"Cogent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... here put forward, there is much in its favour, and it shows a considerable degree of keen argument and cogent reasoning that, in any case, is a valuable contribution to this department of literature. Moreover, it may be the incentive for further exploration of the locality mentioned at some future time, with the view of solving the secrets of the strange carving and wonderful ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... you might have a fall, and I know that I should feel obliged to stop, and I am in a hurry. If that reason does not strike you as a cogent one, I am sorry, for to me it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... conquerors against odds, and partly because their demand for independence was thought too natural to be resisted at the sword's point by a Government founded on the right of insurrection only. To these merely sentimental and not very cogent considerations was added the more potent and weighty reflection that what the Southerners had done no Power, whether American or ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... decomposition, until two men could scarcely be found whose views coincided; nay, even more than that, that the same man should change his opinion with the changing incidents of the different periods of his life. No matter what might be the plausible guise of the beginning, and the ostensibly cogent arguments for its necessity, once let the decomposition commence, and no human power could arrest it until it had become thorough and complete. Considering the prestige, the authority, and the mass of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... filled a footbath with cold water, and was commanding the Rev. Philip Stimcoe to strip—as he put it—to the teeth, and immerse himself forthwith. As the Rev. Philip Stimcoe, patriot and martyr, he was obstinately, and with even more passion, refusing to do anything of the kind, and for the equally cogent reasons that he was a Protestant of the Protestants and that the ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... that this constitutes a difficulty against the theory, when we have so many other cases of proved transmutation to set against it. For instance, not to go further afield than this very glacial flora itself, it will be remembered that in an earlier chapter I selected it as furnishing specially cogent proof of the transmutation of species. What, then, is the explanation of so extraordinary a difference between Mr. Carruthers' views and my own upon this point? I believe the explanation to be that he does not take a sufficiently wide survey of ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... of the public, but the real objects of which are too frequently the advancement of private interests. The known necessity which so many of the States will be under to impose taxes for the payment of the interest on their debts furnishes an additional and very cogent reason why the Federal Government should refrain from creating a national debt, by which the people would be exposed to double taxation for a similar object. We possess within ourselves ample resources for every emergency, and we may be quite sure that our citizens ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... their multiplication. One who cannot be curbed by reason may be curbed by fear, a familiar truth which lies at the foundation of all penological systems. The argument for exemption of women is equally cogent for exemption of habitual criminals, for they too are abnormally inaccessible to reason, abnormally disposed to obedience to the suasion of their unregulated impulses and passions. To free them from the restraints of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... happens that, for cogent reasons, a double passage is attempted upon a single front of operations, as was the case with Jourdan and Moreau in 1796. If the advantage is gained of having in case of need a double line of retreat, there is the inconvenience, in thus operating on the two extremities ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... mourning already for one of our Virginians, who has come to grief in America; surely we cannot kill off the other in England? No, no. Heroes are not despatched with such hurry and violence unless there is a cogent reason for making away with them. Were a gentleman to perish every time a horse came down with him, not only the hero, but the author of this chronicle would have gone under ground, whereas the former is but sprawling outside it, and will be brought to life again as soon as he has been carried ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... boundary by treaty with Mexico; but the United States, in the treaty made with Mexico subsequent to the war with that country, received from Mexico not merely a cession of the territory that was claimed by Texas, but much that lay beyond the asserted limits. Shall we, then, acting simply as the cogent of Texas in the settlement of this question of boundary, take from the principal for whom we act that territory which belongs to her, to which we asserted her title against Mexico, and appropriate it to ourselves? Why, sir, it would ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... voice in council, but as he had been the first to carry the important news, and was known to be an ardent admirer and pupil of Ujarak, he felt that he was bound to back his patron; and his arguments, though not cogent, prevailed. ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... ballad-monger? He was full of gay irresponsibility. Ever since, on returning to his rooms after some tedious lecture, he announced to his friends that he had lost an umbrella but preserved, thank God, his honour, they augured a brilliant future for him. So, for other but no less cogent reasons, did his doting, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... consider and investigate the reasons which appear to have given birth to this opinion, the more I become convinced that they are cogent and conclusive. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... arguments made a suitable impression on the young monarch, and a still deeper on his sister, the duchess of Beaujeu, who exercised great influence over him, and who believed her own soul in peril of eternal damnation by deferring the act of restoration any longer. The effect of this cogent reasoning was no doubt greatly enhanced by the reckless impatience of Charles, who calculated no cost in the prosecution of his chimerical enterprise. With these amicable dispositions an arrangement was at length concluded, and received the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... defend herself; but as Orestes instantaneously rushes on her with the bloody sword, her courage fails her, and, most affectingly, she holds up to him the breast at which she had suckled him. Hesitating in his purpose, he asks the counsel of Pylades, who in a few lines exhorts him by the most cogent reasons to persist; after a brief dialogue of accusation and defence, he pursues her into the house to slay her beside the body of Aegisthus. In a solemn ode the chorus exults in the consummated retribution. The doors of the palace are thrown open, and disclose in the chamber the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... alleged revelation, but on the gradual evanescence of the special claims of all. Nor can we find any sharp and defined line of argument to convince them that they are wrong. The objections, however, to which this position is open are, I think, none the less cogent because they are somewhat general; and to all practical men, conversant with life and history, it must be plain that the necessity of doing God's will being granted, it is a most anxious and earnest question whether that will has not been in some special and articulate way revealed ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... in him unmixed with sterner qualities, and is usually lost in indignation. But of almost every other variety of tone he has a complete command. The essential parts of his reasoning (even when it is logically or morally defective) are couched, as a rule, in a forcible and cogent form;[12] and he has a striking power of close, sustained, and at the same time lucid argumentation. His matter is commonly disposed with such skill that each topic occurs where it will tell most powerfully; and while one portion of a speech ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... that you would, without some very cogent reason, violate all decorum by coming alone at dead of night two miles through a dreary stretch of hills and woods. Necessity sometimes sanctions an infraction of the rules of rigid propriety, and I am impatient to hear your defence of this ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... go to Paris as a member of the Commission aroused still fiercer opposition, but had reasons infinitely more cogent. He knew that there would be great difficulty in translating his ideals into fact at the Peace Conference. He believed that he could count upon the support of liberal opinion in Europe, but realized that the leading ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... touched one's heart! One must try to be very pleasant to that so lonely young man! And that so lonely young man was extended mead and balm in the shape of invitations to very smart affairs. To some of which he found, at the last minute, he couldn't go, for the simple and cogent reason that Checkleigh or Stocks had ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... asserted: that propositions, the negation of which is inconceivable, or in other words, which we can not figure to ourselves as being false, must rest on evidence of a higher and more cogent description than ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... with joy for having been found worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus; by the example of the martyrs, who willingly exposed themselves to torments and death, that they might obtain heaven; and, finally by such cogent reasons, so pathetically set forth, that all the auditors admired the doctrine, and felt what he wished to inspire them with. They found in the preacher something divine, which commanded respect, and they fixed their ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... wild dash of Eastern or Celtic blood may drive suddenly to a whole holiday or a crime. Let us admit then, that it is true that these legends of the Browning family have every abstract possibility. But it is a far more cogent and apposite truth that if a man had knocked at the door of every house in the street where Browning was born, he would have found similar legends in all of them. There is hardly a family in Camberwell that ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... to be persuaded. Perhaps it was that, unacknowledged by himself, any argument which recommended his staying, even for an hour longer than his first decision had announced, in the neighbourhood of Ellen Heathcote, appeared peculiarly cogent and convincing; however this may have been, it is certain that he followed the counsel of his cool-headed follower, who retired that night to bed with the pleasing conviction that he was likely soon to involve ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Brythonic. Transalpine Gaul was probably invaded by Aryan-speaking Celts from more than one direction, and the infiltration and invasion of new- comers, when it had once begun, was doubtless continuous through these various channels. There are cogent reasons for thinking that ultimately the dominant type of Celtic speech over the greater part of Gaul came to be that of the P rather than the QU type, owing to the influx from the East and Northeast of an overflow from the Rhine valley of tribes speaking that dialect; a dialect ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... cogent reasons have been urged by her friends to prove that her affection for Struensee was never carried to the length alleged against her by those who feared her influence. Be that as it may she certainly was no a woman of gallantry, and if she had an attachment for him ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... more if you can stretch a point with regard to time (which is of the last importance just now), and make a subject out of it, rather than find one in it. I would neither have made this alteration nor have troubled you about it, but for weighty and cogent reasons which I feel very strongly, and into the composition of which caprice or ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... foundered ship sinking among them, and have wandered in search of it out of their accustomed zone; first waylaying and following ships, and so coming to our shores in the wake of the Atlantic traffic. But to discuss Hemsley's cogent and admirably-stated arguments would be out of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... have I, a Worker, deeply interested in the welfare of the fellow-workers who are my countrymen, lent to Truth and Justice what little aid I could, by adapting Bastiat's keen and cogent Essay to the wants of readers on this side of ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... in cogent, effective argument. His impassioned reasoning often made ordinary things interesting. He ingratiated himself by his wise and generous sentiments, and his uncompromising solicitude ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... say, Lieutenant Warner, that I listened to your speech from the first word to the last, and I found it very cogent and powerful. As you say, things must have beginnings. If there is no first, there can be no second or third. I am entirely convinced by your argument that our army swallowed a river as it marched southward. In fact, I have often felt so thirsty that I ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... jug-handle, while Snap on the right hand and Puss on the other put up their paws towards a morsel which she held out of the reach of both—Snap occasionally desisting in order to remonstrate with the cat by a cogent worrying growl on the greediness and futility of her conduct; till Eppie relented, caressed them both, and divided ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... has recently been introduced into the French service by Captain Cogent, the tree of which is cut out of a single piece of wood, the cantle only being glued on, and a piece of walnut let into the pommel, with a thin strip veneered upon the front ends of the bars. The pommel and cantle are lower than in ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... nothing. They are like one who has interrupted the conversation of a company to make his speech, and now has forgotten what he went to say. The appearance strikes the eye everywhere of an aimless society, of aimless nations. Were the ends of nature so great and cogent as to exact this immense ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... dear my dearie, Coiled on a nastily mildewed tomb, When the horned owl hoots, and the world is weary, Weary of sorrow, and swamped in gloom? Childie my child, 'tis a cogent question; Dearie my dear, if you wish to know, Tis not that I suffer from indigestion, But that ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... much valued, and who are now in their turn growing old in the service of science, will read the roll-call between the lines, and know that none are forgotten here. Years before his own death, he had the pleasure of seeing several of them called to important scientific positions, and it was a cogent evidence to him of the educational efficiency of the Museum, that it had supplied to the country so many trained investigators and teachers. Through them he himself teaches still. There was a prophecy ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... ruthless punishment inflicted on them for each futile effort to recover some of the property stolen from them, had rendered inevitable the continuance and constant extension of the strife all through the five generations of Dutch rule, and furnished cogent precedent for like action afterwards,[7] After 1652, Colonists of the baser sort kept arriving in cargoes, and gradually the Netherlands Company allowed persons not of their own nation to land and settle under severe fiscal and other restrictions. Among these were a number of French Huguenots, ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... Territories are to a considerable extent disfranchised politically, and are not, in fact, full-fledged American citizens. The idea of taxation without representation is irritating to their sense of justice, and for many other cogent reasons Congress will be forced by public opinion to admit the Territories to all ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... 'They are cogent debaters,' Dacier assented. 'They make me wince now and then, without convincing me: I own it to you. The confession is not agreeable, though it's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have some discussion as to his immediate future with the young man. She was a silly, frivolous woman; but it was clear, even to her, that Frank was not doing very well for himself in the world; and advice she would not have taken from her son's Oxford tutor seemed cogent to her when it came from a Raeburn. "Do at least, for goodness' sake, get him to give up his absurd plan of going to America!" she wrote to Aldous; "if he can't take his degree at Oxford, I suppose he must get on without it, and certainly his dons seem very unpleasant. But ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the age of twenty-five are less cogent. They extend only to the woman herself. She should know that the first labors of wives over thirty are nearly twice as fatal as those between twenty and twenty-five. Undoubtedly nature points to the period between the twentieth and ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... would not ask, but for very particular reasons, connected it may be, of much moment to that dear girl: if as I strongly suspect, I have seen that miniature before, there is a secret and very minute spring, which I could not well ascertain without my glasses. Believe me, my dear Doctor, I have very cogent reasons for my request, and I feel no common interest in Miss Willoughby: but we are attracting the notice of those people I am staying with, who are not at all friendly disposed towards her; in fact, they have done all in their power ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... "My friends, in creating our womankind the Maker of us all was beyond doubt actuated by laudable and cogent reasons; so that I can merely lament my inability to fathom these reasons. I shall obey the Queen faithfully, since if I did otherwise Sire Edward would have my head off within a day of his return. In consequence, I do not consider it convenient to oppose his vicar. To-morrow ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... still more cogent reason why old men are neither respected nor honoured in a democracy. Here is yet another efficiency formally denied and formally set aside. An interesting treatise might be written on the rise and fall of old men. Civilization has not been kind to them. In primitive times, ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... These are cogent remarks. Normal facts, perhaps, may have suggested the belief in spirits, the animistic hypothesis. But we do not find the hypothesis (among the backward races) where abnormal facts are not alleged to be matters ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... sent 20l. His cause has been warmly espoused by the provincial journals, more than 20 of which have inserted his appeal gratuitously, with offers to receive and remit subscriptions. The aphorism, "he gives twice who gives quickly," could not receive a more cogent application than in the present instance, for the funds are required to enable Mr. Hone to commence business in his new undertaking, where he is already placed with his family, liable to rent and taxes, and other claims, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... were sounds native and pleasant to our ears. So "Variation under Domestication" dealt with familiar subjects in a natural way, and gently introduced "Variation under Nature," which seemed likely enough. Then follows "Struggle for Existence"—a principle which we experimentally know to be true and cogent—bringing the comfortable assurance, that man, even upon Leviathan Hobbess theory of society, is no worse than the rest of creation, since all Nature is at war, one species with another, and the nearer kindred the more internecine—bringing in thousandfold ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... spouses especially had not joined the party without cogent reasons, for the mirth in the first long wagon, covered with a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Charles P. Villiers, brother of Lord Clarendon, Lord Morpeth, now Earl of Carlisle, Lord John Russell, and his friend, Mr. Richard Cobden. Sir Robert Peel, who was at that time Prime Minister, had always adhered to the protective doctrines of Pitt and Wellington; and it was mainly due to the clear and cogent reasoning of Bright and his associates, that the illustrious statesman at the head of the Treasury finally yielded, with a magnanimity never surpassed in the annals of ministerial history, to the enlightened policy of free trade in respect to corn. The distress which had for years resulted ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... expostulations of Count Louis seemed powerless. His eloquence and his patience, both inferior to his valor, were soon exhausted. He peremptorily, refused the money for which they clamored, giving the most cogent of all reasons, an empty coffer. He demonstrated plainly that they were in that moment to make their election, whether to win a victory or to submit to a massacre. Neither flight nor surrender was possible. They knew how much ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... your king and country, and your uncommon perseverance in promoting the honor and true interest of the service, convince us that the most cogent reasons only could induce you to quit it; yet we, with the greatest deference, presume to entreat you to suspend those thoughts for another year, and to lead us on to assist in the glorious work of extirpating our enemies, towards which ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... or three persons who share Sir George's favour, determine among themselves to present him with some token of their gratitude. They address a circular on the subject to all the Company's officers, well knowing that none dare refuse in the face of the whole country to subscribe their name. The same cogent reasons that suppress the utterance of discontent compelled the Company's servants to subscribe to this testimonial; and the subscription list accordingly exhibits, with few exceptions, the names of every commissioned gentleman in the service; ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... almost to its final links the accursed chain which bound him." By what means? To have narrated this according to the original intention would have far exceeded the space which can now be allowed. It is fortunate, as such a cogent reason exists for abridging it, that I should, on a maturer view of the case, have been exceedingly unwilling to injure, by any such unaffecting details, the impression of the history itself, as an appeal to the prudence and the conscience ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... have twenty-eight lunar stations, the Manzil, and I can see no reason why Mohammed and his Bedouins in the desert should not have made the same observation as the Vedic poets in India, though I must admit at the same time that Colebrooke has brought forward very cogent arguments to prove that, in their scientific employment at least, the Arabic Manzil were really borrowed from an ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... proved an encumbrance. This was one reason, and apparently a very good one, but I doubt if it would have had much effect upon our party, who could hardly contemplate any undertaking without the agency of horseflesh, had not a more cogent argument been forthcoming, to which they were compelled to ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... Scotch Presbytery," did not induce him to turn aside from his purpose, or to make an abject and inglorious submission. From his first start in life, Dr. Anderson showed that he not only held opinions of his own, but unless there was some cogent reason to the contrary, he clung to them tenaciously. So it was with the casus belli of manuscripts in the pulpit. Failing to understand that the use of "the paper" could interfere in the remotest degree ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... of Edmund Spenser," capable of writing such a poem as Thealma and Clearchus, should have kept his talents so concealed, that in an age of commendatory verses no slightest contemporary record of him exists—is, to say the least, extraordinary. There are cogent arguments then on both sides of the question, and there is very little positive proof on either: so we must be content to leave the matter in some doubt ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... declined to accept. This decision, though a natural one, is much to be regretted by the citizens of this state. Coming from an eminently judicial mind, his decisions, had he sat on the bench, would have been models of close, cogent reasoning, clearness, and brevity, worthy of the best days of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... adopted the saying of Mr. Howells in a wider sense than he ever intended it to carry, and, partly as a result of this, we have arrived at a certain tacit depreciation of the greatest emotional master of fiction. There are other and more cogent reasons for the temporary obscuration of that brilliant light. It may aid our present purpose to discover what ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... of the Equator, and 2000 miles beyond the limits of the Pharaohs' dominions. Nor was the desire diminished when, without sharing the gratification of the Prince in whose name he acted, General Gordon advanced cogent reasons for establishing a line of communication from Gondokoro, across the territory of Mtesa, with the port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. As Gordon pointed out, that place was nearly 1,100 miles from Khartoum, and only 900 from Mombasa, while the advance to the Lakes increased the ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." No one will deny that this has reference to his coming at the end of the Jewish age. Now would it not be doing injustice to this powerful and cogent reasoner to say, that he suddenly drops this subject without giving his brethren any warning, and runs off to the end of time, speaks of another coming of' Christ at which he is to raise, at the same instant, all the dead and change the living ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... cheerful self-condemnation. The little boy's voice was somewhat hushed, because of the four ears of the listener, but it did not falter, except when his mother's arguments against the existence of the man seemed to him cogent and likely to gain the day. Then for the first time the boy was a little downcast, and the light of mystery became dimmer in his ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... following passage in your interview with the representative of the Westminster Gazette: 'As for its rarity, here is a fairly long list of the specimens we have had, and we have several at present'? And did you not give as a reason the reptile could not have strayed from the Gardens the very cogent one that you had none of the kind in your collection? And may I ask whether you really have any or not? For if you have, and the one in question has escaped, what is to prevent rattlesnakes and cobras and other venomous ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... holocausts we are so unfortunately associated with." And then this strange creature began to unfold a scheme of policy which seemed to me the maddest my ears had ever listened to, and yet with cogent method in its madness. Briefly, he wanted to produce diamonds in huge quantities, and sow them broadcast over the globe. As gems they would then be no longer valuable. Castes would cease to exist. And then governments could be ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... this stir of passion, which first increases, and then gradually subsides, these transports of the soul, this sudden return upon himself, and above all, my friend's quite peculiar turn of mind, have made alterations almost impossible. The reasons which he elsewhere asserts, and others still more cogent have secured my indulgence for this paper, which otherwise I should have advised him to throw into the fire. I believe none the less in the great principle of all composition—in that principle of Shakespeare, of Raphael, and of Beethoven, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... appears to be no a priori absurdity in such an idea. At first sight both matter and energy appear non-molecular in structure. But we have been forced to look upon the gradual growth of a crystal as a step-by-step process, and we may some day, by equally cogent considerations, be forced to regard the gradual increase of energy of an accelerating body as also a step-by-step process, although the discontinuity is as invisible to the eye in the latter case as in ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... therefore, is the principle asserted: that propositions, the negation of which is inconceivable, or in other words, which we cannot figure to ourselves as being false, must rest upon evidence of higher and more cogent description than any which experience can afford. And we have next to consider whether there is any ground ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... but hardly a great orator. His speeches are the arguments of a lawyer and a strict constitutionalist, severely logical, and with a sincere conviction in the soundness of his case. Their language is free from bad rhetoric; the reasoning is cogent, but there is an absence of emotion and imagination; they contain few quotable things, and no passages of commanding eloquence, such as strew the orations of Webster and Burke. They are not, in short, literature. Again, the speeches of Henry Clay, of Kentucky, the leader ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... conversation I am recalling. When I started out it was quite settled in the back of my mind that I must not leave Rawdon's. I simply wanted to abuse my employer to Parload. But I talked myself quite out of touch with all the cogent reasons there were for sticking to my place, and I got home that night irrevocably committed to a spirited—not to say ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... atmosphere in which he was brought up. But it is more important to recognise the immense real value of his doctrine. Briefly, I should say, that there is hardly an argument in Bentham's voluminous writings which is not to the purpose so far as it goes. Given his point of view, he is invariably cogent and relevant. And, moreover, that is a point of view which has to be taken. No ethical or political doctrine can, as I hold, be satisfactory which does not find a place for Bentham, though he was far, indeed, from giving ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... his balance, and toppling over, vanished in a twinkling, and rolled down half—a—dozen steps, heels over head, until he lay sprawling on the manger or mule—trough before the door, where the Ceases are fed under busha's own eye on all estates—for this excellent and most cogent reason, that otherwise the maize or guinea—com, belonging of right to poor mulo, would generally go towards improving the condition, not of the quadruped, but of the biped quashiet who had charge of him—and there he lay ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... reminiscence of Marlowe in the construction of the verse points to 1588 or at earliest to 1587 as the date. Mr. Fleay's suggestion of 1589-90 may be accepted as the earliest likely date[223]. To my mind it would need external proof of an unusually cogent description to render plausible the theory that the year, say, of the Shepherd's Calender saw the appearance ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... who proclaimed the future Constitution; by the clergy and the aristocracy, in the most solemn pledges of the electoral period; by the British example, celebrated by Montesquieu and Voltaire; by the more cogent example of America; by the national classics, who declared, with a hundred tongues, that all authority must be controlled, that the masses must be rescued from degradation, and ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... concealing it or forgetting to mention it, without some notion of what he wishes the public to know, every leader is in some degree a propagandist. Strategically placed, and compelled often to choose even at the best between the equally cogent though conflicting ideals of safety for the institution, and candor to his public, the official finds himself deciding more and more consciously what facts, in what setting, in what guise he shall permit the public ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... commentary on the Constitution, making what is regarded as one of America's greatest books, it is doubtful how much immediate influence they had. Certainly in the New York convention itself Hamilton's personal influence was a stronger force. His arguments were both eloquent and cogent, and met every objection; and his efforts to win over the opposition were unremitting. The news which came by express riders from New Hampshire and then from Virginia were also deciding factors, for New York could not afford to remain ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... no doubt had cogent reasons for failing to apply for Navy commissions, but the fact that only one applied called attention to a phenomenon that first appeared about 1946. Black Americans were beginning to ignore the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... having grasped places or pensions, do go back to their constituents, and upon being rejected by them, go to some borough where the people have no voice; or who, not relishing the prospect, do not go to face their former constituents, but go at once to some borough, and there take a seat, which, by cogent arguments, no doubt, some one has been prevailed on to go out of to make way for them? What will even the impudence of the most prostituted knaves of hired writers find to say ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... to be undertaken without the most cogent reasons. In the first place, there must be a right to make war, and just grounds for making it. Nations have no right to employ force any further than is necessary for their own defense, and for the maintenance of their rights. Secondly, it should be made from proper ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... Scriptures have been of any benefit, or have rendered any aid, to woman in her efforts to obtain her rights in either the social, the business, or the political world; and unless she is able to present stronger or more cogent reasons to justify that conclusion than any which are therein specified, I shall be compelled to adhere to my present conviction, which is, that this book always has been, and is at present, one of the greatest obstacles in the way of the emancipation ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Lord Russell, who entered Parliament in 1813, always said that the first Lord Plunket was, on the whole, the finest speaker he had ever heard, because he combined a most cogent logic with a most moving eloquence; and these gifts descended to Plunket's grandson, now Lord Rathmore, and, in the days of which I am speaking, Mr. David Plunket, Member for the University of Dublin. Voice, manner, diction, delivery, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... however, was not easy; and Popanilla, animated for the moment by his natural aristocratic disposition, and emboldened by his superior size and strength, began to clear his way in a manner which was more cogent than logical. The chimney-sweeper and his comrades were soon in arms, and Popanilla would certainly have been killed or ducked by this superior man and his friends, had it not been for the mild remonstrance of his conductor and the singular ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... held in abeyance to be called into requisition only in an emergency and as a last resort. It will readily be seen, however, that the teacher's knowledge of the subject must be far more comprehensive in such a procedure than in the question-and-answer type of recitation, for the very cogent reason that the discussion is both liable and likely to diverge widely from the limits of the book; and the teacher must be conversant, therefore, with all the auxiliary facts. She must be able to cite authorities in case of need, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... just cited, the acceptance of which as an exclusive doctrine would involve the virtual rejection of our right, as scientific men, to rely on the principle that the evidence afforded by logical presuppositions and logical inference is as cogent as ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... had other reasons, some of them very cogent in his own estimation at least, for desiring my presence somewhere in the Eastern States; and the West Point "detail" was the only way in which that could be readily brought about. He had just been restored, or was about to be, to the actual command ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... attitudes, also, were most prepossessing. Their chief characteristics were a calmness and dignity which never disappeared in even the most exciting moments of contest, and of irritability, and provoking interruption. Woe, indeed, to one who ventured to interrupt him! However plausible, cogent, or even just, might be the suggestion thrown in by his adversary, Sir William Follett contrived to make it tell terribly against him, either harmonising it with his own case, or showing it to be utterly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... else might cling to me too closely, since I have been promoted to be peer-spiritual of your forest-court. For, indeed, I do find in myself certain indications and admonitions that my day has past its noon; and none more cogent than this: that daily of bad wine I grow more intolerant, and of good wine have a keener and more fastidious relish. There is no surer symptom of receding years. The ferryman is my faithful varlet. I send him on some pious errand, that I may meditate in ghostly privacy, when my presence ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... appears to Congress to be well founded in whole or in part, it is in the competency of Congress to offer her an indemnity for the surrender of that claim. In a case like this, surrounded, as it is, by many cogent considerations, all calling for amicable adjustment and immediate settlement, the Government of the United States would be justified, in my opinion, in allowing an indemnity to Texas, not unreasonable or extravagant, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... practising in the metropolis, and so I became acquainted with him. He knows Sir Francis Varney, and, if I mistake not, has found out the cause of that mysterious personage's great attachment to Bannerworth Hall, and has found the reasons so cogent, that he has got up ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... do not say so, you will think so. So no more of this just now. What I mention it for, is to tell you, that on this serious occasion I will omit, if I can, all that passed between us, that had an air of flippancy on my part, or quickness on my mother's, to let you into the cool and cogent ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the victories of Constantine the Great, and both the fear of punishment and the desire of pleasing the Roman emperors, were cogent reasons, in the view of whole nations as well as of individuals, for embracing the Christian religion. Yet no person well informed in the history of this period will ascribe the extension of Christianity wholly to these causes. For it is manifest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... arguments urged in those communications against the repeal of the election laws and against the right of Congress to deprive the Executive of that separate and independent discretion and judgment which the Constitution confers and requires are equally cogent in opposition to this bill. This measure leaves the powers and duties of the supervisors of elections untouched. The compensation of those officers is provided for under permanent laws, and no liability ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... objection, to both these suppositions, is the inadequacy of the evidence to prove any given case of such occurrences which has been adduced. It is a canon of common sense, to say nothing of science, that the more improbable a supposed occurrence, the more cogent ought to be the evidence in its favour. I have looked somewhat carefully into the subject, and I am unable to find in the records of any miraculous event evidence which even approximates to the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... and the certainty of plunder, were held up to view as present consequences of this measure; and the expulsion of the whites, and the repossession, by the Natives, of the country from which their fathers had been ejected, as its ultimate result.—Less cogent motives might have enlisted them on the side of Great Britain. These were too strong to be resisted by them, and too powerful to be counteracted by any course of conduct, which the colonies could observe towards them; and they became ensnared by the delusive bait, and the insidious promises ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... attested, could possibly be sufficient evidence for the truth of spiritual teaching given in attestation of it. I will merely remark that to any one who has really appreciated the meaning of biblical criticism, it is scarcely conceivable that the evidence for miracles could seem sufficiently cogent to constitute such an attestation. In proof of that I will merely appeal to the modest, apologetic, tentative tone in which {140} scholarly and sober-minded theologians who would usually be classed among the defenders of miracles—men ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... privilege to be a stamp officer in those stormy hours. Most of the stamp officers were forced to resign under pressure which they might well be excused for finding sufficiently cogent. In order to make the new law a dead letter the colonists resolved that while it was in force they would avoid using stamps by substituting arbitration for any kind of legal procedure. With a people in this temper, there were only two things to be done; to meet ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the spot where I was standing. I was in doubt whether to wait longer or to proceed; my way lay just by him, and it might be dangerous to interrupt so substantial an apparition. However, my curiosity was excited, and my feet were half frozen, two cogent reasons for proceeding; and, to say truth, I was never very much frightened by any thing dead ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were found, the Doctor's charges would be paid by the county; otherwise I should be responsible for the amount. I then went out to see the grave-diggers, and used such convincing arguments that they willingly agreed to disinter the body. My arguments were brief, but cogent, and were presented to them about ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... Devereux—until the minister had said: Amen. He admitted to himself that this was probably a foolish whim, a needless precaution, but nevertheless it obsessed him, so that he tried to argue Mirabelle away from the Herald. His most cogent argument was that the announcement might weaken their position in the League—the League might be too much interested in watching the romance to pay strict ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... that the higher and more important value of this dualism is composed of what may be called reality, quality, spirit, or substance against the lower value of form, quantity, or manner. Of these terms "substance" seems to us the most appropriate, cogent, and comprehensive for the higher and "manner" for the under-value. Substance in a human-art-quality suggests the body of a conviction which has its birth in the spiritual consciousness, whose youth is nourished ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... opinion which I am preparing, wherein may be found a more extensive treatment of what I have here set down. In that document your Lordship will find complete proofs of what is contained in this summary, accompanied by arguments so cogent and convincing that there is neither room nor possibility for doubt ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... that, from whatever side we consider this question, even apart from the specially cogent evidences above cited, we cannot escape the conclusion that a current passes across or very near to the Pole into the sea between Greenland ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... soul was an effort backwards, because the vision of history is focused only for a perspective of progress. On his after-dinner journey to Diderot at Vincennes, Jean-Jacques saw, with the suddenness of intuition, that that progress, amongst whose convinced and cogent prophets he had lived so long was for him an unsubstantial word. He beheld the soul of man sub specie aeternitatis. In his vision history and institutions dissolved away. His second ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... the still readier plan for securing their fidelity (a plan already talked of in all quarters) by exacting a large body of hostages selected from the families of the most influential 30 nobles. On these cogent considerations, it was solemnly determined that this terrific experiment should be made in the next year of the tiger, which happened to fall upon the Christian year 1771. With respect to the month, there was, unhappily for the Kalmucks, even less latitude allowed to ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... paper will keep the run of all the details of all the histories of all the rest of the world, but he hardly attempts this in addition. If he does, he fails. It is therefore necessary, from the most cogent reasons, that any American news office which has a strong regard for the consistency or truth of its South American intelligence shall employ some person competent to take the charge which I held in the establishment of ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... very beginning of the war until the end of his life, by official message and by letter, Washington urged the importance of military instruction. In his message to Congress in 1796 he said: "The institution of a military academy is recommended by cogent reasons. However pacific the general policy of a nation may be, it ought never to be without an adequate stock of military knowledge for emergencies. In proportion as the observance from the necessity of practicing the rules of the military art, ought to be its care in preserving and transmitting ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... Carolina, whose daughter was to pass the summer with Melissa, and was expected to arrive before the appointed day. It would, he said, be a delicate point for him to request her to anticipate the nuptials, unless he could give some cogent reasons for so doing; and at present he was not apprised that any such existed. His father, after a few moments hesitation, answered, "I have reasons, which, when told"—here he stopped, suddenly arose, hastily ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... which may have been proposed or contemplated would be extremely impolitic; for this might have a pernicious influence on future negotiations, or produce immediate inconveniences, perhaps danger and mischief, in relation to other powers. The necessity of such caution and secrecy was one cogent reason for vesting the power of making treaties in the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, the principle on which that body was formed confining it to a small number of members. To admit, then, a right ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... purpose in hand. Its reflected consequences on his own fame as a scholar, a statesman, or a jurist, seem never once to have occurred to him. As a judge, the Old World may be fairly challenged to produce his superior. His style is a model—simple and masculine. His reasoning—direct, cogent, demonstrative, advancing with a giant's pace and power, and yet withal so easy evidently to him, as to show clearly, a mind in the constant habit of such strong efforts. Though he filled for so many years the highest ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... to be considered heretics, and do they not teach very dangerous errors?" Of course an affirmative reply is returned with cogent reasons therefor. At the end of this part there is a prolix recital of the many errors of George Calixtus and his followers. Calov conformed to the causal method of composition. There were two systems of arrangement in vogue, the causal and defining. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Then allow me to tell you that they have not denied it. And one very cogent reason why they have not, is, that they are not yet cognizant of the loss. I do not jump at conclusions as you do, Roland Yorke, and I thought it necessary to make a little private inquiry before accusing the post-office, lest the post-office ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood |
