"Debatable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know also how close his watch was kept. He took the German and Jacko with him, but left them with their horses about a mile on the Boolabong side of his own fence, nigh to the extreme boundary of the Debatable Land. They knew his whistle, and were to ride to him at ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... not known in her day, and deserving investigation. She was happy to compare sensations with him, but hers were not of the complex order, and a potion soon righted her. In fact, her system appeared to be a debatable ground for aliment and medicine, on which the battle was fought, and, when over, she was none the worse, as she joyfully told Hippias. Never looked ploughman on prince, or village belle on Court Beauty, with half the envy poor nineteenth-century ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... propose to make here any treatise of Geology, but simply to place before my readers some pictures of the old world, with the animals and plants that inhabited it at various times, I shall avoid, as far as possible, all debatable ground, and confine myself to those parts of my subject which are best known, and can therefore ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... is to state facts, rather than to moot theories, I leave this debatable ground to others, and here close a narrative, compiled with much care, of this interesting and instructive case. I was the rather disposed to examine it critically and report it in detail, because it seems to suggest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... the need of apologising at this point for getting on that old debatable ground—but the secret was out. It was the essence of my forming ideas on educating the children, as it is the essence of everything else—all writing, all craftsmanship, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... men to women and of women to men are necessarily determined to a large extent by certain general ideas of relationship, by institutions and conventions. One of the most important and debatable of these is whether we are to consider and treat women as citizens and fellows, or as beings differing mentally from men and grouped in positions of at least material dependence to individual men. Our decision in that direction will affect all our conduct from the larger matters ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... property has value is undeniable; whether it be worth what it costs us, in the long run, and from all points of view, may be left to the judgment of generations to come. Law in its origins is Divine; whether our human derivations from it partake of its high nature is debatable. Medicine and psychology, professing much, have not explained to us what or why we are, or what is our degree of responsibility for what we are and do. Politics sits on the bench and argues through the mouth of the public prosecutor; is ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... and forced us back, and now it was our turn to lose heavily. That was nearly three weeks ago, and since then the ground over which we fought has been debatable ground, lying between our lines and the enemy's lines—a stretch four miles long and half a mile wide that is literally carpeted with bodies of dead men. They weren't all dead at first. For two days and nights our men in the earthworks heard ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... appearing with her in public, and receiving visits with her, still permit that good-natured and well-intended social intercourse between young men and women which is so seldom abused, and which has led to so many happy marriages. It is one of the points yet debatable how much liberty should be allowed young ladies. Certainly, however, we do not wish to hold our young girls up to the scorn and ridicule of the novelist or the foreign critic by ignoring what has been a recognized tenet of good manners since society was formed. The ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... the season being that of the rains, pressed forward to Mudkal, an important city in the Raichur Doab, or the large triangle of country lying west of the junction of the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers, a territory which was ever a debatable ground between the Hindus and Mussulmans, and the scene of constant warfare for the next 200 years. Mudkal was captured, and all the inhabitants, men, women, and children, put to the sword. One man only escaped and carried ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... their original endowment by winning out in the struggle shall hand on this endowment to a subsequent generation. In other words, Nature is anxious that they may successfully mate. Here we are again on distinctly debatable ground. Darwin himself believed thoroughly in what he called sexual selection. It is the essence of this idea that the males and females have grown unlike, more technically have developed secondary sexual characters, through the choice of the mating pair. It would usually ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... it only casually, for since she knew it was there, to keep silence altogether would only increase her pain. So from time to time he skimmed the surface just to let her show him where he was wrong and think she won the day. It remained a debatable land of compromise. He listened with patience to her criticisms, her excursions and alarms, knowing that while it gave her satisfaction, it could not change himself. The thing lay in him too deep and true for change. But, for peace' sake, some ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... shall use the two speeches as illustrations of the art of rhetoric; first distinguishing between the debatable and undisputed class of subjects. In the debatable class there ought to be a definition of all disputed matters. But there was no such definition in the speech of Lysias; nor is there any order or connection in his words any more than in a nursery rhyme. With this he compares ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... about a hundred miles separated this mountain fastness from the similar passes which guarded eastern Virginia along the line of the Blue Ridge. This debatable ground was sparsely settled and very poor in agricultural resources, so that it could furnish nothing for subsistence of man or beast. The necessity of transporting forage as well as subsistence and ammunition through this mountainous belt forbade any extended or continuous operations ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... beyond which the State cannot go in reducing railway rates, which limit would be passed in case a State should attempt to deprive a corporation of its property, without due process of law, by fixing rates too low to permit of a fair remuneration for its use. A large debatable ground yet remains open, with a possibility that the position of the railway in Federal jurisprudence may eventually be ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... of the period was sizzling in the fire, Mr. Meredith recovered enough to pull out his purse and pay up the debatable levy. A moment later the steaming drink was poured into ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... liberty and religious liberty, and these are conditions of moral improvement. So far his argument coincides in principle with that of French theorists of Progress. But Kant goes on to apply to these data the debatable conception of final causes, and to infer a purpose in the development of humanity. Only this inference is put forward as a hypothesis, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... whole of the Northern slopes of the Kereves Dere Ravine was covered by bright coloured irregular surging crowds, moving in quite another way to the khaki-clad figures on their left:—one moment pouring over the debatable ground like a torrent, anon twisted and turning and flying like multitudes of dead leaves before the pestilent breath of the howitzers. No living man has ever seen so strange a vision as this: in its disarray; in its rushing to and fro; in the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... range? If Kemble was the ideal Coriolanus and Henry V., he was too kingly as Hamlet, and Booth is the princeliest Hamlet that ever trod the stage. If Kean and the elder Booth were more supernal in their lightnings of passion and scorn,—and there are points in "Richelieu" which leave this a debatable question,—Edwin Booth is more equal throughout, has every resource of taste and study at his command; his action is finished to the last, his stage-business perfect, his reading distinct and musical as a bell. He is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... mountains, and far beyond, it stretched without a break; but towards the mouth of the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers the landscape became varied with open groves of woodland, with flower-strewn glades and great barrens or prairies of long grass. This region, one of the fairest in the world, was the debatable ground between the northern and the southern Indians. Neither dared dwell therein,[1] but both used it as their hunting-grounds; and it was traversed from end to end by the well marked war traces[2] which they followed when they invaded each other's territory. The whites, on trying to break ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... great river called the Savannah poured into the sea. Below the Savannah, past the Ogeechee, sailing south between the sandy islands and the main, ships came to the mouth of the river Altamaha. Thus far was Carolina. But below Altamaha the coast and the country inland became debatable, probably Florida and Spanish, liable at any rate to be claimed as such, and certainly open to attack from Spanish ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... what order to present it. Knowledge consists in being able to find a thing when you want it and accordingly an attempt has been made to pigeonhole each joke where it would be most useful. Such a classification is at best a difficult and debatable question, and numerous cross references have been placed wherever it was thought they might direct the ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... the troop of men that he heard. Collins, the liveryman, had told him that the country was full of trouble. This region was neither North nor South. It was debatable land, of which raiding bands would take full advantage, and, despite the risk, he wished to know what was on foot. He was almost invisible under the boughs of a great oak which hung over the road, and the horse, after so many miles of hard riding, ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... possession, the surveyor is at all times a highly unwelcome visitor, and sometimes goes about his duties at the risk of his life. Besides this, a portion of the land traversed by Washington formed a part of that debatable land, the disputed right to which was the original moving cause of the 'Seven Years' War.' The French were already in motion, both from Canada and Louisiana, to preoccupy the banks of the Ohio, and the savages in their interest ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... answer at once. He appeared to be considering what the soldier had told him. And then Blake looked across No Man's Land—that debatable ground between the two hostile forces—as though to pierce what lay beyond, back of the trenches which were held by the Germans, though, at this point, the ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... occasions, in the glow of Miss Limpenny's wax candles, Youth and Age held opposite camps, with the centre table as debatable ground; nor, until the rubber was finished, and the round game had ended in a seemly scramble for ratafias, would the two recognise each other's presence, save now and then by a "Hush, if you please, young people," from the elder sister, followed by a whispered, "What spirits ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a country must govern itself, to exclude, on some always debatable pretext, a part of the citizens from the administration of affairs is such an injustice that it seems to me ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... wherein they have the most in common. Indeed, so completely did any fundamental distinction between poetic and rhetoric become blurred that in the second century Annaeus Florus was able to offer as a debatable question, "Is Virgil an ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... often been said that the excitement of presidential campaigns is detrimental to the nation. This could hardly be said of the campaign of 1908. To produce political excitement there must be debatable questions termed, by the politicians as "issues." Just what the issues were in the campaign few people could determine. There were no issues which involved foreign affairs. The Democratic party did not criticise the sending of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... countering off-base discrimination against servicemen was still highly debatable in 1946, the right of men on a military base to protection was uncontestable. Yet even service practices on military bases were under attack as racial conflicts and threats of violence multiplied. "Dear Mother," one soldier stationed at Sheppard Field, Texas, felt compelled ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... following the night I had fixed for the destruction of the enemy outpost two companies of enemy infantry and three guns marched out of Shmakovka as a reinforcement to the debatable position. I watched through my binoculars their slow movement along the dusty road. I judged what the enemy's intentions were, and knew also that I was powerless to prevent them. He quickly placed his guns in position, and the following day sent ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... in the former edition, I have received great assistance from my friend Mr. Lennox Browne, the eminent throat surgeon, who, by ever patiently discussing with me debatable points, and by giving me access to cases, interesting from a physiological point of view, both at the Central Throat and Ear Hospital, Gray's Inn Road, and in his extensive private practice, has afforded me opportunities of increasing ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... explained—the actual existence of war, and its monstrous expansion. Never has war been more powerful, more brutal, more widespread. Never has war been more glorified. In an interesting chapter (Chapter Fourteen), which introduces a number of debatable points, Nicolai shows that in earlier days apologists for war were exceptional. Even among the epic poets of war, those whose song was of heroism, the direct references to war convey fear and disapproval. Delight in war (Kriegslust), love ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... liberally minded of the clergy, have now reached an interesting stage, both for those without the Church as well as for those within it. Although he does not feel called upon to state his own private conclusions on such debatable questions, he no longer regards the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Bodily Resurrection as essential prerequisites of Christianity and would consider fit for ordination any candidate who rejected them, provided such a person still acknowledged the divine nature of ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... accumulated experience; a mordant power of analysis; a gift of shrewd speech, a command of hard words that will cut like a diamond; a mental vigour analogous to, though naturally not so powerful, as that displayed by Browning in The Ring and the Book. It is still a debatable proposition whether or not this is high-class poetry; but it is mixed with brains. Imagine the range of knowledge and power necessary to create two hundred and forty-six distinct characters, with a revealing epitaph for each one! The miracle of personal identity ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... himself a lost man that night; the only point which he had considered debatable was whether he should be strangled or poisoned. That his employers were determined upon his death, he was assured; yet he had lived through the night, had learnt from his watch that the morning was arrived... and had seen the flecks at the roots of his dyed ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... of absurd assumptions pass current as fixed and non-debatable standards. We might be free, and we tie ourselves to the slavery of rutted convention. Afraid of ideas, we come to no definite philosophy of life that is the result of clear and ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... digest cooked food; all animals do better fed on what they can digest. A lot of people have taken Pottenger's data and mistakenly concluded that humans also should eat only raw food. This idea is debatable. However, the most important result of the cat experiments took years to reveal itself and is not paid much attention to, probably because its implications are very depressing. Dr. Pottenger continued his experiments for several generations. It was the transgenerational ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... tradition of privacy, they may not exist because nobody thinks record important, because he thinks it red tape, or because nobody has yet invented an objective system of measurement. Then the news on these subjects is bound to be debatable, when it is not wholly neglected. The events which are not scored are reported either as personal and conventional opinions, or they are not news. They do not take shape until somebody protests, or somebody investigates, or somebody publicly, in the etymological meaning of the word, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... had fled from the villages of the Slavs, or (in fewer cases) from the caravans of the Tartars, owing to private feuds, or from love of a freer and more lucrative life than that of the village or the encampment. In this debatable land their numbers increased until, Slavs though they mainly were, they became a menace to the growing power of the Czars. Ivan the Terrible sent expeditions against them, transplanted many of their ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... is to prevent private monopoly more effectually than it has yet been prevented. I think it will be easily agreed that we should let the Sherman antitrust law stand, unaltered, as it is, with its debatable ground about it, but that we should as much as possible reduce the area of that debatable ground by further and more explicit legislation; and should also supplement that great act by legislation which will not only clarify it but also facilitate its administration ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... spiritual phenomena are developed. The modus operandi is understood, and the facts have been known some thirty, some a hundred, some several thousand years. Among advanced thinkers psychic science is no more a debatable question than the rotundity of the earth ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... do not know yet. According to the principle, fiat justitia, pereat mundus, I ought to do so, no doubt. But the pereat mundus is, after all, a debatable point. Probably war is imminent, and I am afraid the Viceroy would not be grateful to me were I to add fresh cares to all his other anxieties. At present these Indian princes are indispensable to us. They have to place their troops at our ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... She had heard of such things, she had even read a little on the subject, but it had never seemed to her a practical means of communicating. Calling a doctor, for instance, seemed to Lorraine rather far-fetched an application of what was at best but a debatable theory. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... amused ourselves with playing at ball, marbles, and especially at "Scotch and English," a game which represented a raid on the debatable land, or Border between Scotland and England, in which each party tried to rob the other of their playthings. The little ones were always compelled to be English, for the bigger girls ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... year, the debatable ground between spring and summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees and flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the bleak brightness of March. The winds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... to the Minto descent, Stevenson claims to have 'shaken a spear in the Debatable Land and shouted the slogan of the Elliots.' He evidently knew little or nothing of his relations on the Elphinstone side. The Logie Elphinstones were a cadet branch of Glack, an estate acquired by Nicholas Elphinstone ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... my full permission to appropriate this story in the next edition of his "Debatable Land between this World and the Next." Should they do so, their readers will doubtless be favoured with an elaborate analysis of the facts, and with a pseudo-philosophic theory about spiritual communion with human beings. My wife, who is an enthusiastic ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... should children first wear glasses? This is a much debatable question. Where there is simply a defect of vision I should never prescribe a pair of glasses for a child under ten years of age. A child under this age runs many risks of injury to the eyeball by accident to the glasses, and to cut the eye ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... Scandinavians, as well as in that of the Bo-tree of the Buddhists. The prototype was not the Egyptian, but the Babylonian crux ansata, the lower member of which constitutes a conical support for the oval or sphere above it. With the Gnostics, who occupied the debatable ground between primitive Christianity and philosophic paganism, and who inscribed it upon their tombs, the cone symbolized death as well as life. In every heathen mythology it was the universal emblem of the goddess or mother of heaven, by whatsoever ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... the price agreed on for this territory was 60,000,000 francs, the United States also covenanting to satisfy the claims which many of their citizens had on the French treasury. For this paltry sum the United States gained a peaceful title to the debatable lands west of Lake Erie and to the vast tracts west of the Mississippi. The First Consul carried out his threat of denying to the deputies of France any voice in this barter. The war with England sufficed to distract their attention; and France turned sadly ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the length of the room, slowly and with knitted brows. "If you mean the world-wide order,—the order of gentlemen,"—he said, coming to a pause with the breadth of the table between him and Haward, "we may have that ground in common. The rest is debatable land. I do not take you for a sentimentalist or a redresser of wrongs. I am your storekeeper, purchased with that same yellow metal of which you so busily rid yourself; and your storekeeper I shall remain until the natural death of my term, two years ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... fortified city, occupying a commanding hill overlooking the Danube; it is a rare old town, battle-scarred and rugged; having been a frontier position of importance in a country that has been debatable ground between Turk and Christian for centuries, it has been a coveted prize to be won and lost on the diplomatic chess-board, or, worse still, the foot-ball of contending armies and wrangling monarchs. Long before the Ottoman Turks first appeared, like a small dark cloud, no bigger than ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Spenser's Red Cross Knight, to avenge the wrongs of distressed damsels in the junior forms. The ring of battle certainly added a spice of excitement to their secret. It was much more interesting to interfere personally on behalf of their protegees than to place debatable matters before the prefects. If war were involved with another sorority it could not be helped. And war there undoubtedly was. Bertha and Mabel, too clever to court open ignominy, desisted for the present from biscuit-snatching, ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas—the "Department of the Trans-Mississippi"—cut off from the main body of the Confederacy and hemmed in between the Federal army and the deep sea. Another group of States—Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama—became so soon, and remained so long, a debatable land, on which the two armies fought, that they also had scant opportunity for genuine political life. Florida, small and exposed, was absorbed in its gallant achievement of furnishing to the armies a number of soldiers larger than its ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... evening of the 27th there was much cheering along the Rebel lines. Their bands, too, were unusually lavish of the Rebel airs they were wont occasionally to waft across the debatable ground which separated our lines. Had the enemy received reinforcements, or had Grant met with a reverse? While on picket that night, in making my rounds, I could distinctly hear the Rebels chopping on the knob which they had so recently occupied on the opposite bank of the river. They were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... rather difficult of accomplishment, for with all Marcia's flighty romance she shrinks from encountering actual poverty, but it might be this man's admiration is sufficiently strong to lead him beyond the debatable land. She hesitates just a little, then solaces herself ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... that the North had to make its army before it could wisely advance into the assured territory of the South; the situation of the Southern Government in this respect was precisely the same. The North had enough to do meantime in making sure of the States which were still debatable ground. Such forces as were available must of necessity be used for this purpose, but for any larger operations of war military considerations, especially on the side which had the larger resources at its back, were in favour of waiting and perfecting the instrument ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... who died. Child's play, you will tell me, and nothing more. But, my dear, I am afraid I shall require some persuasion, before I quite sympathize with this new—what shall I call it?—infatuation is too hard a word, and 'fancy' means nothing. We will leave it a blank. Marriages of cousins are debatable marriages, to say the least of them; and Protestant fathers and Papist mothers do occasionally involve difficulties with children. Not that I say, No. Far from it. But if this is to ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... scared, perhaps not; that point is debatable. But it was beyond doubt of debate that ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... quarrelled for years over the ultimate destiny of the Ueskueb district in north-western Macedonia, which was still subject to Turkey; but in the summer of 1912 the two states compromised in a secret treaty upon their respective territorial ambitions, and agreed to refer the fate of one debatable strip to the arbitration of Russia, after their already projected war with Turkey had been carried through. There was a more formidable conflict of interests between Bulgaria and Greece. These two nationalities are conterminous over a very wide extent of territory, stretching from ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... development of ecclesiastical law in the middle of the twelfth century, it was inevitable that difficulties should spring up. The boundaries of civil and ecclesiastical law were wholly uncertain, the scientific study of law had hardly begun, and there was much debatable ground which might be won by the most arrogant or the most skilful of the combatants. Every brawl of a few noisy lads in the Oxford streets or at the gates of some cathedral or monastic school was enough to kindle the strife as to the jurisdiction of Church or State which shook medieval ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... number of Negroes who have attained distinction have been those of mixed blood. The truth of this statement must be conceded, and yet the cause should not be overlooked. Leaving aside the doctrine of inheritance as a debatable question, the initial advantage of the mixed over the pure Negroes was considerable. Feelings of blood ties prompted many a slave holder to deal kindly by his slave descendants, and often to liberate them and give them a start in the race of life. That an infusion ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... historic themes, I would counsel this hypothetical genius to beware. If there are any which can fittingly be steeped in a lyric atmosphere, they are to be sought on the outskirts of history, or in the debatable land between history and legend. The formula of Schiller can no more be revived than the formula of Chapman or of Rowe. That a new historic drama awaits us in the future, I have little doubt; but it will be written in prose. The idea that the poetry of drama is ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... throughout the North Protestant governments and Protestant nations. In the South were governments and nations actuated by the most intense zeal for the ancient church. Between these two hostile regions lay, morally as well as geographically, a great debatable land. In France, Belgium, Southern Germany, Hungary, and Poland, the contest was still undecided. The governments of those countries had not renounced their connection with Rome; but the Protestants ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not to stay. It is not proper, and my cap at home, too," Katy kept thinking as she fidgeted in her chair, and watched the girl setting the table so cosily for two, and occasionally deferring some debatable point to her as if she ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... have endeavoured to arrange briefly and concisely the various methods at present in use for the study of bacteria, and the elucidation of such points in their life-histories as are debatable ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... polls during the three days of election. They repeatedly addressed the people, and did all that men could do. They frequently met at the same polls, and argued, in the presence of large assemblages, the debatable questions. Their deportment towards each other and towards their opponents was such as comported with the dignity of two of the most accomplished and courtly gentlemen of the age in ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... through the forest. When he saw the smoke of a neighbor's chimney it was time for him to move on. So William James was led by instinct from the crowded highways to the dim border-lands of human experience. He preferred to dwell in the debatable lands. With a quizzical smile he listened to the dignitaries of philosophy. He found their completed systems too stuffy. He loved the wildernesses of thought where shy wild things hide—half hopes, half realities. They are not quite true now,—but ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... discussed. Yet the point is one referred to several times in criticisms contained in these articles. This is the author's duty to write in such a fashion as to seem impartial. It is needless to suggest that he ought to be impartial, since no one ever takes a real interest in any debatable matter without ceasing to be impartial, and nobody will ever write a play worth seeing unless he takes a deep interest in ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... relation of eye to beak, as the getting of its food depends on their practical alliance of power; and the question, for instance, whether peacocks and parrots have musical ears, seems to me not properly debatable unless with due respect to the quality of their voices. It is curious, considering how much, one way or another, we are amused or pleased by the chatter and song of birds, that you will scarcely find in any ornithic manual ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... tell us what he himself had known and witnessed. It was, by the way, extremely difficult either to surprise or to steal upon any of Uncle Nathan's private opinions and beliefs about matters and things. He was as shy of all debatable subjects as a fox is of a trap. He usually talked in a circle, just as he hunted moose and caribou, so as not to approach his point too rudely and suddenly. He would keep on the lee side of his interlocutor in spite of all ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Again, the absence of a front curtain made it impossible to end an act or play with a grand climax or an impressive tableau. Instead, the scenes gradually die away; the actors leave the stage one by one, or go off in procession. Whether this was gain or loss is a debatable question. At any rate, this caused the Elizabethan plays to leave on the spectator an impression totally different from that left by ours. Finally, the absence of pictorial scenery forced the dramatists ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... active wives, ingenuous daughters, heavy sons—I want either to know them better, or not to know them at all. I want to enter the house, the furnished chambers of people's minds; and I am willing enough to throw my own open to a cordial guest; but I do not want to stand and chatter in some debatable land of social conventionality. I have no store of simple geniality. The other night we went to dine quietly with a parson near here, a worthy fellow, happy and useful. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, I sate beside my host. I saw Maud listening, with rapt ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... speak about social security. Our Federal social security system for people who have worked and contributed to it for all their lives is a vital part of our economic system. Its value is no longer debatable. In my budget for fiscal year 1977, I am recommending that the full cost-of-living increases in the social security benefits be paid during the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Gerald R. Ford • Gerald R. Ford
... There was a subdued, almost stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman, when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the formal courtesy, and careful avoidance of debatable topics, one could see sidelong glances cast, and hear muttered sneers. We bowed low to one another, but with anxious faces, knowing that we stood upon the thin crust over the crater, likely at any moment to ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... confused &c (indistinct) 447; mystic, oracular; dazed. perplexing &c v.; enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical; experimental &c 463. unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable) 519. fallible, questionable, precarious, slippery, ticklish, debatable, disputable; unreliable, untrustworthy. contingent, contingent on, dependent on; subject to; dependent on circumstances; occasional; provisional. unauthentic, unauthenticated, unauthoritative; unascertained, unconfirmed; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... advantageous opening for him abroad, only requiring a sum of ready money, which, on being communicated to Deronda in private, might immediately draw from him a question as to the amount of the required sum: and it was this part of his forecast that Lapidoth found the most debatable, there being a danger in asking too much, and a prospective regret in asking too little. His own desire gave him no limit, and he was quite without guidance as to the limit of Deronda's willingness. But ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... dogmatic and intolerant. It requires a good deal of information to discover one's own ignorance, but to the consciousness of this the good people had never arrived. They felt they knew as much as necessary, and naturally on the most debatable questions were most assured. Their standpoint was inconceivably narrow. They had the best intentions in the world of doing their duty, but what their duty was they accepted on trust, frivolously. They walked round and round in a narrow circle, hemmed in by false ideals ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... received from him, a few days before the paper's removal, a silly and characteristic note: "Since the freak grass has been stopped it seems indicated other abnormalities be terminated also. Your usefulness to this paper, always debatable, is now clearly at an end. As of this moment your putative services will be ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... ma bairn," she said, "this nicht o' a' the nichts in the year, when the fairy folk—preserve us frae them!—-have power. But they could nae take the blessed rood o' grace; it was beyond their strength. If gipsies, or robber folk frae the Debatable Land, had carried away the bairn, they would hae taken him, cross and a'. But the guid folk have gotten him, and Randal Ker will never, never mair come hame ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... "Ah," he said, "they tells me times are better now, but I can't see it;" and it was plain enough that he thought our present times the worse. So far as this valley is concerned I incline to agree with him, although in general it is a debatable question. On the one hand, it may be that the things a labourer can buy at a shop for fifteen shillings a week are more in quantity and variety, if not better in quality, than those which his forefathers could produce by their own industry; and to that ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... Corfu, for example. Italian officers had been murdered in Greece by somebody; various individuals had been killed at Corfu by a bombardment of the Italian fleet. Had or had not hostilities broken out within the meaning of Article 10 of the Protocol? Surely the point is at least debatable. ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... He paused. It is debatable if he had spoken wisely, or had spoken even in consonance with fact, but his outburst had, at least, the saving grace of sincerity. He was pallid now, shaking in every limb, and in his heart was a dull aching. She seemed so incredibly soft and little and childlike, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... could have been elected in the absence of this interference by the king, which the adventurers protested as an unwarranted invasion of their liberty, is itself an interesting and debatable question. By his many criticisms of the previous conduct of the company's affairs, Sandys had won the undying enmity of Sir Thomas Smith and his important friends. More than that, he had quarreled with his ally of the preceding year, the Earl of Warwick, ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... is that the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience. [Things of an unexperienceable nature may exist ad libitum, but they form no part of the material for ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... of fear in every man's heart which throbs more or less responsively to the relation of the wonders of that "debatable land," which, by some, is believed to lie "on the boundaries of another world." La Salle felt impressed in spite of himself, and the whole party seemed grave and unwilling to pursue the subject. The silence was, however, broken ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... folded up, "If there be as mony o' the Bailie's friends callin' at the shop on Monday, I doubt the police will no be able to spare a constable to keep order on the Terrace." And as a matter of fact the offensive patrol was withdrawn, and the Seminary resumed possession of the debatable ground. ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... have been seen on the west coast of Bali but not in Java, Heilprin avoids the unscientific term line, because he finds his zoological realms divided by "transition regions," which are intermediate in animal types as they are in geographical location.[333] Wallace notes a similar "debatable land" in the Rajputana Desert east of the Indus, which is the border district between the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... an undue and an unconstitutional exercise of the office of royalty has been employed by His Excellency to influence the public mind, and the decisions of our constitutional tribunals on pending and debatable questions between equally loyal and deserving classes of Her Majesty's subjects in this Province; that His Excellency has also employed the influence of the high office of the Queen's representative to procure and afterwards express his cordial satisfaction at the passing of a Bill, in a thin ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... example is to be found in the account of a dispute about bounds in a transaction under the Land Purchase Act. After all other agencies failed, the landlord's sister called the disputants before her to the disputed spot, stepped the distance of the land debatable, drove her walking-stick into a crevice of the rock (disputes are passionate in opposite ratio to the value of the land) and, collecting stones, built a small cairn round it. "Now men," she said, "in the name of God let this be the bounds." ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... deluge, and beyond it, and to come to close quarters with our proper division, the origin of Romance itself is a very debatable subject, or rather it is a subject which the wiser mind will hardly care to debate much. The opinion of the present writer—the result, at least, of many years' reading and thought—is that it is a result of the marriage of the older East and the newer (non-classical) ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... would have declined the commission. Atmospheric envelopes slowly en route to the dead letter office of dream pastels demand his whole attention. Painting is crass; he mildly cameos. Tonal nuances—shades of imperceptible difference in the shadowy debatable land between things colored exactly alike—claim his earnest interpretation. When he rarely speaks, it is usually an important contribution to the world's artistic knowledge on some such subject as 'The Influence of Rubens' Grandmother on his Portraits ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... This annexation of debatable land was an act of aggression to which the colonists were not bound to submit. The first to understand that it was a question of existence was the man on whose head the destinies of the country rested. Washington twice led expeditions against Duquesne, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... question does arise of facility of expression versus worthiness of expression. He had an unparalleled technique in the manipulation of notes but whether there was always an emotional impulse behind what he wrote is debatable. For there are these two contrasting types in every art: works which come from the heart (remember Beethoven's significant inscription at the end of his Mass),[256] and those which come from the head. This brings us face ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... which relates to the prepuce and circumcision that, before such tables could be satisfactorily and convincingly constructed, time and the evolutionary processes that follow it will bid fair to completely remove this debatable appendage from man. It may be at a very far-distant period that this evolutionary preputial extinction will take place,—probably contemporary with the existence of Bulwer's "Coming Race,"—but not at a too ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... integrity as a man. Nor was this to be wondered at; for when before, in all history, do we find a general in command of half a million of men, and in presence of an enemy inferior in numbers and no better disciplined than his own troops, leaving it still debatable, after the better part of a year, whether he is a soldier or no? The question would seem to answer itself in the very asking. Nevertheless, being most profoundly ignorant of the art of war, like the majority of the General's critics, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fire burning certain nights in the vicinity of the grave. They hold and believe, at least the 'Big Indians' do, that the spirits of the departed are compelled to cross an extremely attenuated greasy pole, which bridges over the chasm of the debatable land, and that they require the fire to light them on their darksome journey. A righteous soul traverses the pole quicker than a wicked one, hence they regulate the number of nights for burning a light according to the character for goodness or the opposite which the deceased ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... assembly, a free press, and that "freedom to worship God" that the Pilgrims sought. Wherever these rights, so fundamental to human happiness, are impugned, "Liberty!" is still the fitting rallying-cry.[Footnote: The exact limits within which freedom of speech must be allowed are debatable, (a) Speech which incites to crime, to lawbreaking, to sexual and other vice, must be prevented; and (b) slander, the public utterance of grossly disparaging statements concerning any person, without reasonable ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... particular feature of this parable any important doctrine or duty, we may rest assured, when he did undertake to give an explanation, he would not have left that part altogether unexplained. On the whole, I think the earlier portion of the parable is debatable ground; it is left in the shade; there is room for difference of opinion in regard to it. In some aspects it may suggest useful reflections as a picture of the good and evil mingled in the Church; in other ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... only alternative left for him would be to retire and leave those who had opposed the policy of Conciliation a free stage for any more heroic projects they might contemplate. Mr Redmond still remained indecisive and Mr O'Brien—whether wisely or unwisely will always remain a debatable point with his friends—quietly quitted the stage, resigning his seat in Parliament, withdrawing from the Directory of the United Irish League, and ceasing publication of his weekly newspaper on the ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... of freebooters Irving writes: "In a little while the debatable ground became infested by roving bands, claiming from either side, and all pretending to redress wrongs and punish political offenses; but all prone, in the exercise of their high functions, to sack hen roosts, drive off cattle and lay farm houses under contributions; such was the origin ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... juvenile story. E. Ralph Cheyney's extract from his essay on "Youth" is in many ways remarkable, and shows us that we have another recruit of choice quality. His rather peculiar ideas are well expressed, though their soundness is quite debatable. A few abnormal characters like Byron and Shelley doubtless experienced all the adolescent phenomena which Mr. Cheyney describes, but we believe that the average youth is a copyist, and for the most part reflects his environment. Radicalism and novel ideas ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft |
