"Contradictory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "treat," or hat-ticket; A seven years' nursing of Slopville-on-Slime, A well-fought Election and Glorious Victory (Crowed o'er by proud Party prints at the time) May—lose you your Seat. It does seem contradictory. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... and since, but in actual effect the most lofty in the world. This is claimed in spite of its 404 feet being exceeded by Amiens (422 feet), and Strasburg (488 feet), and although it might appear special pleading to urge such a theory against contradictory facts, yet since at Amiens the nave roof is 208 feet high, against the 115 feet of Salisbury, it is obvious that the apparent height of the latter exceeds its French rival. At Strasburg the excess of elaboration in the ornament is detrimental ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... from the pen of a Bishop, is one of many extraordinary facts which have grown out of theological controversy. They are questions strongly suggestive of another. Is it possible to have experience of, or even to imagine a Being with attributes so strange, anomalous, and contradictory? To that question reason prompts an answer in the negative—It is plain that Bishop Watson was convinced 'no man by searching can find out God.' The case is, that he, in the hope of converting Deists, ventured to insinuate arguments ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... 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 ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... closed his epistle, fully clearing himself, and assuring her that he could have made her understand it that day if she had not left so suddenly, and he had not been almost immediately called away to the dying bed of his dear cousin. This contradictory letter had troubled Marcia greatly. She was keen enough to see that his logic was at fault, and that the two pages of his letter did not hang together, but one thing was plain, that he wished her forgiveness. The Bible said that one must forgive, and surely it was ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... ever comes. I am not prepared to side with a thoughtless world, which is ready to laugh at the confused statement of the Irishman who had killed his pig. It is not a bull; it is a great psychological fact that is involved in his seemingly contradictory declaration—'It did not weigh as much as I expected, and ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... 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. But ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... practicable, and binding on every Christian, and that, in the life to come, every man will be rewarded according to his works. And, further, it is our belief that, in order to enable mankind to put in practice these sacred precepts, many of which are contradictory to the unregenerate will of man, every man, coming into the world, is endued with a measure of the light, grace, or good spirit, of Christ, by which, as it is attended to, he is enabled to distinguish good from evil, and to correct the disorderly passions and corrupt propensities of his ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... part of the coast as well as to another; as to the localities treated of, as well as of the companions of Vespucius, there are no indications given of a nature to aid the historian. Not a single name is given of any well-known person, and the dates are contradictory in those famous letters which have given endless work to commentators. Humboldt says of them "There is an element of discord in the most authentic documents relating to the Florentine navigator." We have given an account of Hojeda's first voyage, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... had been snatched away and given to a rude man of earth and iron, who could neither need nor appreciate her ministrations,—this was the very perversity of fate that makes human existence appear too absurd and contradictory to be the scene of one other hope or one other fear. There was nothing left for Owen Warland but to sit down like a ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... moment of 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 ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... bubbling streaks of white and black hulks. He felt himself impelled by contradictory forces. Some dragged at his head and others at his feet in different directions, making him revolve like the hands of a clock. Even his thoughts were working double. "It is useless to resist," Discouragement was murmuring in his brain, while his other half was affirming desperately, "I do not ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... friend nowadays. There was a time——" He paused, running his hand down the long trail of his beard reflectively, a slender-fingered supple hand. La Mothe noted it was, a hand that had a distinct character of its own, just as the contradictory face had, though the finger-tips were less sensitive than in the days when their itching acquisitiveness had brought their owner to the cold shadows of the gallows. "Aye! there was a time. There ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... to a bigot. He has already made up his mind, and he doesn't intend to have his solid convictions disturbed by anything so unimportant as a contradictory fact. Lenny was of the opinion that all mathematics was arcane gobbledygook, and his precise knowledge of the mathematical odds in poker and dice games didn't abate that opinion one whit. Obviously, a mind like that is utterly incapable ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... nevertheless there is in the intellect contrariety of affirmation and negation, which are contraries, as stated at the end of Peri Hermen[e]ias. For though "to be" and "not to be" are not in contrary, but in contradictory opposition to one another, so long as we consider their signification in things themselves, for on the one hand we have "being" and on the other we have simply "non-being"; yet if we refer them to the act of the mind, there is something positive in both ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... as carried out by the Dyaks, is most complicated, and the younger men have constantly to ask the older ones how to act when contradictory omens are heard. The law and observance of omens occupy a great share of the thoughts of ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... what they said, the duke intending that the innocence of Isabel should be plainly proved in that public manner before the whole city of Vienna; but Angelo little thought that it was from such a cause that they thus differed in their story, and he hoped from their contradictory evidence to be able to clear himself from the accusation of Isabel, and he said, assuming the look of offended innocence: 'I did but smile till now; but, good my lord, my patience here is touched, and I perceive these poor distracted women are but the instruments of some greater ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... her, and, indeed, what sort of woman would she be, if she said to you to-day, 'There is something more important than the religion I preached to you and the gods I revealed; something more august and more sacred, and that is my own good pleasure'? Bernard, your love is full of contradictory desires. Inconsistency, moreover, is the mark of all human loves. Men imagine that a woman can have no separate existence of her own, and that she must always be wrapped up in them; and yet the only woman they love deeply ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... adultery if they had not esteemed the same lawful and good." To all this it may be added that the opinions of the ancient philosophers concerning virtue, vice, the final happiness, and the state of the spirit after death, were diverse and contradictory. The Epicurean doctrine was, that sovereign happiness consisted in pleasure. They granted a God, but denied his Providence; so virtue was without a spur, and vice without ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... us in "antinomies," apparently contradictory pairs, pairs of poles, which, however, do not really contradict, or even limit, each other, but are only correlatives, the existence of the one making the existence of the other necessary, explaining each other, and giving each other a real standing ground and equilibrium. Such an antinomic ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... around the interpretation of the Egyptian word ka, especially during recent years. An excellent summary of the arguments brought forward by the various disputants up to 1912 will be found in Morel's "Mysteres Egyptiens". Since then more or less contradictory views have been put forward by Alan Gardiner, Breasted, and Blackman. It is not my intention to intervene in a dispute as to the meaning of certain phrases in ancient literature; but there are certain aspects of the problems at issue ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... this seem to her to be so, that notwithstanding her lack of faith in matters beyond proof and knowledge, she never conceived of this passion of hers as having had a beginning, or of being capable of an end. This contradictory woman would argue against the possibility of any future existence, yet she was quite certain that her love for Godfrey had a future existence, and indeed one that was endless. When at length he put it to her that her attitude was most illogical, since that which was dead ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... Francis as well as his; and I had found Clara so gentle, so confiding, so flatteringly cordial in her intercourse with me, that, once within my power, and prevented from receding by shame, and a thousand contradictory feelings, I had, with the vanity of an amoureux de seize ans, the confidence to believe I could reconcile the fair lady ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... although the control exercised by a well-regulated bureaucracy might be beneficial when viewed in contradistinction with the ancient complicated system of government and administration of justice during the existence of the division into petty states and the manifold contradictory privileges, it was utterly uncalled for in the simple administration of the Tyrol. For what purpose were mere presumptive ameliorations to be imposed upon a people thoroughly contented with the laws and customs bequeathed by their ancestors? The attempt ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... 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! Universally ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... Miocene period we find a great expansion of the monkeys. These in turn enter the scene quite suddenly, and the authorities are reduced to uncertain and contradictory conjectures as to their origin. Some think that they develop not from the femurs, but along an independent line from the Insectivores, or other ancestors of the Primates. We will not linger over these early monkeys, nor engage upon the hopeless task of tracing their gradual ramification ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... him. His eyes were opened to see things now as never before, for not as a skillful hunter, but as a seeker after peace, was he out in nature's solitudes. Everything around him seemed mysterious and contradictory. This teacher, nature, whose lessons he had come to learn, seemed to be in a very perverse mood, as if to impart just the reverse of what he would learn, and seemed herself to be destitute of the very things he had hoped she would ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... into the vague realm of poetic style, the logical mind is lost at once. And yet it is more important to use words pregnant with meaning than to be strictly grammatical. We must reduce grammar to an instinct that will guard us against being contradictory or crude in our construction of sentences, and then we shall make that instinct harmonize with all the other instincts which a successful writer must have. When grammar is treated (as we have tried to treat it) ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... once far-famed ATTICUS: the once illustrious RICHARD HEBER, Esq., the self-ejected member of the University of Oxford. Even yet I scarcely know how to handle this subject, or to expatiate upon a theme so extraordinary, and so provocative of the most contradictory feelings. But it were better to be brief; as, in fact, a very long account of Mr. Heber's later life will be found in my Reminiscences, and there is little to add to what those pages contain. It may be here only necessary ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... If such contradictory views can be held and defended with regard to religious systems still prevalent amongst us, where we can cross-examine living witnesses, and appeal to chapter and verse in their sacred writings, what must the difficulty be when we have to deal with the religions of the past? I do ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... and on her way back to him she picked up the photograph case and brought it to the light. "These are my father and mother. We live at Yonkers; but I'm with my aunt a good deal of the time in town—even when I'm at home." She laughed at her own contradictory statement, and put the case back without explaining the third figure—a figure in uniform. Dan conjectured a military brother, or from her indifference perhaps a militia brother, and then forgot about him. But the partial Yonkers residence ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Adam Smith, whose works, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" and "Wealth of Nations," must be taken in conjunction. In the first he works on the assumption that sympathy is the mainspring of human conduct. In the "Wealth of Nations" the mainspring is selfishness. The two are not contradictory, but complementary. Of the second book it may be said that it is probably the most important which has ever been written, whether we consider the amount of original thought which it contains ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... and yellow and red lamps, held a whispered consultation on the manner of conciliating these contradictory demands. Then, after a minute's hesitation, the violins began the prelude of that once famous air, which has remained popular in Venice—the words written, some hundred years ago, by the patrician Gritti, the music by an unknown composer—La ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... reflect upon this important subject, we shall find the more, that external circumstances have an influence upon intellect, increasing in an accumulating ratio; that the political institutions of various countries have their fluctuating and contradictory influences; that example controls in a great degree intellectual production, causing after-growths, as it were, of the first luxuriant crop of masterminds, and giving a character and individuality to habits of thought and modes of expression; in brief, that great occasions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Sam[a]j, on the other hand, seems set against speaking or thinking of God as the Father. Specially present to their minds and in their preaching is the thought of God's absolute justice; and they hold that His Justice and His Fatherhood are contradictory attributes. Virtue will have its reward, they assert, and Sin its punishment, both in this and the following existences. We recognise the working of their doctrine of transmigration, perhaps also the effect of ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... others, unable to save themselves, the members of the two parties oppressed and were oppressed, murdered and were murdered, in their turn. No lucid interval occurred between the frantic paroxysms of two contradictory illusions. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... loosened the tongue of the discreet notary of Vendome, who communicated to me, not without long digressions, the opinions of the deep politicians of both sexes whose judgments are law in Vendome. But these opinions were so contradictory, so diffuse, that I was near falling asleep in spite of the interest I felt in this authentic history. The notary's ponderous voice and monotonous accent, accustomed no doubt to listen to himself and to ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... replace waste material. Elsewhere I read that "Professor Atwater's investigations into nutrition have shown in a most convincing manner that the body derives all its energy from the food consumed. This may be regarded as established." Which of these definite and contradictory assertions does Dr Knaggs support, and why? Where can I get information re Professor Atwater's experiments and other recent ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... often that it was not to be expected that he should escape charges of inconsistency. "Some do compare him to an eel," said Lockhart of Carnwath, "and certainly the character suited him exactly ... He had sworn all the most contradictory oaths, and complied with all the opposite Governments since the year 1648, and was humble servant to them all till he got what he aimed at, though often he did not know what that was." Almost every statesman of ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... the conviction that there is much in us which it is impossible should be the object of God's love. Nor need I remind you how all these difficulties in believing in a God who is love, based on the contradictory aspects of nature, and the mysteries of providence, and the whisperings of our own consciousness, are proved to have been insuperable by the history of the world, where we find mythologies and religions of all types and gods of every ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... purpose that she who is a true woman is a fit peer for a king. Odd and preposterous notions, no doubt, and capable of much controversy, so far as the doctrine of race (if that be any way tenable) is concerned; but then the plain fact is that my Uncle Roland was as eccentric and contradictory a gentleman—as—as—why, as you and I are, if we once ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... such a comical tone and with such diverting sincerity that Hortense was once more seized with a fit of giggling. Laughter alone was able to relax her exasperated nerves and to distract her from so many contradictory emotions. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... was very great— the more so that it was undefined. They saw the captain, however, every now and then come into the cabin and toss off a tumbler of strong rum-and-water, and then return on deck, and shout out with oaths often contradictory orders. The gale all this time was increasing, until it threatened to become as violent as the hurricane from which we had escaped. I could not help wishing that we had not left our leaky little schooner. We might have reached some land in her. Now we did ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... moment, in the utter weakness of the British in their attack; and the supreme skill and valour of the Germans in repelling such an attack. Somehow it must be made a common and obvious collapse for England; and yet a daring and unexpected triumph for Germany. In trying to express these contradictory conceptions simultaneously, he got rather mixed. Therefore he bade Germania fill all her vales and mountains with the dying agonies of this almost invisible earwig; and let the impure blood of this cockroach redden the Rhine ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... changed. The declaration of Orsini is as the dividing point between the two portions of the Emperor's reign, the former openly, reasonably conservative and glorious, the latter sometimes decidedly revolutionary, sometimes vacillating, contradictory, or unwillingly conservative, and finally terminated by a catastrophe unexampled ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... latter being intersected by the equator (as Taprobane was said to be) is sufficient to justify the doubts of those who were disinclined to apply it to the former; and whether in fact the obscure and contradictory descriptions given by Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Pliny, and Ptolemy, belonged to any actual place, however imperfectly known; or whether, observing that a number of rare and valuable commodities were brought from an island or islands in the supposed ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... 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 delivered to ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... they call themselves, destined for Cologne," said Hayraddin, "do not usually descend the Maes so low as Liege, and that the route of the ladies will be accounted contradictory of ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... stump of the barrel-organ's one leg, as Giuseppe, above, moved from room to room after his rebel slave. Now and again a floor shook a little under the combined rushes of Lord Lundie and Sir Christopher Tomling, who gave many and contradictory orders. But when they could they cursed Jimmy with ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... declared to have been legal, and are justified because the independence of the States of America never having been acknowledged by Spain she had a right to prohibit trade with them under her old colonial laws. This ground of defense was contradictory, not only to those which had been formerly alleged, but to the uniform practice and established laws of nations, and had been abandoned by Spain herself in the convention which granted indemnity to British subjects for captures made at the same time, under the same circumstances, and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... will bind me down to double every effort in the future progress of the work. The following are a few remarks on the songs in the list you sent me. I never copy what I write to you, so I may be often tautological, or perhaps contradictory. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... hopes revived by the appearance of this story of his having been seen alive by twelve of his most intimate friends, who were the heads of the party who had believed that the Marquis of Argyle would fulfill the prophecies aforesaid, and not content with receiving this contradictory story with avidity themselves, (which after all might have been invented as a salvo for his non-fulfillment or postponing the fulfillment of these prophecies, by submitting to be decapitated) insisted that every body else should believe it too, on pain of eternal damnation!—Would ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... a time when the Hegelian wise men triumphantly instructed the masses; and the crowd, understanding nothing, blindly believed in every thing, finding confirmation in the fact that it was on hand; and they believed that what seemed to them muddy and contradictory there on the heights of philosophy was all as clear as the day. But that time has gone by. That theory is worn out: a new theory has presented itself in its stead. The old one has become useless; and the crowd has looked into the secret sanctuaries of the high priests, and has seen that there ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... conviction of the truth of Mr. Peck's social philosophy, Annie is aware, through her simple and frank relations with the hands in a business matter, of mutual kindness which it does not account for. But perhaps the philosophy and the experiment were not contradictory; perhaps it was intended to cover only the cases in which they had no common interest. At anyrate, when the Peck Social Union, as its members voted to call it, at the suggestion of one of their own number, got in working order, she was as cordially welcomed to the charge of its funds and accounts ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... so certain that what the rector said was true, that Georgie, or even she herself, more delicate still, a simple-hearted young woman, might have been trusted in his worst haunt. He read her look with a keen pang of feelings contradictory, of sharp anguish and a kind of pleasure. For indeed it was true; and yet—and ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... knowledge, and thus cause disaster, if a sincere effort is made to provide them with knowledge. The money question has first place in multitudes of minds of all degrees or power. But a glance at most of the cure-all systems shows how contradictory they are. The majority of them make the assumption of honesty among mankind, to begin with, and that, of course, is a prime defect. Even our present system would work splendidly if all men were honest. As a ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... war which the Jews made against the Romans hath been the greatest of all times, while some men who were not concerned themselves have written vain and contradictory stories by hearsay, and while those that were there have given false accounts, I, Joseph, the son of Matthias, by birth a Hebrew, and a priest also, and who at first fought against the Romans myself, and was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... would have been difficult to help seeing—that there was a singular, indescribable change in the old man, and that while his manner was far more restless and unsettled than usual, there was yet a curious, contradictory decision in it, that perplexed her very much. She fancied once that he spoke wildly, and at random; for on her saying she regretted not to have seen him when she had been there before that morning, he at first replied that he had been to see her, and directly ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... and impatient. A very contradictory and improper condition to remain in. I can read to him at once, after I have seen if ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... 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
... criticism of these two positions, it may be said that both contain an element of truth and are not so contradictory as they seem. On the one hand, all the various factors of the complex will may seem to be determined by something that lies beyond our control, and thus our will itself be really determined. But, on the other hand, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... heavy-set man, dewlapped like a bloodhound, and his hard blue eyes were close-coupled. The reptilian forehead did not signify a superior mentality, even as the slack, retreating chin denoted a minimum of courage. It was a most contradictory face. The features did not balance. Racey Dawson was not a student of physiognomy, but he recognized a weak chin when he saw it. If this man were indeed McFluke, then he, Racey Dawson, ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... and the doctrines that have been dictated concerning our intellectual faculties and their operations, have tended rather to stifle than to promote inquiry. It is therefore unnecessary to enumerate the catalogue of illustrious names whose contradictory systems have created suspicion and distaste in the student. The science that has been improperly termed Metaphysics, ought to be considered a branch of human physiology, not abstracted from, but in this state of existence, connected with the phenomena of life. The citations ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... his mind called into being, and which, moreover, would at last prove his ruin. Veronica was lovelier than he had ever seen her; he could not drive her from his thoughts: and in this perplexed and contradictory mood he hastened out, hoping to get rid of it by ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... them, have preached and have tried to enforce them, or else have settled down upon the assumption that the matter is of minor importance. I simply ask if this is justifiable in view of the facts; in view of the contradictory position of the church on this subject; in view of the important part which amusements must play in the education of youth; in view of their great and patent abuses; in view of the point urged in these discourses that many of the popular ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... missed the final shaping which turns epic material into epic poetry. For epic material, it must be repeated, is not the same thing as epic poetry. Epic material is fragmentary, scattered, loosely related, sometimes contradictory, each piece of comparatively small size, with no intention beyond hearty narrative. It is a heap of excellent stones, admirably quarried out of a great rock-face of stubborn experience. But for this to be worked into some great structure of epic poetry, the Heroic Age must be capable of ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... to enjoy the holiday which the Royal visit had caused. But the Irish are indeed a strange people. How varied their aspect—how contradictory their character. Ireland, the land of genius and degradation—of great resources and unparalleled poverty—noble deeds and the most revolting crimes—the land of distinguished poets, splendid orators, and the bravest of soldiers—the land ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... disinterested educators studying the merits of the case. But in large part these differences are the expression of different purposes and practical needs in planning a college curriculum, and are neither quite indefensible nor necessarily contradictory in pedagogic theory. In the small college with a nearly uniform curriculum and with limited means, a general course is perhaps best planned for the senior year, or in the junior year if there is an opportunity given ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... honor of his wife as the price of a favorable decision. Wealth and power led to luxury and sensuality, the weaker were oppressed, noble and bishop alike showing themselves proud and tyrannical. There are often two contradictory accounts of the same transaction, and it is impossible to decide where the fault really was, when there seems so little to choose between the conduct ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Europe was divided between the champions and antagonists of religion, as, during its latter portion, it was between the enemies and supporters of political reformation. But a deeper analysis will show us that these names were but the badges of ideas, always complex, sometimes contradictory—the war-cry of contending parties, by whom the reality was now forgotten, or to whom, compared with other purposes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... edition of his Researches into the Physical History of Mankind (1826), he certainly talks evolution and anticipates Prof. Weismann in denying the transmission of acquired characters. He is, however, sadly self-contradictory and his evolutionism weakens in subsequent editions—the only ones that Darwin saw. Prof. Poulton finds in Prichard's work a recognition of the operation of Natural Selection. "After inquiring how it is that 'these varieties ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... vanished from her life was there, palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse holland shirt, in that youthful heart open to the emanations of her beauty. Besides, she now enveloped all things with such indifference, she had words so affectionate with looks so haughty, such contradictory ways, that one could no longer distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from virtue. One evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who had asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... said, and nicely balancing chances in his mind and calculating odds to their faces, without the least appearance of being so engaged, had rendered Gride quick in forming conclusions, and arriving, from puzzling, intricate, and often contradictory premises, at very cunning deductions. Hence it was that, as Nicholas went on, he followed him closely with his own constructions, and, when he ceased to speak, was as well prepared as if he had ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... traversed. I confess it shocked me a little to find that he was born in a house "in a row," - a house, moreover, which at the date of his birth must have been only about twenty years old. All that is contradictory. If the tenement selected for this honour could not be ancient and em- browned, it should ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Contradictory accounts are given of Christian's death. It is generally believed that in the fourth year of the settlement on Pitcairn Island the Tahitians formed a plot to massacre the Englishmen, and that Christian was shot when at work in his plantation (The Mutineers, etc., by Lady Belcher, 1870, p. 163; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... as those assigned by physiologists to everything that lives, grows, and multiplies. The power of the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals itself in a strong tendency to assimilate the new to the old, to simplify the manifold, to overlook or repudiate the absolutely contradictory; just as it arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent, and falsifies for itself certain traits and lines in the foreign elements, in every portion of the "outside world." Its object thereby is the incorporation of new "experiences," ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... symptom which had immediately preceded death—viz., the paralysis of the muscles of articulation—I should have felt disposed to ascribe his end to sheer inanition; and a cursory examination brought to light nothing contradictory to that view. Not being prepared to proceed further in the matter at the moment I was about to rejoin Smith, whom I could hear rummaging about amongst the litter of the outer room, when I made a ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... appeared to embarrass the natives greatly. All their accounts were contradictory: one giving me to understand that Toby would be with me in a very short time; another that he did not know where he was; while a third, violently inveighing, against him, assured me that he had stolen away, and would never come back. It appeared to me, at the time, that in making these ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... one can abdicate his freedom of judgment and feeling; since every man is by indefeasible natural right the master of his own thoughts, it follows that men thinking in diverse and contradictory fashions, cannot, without disastrous results, be compelled to speak only according to the dictates of the supreme power. (15) Not even the most experienced, to say nothing of the multitude, know how to keep ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... serviceable or hurtful in their effects. Good and evil as spoken of in Genesis ii. iii. point to no contrast of some actions with others according to their moral distinctions: the phrase is only a comprehensive one for things generally, according to the contradictory attributes which constitute their interest to man, as they help or injure him: for, as said, he desires to know not what things are metaphysically, but what is the use ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... think of the Tannhauser, after hearing these five contradictory opinions? For my own part I rather thought the cigars were a trifle ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... I shall be his charioteer on the field, for he always considers me equal to Krishna. O tiger like descendant of Kuru, I shall certainly speak to him, when desirous of fighting on the field of battle, words contradictory and fraught with harm to him, so that bereft of pride and valour, he may be easily slain by his antagonist. This I tell thee truly. Asked by thee to do it, this I am determined to do, O my son. Whatever else I may be able to bring about, I shall do for thy good. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... vain search for freedom, the boom that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Kuklux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the decade closed, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth Amendment ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Postscript to Cases of Conscience, Increase Mather says that he hears that "some have taken up a notion," that there was something contradictory between his views and those of his son, set forth in the Wonders of the Invisible World. "Tis strange that such imaginations should enter into the minds of men." He goes on to say he had read and approved of his son's book, before it was ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... window shelves fairly groaned beneath their burden of soaps, toilet waters, and perfumery, a string of bright yellow sponges occupied each corner of the window, and, through the agency of white enamel letters on the pane itself, public attention was drawn to the apparently contradictory facts that English was spoken and "schampoing" given within. Then Hippolyte engaged two assistants, and clad them in white duck jackets, and his wife fabricated a new blouse of blue silk, and seated ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... all night in my vision, Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, Pausing, gazing, bending, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... reliable testimony. And yet it is not the less certain that those same savages practise infanticide; that in some cases they abandon their old people, and that they blindly obey the rules of blood-revenge. We must then explain the coexistence of facts which, to the European mind, seem so contradictory at the first sight. I have just mentioned how the Aleoute father starves for days and weeks, and gives everything eatable to his child; and how the Bushman mother becomes a slave to follow her child; and I might fill pages ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... golden rule settles this whole question. We claim it as ours, and whatever is found in the Bible contradictory to it, never came from God. If men quote other texts in conflict with this, it is their business, not mine, to make them harmonize. I did not quite understand the gentleman's definition of what is natural. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... uncompromising doctrines. Things then took a turn with him, and from a poor persecuted 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 well-meaning, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... it is useless to expect permanent peace in spite of Leagues or Tribunals or Arbitration Courts. Further, it should be noted that Thucydides takes the utmost care to point out the excellent reasons the most enlightened statesmen had for arriving at contradictory conclusions; the event proved them all wrong without exception. The future had in store at least two events which no human foresight could discover, and these proved the deciding factors ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... and that the ambassadors and higher officials were baffled and kept apart by artificially nourished jealousies, and in particular by the device of coupling an honest man with a knave. His inward faith, too, rested upon opposed and contradictory systems; he believed in blind necessity, and in the influence of the stars, and offering prayers at one and the same time to helpers of every sort; he was a student of the ancient authors, as well as of French tales of chivalry. And yet the same man, who ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... from it: I do not reach the fact, nor approach to it. Men of respectable condition, men equal to your substantial English yeomen, are daily tied up and scourged to answer the multiplied demands of various contending and contradictory titles, all issuing from one and the same source. Tyrannous exaction brings on servile concealment; and that again calls forth tyrannous coercion. They move in a circle, mutually producing and produced; till at length nothing of humanity is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... will stand by His Majesty in sustaining the dignity of his crown, and the rights and interests of his people. I trust, therefore, Sir, that by rejecting this most incorrect and inadequate Address—as unworthy of the House as it is of the occasion; an Address contradictory in some parts to itself: in more, to the established facts of the case; and in all to the ascertained sense of the country; and by adopting, in its room, the amendment moved by the honourable member for Yorkshire, and seconded by the member for London, the House will ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... in Vevey, rendered him moody. As is usual with the headstrong and selfish when they possess the power, others were made to pay for the fault that he alone had committed. His men were vexed with contradictory and useless orders; the inferior passengers were accused of constant neglect of his instructions, a fault which he did not hesitate to affirm had caused the bark to sail less swiftly than usual, and ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... are here stated, the two opinions are not necessarily contradictory; differences in external condition may effect remarkable changes in tribes of human beings, and yet the collective body may be made up of different races: and to set before the reader a clear and distinct notion, is to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... or other the moral sense has been evolved. The body of scientific evidence which has now been collected in favour of the general theory of evolution is simply overwhelming; and in the presence of so large an analogy, it would require a vast amount of contradictory evidence to remove the presumption that human conscience, like everything else, has been evolved. Now, for my own part, I am quite unable to distinguish any such evidence, while, on the other hand, in support of the a priori presumption that conscience has been evolved, I cannot conceal ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... there was mingled, however, a weakness of feeling on the subject of position, which occasionally degenerated into an almost ridiculous pettiness. This was especially true of his later life. His utterances were sometimes so apparently contradictory, however, that it is hard to tell whether justice has been done to his real meaning on account of the difficulty of ascertaining what his real meaning was. But he spoke often of "the gentry of ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... came the news of how the President had been shot, "with a poisoned bullet," and a week of contradictory bulletins from the Milburn House in Buffalo. And there were panicky surmises raised everywhere as to "what these anarchists may do next," so that Maggio was mobbed in Columbus, and Emma Goldman in Chicago; and Colonel Roosevelt was found, after days of search, on Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... of light raiment, whether it be organdie dresses, sports togs or afternoon frocks. Women of the city insist on being modish, however, so they wear furs with the airiest of apparel on the warmest days, contradictory but vivacious apparitions. Even the Chinese girls ape their Western sisters and appear in brocaded mandarins with fur ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... are other inaccuracies in Phillips, and the register of the place and date of Milton's marriage with Mary Powell has not been found. (2) On the whole, however, Phillips's recollections about the marriage are so circumstantial, and there is such a likelihood of their being true, that, until contradictory records shall be produced, it seems right to accept his dating. But then his explanation of the cause of his uncle's speculations about divorce must be wrong. The cause in that case cannot have been the obstinate refusal of his wife to return; ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... word, and in his contradictory heat and flurry and despair he felt as if there were no words at his call which were strong enough to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... than one minute the most contradictory resolutions seemed to flit across the marquis's face. He hesitated, and at last ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... 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
... authors. In these specimens, which as yet exist only in manuscript, he has shown the same critical knowledge of the Italian language, and admirable command of the English, that characterize his translations of Tasso. He had not advanced far in these exercises, when the obscure and contradictory accounts of many incidents in the life of Dante caused him much embarrassment, and sorely piqued his curiosity. About the same time he received, through the courtesy of Don Neri dei Principi Corsini, what he had long most fervently desired, a permission ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... to be said for the Highland custom of examining the leaves of the morning cup of tea in order to obtain some insight into the events the day may be expected to bring forth. To 'look in the cup' three or four times a day, as some silly folk do, is simply to ask for contradictory manifestations and consequent bewilderment, and is symptomatic of the idle, empty, bemused minds that prompt to such ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... sense of beauty in ritual, and yet too cosmopolitan to accept easily the conventional religious forms. Before his twentieth year he had come under the influence of Ruskin's writings, but he soon parted from that wayward and contradictory master, whose brilliant dogmatism enslaved so thoroughly, but so briefly, the taste of young England. Ruskin, however, had awakened Pater, although to a style of criticism very different from his own, and for this service we owe him much. The environment ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... informed, 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... you come up to them, and then beg for mercy. I'd teach 'em.' With which remark he turned to the prisoners, who had just been issued rations of beef and biscuit, but who were also very thirsty, and began giving them water to drink from his own canteen, and so left me wondering at the opposite and contradictory sides of human nature as shown by ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... I had interviewed various people through Yejiro on the subject. First, the porters had been exhaustively catechized, and then what wayfarers we chanced to meet had been buttonholed beside; with the result of much contradictory information. There seemed to be an inn which was, I will not say good, but the best, but no two informants could agree in calling it by name. One thought he remembered that the North Inn was the place to go to; another that he had heard the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... for self-defense, I called Congress together at Montgomery on April 29th, and, in the message of that date, thus spoke of the proclamation of the President of the United States: "Apparently contradictory as are the terms of this singular document, one point is unmistakably evident. The President of the United States calls for an army of seventy-five thousand men, whose first service is to be the capture ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... view to the drift of the discussion in hand, or with a view to some special part of the discussion. When the turn of some other part of the matter comes, it will be convenient and often necessary to bring out into full light another side of your opinion, not contradictory, but complementary, and the great distinction of a candid disputant or of a reader of good faith, is his willingness to take pains to see the points of reconciliation among different aspects and different expressions of what ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... him, the more so that he had been playing a concertina and not a fiddle at all. His feelings were vague, and in some respects contradictory; but he was convinced that Mrs. Prockter's scheme for separating Helen and the Apollo Emanuel was not ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... community. Among them are found those who had been Romanists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Restorationists, Quakers, Arians, Unitarians, etc., etc. We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, but various opinions. All these persons, of so many and contradictory opinions, weekly meet around our Lord's table in hundreds of churches all over the land. Our bond of union is faith in the slain Messiah, in his death for our sins and his resurrection for ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... and was just waking to painful life. For nearly four years had Grena Holland soothed her many misgivings by some such reasoning as that of Mr Justice Roberts. She had conformed outwardly: had not merely abstained from contradictory speeches, but had gone to mass, had attended the confessional, had bowed down before images of wood and stone, and all the time had comforted herself by imagining that God saw her heart, and knew that she did not really ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... if fate wished to make amends for the sorry tricks it had played Mavis. Her first impressions after hearing the news were of such a contradictory nature that she was quite bewildered. Those present at the reading of the will, together with Montague Devitt, who had accompanied her, hastened to offer their congratulations (those of Devitt being chastened by the reflection of how much his daughter Victoria suffered from Mavis's good fortune), ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... can one use but the word-of-all-work, love, which means so many variations and shades, and complications of passion, sentiment, vanity and attraction?—his love had greatly increased, was growing stronger: sometimes he wondered whether it was the mere contradictory, defiant obstinacy of the discouraged admirer; and, certainly, there was in his devotion a strong infusion of a longing to score off his tyrannising wife and the fortunate, amiable Percy. Nigel's jealousy of Percy—and not of Percy only, but ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... denied its present infallibility. Moreover, no sooner was the Protestant principle applied to practice, than it became evident that even an infallible text, when manipulated by private judgment, will impartially countenance contradictory deductions; and furnish forth creeds and confessions as diverse as the quality and the information of the intellects which exercise, and the prejudices and passions which sway, such judgments. Every sect, confident in the derivative infallibility of its wire-drawing ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Hence we find them sitting in church courts with these brethren, [47:1] and desirous to be known not as apostles, but as elders. [47:2] We possess little information respecting either their official or their personal history. A very equivocal, and sometimes contradictory, tradition [47:3] is the only guide which even professes to point out to us where the greater number of them laboured; and the same witness is the only voucher for the statements which describe how most of them finished their career. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... could manage for himself.) In many particulars Carlyle was indeed, as Froude terms him, one of those far-off Hebraic utterers, a new Micah or Habbakuk. His words at times bubble forth with abysmic inspiration. Always precious, such men; as precious now as any time. His rude, rasping, taunting, contradictory tones—what ones are more wanted amid the supple, polish'd, money—worshipping, Jesus-and-Judas-equalizing, suffrage-sovereignty echoes of current America? He has lit up our Nineteenth century with the light of a powerful, penetrating, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... matter of extinguishing fires. It is only when roused by some great calamity that people bestir themselves; and then there is such a variety of plans proposed to avert similar cases of distress, that to attempt to concoct a rational plan out of such a crude, ill-digested, and contradictory mass of opinion, requires more labour and attention than most people are inclined to give it, unless a regular business was made of it. In Paris the corps of military firemen are so well trained, that although their apparatus is not so good as it should be, the amount ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... among the duties is deemed to be the most worthy of being performed? The diverse modes of duty, we see, are contradictory. Some say that (it remains) after the body (is destroyed). Others say that it does not exist. Some say that everything is doubtful. Others have no doubts.[146] Some say that the eternal (principle) is not eternal. Some ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... boyhood, when the teacher punished me by making me sit with the girls, but will hasten on to a point that stands out vividly against a dark background of accidents. I was nineteen. My sentiments toward that part of creation known as "young ladies" were, at that time, of a mingled and contradictory nature. I adored them as angels; I dreaded them as if they were mad dogs, and were ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... of eye-witnesses to any strange event always are contradictory. Some said this band of ghostly men marched on the street level; others said they were below it, walking with only their heads above the road surface and gradually descending. In any event the frightened group of onlookers scattered and shouted until ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... coeteris paribus, he would probably himself, as a matter of taste, prefer the man who can lift a hundred-weight round his head with his little finger to the man who can construct a string of perfect Sorites, or expound the doctrine of "contradictory inconceivables." ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... restlessly about, held consultations with his officers, gave contradictory orders in this shrill clamour pervading the whole empty edifice. Sometimes there would be long and awful silences. Several times he had entered the torture-chamber where his sword, horsewhip, revolver, and field-glass were lying on the table, to ask with forced calmness, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... you will see by the terms of the law of sale, is merely interest intensified. Desire is the main spring of action. It is the real force of every motive. Contradictory as it may seem at first sight, people always do what they want to do even when they act most reluctantly. Their action is inspired by a desire to escape what they believe to be the certain penalty of inaction ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... alembic of Dyer's 'Weekly Letter.' [Footnote: See Note I. ] For it may be observed in passing, that instead of those mail-coaches, by means of which every mechanic at his six-penny club, may nightly learn from twenty contradictory channels the yesterday's news of the capital, a weekly post brought, in those days, to Waverley-Honour, a Weekly Intelligencer, which, after it had gratified Sir Everard's curiosity, his sister's, and that of his aged butler, was ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... similar circumstances would have been more indifferent than I. As I proceeded she scribbled in a little note-book; and as she listened to my discourse one could see that she was visibly swayed by the most contradictory emotions; she seemed to pass from satisfaction and joy to surprise and even anxiety. I examined her with increasing curiosity. Would to God I had set eyes on her and her only that day under ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... her, dismayed. All his confused contradictory impressions assumed a new aspect at this announcement; and to hide his surprise he added lightly: "Ah—then you will have Paris, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... is for a time reticent, and his statements are contradictory. No wonder he declines to tell what has occurred, so compromising to himself! But when the lariat is at length noosed around his neck, the loose end of it thrown over the limb of a pecan tree—the other conditions being clearly expounded to him—he sees that ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... held out my Field Note-book, having turned over the page." (There are not many people who can say 'No' to B——.) "He didn't mind, So he wrote it down. Naturally I took care of those pages. Next day old Macassey must have remembered that he had issued two contradictory orders in the same day. Ordered me to expand and contract at the same time, like the third ventricle. And he knew that I had first-class documentary evidence, and that I guarded his autographs as though I were going to put 'em up for sale at Sotheby's. He ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... Albany, from the various departments of the army. Or, we may fancy ourselves in the circle of listeners, all with necks stretched out towards an old gentleman in the centre, who deliberately puts on his spectacles, unfolds the wet newspaper, and gives us the details of the broken and contradictory reports, which have been flying from mouth to mouth, ever since the courier alighted at Secretary Oliver's office. Sometimes we have an account of the Indian skirmishes near Lake George, and how a ranging party of provincials ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Book of Acts was rejected by the Jewish Christians, as containing accounts untrue, and contradictory to their Acts of the Apostles. It was rejected also by the Encratites, and the Severians, and I believe by the Marcionites. The Jewish Christians were the oldest Christian Church, and they pronounced that the Book of Acts in our Canon was written by a partizan of Paul's; ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... Retaliation were written—that last scintillation of the bright and happy genius that was soon to be extinguished for ever. The most varied accounts have been given of the origin of this jeu d'esprit; and even Garrick's, which was meant to supersede and correct all others, is self-contradictory. For according to this version of the story, which was found among the Garrick papers, and which is printed in Mr. Cunningham's edition of Goldsmith's works, the whole thing arose out of Goldsmith and Garrick resolving one evening ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... when observing an ant-hill that any individual insect follows, when working, a personal idea which it has conceived, and which it realises without troubling itself about the others. Often these latter are executing a quite contradictory plan. It is rather an anarchistic republic. Happily Ants are not obstinate, and when they see the idea of one of them disengaging itself from the labour commenced, they are content to abandon their own less satisfactory idea and to collaborate in the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... such extreme restriction in money matters. The particulars, however, have been so transmitted as to entitle them to acceptance, unless contradicted by something more positive than circumstantial inference from other conditions, not necessarily contradictory. ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... cannot conceive them as being morally repented of); but it is likewise degrading to the character of woman. Beaumont and Fletcher, who can follow Shakespeare in his errors only, have presented a still worse, because more loathsome and contradictory, instance of the same kind in the Night-Walker, in the marriage of Alathe to Algripe. Of the counter-balancing beauties of Measure for Measure, I need say nothing; for I have already remarked that the play is ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... confessed it would be what she declared. I never dreamed that Clancy and his confederate were the thieves: I never believed the money was taken until after Hayne received it. I saw how Hayne's guilt was believed in even in the face of contradictory evidence before the court. What would be the tendency if three men together were to swear against me, now that everybody thought him wronged? I know very well what you will think of my cowardice. I know you and your officers ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... 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
... his injuries? No! We trust that there is a redeeming virtue in our fellow citizens, which will urge them to unite with us in abolishing Domestic Slavery. We invite them, because we believe it to be contradictory to the Law of Nature—in violation of the commands of Christianity—hostile to our political union—dangerous to a portion of our white population—inconsistent with our professed love of liberty—degrading to our national character—and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... contradictory directions given. He chose the latter, and when it wanted but one step more to the bank, down sunk both horses, until little more than their ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... give an idea of Phillips Brooks without a word about his personality, which was almost contradictory. His commanding figure, his wit, the charm of his conversation, and a certain boyish gayety and naturalness, drew people to him as to a powerful magnet. He was one of the best known men in America; people pointed him out ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... been brought together in the following catalogue, and all the obtainable information given concerning the varieties which they represent. The testimony given is sometimes contradictory, either from want of proper observation on the part of the writers quoted, or from differences in the seeds sold under the same name. This is necessarily somewhat confusing to one who is looking up the merits of a variety, ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... up and nearing the Russian frontier. Everywhere one heard curses on Bonaparte, "the enemy of mankind." Militiamen and recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and from the seat of war came contradictory news, false as usual and therefore variously interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkonski, Prince Andrew, and Princess Mary had greatly changed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... do with it, are listened to with patience. The rumour that they were shot by soldiers gains ground, and seems less incredulously received. As to the massacres of the Rue de la Paix, we are told that this event is enveloped in mystery, that the evidence is most contradictory, etc., etc.[22] There is evidently a decided reactionary movement in favour of the partizans of the Commune. Without approving their acts their activity is incontestable. They have done much in a short time. People exclaim, "There are men for you!" This state of things is very alarming to all ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... independent republics in December 1991. Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political system and market economy to replace the strict social, political, and economic controls of the communist period. These reform efforts have resulted in contradictory and confusing economic and political regulations and practices. Industry, agriculture, the military, the central government, and the ruble have suffered, but Russia has successfully held one presidential, two ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... belief of the North-American Indians seems, on a first view, anomalous and contradictory. It certainly is so, if we adopt the popular impression. Romance, Poetry, and Rhetoric point, on the one hand, to the august conception of a one all-ruling Deity, a Great Spirit, omniscient and omnipresent; and we are called to admire the untutored intellect which ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... in what aspect she would appear, she whose nature seemed to him so varied and contradictory, and whose face was the index to these changing phases. She came in quietly, a young girl, pale, inquiring, yet saying no word; but there was a sparkle in her gaze that made the blood leap for a ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler |
