"Contradiction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distinguished, or beautiful and ugly, or precise and vague, or tender and harsh. And common-sense will therefore tell you that to try to set up vital contradictions between matter and style is absurd. When there is a superficial contradiction, one of the two mutually-contradicting qualities is of far less importance than the other. If you refer literature to the standards of life, common-sense will at once decide which quality should count heaviest in your esteem. You will be in no danger of weighing ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... would have been lasting. Death would not interrupt it, for death would end it. We could not, even then, suppose ourselves unhappy unless we dreaded unhappiness after death, and such an idea strikes me as absurd, for it is a contradiction of the idea of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... satisfying the demands of the most exacting of the creditors. The demonstrative perfumer, who told his dear Constance, with his head on her pillow, the smallest thoughts and feelings of his whole life, looking for the lights of her contradiction, and gathering courage as he did so, was now prevented from speaking of his situation to his head-clerk, his uncle, or his wife. His thoughts were therefore doubly heavy,—and yet the generous martyr preferred to suffer, rather than fling the fiery brand into the soul ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... name."[11] Against the imputation of paradox, which such expressions expose him to, he has written his own defence, applying his usual analytical acuteness to distinguish between originality and singularity.[12] The contradiction of a common prejudice, which always passes for paradox, is often such only in appearance. It is true that an ingenious person may take advantage of the elusive nature of language to play tricks with the ordinary understanding, but it is equally true that words of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... a slight sound that might have been of indifferent assent or of contradiction. The other chose ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... another substance with a faculty of thinking, since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first thinking eternal Being should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created, senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought." With such notions of the nature of thought, as a kind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... that were successful, but his results were contradicted by the experiments of Messrs. Jaillard and Leplat, and those of Mr. Bert concerning the toxic influence of oxygen at high tension upon microbes. As Davaine was unable to explain the contradiction between his results and those of Messrs. Jaillard, Leplat, and Bert, minds were not as yet convinced, notwithstanding the support that his ideas received from Mr. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... Nettie; I behaved rudely to HIM. Yes! Besides, if he behaved rudely, he was no gentleman. It's a contradiction in terms, don't you see? But I'll tell you what I'm going to do if he comes. I'm going to show a proper spirit for once in my life. I'm going to refuse to see him. ...
— The Register • William D. Howells
... voltigeurs to report to me with another howitzer to be placed along with the one already rendering so much service. I could not tell the General that there was not room enough in the steeple for another gun, because he probably would have looked upon such a statement as a contradiction from a second lieutenant. I took the captain with me, but did not ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... sense was now nearing its zenith. The 'Dramatic Lyrics' were published in 1842, possibly about the time that Dickens was returning from his triumphant American tour. These showed, Chesterton thinks, the two qualities most often denied to Browning, passion and beauty. They are the contradiction to critics, other than ours, who regard Browning as wholly a philosophic poet, which is to say a poet who wrote poetry not for its own sake but for purely utilitarian purpose; not that poetry of the emotions is not useful—it ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... their innocence to the last, and if they had confessed previously, retracted before death their statements and accusations. But this contradiction of themselves, to-morrow denying what to-day they had solemnly sworn on the Bible to be true, instead of causing the authorities to hesitate, and consider how much terror and the hope of pardon had to do with it, convinced ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... Strange contradiction! A young man is equally blamed if he passes life in Holy Land, to use an expression of bachelor life. Could it possibly be for the benefit of the honest women that the prefects of police, and mayors of all time have ordained that the passions of the public shall not manifest themselves until ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... its clergy for heresy, for the publication of a book in which the principles of Evolution are frankly adopted and applied to Christianity. For a man to call himself a Christian Evolutionist is (we have been told by high Orthodox authority) a contradiction in terms. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... industriously circulating said maniac calumny. Why did not this base Plebeian, anterior to his giving publicity to the tartaric nausea that rankled at his gloomy heart, forward the corroding philippic, and bid defiance to my contradiction? No, no; he knew full well that with his scanty stock of English ammunition scattered over the sterile floor of his literary magazine, he could not have the effrontery, impudence, or presumption to enter the list of philosophical ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... cannot have escaped observation, that on all subjects but one Holden exercised an ordinary degree of judgment, a circumstance by no means singular in the case of persons affected with monomania. Pownal, therefore, did as he was accustomed, avoiding all contradiction, and falling in with the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... way, and says that Poe, when he reached the goal, emerged from the water with neck, face, and back blistered. The facts of this feat, which was undertaken for a wager, having been questioned, Poe, ever intolerant of contradiction, obtained and published the affidavits of several gentlemen who had witnessed it. They also certified that Poe did not seem at all fatigued, and that he walked back to Richmond immediately after ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... that the Messiah came to the sinner, and not to the righteous. Had the young Jewess been less in need of comfort in her own consciousness of spiritual delinquency she would have set down the old teacher as one of the idlest dealers in contradiction. But now she listened with keener zest; perchance in this doctrine there was balm for her hurt. She made some answer which showed the awakening of this new interest and then with infinite poetry and earnestness he began to unfold ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... it, Put him to Choller straite, he hath bene vs'd Euer to conquer, and to haue his worth Of contradiction. Being once chaft, he cannot Be rein'd againe to Temperance, then he speakes What's in his heart, and that is there which lookes With vs to breake his necke. Enter Coriolanus, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... according to their method, they even had a tendency toward an exaggeration of whatever they adopted. This fine fellow, with ardent but rather heavy voice and look, with his regular features as if marked with a stamp imposed, was more pronounced in his convictions than was needful, and violent in contradiction. According to him, all that was necessary was a crusade made by the democracies to deliver the nations and extinguish war. Four years of the philanthropic slaughterhouse had not convinced him. He was one of those who will never accept the flat contradiction of facts. He had a twofold ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... unjust; but the moral atmosphere between Steve and himself had become permeated with distrust and dislike. Unhappy miasmas floated hither and thither in it, and poisoned him. When with Stephen he hardly recognized himself: he did not belong to himself. Sarcasm, contradiction, opposing ideas, took possession of and ruled him by the forces of antipathy, just as others ruled him by the forces of love ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Englishman's religion, his inborn pietas; in the depths of the dullest soul moved a perception of the ethic meaning attached to lordship. Your Lord was the privileged being endowed by descent with generous instincts, and possessed of means to show them forth in act. A poor noble was a contradiction in terms; if such a person existed, he could only be spoken of with wondering sadness, as though he were the victim of some freak of nature. The Lord was Honourable, Right Honourable; his acts, his words virtually constituted the code of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... leaf fell under Mr. Stackpole's touch, as if it had been a black frost. The American government was a rickety experiment go to pieces presently; American institutions an alternative between fallacy and absurdity, the fruit of raw minds and precocious theories; American liberty a contradiction; American character a compound of quackery and pretension; American society (except at Mrs. Evelyn's) an anomaly; American destiny the same with that of a cactus, or a volcano a period of rest followed by a period of excitement; ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... clergy, ever proclaiming by life or exhortation ideas of peace, submission, and a kingdom not of this world. Why did men turn their backs on these and all else, and betake themselves to revolutionary ideas? How came those ideas to rise up and fill the whole air? The answer is that, with all their contradiction, shallowness, and danger, such ideas fitted the crisis. They were seized by virtue of an instinct of national self-preservation. The evil elements in them worked themselves out in infinite mischief. The true elements ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... as this were frequent upon Job Grinnell's tongue. He did not believe them; their utility was in their challenge to contradiction. Thus they often promoted an increased cordiality of the domestic relations and ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... then having nothing more to advance in contradiction to the Canadian's truthful words whose honest manner of speech carried with it an irresistible ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... rather fond of a joke on his own branch of the profession; he always gave a peculiar emphasis to the line in his song on the contradiction ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... what was said or done in the court chamber after the charter disappeared. The stories of that night are full of mystery and contradiction. Perhaps, after all, no very serious search was made for it. Perhaps its loss brought about a compromise between the two parties. For Governor Andros had already gained his object; he had taken over the government of Connecticut, and the people had saved their pride because they ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... forehead and the neck. Her chin, round and dimpled, was pure of the slightest blemish in every part of it, and perfectly in line with her forehead to the end. Nearer and nearer, and fairer and fairer she came, in the glow of the morning light—the most startling, the most unanswerable contradiction that eye could see or mind conceive to the description in ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the true morning, when the black-haired boy met him with the information that Papa and Mamma had gone to Bombay, and that he and Judy were to stay at Downe Lodge "forever." Antirosa, tearfully appealed to for a contradiction, said that Harry had spoken the truth, and that it behooved Punch to fold up his clothes neatly on going to bed. Punch went out and wept bitterly with Judy, into whose fair head he had driven some ideas of the ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... pointed because Somerset interested himself on the bishop's part. Gardiner, with thorough consistency, declared himself ready to accept the Prayer-book since it did not preclude his view of the Sacrament; but he would not profess opinions in contradiction of the doctrines formally affirmed in the last reign. In the end, he was not only kept in prison, but deprived of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... endured for her sake, or perhaps, by a strange contradiction, just because of these sufferings, the feeling that she was under his care was most highly developed. His admiration of her was unqualified; he thought her more than remarkable in her blue bow and an old red stuff rose in her ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... many coloured jewel to the surface, so has it been permitted to this obscure and superficially educated one to discover the truth of the entire matter among the badly-arranged and frequently really illegible documents preserved at the Hall of Public Reference at Peking. Without fear of contradiction, therefore, he now sets forth ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... of the young man—albeit begrimed with smoke, and his clear laughing blue eyes, were such a flat contradiction to the charge which had been made against him that John looked up in his ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... opinion might be, she certainly offered no contradiction. If she had been in his place, all her world should have heard of her prodigal's return, and should have been bidden to eat of the fatted calf; she would have called her friends and neighbours to rejoice with her over the lost one who had found his way home. Her ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... verse that's just meant for you, Dick," said Mrs. Dainton kindly, "and you ought to learn it by heart. 'Consider Him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be weary and faint in your minds.' I'll show ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... Claudius began, "that the difficulty lies in the contradiction between the theory and the fact. Of course, as in all such cases, the theory loses the battle, and we are left groping for an explanation of the fact which we do not understand. Perhaps that is a little ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... super-sweet, egoistic voice of the club-footed poet Byron would, of course, never have been heard: one brief egoistic "lament" on Taygetus, and so an end. It is not, however, certain that the world could not have managed very well without Lord Byron. The one thing that admits of no contradiction is that it cannot manage without the holy citizen, and that disease, to men and to nations, can have but one meaning, annihilation near or ultimate. At any rate, from these remarks, you will now very likely be able to arrive at some understanding of the wording of the advertisements ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... Roddy drew a deep breath and glared at Peter as though inviting contradiction. But, instead of contradicting him, Peter smiled skeptically and moved to his bedroom, which opened upon the court-yard. At ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... I wanted to exasperate him. I have an innate passion for contradiction—my whole life has been nothing but a series of melancholy and vain contradictions of heart or reason. The presence of an enthusiast chills me with a twelfth-night cold, and I believe that constant association with a person of a flaccid and phlegmatic ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... conflicting testimony, what is stated by the majority (of the witnesses) must be credited; if the numbers be equal, then those of the witnesses who are of distinguished qualities[157] must be credited; if again, these are in contradiction, then the most ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... PERIOD. It seems a curious contradiction, at first glance, to place the return of Charles II at the beginning of modern England, as our historians are wont to do; for there was never a time when the progress of liberty, which history records, was more plainly turned ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... was the young man's speech. The hands noticed that he had not called them 'friends,' nor, indeed, had his tone been friendly, but only business-like and curt, in marked contradiction to the way he had spoken of 'my good friends here,' alluding to those who had remained at their posts. But they were just men, and they respected the young man all the more for bravely and boldly 'standing up to them,' and showing his loyalty to his father and those who had stood ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... Brigadier, surrounded himself with a staff of young men of unequalled ability, tireless, watchful, and brave to a fault. Captain C.R. Holmes, as Assistant Adjutant General, was promoted to that position from one of the Charleston companies. I fear no contradiction when I say he was one of the very best staff officers in the army, and had he been in line of promotion his merits would have demanded recognition and a much higher position given him. Captain W.M. Dwight, as Adjutant and ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... two more volumes (which I suppose will reach backwards to his great-great-grandfather); Lord Fauconberg, a donative of one hundred and sixty pounds a-year; and Bishop Warburton[3] gave him a purse of gold and this compliment (which happened to be a contradiction), "that it was quite an original composition, and in the true Cervantic vein:" the only copy that ever was an original, except in painting, where they all pretend to be so. Warburton, however, not content with this, recommended the book to the bench of bishops, and told them Mr. Sterne, the author, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... The same contradiction still prevails between all the private accounts, even those of the physicians themselves, and the public information which they give either to Ministers or to the country. At the same time, the medical ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... reason as Plutarch allegeth for it. The Jews, that can believe the supernatural solstice of the sun in the days of Joshua, have yet the impudence to deny the eclipse, which every pagan confessed, at his death; but for this, it is evident beyond all contradiction: the devil himself confessed it.* Certainly it is not a warrant- able curiosity, to examine the verity of Scripture by the concordance of human history; or seek to confirm the chronicle of Hester or Daniel by the authority of Meg- asthenes or Herodotus. I confess, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... reveals so much in one single accent, I was surprised to see her averted looks, or remark on her brow and in the corners of her mouth a trace of sad and painful incredulity, which seemed to me in contradiction with our enthusiasm. One day, I asked her, timidly, the reason. "It is that that word gives me pain," she answered. "And how," said I, "how can the word that comprehends all life, all love, and all goodness give pain to the most perfect of God's creations?" ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... The quasi-historical Robin, the outlaw ennobled (by a contradiction in terms) as the Earl of Huntingdon, Robert Fitzooth, etc., ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... with oneself and others. Proceeding from concepts already formed, from facts already observed and making appeal to the persistence of the true or of thought (such is the meaning of the principle of identity and contradiction), it infers consequences from these data, that is, it represents what has already been discovered. Therefore, if it be an idem per idem from the point of view of invention, it is most efficacious ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... this subject. There is not, and never will be, any direct evidence as to the origin of conscience; and as that sense (like any other power of our mental nature) is capable of being educated, evoked, enlightened, and strengthened, and may also by neglect and contradiction deteriorate and wither away, there is ample room for allowing a certain part of the theory.[3] But many people who examine their own conscience will feel that the description certainly does not suit them; there are many things which conscience disapproves, of which no great evil ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... may involve a seeming contradiction; But you I know are sage, and feel, and taste, And understand my speech with full conviction. For your just pious deeds may you be graced With the Lord's great reward and benediction, By whom you were directed to this waste: To His high mercy ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... told me of a conversation he held with you this morning. He says you admit the authorship of an article which seems quite inconsistent with what you have professed in our talks. How am I to understand this contradiction? I beg that you will write to me at once. I shall ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... prompt contradiction. "On the contrary, after several years of struggle, it failed. The public is fickle, you know, and the novelty of owning a cheap watch wore off. Moreover, the product got a bad name and failed to be taken seriously. It required a great deal of time and energy to wind a watch with such a long ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... happy to hear of any one who liked self-denial," responded the Earl, laughing. "Is that not a contradiction in terms?" ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... there is a difficulty to the judgment in associating Robinson Crusoe with this lovely island of the Pacific, and a difficulty even to the fancy. Why, it is hard to guess, or through what perverse contradiction to the facts, De Foe chose to place the shipwreck of Robinson Crusoe upon the eastern side of the American continent. Now, not only was this in direct opposition to the realities of the case upon which he built, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... gentle to the sufferers under my care, as a necessary element of professional duty, I was intolerant of contradiction from those who belonged to my calling, or even from those who, in general opinion, opposed my favourite theories. I had espoused a school of medical philosophy severely rigid in its inductive logic. My ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to his metallic voice which betrayed the profoundest emotion. His daring came from some mysterious source within. It was a daring that was the contradiction of reason ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... further risks of being confronted by a contradiction that may put them at a loss they will do well to ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... must attract, such a woman as Hermione. That which she had in the soul Delarey seemed to express in the body—sympathy, enthusiasm, swiftness, courage. He was like a statue of her feelings, but a statue endowed with life. And the fact that her physique was a sort of contradiction of her inner self must make more powerful the charm of a Delarey for her. As Hermione looked round at him, turning her tall figure rather slowly in the chair, Artois made up his mind that she had been captured by the physique of this man. He could not ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... colour, the binding together and admixture of two related colours, are the foundations of most coloured harmonies. From what has been said above about colour working, from the fact that we live in a time of questioning, experiment and contradiction, we can draw the easy conclusion that for a harmonization on the basis of individual colours our age is especially unsuitable. Perhaps with envy and with a mournful sympathy we listen to the music of Mozart. It acts as a welcome ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... be too much, as Mary told Clavering, to ask a violent contradiction of human nature from worn out glands, and she bore them no malice. She only wondered that Jane Oglethorpe, Elinor Goodrich, and Lily Tracy were still faithful in private—to the world all of them preserved a united front; they ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... thing I do believe in," he answered lightly. "It is a fact that will bear examination, but not contradiction. May I ask you to turn your head slightly to the left—so! Yes, that will do; if I can catch the look in your eyes that gleams there now,— the look of intense, burning, greedy cruelty which is so murderously fascinating, I shall ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... not feel,' she explained; 'there is no such thing as feeling: therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing as existent as a contradiction. Matter has no existence; nothing exists but mind; the mind cannot feel pain, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... die? Isn't there some contradiction?" Sri Yukteswar's eyes were twinkling with love ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... him with especial clearness when he met her from time to time during the winter. He watched her in talk with others, noting the contradiction in her that she would at one moment appear knowing and masterful, with depths of reserve that the other people neither fathomed nor knew of; and at another moment frankly girlish, with an appealing feminine helplessness which is woman's greatest ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... lazy and disrespectful abbreviation. If you say "Pardon me," let your manner indicate a dignified apology. "I beg your pardon," is sometimes only the insolent preface to a flat and angry contradiction. In most phrases of compliment, the words derive their real significance from ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... books. Pete Murphy began the score of an opera vaguely heroic in theme; he wrote every spare moment. Billy Fairfax worked so hard that he grew thin. Honey Smith went off on long, solitary walks. Ralph Addington, as usual, showed an exasperating tendency towards contradiction, ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... dark world. She heard the song of the birds, and smelt the scent of the orange groves and apple orchards so strongly that she seemed to taste it. Soft tones and charming songs reached her ear, as well as harsh sounds and rough words—thoughts and opinions in strange contradiction to each other. Into the deepest recesses of her heart penetrated the echoes of human thoughts and feelings. Now she heard the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... her daughters were using the power of earthly love to discipline and refine the courts. Side by side with the crude realities about them, they insisted on teaching and enforcing an ideal that contradicted the realities, and had no value for them or for us except in the contradiction. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... hundred yards further a strange contradiction of such tenderness occurred. A child running along the path towards them fell on its face, and set up a dismal cry of fright and pain. A look of horror came into Frank's eyes, and, putting his fingers in his ears, he fled at full speed down ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... that her mind was in fact unhinged altogether by the calamity, she overcame her feelings; but it is comic to see her struggling between her indignation at your mother's irresponsible talk and her consciousness that it is necessary to abstain from exciting her by contradiction." ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... the Yankee women; they have no character. The weight of tradition might be fatal to industry and modern life, but it is the one thing that creates the spirituality of the old countries. Beyond contradiction American women have intelligence, beauty, energy, attractive flashes, but they lack that particular thing created by centuries: character. At times they have very charming impulses. Have you heard the ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... the evening between flirting and recounting various anecdotes of Mr. Burton, none of which were at all flattering either to his intelligence or to his sobriety, and the victim, after one or two futile attempts at contradiction, sat in helpless wrath as he saw the infatuation of the widow. They were barely clear of the house before his pent-up emotions fell in an avalanche of words on the faithless ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... which these dames call "taking the dress" attracted the entire Court to their church. The Queen herself desired to be present at so harrowing a spectacle, and by a curious contradiction, of which her capricious nature is capable, she shed floods of tears. La Valliere seemed gentler, lovelier, more modest and more seductive than ever. In the midst of the grief and tears which her courageous sacrifice provoked, she never uttered a single sigh, nor did she change colour ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... other hand, the occasional and precarious dripping of coppers has by no means a genial effect. If the one recipient becomes hard as the nether millstone, the other (just as after constant 'pinching' a limb becomes insensible) grows callous, and also (though it seems like a contradiction in terms) sometimes acquires a certain dreadful suppleness. Nothing is more monstrous than the generally received opinion with respect to a moderate competence; that 'fatal gift,' as it is called, which encourages idleness in youth by doing away with the necessity ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... most Germans in the group, whatever they may babble of the firm over the walnuts and the wine, will rally round the national concern at the approach of difficulty. They are so few—I am ashamed to give their number, it were to challenge contradiction—they are so few, and the amount of national capital buried at their feet is so vast, that we must not wonder if they seem oppressed with greatness and the sense of empire. Other whites take part in our brabbles, while temper holds out, with a certain schoolboy entertainment. In the Germans ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but because passion says he couldn't. I suggested in an earlier chapter that the issue of honesty and dishonesty was a futile one, and I placed faith in the creative men. They hate shams and the watering of goods on a more trustworthy basis than the mere routine moralist. To them dishonesty is a contradiction of their own lusts, and they ask no credit, need none, for being true. Creation is an emotional ascent, which makes the standard vices trivial, and turns all that is valuable in virtue ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... to make the instructions "as vague and general as possible," the simple direction to confer "upon the subject to which it relates"; but his chief refused the suggestion, and wrote the following instruction, which carried a palpable contradiction on its face: ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... is all this thus? It is not because the Negro is an alien or because he is an undesirable citizen. For he is not that at all, as we have seen, but quite the contrary. But how explain this enormous contradiction between the rights which he is legally entitled to and those which he actually possesses? Here he is fifty years after emancipation, forty-four years after his investiture with American citizenship, and forty-two years after the adoption of the great ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... cross-questioned the witness searchingly, ever more searchingly, pursued him in and out, in and out, till at length, snap!—Katherine's heart stood still, and the crowd leaned forward breathless—snap, and he had caught the engineer in a contradiction! ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... may be the Eighty-firsht, or th' Eighty-second; but what I say is, without fear of contradiction, I wish to the Lord I was back in old Bristol again. I'd sooner have a nipperkin of our own real "Bristol milk" than a mash-tub ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... "Beyond all contradiction, boy, there is a strange perversion of the old and natural sentiments on this head among us. But you must bear in mind the fact, that of the two millions and a half the State contains, not half a million, probably, possess any of the true York blood, and ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... concern for the interests of mankind. Were they convinced, that their discoveries were of no consequence, they would entirely lose all relish for their studies, and that though the consequences be entirely indifferent to them; which seems to be a contradiction. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... regret that I had been "betrayed into a warmth which," and on the whole to repudiate, as untenable, the idea that I was to be found anywhere. Drummle and I then sat snorting at one another for an hour, while the Grove engaged in indiscriminate contradiction, and finally the promotion of good feeling was declared to have gone ahead ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... passed, and with each the silver thread—for them the thread of life—grew, with strange contradiction, longer and longer, and with every minute ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... here with Captain Barker, started in a direction to Swan Port (Swan River) with a party of men, and in eleven days went over at least two hundred miles of ground. He says, without fear of contradiction in future, that there is far greater proportion of good land in this direction than in any other part of Australia that he had been in, and also wood of large growth, with innumerable rivers. He ascended ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... or as authority, is distinct from that which is governed; but natural developments are nature, and indistinguishable from her. The governor and the governed, the restrainer and the restrained, can never as such be identical. Self-government, taken strictly, is a contradiction in terms. When an individual is said to govern himself, he is never understood to govern himself in the sense in which he is governed. He by his reason and will governs or restrains his appetites and passions. It is man as spirit ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... the main difficulty which obstructs our comprehension comes from the seeming dissimilarity of things within and things without man's "passing strange, complex mortality." This apparent lack of co-ordination presumedly stands in direct contradiction ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... him; or that thou hadst not compassion for the biggest sinners, therefore I died in despair? Will these be excuses 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 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the great selflessnesses? What of the ideal loyalties? What of the long-accumulated instincts which tell a man, in tones which brook no contradiction, that the shortest life and the cruellest death are better than the longest life of sensual self-contempt? Here, as it seems to me, Mr. Wells's apostolate of a new religion is very conspicuously superfluous—much more so than it would have been five ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... contradiction involved in commending Edith for doing what he considered it a pity that she should do; but she recognized her own impotence also, and was silent. It was the system, the horrid system that was to blame, and neither he, nor she, nor ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... nose long in proportion, but not prominent. The eyes were dark, very bright, and wide apart, with little eyebrows dabbed over them at a slanting angle. The thin-lipped mouth rather pursed up, which made his smile the contradiction it was. In short, my dears, while I do not lay claim to the reading of character, it required no great astuteness to perceive the scholar, the man of the world, and the ascetic—and all affected. His conversation bore out the summary. It astonished us. It encircled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... presence of you all, claim for the Republican party, and defy contradiction, that in the grandeur of its achievements, in the benefits it has conferred upon the people, in the patriotic motives that have animated it, and the principles that have guided it, in the fidelity, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... attorney not only accompanied them to the door, but down-stairs to the street, where he stood for a moment watching them drive down the thoroughfare. Then he slowly returned, breathing heavily—invidious contradiction of his youthful assumption!—and shaking his head, as ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... is full of uncertainty and contradiction. Without discussing these features, I am entirely satisfied that a pension should not be allowed, for the reason, among others, that three careful medical examinations made in 1883, 1884, and 1886 failed to disclose any ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... for it was part of one's senses—the very evidence on which the materialists rely to prove that beyond this world there is nothing. Yet what a flagrant contradiction her conduct was to the murmur of spiritual existence. And that was why she was not happy. That was why she would never be happy till she reformed.... But the preacher spoke as if it were easy for all who wished it to change their lives. How was she to change her life? Her life was settled and ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... in his own judgment, in discussions with his associates. But the Socratic method of argumentation, so different from that in which he had been accustomed to indulge, at once secured his approval and admiration. Socrates was never guilty of the discourtesy of assailing an opponent with flat contradiction or positive assertion. With a politeness which never failed him, and a modesty of demeanor which won the regard of all others, he would lead his fellow disputant, by a series of questions, to assent ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... contradiction, ever since the doors are open to every one there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When, twelve years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the "Medusa" of Gericault, the ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... the barbarians were most readily converted; by the rising tide of ignorance, which overwhelmed all rival conceptions of Christendom and blotted out the past history of the Church. So great was this ignorance that Innocent I could claim, without much fear of contradiction, that "no man has founded any church in Italy, Sicily, Gaul, Spain, or Africa, excepting those whom Peter and his successors have ordained as priests." In the Italian peninsula there were three churches—Ravenna, ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... and moving in Tarboe. He was a contradiction. A lover of life, he was also reckless in how he got what he wanted. If it could not be got by the straight means, then it must be by the crooked, and that was where he and Grier lay down together, as it were. Yet he had some knowledge that was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hours thus employed were lost in God's sight; but her celestial guardian corrected her judgment on this point, and taught her to discern the Divine will in every little irksome worldly duty, in every trifling contradiction, as well as in great trials and on important occasions. The light of the angelic presence gave her also a marvellous insight into the thoughts of others. Their sins, their errors, their evil inclinations, were supernaturally revealed to her, and often caused ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... contradiction as to the date of composition of Windsor Forest. Part seems to have been written early (Pope says 1704), and part ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... in the inmost recesses of his own heart, Mr. Grimwig was strongly disposed to admit that Oliver's appearance and manner were unusually prepossessing; but he had a strong appetite for contradiction, sharpened on this occasion by the finding of the orange-peel; and, inwardly determining that no man should dictate to him whether a boy was well-looking or not, he had resolved, from the first, to oppose his friend. When Mr. Brownlow admitted that on no one point of ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... of little streams suddenly heard on the turning of the corner of a hill. The dim light shrouded with fantasy the walls; along the wide passage and cabinets, high china jars, the hollow scoop of the window at the far-distant end, were all alive and moving. And, in strange contradiction to the moving voices within the house, came the blurred echo of the London life, whirring, buzzing, like a cloud of gnats at the window-pane. "Look out! Look out! Look out!" the house cried, and Henry, with chattering teeth, was ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... are here retailed and related— contradiction is challenged from friend or foe. The observation on, and induction from the facts, are here stamped with sincerity: I ask for no other credit. I may be mistaken: I will not acknowledge the mistake ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... improved the acquaintance of Solomon Gills, with whom she was on terms of perfect confidence and ease. The black-eyed (who had cried so much that she might now be called the red-eyed, and who was very silent and depressed) caught her in her arms without a word of contradiction or reproach, and made a very hysterical meeting of it. Then converting the parlour, for the nonce, into a private tiring room, she dressed her, with great care, in proper clothes; and presently led her forth, as like a Dombey as her natural disqualifications ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... his ideas, we must remember that he confessed that he was baffled by many of Bergson's notions. James certainly neglected many of the deeper metaphysical aspects of Bergson's thought, which did not harmonize with his own, and are even in direct contradiction. In addition to this Bergson is no pragmatist, for him "utility," so far from being a test of truth, is rather the reverse, a synonym ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn |
