"Confute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... zealous for the repute of a teacher under whose influence his own political faith developed, was always at pains to confute the popular opinion as to Mill's hardness. Addressing the Economic Society ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Goddess, Nature's earliest Power, And greatest and most present, with her dower Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute For meditated guile. She laughs to hear A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute, Her garden's histories tell of to all near. Let it be said, But less upon her guile Doth she rely for her immortal smile. Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens To push her conquests by the simplest means. While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves From earth's good ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and shut quickly. There was an implied accusation against him in the fervor of her admiration for the wife who had deserted him. He groped for something in self-justification with which to confute Lois Montgomery's daughter. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... a little higher up the stream. Not content with this Caligulesque apostolate to the Guaycurus, the Bishop longed for serious occupation, and caused it to be rumoured about the city that he did nothing except by the direct authority of the Holy Ghost, an allegation hard to confute, and if allowed, likely to lead to difficulties ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Westmoreland, Earl Grey, and Lord Plunkett. The lord-chancellor had a difficult task to perform. He was among those who up to this period had earnestly refuted all the pleas of concession which were now brought forward, and he had now to confute all these refutations. As late as last year he had declared his conviction, that emancipation, though accompanied by weighty securities, was pregnant with danger to the constitution and establishment; and he now ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... published in 1627 a folio of six hundred pages to confute "the common error touching Nature's perpetual and universal decay." [Footnote: An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World, consisting in an Examination and Censure of the common Errour, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... after forty days did hunger and faint for lack of food; so the external ear did hear the tempting words of Satan, which entered into the knowledge of the soul, and which, repelling the venom of such temptations, caused the tongue to speak and confute Satan, to our unspeakable comfort and consolation. It appears also that the body of Christ Jesus was carried by Satan from the wilderness unto the temple of Jerusalem, and that it was placed upon the pinnacle of the same temple, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... men admire them; and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... confute the charge; it was tyrannical to punish words in men whose deeds had raised you ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... As I have said before, to pit oneself against another's praise and reputation is by no means fitting for a public man: however, in important matters, where mistaken praise is injurious and detrimental, it is not amiss to confute it, or rather to divert the hearer to what is better by showing him the difference between true and false merit. Anyone would be glad, I suppose, when vice was abused and censured, to see most people voluntarily keep ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... difficulties. It was contrary to Thorpe's aims in business to invest a dedication with any cryptic significance, and thus mystify his customers. Moreover, his career and the circumstances under which he became the publisher of the sonnets confute the assumption that he was in such relations with Shakespeare or with Shakespeare's associates as would give him any knowledge of Shakespeare's early career that was not public property. All that Thorpe—the struggling pirate-publisher, 'the well-wishing ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... most people begin to swim when they have proceeded but a short way into such argumentation; but Edwards delights in applying similar logical puzzles over and over again to confute the notions of a 'self-determining power in the will,' or of a 'liberty of indifferency;' of the power of suspending the action even if the judgment has pronounced its verdict; of Archbishop King's ingenious device ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... replies To questions put to suit him, Would not, I think, have looked so wise With Lesbia to confute him; He would more probably have bade Xantippe hasten ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... maintained him in luxury. Several of them appeared at the bar to countenance him when he was tried at the Horsham assizes. So long did this delusion last that, when George the Third had been some years on the English throne, Voltaire thought it necessary gravely to confute the hypothesis that the man in the iron mask was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in return, the Lord meets him. And he does not quote the scripture for logical purposes—to confute Satan intellectually, but as giving even Satan the reason of his conduct. Satan quotes Scripture as a verbal authority; our Lord meets him with a Scripture by the truth in which ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... what he had written. There can be no doubt that, had there been no misprints in Shakespeare's quartos and folios, half the occupation of Shakespeare scholarship would have been lacking. Sometimes the original manuscript turns up—unfortunately not in Shakespeare's case—to confute some or all of the ingenious editors. A learned professor changed the word "unbodied" in Shelley's "Skylark" to "embodied," and some critics approved the change; but the poet's manuscript in the Harvard University Library makes the former reading clear beyond question. One might say that in ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... afterwards, short of an oath—but to her amazement the unexpected, which so rarely happened in the case of Cyrus, happened at that minute. Human nature, which she had treated almost as a science, proved suddenly that it was not even an art. One of those glaring inconsistencies which confute every theory and overturn all psychology was manifested ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... course, countless others are also setting to work upon it. It is a research. It is a research exactly like a scientific exploration. Each of us will probably get out a lot of truth and a considerable amount of error; the truth will be the same and the errors will confute and disperse each other. But it is clear that there is no simple panacea in this matter, and that only by intentness and persistence shall we disentangle a general conception of the road the peace-desiring ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the phenomena of this river have put mankind to the expense of. Yet there are people so bigoted to antiquity, as not to pay any regard to the relation of travellers who have been upon the spot, and by the evidence of their eyes can confute all that the ancients have written. It was difficult, it was even impossible, to arrive at the source of the Nile by tracing its channel from the mouth; and all who ever attempted it, having been stopped by the ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... Canongate Chronicles without my name (nom de guerre, I mean) the event would be a corollary to the fable of the peasant who made the real pig squeak against the imitator, while the sapient audience hissed the poor grunter as if inferior to the biped in his own language. The peasant could, indeed, confute the long-eared multitude by showing piggy; but were I to fail as a knight with a white and maiden shield, and then vindicate my claim to attention by putting "By the Author of Waverley" in the title, my good friend Publicum would defend itself by stating I had tilted so ill, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... never saw your face again; If all the music of your voice were mute As that of a forlorn and broken lute; If only in my dreams I might attain The benediction of your touch, how vain Were Faith to justify the old pursuit Of happiness, or Reason to confute The pessimist philosophy of pain. Yet Love not altogether is unwise, For still the wind would murmur in the corn, And still the sun would splendor all the mere; And I—I could not, dearest, choose but hear Your voice upon the breeze and see your eyes Shine ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... they will no doubt proceed to the greatest lengths against me, I being the only surviving officer, and they most inclined to believe a prior story, all that can be said to confute it will probably be looked upon as mere falsity and invention. Should that be my unhappy case, and they resolved upon my destruction as an example to futurity, may God enable me to bear my fate with the fortitude of a man, conscious that ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... sonatas: "As regards the sonatas, I ought to bear MacDowell a decided grudge. After I had written and argued a hundred times that the sonata form was 'played out,' he went to work and wrote four sonatas to confute me. To be sure, I might have my revenge and say they are 'not sonatas'; but they are no more unorthodox than the sonatas of Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Grieg, though they have a freedom of their own which is captivating. They are brimful of individuality ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... the controuersie begun betweene the king and Anselme, & with good arguments went about to prooue the kings cause to be lawfull. Vpon the otherside, Anselme and his partakers with contrarie reasons sought to confute the same. Wherevpon the pope declared, that sith by the lawes of the church it was decred, that the possession of any spirituall benefice, obteined otherwise than by meanes of a spirituall person, could not be good or allowable; from thencefoorth, neither the king nor any other for him, ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (3 of 12) - Henrie I. • Raphael Holinshed
... and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider," says Bacon. ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... party (whosoever he was) took little notice of, or was little troubled at the notice of these distempers in himself before; least of all sought out for help against them. And I have the rather inserted this to confute that scorn which, I hear, some have since put upon that conscientious desire. As if one had complained, that since his swearing to the covenant he could not forbear swearing, and that this sacred oath had taught him profane ones. But what holy thing is there which ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... with Logic absolute The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute: The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice Life's ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... chuse but smile to think What they could do for Meat and Drink, Who o'er so many Desarts ran With Brats and Wives in Caravan; Unless perchance they'd got the Trick, To eat no more than Porker sick; Or could with well contented Maws Quarter like (v) Bears upon their Paws. Thinking his Reasons to confute, I gravely thus commenc'd Dispute, And urged that tho' a Chinese Host, Might penetrate this Indian Coast, Yet this was certainly most true, They never cou'd the Isles subdue; For knowing not to steer a Boat, They ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... of the blending and conciliation of the two modes of argumentative writing referred to in Bishop Kurd's acute observation, that if your first object is to convince, you cannot use a style too soft and insinuating; if you want to confute, the rougher and more unsparing the better. And the description and characterisation are ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... tree: Notwithstanding, we have in this country of ours, no less than three sorts, which are all of them easily propagated, and prosper very well, if they are rightly ordered; and therefore I shall not omit to disclose one secret, as well to confute a popular error, as for the instruction ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Printer's). Aldus Manutius, a printer in Venice to the holy Church and the doge, employed a negro boy to help him in his office. This little black boy was believed to be an imp of Satan, and went by the name of the "printer's devil." In order to protect him from persecution, and confute a foolish superstition, Manutius made a public exhibition of the boy, and announced that "any one who doubted him to be flesh and blood might come ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... believed: in this way knowledge is a gift and is common to all holy persons. The other is a knowledge about matters of belief, whereby one knows not only what one ought to believe, but also how to make the faith known, how to induce others to believe, and confute those who deny the faith. This knowledge is numbered among the gratuitous graces, which are not given to all, but to some. Hence Augustine, after the words quoted, adds: "It is one thing for a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... "be diligent to study the law, that thou mayest know how to confute the Epicurean; consider also in whose presence thou art laboring, for the Master of thy work is faithful to pay thee the reward ...
— Hebrew Literature
... Whitelocke's friends were much startled at this news, and the more because of former intelligences of designs of that nature against him, whereof they wrote him word; and he was glad to read the news, and that, through the goodness of God, he was able to confute those reports. They were kept from Whitelocke's wife by the care of his friends, till one in gladness came to give her joy that the ill news of her husband was not true; which brought the whole matter ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil, and confute my pen— To make me own this hind of princes peer, This rail-splitter a true-born ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... confute by experience: he had repeatedly been called in to cases of mania described as sudden, and almost invariably found the patient had been cranky for years; which he condensed thus: "His conduct and behaviour for many years previously to any symptom of mental aberration ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... he appeared to listen with attention, and offered nothing against the reasoning of OMAR, yet secretly despised it as sophistry; which cunning only had rendered specious; and which he was unable to confute, merely because it was subtil, and not because it was true: he had been led, by his passions, first to love, and then to adopt different opinions; and as every man is inclined to judge of others by himself, he doubted, whether the principles which OMAR had thus laboured to ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... Faith" (in Emile) proclaims deism as a religion of feeling. The rational proofs brought forward for the existence of God—from the motion of matter in itself at rest, and from the finality of the world—are only designed, as he declares by letter, to confute the materialists, and derive their impregnability entirely from the inner evidence of feeling, which amid the vacillation of the reason pro and con gives ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... System that with logic absolute Both Standard Oil and Copper can confute; The Sovereign Alchemist that in a trice National ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... Palladius hither, who obtaining liberty from Celestine, and being enjoined to introduce the hierarchy as opportunity should offer, came into Scotland, and succeeded so effectually in his commission, as both to confute Pelagianism and new-model the government of ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... philosophers had bequeathed upon that mighty secret. I arranged their arguments in my mind. I armed myself with their weapons. I felt my heart spring joyously within me as I felt the strength I had acquired, and I sent to the philosopher to visit me, that I might conquer and confute him. He came; but he spoke with pain and reluctance. He saw that I had taken the matter far more deeply to heart than he could have supposed it possible in a courtier and a man of fortune and the world. Little did ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... foolishness the world is governed. He finds that there is quackery in legislation as in everything else; that rulers have their whims and errors as well as other men, and are not so wonderfully superior as he had imagined, since even he may occasionally confute them in argument. Thus awe subsides into confidence, confidence inspires familiarity, and familiarity produces contempt. Such was the case, say they, with William the Testy. By making himself too easy of access, he enabled every scrub-politician to measure wits with him, and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Zenocrate, were Egypt Jove's own land, Yet would I with my sword make Jove to stoop. I will confute those blind geographers That make a triple region in the world, Excluding regions which I mean to trace, And with this pen [233] reduce them to a map, Calling the provinces, cities, and towns, After my name and thine, Zenocrate: Here at Damascus will I make the point ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... Thaumaturgus, Bishop of Pontus in the third century, was favoured by a vision of the Trinity, which enabled him to confute and utterly subdue the Sabellian heretics—the Unitarians ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... the door behind. He locked it. He stepped away from the girl, leaving her standing there. She was a picture to confute slander. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... shifting them, from Paris to London and from London to Paris. In London he set up for a patriot, and engaged seriously in the disputes and parties of the day, and what was very diverting, sat down for a few weeks to study the laws of England in order to confute Blackstone. His rank, to which his birth entitles him, gives him admittance to court, and the extravagancy of his wit and humor serves to divert and please men in high office, and he consequently at times fancies himself in their secrets. This gentleman ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... view was originally stated in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Argei." I endeavoured to confute it in the Classical Review, 1902, p. 115 foll., and Wissowa replied in Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 211 foll. Since then my conviction has become stronger that this great scholar is for once wrong. Ennius alluded to the Argei as ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... brought Shakspeare, to a tragical conclusion. Mr. Pope suggests the last choice of a subject for writing a book, by making the Nonsense of others his argument; while his own puts it out of any writer's power to confute him." In another fling at Pope, he gives the reason why Mr. Pope adds the dirty dialect to that of the water, and is in love with the Nymphs of Fleet ditch; and in a lecture on the spleen he announced "an anatomical discovery, that Mr. Pope's spleen ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Sertorius, that possessed himself of Spain; or of Lucius Mummius that destroyed Corinth, though this last was surnamed Achaicus from his conquests, as Scipio was called Africanus, and Metellus, Macedonicus. Hence Posidonius draws his chief argument to confute those that hold the third to be the Roman proper name, as Camillus, Marcellus, Cato; as in this case, those that had but two names would have no proper name at all. He did not, however, observe that by his own reasoning he must rob the women absolutely of their names; for none ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... her appearance in Miss Williams's little sitting-room. "I am ready to submit to any test that Captain Keith may require to confute himself," she said to Ermine; "and I do so the more readily that with all his mocking language, there is a genuine candour and honesty beneath that would be quite worth convincing. I believe that if once persuaded of the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shall be delivered annually at Oxford in the University Church on as many Sunday mornings in full term, "between the commencement of the last month in Lent term and the end of the third week in Act term, upon either of the following subjects:—to confirm and establish the Christian faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics; upon the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures; upon the authority of the writings of the primitive fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church; upon the divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; upon the divinity ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... dull and uncongenial pupil: but that the teacher is younger, or not as yet in repute—anything of that sort is of no account with me. And therefore, Socrates, I give you notice that you may teach and confute me as much as ever you like, and also learn of me anything which I know. So high is the opinion which I have entertained of you ever since the day on which you were my companion in danger, and gave a proof of your valour such as only the man of merit can give. Therefore, say ...
— Laches • Plato
... Gregory X., and the tale was generally believed till the Reformation. There is a German miracle-play on the subject, called The Canonization of Pope Joan (1480). David Blondel, a Calvinist divine, has written a book to confute the tale. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of old letters and began turning them over as if in search of one that would confute Terence's suspicions. As he searched, he began to tell a story about an English lord who had trusted him—a great English lord, whose name he had, ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... frequently calls the Christian doctrine a secret system [of belief], we must confute him on this point also, since almost the entire world is better acquainted with what Christians preach than with the favourite opinions of philosophers. For who is ignorant of the statement that Jesus was born of a virgin, and that He was crucified, and that His resurrection ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... rough, and his tongue had a keen Shropshire tang, which indeed it never lost, giving thereby evidence to confute those who afterwards claimed for him kinship with a noble family. In truth Benbow was the son of an honest tanner of our town, and took no shame of his origin: his greatness was above such pettiness of spirit. He had run away to sea at an early age, and for some years lived a hard ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... journey to Fiddler's Green," cries out the Captain. "But cheer up, Heart; ye're not weighed for the Long Journey yet." Nor had I; for I presently recovered, and in less than a month after my Mishap was again whole and fit for Duty. And I have set this down in order to confute those malignant men who have declared that all my Wounds were from Stripes between the Shoulders; whereas I can show the marks, 1 deg., of an English Grenadier's bayonet; 2 deg., of a Frenchman's sword; 3 deg., of a Spanish bullet; with many more Scars gotten as honourably, and which it would ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... shall judge by the reception of Ethel's tidings!' cried Gertrude. 'Now for it, Ethel. Read us Tom's letter, confute the engineer, hoist with ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... notwithstanding her frequent and vociferous denials, that the robes of the "imperial votaress" were not so unsullied as could be wished. We know how loudly Leicester had complained—we have seen how clearly Walsingham could convict; but Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute: for an absolute sovereign, even without resorting to Philip's syllogisms of axe and faggot, was apt in the sixteenth century to have the best of an ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that, Gorgias, was what I was suspecting to be your notion; yet I would not have you wonder if by-and-by I am found repeating a seemingly plain question; for I ask not in order to confute you, but as I was saying that the argument may proceed consecutively, and that we may not get the habit of anticipating and suspecting the meaning of one another's words; I would have you develope your own views in your own way, whatever may be ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... the rare seduction of her smile. She also was entertaining an emotion or two. She had not at all known where she would find the strength to confront and confute a grandmotherly old ruffian. But luck was with her. He ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... answer; disproof, conviction, redargution[obs3], invalidation; exposure, exposition; clincher; retort; reductio ad absurdum; knock down argument, tu quoque argument[Lat]; sockdolager * [obs3][U. S.]. correction &c. 527a; dissuasion &c. 616. V. confute, refute, disprove; parry, negative, controvert, rebut, confound, disconfirm, redargue[obs3], expose, show the fallacy of, defeat; demolish, break &c. (destroy) 162; overthrow, overturn scatter to the winds, explode, invalidate; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... nature are to us the disciples of Bacon. But with these hapless Megarans, who thought that they had found that for which Socrates professed only to seek dimly and afar off, and had got it safe in a dogma, preserved as it were in spirits, and put by in a museum, the great use of dialectic was to confute opponents. Delight in their own subtlety grew on them, the worship not of objective truth, but of the forms of the intellect whereby it may be demonstrated; till they became the veriest word-splitters, rivals of the old sophists whom ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... ordinary, where we dined well, and after dinner Sir Thomas Willis and another stranger, and Creed and I, fell a-talking; they of the errours and corruption of the Navy, and great expence thereof, not knowing who I was, which at last I did undertake to confute, and disabuse them: and they took it very well, and I hope it was to good purpose, they being Parliament-men. By and by to my Lord's, and with him a good while talking upon his want of money, and ways of his borrowing some, &c., and then by other visitants, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... ([Greek: en tois adiorthotois antigraphois]) is found "He wept,"' Epiphanius is instructive. Perfectly well aware that the expression is genuine, he goes on to state that 'Irenaeus quoted it in his work against Heresies, when he had to confute the error of the Docetae[495].' 'Nevertheless,' Epiphanius adds, 'the orthodox through fear ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... that this particular wheel was out of track, and that its tyres were the same as those of the car that drew up outside Burns's training-quarters, then I should have a wealth of circumstantial evidence that it would be almost impossible to confute. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... Grossmann was delivering an impromptu lecture on the limits of variation from the normal type, when Elmer came in and joined the group of the great Professor's listeners, every one of whom was seeking some conclusive argument to confute their guest's overwhelmingly accurate ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... question of accompanying merit—is a trait which, in my mystic inquiries and devious wanderings, I meet with far more frequently than might be expected. I have just met with two instances which I hasten to put on record, if only to confute those who say that the age in general, and spirit mediums in particular, are not prone to be modest and retiring. My first modest person was a Spirit Photographer; my second was a Sibyl. I might have ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... as soon as he perceived him, said: "Embrace me, my dear marshal; I am glad to see you. I want no explanation or justification: I have honoured and esteemed you as the bravest of the brave."—"Sire, the newspapers have told a heap of lies, which I wish to confute: my conduct has ever been that of a good soldier, and a good Frenchman."—"I know it, and accordingly never doubted your attachment."—"You were right, Sire. Your Majesty may always depend upon me, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... high."* An American professor** conjectures the above nest to have possibly been that of the Dinornis, the gigantic New Zealand bird, known only by its fossil remains. A very slight knowledge, however, of ornithology, would be sufficient to confute the notion of any struthious bird constructing a nest of this kind, or of a wingless land bird of great size inhabiting an islet only a quarter of a mile in length. Both Mr. Gould and myself have seen nests of the same construction, the work of the large ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... me so civilly, that I ought to write more, I reply in your own words (like the Pamphleteer, who is going to confute you out of your own mouth), What has one to do when turned of fifty, but really to think of finishing? However, I will be candid (for you seem to be so with me), and avow to you, that till four-score-and-ten, whenever the humor takes me, I will write, because I like ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... Gentiles, there was no use of alledging the Scriptures, which they beleeved not. The Apostles therefore laboured by Reason to confute their Idolatry; and that done, to perswade them to the faith of Christ, by their testimony of his Life, and Resurrection. So that there could not yet bee any controversie concerning the authority to Interpret Scripture; seeing no man was obliged during his infidelity, to follow any ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... of the sectarists, with their six thousand errata, like the false Duessa, covered their crafty deformity with a fair raiment; for when the great Selden, in the assembly of divines, delighted to confute them in their own learning, he would say, as Whitelock reports, when they had cited a text to prove their assertion, "Perhaps in your little pocket-bible with gilt leaves," which they would often pull out and read, "the translation may be so, but the Greek or the Hebrew ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... their judgment until the publication of certain new documents, in the form of letters, which had been discovered. I might have replied, if my intent had been hostile, that little fault could be justly found with a critic of the existing evidence if new evidence were required to confute him. But as the very last intention that I had in writing the paper was to impute anything that can be properly called untruthfulness to De Quincey, I thought it better to say so and to wait for the further documents. In a subsequent private correspondence ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... disburs'd To be with peace, and too much plenty, curs'd; Who their old monarch eagerly undo, And yet uneasily obey the new. Search, Satire, search; a deep incision make: The poison's strong, the antidote's too weak. 'Tis pointed truth must manage this dispute, And down-right English, Englishmen confute. ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... of the convicts who embarked for this country, which articles had been entrusted to the Rev. Mr. Johnson, to be disposed of according to the intention of the subscribers after our arrival, Mr. Johnson wrote to his friends in England to confute this report; and by accounts lately received, it appeared that no such public collection had ever been made; at Mr. Johnson's request, therefore, the governor published a contradiction of the above report in the general orders of the settlement. The convicts had hitherto ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... cardinals, about as many bishops, and fifteen or sixteen theologians of the Sorbonne, laden with thick folios—the writings of the Fathers of the first five centuries, with which the Cardinal of Lorraine still professed his ability to confute the Reformed.[1147] Again the twelve Huguenot ministers were admitted; but the lay deputies of the churches were excluded.[1148] The discussion was long and desultory. Beza began by replying to the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... book, while the unbeliever would be repelled by its size. Assuredly there can be no doubt as to the value of a great work which should meet objections derived from certain recent scientific theories, and confute opponents who have arisen since the death of our two great apologists, but as a preliminary to this a smaller and more elementary book seems called for, which shall give the main outlines of our position with such boldness and effectiveness as to arrest the attention of any unbeliever ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... of their argument turns upon this point, the concessions of the Gentiles. The more early writers of the church were not making a strict chronological inquiry: but were labouring to convert the heathen. They therefore argue with them upon their own principles; and confute them from their own testimony. The Romans had their Dii Immortales; the Greeks their [Greek: Theoi Athanatoi]: yet acknowledged that they had been men; that they died, and were buried. Cicero owns; [397]ab Euhemero et mortes, et sepulturae demonstrantur deorum. It matters not whether the notion ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... pondered his opinion as he gave it, and his words came irregularly by twos and threes. "It may be hard—for some while—to make her see the—the necessity. Women fight for their own by instinct—right or wrong, they do not ask themselves. If you reason, they will seize upon any sophistry to confute you—to persuade themselves. Doubtless the instinct comes from God; but to men, sometimes, it makes ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lies had been openly confuted, and also that the Accused of Heresy might as well have been admitted to reason their Articles with Counsel, whether they were heresy or no[t], as the Accused of Treason against the King is admitted to his Council to confute his cause and Articles, whether they be treason or not, they should never have murdered nor prisoned so many good Christian men as ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... alleged for not performing that feat took a special form, which I am compelled to notice briefly because they set up the mark for the whole intellectual artillery of the Utilitarians. Reid, in fact, invented what J. S. Mill called 'intuitions.' To confute intuitionists and get rid of intuitions was one main purpose of all Mill's speculations. What, then, is an 'intuition'? To explain that fully it would be necessary to write once more that history of the philosophical movement from ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... regarded as the protagonist of infidelity. The myth of incredulity that gathered round his memory and made him hated in the Middle Ages, has been traced with exquisite delicacy by Renan,[141] who shows that his name became a rallying point for freethinkers. Scholars like Petrarch were eager to confute his sect, and artists used him as a symbol of materialistic disbelief. Thus we meet with Averroes among the lost souls in the Pisan Campo Santo, distinguished as usual by his turban and long beard. On ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... offended Prince George; and the Danish Minister presented a memorial against it. The principles of its author did not please Dr. King; and therefore he undertook to confute part, and laugh at the rest. The controversy is now forgotten: and books of this kind seldom live long when ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... liar, among persons whom I know to be of undoubted credit. Now Mr. Veal is more of a gentleman than to say she lies; but says, a bad husband has crazed her. But she needs only present herself, and it will effectually confute that pretense. Mr. Veal says, he asked his sister on her death-bed, whether she had a mind to dispose of anything? And she said, No. Now, the things which Mrs. Veal's apparition would have disposed of, were so trifling, and nothing of justice aimed at in their disposal, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Subjects—to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics—upon the divine authority of the holy Scriptures—upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church—upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... place in my poor Collection whenever the public taste calls for a new edition. But the original, what would I not give to have it in my hands, to touch the very parchment which came from the press of my revered ancestor, and, gloating on the crabbed letters, confute MacCribb to his face ipso visu et tactu of so inestimable a rarity. Exchanges—or "swaps," as the vulgar call them—are not unknown among our fraternity. Ask what you will for this treasure, to the half of my kingdom: my gold Aurelius (found at Bermuckety, on the very limits of ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... three parts,—the 'stout words' against God which the Prophet sets himself to confute (verses 13-15); the prophecy of the day which will show their falsehood (verse 16 to iv. 3); and the closing exhortation and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... every one. Ritson's immediate outcry is famous—and Ritson stood almost alone. He did, indeed, go so far as to deny the existence of the Folio Manuscript, and Percy was forced to confute him by producing it. In the later editions of the Reliques, Percy sought to conciliate him by revising his texts, so as to approximate them more closely to his originals, but still Ritson cried out for the ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... matters, that the two sets of opinions are incompatible, and that the belief in the unity of origin of man and brutes involves the brutalization and degradation of the former. But is this really so? Could not a sensible child confute by obvious arguments, the shallow rhetoricians who would force this conclusion upon us? Is it, indeed, true, that the Poet, or the Philosopher, or the Artist whose genius is the glory of his age, is degraded from his high estate by ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... without speaking. She made room for Philip and his luggage amidst the loud indignation of the unsuccessful driver, whom it required the combined eloquence of the station-master and the station beggar to confute. The silence was prolonged until they started. For three days he had been considering what he should do, and still more what he should say. He had invented a dozen imaginary conversations, in all of which his logic and eloquence ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... quest, a hopeless one. So reason said. Romance and youth, and the longing that he could not define, rose to confute this sober argument, flushed and eager, violet ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... because her alledged unnatural and cruel conduct to her son, and shameful avowal of guilt, were stated in a Life of Savage now lying before me, which came out so early as 1727, and no attempt had been made to confute it, or to punish the authour or printer as a libeller: but for the honour of human nature, we should be glad to find the shocking tale not true; and, from a respectable gentleman[493] connected with the lady's family, I have received such information and remarks, as joined ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... he is neither to raise an old Heresie from the grave, nor to mention a blasphemous opinion unnecessarily; but if the people be in danger of an errour, he is to confute it soundly, and endeavour to satisfie their judgements and consciences ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... nor even from motives of self defence, which would justify a certain degree of egotism, especially if it be considered, how often and grossly I have been attacked for sentiments, which I have exerted my best powers to confute and expose, and how grievously these charges acted to my disadvantage while I was in Malta. Or rather they would have done so, if my own feelings had not precluded the wish of a settled establishment in that island. But I have mentioned it from the full persuasion ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... elderly widower, almost as old as her father, and by-and-by they got into very pleasant conversation. She learnt from him that Roger Hamley had just been publishing a paper in some scientific periodical, which had excited considerable attention, as it was intended to confute some theory of a great French physiologist, and Roger's article proved the writer to be possessed of a most unusual amount of knowledge on the subject. This piece of news was of great interest to Molly, and, in her questions, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... whale is not an 'admitted fact,' how could it 'warrant belief' in the 'coming resurrection'?" [Footnote: The Nineteenth Century, July, 1890.] Mr. Huxley is using Canon Liddon's phrases here; but he is using them to confute those for whom, as he knows very well, Canon Liddon does not speak. Those who say that the story of Jonah is an "admitted reality" may, perhaps, be able to see that it "warrants belief" in the "coming resurrection." To my own mind, even this is by no means clear. ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... almost fearful of illustrating anything by Similitude; lest he should confute it for an Argument: yet, I think the comparison of a Glass will discover, very aptly, the fallacy of his argument, both concerning Time and Place. The strength of his Reason depends on this, "That the less cannot comprehend the greater." I have already answered that we need ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... brought promises of military assistance on a scale far beyond anything France had yet afforded. It is almost needless to say he was received at Galway and Limerick with an enthusiasm which silenced, if it did not confute, his political enemies, both ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... returned, carrying the salad in its green bowl. She held it precisely between her slender, pale hands as she stood still to confute ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... Christ died for) and so by that means took away the seat of hell, or so contracted it, that it could bear no proportion to heaven, and contradicted that opinion of Austin, Basil, Lactantius that held the earth round as a trencher (whom Acosta and common experience more largely confute) but not as a ball; and Jerusalem where Christ died the middle of it; or Delos, as the fabulous Greeks feigned: because when Jupiter let two eagles loose, to fly from the world's ends east and west, they ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... I say, Okusama! The expression of your face has changed. Heigh-ho! Whither away? Alas! It is plain that she would go to the yashiki of Okumura. Evil her purpose. She would confute the malice spoken by Koume, by parent and child. She would fetch away with her Iemon Dono. Iya! Ho, there! Your honoured judgment strays. She believes in what Gombei has said; that he is with the Okumura. Does she not remember times past, the reproof ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... as corroborating the probability of Pope's statement viewed in the light of a fact; and, secondly, as corroborating that same statement viewed in the light of a current story, true or false, and not as a disingenuous fiction put forward by Pope to confute ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... others (and he mentioned the AEgina marbles as an example) were as highly finished behind as before. I owned myself unwilling to consider the Gladiator a Gaul, but the reasoning struck me, and I am too unlearned to weigh the arguments he used, much less confute them. That the statue being of Grecian marble and Grecian sculpture must therefore have come from Greece, does not appear a conclusive argument, since the Romans commonly employed Greek artists: and as to the rest of the argument,—suppose that in a dozen centuries hence, the charming statue ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Ephesus St. John could best combat and confute, both by his words and writings, the subtle and deadly heresies which were especially rife there. "False Christs," such as Simon Magus, the first heretic, Menander, Dositheus, and others, no longer troubled the Infant Church with their blasphemous ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... not acceptable to him, not with argument, or satire, or wit, or direct refutation, but by metaphorically emptying slops, and directing whirlwinds of bad smells upon their supporters. The intention seems to be, not to confute the arguments, but to disgust the advocates. The proceeding is a confession that the views are so evidently correct that they will inevitably prevail unless their supporters can be driven away. This is an ingenious ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... from the wounds of the brave Prince in the holy land, when an assassin had pierced him with a venomed arrow: and if it be told that women cannot retain council, and therefore can be no brave friends, I can best confute them by the story of Porcia, who being fearful of the weakness of her sex, stabbed herself in the thigh to try how she could bear pain; and finding herself constant enough to that sufferance, gently chid her Brutus for not trusting her, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... accompanie the vnbealeuers / They can not chose but they must heare many subtill reasons and see many other thinges which do mutch make against the true religion that they do profes: Which thinges when they se and be not able to disproue and confute / They do it not: And so they ronne into two mischeifs. The furst is / That they ar as it wer witnesses of the blasphemie / and of the reproche that the vnbeleauers do to the truthe: the seconde / that they maie happ to haue summe stinge left sticking in their concience / ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... faithfully commended to euerlasting posteritie, the stories of the whole world: that by their infinite labours haue aduaunced the knowledge of tongues: to be short, that endeuour themselues to represse the insolencie, confute the slanders, and withstand the vniust violence of others, against themselues, their Nation ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... patient He had, indeed, founded a small religious community of sixteen brethren at St. Ronain, near Toulouse—one of these, we are told, was an Englishman—whose aim and object were to produce an effect through the agency of the pulpit, to confute the heretics and instruct the unlearned. The Order, if it deserved the name, was established on the old lines. A monastery was founded, a local habitation secured. The maintenance of the brotherhood was provided for by a sufficient endowment; the petty cares and anxieties ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... afforded by the institutions of the Incas, seems to point, as far as it goes, towards the same direction; and as the investigation could present but little substantially to confirm, and still less to confute, the views taken in the former disquisition, I have not thought it best to fatigue the reader ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... are forced, for the sake of consistency, to adhere to them even though they do not themselves wholly approve of them; we, on the other hand, who pursue only probabilities, and who cannot go beyond that which seems really likely, can confute others without obstinacy, and are prepared to be confuted ourselves without resentment. Besides, if these studies are ever brought home to us, we shall not want even Greek libraries, in which there is an infinite number of books, by reason ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... Newton had declined the office assigned him, it was given to Mr. Molineux, one of the commissioners of the Admiralty, who engaged in it with no great inclination to favour me; but, however, thought one of the instruments, which, to confirm my own opinion, and to confute Mr. Whiston's, I had exhibited to the Admiralty, so curious or useful, that he surreptitiously copied it on paper, and clandestinely endeavoured to have it imitated by a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... assumption that animals are conscious, but after all you cannot directly observe their consciousness, and you cannot logically confute those philosophers {9} who have contended that the animal was an unconscious automaton. Still less can you be sure in detail what is the animal's sensation or state of mind at any time; to get at that, you would need a trustworthy report from ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... justice of this description, there is a strange mixture of sense and nonsense in Collier's celebrated treatise. Not contented with resting his objections to dramatic immorality and religion, Jeremy labours to confute the poets of the 17th century, by drawing them into comparison with Plautus and Aristophanes, which is certainly judging of one crooked line by another. Neither does he omit, like his predecessor ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... truth of the Christian religion, and even spent some of his spare hours in this study: on other days, when his ordinary labour was over, he meditated some work in Flemish on religion. The subject which he liked best at that time was Christ's love to mankind: he no doubt intended to confute the extravagant opinions of the Gomarists. He purposed also to write a Commentary on the ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... peremptorily said by more than one writer in periodicals, that I have overrated the erudition of William, in permitting him to know Latin; nay, to have read the Comments of Caesar at the age of eight.—Where these gentlemen find the authorities to confute my statement I know not; all I know is, that in the statement I have followed the original authorities usually deemed the best. And I content myself with referring the disputants to a work not so difficult to procure as (and certainly more pleasant to read than) the old Chronicles. ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... especially such as were Ministers in the congregation, should (by often reading, and meditation in God's word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth; and further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) might continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... have been an unnatural thing for an observant lover of poetry at that date to make such a speech, and, without the light of later experience, it would have been impossible to confute him. Yet had that same man lived the length of another human life, seen still more scientists make their steps forward in discovery, seen another crop of even subtler philosophers at their analytic work, witnessed the "Triumph of Reason and Democracy" in the ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... illustrating any thing by similitude, lest he should confute it for an argument; yet I think the comparison of a glass will discover very aptly the fallacy of his argument, both concerning time and place. The strength of his reason depends on this, that the less cannot comprehend the greater. I have already answered, that we need not suppose ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... love trample in its boldness All the laws on which relying She here at my feet has thrown her. 'Tis a dream; and since 'tis so, Let us dream of joys, the sorrows Will come soon enough hereafter. But with mine own words just spoken, Let me now confute myself! If it is a dream that mocks me, Who for human vanities Would forego celestial glory? What past bliss is not a dream? Who has had his happy fortunes Who hath said not to himself As his memory ran o'er them, "All I saw, beyond a doubt Was ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... 'feel no shame whatever in the retrospect of their idiocy. To convert a mind is a subject for high rejoicing; to confute a temper isn't worth ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... that seeing him before my eyes that denied he had defiled my bed, I may confute him with words, and with what has happened from ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... that we're not simple enough. We're perfectly simple, but they've never bothered to study us. They say so many things about us, for instance, that are only half true—and yet I don't know exactly how to confute them. None of us would presume to say such things about them. I'm glad," she ended with a sudden fierceness, "that I ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Two of the most enterprising travellers of modern days, Bruce and Le Vaillant, were ridiculed and discredited upon their return. Subsequent travellers, who went the same track as the former, with a view to confute, were obliged to corroborate his assertions; and all who have followed the latter have acknowledged the correctness of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... says: "With the fair attitude of mind and influenced only by the student's desire to procure knowledge, this book becomes at once something to fascinate. On every page authoritative facts confute the stereotyped statement ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... Dr. Blanchard resigned and Mrs. Hannah J. Bailey was elected president, as she said, "because it was thought best to have a woman at the head of the organization in order to confute the argument, then often advanced by the legislators, that women do not want the ballot." Mrs. Bailey's term of office expired in 1897, by her own request. In the six years of her leadership, six public conventions took place, all in Portland. The business ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Bentley, upon the attacks against him, "Why, they'll write you down." "No, Sir," he replied; "depend upon it, no man was ever written down but by himself[748]." 'He observed to me afterwards, that the advantages authors derived from attacks, were chiefly in subjects of taste, where you cannot confute, as so much may be said on either side.[749] He told me he did not know who was the authour of the Adventures of a Guinea[750], but that the bookseller had sent the first volume to him in manuscript, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... the lawful and only son of the beneficiary named therein, and as such the sole rightful and lawful heir to and owner of the Mainwaring estate. More than this, we propose at the same time and by the same evidence to forever disprove, confute, and silence any and every aspersion and insinuation which has been brought against the character of the proponent, Harold Scott Mainwaring; and in doing this, we shall at last lift the veil which, for the past five months, has hung ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... idea that I was actually dead. This idea I endeavored to confute, kicking and plunging with all my might, and making the most furious contortions—for the operations of the surgeon had, in a measure, restored me to the possession of my faculties. All, however, was attributed to the effects of a new galvanic battery, wherewith the apothecary, who is really a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... absolute lords; but I believe they may mistake their evidence: for it is one thing to be eloquent in the schools, or in the hall; another at the bar, or in the pulpit. There is a difference between mooting and pleading; between fencing and fighting. To make arguments in my study, and confute them, is easy; where I answer myself, not an adversary. So I can see whole volumes dispatched by the umbratical doctors on all sides: but draw these forth into the just lists: let them appear sub dio, and they are changed with the place, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... passed for certain, undisputed; It ne'er cam i' their heads to doubt it, Till chiels gat up an' wad confute it, An' ca'd it wrang; An' muckle din there was about ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... madam, are the eternal humorist The eternal enemy of the absolute, Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist With your air indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—" And—"Are we ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... Ingenious Mr. Thomas Randolph, who in one of his great many admirable Pieces, call'd the Muses Looking-glass, makes his whole Moral to be the Vindication of the Stage, and its usefulness, and by shewing the passions in their Kinds, contrives to confute some canting prejudic'd Zealots, whose ignorance and frenzy had conspir'd before to run it down; I will treat the Reader here with some ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... weary sense of the "stale, flat, and unprofitable" nothings he has been compelled to entertain in his intercourse with the world,—without the recollection of some outrage on his independence, some dogmatism that he dared not question, some impertinence that he dared not confute. With his ears ringing with blue-stocking literature, threadbare sophistries, forms erected into important principles, mediocrity elevated into consideration, and the pre-eminence of the vain, the ignorant, and the contemptible, he will shut himself up in his ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... of the most ordinary sort, and advanced by men of little weight: he had appropriated material without giving due credit for it, and he had puffed his own work. Their only claim upon our notice lies in the fact that Irving thought it worth while to confute them at length. He was perhaps especially sensitive to critical attacks at this time. His income from literary property had nearly ceased. Some of his books were out of print, and the rest were having comparatively little sale. A wave of indifference ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... be no doubt that Hermocrates was right in his view of the motive which brought the Athenians to Sicily, and the arguments of Euphemus, the advocate for Athens, who strove to confute him, will not bear examination. But the people of Camarina were in a difficult position; their city had suffered many things in the past at the hands of Syracuse, and they had reason to fear that her oppressions might be renewed, if she emerged ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... it vile, And coxcombical. My friend the Poet Laureat, Who is a great lawyer at Anything comical, Was the first who tried it; But Mellish could never abide it. But it signifies very little what Mellish said, Because he is dead. For who can confute A body that's mute?— Or who would fight With a senseless sprite?— Or think of troubling An impenetrable old goblin That's dead and gone, And stiff as stone, To convince him with arguments pro and con, As if some live logician, Bred up at Merton, Or Mr. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... and girl, but whilst she was absent from the house for a little, the relatives came, and, by false pretences, obtained possession of the boy, and killed him. She was determined that the girl should live and grow up to confute their fears, and she would not incur the risk of leaving ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... prescribing the methods of raising laughter: in short, they may well attribute a great efficacy to folly, since on any argument they can many times by a slight laugh over what they could never seriously confute. ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... a dreadful charge that I was about to insinuate. I was to accuse my companion of nothing less than murder. I was to call upon him for an avowal of his^ guilt. I was to state the ground of my suspicions, and desire him to confute or confirm them. In doing this, I was principally stimulated by an ungovernable curiosity; yet, if I intended not the conferring of a benefit, I did not, at least, purpose the infliction of evil. I persuaded myself that I was able to exclude ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... believed that spirits intermeddled in the affairs of mankind; and, throughout the Old Testament, I do not find any thing that in the least contradicts is. All the pains and labour that some learned men have taken, to confute the story of the witch of Endor, and the appearance of an old man personating Samuel, cannot make such apparitions inconsistent with nature or religion; and it is plain, that it was either a good or bad spirit, that prophetically told the unfortunate king what should ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... is better, and more necessary, the great nomber, then the little: but to speake more plainly, where there cannot be ordeined a great nomber of men, there cannot be ordeined a perfect ordinaunce: and I will easely confute all the reasons of them propounded. I saie therefore firste, that the lesse nomber where is many people, as is for ensample Tuscane, maketh not that you have better, nor that the chosen be more excellent, for that myndyng in chosing the menne, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... and considerations which rather confute that easy explanation, or at least make clear that the mystery is not so simple. The work of Steinach, a Viennese investigator, has contributed most to the elucidation of the nonarterial factor in senility. No one has asserted more loudly the importance ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... looked into the garden, those did not escape which were in the immediate neighbourhood of the small door by which he had seen Marthon admit Hayraddin, as he pretended, to the apartment of the Countesses. But nothing stirred or showed itself, which could either confute or confirm the tale which the Bohemian had told, until it was becoming dusky, and Quentin began to be sensible, he scarce knew why, that his sauntering so long in the garden might be subject of displeasure or suspicion. Just ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... light. In form too I differ,—I'm thick and I'm thin; I've no flesh and no bone, yet I'm covered with skin; I've more points than the compass, more stops than the flute; I sing without voice, without speaking confute; I'm English, I'm German, I'm French, and I'm Dutch; Some love me too fondly, some slight me too much; I often die soon, though I sometimes live ages, And no monarch alive has so many ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... than what was possible Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute He sat a great while at a time. He had a genius for sitting Mistakes might occur from occasional deviations into sincerity Nine syllables that which could be more forcibly expressed in on They were always to deceive every one, upon every ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... coincidence, collusion, colossal, comatose, combustible, commendatory, commensurate, commiserate, communal, compatibility, compendium, complaisant, comport, composite, compulsive, compulsory, computation, concatenate, concentric, concessive, concomitant, condign, condiment, condolence, confiscatory, confute, congeal, congenital, conglomerate, congruity, connivance, connoisseur, connubial, consensus, consistence, consort, constriction, construe, contentious, context, contiguity, contiguous, contingent, contortion, contravene, contumacious, contumacy, contumelious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... close, damp weather," said Henrietta, surprised at the accurate remembrance, which she could not confute. "She misses ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for them, as the case now standeth with them? Is there not everywhere in God's Book a flat contradiction to this, in multitudes of promises, of invitations, of examples, and the like? Alas! alas! there will then be there millions of souls to confute this plea; ready, I say, to stand up, and say, 'O! deceived world, heaven swarms with such as were, when they were in the world, to the full as bad as you!' Now, this will kill all plea or excuse, why they should not perish in their sins; yea, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
