"Contradictory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a characteristic which distinguishes the Pigtail from the Rococo. This leaning toward individual caricature nevertheless was maintained throughout the entire age of the Pigtail. Indeed the very figure in the escutcheon of this period, the pigtail of hair, grew out of the contradictory effort to restrain and render uniform the natural luxuriance of the hair, and yet at the same time to append to men's backs a pure freak, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... the most remarkable boyish poems that we have ever read. We know of none that can compare with them for maturity of purpose, and a nice understanding of the effects of language and metre. Such pieces are only valuable when they display what we can only express by the contradictory phrase of innate experience. We copy one of the shorter poems, written when the author was only fourteen. There is a little dimness in the filling up, but the grace and symmetry of the outline are such as few poets ever attain. There is a ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... forgotten. When her name was mentioned among the ladies and gentlemen, the strangest stories were told, and everybody gave the most contradictory and at the same time prodigious information. She had made a conquest of the viceroy; she was reigning, in the recesses of a palace, over two hundred slaves whose heads she now and then cut off for the sake of a little amusement. No, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... example, is constituted by his memories and the rest of his knowledge, by his loves and hatreds, and so on; thus, but for the objects which he knows or loves or hates, he could not be what he is. He is essentially and obviously a fragment: taken as the sum-total of reality he would be self-contradictory. ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... thought him obstinate and contradictory. Halting, he planted his feet as though no power on earth could move him, and shot forward his long ears. Then it seemed to me that he was trying to show how futile my boast, and in my anger I dared to kick him. A fly would have moved him as well. His long ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... conversation was all contradictory. In one breath, on the self-abnegation principle, he would say, 'I don't know any thing about paintings;' in the next breath, his overweening egotism would make him loudly proclaim: 'There never was but one painter in this world, and his name is Hockskins; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is possible, yet 'tis so exceeding difficult that very few Persons in an Assembly are capable of it; and when they attempt it, if their Thoughts should be enquir'd one by one, you would find very various, wretched, and contradictory Meanings put upon the Words of the Hebrew Psalmist, and all for want of an Evangelical Translation of him. 'Tis very obvious and common to observe that Persons of Seriousness and Judgment that consider what they sing, are often forced ...
— A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody • Isaac Watts
... the subject is that by Boker; it is a peculiarly contradictory piece of work, since, from the standpoint of the stage, it is essentially and effectively dramatic, while as literature it is imitative of the Elizabethan style. Boker's poetic imagery is distinctly borrowed, and his choice of words disappointingly ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... uncontrolled: was it likely she would prove controllable? Would she mind him, when she cared no more for his stately mother than for the dairy-woman! How could such a bewitching creature so lack refinement! The more he thought, the more inexplicable and self-contradictory her conduct appeared. Such a jewelled-humming-bird to make friends with a grubbing rook! The smell of the leather, not to mention the paste and glue, would be enough for any properly sensitive girl! ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... unsophisticated enjoyment of nature. In the midst of modern society, broken up by innumerable prejudices, the mind is in a constant turmoil of agitation. It is incessantly revolving in itself a thousand tumultuous and contradictory opinions, by which the members of an ambitious and miserable circle seek to raise themselves above each other. But in solitude the soul lays aside the morbid illusions which troubled her, and resumes the pure consciousness ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... escaping the issue of moral choice." "One opinion is as good as another." Discuss these two contradictory statements. ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... critical ingenuity in the explanation of this passage. His interpretation, however, seems to me much too recondite. The meaning of the passage may be certain enough; but surely the expression is confused, and one part of it contradictory to the other. BOSWELL. This note is first given ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... witchcraft was tried in 1711, before Lord Chief Justice Powell; in which, however, the jury persisted in a verdict of guilty, though the evidence was of the usual absurd and contradictory character, and the enlightened judge did all in his power to bring them to a right conclusion. The accused person was one Jane Wenham, better known as the Witch of Walkerne; and the persons who were alleged to have suffered from her ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Eugenio make such things—so true and yet so self-contradictory, so mutually repellent—clear to these simple-hearted young correspondents of his? The more he thought of the matter, the more he resolved ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... work accomplished.[98] This has special reference to the statistics published by the Army, and is a good criticism. At different times and in different parts of the world, statistics are given out, which seems to emanate from no one authority, which are often contradictory, and which create confusion in the mind of the person wishing to get at the facts. As a result of a good deal of recent criticism on this point, all future statistics of the Army in the United States are to come from ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... pleased. It did not occur to her, in the least, little degree, that occasion could possibly arise whereby contradictory orders would be given. Ben started to help ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... she thus kept them by her side. Henri had at first paid two visits each day, but soon he spent the whole night with them, giving every hour he could spare to the child. At the outset he had feared it was a case of typhoid fever; but so contradictory were the symptoms that he soon felt himself involved in perplexity. There was no doubt he was confronted by a disease of the chlorosis type, presenting the greatest difficulty in treatment, with the possibility of very dangerous complications, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... two contradictory principles, even if she has the best intentions in the world, what is she to do? Is it to be wondered at, if many a modern mother, in this predicament, vacillates between the two? She doesn't like to punish the child and most of the time she avoids doing it; but now and then, ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... attempt is to make the machine do the thing with as little dependence as possible on the human element, even though the human element was never emphasized more. Contradictory? Yet there it is. We men go to the impersonal. Yet deep down in our hearts we hunger for the human touch, the warm personal touch. This after all is the thing. We all feel that. Yet the whole crowding of life's action is to ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... without our mosquito-nettings, and in daytime the deck was pleasant under the awnings. It was hot, of course, but we were dressed suitably in our exploring and hunting clothes and did not mind the heat. The river was low, for there had been dry weather for some weeks —judging from the vague and contradictory information I received there is much elasticity to the terms wet season and dry season at this part of the Paraguay. Under the brilliant sky we steamed steadily up the mighty river; the sunset was glorious as we leaned on the port railing; and after nightfall ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... class and himself, and then he would select from the results the form which was before them in nature. These lessons, which were in this way made so attractive, and whose merits spoke for themselves, showed, however, when it came to practical application, an unpractical, I had almost said, a self-contradictory aspect. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... words: They gave Him His grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in His death) to be recognized in the text? There remains no trace of a contrast, unless it be contained in [Hebrew: rweiM] and [Hebrew: ewir]. Are these really two ideas so contradictory, that they alone are sufficient to bring into contrariety two clauses which have altogether the appearance of being intended for the same purpose?" But in this argument, Hofmann overlooks the circumstance, that the wicked are specially criminals—for they alone had a peculiar grave—and that ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... truth. The Friend of Man was the enemy of all his family. He beat his servants, and did not pay them. The reports of the lawsuit with his wife, in 1775, prove that this philosopher possessed, in the highest possible degree, all the anti-conjugal qualities. It is said that his eldest son wrote two contradictory depositions, and ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... to me, Wynnie," he said, when I had ended. "I must go and see her. I have a suspicion, amounting almost to a conviction, that she is one whose acquaintance ought to be cultivated at any cost. There is some grand explanation of all this contradictory strangeness." ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... the whole house that something was wrong. Mr. Arabin, when he saw Eleanor, could not succeed in looking or in speaking as though he knew nothing of all this. He could not be cheerful and positive and contradictory with her, as was his wont. He had not been two minutes in the room before he felt that he had done wrong to return; and the moment he heard her voice, he thoroughly wished himself back at St. Ewold's. Why, indeed, should he have wished to have ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... letter written the day after her death to Edmund Lambert, whether by one of her physicians or not is uncertain, gives an account of her sickness in no respect contradictory to Robert Cary's. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... who was then Proconsul, placed the crown, as he says, upon his "disordered head." The future Father of the Church writing for the theatre—and what a theatre it was then!—is not the least extraordinary thing in this life so disturbed and, at first sight, so contradictory. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Scipio, consul B.C. 83. Plutarch speaks of the same event in the Life of Sulla, c. 28, where he states that the soldiers of Scipio came over to Sulla. The two statements are contradictory, Appianus (Civil Wars, i. 85) tells the story of Scipio's army going over ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... tattered uniforms, with grimy hands and faces, and boots knee-deep in stains of mud, stood about or sat in the empty carts, talking, gesticulating, giving sundry, confused and contradictory accounts of the great battle—describing Napoleon's decisive victory—Wellington's rout—the prolonged absence of Bluecher and the Prussians, ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... which I am sorry we are obliged to eat in this early part of our journey. This supply of biscuits has certainly cost us much in carriage—many hard dollars; but nevertheless we have found it excellent for our health, and it now promises to save us from starvation. We had heard contradictory reports on the road; some people saying we should find everything in Aheer, and others nothing. The latter prophecy seems likely to ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... made such confusion, first confessing a little, then a little more, then contradicting himself, then admitting, when the thing had been proved against him, what he had before denied, that it was almost impossible to disentangle the truth from his confused and contradictory declarations. The substance of the case ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... for any fate has been one of the chief attractions of your character to me, for I believe it is deeper than a mere state of mind. But, for all that, your restlessness is uppermost just now; not as a contradictory element, for it is not; ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the priests, merchants, and lawyers, are really the most ignorant, and it is only from the arrieros, or muleteers, and the correos, or runners, that any knowledge of this kind can be obtained, and then only in a very confused form, and with most preposterous and contradictory estimates of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... his fall, transmitted some calamity only, but no crime to his posterity; the good old man was exceedingly troubled, and bewailed the misery of those licentious times, and seemed to wonder (save that the times were such) that any should write, or be permitted to publish any error so contradictory to truth, and the doctrine of the Church of England, established (as he truly said) by clear evidence of Scripture, and the just and supreme power of this nation, both sacred and civil. I name not the books, nor their authors, which are ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... contradiction in terms. There are impossibilities logical, but none natural. A 'round square,' a 'present past,' 'two parallel lines that intersect,' are impossibilities, because the ideas denoted by the predicates, round, present, intersect, are contradictory of the ideas denoted by the subjects, square, past, parallel. But walking on water, or turning water into wine, or procreation without male intervention, or raising the dead, are plainly not impossibilities ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... logic in dealing with the Bible so superior! On the contrary, I am all for your Ranter. He is your logical Protestant. Historically, you Anglican parsons are where you are and what you are, because Englishmen, as a whole, like attempting the contradictory—like, above all, to eat their cake and have it. The nation has made you and maintains you for its own purposes. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... prove the supposition that the things were different at the different moments. If it is held that the nature of production varies at different moments, then also the thing at those two moments must be different, for a thing could not have in it two contradictory capacities. ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Land Court, Mr. Strachan buying part of the estate for L2,765. It was easy enough to buy, and even to pay, but to get possession was quite another thing. Precise information is difficult to get, for while some decline to say a word, others are mutually contradictory, and a State Commission would hardly sift truth from the confusing mass of details, denials, assertions, and counter-assertions. This much is clear enough. A tenant named Ruane was required to leave a house, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... blow was given because wearing a white hat they thought I was a Tuscan. If the first reason had been sufficient, the other, miserable as it is, had not been necessary. But all the defence is palpably false, contradictory, and nothing worth. An untruth defended cannot become truth. All these facts, without troubling you further, prove the truth of my statement, which it has been ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "inexorable laws and indestructible properties of matter," but is implied in the inexorable laws of thought—in that eternal right reason which makes it impossible for Deity to do what is self-contradictory or absurd. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... make so loud a report," said I, smiling; "but I protest against your doctrine. Why, according to that, an author is accountable for all the opinions of his dramatis personae, however absurd and contradictory they may be." ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... his agony, came inspiration. He must save them all with a lie! Queer that, queer and contradictory! Yes, after practicing the truth, he must save them all from ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... efficiency; with a great task given into her hand. As to the Squire, the owner of Mannering, who had provided her with the task, Mrs. Bremerton could not imagine him or envisage him at all. Elizabeth's accounts of him were so reticent and so contradictory.... 'Well, that's very interesting'—said Elizabeth thoughtfully, when Captain Dell laid down his papers—'I wonder what Mr. Mannering will say to it? As you know, I got his express permission for you to make these enquiries. ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that odd merriment which came from sheer perversity. When the depths and shallows of his contradictory character were disturbed a ripple of what passed for mirth covered all the surface; if there was any profundity to the man the ripple obscured it. No eye had ever penetrated the secrecy of what lay below; none ever would. Perhaps there ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... seen the head without imagining that it was his, some time after called on Mrs. Hayes, on separate occasions, to inquire for her husband, whose absence began to be noticed. Ashley and Longmore were mutual {51} friends, and their suspicions being excited by the contradictory statements which Mrs. Hayes had given to them, they went to look again at the head, when a minute examination satisfied them that it had belonged to Hayes. The apprehension of the murderers was the result. On the day they were brought ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... means void of divertisement," remarked Shen Yi, with conciliatory mildness in his voice. "There was one, turning on the contradictory nature of a door which under favourable conditions was indistinguishable from an earthenware vessel, that seldom failed to baffle the unalert in the days before the binding of ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... did hear, or pretend to, for two whole days, from all the counsel in turn, in the course of which the lawyers read contradictory decisions enough to perfectly establish both sides, from volume after volume, whole libraries in fact, until no mortal man could say what the rules were. The question of insanity in all its legal aspects was of course drawn into the discussion, and its application ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... evidence, proportioned to the superiority. A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably beget a pretty strong degree of assurance. In all cases, we must balance the opposite experiments, where they are opposite, and deduct the smaller number from the greater, in order to know the exact ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... no further molestation. But indeed the young men's time was almost up—which was quite as well, for Annie of the shop, after turning a corner of the road, had climbed the hill-side, and seen all that passed. The young ladies, hearing contradictory statements, called upon Annie to learn the truth, and the intercourse with her that followed was not without influence on them. Through Annie they saw further into the character of the brothers, who, if they advocated things too fine for the world the girls had hitherto known, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... in apportioning the parts, for there was no disposition to let anybody win but the Americans. Seesaw Simpson was usually made commander-in-chief of the British army, and a limp and uncertain one he was, capable, with his contradictory orders and his fondness for the extreme rear, of leading any regiment to an inglorious death. Sometimes the long-suffering house was a log hut, and the brave settlers defeated a band of hostile Indians, or occasionally were ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... anti-charabancs campaign and Sir ERIC GEDDES was doing his best to maintain an even mind amid the contradictory suggestions showered upon him, the Ministerial eye was caught by the red gleam from Colonel WEDGWOOD'S shirt-front. At once, the old railway instinct reasserted itself. Recognizing the danger-signal and hastily cramming on his brakes, Sir ERIC observed that it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... contradictory, or bad, is "supposed" to be the German word quer, introduced by the Gipsies. In their own language atut means across or against, though to curry (German and Turkish Gipsy kurava), has some of ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... and inevitably forced to make, an ivory bell-handle against the wall, beside the door, arrests your attention, with the words around it, which, with difficulty, you decipher by the dim light, "Editor's Room—No Admittance," followed by the encouraging, but somewhat contradictory word, "Ring," which, doubtless, means this: "If you are a particular friend of the editor, or have particular business with him as a journalist, ring the bell, and perhaps you may be admitted." Supposing either of these positions ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... contradicts it, that part of the amendment falls void and useless, so far as its effect upon woman is concerned. There is the declaration of the general principles expressly stated; and, if there is anything contradictory, "the particular and inferior can not defeat the general and superior." (Lieber's Hermeneutics, p. 120.) The great object of that XIV. Amendment, so far as it can be deduced from the words in which it is expressed, is this: that the rights of the citizens of the United ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... metallic substances upon one another, and apparently without the interference of electric bodies. I say apparently so, because the air seems to be in a great measure concerned in those experiments, and perhaps the whole effect may be produced by that surrounding medium. But, though the irregular, contradictory, and unaccountable effects observed in these experiments do not as yet furnish any satisfactory theory, and though much is to be attributed to the circumambient air, yet the metallic substances themselves seem to be endowed ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... took the queer sicht for a guid omen. It's unco strange hoo fowk 'll mix up God an' chance, seein' there could hardly be twa mair contradictory ideas! I min' ance hearin' a man say,'It's almost ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... In this strange and contradictory condition of alternate peace, rendered insipid by Miss Onslow's coolness, and anxiety converted into happiness unspeakable by the warmth and tenderness of her sympathy, I carried the brig toward the spot indicated ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... a tone of righteous indignation and severity, giving as free vent as possible to the very real annoyance that the fellow's pranks frequently occasioned me; inwardly resolving at the same time that, if he emerged with unblemished reputation from the perplexingly contradictory role he was then enacting, I would do him the most lavish justice when ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... thatch, she said, with a rueful droop at the corners of her mouth, a contradictory smile in her eyes: "I shall rejoice more if you do not lose ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... regard to women, for I am not, I have travelled over and seen more of the world than you, and I know the difference, vast and mysterious as it is, that lies between woman and woman. The word, has, of all words, two meanings, the most antithetical and contradictory, one is the limit of the Beautiful, the other the limit of the Repulsive; one is synonymous with purity, truth and excellence, and the other with vice and diplomacy. The world is often imposed upon when the latter counterfeits the former. Men are dazzled by the glitter and gaudy show ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... health-resort in the world." Dr. Isham, of same place, goes into details, and is almost the only physician I have consulted who acknowledges drawbacks in the Pasadena climate for those who desire a cure for throat or lungs. "This climate, like all else here, is paradoxical and contradictory," and he mentions that the winds blowing from the Pacific are not usually the rain-bearers, but those blowing from a point directly opposite, and that the arid desert. Among objectionable features he mentions the "marked changes of temperature daily, frequent fogs, excess of humidity ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... at the Isle of Elba, did not think himself authorised to abandon the place till he had received specific instructions from England to that effect; professing that he was unable to decide between the contradictory orders of government, or to guess at what their present intentions might be; but he said, his only motive for urging delay in this measure arose from a desire that his own conduct might be properly sanctioned, not from any opinion that Porto Ferrajo ought to be retained. But Naples having made peace, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... have been of an unpleasant temper; while general evidence pronounced him rather more dull than most boys. With these two facts at least sufficiently well established, while his head was filled with contradictory visions, of hair, eyes, and complexion, of various shades and colours, Harry returned in the evening, quite jaded and worn-out with his day's exertions; not the least of which had been, to reconcile totally opposite accounts ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... of the universal learned, who were in a fever of excitement about it. Some believed in it so implicity that they saw in every experiment a hundred things which they did not see. Others were so sceptical and contradictory that they would not preceive what they did see. Those blended with each fact their own deductions, whilst these span round every reality the web of their own prejudices. Curious to say, the Jayasthalians, amongst whom the luminous ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... utter disorder. Some of the men were quietly walking away with their rifles slung behind them, in spite of a line of sentries placed across the road and the efforts of their officers. Cuthbert questioned some of the men, as they came along, as to what had happened, but the most contradictory answers were given. They had been fired upon from Fort Valerien; they had been attacked from Courbevoie; they had been betrayed; they had been sent out without any cannon: ammunition was short; they were not going to stay to be shot down; they were going to the ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... it out finally from the narratives of the two tramps, and when he had returned to the Shorter home and listened to the contradictory and whole-souled improvisations of Shorter pere and mere he ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mystery, and remains so to the last. We fancy we know a character; we form a distinct conception of it; for years that conception remains unmodified, and suddenly the strain of some emergency, of the incidental stimulus of new circumstances, reveals qualities not simply unexpected, but flatly contradictory of our previous conception. We judge of a man by the angle he subtends to our eye—only thus CAN we judge of him; and this angle depends on the relation his qualities and circumstances bear to our interests and sympathies. Bourgonef had charmed me intellectually; morally I had never come ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... and reconversion of water and air, is still stoutly kept up. The contradictory experiments of chemists, leave us at liberty to conclude what we please. My conclusion is, that art has not yet invented sufficient aids, to enable such subtle bodies to make a well defined impression on organs ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... make some remarks here on 1 Peter iii. 19, as the sense of this passage might be thought to be contradictory to the meaning assigned above to Hades. It affirms that "in spirit Christ went and preached to the spirits in custody {59} (en phylake)." Now, the literal meaning of the concrete terms, "went and preached" (poreutheis ekeruxen), is excluded by "in spirit" ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... smiled, "I have heard you. You are full of happy ideas, many of them somewhat contradictory; but you have not yet fallen into any groove. To you freedom means rebellion; ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... this evidence Travers had fixed his eyes on Gardiner, but the witness had steadily avoided him. Jim was now convinced that he was the victim, not of a coincidence, but a plot. Of course, he could give his evidence, which would be directly contradictory to that of Gardiner, but he was already under suspicion, and anything he might say would be unconsciously discounted by the jurors. But he began calmly, a quiet smile still playing about his thin lips and clean ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... or be well employed? Is his frame of mind adapted to the study of the Bible?—to make its meaning plain and welcome? What must he think of God, to search his word in quest of gross inconsistencies and grave contradictions! Inconsistent legislation in Jehovah! Contradictory commands! Permissions at war with prohibitions! General requirements at ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... hold two inconsistent and seemingly contradictory views about the human attitude which is the psychological pre-condition for this epoch-making experience. In his own autobiographical {204} accounts, he always refers to the part that earnest resolution has played in bringing success to his momentous quest. ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... offering a fixed centre for the revolving motions of other heavenly bodies, be supposed itself to revolve about some one of these, as the sun. That supposition was tried, and gradually all the phenomena which, before, had been incoherent, anomalous, or contradictory, began to express themselves as parts of a most harmonious system. 'Something,' he goes on to say, 'analogous to this I have practised with regard to the subject of my inquiry—the human understanding. All others had sought their central principle of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... pietist he became a close client of Royalty, and almost the chief of court favorites in an age of favoritism. That some of his sayings and doings in these two strangely-contrasted scenes of his life should be a little contradictory is, to say the least, no matter of wonder. Mr. Macaulay, accordingly, giving him full credit for religious principle, but not much for strength of mind, depicts the stubborn and fanatical Quaker of former days as having become in the reign of King James the compliant and, though ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... naturally and inevitably, failed to produce a congruous scheme of saving truth and religious appeal. The result is that we see, on almost every page, contradictory teachings and conflicting methods of salvation. This, of course, is by no means fatal to it in the estimation of Hindus, with whom consistency has never been a foible, and in the eyes of whom two mutually contradictory teachings can rest peacefully ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... was a most active worker, but, being somewhat of an irascible temper, the builders occasionally amused themselves at his expense: for while he was eagerly at work with his large iron-shod pestle in the mortar-tub, they often sent down contradictory orders, some crying, "Make it a little stiffer, or thicker, John," while others called out to make it "thinner," to which he generally returned very speedy and sharp replies, so that these conversations ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... key distinction between selective or precise and massive application of force. Technology, in the form of "zero CEP" weapons, may provide the seemingly contradictory capability of systems that are both precise and have the net consequence of imposing massive disruption, destruction, or damage. This damage goes beyond the loss of power grids and other easily identifiable industrial targeting sets. Loss of all communications ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... subjective wisdom? Now Nitzsch truly feels that Pallas is something altogether more than an allegory, but he has failed to grasp distinctly her mythical character, the objective side of the Goddess, and so gets confused and self-contradictory. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... obstinate objection to the presence of a medical man at his bedside. Generally speaking, he appeared to be in a delicate state of health. His nervous system was out of order—he was at once timid and contradictory. When I spoke to him in English, he answered in Italian; and when I tried him in Italian, he went back to English. It mattered little—the malady had already made such progress that he could only speak a few words at a time, ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... persons the thoughts I have uttered here and in "The Kreutzer Sonata" will seem strange, vague, even contradictory. They certainly do contradict, not each other, but the whole tenor of our lives, and involuntarily a doubt arises, "on which side is truth,—on the side of the thoughts which seem true and well-founded, or on the side of the lives of others and myself?" I, too, was weighed ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... rarely attempting to gain an insight into the real character of his system. Indeed, "the system of Lord Bacon" became a sort of cabalistic phrase. It meant anything and everything. It was like the English Constitution, venerable in authority and prescription, interpreted in contradictory methods, and never precisely defined. Few men undertook to study it with a zeal like that of Homer and his friend Lord Webb Seymour, when, in days of enthusiasm, they read and re-read the "De Augmentis" and the "Novum Organum," and Homer planned to do what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... a confused explanation, a perplexing contradictory apology for his urgency and wrath. He loved Ann Veronica, he said; he was so mad to have her that he defeated himself, and did crude and alarming and senseless things. His vicious abusiveness vanished. He suddenly became eloquent and plausible. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... on these contradictory estimates of the same work, it should be borne in mind that Darwin had but recently given up the idea of becoming a clergyman, and doubtless retained some of the instinctive regard for sincere Christian ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... a few contradictory dates and statements in this precious document, and for the occasional flights of a pious imagination in the biographer or his subject, we arrive at the following historical basis: Rahere was a man of humble origin, who had found his way to the Court of Henry ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... of superiority exists internationally, there is the most contradictory depreciation nationally. "We," they say, "are only a little people." So was Switzerland. So was Greece. So was Belgium. So, indeed, ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... little solidity and certainty on the subject; which, joined to the opinion of some prudent and respectable persons whom I consulted, had induced me to give up my design entirely, and to renounce laboring on a subject which is so contradictory, and embraces so ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... must of course be much discontent, and many have been disposed to trace the sources of the former in vicious legislation, or the structure of government; and the author gives the various schemes, sometimes contradictory, sometimes ludicrous, which projectors have devised as a remedy for all this evil to which flesh is heir. That ill-judged legislation may have sometimes aggravated the general suffering, or that its extremity may be mitigated by the well-directed efforts of the wise and virtuous, there can be no ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Cycle is the process by which information is acquired, converted into intelligence, and made available to policymakers. Information is raw data from any source, data that may be fragmentary, contradictory, unreliable, ambiguous, deceptive, or wrong. Intelligence is information that has been collected, integrated, evaluated, analyzed, and interpreted. Finished intelligence is the final product of the Intelligence Cycle ready to be ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the same system, we may discover reason to suspect that they acted under the direction of some acknowledged though invisible leader. The nobility and gentry, intimidated by the hostility of their tenants, and distressed by contradictory reports, sought security within the fortifications of their castles. The only man who behaved with promptitude and resolution was Henry Spenser, the young and warlike Bishop of Norwich. In the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to this account, Susan, under Papist influences, pretended to be possessed in such a way that she was continually blaspheming. She was indicted for blasphemy, fined, and sentenced to stand in the pillory. (For the graphic titles of these contradictory pamphlets and of a folio broadside on the same subject, see appendix A, ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... to the leading historical incidents in the grand tragedy of Harold, and as careful as contradictory evidences will permit, both as to accuracy in the delineation of character, and correctness in that chronological chain of dates without which there can be no historical philosophy; that is, no tangible link between the cause and the effect. The fictitious ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... walked across the fields the girls only spoke occasionally. Alice strove to see clear, but her thoughts were clouded, scattered, diffused. Force herself as she would, still no conclusion seemed possible; all was vague and contradictory. She had talked to these Brennans, seen how they lived, could guess what their past was, what their future must be. In that neat little house their uneventful life dribbled away in maiden idleness; neither hope nor ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... of Tim Bunker was very long and very severe; and though he still adhered to the story he had told at the examination, he was confused, stammered a great deal, and tried to be saucy to the lawyer. His statements were so contradictory at times, that a general disposition to laugh pervaded the minds of the audience. At these times, when he so grossly crossed himself, Squire Benson looked significantly at the jury, as though to invite their ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... conclusions. The philological arguments are no less beset with difficulties. Both the facts and their significance are obscure, and the inquiry into them has hitherto yielded little beyond confident and yet wholly contradictory assertions and theories which are not susceptible of proof. The archaeological evidence, on the other hand, is definite and consistent, and perhaps deserves fuller notice than it has yet received. It illuminates, not only the material civilization, but also the ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... of two sorts. There is petrifaction of the understanding; and also of the sense of shame. This happens when a man obstinately refuses to acknowledge plain truths, and persists in maintaining what is self-contradictory. Most of us dread mortification of the body, and would spare no pains to escape anything of that kind. But of mortification of the soul we are utterly heedless. With regard, indeed, to the soul, if a man is in such a state as to be incapable of following or understanding anything, I grant you we ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... Washington. There, during the winter, he had heard of her (as one always heard of pretty women in Washington) as shining in the "brilliant diplomatic society" that was supposed to make up for the social short-comings of the Administration. He had listened to these accounts, and to various contradictory reports on her appearance, her conversation, her point of view and her choice of friends, with the detachment with which one listens to reminiscences of some one long since dead; not till Medora suddenly spoke her name at the archery match had Ellen ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... same in our own country, is it not?" queried Harry. "It seems to me that I have read articles in the New York Tribune and the New York Evening Post that were flatly contradictory of each other on ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Uncertain from these contradictory responses, the dame consulted the bells when ringing, and which seemed to repeat, "Marry your man John." She took this oracular advice, married, and soon repented. She again applied to the curate, who told her, "You have not observed well what the bells ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... well-meant chilling displeasure. Then Barbara rode on with the two envoys, in advance of the procession, at the swiftest trot. Her tongue, just now so voluble, seemed paralyzed. The violent throbbing of her heart fairly stopped her breath. A throng of contradictory thoughts and feelings filled her soul and mind. She was conscious of one thing only. A great, decisive event was imminent, and the most ardent wish her heart had ever cherished was approaching ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... here insist. The meaning you attach to words is exceedingly diverse; and hence you are not always able to think alike, or understand each other, nor derive the same sentiment from the same language. The contradictory opinions which exist in the world may be accounted for, in a great measure, in this way. Our knowledge of many things of which we speak, is limited, either from lack of means, or disposition to employ them. People always differ and contend most about things ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... in respect to the opposite duties of leading celibate lives, and of continuing families, have been contradictory. In many nations it is and has been considered a disgrace to bear no children, and in other nations celibacy has been raised to the rank of a virtue of the highest order. During the fifty or so generations ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... entretenue, to parallel which, as in the case of Lady Bellaston, we must go to Balzac; Mrs. James, again, is an excellent example of that vapid and colourless nonentity, the "person of condition." Mrs. Bennet, although apparently more contradictory and less intelligible, is nevertheless true to her past history and present environments; while her husband, the sergeant, with his concealed and reverential love for his beautiful foster-sister, has had a long line of descendants in the modern novel. It is upon Amelia, however, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... will be seen by this retrospect how difficult it is to seize all the shifting subtleties of this remarkable character. His sophisms even, when self-contradictory, are so adroit that they are often hard to parry. He made a great merit to himself for not having originated the new episcopates; but it should be remembered that he did his utmost to enforce the measure, which was "so holy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sure?" repeated Red Shirt. There was no limit to his womanishness. If Red Shirt was typical of Bachelors of Arts, I did not see much in them. He appeared composed after having requested me to do something self-contradictory and wanting logic, and on top ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... same kind. I do not see what else, under the circumstances, the poor man could say. Nor do I blame him in the least for boldly demanding more battleships to carry something—I think he said the Gospel—to still remoter lands. Lalage chose to pretend that liberty and subjection are contradictory terms, but this is plainly absurd. Lord Thormanby talked over this part of the Gazette with me some months later and gave it as his opinion that a man whom he knew in the club had put the case very well by saying that there are several ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... that ambifariam in both places means "by dilemma". But this is not a natural way of describing the method of Zeno. The characteristic of his philosophy was, according to tradition, that he tried to prove the thesis of Parmenides negatively by disproving the hypothesis contradictory to it. The disproof consisted in showing that the hypothesis in question involved a contradiction. If, therefore, ambifariam means "by dilemma" it would appear that Apuleius did not understand the true characteristic of Zeno's method; for dissolvere should ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... ad absurdum is a variety of analysis. Starting from a hypothesis, namely the contradictory of what we desire to prove, we use the same process of analysis, carrying it back until we arrive at something admittedly false or absurd. Aristotle describes this method in various ways as reductio ad absurdum, proof per impossibile, or proof leading to the impossible. But here again, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Il or Ra; Vul was son of Ana; Hurki, the Moon-god, of Bel; Nebo and Merodach were sons of Hea or Hoa. Many deities, however, are without parentage, as not only Il or Ra, but Hea, San (the Sun), Ishtar, and Nergal. Sometimes the relationship alleged is confused, and even contradictory, as in the case of Nin or Ninip, who is at one time the son, at another the father of Bel, and who is at once the son and the husband of Beltis. It is evident that the genealogical aspect is not that upon which much stress ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... here we have undoubtedly another contradiction; this is because your life is in time and your immortality in eternity. Hence your immortality may be said to be something that is indestructible and yet has no endurance—which is again contradictory, you see. This is what happens when transcendental knowledge is brought within the boundary of immanent knowledge; in doing this some sort of violence is done to the latter, since it is used for things for which it ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... "down." The world is the Earthly Paradox, with four cardinal points of mutual contradiction, all equally N., S., E., and W. 'T is thus a symbol of all paradoxes, of all propositions in which mutually contradictory things are true. Nay, paradox is the only truth, for it cannot be denied; including, like the world, its own contradiction. Topsy-turveydom unfolds our musty ideas to the sun and spreads them out the other way. The man who reverses the Fifth Commandment and ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... rather have had 200,000 on the footing of Lord Hobart's first letter in June than double that number selected and formed in the loose and desultory manner they have more recently been under the variety of contradictory orders they have since received and by which Government have annoyed every corner of the country." Melville adds that they would be useful if thoroughly trained and not allowed to leave their corps; but exemptions from the Militia and Army of Reserve ballots granted to the recent Volunteer ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... short and square, but flows majestically down upon his broad breast. His step is slow, but firm still, and when he looks up suddenly from under his wrinkled lids, the fire is not even yet all gone from his eyes. He is still contradictory by nature, but he has mellowed like rare wine in the long years of prosperity and peace. When the change came in Rome he was in the mountains at Saracinesca, with his daughter-in-law, Corona and her children. His son Giovanni, generally known as Prince ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... negative virtue. But he was also, what seems almost incompatible with this ferocious truthfulness, excessively self-conscious and morally attitudinising, a thin-skinned poseur. To reconcile these seemingly contradictory characteristics, to become what he wished to appear, to pose as what he was, to make himself up (if I may say so) as himself, to intensify what he recognised as his main characteristics and efface all his ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... expression point to the operation of a personal divine Will in human affairs, but it conceives of that operation as one, a uniform and consistent whole. However complicated, and sometimes apparently contradictory, the individual events were, there was a unity in them, and they all converged on one result. The writer does not speak of 'ways,' but of 'the way,' as a grand unity. It is all one continuous, connected, consistent mode of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... can create so much suffering to most of us as we conquer for them our awkwardness and our shyness? Let us pause for a moment, and try to be just. Let us contemplate these social ethics, which call for so much that is, perhaps, artificial and troublesome and contradictory. Society, so long as it is the congregation of the good, the witty, the bright, the intelligent, and the gifted, is the thing most necessary to us all. We are apt to like it and its excitements almost too well, or to hate it, with its excesses and its mistakes, too bitterly. We are ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... give you an idea of the petty cares which obscured the morning of my life; continual restraint in the most trivial matters; unconditional submission to orders, which, as a mere child, I soon discovered to be unreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory. Thus are we destined to experience a mixture of bitterness, with the recollection ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the constitutional State, the Jewish question is the question of constitutionalism, of the incompleteness of political emancipation. As the semblance of a State religion is there preserved, although in a meaningless and self-contradictory formula, in the formula of a religion of the majority, the relationship of Jews to the State retains the semblance of a religious and ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... never occurred to him that there is a difference between assertion and demonstration, that a rumour does not always prove a fact, that a single fact, when proved, is hardly foundation enough for a theory, that two contradictory propositions cannot be undeniable truths, that to beg the question is not the way to settle it, or that when an objection is raised, it ought to be met with something more convincing than ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... is the case perhaps with the works of only one man out of the whole circle of the fathers of art, of him to whom we have just referred—Michael Angelo. In others the estimate and the sensation are constantly unequal, and often contradictory." There is a distinction between the sensation of power and the intellectual perception of it. A slight sketch will give the sensation; the greater power is in the completion, not so manifest, but of which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... Brown intend to do? What result did he look for from his movement thus far? Amid his conflicting acts and contradictory explanations, the indications seem clear only on two or three points. Both he and his men gave everybody to understand without reserve that they had come not to kill whites, but only to liberate slaves. Soon, also, he placed pikes in the hands of his black prisoners. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... me resolve once more to visit my native country, and my resolution was immediately put in practice. It was a relief, though of a painful kind, to the more painful state in which my undecided thoughts at that moment held me. The man whose contradictory impulses goad him in a thousand different directions, without permitting him to pursue any one, is happy to be ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... whole poetry of this generation, was the dignity of nature in all her manifestations, and not merely in those which may happen to suit the fastidiousness or Manichaeism of any particular age. He may have been at times fanatical on his idea, and have misused it, till it became self-contradictory, because he could not see the correlative truths which should have limited it. But it is by fanatics, by men of one great thought, that great works are done; and it is good for the time that a man arose in it ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... meantime, events were moving. The year 1851 was a year of anxiety and apprehension for the politicians of Plassans, and the cause which the Rougons served derived advantage from this circumstance. The most contradictory news arrived from Paris; sometimes the Republicans were in the ascendant, sometimes the Conservative party was crushing the Republic. The echoes of the squabbles which were rending the Legislative Assembly reached the depths ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... state of retribution; all this joined with an explicit ardent wish that, when he was to leave this world, he might be in the condition of a righteous man. Good God! what inconsistency, what perplexity is here! With what different views of things, with what contradictory principles of action, must such a mind be torn and distracted! It was not unthinking carelessness, by which he ran on headlong in vice and folly, without ever making a stand to ask himself what he was doing: no; he acted upon the cool motives of interest ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... abnormal development. I presume that you will not object to my putting a note saying that you had reflected over the case, and though one or two cases seemed to support, quite as many or more seemed wholly contradictory. This want of evidence is the more surprising to me, as generally I find any proposition more easily tested by observations in botanical works, which I have picked up, than in zoological works. I never ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... my sincerity, and always was amenable enough to counsel, was doubtless much confused by such contradictory diagnosis of his case. The question, Poetry or Prose? became more and more pressing, more and more insoluble. He decided, at last, to appeal to the public upon it;—got ready, in the late autumn, a small select Volume of his verses; and was now busy pushing ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... he charged with them, and the officers of the Blankshire who knew him, and witnessed the charge from a distance, were anxious to know for certain what had occurred, the reports which had reached them being too contradictory for reliance. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... necessary and indispensable. Under that placid exterior he conceals, I believe, a boundless ambition, and hatred and jealousy lurk under his professions of esteem and political attachment. His is one of those contradictory characters, containing in it so much of mixed good and evil, that it is difficult to strike an accurate balance between the two, and the acts of his political life are of a corresponding description, of questionable utility and merit, though always marked ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... where I had made my brief home on the much rolling deep. I had grown used to pain and resigned to fate. I walked the plank unsteadily. I stood on shore amid the rain and the mist. A hackman preyed upon me. I was put into an ancient ark and trundled on through the queer, irresolute, contradictory old streets, beside the lovely bay, all aglow with the lighted yachts, as a Southern swamp is with fire-flies. A torchlight procession met and escorted me. To this hour I am at a loss to know whether this attention was a ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... of Cape North, must necessarily be derived from the charts and journals of the persons who have been employed at various times in ascertaining the limits of that empire; and these are for the most part so imperfect, so confused, and contradictory, that it is not easy to form any distinct idea of their pretended, much less to collect the amount of their real discoveries. It is on this account, that the extent and form of the peninsula, inhabited by the Tschutski, still remains a point on which the Russian geographers are much divided. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... like the most perfect of religions, taken in a literal sense, is a contradictory idea. The problem is not to discover how we shall be best governed, but how we shall be most free. Liberty commensurate and identical with Order,—this is the only reality of government and politics. How shall this absolute liberty, synonymous with order, be ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... not contradictory, those two words," said Dolly. "It is deceitful; it gets hold of a man, and then he cannot get loose from it. You know, Mr. St. Leger, what ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... have an act of government before the government exists? How can the people, who are only sovereigns or subjects, become magistrates under certain circumstances? Here we discover one of those astonishing properties of the body politic, by which it reconciles operations apparently contradictory; for the process is accomplished by a sudden conversion from sovereignty to democracy, so that, with no sensible change, and simply by a new relation of all to all, the citizens become magistrates, pass from general to partiacts, and from the law to its execution. In this ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... had been sent to him by the Prince of Evil for his utter undoing; and there were times in which he seemed to think that such had been the manner in which the fatal cheque had reached him. In all that he said he was terribly confused, contradictory, unintelligible,—speaking almost as a madman might speak,—ending always in declaring that the cruelty of the world had been too much for him, that the waters were meeting over his head, and praying to God's mercy ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... various works. The interesting description which he himself gives of his residence at Skillus implies a state of things not present and continuing, but past and gone; other testimonies too, though confused and contradictory, seem to show that the Lacedaemonian settlement at Skillus lasted no longer than the power of Lacedaemon was adequate to maintain it. During the misfortunes which befell that city after the battle of Leuktra (371 B.C.), Xenophon, with his family and his fellow-settlers, was expelled by the ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... congratulation, as well as of discussion, to one certain established agency. To allow correspondence or interchange between states to be conducted by or with more than one such agency would necessarily lead to confusion, and possibly to contradictory presentation of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... at that time of life when opinions are valued for being new: he heard varieties of the most contradictory assertions in morals, in science, in politics. It is a great advantage to a young man to hear opposite arguments, to hear all that can ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... setting aside the Constitution itself. Accordingly, by these provisions, the National Assembly challenges its own violent destruction. It not only consecrates, like the character of 1830, the division of powers, but it extends this feature to an unbearably contradictory extreme. The "play of constitutional powers," as Guizot styled the clapper-clawings between the legislative and the executive powers, plays permanent "vabanque" in the Constitution of 1848. On the one side, ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... our Boy-Friend Johann Wolfgang watched with such interest, from his garret-window, hour after hour; all Frankfurt simmering round him, in such a whirlpool of self-contradictory emotions; till towards evening, when, in long rows of carts, poor wounded Hessians and Hanoverians came jolting in, and melted every heart into pity, into wailing sorrow, and eagerness to help. A little later, Papa Goethe, stepping downstairs, came across the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
