"Infallible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of it about a sore toe; or, when he had fits, burn two inches under his nose; or, if anything lay heavy on his stomach, scrape off and swallow as much of the powder as would lie on a silver penny—they were all infallible remedies. With analogy to these refinements, his common talk and conversation ran wholly in the praise of his Will, and he circumscribed the utmost of his eloquence within that compass, not daring to let slip a syllable without authority ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... never seen a more terrible, desperate, solemn struggle than the one which is going on in the soul of the poor trembling young woman, who, at the feet of that man, has to decide whether or not she will open her lips on those things which the infallible voice of God, united to the no less infallible voice of her womanly honour and self-respect, tell her never ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... small liking for putting a green man on the job. He realized that there was nothing personal in Truxton's attitude toward him. Truxton was not looking for a man, but for an efficient, reliable machine, one that had already been tested and found to be strong, trustworthy, infallible. ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... which he contents himself with there, that would lead any one to infer that the power of this invention, which is the novelty of it, was going to be a dangerous thing to society, or, indeed, that they were not the most harmless things in the world. It is the true cause of HEAT, and the infallible means of producing that under the greatest variety of conditions, which he appears to be trying to arrive at there. But what harm can there be in that, or in any other discovery of that kind. And there is no real impression ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... education as they were in the early years of Queen Elizabeth, when, as Fuller states in his Triple Reconciler, they were commanded "to read the chapters over once or twice by themselves that so they might be the better enabled to read them distinctly to the congregation." If the clergy were not infallible in the matter of the pronunciation of difficult words, it is not surprising that the clerk often puzzled or amused his hearers, and mangled or skipped the proper names, after the fashion of the mistress of a dame-school, who was wont to say when a small pupil ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... patrons—Lady Bygrave and Sir Reginald—had become Romanists. They had all three lately set off for Rome itself, under the escort of the Abbe Henon. They were there received with due honour by the Pope, and had the satisfaction of hearing from the infallible lips of his Holiness that England would, ere long, be won from the power of the infidel Protestants, and restored to the bosom of the Catholic Church; and believing themselves to be not the least important members of the British race, they returned home to spread the joyful intelligence ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... plain and straightforward are many of the speeches, that one is tempted to refer their wonderful power when spoken to some richness of elocution not appreciable now. Says Hume, treating of Demosthenes' manner, "Could it be copied, its success would be infallible over a modern assembly. It is rapid harmony exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning without any appearance of art; it is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom, involved in a continued stream of argument; and, of all human productions, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... learning and his wit: 'Twas Presbyterian, true blue; For he was of that stubborn crew Of errant saints, whom all men grant To be the true church militant: Such as do build their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun; Decide all controversy by Infallible artillery; And prove their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks; Call fire and sword and desolation A godly-thorough-Reformation, Which always must be carry'd on, And still be doing, never done, As if Religion were intended ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... as Paul says, have not a dead and dumb god, for which the Lord be praised! Nor will we countenance such idols. We have a living, speaking God, who gives us his infallible Word. We know how he is disposed toward us and what we may expect from him; namely: through faith in Christ we have forgiveness of sins and are his beloved children; and as evidence of acceptance with God, we have baptism and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... before them, and marriage and men are the usual topics of conversation. The wonder is that girls still make so many mistakes in their choice, after listening to the combined experience of all the married women of their acquaintance for several years. It shows that no one is infallible." ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... ruler. Work out your kingdom. Define and fill its bounds and metes, and never will usurper's foot print its soil. No invasion of your sovereignty is possible. The magnetisms of the universe hold you there, and every other being outside—an infallible police, bent on the protection of your rights, charged to secure them to you without so much as a flaw in their finest edges. Nature knows your kingdom, and charges all yet unsettled parties to go aside. But in the coming cycles she will develop ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Constitution of the United Lutheran Church provides: "Article II: Doctrinal Basis. Section 1. The United Lutheran Church in America receives and holds the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and as the only infallible rule and standard of faith and practise, according to which all doctrines and teachers are to be judged.—Section 2. The United Lutheran Church in America accepts the three ecumenical creeds; namely, the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian, as important testimonies drawn from the Holy Scriptures, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... of profound abasement. He didn't think himself good enough for anybody's kinship. He envied the purple-nosed old cab-drivers on the stand, the boot-black boys at the edge of the pavement, the two large bobbies pacing slowly along the Tower Gardens railings in the consciousness of their infallible might, and the bright scarlet sentries walking smartly to and fro before the Mint. He envied them their places in the scheme of world's labour. And he envied also the miserable sallow, thin-faced loafers blinking their obscene eyes and rubbing ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... wonderful nutmeg grater which fell to pieces at the first trial, a knife cleaner that spoiled all the knives, or a sweeper that picked the nap neatly off the carpet and left the dirt, labor-saving soap that took the skin off one's hands, infallible cements which stuck firmly to nothing but the fingers of the deluded buyer, and every kind of tinware, from a toy savings bank for odd pennies, to a wonderful boiler which would wash articles in its own steam with every prospect of exploding ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... may be ever otherwise with him; for he is persuaded, that much of man's dignity and welfare consists in his seeing things just as they are, without any disguise or delusion; and that whatever death really is, there is an infallible remedy provided against its greatest terrors, to which he can always have recourse. So far, on the other hand, as his observation on others, which has not been small, extends, he would notice, that, on the whole, young persons die more easily than the aged; he ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... impress their members with the idea that they are infallible and that it is impossible for them to sin. They do this for many reasons. First, in order that they may have their congregations in humble submission to any of the demands of the church, and, secondly, it enables them ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... for sale to the highest bidder the fee simple of the Borough of Gatton with the power of nominating two members for ever. That auctioneer is worth quoting: "Need I tell you, gentlemen, that this elegant contingency is the only infallible source of fortune, titles, and honours in this happy country? That it leads to the highest situations in the State? And that, meandering through the tempting sinuosities of ambition, the purchaser will find the margin strewed with roses, and his head quickly crowned with those ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... the stars at the time of birth, and their influence, which they perfectly understand beyond what mortal men can do. We have a constant proof of this in the corps candles, whose appearance is an infallible sign that death will follow, and they never fail going the way that the corps will go to be buried, be the way ever so unlikely that it should go through. But to give some instances ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... knot and unpowdered. She looked younger and prettier than with powder or wig, and Hamilton begged her to defy the fashion; but yielding in all else, on this point she was inflexible. "I am wiser than you in just a few things," she would say, playfully, for she firmly believed him infallible; "my position would suffer, were I thought eccentric. You cannot stand in rank without a uniform. I shall not yield to Sarah Jay nor even Kitty Duer. I am a little Republican, sir, and know my rights. And I know how ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Sidney in Arcadia, or of Monsieur d'Urfe upon the banks of Lignon; and began to consider with myself, which way I might recommend no less to posterity the happiness and innocence of the men of Chertsey: but to confess the truth, I perceived quickly, by infallible demonstrations, that I was still in old England, and not in Arcadia, or La Forrest; that if I could not content myself with anything less than exact fidelity in human conversation, I had almost as good go ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... differently. I should wield a rod of iron, and teach my own flesh and blood to obey by saying, 'Do this!' and 'You shall not do that!' The result could be no worse than it has been under the other system. Is the judgment of the new generation so infallible," he continued, "that it can afford to dispense with obedience and filial respect altogether? You have had one lesson already, Virginia, but you have failed to profit by it. When that fortune-hunting, idle dandy was whispering his pretty speeches in your ear, was it your own good sense that ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Itch, Healing Ointment for.—"Plain vaselin four ounces, sulphur two ounces, sal-ammoniac powder two drams. Mix and apply daily after cleansing the parts thoroughly with castile soap and soda water. This is also an almost infallible cure for common itch." The vaselin is very good and healing, while the sulphur has a soothing effect and is a ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... they might have lived for many years. How can I reconcile it to my conscience to assume such an awful responsibility?" "But," urged Van Swieten, "thousands have been rescued, where two or three have perished. I do not say that the remedy is infallible; but I can safely say that out of one hundred cases, ninety, by its use, are rendered innoxious. Oh, your majesty! when you remember that within ten years five members of your family have been victims to this terrific scourge—when you ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a-thinking and spoke not. A sure sign of love in one of her sex: for of all things else they speak ere they think. Also her voice did sink exceeding low in discoursing of thee, and murmured sweetly; another infallible sign. The bolt hath struck and rankles in her; oh, be joyful! Art silent? I see; 'tis settled. I shall go alone to Remiremont, alone and sad. But, pillage and poleaxes! what care I for that, since my ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Concord, viz.: "We believe, teach and confess that the only rule and standard, according to which all doctrines and teachings should be esteemed and judged, are nothing else than the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testament." We wish to test it by the infallible Word. By it, we are willing to be judged. According to it, our views and doctrines must stand ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... enumerates among the blessings that attend the reign of a just king "fine weather, calm seas, crops abundant, and trees laden with fruit." On the other hand, dearth, dryness of cows, blight of fruit, and scarcity of corn were regarded as infallible proofs that the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... situation became insecure, and even perilous. To obtain a passport was impossible; and as Mr. C. had formerly rendered himself obnoxious to the great Captain by some political papers, he was in daily and hourly expectation of being incarcerated in an Italian prison, which would have been the infallible road to death! ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Tobacco, like a Dutch Scoot or a Boatswain's Cabbin. The Walls being hung with Gilt Frames, as a Farriers shop with Horse shoes; which contain'd abundance of Rarities viz. Nectar and Ambrosia, May Dew, Golden Elixirs, Popular Pills, Liquid Snuff, Beautifying Waters, Dentifrisis Drops, Lozenges, all as infallible as ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the country. The weather continued sultry and fine. I have heard that Shelley all this time was in brilliant spirits. Not long before, talking of presentiment, he had said the only one that he ever found infallible was the certain advent of some evil fortune when he felt peculiarly joyous. Yet, if ever fate whispered of coming disaster, such inaudible but not unfelt prognostics hovered around us. The beauty of the place seemed unearthly in its excess: the distance we were at from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the officer. "Our men are not infallible. I think I can promise that it will not happen again." Then he rose. "I have some business waiting and you must excuse me. I can assure you that nothing which promises to throw any light upon ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... had something to say about most of the pictures: generally an unanswerable objection to some historical or technical inaccuracy, which sometimes convinced her, and always impressed her with a confiding sense of ignorance in herself and infallible judgment ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Stevens bet his share of the mine against $75 at a horse race one day, and lost; and George Warren, the man with the infallible hunch, died years back in squalid misery, driven there by drink and the memory of many empty discoveries. The syndicate that obtained the mine from Warren gave him a pension amply sufficient for his needs, I believe. It is but fair to state that had the mine been retained by Warren ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... would usually seek Jimmy Brackett, who would console her with some sticky sweetmeat, and strive to wither McWha with envenomed glances. McWha would reply with a grin, as if proud of having routed the little adventurer so easily. He had discovered that the name "Yaller Top" was an infallible weapon of rebuff, as Rosy-Lilly considered it a term of indignity. To his evil humour there was something amusing in abashing Rosy-Lilly with the title she most disliked. Moreover, it was an indirect rebuke to the "saft" way the others ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... is often a mystery in virtue. While the cunning of vice is no more than a pitiful imitation of that art which endeavors to cloak its workings in the thin veil of deception, the other, in some degree, resembles the sublimity of infallible truth. ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... that the first philosophers of the Ionian school did not recognize an efficient cause. In his opinion, they were decidedly materialistic. Now to question the authority of Aristotle may appear to many an act of presumption. But Aristotle was not infallible; and nothing is more certain than that in more than one instance he does great injustice to his predecessors.[404] To him, unquestionably, belongs the honor of having made a complete and exhaustive classification of causes, but there certainly does appear something ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Burton, and looking in the direction of the door, they saw that the young man had entered the room. "Is it not possible that the wound was caused by a regulation weapon of some sort after all; is the shape of the cut an infallible test as to the character of the ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... not merely in the name of country but in that of humanity itself? The solution so often sought amidst such long wars surely lies in this: Either give the Pope the temporal sovereignty of the world, or leave him only the spiritual sovereignty. Vicar of the Deity, absolute and infallible sovereign by divine delegation, he can but remain in the sanctuary if, ruler already of the human soul, he is not recognised by every nation as the one master of the body also—the king ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... secret. Both these objects you have attained. It is impossible I think, for any one to read the book about to be published, without being impressed with the truth of the moral it is intended to convey, and without seeing, by a thousand infallible signs, that its spring and its general course have flowed from reality and not fiction. Yet have you, by a few light alterations and addition, managed to effect that concealment of names and persons, which is due no less to the living than to ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were formulated in a secret letter to the Committee of Public Safety, which stated that the Army of the Alps had been kept inactive by the intrigues of the younger Robespierre and of Ricord. Many a head had fallen for reasons less serious than these. But Buonaparte had one infallible safeguard: he could not well be spared. After a careful examination of his papers, the Commissioners, Salicetti and Albitte, provisionally restored him to liberty, but not, for some weeks, to his rank of general (August 20th, 1794). The chief reason assigned for his ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... probably be the results of inexperience, of prejudice, or of erroneous views of the masonic system, and from which the authors themselves have, in repeated instances, subsequently receded—for Grand Masters and Grand Lodges, although entitled to great respect, are not infallible—and I could not, conscientiously, have consented to assist, without any qualifying remark, in the extension and perpetuation of edicts and opinions, which, however high the authority from which they emanated, I did not believe to be in accordance ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... evil in our eyes, and is being undone in the name of progress precisely as evil is undone and replaced by good on the lines along which we are evolving. This is indeed the Illusion of Illusions; for it gives us infallible and appalling assurance that if our political ruin is to come, it will be effected by ardent reformers and supported by enthusiastic patriots as a series of necessary steps in our progress. Let the Reformer, the Progressive, the Meliorist then reconsider himself and his ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... midnight and at daybreak; and, waiting four hours at one little station, the diary says she was so thoroughly worn-out she was compelled to lie down on the dirty floor. On the homeward route she spoke at Antioch College, and was the guest of President Hosmer's family. According to the infallible little journal: "The president said he had listened to all the woman suffrage lecturers in the field, but tonight, for the first time, he had heard an argument; a compliment above all others, coming from an aged and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... commodities produced by the associations; they form, of course, a part of the cost of production, and must necessarily be covered by the price of the product. That this shall take place fully and universally is ensured with infallible certainty by the free mobilisation of labour. A production in which these repayments were not completely covered by the price of the commodities produced would fail to attract labour until the diminished supply of the commodities had produced the requisite rise in price. When the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... would impress their hearers. On some occasions, they do indeed make use of little sticks to remind them of the different subjects they have to discuss; and with ease they form a kind of local memory, and that so sure and infallible, that they will speak for a great length of time—sometimes for three or four hours together—and display twenty different presents, each of which requires an entire discourse, without forgetting any thing, and ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... of many diseases that mankind is subject to, and it has been prescribed with success by some of our best practitioners. It opens up the pores, and restores the circulation of the blood, and the despondent patient that smiles, is in a fair way to recovery. While this book is not recommended as an infallible cure for consumption, if I can throw the patient into the blues by the pictures, I can knock the blues out by vaccinating with ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... nations is doubtfull, and euen the same for the more part fabulous (that alwaies excepted which we find in the holie scriptures) I wish not any man to leane to that which shall be here set downe as to an infallible truth, sith I doo but onlie shew other mens conjectures, grounded neuerthelesse vpon likelie reasons, concerning that matter whereof there is now left but little other certeintie, or rather none ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (1 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... was in the straw-bonnet line, another a milliner, a third a dress-maker, and so forth, I will answer it by stating that the left forefinger of the seamstress, long since vulcanized into a little file, furnishes the infallible sign which indicates the class. To the practised eye, the varieties are known by many a token: by the smart little close-grained cereal bonnet which little Straw-Goods put away before she came into the dance; by the spicy creation of silk and ribbons which ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... children, and then she knew how irrelevant and unprofessional that was. Dr. Hughes was telling her to look at something, and she did look, and she saw Dr. Parkman's hands, only it seemed they were not human hands at all, but some infallible instrument, an instrument with an unconquerable soul,—and then everything was dancing before her eyes, her ears were pounding harder and harder, her knees sinking, everything swaying, some one had hold of her, and some one else, a great ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... Christ is made a witness to the authenticity and infallible authority of the Old ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... Posnet he exposes and ridicules the Dramatic Censorship, just as in Getting Married he exposes and ridicules the popular conception of happy domestic life, and in like manner in The Doctor's Dilemma the superstition that the faculty of medicine is infallible. ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... with the greatest volubility, at great length, to describe his system. He said that it was infallible, if played with coolness; that he had it from a chap at Baden, who had lost by it, it was true, but because he had not enough capital; if he could have stood one more turn of the wheel, he would have had all his money back; that he and several more chaps were going to make a bank, and try it; ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suspicious clause in the charter, because of his age, Matt Peasley's youth and practical maritime knowledge should have offset Cappy's error; and even if both had erred, there still remained the matchless Skinner, as suspicious as a burglar, as keen as a razor, as infallible as a chronometer. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... be passing, was broken every now and then by some affectionate apostrophe to these four-footed friends. He said they understood everything he said to them—and I believe they did understand a great deal of it. But at all events, dogs and cats, like children, have some infallible tact for discovering at once who is and who is not really fond of their company; and I venture to say, Scott was never five minutes in any room before the little pets of the family, whether dumb or lisping, had found out his kindness for ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... once," said Paganel, "a son of the great Haroun-al-Raschid, who was unhappy, and went to consult an old Dervish. The old sage told him that happiness was a difficult thing to find in this world. 'However,' he added, 'I know an infallible means of procuring your happiness.' 'What is it?' asked the young Prince. 'It is to put the shirt of a happy man on your shoulders.' Whereupon the Prince embraced the old man, and set out at once to search for his talisman. He visited all ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... arm up, and jingling the bell to his ear, first on one side and then on the other, till the track of a hyaena gave him a clue, and in two or three more steps he found it. A hyaena had carried it into the grass and dropped it. Bravo for the infallible horn, and well done the king for his honesty in sending it. Speke gave the king the bottle and gauge, which delighted him amazingly, and the old doctor, who begged for pomba, got a ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... places. Some of our common oaks bear their leaves green all winter; but they are generally pollards, and such as are shelter'd in warm corners and hedge rows. To speak then particularly of oaks, and generally of all other trees of the same kind, (by some infallible characters) notice should be taken of the manner of their spreading, stature and growth, shape and size of the acorn, whether single or in clusters, the length or shortness of the stalks, roundness of the ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... would come forward and shake hands with you—that one infallible sign of sincere approval. In all my life, wherever it failed me I left the hall sick and ashamed, knowing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his friends Prescott found himself becoming more of an optimist than he had been for some days. Cheerfulness is riveted in such a physical base as youth and strength, and Prescott was no exception. He could even smile behind his hand when he saw General Wood draw forth the infallible bowie-knife, pull a piece of pine from a rickety box that held fuel for the stove and begin to whittle from it long, symmetrical shavings that curled beautifully. This was certain evidence that General Wood, for the evening at least, was inclined to ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... and hearts must be saturated with it by many an hour of solitary reflection, by meditation which will diffuse its aroma like a fragrant perfume through our characters, and by the habit of bringing all circumstances, moods, and desires to be tested by its infallible criterion, and by the unreluctant acceptance of its guidance at every moment of our lives. There are many of us who, in a real though terribly imperfect sense, hold the truth, but who know nothing, or next to nothing, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... as devoutly as the Protestant obeys his Bible, the Catholic his Church, or the scientific man follows up the results of his demonstrations. That is, in fact, the position they assume. They claim to have attained in matters of religion to demonstration as clear and infallible as the philosopher does in pure science. They say no longer "We believe," but "We know." These people care little for the vagaries of Dark Circles, or even the doings of young ladies with "doubles." The flight of Mrs. Guppy through the air, the elongation of Mr. Home's braces, the insertion ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... law, then, comes to this: Every well-developed male individual of the present day successively passes through the three stages of love through which the European races have passed. The three stages are not traceable in all men with infallible certainty, there are numerous individuals whose development in this respect has been arrested, but in the emotional life of every highly differentiated member of the human race they are clearly distinguishable, and the greater ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... shoulder, and ribbons fluttered to his feet The hemp-dresser, who was also the barber and hair-dresser of the district, had cut his hair evenly, by covering his head with a bowl, and clipping off the protruding locks, an infallible method for guiding the shears. Thus arrayed, the poor child was less poetic, certainly, than with his curls streaming in the wind, and his Saint John Baptist's sheepskin about him; but he knew nothing of this, and everybody admired ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... attentively will see in it that infallible criterion of hypocrisy and pretense in professions of regard, viz., extravagant ideas feebly and incoherently expressed. When the heart dictates what is said, the thoughts are natural, and the language plain; but in composition like the above, we see a continual ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... the Tiber is low, so much has its bed been silted up that only about three feet below the keystone of the sewer can be seen. Subsequently all the sewers of Rome were connected with it; and at the present day the nose gives infallible proof that it carries off a very large portion of the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... said that, in the case of the Church of Rome, there is not only a process of development, but an infallible developing power, and that this affords a guaranty, strong as the Divine promise itself, against that risk of error which is attendant on the ordinary methods of human teaching,—we answer, that this is a mere ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... harmonising ideas, which I have described as poetical, which were never meant to be reconciled or harmonised. And then there is the added difficulty that, owing to the system of the Church, the ideas of the earliest Christian teachers, like St. Paul, have been accepted as infallible too; and hence arises the dilemma of having to bring into line a whole series of statements, made, as in St. Paul's case, by a man of intense emotion, which are neither consistent with each other, nor, in all cases, with the teaching of Christ. My idea of Christianity is to get as close ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... apprenticed to an honest Bowyer who dwelt in the ward of Cheype, and was rumoured to possess great wealth. Rumour was quite as infallible in those days as at the present time, but it happened then as now to be sometimes right by accident. It stumbled upon the truth when it gave the old Bowyer a mint of money. His trade had been a profitable one in the time of King ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... words. The verses may scan faultlessly, the lines may read smoothly and be without harsh and difficult combinations, and yet the total rhythmic effect may be indifferent or unpleasant. When a critic dilates on his infallible detection of an indefinable somewhat, independent of material aspects of the verse and traceable to a mystic charm of 'thought,' it may very well be that the unanalyzed thing lies in just such dynamic and melodic conditions of rhythm ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... be adding to its deleterious principle instead of neutralising it: but in thus striking away a prop from the confidence of the poor, I thank God I can furnish them with other preservatives and disinfectants, which I take it upon me to say, they will find as simple and practicable as they are infallible. For the first, the liberal use of cold water and observance of free ventilation, with slaked lime to wash the walls, and quick lime when they can get it, to purify their dung heaps and necessaries, are among the best; but when actually infected, then heat is the only purificator yet known ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... weeks after this; for he was apparently the only traveller in the southern provinces, and it was my daily fate to sit opposite to him at tables d'hote and in railway trains. He may be known by two infallible signs, - his hands are fat, and he tucks his napkin into his shirt-collar. In spite of these idiosyncrasies, he seemed to me a reserved and inoffensive person, with singularly little of the demonstrative good-humor that he has been described as possessing. I saw no one who re- minded ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... dropped asleep, and left the apartment on tiptoe, closing the door after him with the utmost precaution. "This devil of a fellow," he muttered, shaking his head; "I said at the time he would create a sensation here, and I measure his effect by an infallible thermometer. My mother has noticed him, and he must therefore, perforce, be remarkable." He went down to the stables, not without some slight annoyance, when he remembered that the Count of Monte Cristo ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... so well? I have not given you my word to reveal nothing. You confided in my rare quality of silence; you confided in me because you had proved me. Man is not infallible, even when he is named Karloff." She lifted from a vase her flowers, from which she shook the water. "Laws have been passed or annulled; laws have died at the executive desk. Who told you that this ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... religion, and he exults in his artifice; for, in a letter, where he is soliciting the minister for employment, he says:—"The church is much exasperated against me; yet as that is the heaviest article, so it is undoubtedly the easiest conquered, and I know the infallible method of doing it." And, in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he promises to reform his religion to that prelate's liking! He took the sacrament as an ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Queen. He was fond of mediation. He considered it his special mission in the world to mediate. He imagined himself as looked up to by the nations as the great arbitrator of Christendom, and was wont to issue his decrees as if binding in force and infallible by nature. He had protested vigorously against the Spanish-French marriages, and declared that the princes were justified in formalizing an opposition to them, at least until affairs in France were restored to something like order. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Bennett, McClure, Gilder and Curtis, attained their high station in the world of letters largely because of their ability to unearth men of genius. Morgan, Rockefeller, Theodore N. Vail, James J. Hill, and other builders of industrial and commercial empires laid strong their foundations by almost infallible wisdom in the selection of lieutenants. Even in the world of sports the names of Connie Mack, McGraw, Chance, Moran, Carrigan and Stallings shine chiefly because of their keen ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the Jews appointed some pickaxes, spades, and baskets to be made of silver for the honor of the work. But the good bishop St. Cyril, lately returned from exile, beheld all these mighty preparations without any concern, relying on the infallible truth of the scripture prophecies: as, that the desolation of the Jewish temple should last till the end;[22] and that one stone should not be left on another;[23] and being full of the spirit of God, he foretold, with the greatest confidence, that the Jews, so far ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... forward, she had only one thought; to have a child, another child; she confided her wish to everybody, and in consequence of this, a neighbor told her of an infallible method. This was, to make her husband a glass of water with a pinch of ashes in it, every evening. The farmer consented to try it, but without success; so they said to each other: "Perhaps there are some secret ways?" And they tried to find out. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Luther Barr, the famous ivory importer," he said, with far more respect in his tones than he had used to the boys; whom indeed, he looked upon as talented chaps, but still boys—which to men of his caliber is an infallible sign that anything such youthful persons may attempt is extremely likely to go wrong. How erroneous such an opinion is, those of our readers who have followed the adventures ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that's all. Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... what my slave has said. He speaks with knowledge. I saved his life in the deserts of Africa when he was all but dead with fever, by administering to him one of my wonderful potions; he at once recovered and devoted himself to my service. I have infallible remedies for every disease, therefore do you who are sick come to me and be cured; while for you who do not suffer I can do as much or more, by telling you of your future, what evils to avoid and what chances ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... benevolently anxious that his fellow-creatures may not be taken in by the rustic meteorologists, satirically furnishes a number of infallible tests to determine the approach of a severe season. He entitles his contribution to meteorological science,—"Jonathan Weatherwise's Prognostications. As it is not likely that I have a long Time to act on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... shorter way— Who shall dispute what the Reviewers say? Their word's sufficient; and to ask a reason, In such a state as theirs, is downright treason. True judgment now with them alone can dwell; Like Church of Rome, they're grown infallible. Dull superstitious readers they deceive, Who pin their easy faith on critic's sleeve, 100 And knowing nothing, everything believe! But why repine we that these puny elves Shoot into giants?—we may thank ourselves: ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... friendship of the great, as another name for servitude; but when his talents procured him a situation under the emperor, he facetiously compared himself to those quacks who, themselves plagued by a perpetual cough, offer to sell an infallible remedy for one. Sir THOMAS MORE, in his "Utopia," declares that no man ought to be punished for his religion; yet he became a fierce persecutor, flogging and racking men for his own "true faith." At the moment the poet ROUSSEAU was giving versions of the Psalms, full of unction, as our Catholic ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... and Royal Highness, Archduchess of Austria, Princess of Hungary and Tuscany, Crown Princess of Saxony, etc., etc., smash these paper records of infallible royal rectitude, and ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... earliest times quotations were indicated by ticks on the margin or by indented paragraphs. Sometimes the substance of the quotation was written in a smaller hand or otherwise distinguished from the body of the text. Scribes were by no means infallible and corrections are not uncommon. Erasures on papyrus were difficult, if not impossible, and therefore other means of correction had to be used. This is particularly the case because writing material was too expensive to be wasted and a copyist's mistake could ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... the distant northern suburb in silence. It was evidently useless for me to attempt to speak, and experience informed me that I need not expect to hear a word fall from the lips of my companion. Experience, however, is not always infallible. After driving for half an hour in stolid silence, Ariel astounded me by suddenly ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... the blemishes in "Robinson Crusoe;" those are left to the Infallible Critic. The book is as ludicrous as "Hamlet" from one aspect and as profound as "Don Quixote" from another. In its pages the wonder tales and wonder facts meet and resolve; realism and idealism are joined—above all, there ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... and console this woman who is gentleness and simplicity and who is sinking there while she lightly touches me with her presence—but exactly because she is there I cannot lie to her, I can do nothing against her grief, her perfect, infallible grief. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... so near Had sold all their souls long before), 210 As he swallowed down the bacon he wished himself a Jew For the sake of another crime more: For Sinning itself is but half a recreation, Unless it ensures most infallible Damnation. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... the tone of legend unreality, uncertainty. With the same entire consciousness of matter of fact with which I might write of the statesmen or generals of my early manhood, he writes of One who, in his early manhood, overcame death by death, and "shewed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs." ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... found his feet among the heterogeneous band who walk on at London theatres. Some were frankly vulgar, some were pretentiously genteel, a good many were young men of gentle birth from the public schools and universities. Paul's infallible instinct drew him into timid companionship with the last. He knew little of the things they talked about, golf and cricket prospects, and the then brain-baffling Ibsen, but he listened modestly, hoping to learn. He reaped the advantage of having played "the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... in his opposition to anything like injustice, though frankly admitting that youth is not infallible. One of his boyish speculations was as to what would become of things if their qualities were taken away. While on this quest, he got hold of Sir William Hamilton's Logic, and read it to such good effect that when, years afterwards, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... which we have more than once alluded, passing off in dread mutterings, that, in the deep quiet of all other things, bore a close affinity to the rumbling of a surf upon the sea-shore. The surface of the lake was first broken after one of these symptoms, and it was this infallible sign of a gale which had assured Maso there was no time to lose. This movement of the element in a calm is a common phenomenon on waters that are much environed with elevated and irregular head-lands, and it is a certain proof that wind is on some distant ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... say this work was too sudden, and that these baptisms were too soon. Nothing of the kind. It was only another chapter in the Acts of the Apostles, and in perfect harmony with what is stated by infallible Wisdom. There it is recorded of the multitudes, after one sermon by Peter, "Then they that gladly received his word were baptised: and the same day there were added unto ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... six times six are thirty-six, that two from ten leaves eight; that eight and seven are fifteen. These are, perhaps, the only things we are agreed about; but, although they are so few, they are of inestimable value, because they make an infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts them him we know to be substantially sane; sufficiently sane; in the working essentials, sane. Whoever disputes a single one of them him we know to be wholly insane, and qualified for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... marked the character of Cromwell, it was the abiding sense, from first to last, of his personal responsibility to God Almighty, whose servant and instrument he felt himself to be. I believe he was loyal to his conscience, if not to his cause. He may have committed grave errors, for he was not infallible. It may have been an error that he ruled virtually without a Parliament, since it was better that a good measure should be defeated than that the cause of liberty should be trodden under foot. It was better that parliaments should wrangle and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... when the chief Lenoir was at Paris, and the reins of government were in the hands of his younger brother, a company of adventurers from Belgium, with a capital of three hundred thousand francs, and an infallible system for playing rouge et noir, and they boldly challenged the bank of Lenoir, and sat down before his croupiers, and defied him. They called themselves in their pride the Contrebanque de Noirbourg: they had their ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a pair of boots, a silver pencil, or a horse of small value, as an infallible specific for getting rid of a troublesome guest. He always had the satisfaction to find he never came back to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... I call him back, your majesty, that the prince may convince himself that his memory of faces is not infallible? ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... reforming sects. But to see Hinduism in proper perspective we must remember that from the time of the Buddha till now, the composition of religious literature in India has been almost uninterrupted and that almost every century has produced works accepted by some sect as infallible scripture. For most Vishnuites the Bhagavad-gita is the beginning of sacred literature and the Narayaniya[66] is also held in high esteem: the philosophy of each sect is usually determined by a commentary on the Brahma Sutras: the Bhagavata Purana (perhaps in a vernacular paraphrase) and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... insolvent Person upon the first sight. The severe Usage his Apparel has met with from the Bristles, or else his conscious Countenance in the shy and suspicious Look he casts over his Shoulder upon every one he hears treading behind him, are the infallible Tokens by which they form their Judgment. Having pitch'd upon their Man, they pursue him at a proper Distance, till they find an Opportunity to speak with him alone, and then tell him a Person has hired them to watch diligently ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... of Sir Henry Wotton's being designed for the employment of an ambassador, came to Eton, and requested from him some experimental rules for his prudent and safe carriage in his negociations; to whom he smilingly gave this for an infallible aphorism,—that, to be in safety himself, and serviceable to his country, he should always, and upon all occasions, speak the truth (it seems a state paradox). "For," says Sir Henry Wotton, "you shall never be believed; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... the Big Medicine to heal his wounds, the water had no effect and he soon died. So these Medicine Waters were not only a panacea for all diseases, and injuries received in honourable warfare, but an infallible test of the courage of every wounded warrior engaged in ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... while (for I was beginning to melt), and said how much I longed to be a soldier; on which Nora recurred to her infallible 'Ah! now, would you leave me, then? But, sure, you're not big enough for anything more than a little drummer.' To which I replied, by swearing that a soldier I would ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... [illeg.] of loyalty; to whom their majesties, with sweetest smiles, acknowledge the obligation by a genteel bow, and an elegant curtesy. This congratulatory noise of the Stentors is looked on by many, particularly country ladies and gentlemen, as an infallible thermometer, that ascertains the warmth ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... that axiom, and triumphantly proved it true. Almost the historic happy marriage of the world! Such was his marriage, and such it must have been, for never was man declared beforehand more infallible for the greatest of decisions. He understood: understood love, marriage, and (hardest of all perhaps!) conduct—what it may do, and not do, for happiness. That is to say, he understood how far conduct helps ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... morals. As the Parliament of Paris had made some resistance to the Scotch minister on this occasion, M. de Montesquieu asked him why he had never tried to overcome this resistance by a method almost always infallible in England, by the grand mover of human actions—in a word, by money. "These are not," answered Law, "geniuses so ardent and so generous as my countrymen; but they are much more incorruptible." It is certainly true that a society which is free for a limited time ought ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a silly mistake. Doctors are not infallible, you know! He's brutal to have suggested it even. Oh damn these colonials! No English doctor ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... however, something took place that caused even Columbus' bold heart to beat quicker with fear, for the compass, that infallible instrument of direction, which was trusted by the mariners of those days even more than it is in the present time, began to veer around from the north and no longer pointed steadily to the pole. Only a few of Columbus' men were aware of this, and Columbus strengthened their ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... often displaying a decided liking for the very people whose looks and manners had been previously considered certain to displease her—he was now almost as much surprised as Zack, when he witnessed her reception of Mat. It was an infallible sign of Madonna's approval, if she followed up an introduction by handing her slate of her own accord to a stranger. When she was presented to people whom she disliked, she invariably kept it by her side until ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... middle, suffered themselves to be thrown into a pool of water. One of them sank immediately, but the other continued struggling a short time upon the surface of the water, which the mob deeming an infallible sign of her guilt, pulled her out, and insisted that she should immediately impeach all her accomplices in the craft. She accordingly told them that, in the neighbouring village of Burton, there were several old women as "much witches as she was." Happily for her, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... stepped into the pulpit of St. John's —and it will do me good to talk to you, this once, frankly. You have reiterated to-day, in no uncertain terms, doctrines which I once believed, which I was brought up to think infallible. But I have lived since then, and life itself has made ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... authority of each separate book; it is not enough to prove the Divine origin of a single book in order to infer the Divine origin of the rest. (97) In that case we should have to assume that the council of Pharisees was, in its choice of books, infallible, and this could never be proved. (98) I am led to assert that the Pharisees alone selected the books of the Old Testament, and inserted them in the canon, from the fact that in Daniel ii. is proclaimed the doctrine of the ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... silver-gilt buckles, which she had worn during pregnancy. This offering is now suspended around the present effigy, and for a small consideration any lady applicant is allowed to fasten it round her waist. The effect is infallible, and quite equals that of the rock and silver Virgin. This remarkable inductive power may perhaps be some day explained by philosophers, but it is now exceedingly dangerous, and unfortunate results have occurred, when in a sudden impulse of ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... de Diane, sister of M. de Polignac, and the Baron de Besenval and M. de Vaudreuil, particular friends of the Polignac family, made use of means, the success of which was infallible. One of my friends (Comte de Moustier), who was in their secret, came to tell me that Madame de Polignac was about to quit Versailles suddenly; that she would take leave of the Queen only in writing; that the Comtesse Diane and M. de Vaudreuil had dictated her letter, and the whole affair was ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... Evarin couldn't be infallible; he hadn't even recognized me as Race Cargill! Or—suddenly the sweat broke out, again, on my forehead—or had he? Had the whole thing been one of those sinister, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... limine as to the character of the proceedings at Bourges. For the deposition of Eugenius was either a rightful and valid exercise of conciliar authority or it was not. If it was not—if the council had wrongfully or uncanonically condemned the successor of Peter—how could it be infallible? and when should its legislation in any other particulars be indisputable? On the other hand, if the deposition was a valid one, with what consistency could the French continue to regard Eugenius as their legitimate pastor? It was a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the problems his position wakes her to. Alone, not confused, but seeking something to lean on, she grasps the Church, which proves a broken reed. No whit disheartened, she turns from one sect to another, trying each by the infallible touchstone of that clear, child-like conscience. The two old, lonely Quakers rest her foot awhile. But the eager soul must work, not rest in testimony. Coming North at last, she makes her own religion one of sacrifice and toil. Breaking away from, rising above, all forms, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... to give an instance tending to show how unaccountably individuals deceive themselves, and imagine themselves to be somewhat rapidly mending their condition, while they ought to be persuaded that, by that infallible standard, the balance of trade, they are on the high road to ruin. Some years ago, in better times than the present, a ship left one of the towns of New England with 70,000 specie dollars. She proceeded to Mocha, on the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... pensions, he would be robbing the Court of its chief implements of corruption, and protecting the representative against his chief motive in selling his country. He conceived that he would thus be promoting a far more infallible means than any scheme of electoral reform could have provided, for reviving the integrity and independence of the House of Commons. In his eyes, the evil resided not in the constituencies, but in their representatives; not in the small number of the one, but in the ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Scripture," as the modern phrase is, we may well pass by many minor arguments, and emphasize the one great reason for holding this view, viz.: If it is God the Holy Ghost who speaks in Scripture, then the Bible is the word of God, and like God, infallible. A recent brilliant writer has challenged us to show where the Bible anywhere calls itself "The word of God."[9] The most elementary student of the subject can, with the aid of a concordance, easily ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... gentlemen,' says he, for he was a very polite sort of a chap, 'here's the universal 'lixier of life; it cures all complaints, and takes a man, if he has a mind to it and has proper faith in what it will do for him, right clear away to the end of the world. It's as infallible as the Pope of Rome and all his cardinals, and is patronised by all the first haristocracy and clergy in the country. Only one shilling a bottle, ladies and gentlemen; taken how you will and when you will—it's all the same—in a glass of grog, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... people found an infallible way to keep those of their order out of the gutters?" asked Elder Gray. "Ephraim seems repentant; if he is willing to try again, we must be willing ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... individual, of church, or of inarticulate nature, that escaped Macaulay and impresses Motley. The one would govern the universe with the arbitrary rules of a political clique; the other applies to all the infallible test of a universal philosophy. Both writers are thoroughly incorporated with their subject; but where Macaulay was the captive of a mighty and often just prejudice, Motley is the exponent of a living principle. Everywhere Macaulay was a Whig and an Englishman; everywhere ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... an excellent indication of how popular the periwig was amongst the lawmakers of the land. Farquhar, in a comedy called "Love and a Bottle," brought out in 1698, says, "A full wig is imagined to be as infallible a token of wit ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... was to employ the common, wayside plant that bore the saint's name. Mental healers will not be surprised to learn that because of the strong popular belief in its efficacy to cure all fleshly ills, it actually seemed to possess miraculous powers. For scrofula it was said to be the infallible remedy, and presently we find Linnaeus grouping this flower, and all its relatives, under the ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... unnatural Mistakes, and Hypocritical Hypotheses, I resolv'd to controvert him, and endeavour to prove that 'tis meerly his malice that has abus'd me and the rest, without Reason or Provocation; and that his own Wit and Morals are not so Infallible, but they lye also open to the censure of any Poetical Critick, who has Courage and Sense ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... Tyson was strong, rather than brilliant. With scarcely any imagination, he possessed a judgment almost infallible in its decisions; great powers of reason, which were more conspicuous for the certainty of its conclusions than remarkable for displaying the train of inferences by which it arrived at them. He possessed wonderful ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... diseases, erysipelas, and eczema. Passion, sinful thought, avarice, envy, jealousy, selfishness, all press for external bodily expression. Even false philosophies, false theology, and false conceptions of God make their unwholesome influence felt in every bodily tissue. By infallible law, mental states are mirrored upon the body, but because the process is complex and gradual, we fail to observe the connection. Mind translates itself ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... taken from the intestines, shewing that the tiger does not waste much time on mastication, but tears and eats the flesh in large masses. The liver is found to have numbers of separate lobes, and the natives say that this is an infallible test of the age of a tiger, as a separate lobe forms on the liver for each year of the tiger's life. I have certainly found young tigers having but two and three lobes, and old tigers I have found with six, seven, and even ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... family-society, at least; and are trained up by their parents to some rule of conduct and behaviour. But this must be admitted, that, if such a state of mutual war and violence was ever real, the suspension of all laws of justice, from their absolute inutility, is a necessary and infallible consequence. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... first reason that I gave you these Loire drawings was this of their infallible decision; the second was their extreme modesty in color. They are, beyond all other works that I know existing, dependent for their effect on low, subdued tones; their favorite choice in time of day being either dawn or twilight, and even ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... powers were then unrivaled, and the list of cures which she is claimed to have effected surpasses that of all the patent medicines of our day. She was an infallible healer, alike of the diseases of the mind and of the body. A glimpse of her broken nose and battered face instantaneously cured men of democracy and unbelief. Heretics stood confounded in her presence, while the halt, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... as her sister," repeated Mr. Wilmot; "I think we have good proof that she is much more so. I hope you are now convinced that Fanny is not infallible, though I will confess I am surprised and disappointed, for I thought she was really of ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... internally a celestial globe in which figures of the sun, moon, and other planets formed with the greatest skill moved, being impelled by weights and wheels, so that performing their course in certain and fixed intervals they pointed out the hour night and day with infallible certainty; also the twelve signs of the zodiac with certain appropriate characters, moved with the firmament, contained within themselves ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... intervals over the entire region where it is certain that Babylon anciently stood, and between the "heaps" the soil is in many places composed of fragments of pottery and bricks, and deeply impregnated with nitre, infallible indications of its having once been covered with buildings. As the traveller descends southward from Baghdad he finds these indications increase, until, on nearing the Euphrates, a few miles beyond Mohawil, he notes that they have become continuous, and finds ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... learns, is of the same infallible stuff as the rest of life. After all it is only the personal opinion of the judge between two persons swearing on oath to diametrically opposed statements; and for all the impressiveness of deep furrowed brows I did not find that the average ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... hand, if an act is done by an exercise of reason or intelligence, it proceeds according to a rule which the understanding has itself devised for the purpose of carrying out a preconceived aim. Hence it is that action according to rule may miss its aim, while instinct is infallible. ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... all, comes the cramming over-production of food, farinaceous and animal, under which the overfed stomach of the country is afflicted with nightmare, as we learn on the unimpeachable authority of that wisest and most infallible of all one-idea'd nostrummongers, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... religious notions, as you must know, the Roman pontiff is the vicar of Christ, and infallible; he can never err. The atheists of the National Convention and the Theophilanthropists of the Directory not only denied his demi-divinity, but transformed him into a satyr; and in pretending to tear the veil of superstition, annihilated all belief in a God. The ignorant part of our ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... consequently, addressed to the senate the following remarkable speech:—"I entertain the highest admiration for that statesman; I believe that few men have rendered greater services to mankind than he has. Yet I do not believe that Sir Robert Peel was always infallible in his political career. It is my opinion that Sir Robert Peel would have left a much more illustrious name behind him, if, instead of having been compelled by circumstances to introduce reforms, he himself had originated them. I think that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... scornfully. Anker himself paid no attention to them, but went his own way. Presently he was a king's son in disguise, and was betrothed to the eldest daughter of the King—and the new time was coming. Or when his mood was quieter, he would sit and work at an infallible clock which would not show the time; it would be the time—the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... visualized the consummation of that wish, she saw with her mind's eye the other sitting at the piano in his wheel chair, his music strewn round him, the air still vibrant with triumph and gratitude, his face turned eagerly toward the door as toward the source of an infallible reassurance, of beautiful accomplishment, of ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... be said of Green that he combines the merits of the scientific and literary historian. He has written an honest and artistic piece of work. But he is not infallible. I have been told on good authority that in his reference to the Thirty Years' War he has hardly stated a single fact correctly, yet the general impression you get from his account is correct. Saintsbury writes ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... albumin in the latter weeks; but when the blood-pressure jumped to 170 or 190, then we knew that toxemia—eclampsia—convulsions—were imminent. So we have in recent years, come to look upon the blood-pressure as an exceedingly important factor—as an infallible indicator of approaching trouble—as a red signal light at the precipice or the point of danger; and it not only warns us of the danger, but it tells us about how near the boilers are to the bursting point. The glassy eye, the headache, the full bounding pulse and the blurring ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... the Reverend Septimus fell a-musing, his good mother took it to be an infallible sign that he 'wanted support,' the blooming old lady made all haste to the dining-room closet, to produce from it the support embodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-made biscuit. It was a most wonderful closet, worthy of Cloisterham and of Minor Canon ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Then he tried another infallible recipe for sleep He imagined, or tried to imagine, endless lines of rolling waves. This also ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... of the old Roman in me. This morning, when I got up, I remarked that my sword had got caught in one of the aiguillettes, and that my shoulder-belt had slipped quite off. That is an infallible sign." ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... question; steady-going old Barham, confessing nobody but the Jackdaw of Rheims, and fearless alike of Ritualism, Darwinism, or disestablishment; iridescent clearness of Thomas Hood—the wildest, deepest infinity of marvelously jestful men; manly and rational Sydney, inevitable, infallible, inoffensively wise of wit;[3]—they are gone their way, and ours is far diverse; and they and all the less-known, yet pleasantly and brightly endowed spirits of that time, are suddenly as unintelligible to us as the Etruscans—not a feeling they had that we can share in; and these pictures ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... any other. The world may hold you to be infallible. I do not. I am far from believing that from your judgments there ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... have blood spots made on the portieres at the house of Phelps by the man who removed the needle, probably the unknown himself, possibly his—or her—agent. In any case it is a clue and—THE ONLY DIRECT AND INFALLIBLE CLUE IN EXISTENCE TO THE CRIMINAL! Also I have the evidence of the snake venom and of the botulin toxin here. Sooner or later the person who killed Werner because he suspected things will wake up to the fact that we possess tangible ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... material evidences assembled in the chateau. In the cases are not only large collections of celts, but also the carved bones, horn, and stones which, by their distribution through the stalagmite of caves, or through the gravel of ancient river beds, give infallible proof of the presence of man. One floor contains a collection not less interesting, though illustrating the manners of a much later age. It is formed of the military weapons, bridges, fortifications, camps, etc., which were constructed to illustrate the "life ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... feeling that the work has something to say; that it is not a mere reproduction of some form, but is, rather, an idea impersonated, and therefore it has life, it has significance. The criticism of the immediate hour is not necessarily infallible because it is contemporary. What does ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... one of our antiquarian volumes, and in the description of Leeds is an account of Mr. Thoresby's famous museum there-what do you think is one of the rarities?—a knife taken from one of the Mohocks! Whether tradition is infallible or not, as you say, I think so authentic a relic will make their history indisputable. Castles, Chinese houses, tombs, negroes, Jews, Irishmen, princesses, and Mohocks—what a farrago do I send you! I trust that a letter from England to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... mere principles of natural science, we should feel these difficulties to be insurmountable. But, in this great inquiry, we have two sources of knowledge, to which nothing analogous is to be found in the history of physical science, and which will prove infallible guides, if we resign ourselves to their direction with sincere desire to discover the truth. These are,—the light of conscience,—and the light of divine revelation. In making this statement, I am aware that I tread on delicate ground,—and ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... Kitty would have made! What an infallible eye she had for measuring a person! No servant-question ever dangled its hot interrogation point before his eyes. Kitty saw to that. She was the real manager of the household affairs, for all that he paid the bills. Some day she would marry a proper man; but heaven keep that day as far off as possible. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... caricatured in the roseate environs of Castle Bunthorne. A number of people present had never been in a theatre, either for lack of opportunity or from a moral objection to theatres. Many others, who seldom missed a melodrama at the Hanbridge Theatre Royal, avoided operas by virtue of the infallible instinct which caused them to recoil from anything exotic enough to disturb the calm of their lifelong mental lethargy. As for the minority which was accustomed to opera, including the still smaller minority which had seen Patience itself, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... moved towards them; and she and Walter taking them off, disclosed the old Instrument-maker, a little thinner and more careworn than of old, in his old Welsh wig and his old coffee-coloured coat and basket buttons, with his old infallible chronometer ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... difference. A prostate is part of a uterus, just as a coccygeal bone is part (the centrum) of a vertebra. That this is the absolute signification of the prostate I firmly believe, and were this the proper place, I could prove it in detail, by the infallible rule of analogical reasoning. John Hunter has observed that the use of the prostate was not sufficiently known to enable us to form a judgment of the bad consequences of its diseased state. When the part becomes morbidly enlarged, it acts as a mechanical ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... Anthems were chanted and thanksgivings were solemnly offered for the great victory over the enemies of the Church. A gold medal was struck off to commemorate the event; and Charles IX. and Catharine were pronounced, by the infallible word of his holiness, to be the especial favorites of God. Spain and the Netherlands united with Rome in these infamous exultations. Philip II. wrote ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... superstition, that the solemnly pronounced verities of the time were but a burlesque upon the truth. Belief in the existence of the antipodes was considered by ecclesiastical authority as a sure proof of heresy, the philosopher's stone had been found, astrology was an infallible science, and the air was filled with demons who were ever waiting for an opportunity to steal away man's immortal soul. Geography did not exist except in fancy; history could be summed up in the three magic words, Troy, Greece, and Rome; and the general notions current ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... censure on his conduct, for having detached such a numerous body of troops to a situation where they could not be sustained by the rest of the army. On the other hand, the court of Vienna exulted in this victory, as an infallible proof of Daun's superior talents; and, in point of glory and advantage, much more than an equivalent for the loss of the Saxon army, which, though less numerous, capitulated in the year one thousand seven hundred and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... awful—to us Catholics, the majestic—facts on which our religion stands. Accept them, and nothing else is really difficult. Miracles, the protection of the saints, the mysteries of the sacraments, the place that Catholics give to Our Lady, the support of an infallible Church—what so easy and natural if these be true?... Sin and its Divine Victim, penance, regulation of life, death, judgment—Catholic thought moves perpetually from one of these ideas to another. As to many other thoughts and beliefs, it is free to us as to ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of breathing, and a great one for that of believing—consequently there must go a great deal more of voluntary effort to this latter than is implied in the getting absolutely rid of it at once, by adopting the direction of an infallible church, or private judgment of another—for all our life is some form of religion, and all our action some belief, and there is but one law, however modified, for the greater and the less. In your case I do think you are called upon to do your duty to yourself; that is, to God in the ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the infallibility of a man, of the Pope? What difference does it make whether it be a book that is infallible—the Bible, or a society of men—the Church, or a single man? Does it make any essential change in the rational difficulty? And since the infallibility of a book or of a society of men is not more rational than that of a single ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno |
