"Disputant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be refuted. For every one of them builds upon rules of 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 be regarded ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... connection, let 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... eruditione Graeca intellegi non possunt: itaque ea nolui scribere, quae nec indocti intellegere possent nec docti legere curarent. 5. Vides autem—eadem enim ipse didicisti—non posse nos Amafinii aut Rabirii similis esse, qui nulla arte adhibita de rebus ante oculos positis volgari sermone disputant, nihil definiunt, nihil partiuntur, nihil apta interrogatione concludunt, nullam denique artem esse nec dicendi nec disserendi putant. Nos autem praeceptis dialecticorum et oratorum etiam, quoniam utramque vim virtutem esse ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... not displeased with an opportunity where he could at once exert his supremacy and display his learning, accepted the appeal; and resolved to mix, in a very unfair manner, the magistrate with the disputant. Public notice was given that he intended to enter the lists with the schoolmaster: scaffolds were erected in Westminster Hall, for the accommodation of the audience: Henry appeared on his throne accompanied with all the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... 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, and not more remarkable for his extraordinary intellectual ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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, ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... it? We feel at once driven to the wall by the horns of so dexterous a dilemma; and unable as we are, in the kindness of our hearts, to adopt the more uncivil supposition, we succumb, without a struggle, to the only choice left us, and concede to such a disputant all that he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... As for the disputant who had stirred up the monster, his situation was as unenviable as it was comic to the bystanders. He had never before dropped a stone into the great geyser. He was therefore unprepared for the result. One likened him to an unprotected ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... 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 fled ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... was 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. 'Ten thousand times would ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... them, must be more completely deceived than I had imagined possible. Nor can I quite deny that I feel a half mischievous delight in reducing to despair, "'<———-ce peuple de rivales Qui toutes, disputant, d'un si grand interet, Des yeux d'Assuerus attendent leur arret.>' " (which, of course, means me) keeps one perpetual reply to all their high-sounding praises and eulogiums of such or such a lady. ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... his realm should be decided. The points actually 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?" The bishop could but answer "No." "Then ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... 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 les depouiller sans les entendre; les eveques, en retour, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Renfrewshire. The year of his birth was long believed to be 1505, but of late some writers have found reason to hold that he was really b. some years later, 1510 or even 1513. At Glasgow he was the pupil of John Major (q.v.), and became distinguished as a disputant. He is believed to have been ordained a priest about 1530, after which he went to St. Andrews and taught. About this time, however, there is a gap of 12 years or more, during which almost nothing is known of his life. About 1545 ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... 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? ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... more vivid 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
... prime counsellor and subtle disputant, Munro, worthy of the Philadelphia lawyers," returned the other, in a sneer. "You think only of one part of this subject, and have no passions, no emotions: you can talk all day long on matters of feeling, without showing any. Did ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... 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 ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... John Eck, a priest and lawyer, a man in intimate touch with Rome, and the foremost public disputant and orator of his time. He proposed to meet Luther in public debate. In social station Eck stood much higher than Luther. Luther was a poor college professor in a poor little University—a mere pedagog, a nobody. That Eck should meet him was a condescension ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... to 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 ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Damaris stayed her measured walk, and stood gazing at the jet of water in its uprush and myriad sparkling fall. Ellice answered chaffingly yet with an underlying growl; and the dispute threatened to wax warm. But the girl heeded neither disputant, her attention rapt in watching the play of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... advocates. Some years ago, at Trinity College, Cambridge, Mr. G.E. Moore began to produce a very deep impression amongst the younger spirits by his powerful and luminous dialectic. Like Socrates, he used all the sharp arts of a disputant in the interests of common sense and of an almost archaic dogmatism. Those who heard him felt how superior his position was, both in rigour and in force, to the prevailing inversions and idealisms. The abuse of psychology, rampant for two hundred years, seemed at last to be detected and challenged; ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... was interjected, another disputant stepped quickly forward, and Toomey checked himself in the first breath of an impassioned outburst; his black hand suddenly shot half-way up to the cap-visor, then came down with a jerk; his heels had clicked ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... a very bad opinion of Mr. Miller, and there was no good feeling existing between us. In reply to their communication I said: "You have a number of brethren in Kentucky of equal or superior ability to Mr. Miller, whom I can meet as Christian gentlemen, and when I have the promise of such a disputant, I shall be ready to arrange propositions." They then applied to Mr. Fitch, and a correspondence between us was opened. My purpose then, and ever since in debating with Methodists, was to discuss the system of Methodism, instead of a few isolated propositions. In that ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... l'esprance. A ses desseins secrets tremblante j'obis. Je vins. Mais je cachai ma race et mon pays. Qui pourrait cependant t'exprimer les cabales 55 Que formait en ces lieux ce peuple de rivales, Qui toutes disputant un si grand intrt, Des yeux d'Assurus attendaient leur arrt? Chacune avait sa brigue et de puissants suffrages: L'une d'un sang fameux vantait les avantages; 60 L'autre, pour se parer de superbes atours, Des plus adroites mains ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... positively. "It will be a bad lookout indeed for the logic and rhetoric of Alexandria if an old professor and disputant cannot succeed in turning a young girl's resolutions upside down. Leave that to me. I shall find time for a chat with you by and bye, friend Karnis. How in the world does it happen that you, who so often have helped us with your father's coin, have come down to be the chief ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... if you 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 ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... his opinion, such an answer might, without much difficulty, be written, but declined the controversy on the plea of reverence for the memory of his deceased master. This plea the King considered as the subterfuge of a vanquished disputant. [47] Had he been well acquainted with the polemical literature of the preceding century and a half, he would have known that the documents to which he attached so much value might have been composed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... unauthorized intrusion 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 ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... complures alios eadem calumnia comprehensos, e sincero canone repente dispungerent? Desperatio. His enim oraculis disertissime coarguuntur, quoties de angelorum patrocinio, quoties de arbitrii libertate, quoties de fidelibus vita defunctis, quoties de Divorum hominum intercessione disputant. ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... more from the habits 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 ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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
... Goddess of Reason at Notre Dame. He says, moreover, that I have "the effrontery to imply that the horrible massacres of the Revolution ... were 'a very mild story compared with the atrocities of the Jews or the crimes of Catholicism.'" No really honest and competent disputant would have hit on "effrontery" as the note of the passage referred to, if he had had its whole spirit and drift before him. The reader shall, if he pleases, judge for himself. After the words just quoted, I go on ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... says of war may be applied to disputing,—it should be always so managed as to remember that the only true end of it is peace: but generally true disputants are like true sportsmen,—their whole delight is in the pursuit; and a disputant no more cares for the truth than ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... wit and ingenuity, superior 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
... the third 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, continued ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... This announcement that readiness was the chief quality sought for in the solutions here given, modifies our inference from the other qualities which those solutions present; and it is but fair to presume that when the Christian disputant is not in a hurry Dr. Cumming would recommend replies less ready and more veracious. Here is an example of what in another place {74} he tells his readers is "change in their pocket . . . a little ready argument which they can employ, and therewith answer a fool according ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... 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, that in his pursuit of her she ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... the majority. Right 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 ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... to this day, to their great advantage, as is manifest by the comparison of our understandings with theirs. The study of books is a languishing and feeble motion that heats not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises at once. If I converse with a strong mind and a rough disputant, he presses upon my flanks, and pricks me right and left; his imaginations stir up mine; jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up to something above myself; and acquiescence is a quality altogether tedious in discourse. But, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... to leave him, apparently unmoved, or at all events unconvinced. He paid his distant visit, and late in the evening returned homeward through the same alley. Desparing of success, he paid no second visit to the disputant of the morning, though he did remark with pleasure that the revolutionary placard had been withdrawn. Hardly, however, had he passed the shop twenty yards, when he heard some one running after and calling to him. He looked back and beheld the Republican ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... of relics, and the pomp of religious worship. But the rational and ingenious mode of persuasion, which a Saxon bishop [81] suggested to a popular saint, might sometimes be employed by the missionaries, who labored for the conversion of infidels. "Admit," says the sagacious disputant, "whatever they are pleased to assert of the fabulous, and carnal, genealogy of their gods and goddesses, who are propagated from each other. From this principle deduce their imperfect nature, and human infirmities, the assurance they were born, and the probability that they ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... another, 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 middle life before they ventured as instructors ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... some mischief still for idle hands to do" and manual labour is a recognized part of the monastic life. But in India conditions and ideals were different. The resident monk grew out of the wandering teacher or disputant, who was not likely to practise any trade; it was a maxim that religious persons lived on alms, and occupations which we consider harmless, such as agriculture, were held to be unsuitable because such acts as ploughing may destroy animal life. Probably the Buddha would ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... service those German smoking-houses, where, of an evening, among the companions of gay science, his weary mind might have revived its energies. In France the monks did not resort to taverns. Calvin was, therefore, everything he was destined to become: an adroit, biting disputant, ready at retort, but without warmth or enthusiasm. He loves to bear testimony in his own behalf, that "he did not indulge his wrath, except modestly; that he always made it a rule to set aside outrageous or biting ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... 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 to him the sum ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... had been spatting thus in lowered voices on the sofa, and as Tibbie ended, her disputant's arm was about her waist, and she ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of reply where the disputant had no clear statement to make, but without attempt at proof chose to contend that such or such a person named by himself was wiser, or more of a statesman, or more courageous, and so forth, than some other person. (39) ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... point it better than I can. Let me as an old friend entreat you not to pass this over, but to allow me to continue to think of you as I always have thought of you hitherto, namely, as the most impartial disputant in the ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... classics, exhausting the heathen mythology for examples and parallels, but he could come to no conclusion until the shining illustrations of the Christian faith rose up before him. Taking the white hand of each fair disputant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... up, his large eyes glittering blackly in the paleness of his face. Gnulemah, with the serenity of a victorious disputant willing to ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Coleridge when he supposed him to be a Socinian. Now, though a 'liberal man,' he could not hold a Socinian to be a Christian; nor could he 'think that any man, though he make himself a marvellously clever disputant, ever could tower upwards into a very great philosopher, unless he should begin or end with Christianity.' The canon may be sound, but it at once destroys the pretensions of such men as Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume, and even, though De Quincey considers ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... to overcome the inertia of the logs, and while this was being done by the silent Indian, Rivenoak stalked over the hemlock boughs that lay between the logs in sullen ferocity, eyeing keenly the while the hut, the platform and the person of his late disputant. Once he spoke in low, quick tones to his companion, and he stirred the boughs with his feet like an animal that is restive. At that moment the watchfulness of Deerslayer had a little abated, for ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the disputant of old to yield up the controversy, with little resistance, to the master of forty legions. Those who know how weakly naked truth can defend her advocates, would forgive me, if I should pay the same respect to a governour of the foundlings. Yets the consciousness of my own rectitude of intention ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... at all pleasant for me to be egotistical; nor to be criticized 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 be doing my duty to my faith or to my name, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... 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. ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Nor does he ever go out of his natural character. He is, indeed, the lover from infancy of Beatrice, the aristocratic magistrate of a fierce democracy, the valiant soldier in the field of Campaldino, the fervent patriot in the feuds of Guelphs and Ghibellines, the eloquent and subtle disputant in the school of theology, the melancholy exile wandering from court to court, depending for bread and shelter on petty princes who knew not his worth, except as a splendid captive in their train; and ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... tap-room than to the drawing-room. The controversy 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 side, and with an immense preponderance ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... exactly of his own size to meddle with, who should only have the odds of truth and honesty; which as I take it, would be an effectual way to silence him for ever. Upon this occasion, I cannot forbear a short story of a fanatic farmer who lived in my neighbourhood, and was so great a disputant in religion, that the servants in all the families thereabouts, reported, how he had confuted the bishop and all his clergy. I had then a footman who was fond of reading the Bible, and I borrowed a comment for him, which he studied so close, that in a month or two I thought ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... the current heathen conceptions of Christianity and its morals, especially its assemblies, where the worst excesses were supposed to take place. In the dialogue the passage is put into the mouth of the disputant who represents the heathen objection to the new faith. The date is difficult to determine probably it was the last third of the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... 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
... R. 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 him to form the soundest views. Acting with these military authorities ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... of the so-called "Negro Problem," there is, as a rule, a great deal of the sentimental and still more of the sensational. By a series of non sequitur arguments the average disputant succeeds admirably in proving what is foreign to the subject. This is true of writers of both sections of our country—North as well as South—but especially true of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... at this time in Paris, of which the “hasty and jealous Roberval” was the centre, and which delighted in “abusing Descartes, and attacking him on all sides,” Jacqueline’s frank and lively letter seems enough to show that while Roberval was Pascal’s friend and Descartes’s disputant, there was nothing in the meantime between Descartes and Pascal but courteous friendliness and a cordial feeling ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... 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 ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... 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 was from Christian ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... are rich enough to hold an Argument with him. He has five Guineas upon Questions in Geography, two that the Isle of Wight is a Peninsula, and three Guineas to one that the World is round. We have a Gentleman comes to our Coffee-house, who deals mightily in Antique Scandal; my Disputant has laid him twenty Pieces upon a Point of History, to wit, that Caesar never lay with Cato's Sister, as is scandalously reported by ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 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
... slightly to the 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 rendezvous at ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Intolerance was then a thing to be proud of, but in Lessing's time some 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 since ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... 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 ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... great marks of vigour in it, as if advanced with stern 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. ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... 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
... 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, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... limits of the covenant. The other argued, with mighty 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 ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... frequently. With some perversity he would analyze to herself Emilia's spirit of hope, partly perhaps for the sake of probing to what sort of thing it might be in its nature and defences; and, as against an accomplished disputant she made but a poor battle, he injured what was precious to her without ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him from roving. And, up to a certain point, men continually give in. They find it easier and more comfortable to lower their arms, and not always to be maintaining a barren controversy. They have not the slightest wish to convince their affectionate feminine disputant, to take from her the sincere and positive dogmas on which her happiness is built, and to substitute for these a phase of doubt and difficulty for which her past intellectual life has not fitted her. Accordingly, they indulge in a thousand little ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the Last Judgment. At seventeen we find him, destined for the hereditary profession, a student in the Theological College at Hoxton. His mental development was by no means headlong, but he was a laborious reader and an eager disputant, endowed with ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... special part of the discussion. When the turn of some other part of the matter comes, it will be convenient and often necessary to bring out into full light another side of your opinion, not contradictory, but complementary, and the great distinction of a candid disputant or of a reader of good faith, is his willingness to take pains to see the points of reconciliation among different aspects and different expressions of what ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... floor at Hiram Institute. Here, besides gaining a considerable step in his education, Garfield began to exercise his gifts as a speaker. The debating society of his college found in him its most fluent disputant, and the college became immensely proud of the promising youth, whose reputation as a ready and effective speaker was spreading far ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... the test of strict investigation, or of a severe discussion of principles and provocations, was superficially maintainable, and not to be anyhow argued out of all plausibility. "The South is defensive, and the North aggressive," one disputant might say. "Yes," would be the reply, "at this stage of the contest; but ascend a step higher, and it is the South which made an aggression on the Union, and the North is defending that." "Still, the North might have abstained ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... to 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
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ancestors. But he was a brave and steady citizen, and a warm opposer of Gracchus, as appears from an Oration of Gracchus against him: we have likewise some of Tubero's speeches against Gracchus. He was not indeed a shining Orator: but he was a learned, and a very skilfull disputant. ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... promulgate his worship in the form of the divine child known as Bala Gopala. Vallabha settled in Benares and is said to have composed a number of works which are still extant.[623] He gained further victories as a successful disputant and also married and became the father of two sons. At the age of fifty-two he took to the life of a Sannyasi, but died forty-two ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... punish any one for what he cannot help. Each is triumphant so long as he is not compelled to take into consideration any other maxims of justice than the one he has selected; but as soon as their several maxims are brought face to face, each disputant seems to have exactly as much to say for himself as the others. No one of them can carry out his own notion of justice without trampling upon another equally binding. These are difficulties; they have always been felt to be such; and many devices have been invented ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... 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, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... them.' He afterwards studied physick at Edinburgh, and upon the Continent; and I have been informed, was enabled to pursue his travels on foot, partly by demanding at Universities to enter the lists as a disputant, by which, according to the custom of many of them, he was entitled to the premium of a crown, when luckily for him his challenge was not accepted; so that, as I once observed to Dr. Johnson, he ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... for me. Drive on, coachman, and drown her replies in the clatter of hoofs. Round by the Stag, Zoe. I am uneasy till I have locked Fair Science up. I own it is a mean way of getting rid of a troublesome disputant." ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... call, and presently the Treasurer, Mr Willett—a pursey little man with enormous side-whiskers,—came hurrying forward from the after-companion, where he had been engaged in hearing a protest from an excited disputant—a competitor in the 16-foot class— who had in fact come in last, even on his handicap, but with a clear notion in his own mind, and an array of arguments to convince others, that he was entitled to the prize. Such misunderstandings were frequent enough ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... might have lasted, before the iron arguments of despotism achieved the inevitable victory, I know not; but it was cut short by a party whom neither disputant had deigned ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... 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 to save themselves ...
— Sophist • Plato |
