and quite consistent. The one called the others godless—the others threw back the aspersion of ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... with two assessors representing capital and labour respectively. The trio are appointed for three years, and in default of crime or insanity can only be removed by statute. Their court may not be appealed from, and their procedure is not fettered by precedent. No disputant may employ counsel unless all agree to do so. The decisions of this Court are binding in law, and may be enforced by pains and penalties. The arbitration law has been in active operation for about three years, during which time some ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and has the healthiest and simplest power of enjoyment. His severity has mellowed with age, while his love of beauty has, I think, increased; he does not care for argument, and is apt to say pathetically that he knows that his fellow-disputant is right, but that he cannot change his opinions, and does not desire to. He is passing, it seems to me, into a very gracious and soft twilight of life; he grows more patient, more tender, more serene. His face, always beautiful, has ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... us remark, that we recently listened to a very interesting discussion, at the 'Union' club, between an English traveler of high repute, and a warm Unionist, upon the attitude of England. The former seemed as ardent as was the latter disputant in his abhorrence of the Southern traitors; but he constructed a very fair argument for the consistency of England. Taking for his first position, that foreign nations viewed the Jeff Davis movement as a revolution, self-sustained for nearly a year, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... not human nature!" cried the second disputant, folding his arms doggedly, in preparation for ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... then Pontifex Maximus—an office which answered nearly to that of Minister of religion. The other speakers are Balbus, Velleius, and Cicero himself,—who acts, however, rather in the character of moderator than of disputant. The debate is still, as in the more strictly philosophical dialogues, between the different schools. Velleius first sets forth the doctrine of his master Epicurus; speaking about the gods, says one of his opponents, with as much apparent intimate knowledge "as if he had just come straight ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... more interested in the results than in the method. He has a just instinct of the presence of a master, and prefers to sit as a scholar with Plato than as a disputant. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... be the multiplicity or contrariety of opinions upon this subject, nature has taken sufficient care that theory shall have little influence on practice. The most diligent inquirer is not able long to keep his eyes open; the most eager disputant will begin about midnight to desert his argument; and, once in four-and-twenty hours, the gay and the gloomy, the witty and the dull, the clamorous and the silent, the busy and the idle, are all overpowered by the gentle tyrant, and all lie down in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... arguments on this question, in all the centuries, comprised within these well-defined bounds, it were useless to name each prominent disputant, in order merely to classify him as on the one side or on the other, or as zigzagging along the line which he fails to perceive. It were sufficient to point out a few pre-eminent mountain peaks, in the centuries between the fifth and the nineteen of the Christian era, ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... The disputant in words his eye dismayed: Opinions blocked his passage. Rent Were Councils with a gesture; brayed By hoarse camp-phrase what argument Dared interpose to waken spleen In him whose vision grasped the unseen, Whose counsellor was the ready blade, Whose argument the cannonade. He loathed his land's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cap at Mr. Winkle. Moreover, it was the whole point of her character in any case. Mrs. Pott was that kind of woman. If she had been in Ipswich she would have said that she ought to be in London. If she was in London she would have said that she ought to be in Paris. The first disputant proves Eatanswill grand because a servile candidate calls it grand. The second proves it dull because a discontented woman calls ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... usual hostile factions of north against south. North, of course, commenced the conversation with Paris, Paris, and again PAR-RRI; the southerners every now and then throwing in a doubt of the universal superiority of the metropolis over the known world. One disputant stood out for Marseilles, another broke a lance for Bordeaux, and the war of words waxed so fierce that I began to tremble for the consequences. One young man in company had been some time at Bordeaux, and had much to say thereon; but all his remarks were ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham |
