"Fallacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that, having received light from above, he knew how false and fallacious were the boasted philosophies of the Greeks. Their philosophers, ignorant of themselves and of God, and arrogating all glory to themselves and ascribing none to Him, were unable to impart wisdom to any one. From Hebrew psalm and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... City—Patterson the Governor of the Bank, Grote, Glyn, himself, and others—had successively been consulted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and they had all expressed the same opinion and given the same advice; but that he had met their conclusions with a long chain of reasoning founded upon the most fallacious premises, columns of prices of stocks and exchequer-bills in former years, and calculations and conjectures upon these data, which the keen view and sagacious foresight of these men (whose wits are sharpened by the magnitude of their immediate interest in the results, and whose long habits make them ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... a stone has advanced into the ureter from the pelvis of the kidney, it is sometimes liable to be returned by the retrograde motion of that canal, and the patient obtains fallacious ease, till the stone is again pushed ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... promote him in the favour of this young lady; the greenness of his years secured him from any appearance of fallacious aim; so that he was indulged in frequent opportunities of conversing with his young mistress, whose parents encouraged this communication, by which they hoped she would improve in speaking the language of her father. Such connexions naturally produce intimacy and friendship. Fathom's person ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... in what you say," said I, "and yet no man ever acts upon this theory. Who, when he makes a choice, says, Thus I choose, because I am necessitated? Does he not on the contrary feel a freedom of will within him, which, though you may call it fallacious, still ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... reaches his greatest perfection in England, and that the trotting horses of America beat the world? And why should we have expected that the pick—if it was the pick—of our few and far-between racing stables should beat the pick of England and France? Throw over the fallacious time-test, and there was nothing to show for it but a natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, which some of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Refulgent gliding o'er the sable deeps. Between where Samos wide his forests spreads, And rocky Imbrus lifts its pointed heads, Down plunged the maid; (the parted waves resound;) She plunged and instant shot the dark profound. As bearing death in the fallacious bait, From the bent angle sinks the leaden weight; So pass'd the goddess through the closing wave, Where Thetis sorrow'd in her secret cave: There placed amidst her melancholy train (The blue-hair'd ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... function, must become withered and atrophied. While this course of reasoning may seem rational and the conclusion may seem tenable, it is well known to physiologists and sociologists that the reasoning is fallacious; the fallacy rests in the premises. It was assumed above that the activity of the sexual glands was ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... Mr. Robertson, who had listened quietly to the talk of the children. "I think that every noble, honorable man and woman works, and is glad to work, for a living. The old saying that 'the world owes us a living' is a very fallacious one. The world doesn't owe us anything, and God does not either. Indeed, he has said: 'If any man will not work, neither ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... could exist. Hence we conclude we are the only rational creatures, which is highly satisfactory, and, what is more, quite Scriptural. Owen, on the other hand, I believe, and other scientific people, declare it a most presumptuous essay,— conclusions audacious, and reasoning fallacious, though the facts are allowed; and in that opinion I, on the ground that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... commercial monopoly which Spain adopted with respect to America immediately on the discovery of the Continent was as disastrous to the motherland as to the colonies. Employing a fallacious theory in order that the riches of the New World should pass to Spain, and that the latter country should serve as sole provider to her colonies, all the legislation was in the first instance directed to this end. Thus in America ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... information of your old friend Mr. Courtland, partly by accident, found what I hope may prove a clue to the fate of my father. I am now departing to put this hope to the issue. More I would fain say; but lest the expectation should prove fallacious, I will not dwell on circumstances which would in that case only create in you a disappointment similar to my own. Only this take with you, that my father's proverbial good luck seems to have visited ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... meanwhile, the autumn of 1816 was probably occupied with the preparation of Persuasion for the press; and, on the whole, we should gather from the evidence before us that the earlier part of the winter saw one of those fallacious instances of temporary improvement which so often deceive nurses and patients alike, in cases of internal complaints. 'I have certainly gained strength through the winter,' she says, on January 24, 1817. On the 23rd: 'I feel myself stronger than I was half a year ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... by the accomplished statistician, there is nothing more fallacious than the figures of the census. As the author of this article is a disciple neither of Buckle nor De Bow, they have not been used at all; but a few of the census figures are nevertheless instructive, as showing the difference between the Free and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... as regards the conditionating nature of all thought is condensed into four words by Spinoza—"Omnis determinatio est negatio;" all determination is negation. Nothing can be more arbitrary or more fallacious than this principle. It arises from the confusion of two things essentially different—the limits of a being, and its determinate and distinguishing characteristics. The limit of a being is its imperfection; the determination of a being is its perfection. The less a thing ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... mercilessly exposed these fallacious arguments from analogy have themselves reasoned in the same way as fallaciously and as often. When individual life leaves the physical man, say they, cosmical life immediately enters the corpse and restores it to the general stock of nature; so ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... enacted, that whoever offends, &c., shall be fined five hundred pounds, imprisoned for a year and a day, and rendered incapable of all public trust for ever. Otherwise, I do insist that those pious, indulgent, external professors of our national religion, shall either give up that fallacious hypocritical reason for taking off the Test; or freely confess, that they desire to have a gate wide open for every sect, without any test at all, except that of swearing loyalty to the King: Which, however, considering their principles, with ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... to follow the example of the provincial militia at that battle, it would be better for the country, the people, science, and last, but not the least, for the profession. The theory that we should not counsel with quacks is altogether mischievous and fallacious, although right and rigidly orthodox in its intent; were we to counsel and meet these gentry, we should expose their ignorance and assumption, and we should not be exposed to the charge of jealousy and of fear to meet them in consultation. I remember ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... optimism, or sink back upon the cushions of Christian resignation, their intellectual powers anaesthetized by cheerful platitudes. Or else, even those, who are fully cognizant of the chaos and conflict, seek an escape in those pretentious but fundamentally fallacious social philosophies which place the blame for contemporary world misery upon anybody or anything except the indomitable but uncontrolled instincts of living organisms. These men fight with shadows and forget the realities of existence. Too many ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... in carrying New York that he would have himself. The element of military heroism was wanting. He had written to General Sherman on the subject, and of course the General thought he could not consent to be President—for that was what it amounted to—but his reasoning was fallacious. If General Sherman had the question put to him—whether to be President himself or turn the office over to the Democratic party, with the Solid South dominant—he would see his duty and do it, though ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... with the reception accorded him and the missionaries, and hoped the time was coming for again using the lots in Savannah, but the hope again proved to be fallacious. The missionaries all suffered greatly from fever, always prevalent on the rice plantations in the summer, and on Oct. 11th, 1775, Mueller died. The outbreak of the Revolutionary War made Wagner's and Broesing's position ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... investment, thus narrowing the scope of use for any outside capital. This employment of brute force is sometimes spoken of as "unfair" competition, and treated as something distinct from ordinary trade competition. But the difference drawn is a purely fallacious one. In thus breaking down a competitor the Trust simply makes use of those economies which we have found to attach to large-scale businesses as compared with small. Its action, however oppressive it ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... is the basis of the State thus taken by itself is entirely false; but even if true, the use made of it as an argument against giving suffrage to women is equally fallacious. This can be shown by a single illustration. We will suppose there are two families, in both of which the father dies, leaving in one case a widow and one son, and in the other a widow and six daughters. Where is now the family representation? The son whom we will suppose to be of age, goes to the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... good ground for their subconscious distrust of it. We have seen that the vulgar confusion between information and knowledge is at the root of much that is unsound in education. There is no branch of education in which this confusion is so fallacious or so fatal as in that which is called religious. The process of converting information into knowledge is a comparatively easy one when we are dealing with matters of detailed fact. Information as to the dates of the kings of England, as to the bays ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... cannot be considered a proper and sufficient basis for cerebral science. In the hands of Gall and Spurzheim, it had already very nearly attained its limits as regards the subdivision of organs, and the progress of their followers in discovery has been unimportant or fallacious. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... no temporary or fallacious cause. In the former country, population very rapidly increases, and, in the latter, wealth and civilization, which have a similar effect {155} upon the wants of a nation. These are in favour of a manufacturing ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... accorded you unlimited space in which to acquire momentum, I would certainly dread the shock were I cursed with an atom of polemical pride. Frankly, I wish you success—trust that you can demonstrate beyond a peradventure of a doubt that all my objections to the Single Tax are fallacious, that it is indeed the correct solution of that sphinx riddle which we must soon answer or be destroyed. At a time when the industrial problem is pressing upon us with ever increasing power, it is discouraging to hear grown Americans prattling of "unhorsing" economic adversaries—priding themselves ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Under this fallacious idea a large proportion of the workmen of both countries each day deliberately work slowly so as to curtail the output. Almost every labor union has made, or is contemplating making, rules which have for their object ' curtailing the output of their members, ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... Dialogue. Another example; scene in the woods. Cautions. Affected simplicity of language. Evils of it. Minute details. Example; motives to study. Dialogue. Mingling religious influence with the direct discipline of the school. Fallacious indications of piety. Sincerity of ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... utmost explication there must be felt that there is yet more behind; its utmost distinctness must be everywhere indefinable, evanescent,—must proclaim that this parade of surface-appearance is not there for its own sake. This is what Mr. Ruskin calls "the pathetic fallacy": but there is nothing fallacious in it; it is solid truth, only under the guise of mystery. Turner said that Mr. Ruskin had put all sorts of meanings into his pictures that he knew nothing about. Of course, else they would never have got into the pictures. But this does not affect their validity, but means ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... free will is commonly denounced on the ground that it subverts morality and makes of religion a mocking. Such pious objections, of course, are foreign to logic, but nevertheless it may be well to give a glance to this one. It is based upon the fallacious hypothesis that the determinist escapes, or hopes to escape, the consequences of his acts. Nothing could be more untrue. Consequences follow acts just as relentlessly if the latter be involuntary as if they be voluntary. If I rob a bank of my free choice or in response ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... no means an easy task to adjust the chronology of Fra Angelico's works; he has affixed no dates to them, and consequently, when external evidence is wanting, we are thrown upon internal, which in his case is unusually fallacious. It is satisfactory therefore to possess a fixed date in 1433, the year in which he painted the great tabernacle for the Company of Flax-merchants, now removed to the gallery of the Uffizii. It represents the Virgin and child, with attendant Saints, on a gold ground—very ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... formed by early advantages: contrasted with Michael: she engages with Aaron in a plot against Moses: God observes it and punishment of leprosy inflicted upon Miriam: her cure: dies at Kadesh: general remarks on slander: debasing nature of sin: hope of escaping punishment fallacious: danger of opposing Christ: exhortation to ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... exultingly. They arrived at San Domingo without an ounce of gold, half-famished, downcast, and despairing. [205] Such is too often the case of those who ignorantly engage in mining—of all speculations the most brilliant, promising, and fallacious. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... WM. H. SEWARD would be present at the dedication of the Geological Hall, excited great interest among the citizens; but the hope of his appearance proved fallacious. His place was occupied by seven picked men of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of whom (Prof. HENRY) declared his inability to compute the problem why seven men of science were to be considered ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... market-place, errors arising from the influence exercised over the mind by mere words. This, according to Bacon, is the most troublesome kind of error, and has been especially fatal in philosophy. For words introduce a fallacious mode of looking at things in two ways: first, there are some words that are really merely names for non-existent things, which are yet supposed to exist simply because they have received a name; secondly, there are names hastily and unskilfully abstracted ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... divided. Here is a double fallacy. To say that the vote was divided, begs the question. It was not divided so long as the resolution passed by the delegation remained valid, and its validity is not denied. The other part of the proposition is equally fallacious. A State is represented when there are in the body delegates authorized to represent it, whatever be their number. The arguments of my associates seem to be, that a State could only be represented in the Peace Convention by odd numbers, and that if it ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... sent to the Nunneries in Canada under the fallacious hope of obtaining for them, a superior education; and very frequently, they are suddenly removed after being there but a short period; because the persons to whose partial guardianship they are committed ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... honour a Paper Age too; an Era of hope! For in this same frightful process of Enceladus Revolt; when the task, on which no mortal would willingly enter, has become imperative, inevitable,—is it not even a kindness of Nature that she lures us forward by cheerful promises, fallacious or not; and a whole generation plunges into the Erebus Blackness, lighted on by an Era of Hope? It has been well said: 'Man is based on Hope; he has properly no other possession but Hope; this habitation of his is named the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... altogether ceased to haunt the world at the present day (compare Charmides). The defect of clearness is also apparent in Socrates himself, unless we suppose him to be practising on the simplicity of his opponent, or rather perhaps trying an experiment in dialectics. Nothing can be more fallacious than the contradiction which he pretends to have discovered in the answers of Gorgias (see above). The advantages which he gains over Polus are also due to a false antithesis of pleasure and good, and to an ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... of course, confined to the lady's health. She thought that she was, perhaps, getting better, though, as the doctor had told her, the reassuring symptoms might too probably only be too fallacious. She could eat nothing,—literally nothing. A few grapes out of the hothouse had supported her for the last week. This statement was foolish on Lizzie's part, as Mr. Emilius was a man of an inquiring nature, and there was not a grape in the garden. Her only delight ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... boasted powers of wit and song Of life one pang remove, one hour prolong? Fallacious hope which daily truths deride— For you, alas! have ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... in the interests of mediaeval democracy." Mr. Chesterton's history would hardly be worth reading, if he had made nothing more of it than is suggested in that sentence. His book (apart from occasional sloughs of sophistry and fallacious argument) remains in the mind as a song of praise and dolour chanted by the imagination about an England that obeyed not God and despised the Tree of Life, but that may yet, he believes, hear once more ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... protestations of hurry, they proved irresponsible like children. Kelmar himself, shrewd old Russian Jew, with a smirk that seemed just to have concluded a bargain to its satisfaction, intrusted himself and us devoutly to that boy. Yet the boy was patently fallacious; and for that matter a most unsympathetic urchin, raised apparently on gingerbread. He was bent on his own pleasure, nothing else; and Kelmar followed him to his ruin, with the same shrewd smirk. If the boy said there was "a hole there in the hill"—a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he dared not repeat one of them to the king; and, after an ineffectual struggle, Mr. M'Leod was at last compelled to witness, with the most painful emotion, this ill-fated youth dragged off in a state of the gloomiest despair, a despair rendered more dismal from the fallacious glimpse of returning happiness, by which he had been ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... ordinance of 1787. The weight of his remarks was directed to showing that the complaint of Northern attacks on slavery as existing in the Southern States, or of Northern schemes to compel the abolition of slavery, was utterly groundless and fallacious. At the same time he pointed out the way in which slavery was continually used to unite the South against ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of the plan of the Divina Commedia or by some finer instinct of reserve and reverence in the poet, we never find ourselves in Dante as we do in Milton exercising our critical faculties, whether we will or no, on the very words of God Himself. If we reject an argument as unconvincing or fallacious, it is on Virgil or Statius, Beatrice or Thomas Aquinas, that we sit in judgment. The Divine Mind, intensely and constantly felt as its presence is from the first canto of the poem to the last, is yet felt always as from behind a {158} curtain which can never be raised for the sight ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... general non-possumus; and most of the would-be critics of the Proceedings have been contented to oppose to the phenomena recorded the simple presumption that in some way or other the reports must be {318} fallacious,—for so far as the order of nature has been subjected to really scientific scrutiny, it always has been proved to run the other way. But the oftener one is forced to reject an alleged sort of fact by the use of this mere presumption, the weaker does the presumption itself ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... admitting that, owing to failing powers, it may come at any moment. It will make a complete change in the position of politics! Then I got, from Cook Wilson, what I have been so long trying for—an accepted transcript of the fallacious argument over which we have had an (apparently) endless fight. I think the end is ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Africa, it proved impracticable as a remedy at home. Madison, who in early life disliked slavery so much that he wished "to depend as little as possible on the labor of slaves"; Madison, who held that where slavery exists "the republican theory becomes fallacious"; Madison, who in the last years of his life would not consent to the annexation of Texas, lest his countrymen should fill it with slaves; Madison, who said, "slavery is the greatest evil under which the nation labors—a ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... same ground of equality of new taxation I should propose to replace the amount now levied in duties mainly by an income tax. That is a perfectly level tax; the idea that temporary incomes ought to pay a lower rate is fallacious. We are all agreed to tax the poor at a lower rate; we have now a section of advanced Radicals proposing to tax the rich at a higher rate. One present candidate for Parliament is even willing to tax people of L100,000 a year and upwards at nineteen shillings in the ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... The fallacious views about the nature and sphere of politics, which the Irish bring with them from Ireland, and which are perpetuated in America, have the effect not only of debarring the Irish from real political progress, ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... afterwards as a condottiere. It was done in both cases with a certain naivete—with good faith in the possibility of his being able to found a free commonwealth, if not by the swords of others, at any rate by his own. We perceive without difficulty that this faith was fallacious, and that no one takes an evil spirit into his service without becoming himself enslaved to it; but the greatest men are not those who err the least. If we still after so many centuries bow in reverence before what Caesar willed and did, it is not because he desired and gained a crown (to do ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... that they are spiritually in advance of their time. The majority, however, of Christians have felt that the Pacifist or Quaker doctrine is not merely impracticable under present conditions, but that it rests upon a fallacious principle. For it appears to deny that physical force can ever be rightfully employed as the instrument of a moral purpose. In the last resort it is akin to the anti-sacramental doctrine which regards what is material as essentially ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... deference paid to legal decisions. But this is not implicit, as the author supposes. The course of reasoning by which the courts have come to their conclusions, is often assailed by the advocate and shown to be fallacious, and the instances are not unfrequent of courts disregarding prior decisions and overruling them when not ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... the East, to check emigration to the West, and thus to diminish the value of the public lands and prevent the growth of the Western States, Mr. H. proceeded thus:] "That portion of the Union could participate in no part of the bill, except in its burdens, in spite of the fallacious hopes that were cherished, in reference to cotton bagging for Kentucky, and the woolen duty for Steubenville, Ohio. He feared that to the entire region of the West, no 'cordial drops of comfort' would ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... may be constituted as a plea for refraining to dwell upon the time so laden with exquisite joy to Josephine de Maistre, the time that made up the days and nights of this period of her life at Sleepy Cottage. She had worked out such fallacious reasonings as justified her in the end, in holding clandestine meetings with her romantic lover, and so, each night when she had finished reading to her father, she stole quietly away to the rustic gate, at the end of the shrubbery, there to ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... engineers. It has been patented several times over. It has formed the theme of scientific papers, which have been read both in France and in England. The explanation generally given of the advantage of uniting the coils in parallel is, I think, fallacious; namely that the "extra currents" (i.e., currents due to self-induction) set up in the two coils are induced in such directions as tend to help one another when the coils are in series, and to neutralize ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... considerations also, which determined the House in the year 1782 to adopt a measure of the same kind as the present. Had any thing happened to change the opinion of members since? On the contrary, they had now the clearest evidence, that all the arguments then used against the abolition were fallacious; being founded not upon truth, but on assertions devoid of all truth, and derived from ignorance ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... the policy which prevails in the public schools of the State should be carried out in the new institution at the summit of the system. This demand was plausible, but the more I thought upon it the more illogical, fallacious, and injurious it seemed; and, in spite of some hard knocks in consequence, I have continued to dissent from it, and feel that events ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the case of democracy seemed doomed. John Randolph had denounced it as a monstrous "tyranny of King Numbers"; Judge Gaston, one of the purest and best men of North Carolina, declared that the cry, "let the people rule," was fallacious, and asked with great concern, "What is then to become of our system of checks and balances?" While the radical spokesmen of the South Carolina aristocracy declared that they would never submit to that "dangerous ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... reasoning, but very fallacious notwithstanding; indeed, it is this description of logic which conceals the full extent of a man's errors from, himself, and which has sent thousands forward on their career to ruin. Had Art, for instance, been guided by his steady and excellent brother, or, what ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... very recently, Theology and Religion were supposed to be synonymous, or at least to walk hand in hand. Balzac's early training and his environment, as well as the thought of the times in which he lived, were calculated to inspire in him the fallacious belief that God would have us renounce the love of our fellow beings, for love ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... in the last sixty-five years fled from the country, and though the figures, as they are published, seem to show a slight decrease each year, the apparent diminution is to a large extent fallacious, since the residue of population from which emigrants are drawn becomes each year less, and an apparent decrease may in truth ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... labour in attaining. After much time spent in these frivolous pursuits, the difficulty will be to retreat; but it will be then too late; and there is scarce an instance of return to scrupulous labour after the mind has been debauched and deceived by this fallacious mastery. ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... them a very different origin. But perfect soever as may have been his knowledge of their manners, customs, religion and traditions, yet it must be admitted that any inquiry into these, with a view to discover their origin, would most probably prove fallacious. A knowledge of the primitive language, alone can cast much light on the subject. Whether this knowledge can ever be attained, is, to say the least, very questionable—Being an unwritten language, and subject to change for so many centuries, it can scarcely be supposed now ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the Syrian matron, Miss Whately went out into the surrounding lanes and invited the women to send their little girls to her to be taught to read and sew. She met with many curt refusals and received many fallacious promises; but when at last, in February 1861, a start was made, nine little girls were present the first morning "No recruiting sergeant," she says, "was ever so pleased with a handful of future soldiers, for it ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... safely trust the State governments, though we have no means of resisting them; but we cannot confide in the national government, though we have an effectual constitutional guard against every encroachment. This is the essence of their argument, and it is false and fallacious beyond conception. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... Synergists employed also the same line of argument. Both derived their doctrine, not from any clear statements of the Bible, but by a process of anti-Scriptural and fallacious reasoning. The Majorists inferred: Since evil works and sins against conscience destroy faith and justification, good works are required for their preservation. The Synergists argued: Since all who are not converted or finally saved must blame, not God, but themselves for rejecting ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... satisfied to leave their theory in the condition of an ingenious hypothesis or a convenient verbal formula. But that age was under the dominion of legal superstitions. The State of Nature had been talked about till it had ceased to be regarded as paradoxical, and hence it seemed easy to give a fallacious reality and definiteness to the contractual origin of Law by insisting on the Social Compact as a ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... fraction less than the guesses of the census enumerators at the national wealth of the United States, twelve years later, in 1870. Can one guess be said to be any nearer the fact than the other? May we not be pardoned for treating all estimates as utterly fallacious that are not based upon known facts and figures? Why do we hear so much of the "approximate correctness" of so many statistical tables, when, in point of fact, the primary data are incapable of proof, and the averages and conclusions built ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... restore Major Laing's papers. He answered haughtily, that this declaration was only a tissue of calumnies; and Mohamed, on his side, trusting, doubtless, in a pretended inviolability, yielding, perhaps, to fallacious promises, retracted his declaration, completely disowned it, and even went so far as to deny his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... only either deal with the question straight, either frankly yield or ineffectually struggle or insincerely argue, or else merely express herself by following up the advantage she did possess. It was part of that advantage for the hour—a brief fallacious makeweight to his pressure—that there were plenty of things left in which he must feel her will. They only told him, these indications, how much she was, in such close quarters, feeling his; and it was enough for him again that her very aspect, as great a variation ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... then, it was said that quiet could not be expected after slavery in its most complete and abject form had so long reigned paramount, and that any sudden emancipation must endanger the peace of the islands. The experience of the first of August at once scattered to the winds that most fallacious prophecy. Then it was said, only wait till Christmas, for that is a period when, by all who have any practical knowledge of the negro character, a rebellion on their part is most to be apprehended. We did wait ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Parliament, and never opened his mouth. For my own part, I think it is more disgraceful never to try to speak, than to try it and fail; as it is more disgraceful not to fight, than to fight and be beaten.' This argument appeared to me fallacious; for if a man has not spoken, it may be said that he would have done very well if he had tried; whereas, if he has tried and failed, there is nothing to be said for him. 'Why then, (I asked,) is it thought disgraceful for a man not to fight, and not disgraceful not to speak in publick?' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Christmas. In this way the other four winter months—October and November at the autumnal end, and February and March at the spring end—must inevitably present the two chief reading climaxes of the year; and so the reports of lending libraries present us with figures which show a striking, but fallacious, resemblance to the curves which are probably produced ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... business in the French manufacturing towns, and thrown throngs upon the 'pave' for want of employment, yet M. de Calonne either did not see, or pretended not to see, the errors he had committed. Being informed that the Comte de Vergennes had attributed the public disorders to his fallacious policy, M. de Calonne sent a friend to the Count demanding satisfaction for the charge of having caused the riots. The Count calmly replied that he was too much of a man of honour to take so great an advantage, as to avail ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... aristocracy, and to save their country. The hoarse bawling of the vendors of the public journals, the patriotic chaunts of the Jacobins as they quitted their clubs, the tumultuous assemblies, the convocations to the patriotic ceremonies, fallacious fears as to the failure of provisions—kept the population of the city and faubourgs in a perpetual state of excitement, which suffered no one to remain inactive; indifference would have been considered treason; and ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... the short time the lieutenant and his men were on board no infection could have been conveyed from her to the frigate. Before two days, however, had passed these hopes were found to be fallacious. Two of the men who had been on board the merchantman were seized with the fearful complaint, and the following day were corpses. Several others in the course of a few hours were seized in the same manner. Their illnesses in each case terminated fatally. As is often the case, ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... me the desired explanation. "I now feel better satisfied with reference to your action upon that occasion," I assured him. "While I do not agree with you in your conclusions, and while I believe your reasoning to be unsound and fallacious, still I cannot help giving you credit for having been actuated by no other motive than to do what you honestly believed was for the best interest of the country and the ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... and to young wives on whom life has hitherto smiled, and who conceal their alarms. Also Lisbeth had immediately guessed that her mother had given her no money. Adeline's delicacy had brought her so low as to use the fallacious excuses that necessity ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... told by Adam Smith that the money which I can obtain for my hat expresses only its nominal value, but that the labor which I can obtain for it expresses its real value—I reply, that the quantity of labor is no more any expression of the real value than the quantity of money; both are equally fallacious expressions, because equally equivocal. My hat, it is true, now buys me x quantity of labor, and some years ago it bought x/2 quantity of labor. But this no more proves that my hat has advanced in real value according to that proportion, than a double money price will prove it. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... figure gave an impression of abounding strength and energy which obtained him the nickname of "the little Giant." With no assignable higher quality, and with the blustering, declamatory, shamelessly fallacious and evasive oratory of a common demagogue, he was nevertheless an accomplished Parliamentarian, and imposed himself as effectively upon the Senate as he did upon the people of Illinois and the North generally. He was, no doubt, a remarkable man, with the gift of attracting many people. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... may, perhaps, find entertainment, yet will never gain to themselves a sure hold upon the Mind; and so soon as they become troublesome, are in great danger of being question'd; whereby whatever is Built upon them, must be likewise liable to be suspected for fallacious: And however empty Declamations do often-times make livelier impressions upon Young People than substantial Reasoning, yet these impressions are, for the most part, easily effac'd; and especially are so ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... was led at last to the conclusion that knowledge based on reason is fallacious, and that the knowledge of truth can be secured only by living. I had come to feel that I must live a real, not a parasitical life, and that the meaning of life could be perceived only by observation of the combined lives of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Consider further, that the figures here given for wealth really express but the sum of capitals of the individuals (or private corporations) of the nation. These do not constitute a sum of social wealth in any proper sense of the term.[3] Arithmetically it is a fallacious kind of a total, for the sum of the individual capitals contains some items that should be canceled to find the sum of wealth. Moreover, capital is an acquisitive concept. It is an expression of the value of a man's possessions, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton been known only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibility have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallow would have been our optimism, how fallacious our attempt at consolation. There is no denying the fact that when a young Marcellus is shown by fate for one brief moment, and withdrawn before his springtime has bought forth the fruits of summer, we must bow in silence to the law ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... allowed, in lieu of granting appeals from its prize courts to the International Court, to be mulcted in damages in the latter for erroneous decisions in the former. It is submitted that President Taft's position was fallacious, for the simple reason that not even the whole American nation is entitled to judge finally of its rights or of those of its citizens under the law which binds all nations and determines their rights; and that, therefore, the whole American ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... first obstacle, that men do not sufficiently exert and fix their minds upon those things which are evident, so as to be able to understand how great the light is with which they are surrounded. The second is, that some men, being deluded and deceived by fallacious and captious interrogatories, when they cannot clear them up, abandon the truth. It is right, therefore, for us to have those answers ready which may be given in defence of the evidentness of a thing,—and ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... established, its development continues under conditions of progress similar to those to which we have before alluded in speaking of other like affections. The argument advanced by some that because these bony deposits are frequently found on both hocks they are not spavins is fallacious. If they are discovered on both hocks, it proves merely that they are not confined to a ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... all curious cultivation, in favour of the vineyard; and endeavours to shew, by a comparison of the profit and expense, that it was a most advantageous improvement. Such comparisons, however, between the profit and expense of new projects are commonly very fallacious; and in nothing more so than in agriculture. Had the gain actually made by such plantations been commonly as great as he imagined it might have been, there could have been no dispute about it. The same point is frequently at this day a matter of controversy ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... eagerly; "thank God! Perhaps the mist is going to clear away." But the hope was fallacious, for in the direction where their path lay all was still dark, and the chilly mist soon closed again, though not so densely, over the wound which the breeze from the chasm below them had ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... conference, agitation, or the like.) "Our business is with ourselves,—to make ourselves more holy, more self-denying, more primitive, more worthy of our high calling. To be anxious for a composition of differences is to begin at the end. Political reconciliations are but outward and hollow, and fallacious. And till Roman Catholics renounce political efforts, and manifest in their public measures the light of holiness and truth, perpetual war is our ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... designs; wherein they were not disappointed. As to his other accomplishments, he was what we usually call a piece of a scholar, and a good logical reasoner; if this were not too often allayed, by a fallacious way of managing an argument, which made him apt to deceive the unwary, and sometimes ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... gather from our Aspect. A Man, they say, wears the Picture of his Mind in his Countenance; and one Man's Eyes are Spectacles to his who looks at him to read his Heart. But tho that Way of raising an Opinion of those we behold in Publick is very fallacious, certain it is, that those, who by their Words and Actions take as much upon themselves, as they can but barely demand in the strict Scrutiny of their Deserts, will find their Account lessen every Day. A modest Man preserves his Character, as a frugal Man does his Fortune; if either of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... were fallacious—well, were they fallacious? Does this spectacle of a nation drowned look 'fallacious' to you? Why didn't you study the matter until you understood it? Why did you issue officially, and with my ignorant sanction—may ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... enables breeders to determine which of their calves are most promising, and in purchasing young stock it affords indications which rarely fail as to their comparative milk yield. These indications occasionally prove utterly fallacious, and Mr. Guenon gives rules for determining this class, which he calls "bastards," without waiting for them to fail in their milk. The signs are, however, rarely so distinct that one would be willing to sell a twenty-quart cow, whose yield confirmed the prediction of her mirror ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... who wins recognition in a first-class magazine has achieved a double success, first, with the editor, and then with the best reading public. Many factitious and fallacious literary reputations have been made through books, but very few have been made through the magazines, which are not only the best means of living, but of outliving, with the author; they are both bread and fame to him. If I insist a little upon the high office ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 1s.) amounted to L.3257. The average weight of the elephant's tusk is 60 lbs.; and therefore 3040 elephants have been killed to supply this quantity of ivory.' But these calculations are in many respects quite fallacious. In the first place, the average weight of our imported tusks is not 60 lbs.: we have the authority of one of the first ivory-merchants in London for stating that 20 lbs. will be a much closer approximation. This at once involves a threefold ratio of destruction. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... is the "raw material of consciousness," and the Unknowable in the second is something not in consciousness at all. The two senses of the word "light" are not more different from one another. Such apparent arguments abound, and it often requires much acuteness to be able to detect their fallacious character. ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... starting out with their baskets. Women and house-porters were coming out to wash pavements and entrances: the collective life of the town was waking up to another uneventful day; but they two were hastening off to long hours of sunlight and fresh air, unhampered by the passing of time, or by fallacious ideas of duty; were setting out for a new bit of world, to strange meals taken in strange places, reached by white roads, or sequestered wood-paths. In the train, they were crushed between the baskets of the marketwomen, who were journeying from one ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... have often succeeded in creating by one inspiration (but at the risk of errors, for a genius is only human and in many cases more fallacious than his fellow-men) was deduced by me gradually from various sources—the study of the normal individual, the lunatic, the criminal, the savage, and finally the child. Thus, by reducing the penal problem to its simplest expression, its solution was rendered easier, just as the study of embryology ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... little grimace. "No young man who contemplates marrying should allow himself to launch into extravagance on the strength of prospects which, for all he can tell," said the Professor, genially, "may prove fallacious. On the contrary, if his affection is sincere, he will incur as little expense as possible, put by every penny he can save, rather than subject the girl he professes to love to the ordeal of a long engagement. In other words, the truest ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... very remote from the private interests and circumstances of the writer himself. At least I have found that where the subject is taken immediately from the author's personal sensations and experiences, the excellence of a particular poem is but an equivocal mark, and often a fallacious pledge, of genuine poetic power. We may perhaps remember the tale of the statuary, who had acquired considerable reputation for the legs of his goddesses, though the rest of the statue accorded but indifferently with ideal beauty; till his wife, elated by her husband's praises, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... allude to the circumstance of his shipwreck and stay at our castle; and I trusted that she had banished him from her mind. Such happiness as the world can give was about, I hoped, to revisit the remnant of our family. Alas! how fallacious were my expectations." ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Hollanders that the king, in a very fallacious hope of temporary gain to himself, was about to break his solemn promises to his allies and leave them to their fate, drew but few tears down the iron cheeks of such practised diplomatists as Villeroy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that it is easier to measure a part, or one aspect, of intelligence than all of it, is fallacious in that the parts are not separate parts and cannot be separated by any refinement of experiment. They are interwoven and intertwined. Each ramifies everywhere and appears in all other functions. The analogy of the stones ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... without hesitation. If the action of Parliament was any sort of index to popular sentiment, the idea that there was any widespread or deep- rooted feeling in the country against a war of religion is certainly fallacious; while there can be no question that the entire sea-going population—which had attracted into its ranks all that was most adventurous, most daring, most energetic, and most capable in the country—was heart and soul hostile to Spain. How much of that feeling was due to ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... then, at least the head in light and shade, from life, so as to give the expression of the eye. Fallacious, this latter, often, as an indication of character; but deeply significant of habit and power: thus the projecting, full, bead, which enables the smaller birds to see the smallest insect or grain with good in it, gives them much of their bright and often arch expression; ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... the heart of his error He must sweep through the silences dire, Like one in the dark of a desert Allured by fallacious fire." ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... died by pitying Heaven's decree, Nor proved so black, so base, a mind in thee! But vain the wish; my heart was doomed to prove Each torturing pang, but not one joy of love. Wouldst thou again fallacious prospects spread, And woo me from the confines of the dead? The pleasing scenes that charmed me once retrace— Gay scenes of rapture and ecstatic bliss? How did my heart embrace the dear deceit, And fondly cherish the deluding cheat! ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... said to an excited audience: "Do not imagine you are listening to me; it is history itself that speaks." 40 We can found no philosophy on the observation of four hundred years, excluding three thousand. It would be an imperfect and a fallacious induction. But I hope that even this narrow and dis-edifying section of history will aid you to see that the action of Christ who is risen on mankind whom he redeemed fails not, but increases 41; that the wisdom of divine rule ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... years of age. Though based on the ideas of phrenology and not, I believe, of high repute as a system of philosophy, it was as good a moral tonic as I can imagine to be placed in the hands of a youth, however fallacious may have been its general doctrines. So far as I can recall, it taught that all individual and social ills were due to men's disregard of the laws of Nature, which were classified as physical and moral. Obey the laws of health and we and our posterity will all reach the age of one ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... that a necessarily undesirable condition of life, of mind, of the physical world about us. 'Tis the dead things, we may remind ourselves, that after all are most entirely at rest, and might reasonably hold that motion (vicious, fallacious, infectious motion, as Plato inclines to think) covers all that is best worth being. And as for philosophy—mobility, versatility, the habit of thought that can most adequately follow the subtle movement of things, that, surely, were the ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... out such a line of practical investigation, which are to some extent foreign to the usual work of the mining engineer. For example, the conditions which determine the "short-circuiting" of an earth-current require to be carefully noted, because it would be fallacious to reason that because the line of least resistance lay in a certain direction, therefore an almost continuous lode would be found. Moreover, the electrical method must only be relied upon as a ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... "Dr. Hilary married us, but we haven't troubled the church much since. I never took any interest in the Christian religion to begin with; and when I looked into it I found it even more fallacious than I supposed." To account for this advanced position on the part of a simple market-gardener he added, "I've been a good deal ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... book there is much fallacious reasoning, and many conclusions that are not borne out by the facts. For example, he says that no species of bird of paradise has been diminished in number by slaughter for the feather trade; that ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... memory-pictures of adults, recourse to this method often fails us because the experiences are so remote as to have been largely, if not entirely, forgotten. The autobiographies of sexually perverse individuals have drawn my attention to the fallacious nature of memory. Its records are uncertain, but that especially is recorded which has aroused interest. Not only the interest felt in the experiences at the time determines what shall be recorded, but also the ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll |
