"Self-contradictory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this necessity, we would add, does not follow from God's failure to overcome any "inexorable laws and indestructible properties of matter," but is implied in the inexorable laws of thought—in that eternal right reason which makes it impossible for Deity to do what is self-contradictory or absurd. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... sole feature for which I hold myself in some esteem is that in which no man has ever thought himself defective. My self-approbation is common, and shared by all. For who has ever considered himself lacking in common sense? This would be a self-contradictory proposition. Lack of sense is a disease that never exists when it is seen; it is most tenacious and strong, yet the first glance from the patient's eye pierces it through and disperses it, as a dense mist is dispersed by the sun's beams. To accuse oneself would amount to self-absolution. There ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... fifteen years ago are too familiar to you to need any exposition at my hands at this time. Suffice it to say that the religion of the Bible, as taught by the churches, to my mind appeared to be self-contradictory and confusing, and their explanations failed to explain. During the next eleven years my convictions underwent little change. I read everything that came in my way that had any bearing upon, or pretended in any degree to explain, the problem of life; and while ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... of itself is wearisome, but its existence proves that it must be quieted, and it can be so quieted only by a rational solution, for every irrational decision, being from its nature self-contradictory, has for its chief mission to destroy itself. As long as it continues, we may be sure that the true solution has not been attained, and for our hope we may ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... is the general conception of human character. Man is still thought of as a complex of lofty and mean qualities, widely variable in their proportion yet in no instance quite dissevered. To interpret—not God or Nature—but this self-contradictory being, in both his higher and his lower manifestations and possibilities, remains the chief vocation of the poets. They have not ceased the endeavor to lend dignity to life by portraying its nobler features. Addison, in The Campaign, glorifies the national hero whose ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... all previous explanations of the principles of duty, so far as it is derived from pure reason, it was still possible to reduce it again to a doctrine of happiness; in such a way, however, that a certain moral happiness not resting on empirical causes was ultimately arrived at, a self-contradictory nonentity. In fact, when the thinking man has conquered the temptations to vice, and is conscious of having done his (often hard) duty, he finds himself in a state of peace and satisfaction which may well be called happiness, in which virtue is her own reward. ...
— The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics • Immanuel Kant
... stillborn. Unless they retraced their steps, there were but two paths to take—either to admit priests consecrated by a Church they had condemned, or to dispense with the clergy, who alone could celebrate the rites in defence of which they had revolted. There was little to choose between the two self-contradictory courses, and each had its partisans. This first check split the schism into two groups, whose hostility has not been allayed by the lapse of two centuries. According to some, as Christianity cannot exist without a priesthood, its complicity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... accurate data with such inadequate means, and in varying and testing such a number of questions as were suggested in the course of the investigation—or the intellectual power shown in marshalling and reducing to a system such intricate and apparently self-contradictory phenomena. It is true that this discussion led him to a different conclusion from that announced in the previous paper, and, consequently, to a false conclusion; but almost the only escape from his course of reasoning lay in a principle which belongs to a later period of intellectual development ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... sensibility, by an enlightened awareness of the evil beyond. And to experience evil, to realize it, and yet to be content, lies not within {116} the power of any moral being; it is not merely difficult, it is self-contradictory. To any one who judges himself fairly, with a wide and vivid image of life as it is in all its ramifications and obscurities, the evil of the world is all one. It follows that, as there is no perfect happiness except in the annihilation of evil, so there can be no peace ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry |
