"Fallacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did not question the statement in the least. He had made them believe, and they in turn had made many others believe, that Pompier de Nanterre would certainly win such and such a race; and, trusting in this fallacious promise, they risked their money on ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... of nine nights. Johnson's profits, after the deduction of expenses, and together with the hundred pounds, which he received from Robert Dodsley, for the copy, were nearly three hundred pounds. So fallacious were the hopes cherished by Walmsley, that Johnson would "turn ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... ourselves,—to make ourselves more holy, more self-denying, more primitive, more worthy of our high calling. To be anxious for a composition of differences is to begin at the end. Political reconciliations are but outward and hollow, and fallacious. And till Roman Catholics renounce political efforts, and manifest in their public measures the light of holiness and truth, perpetual ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... large has panes of a ruddier hue, he cultivates a mildness of tone, which a Briton is apt to despise as weakness. His desire to oblige sometimes impels him to uncharacteristic actions, which lead to fallacious generalisations on the part of his British critic. He shrinks from any assumption of superiority; he is apt to think twice of the feelings of his inferiors. The American tends to consider each stranger he meets—at any rate within his ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... curiously enough, was the highest bidder for the land. He of all men should have known that if the farm would not pay expenses when there was no rent, it would not reward the man who had rent to pay. This reasoning proved fallacious. The farm which without rent proved a loss, in the same hands turned out when rent was charged a perfect gold-mine. In another case, a bailiff on leaving his employ expended on land the accumulated savings of his thrifty years, and—strange to say—his savings amounted to about ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... a fallacious idea to assume that the sources of immorality are confined to the large cities. This is far from the truth. In smaller towns and country places the diseases are quite common and conditions there tend to the spread of the contagion in a more intimate and a more harmful way. The individuals ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... proposition being still considerable and history being quite unintelligible without it, I devoted four chapters to its demonstration in my last book ("The Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples"). From it the reader will see that, in spite of fallacious appearances, neither language, religion, arts, or, in a word, any element of civilisation, can pass, intact, from one ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... He left the plate exposed for hours, and on developing it not only were the stars seen, but there were also patches of faint light due to the presence of nebulae. It could not be said that the objects on the plate were fallacious, for another photograph was taken, when the same appearances ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... is a compact between sovereign States, who have preserved their whole sovereignty, and therefore are subject to no superior; that because they made the compact, they can break it when in their opinion it has been departed from by the other States. Fallacious as this course of reasoning is, it enlists State pride, and finds advocates in the honest prejudices of those who have not studied the nature of our government sufficiently to see the radical error on which ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... learning to row. It was not difficult, and I do not know a pleasanter exercise. I soon became expert, and my train of thinking kept time, as it were, with the oars, or I suffered the boat to be carried along by the current, indulging a pleasing forgetfulness or fallacious hopes. How fallacious! yet, without hope, what is to sustain life, but the fear of annihilation—the only thing of which I have ever felt a dread. I cannot bear to think of being no more—of losing ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... is necessary for the semen to be ejected at certain times from the body; that its retention is incompatible with sound health and vigor of body and mind. This is a very fallacious idea. The seminal fluid is too precious—nature bestows too much care in its elaboration for it to be wasted in this unproductive manner. It is intended, when not used for the purpose of procreation, to be reabsorbed again into the ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... instances in Antirrhinum majus and in Crataegus oxyacantha, in the latter case complicated with the partial atrophy of one of the four cotyledons. It is necessary to distinguish between such cases and the fallacious appearances arising from a division of the cotyledons. M. Morren has figured and described the union of two roots of carrot (Daucus), which were also spirally twisted. He attributes this union to the blending ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... extraordinary composition, should suspect his own ignorance and that of his Byzantine guides, so prone to the marvellous, so careless, and, in this instance, so jealous of the truth. From their obscure, and perhaps fallacious hints, it should seem that the principal ingredient of the Greek fire was the naphtha, or liquid bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil, which springs from the earth, and catches fire as soon as it comes in contact with the air. The naphtha ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... which he found in Mrs. Fenton's presence. He dwelt in his musings upon her devotion to the church, her good works, her visitings of the poor and sick. He assured himself with a vehemence too feverish not to be fallacious that he was instigated only by entirely disinterested feelings; by the desire to assist in deeds of Christian helpfulness, and by pleasure in the society of one whose devotion to godliness was so marked. He argued with himself as eagerly as if he were struggling to convince another, protesting ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... such an apparently plausible, but really fallacious inversion of the Pantheistic view of the Universe, I repeat that the latter is the precise opposite of Atheism. So far from tolerating any doubt as to the being of God, it denies that there is anything ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... were no written records to tell primeval man of events of long ago. He lived in the present, and his sweep of ideas scarcely carried him back beyond the limits of his individual memory. But memory is observed to be fallacious. It must early have been noted that some people recalled events which other participants in them had quite forgotten, and it may readily enough have been inferred that those members of the tribe who spoke of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Heaven-when its nature is not understood, the proper means of obtaining it are neglected, other objects are preferred to it-is no proof that a man will be saved. The expression, "The desire of grace is grace," is very fallacious. But to hunger and thirst for God, and His righteousness, His favour, image, and service, as the supreme good, so that no other object can satisfy the heart, is grace indeed, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... set forth which is held to prove that a part at least of imbibed fluid passes into the cavity of the lung and thence to the parts of the body, a popular error in antiquity which recurs in Plato's Timaeus. This view, however, is specifically held to be fallacious by the author of the work On Diseases, who is supported by a polemical section in the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... to decide is, not whether, if we judge by results, Tazewell was right or wrong—a mode of judging too fallacious and too dangerous in human affairs, and subjecting the responsibility of human actors to too fearful a test,—but which, even if applied to the course of Mr. Tazewell, would confirm, beyond question, the ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... Seward. It made American and Canadian agriculture the most efficient in the world. The German brags that his agriculture is superior to American, quoting as proof the more bushels of wheat or potatoes he grows to an acre. But the comparison is fallacious. The real test of efficiency is, not the crops that are grown per acre, but the crops that are grown per man employed. German efficiency gets its results by impressing women as cultivators—depressing ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... find upon examination, that every demonstration, which has been produced for the necessity of a cause, is fallacious and sophistical. All the points of time and place, say some philosophers [Mr. Hobbes.], in which we can suppose any object to be-in to exist, are in themselves equal; and unless there be some cause, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... if I have any guidance and help to give, I do not take it myself, and write plays instead of instructing others in the art. This is a variant of an ancient and fallacious jibe against criticism in general. It is quite true that almost all critics who are worth their salt are "stickit" artists. Assuredly, if I had the power, I should write plays instead of writing about them; but one may have a great love for an art, and some ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the aspect of a wooded plain. It will be sufficient to refer to this view to be satisfied that all the impressions which have been circulated of a continuous chain of elevations extending along the line claimed by Great Britain are utterly fallacious. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... will be asked) spin out by these excessive methods a thread of such tenuity? Why go to such lengths for four months longer of fallacious solvency? I expect not to be believed, but I think the Government still hopes. A war-ship, under a hot-headed captain, might be decoyed into hostilities; the taxes might begin to come in again; the three Powers might become ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vote supplies; which it did without hesitation. If the action of Parliament was any sort of index to popular sentiment, the idea that there was any widespread or deep- rooted feeling in the country against a war of religion is certainly fallacious; while there can be no question that the entire sea-going population—which had attracted into its ranks all that was most adventurous, most daring, most energetic, and most capable in the country—was heart and soul hostile to Spain. How much of that feeling was due to enthusiastic ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... children will be in as good a condition as himself. To a refined and intellectual nature, it may not be difficult to practice the restraint of which I have spoken. But the reasoning from such to the great mass of mankind, is most fallacious. To these, the supply of their natural and physical wants, and the indulgence of the natural domestic affections, must, for the most part, afford the greatest good of which they are capable. To the evils which sometimes attend their matrimonial connections, arising from their ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... separated and removed, as the man's spirit is elevated above the sensual things of the body, and from its elevation sees their appearances and fallacies beneath: in this case it perceives fleshly delights, first as apparent and fallacious, afterwards as libidinous and lascivious, which ought to be shunned, and successively as damnable and hurtful to the soul, and at length it has a sense of them as being undelightful, disagreeable, and nauseous; and in the degree that it thus perceives and is sensible of these delights, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... WM. H. SEWARD would be present at the dedication of the Geological Hall, excited great interest among the citizens; but the hope of his appearance proved fallacious. His place was occupied by seven picked men of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of whom (Prof. HENRY) declared his inability to compute the problem why seven men of science were to be considered equal to one statesman. The result justified the selections ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... their fall, are less fit and less able to take stronger counsels; and having left off prayers and supplications, whereby with long and continued satisfaction the Lord is to be appeased, they invite them by the deceit of a fallacious peace ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... retrogressus. When a stone has advanced into the ureter from the pelvis of the kidney, it is sometimes liable to be returned by the retrograde motion of that canal, and the patient obtains fallacious ease, till the stone is again ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sums up one policy, doctrine, view, or phase of a subject. It may be legitimate and useful, but a watchword easily changes its meaning and takes up foreign connotations or fallacious suggestions. Critical analysis is required to detect and exclude the fallacy. Catchwords are acutely adapted to stimulate desires. In the presidential campaign of 1900 we saw a catchword deliberately invented,—"the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... his mind open to criticism of his opinion and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and on occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... noticed, those whales, influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in immense caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely separated, unfrequent armies. That is all. And equally fallacious seems the conceit, that because the so-called whale-bone whales no longer haunt many grounds in former years abounding with them, hence that species also is declining. For they are only being driven from promontory to cape; and if one coast ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... though we have no means of resisting them; but we cannot confide in the national government, though we have an effectual constitutional guard against every encroachment. This is the essence of their argument, and it is false and fallacious ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... like Crime before; having this order of thoughts, The Crime, the Officer, the Prison, the Judge, and the Gallowes. Which kind of thoughts, is called Foresight, and Prudence, or Providence; and sometimes Wisdome; though such conjecture, through the difficulty of observing all circumstances, be very fallacious. But this is certain; by how much one man has more experience of things past, than another; by so much also he is more Prudent, and his expectations the seldomer faile him. The Present onely has a being in Nature; things Past ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Spain. This time the Mexicans under Santa Anna achieved the independence of their country, and a Mexican Republic was formed, with a constitution so liberal that it was gladly accepted by the American colonists. But its promises were fallacious. For ten years Santa Anna was engaged in fighting for his own supremacy, and when he had subdued all opposition he had forgotten the traditions of freedom for which he first drew his sword, and assumed the authority of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... acquaintance. Now, he was not only thrilled, he was interested. She was a child. He found her so—as much a child as Sally had been. Add her beauty to that—a beauty unquestionably greater than the simple charm of Sally's baby features—and add still again that fallacious sense of social position by which Traill realized that such a girl he could not ask promiscuously out to dinner, could not casually persuade to come to his rooms, and you have, besides the unavoidable comparison between the two in his mind, that subtle difference ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... very plausible reasoning, but very fallacious notwithstanding; indeed, it is this description of logic which conceals the full extent of a man's errors from, himself, and which has sent thousands forward on their career to ruin. Had Art, for instance, been guided by his steady and excellent brother, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... that from the short time the lieutenant and his men were on board no infection could have been conveyed from her to the frigate. Before two days, however, had passed these hopes were found to be fallacious. Two of the men who had been on board the merchantman were seized with the fearful complaint, and the following day were corpses. Several others in the course of a few hours were seized in the same manner. Their illnesses ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... reality, one of power, not of abstract or legal right. Once more it was clear to men of penetrating vision that the American colonies needed extremely careful handling. Whether their arguments were sound or fallacious, loyal or seditious, it was significant that the whole continent spoke with one voice and felt but one desire—to be allowed to exercise complete financial discretion and to retain full control over governors and judges. ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... resulted from the departure of the unpopular minister. The public fermentation subsided; the patriot lords reappeared at court; and the Prince of Orange acquired an increasing influence in the council and over the stadtholderess, who by his advice adopted a conciliatory line of conduct—a fallacious but still a temporary hope for the nation. But the calm was of short duration. Scarcely was this moderation evinced by the government, when Philip, obstinate in his designs, and outrageous in his resentment, sent an order ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... after having been stolen by my hands they were given to Jerome Fandor by one of our agents, for the purpose of compromising the false Corporal Vinson.... But if I have acted thus, it was not so much through a desire for the money they gave me for my treachery, not so much for the fallacious promises of eventual riches which Vagualame was always trying to dazzle me with—it was through rancour, spite, hate, it ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... I do not think that it has, Socrates: at least, if the argument is fallacious, it would be difficult for me to find another which I ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... vicious to the death?" I went on with this dream. "It is not fair—their overpowering personality—it is not fair to others. It overpowers me, though I know it is all fallacious." ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... having disposed of his whole Fortune in the Island of Isla, expended the far greatest part of it from his confidence in these fallacious promises found himself at length constrained to employ the little he had left in the purchase of a small farm seventy miles north of New York for the subsistence of himself and his Family consisting of three sons and three daughters. He ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... With this extreme, hence fallacious, doctrine of State Rights thus firmly imbedded in the hearts and heads of a zealous people, rendering them, upon conscientious principles, the ready tools of ambitious leaders, filled with lust for power and place, it should not be a matter of so much surprise, that, ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... excellences, which they will find no great labour in attaining. After much time spent in these frivolous pursuits, the difficulty will be to retreat; but it will be then too late; and there is scarce an instance of return to scrupulous labour after the mind has been debauched and deceived by this fallacious mastery. ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... atmosphere, I felt a sanguine hope that I should not again be affected by diseases incident to the climate, and that I had already qualified myself for the honorary degree which was referred to by my friend Murray. My hopes were fallacious. I was again attacked by a remittent fever of an obstinate character. I was again conveyed to Bel-Air. The doctor was again summoned, and he had a difficult task in restoring me to health. But he protested against my return to the Pearl estate, declaring ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... on ivory (20s. per cwt.—since reduced to 1s.) amounted to L.3257. The average weight of the elephant's tusk is 60 lbs.; and therefore 3040 elephants have been killed to supply this quantity of ivory.' But these calculations are in many respects quite fallacious. In the first place, the average weight of our imported tusks is not 60 lbs.: we have the authority of one of the first ivory-merchants in London for stating that 20 lbs. will be a much closer approximation. This at once ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... proved irresponsible like children. Kelmar himself, shrewd old Russian Jew, with a smirk that seemed just to have concluded a bargain to its satisfaction, intrusted himself and us devoutly to that boy. Yet the boy was patently fallacious; and for that matter a most unsympathetic urchin, raised apparently on gingerbread. He was bent on his own pleasure, nothing else; and Kelmar followed him to his ruin, with the same shrewd smirk. If the boy said there was "a hole there ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... theory of the passive mind as a sufficient philosophical explanation of the Scotch novels. But Hazlitt is certainly right to make much of the store of reading and reminiscence they imply, and it is not erroneous or fallacious to think of all Scott's writings in verse or prose as peculiarly the fruits of his life and experience. His various modes of writing are suggested to him by the way, and he finds his art with no long practice when the proper time comes ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... was thus cultivating his genius, his father, the earl Rivers, was seized with a distemper, which, in a short time, put an end to his life[51]. He had frequently inquired after his son, and had always been amused with fallacious and evasive answers; but, being now, in his own opinion, on his deathbed, he thought it his duty to provide for him among his other natural children, and, therefore, demanded a positive account of him, with an importunity not to be diverted or denied. His mother, who could ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... facts she remembered suddenly brought directly under a neat generalisation; and before long she found herself trying to remember facts to fit his theories, a mode of going in double harness which is apt to lead to remarkable but fallacious results. In the intervals of theorising Claudius indulged in small experiments. But Barker and ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... cross under flowers, and at last only gives back to humanity its old idol, newly carved and painted. This idol is no other than humanity itself. This mixture of atheism and sensibility was particularly dangerous, because it met preexistent tendencies, and colored them with a fallacious poesy. The art of the historian, or rather of the romance-writer [Renan], consisted in his hiding the entire absence of all belief under graceful metaphors and an unctuous style, just as the brilliant snow of the Alps covers up the abyss ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... more apply that fallacious standard of what is called consistency to a man's moral nature, and argue against the existence of fine impulses or habits of feeling in relation to his actions generally, because those better movements are absent in a class of cases ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... a perfectly legitimate and logical deduction, that, if the system of administering drugs is founded upon a wrong conception of their relation to the human organism, then any theoretical "law of cure" predicated upon drug action must necessarily be equally fallacious and untrustworthy. ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... velvet. To be given what satisfies Joffre and French—that sounds too good to be true. So ran my thoughts and Braithwaite's on a first reading. Then came the C.R.A. who puts another light on the proposal and points out that the implied comparison with France is fallacious. We are undergunned here as compared with France in the proportion of 1 to 3. I mean to say that, in proportion to "bayonets" we have rather less than one third of the "guns." Therefore, if we were really to have munitions on the scale "considered necessary by General Joffre and Sir ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... should have in receiving me; but the Greyhound had already been sent away two days! and nothing announced any haste in the general to put the order into execution. I then wrote to request His Excellency would have the goodness to confirm the hopes produced by these letters; or that, if they were fallacious, he would be pleased to let me know it. It was seven days before an answer was given; colonel Monistrol then said, "His Excellency the captain-general has charged me to answer the letter which you addressed to ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... appearances, may safely be pronounced to be a fallacious one. It has been received in various quarters with the greater indulgence, inasmuch as the human mind is prone in many cases to give a more welcome reception to seeming truths, that present us at the first ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... own diseased imagination should have so far deceived him, is strange; but it is stranger still that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those who wish to depreciate him, should, since his death, have laid hold of this circumstance, and insisted upon ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Hamburg can not be counted. At every third step you behold a bare-chested negro cultivating the precious leaf or a Grand Seigneur, attired like the theatrical Turk, smoking a colossal pipe. Boxes of cigars, with their more or less fallacious vignettes and labels, figure, symmetrically disposed, in the ornamentation of the shop-fronts. There must be very little tobacco left at Havana, if we can have faith in these displays, so rich in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... nervous system, there still remains enough of mystery to awaken the solemn inquiry of the physician, the psychologist, the Christian, of every thinking man. Contradictions will meet him at every turn. He will find all theories more than usually fallacious. He will see a strictly matter-of-fact person, in seeming health, and of strong mind, so easily acted on as in a few seconds to present the appearance of a doting idiot; and a highly imaginative person, or ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... excuse of ill-health. He had not, stayed to supper at the Aniene with his friend, because, on a previous visit to Subiaco, he had found the cuisine of that hotel too simple to suit his taste, and he had hopes of a French supper from Signora Selva. Baron Leyni knew well how fallacious such hopes were; but in a spirit of mischief he refrained from enlightening him. There was barely: room for the five people in the tiny dining-room. It was fortunate the other two had not come. In fact, neither the Abbe Marinier nor Don Fare was expected, but others who had been expected were absent. ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... population. Stevenson[25] gives a long list of these mixed races, and specifies the proportionate degree, that is to say, how many eighths or sixteenths of black, brown, or white color belong to each. But these data respecting tint are fallacious, for, being founded solely on external appearance, they are liable to endless modifications. Stevenson falls into the mistake of giving to the children of a negro father and a white mother, the name of Zambos; whilst to the offspring of a white father and a black mother, he gives the name ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... agree with you in your opinion of Mr. Mill's theory of marriage and the relations between men and women. I think it is not only fallacious, but a strangely superficial way of regarding a question which is made only the more serious by the fact that a great deal of suffering and much injustice result, not from arbitrary and removable causes, but from nature ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... becomes a speaking portrait. Constitutional questions, in which Livy is singularly ill informed, are hinted at, [36] but generally in so cursory and unintelligent a way, that it needs a Niebuhr to elicit their meaning. And Livy is throughout led into fallacious views by his confusion of the mob (faex Romuli, as Cicero calls it) which represented the sovereign people in his day, with the sturdy and virtuous plebs, whose obstinate insistance on their right forms ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... it is, therefore, a matter of importance that they should think aright. It is of importance, that they should be guarded against fallacious Utopian promises. Henceforth, there is no security for the stability of the world but in the contentment of minds. There is no rest for mankind, unless men will understand the conditions of their ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... senile thing, and finally die and be buried with all the honors due its long, useful life. It was Henrik Ibsen who said that the value of a truth lasted about fifteen years; then it rotted into error. Now, isn't all this talk of artistic improvement as fallacious as the vicious reasoning of the Norwegian dramatist? Otherwise Bach would be dead; Beethoven, middle-aged; Mozart, senile. What, instead, is the health of these three composers? Have you a gayer, blither, more youthful scapegrace writing ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... This morning fallacious prophecies were further shattered by a shell from works placed far back on the table top of Bulwaan. It did not demolish anything else, but it makes us very chary now about predicting what the Boers can or cannot do. Through telescopes they had been watched building that strong ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... reasoning from which it is concluded that similar organic forms were once more widely spread than now, is doubly fallacious; and, consequently, the classifications of foreign strata based on the conclusion are untrustworthy. Judging from the present distribution of life, we cannot expect to find similar remains in geographically remote ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... readers, or, if you prefer the other metaphor, with the rank vegetation that has choked the fertile soil of their minds, making any legitimate mental crop impossible. We have seen that the conditions favorable to the disease are a lack of interest and a fallacious idea that there is something inherent in the printed page per se that makes its perusal valuable whether the reader is interested or not—somewhat as a charm is supposed to work even when it is in a language that ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... joy; bitingly true, yet withal of a kindly sympathy with his victims. One would say that he knows boys as well, were it not for the conviction that to imagine any kind of understanding of Boydom is (if my contemporaries will forgive me) the last enchantment of the middle-aged, and the most fallacious. As for the Educational experts, he has all the cold and calculated hate for them that is the mark of experience. I admired especially his treatment of the "craze for practical teaching," the theory which holds, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... foregoing stenogram, the patient is only partially oriented, perhaps more so than he shows, because of his tendency to answer questions in a sort of careless manner. There is a slight suggestion of "by speaking" (Vorbeireden). The stenogram also suggests the possibility of the existence of fallacious sense perceptions. Of the utmost importance, however, for our consideration, is the fact that the occurrence which brought about the mental breakdown plays an important role in the consciousness of the patient. Amid what may be considered an almost total oblivion to his immediate ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... superiority, and trust themselves in his hands. To such a character, any appearance or suspicion of coldness, or indifference towards the public good, and much more any appearance or suspicion of uncommon devotion to self, however fallacious such appearance or suspicion may be, is political death, without the hope of resurrection. Such a character must lose sight of self altogether, compared with the public, or the public will be very apt to lose sight of him, or seeing, not to trust him. As to Sidney, ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... that a necessarily undesirable condition of life, of mind, of the physical world about us. 'Tis the dead things, we may remind ourselves, that after all are most entirely at rest, and might reasonably hold that motion (vicious, fallacious, infectious motion, as Plato inclines to think) covers all that is best worth being. And as for philosophy—mobility, versatility, the habit of thought that can most adequately follow the subtle movement of things, that, surely, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... economy required by trade. The competition of those who speculate at random would then cease, or what is the same, as money obtained at a premium could not then be laid out with the same advantages by the merchants as if it was their own, it will be necessary to renounce the fallacious profits held out by the public charities, till at least they are placed on a level with existing circumstances, and brought in to be of real service to the honorable planter and laborious merchant, in their accidental exigencies, ceasing to be, as hitherto, the indirect cause of idleness, dissipation, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... when I conceived the story, and with that feeling I described the characters of Carry Brattle and of her family. I have not introduced her lover on the scene, nor have I presented her to the reader in the temporary enjoyment of any of those fallacious luxuries, the longing for which is sometimes more seductive to evil than love itself. She is introduced as a poor abased creature, who hardly knows how false were her dreams, with very little of the Magdalene about her—because ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... hand can grasp or the corporeal eye perceives, and nothing useful but what pampers the appetite or fills the purse; but unfortunately, their perceptions, like Homer's frail dreams, pass through the ivory gate; and are consequently empty and fallacious, and contain nothing belonging to the vigilant soul. To such as these a treatise on the beautiful cannot be addressed; since its object is too exalted to be approached by those engaged in the impurities of sense, ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... however, this affection of his eye became more serious; and, in 1637, his left eye was attacked with the same disease. His medical friends at first supposed that cataracts were formed in the crystalline lens, and anticipated a cure from the operation of couching. These hopes were fallacious. The disease turned out to be in the cornea, and every attempt to restore its transparency was fruitless. In a few months the white cloud covered the whole aperture of the pupil, and Galileo became totally blind. This ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... system. Colonial representation in the present Imperial Parliament is an altogether impracticable alternative. The suggestion had often been made for the American Colonies at the height of their discontent, later for Canada as an alternative to the Act of 1791, and in recent times also. The same fallacious idea underlay the Union of Ireland with Great Britain and her representation in Parliament, while retaining colonial institutions. At present the prospects of Imperial Federation seem to be indifferent. On the other hand, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... and it was only the profits he managed to restrict. Nobody had ever made money out of that concern except the capable Scot, who retired (after his discharge) to the neighbourhood of Banff and built a castle with his profits. The memory of this fallacious Caledonian Morris would revile daily, as he sat in the private office opening his mail, with old Joseph at another table, sullenly awaiting orders, or savagely affixing signatures to he knew not what. And when the man of the heather pushed cynicism so far as to send him the announcement of his ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... dear, no; the recollections are not displeasing. The day-dreams of youth, however fallacious, are a composite of pain and pleasure: for the sake of the latter the former is endured, nay, even cherished ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... devoted city, had been going on, and Jeremiah had been vainly calling on the people to return to Jehovah. The last agony was now not far off. But there came a momentary pause in the siege, produced by the necessity of an advance against a relieving army from Egypt, which created fallacious hopes in the doomed city. It was only a pause. Back came the investing force, and again the terrible, lingering process of starving into surrender was resumed. Our text begins with the raising of the siege, and extends to some point after its resumption. It needs ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... a victory but to save an army from disaster. The mass of French reserves were in Lorraine or far away to the south, and the safety of the French line on the northern front had depended upon the assumed impregnability of Namur and an equally fallacious underestimate of the number of German troops in Belgium. Three French armies, the Third, the Fourth, and the Fifth, were strung along the frontier from Montmdy across the Meuse and the Sambre to a point north-west of Charleroi, where the British ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... rife of a possible monarchy; and leading Southerners were credited with the statement, that the best upshot of all, would popular prejudice in the South but allow of it, would be to import a king from the English royal family. Such rumors may have been fallacious, but they were not unacceptable to the British Tory. On the other hand, the disruption of the United States by the secession of the South was continually spoken of as "the breakdown of Democracy," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... consumer of the other moiety.' He then plunged boldly into the MARE MAGNUM of accompts between the parties; he pursued each false statement from the waste-book to the day-book, from the day-book to the bill-book, from the bill-book to the ledger; placed the artful interpolations and insertions of the fallacious Plainstanes in array against each other, and against the fact; and availing himself to the utmost of his father's previous labours, and his own knowledge of accompts, in which he had been sedulously trained, he laid before the court a clear and intelligible statement ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... correctly narrated the more recent adventures of Rienzi after his fall. He had first with Nina and Angelo betaken himself to Naples, and found a fallacious and brief favour with Louis, king of Hungary; that harsh but honourable monarch had refused to yield his illustrious guest to the demands of Clement, but had plainly declared his inability to shelter him in safety. Maintaining secret intercourse ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and magic were not entirely fruitless. Their counterfeit learning has been a genuine help to the progress of human knowledge. Because they awakened chimerical hopes and fallacious ambitions in the minds of their adepts, researches were undertaken which undoubtedly {195} would never have been started or persisted in for the sake of a disinterested love of truth. The observations, collected with untiring patience by ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... promote him in the favour of this young lady; the greenness of his years secured him from any appearance of fallacious aim; so that he was indulged in frequent opportunities of conversing with his young mistress, whose parents encouraged this communication, by which they hoped she would improve in speaking the language ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Evellin, allied himself to their house by marrying the Lady Eleanor Neville, his only sister. Though Buckingham never stood firmer in the King's favour, he had already experienced that popular esteem is a quicksand, fair to the eye, but fallacious and destructive to all who build their greatness on it. Two parliaments that were called, in succession, to grant the supplies which the favourite's profusion, and the war in which he had unwisely engaged, rendered necessary, had been angrily dissolved for ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... filter. This contagion can be propagated only in the body of an animal. It is transmitted naturally from one animal to another solely by bites, and the old idea of spontaneous appearance of the disease is absolutely fallacious. It may be produced artificially by inoculating susceptible animals with an emulsion of the brain or spinal cord, as well as the saliva, milk, and other secretions of the affected animal. The blood, on the contrary, seems to be free from the infectious ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... first came to the meadow were a different sort of creature, and they themselves, too (and the ox looked complacently at himself), had improved since that time. Judging by appearances, though they might be fallacious, he himself was quite as good a beast as the lion. If the lions would lead lives more noble than oxen could live, once more he would not complain. As it was, he submitted that ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... for cotton, and the stimulus given to the production of it by the cotton-gin, made the prospect of emancipation by legislative action less probable as time advanced. The American Colonization Society was formed in 1811; and the fallacious hope was entertained by many, that the negroes might be carried back to the Liberian settlement on the African coast. The extension of slavery in the territory north-west of the Ohio had been prevented by the Congressional ordinance of 1787. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... which results from a too slender butt. This produces a double action in the rod, and prevents a clear satisfactory cast. In England this quality was made a specialty for salmon rods some years ago, it being supposed that it increased the length of the cast. Recent experiences proved this to be a fallacious idea, and such a rod required quite an education to use with ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... independently—forbid marriage to a young man who is scarcely able to provide for himself, much less to support a wife and a family. The theory advocated by some that two can live almost as cheaply as one, so that a saving will be made by a union of two in marriage, is a most fallacious one. There may be occasional exceptions, but in general, young people who marry with this idea in their heads find that they have reasoned not wisely. It will not be disputed that a married couple may live upon what is often spent foolishly by a young man; but a young ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... fined five hundred pounds, imprisoned for a year and a day, and rendered incapable of all public trust for ever. Otherwise, I do insist that those pious, indulgent, external professors of our national religion, shall either give up that fallacious hypocritical reason for taking off the Test; or freely confess, that they desire to have a gate wide open for every sect, without any test at all, except that of swearing loyalty to the King: Which, however, considering their principles, with regard to monarchy yet unrenounced, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... 1782 to adopt a measure of the same kind as the present. Had any thing happened to change the opinion of members since? On the contrary, they had now the clearest evidence, that all the arguments then used against the abolition were fallacious; being founded not upon truth, but on assertions devoid of all truth, and derived ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... was still detained in the Tower on Wyat's information, as was pretended, and on other indications of guilt, all of which were proved in the end equally fallacious: and at the time of Elizabeth's removal hither this state-prison was thronged with captives of minor importance implicated in the designs of Wyat. These were assiduously plied on one hand with offers of liberty and reward, and subjected on the other to the most ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... various revolutions which had failed in Europe; so he was not denied the expectation of some private assistance, though the hope that the United States should openly declare Hungary a belligerent, and thus give its moral weight to Kossuth, the recognized governor, was soon seen to be an idle and fallacious one. "Something might be done," said ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Independent Theatre, when Miss May Harvey gave an admirable performance as Mildred; whilst Strafford, Colombe's Birthday and In a Balcony have all seen the footlights and achieved at the most a succes d'estime. Few, however, even putting aside the vulgar, fallacious test of the box-office, would say that these works are really valuable stage dramas, despite the superb qualities ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... becoming alive to the blighted ambition of my father's life, and becoming alive also to the violence of the strain which my mother was enduring. But I could do nothing but go and leave them. There was something that comforted me in the idea that I need no longer be a burden,—a fallacious idea, as it soon proved. My salary was to be (pounds)90 a year, and on that I was to live in (pounds)ondon, keep up my character as a gentleman, and be happy. That I should have thought this possible at the age of nineteen, and should have been delighted ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... of its motion. In the course of two hours the vast phenomenon had advanced to a point which was judged to be within five miles of the spectators, though all calculations of distance were difficult, and often fallacious, when applied to the endless expanses of the Tartar deserts. Through the next hour, during which the gentle morning breeze had a little freshened, the dusty vapor had developed itself far and wide into the appearance ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... popular form of Evolutionism. Its simplicity in statement is more than cancelled by its difficulty in application; and at last we are driven to conceive it in a form which at once deprives it of its title to popularity. So far as it is simple it is fallacious and proves incoherent on closer inspection, when we try to translate its terms into clear and distinct ideas; but when we get it into intelligible form it is no simpler than the theistic hypothesis ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... calls "a pulling back of the impulse to the track that knowledge indicates." Such moral mastery is not identical with moral perception and most frequently is not its accompaniment, unless observation and experience are alike fallacious. Thus the whole argument falls to the ground when we confess that possession of knowledge does not guarantee the application of it. Therefore the two things, knowledge and virtue, according to universal experience, are not identical. ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... comptroller of the fleet, all three saw it in motion, as if it were carried from place to place. A little after midnight, the joyful sound of "Land! Land!" was heard from the Pinta, which kept always ahead of the other ships. But, having been so often deceived by fallacious appearances, every man was now become slow of belief, and waited in all the anguish of uncertainty and impatience for the return of day. As soon as morning dawned, all doubts and fears were dispelled. From ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... cannot be derived from experience, because experience only proves that many things have causes, whereas the axiom declares that all things have causes. The syllogism, "many things which come into existence have causes, A has come into existence: therefore A had a cause," is obviously fallacious, if A is not previously shown to be one of the "many things." And this objection is perfectly sound so far as it goes. The axiom of causation cannot possibly be deduced from any general proposition which simply embodies experience. But it does not follow that the belief, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... which to allege the de novo origin of life—its spontaneous manifestation in their experimental flasks—than any vital principle primarily inhering in matter, and manifesting itself whenever conditions favor. It is to validate their own reasoning that they construct their fallacious force-premises, from which to draw their materialistic inductions. In other words, theirs is the fallacy of non causa pro causa, or that vicious process of reasoning which alleges some other than the real cause of ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... an objection has been speciously raised, which at first sight appears of subversive weight; though, when further examined, it is found to be clearly fallacious. By an able but carping critic it was alleged that the mere chemical analysis of old-fashioned Herbal Simples makes their medicinal actions no less empirical than before: and that a pedantic knowledge of their constituent parts, invested ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... definitions of it are wholly deceitful. Often it would be unjust to society to do what would, in the absence of that consideration, be pronounced just to the individual. General propositions of man's right to this or that are ever fallacious: and not infrequently it would be most unjust to the individual himself to do for him what the theorist, as a general proposition, would say was right and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... well-conceived but ill-conducted system of object-lessons. The saying of Bacon, that physics is the mother of the sciences, has come to have a meaning in education. Without an accurate acquaintance with the visible and tangible properties of things, our conceptions must be erroneous, our inferences fallacious, and our operations unsuccessful. "The education of the senses neglected, all after education partakes of a drowsiness, a haziness, an insufficiency, which it is impossible to cure." Indeed, if we consider it, we shall find that exhaustive observation is an element in all great success. It is ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... fallacious one: it does not denote an existence, as Something does, but the end of an existence. It is in fact a negation, which must presuppose a matter once in being and possible to be denied; it is an abstraction, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper |
