"Fallacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and she wanted to think. Any other Sunday evening she would have told the landlady something about her motor-ride, for she and Dudley had now been in the same rooms for seven years, and it is quite a fallacy to condemn all London landladies as grasping, ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... trying very hard not to think of Alice Greggory these days. He had come back hoping that he was in a measure "cured" of his "folly," as he termed it; but the first look into Alice Greggory's blue-gray eyes had taught him the fallacy of that idea. In that very first meeting with Alice, he feared that he had revealed his secret, for she was plainly so nervously distant and ill at ease with him that he could but construe her embarrassment and chilly dignity as ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... Here the prime fallacy of his school misled him: he believed that if he had represented the types and scenes of his particular region once he had done all he could, when of course had he let imagination serve him he might have found in that microcosm as many passions ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... ever had; and he was a brother of Agrippina, mother of Nero. This precious pair had a most noble and generous father, and their gentle mother was a fit mate for the great Germanicus—these things are here inserted for the edification of folks who take stock in that pleasant fallacy, the Law of Heredity, and who gleefully chase the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... anyone, but yet bearing just the resemblance of argument which is calculated to amuse by contrast." Farther on we read again: "There are several different kind of jokes and raillery, which will be found to correspond with the different kinds of fallacy." On this we may observe that some jests, generally of the "manufactured" class, are founded on a false logical process, but in most cases the error arises more from the matter than from the form, and often from mistakes of the senses. Although ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... his not always loving subjects, should have been made, as usual, the battle-ground of literary fancy and of that general tendency of mankind to ferocity, which, unluckily, the study of belles lettres does not seem very appreciably to soften. Assisted by the usual fallacy of antedating MSS. in the early days of palaeographic study, and by their prepossessions as Germans, some early students of the Reynard story made out much too exclusive and too early claims, as to possession by right of invention, for the country in which Reynard ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... many words need be used to expose the fallacy of the argument, heard even in the Halls of Congress: "If men are to be conscripted, ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... not mutually contradictory; and hence it is not necessary to assert one or other of them. For when we say the Father and the Son are one principle, this word "principle" has not determinate supposition but rather it stands indeterminately for two persons together. Hence there is a fallacy of "figure of speech" as the argument concludes from the indeterminate ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... to constant change, too much permanence to a given state of affairs. The fact that Ethel was the wife of another man seemed to me so fixed and unalterable that I allowed my imagination to play with the picture of what might happen if that unalterable fact were altered. Secure in this fallacy, I worked myself up to the pitch of believing that I was actually and passionately in love with a woman whose inaccessibility was, after all, her most winning attraction. Moreover, by writing down, in this journal, the events and words ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... of India, and adherence to it bound up with the national honour. I refer to it here again only to glance at a kindred notion, common among Anglo-Indians, that the Indian religion is the outcome of Indian environment, and is "consequently" the best religion for India. That superficial fallacy, undoubtedly, alienates the sympathy of many Anglo-Indians from religious and social progress in India. Thrice at least did one of the most distinguished viceroys, when addressing native audiences, advise them to stick to their own beliefs, using these or very similar words. ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... conquered by deserting his ground, and not meeting the argument as I had put it. The assiduity of the Scottish clergy is certainly greater than that of the English. His taking up the topick of their not having so much learning, was, though ingenious, yet a fallacy in logick. It was as if there should be a dispute whether a man's hair is well dressed, and Dr Johnson should say, 'Sir, his hair cannot be well dressed; for he has a dirty shirt. No man who has not clean linen has his hair well dressed.' When some days afterwards ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... years of preparatory study for this work, he has sought the rewards of industry, in sifting out the certain and the useful from the hypothetical and the fanciful, and the results of judicious discrimination between fallacy and just reasoning, in support of theories. This volume is designed to be a complete manual for all but amateur cultivators. While it is believed that he who follows its directions will be certain ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... speaks his mind a little more freely and intimately perhaps, as becomes his added years and experience. He still acts as a divine messenger to a heathen king, and he successfully unmasks his fallacy of judging by appearances in the matter of Bel's food. His laughter in vv. 7,19, may have been amusement at the king's simplicity or at the priests' cunning, the king's wrath in vv. 8, 21, being compatible with either. ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... alive—making allowances for temperamental variations. Degas knew that to grasp the true meaning of the nude it must be represented in postures, movements which are natural, not studio attitudes. As Monet exposed the fallacy of studio lighting, so Degas revealed the inanity of its poses. Ibsen said the stage should be a room with the fourth wall removed; Degas preferred the key-hole through which we seem to peep upon the privacy of his ugly females bathing or combing their hair or sleeping, lounging, yawning, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... ridiculous fallacy to assume, as many do, that such fullness of life is an attribute of youth alone and slips out of the back door when middle age knocks at the front. It is no more bound to go as the wrinkles and gray hairs arrive than your income is bound to take wings two or three score years after ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... proceedings in the Upper House, and is likely to be of vast service to the nation at large. Next follows the EXPIRING LAWS' BILL! We imagine that a slight error has been made in the title of this bill, and that it should be read "Expiring Justice Bill!" As to expiring laws—'tis all a fallacy. One of the glorious privileges of the English Constitution is, that the laws never expire—neither do the lawyers—they are everlasting. Justice may die in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... to show the fallacy and the wrong and injustice of this doctrine, and how helplessly exposed it leaves the negro to the prejudices of the poor whites, I relate a tragedy in the life of a friend of mine, who was well known and respected in the town of ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... in a strong principality they never will suffer such divisions; for they shew them some kind of profit in time of peace, being they are able by means thereof more easily to mannage their subjects: but war comming, such like orders discover their fallacy. Without doubt, Princes become great, when they overcome the difficulties and oppositions that are made against them; and therefore Fortune especially when she hath to make any new Prince great, who hath more need to gain reputation than an hereditary Prince, causes enemies ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... of the fallacy of this spirit. It was supposed that the girl was practised in the art of ventriloquism, an art better known now than formerly; but it was soon after discovered that there was not so much ingenuity in ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... very soon betrayed him into the commission of new offences. He fled from London, and I lost sight of him. At length I discovered that he was preaching in one of the northern counties, and with greater success than ever—yes, such is the fallacy of the system—with the approbation of men, and the idolatry of women, to whom the history of his career was as familiar as their own. Again circumstances compelled him to decamp. I know not what these were, nor could I ever learn; satisfied, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... makers demanded very dense wood under the impression that it would be advantageous to have them as slender as possible, for the denser the wood the thinner must be the stick to preserve a normal weight. The fallacy of this method, however, soon made itself apparent, for, though you may thin down a stick ad libitum, the head must be a certain height and breadth, consequently these bows were all more or less top heavy. A much lighter variety of wood therefore is now being used, and I must ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... County Treasurer. His sordid soul was too deeply imbued with the love of money to perceive that what he had hitherto looked upon as a proof of parental affection and foresight, was nothing more than a fallacy by which he was led day after day farther into his prevailing vice. In other words, now that love for his son, and the hope of seeing him occupy a respectable station in society, ought to have justified the reasoning by which ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... words breathed into her ear as her head rested upon his bosom might have taught her the fallacy of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... a further—a second—fallacy in the supposed analogy between the submission of individuals to law, and the advocated submission of states to a central tribunal. The law of the state, overwhelming as is its power relatively to that of the individual citizen, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... God—let every soul be subject to the higher powers." From these texts they inferred that the new oaths ought to be taken without scruple, and that those who refused them concealed party under the cloak of conscience. On the other hand, the fallacy and treachery of this argument were demonstrated. They said, it levelled all distinctions of justice and duty; that those who taught such doctrines attached themselves solely to possession, however unjustly acquired; that if twenty different ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... again in South Africa that this law applies equally to Europeans and whites as well as to the Natives. There is, they say, no injustice. The European is estopped from this purchase of land, just as the Native is estopped. All I can say in answer to that is that the fallacy is shown the moment you begin to ask what land the Natives have to sell. The native areas are already overcrowded, and they positively have no land which they could sell. When once a Native leaves his farm or is evicted, or has to quit for any reason whatever, the Act does not allow him to purchase, ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... mostly of rock, should be colder than cones of snow. The phenomenon was first described by De Saussure, who gives the same explanation as Tyndall; and from whom, in the first volume of 'Modern Painters,' I adopted it without sufficient examination. Afterwards I re-examined it, and showed its fallacy, with respect to the cap or helmet cloud, in the fifth volume of 'Modern Painters,' page 124, in the terms given in the subjoined note,[A] but I still retained the explanation of Saussure for the lee-side cloud, engraving in plate 69 the modes of its occurrence on the ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... The fallacy that a man could, by the rapid flapping of wings of any sort, overcome the force of gravity persisted up to a very recent day, despite the complete mathematical demonstration by von Helmholtz in 1878 ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... right to expose a logical fallacy, but I am not fond of the attempt to obscure by logic-chopping what is a writer's real meaning. I will therefore say that, as far as I can make out, what this particular writer really believes is that the German people, through some innate and incurable frowardness of disposition, have turned the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... "divine tradition". I was also on my guard against the modern bias derived from the "ghost-theory," and Mr. Spencer's works, and I kept an eye on opportunities of "borrowing".(1) I had, in fact, classified all known idola in the first edition of this work, such as the fallacy of leading questions and the chance of deliberate deception. I sought the earliest evidence, prior to any missionary teaching, and the evidence of what the first missionaries found, in the way of belief, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... say "no," and some say "yes." If it is true that you can't, the whole fabric of the wonderful story, one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful I have ever read, "The Moon Maid," by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is built on a fallacy. You see, I am a believer in reincarnation and I would surely like to correspond with others who are also! Would not that also disprove the whole theory of reincarnation if it is true? I think it is not true, but I may be wrong. Is reincarnation a proven ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... there's a fallacy in that,' replied Emily. 'Their life is probably not hard at all. I used to feel that pity, but I have reasoned myself out of it. They are really happy, for they know nothing of ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... by framing special and separate theories of wages, rent, value, the functions of money, and so forth, are now recognised to be in large measure failures precisely because they involve the fundamental scientific fallacy of supposing that the several parts of an organic whole can be separately studied, and that from this study of the parts we can construct a correct idea of the whole. As in economic theory so in the comprehension of industrial history, no detailed investigation of a number of different ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... will not hold water, and must not be taken for a philosophic truth. That would be to confess man—what I shall never confess him to be—the creature of circumstances; it would be to fall into the same fallacy of spontaneous generation as did the ancients, when they believed that bees were bred from the carcass of a dead ox. In the first place, the bees were no bees, but flies—unless when some true swarm of honey bees may have ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... writings that the fertility of a soil depended really upon its humus; for this substance, with the exception of water, is the only source of plant-food. De Saussure, however, by his experiments—the results of which he had published in 1804—had shown the fallacy of this humus theory; and his statements had been further developed and substantiated by the investigations of the French chemist Braconnot and the German chemist Sprengel. Despite, however, the experiments of Saussure, Braconnot, and Sprengel, the belief that plants derived ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... Orangemen are members of the Church of Ireland, and have always been regarded as Conservative. On the contrary, Presbyterians and Methodists are considered to be advanced Liberals, and herein lies a popular English fallacy—Gladstonians often refer to the Orange agitation against the disestablishment of the Irish Church, which they would fain compare with the present opposition to Home Rule, forgetting or ignoring the fact that the strength of Ulster resides in the Nonconformist bodies, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... which produces them. The war is now reviled as unjust and unnecessary; and in order to prove it so, appeals are made to circumstances of accidental scarcity from the visitation of the seasons. The fallacy of these reasonings is equal to their mischief. It is not true that you could procure corn more easily if peace were to be made to-morrow. If this war be unjust, it ought to be stopped on its own account; but if it be indeed a war of principle and of necessity, it ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... annuity of two millions dead charge upon the public in favor of certain moneyed men; but inspect the thing more nearly, follow the stream in its meanders, and you will find that there is a good deal of fallacy ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "The fallacy is that what seems to be play to a mind like Daniel's, is really seen to be work by a larger mind," explained Arthur Waldron. "Sport, for instance, which is the backbone of British character, is a thousand ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... two generals in all matters pertaining to their profession. I supposed they moved in small bodies because more men could not be passed over a single road on the same day with their artillery and necessary trains. Later I found the fallacy of this belief. The rebellion, which followed as a sequence to the Mexican war, never could have been suppressed if larger bodies of men could not have been moved at the same time than was the custom ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... disparity in years, and because I dared not hope that one so tenderly nurtured could ever brave the hardships of my projected life, I determined to quit New York earlier than I had anticipated, and to bury a foolish memory in the trackless forests of the far West. I ought to have known the fallacy of my expectation; I have proved it since. Your face followed me; your eyes met mine at every turn; your glittering hair swept on every breeze that touched my cheek. Irene, you are young, and singularly beautiful, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... near to the village the old men and the women began to meet them, and now a scene ensued that proved the fallacy of the old fable of Indian apathy and stoicism. Parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters met with the most rapturous expressions of joy; while wailings and lamentations were heard from the relatives ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... session to the present, I had been variously employed, but more particularly in the composition of a new work. It was soon perceived to be the object of our opponents, to impress upon the public the preference of regulation to abolition. I attempted therefore to show the fallacy and wickedness of this notion. I divided the evils belonging to the Slave-trade into two kinds. These I enumerated in their order. With respect to those of the first kind, I proved that they were never ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... King's Printers' Patent for printing Bibles and Acts of Parliament, the period for the renewal of which was near at hand. The principle upon which the patent was originally granted appeared to be correctness secured only by protection—a fallacy which the voluminous evidence of the Committee most completely exposed. The late Alderman Besley, a typefounder, and a great friend of John Childs, as well as Robert Childs, practical printers, gave conclusive evidence on this head, and ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... was the fallacy of strict construction laid bare by the Louisiana question. The remedy of an amendment to the Constitution to bestow needed powers had been the one frequently suggested. Here was an early opportunity to test this constitutional ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... the recognised attributes of God, than that error, pain, and sorrow should be mingled in His works. These, the spontaneous offspring of His love, one might (not all wisely) argue, must always be good and happy—because perfect as Himself. Because perfect?— Therein lies the fallacy, which reason will at once lay bare. Perfection is attributable to no possible creature: perfection argues infinity, and infinity is one of the prerogatives of God. However good, "very good," a creation may be found, still it must, from essential finitude, fall short of that Best, which ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... between the collective and distributive use of a term is of importance, because the confusion of the two is a favourite source of fallacy. When it is said 'The plays of Shakspeare cannot be read in a day,' the proposition meets with a very different measure of acceptance according as its subject is understood collectively or distributively. ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... then, has arisen the prevailing opinion that stoves are unhealthy? There are two sources of mischief, either of which furnishes a sufficient foundation for this popular fallacy. The first has already been referred to, and consists simply in the almost total neglect of proper ventilation. The other lies in the circumstance that school-rooms are generally kept too warm. In addition to the inconvenience of too high a temperature, the aqueous vapor existing in the ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... the name of dialectician if, in order to avoid this difficulty, I were to say (as you are saying of pleasure) that there is no difference between one science and another;—would not the argument founder and disappear like an idle tale, although we might ourselves escape drowning by clinging to a fallacy? ...
— Philebus • Plato
... State were recorded with zest and intelligence by Jefferson before Clinton had performed a like service for New York, or Flint for the West, or any of the numerous scholars and writers of the Eastern States for New England. The very fallacy whereon treason based her machinations and the process whereby the poison of Secession was introduced into the nation's life-blood, found exposition in the insidious fiction of a Virginian—Mr. George Tucker—secretly printed years ago, and lately ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... thoroughly, and understood what points to dwell upon and what to gloze over, how to twist and turn the statistics, and how to marshal my facts in such fashion as would make it very difficult to expose their fallacy. Then, when I had done with general arguments, I went on to particular cases, describing as a doctor can do the most dreadful which had ever come under my notice, with such power and pathos that women in the audience burst ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... a patch or two there, and I'll Warrant you for pretending as much as any man; And who, you Fool, shall know the fallacy? ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... hadn't the slightest idea where the play-actors were or had gone. They had opened a two weeks' engagement at the Teatro Quirino. There had been a good house on the opening night; the remainder of the week did not show the sale of a hundred tickets. It was a fallacy that traveling Americans had any desire to witness American productions in Italy. So, then, the managers of the theater had abruptly canceled the engagement. The American manager had shown neither foresight nor common sense. He had, in the first place, come with his own scenery and ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... 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 modes in which it can be looked at by ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... who seek to explain life's perplexities rather than to condemn them discovered—Some of them, that the defiant tone of her writings and her love of opposition bespoke a degree of vanity sufficient to have led her into fallacy. Others maintained that hers was essentially a romantic nature which might cause her to form a false estimate both of her own powers and of the circumstances of life. Others, again, had heard something of how ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... his mouth, and become accordingly unmanageable. Illustrations of dog-sleds in the Arctic generally depict the animals as bounding merrily away at full speed, to be restrained or urged on at the will of their driver, but this is a pure fallacy, for a sled-dog's gallop is like a donkey's, short and sweet. The average gait is a shuffling trot, covering from five to seven miles an hour over easy ground; and even then desperate fights frequently necessitate a stoppage and readjustment of the traces. There are no reins, the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... will admit that this law of development applies in the mechanical world, they hold that there is something mystic about teaching for which only a pedagogical birthright is a solution. The fallacy of such a contention seems too evident to call for argument. At least the only sensibly hopeful view to take in such a Church as ours, in which so many members must perforce be called to be teachers, is that power in teaching can ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... his ruddy face, and assumed thereby a physiognomy of almost childlike naivete. "Ah, well, on Friday, then;—though Friday is unlucky, and one rarely shines on a day of abstinence, anyhow. It's all a fallacy about fish being food for the brain. Meat, red meat, is what the brain requires." He slapped his forehead. "But Friday, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... gathering of the property of the poor into the hands of the rich does no ultimate harm; since, in whosesoever hands it may be, it must be spent at last, and thus, they think, return to the poor again. This fallacy has been again and again exposed; but grant the plea true, and the same apology may, of course, be made for black mail, or any other form of robbery. It might be (though practically it never is) as advantageous for the nation that the robber should ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... was being watched with more or less interest by the vast crowd of spectators. There were many who pretended to be able to gauge the capacity and fielding power of a club in this stage, but experienced onlookers knew the fallacy of such a premature decision. Often the very fellows who displayed carelessness in practice would stiffen up like magic when the game was actually started, and never make a sloppy play from that time on, their throwing being like clock-work and their ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... eternity. If the fabric of the universe is a perfection of the Creator, He, therefore, lacked a perfection before the creation of the world. But an assumption like this contradicts the idea of perfect goodness, therefore there is no creation. To what have I arrived, Raphael? Terrible fallacy of my conclusions! I give up the Creator as soon as I believe in a God. Wherefore do I require a God, if ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and admiring readers Mr. Carlyle wearies with his ever-recurrent fallacy that might is right. In Heaven's name, what are all the shams whose presence he so persistently bemoans,—worldly bishops, phantasm-aristocracies, presumptuous upstarts, shallow sway-wielding dukes,—what are all these, and ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... this blind worship of custom and tradition! Let us do the thing that gives the greatest immediate benefit to our pupils. Let us discard the elements in our courses that are hard and dry and barren of practical results." Now these men, I believe, are basing their argument upon the fallacy of immediate expediency. The old is bad, the new is good. That is their argument. They have no sheet anchor out to windward. They are willing ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... England. Happily, ataste for furniture and all the appliances of every-day life in the Gothic style is gradually becoming prevalent; and this is inseparable from the use of Heraldry for the purposes of ornamentation. Ipresume that the fallacy of regarding the Gothic style of Art as exclusively ecclesiastical in its associations and uses, or as no less necessarily inseparable from medival sentiments and general usages, is beginning to give ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... all this. She closed her eyes and enjoyed a delusion. It was the soul of the poet reading. The body there was but a fallacy of vision, non-existent, really dead, perhaps; subservient for a while longer to that imperious immortal part that had not yet fulfilled its earthly mission. She had allowed herself to believe that she had caught fleeting glimpses of this man's soul, so different from his battered clay; to-night ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... idea of the brilliant course, delivered without an accident, that, as a lecturer, would still make the paying public aware of our great man, but the fact remained that in the case of an inspiration so unequal there was treachery, there was fallacy at least, in the very conception of a series. In our scrutiny of ways and means we were inevitably subject to the old convention of the synopsis, the syllabus, partly of course not to lose the advantage ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... influenced Chopin in the production of his masterpieces. Lina Ramann, in her exhaustive biography of Franz Liszt, openly declares that Nos. 9 and 12 of op. 10 and Nos. 11 and 12 of op. 25 reveal the influence of the Hungarian virtuoso. Figures prove the fallacy of her assertion. The influence was the other way, as Liszt's three concert studies show—not to mention other compositions. When Chopin arrived in Paris his style had been formed, he was the creator of ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... into wax or comb, a simple question will show its fallacy. Do not the bees belonging to a hive that is full of combs, and no more wax for that purpose needed, bring home as much and often more pollen than one half full? Any person who has watched two such hives five minutes when busily engaged at work, can answer. It is ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... "inevitable;" to regard the whole matter as a slow inexorable process, independent of the human will, still suits the materialist pantheism of our time. There is an inherent tendency in all men to this fallacy of reading themselves into the past, and of thinking their own mood a consummation at once excellent and necessary: and most men who write of these things imagine a vaguely Protestant Tudor England growing consciously Protestant in the England ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... Doctor thoughtfully as he glanced up at the hills. "There's one theory of Rogers's that was a fallacy. You remember he was quite positive that this change of stature became steadily more rapid, until it reached its maximum rate and then remained constant. If that were so we should probably be diminishing in size more rapidly now than when we first climbed on to the ring. If we had so ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... interest that my book has excited are accidental, circumstantial. Life comes before literature, for certain he stands at the branching of the roads, and the best way I can serve him is by drawing his attention to the fallacy, which till now he has accepted as a truth, that there is one immutable standard of conduct for all men and all women." But the difficulty of writing a sufficient letter on a subject so large and so intricate puzzled me and I sat smiling, for an odd thought had dropped suddenly into my mind. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... of the future animal, the rounded form gives place to a more or less irregular nodular mass, while later still the head, limbs, and body of the fetus may be distinctly made out. The chief source of fallacy is found in the very pendent abdomen of certain cows, into which in advanced gestation the fetus has dropped so low that it can not be felt by the hand in the rectum. The absence of the distinct outline of the vacant womb, however, and the clear indications obtained on external examination ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... such as he thought proper a portion of this inexhaustible source of merit, suitable to their respective guilt, and sufficient to deliver them from the punishment due to their crimes." Concerning the fallacy of this doctrine the author has written (The Great Apostasy, 9:15), in this wise: "This doctrine of supererogation is as unreasonable as it is unscriptural and untrue. Man's individual responsibility for his acts is as surely a fact as is his agency ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... animals; and this doctrine had been especially welcomed by St. Augustine and many of the fathers, since it relieved the Almighty of making, Adam of naming, and Noah of living in the ark with these innumerable despised species. But to this fallacy Redi put an end. By researches which could not be gainsaid, he showed that every one of these animals came from an egg; each, therefore, must be the lineal descendant of an animal created, named, and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... newspapers and a large share of the Northern people joined in the cry of "On to Richmond!" Censure and criticism ran riot even among Northern Republicans. In a three-line memorandum the President showed the fallacy of that outcry, when he wrote: "Our prime object is the enemy's army in front of us, and not with or about Richmond at all, unless it be incidental to the main object." At a later day he said to Hooker: "I think Lee's army, and not Richmond, ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... particle &c. (smallness) 32; all talk, moonshine, stuff and nonsense; matter of no importance, matter of no consequence. thing of naught, man of straw, John Doe and Richard Roe, faggot voter; nominis umbra[Lat], nonentity; flash in the pan, vox et praeterea nihil[Lat]. shadow; phantom &c.(fallacy of vision) 443; dream &c. (imagination) 515; ignis fatuus &c. (luminary) 423[Lat]; " such stuff as dreams are made of " [Tempest]; air, thin air, vapor; bubble &c. 353; " baseless fabric of a vision " [Tempest]; mockery. hollowness, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... comparison between certainty of the Inconceivability Argument as applied to Theism and to mathematics shown to contain a virtual though not a formal fallacy. ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... that the Khan should not, in this case, perceive the fallacy of his own argument, or see that the power of the sword must always virtually rest with the holder of the purse; since immediately afterwards, after enlarging on the enormous amount of taxes levied in England, the oppressive nature of some of them, especially the window-tax, "for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... condemned to death, for what his fellow-citizens considered so great a crime. They asserted that the republic had to fear the worst consequences from a man who had been able to subdue so much ferocity. A little more experience, however, convinced them of the fallacy of that ridiculous judgment. The triumvir Antony, accompanied by an actress, was publicly drawn by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... enough, his childhood was blameless, and he possessed exceptional wisdom so that many of his countrymen believed him to be more than human. In this manner the idea of his Divinity originated, and this fallacy ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... progress of mankind, who asserts that the masculine and vigorous treatment that was necessary to Thucydides and Livy is not required by the historians of our puny and degenerate day. Even the Count Gobineau, who so ably and, to his followers, conclusively proves the fallacy of the dearest hope of every learned philanthropist and patriot, does not, in his most earnest antagonism to the doctrine of human progress, insinuate the existence of a principle urging the systematic and inevitable ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... claimed the crown of England as the chosen heir of Edward the Confessor. It was a claim which the English did not admit, and of which the Normans saw the fallacy, but which he himself consistently maintained and did his best to justify. In that claim he saw not only the justification of the Conquest in the eyes of the church, but his great safeguard against the jealous and aggressive host by whose aid he had realized it; therefore, immediately ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... absurdity passes unnoticed. Now the wonderful is pleasing: as may be inferred from the fact that every one tells a story with some addition of his own, knowing that his hearers like it. It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully. The secret of it lies in a fallacy, For, assuming that if one thing is or becomes, a second is or becomes, men imagine that, if the second is, the first likewise is or becomes. But this is a false inference. Hence, where the first thing is untrue, it is quite unnecessary, ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... SYRACUSE. To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme: What, was I married to her in my dream? Or sleep I now, and think I hear all this? What error drives our eyes and ears amiss? Until I know this sure uncertainty I'll entertain the offer'd fallacy. ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... imperial purple, are sure at least of receiving attention. If they cannot sell everything at their own price, one thing—silence—must, at any cost, be purchased of them. Harold accordingly had to be consoled by the employment of every specious fallacy and base-born trick known to those whose doom it is to handle children. For me their hollow cajolery had no interest, I could pluck no consolation out of their bankrupt though prodigal pledges I only ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... happened? Well, riding, lessons, sisters. There was an enchanted rubbish heap, I remember, where all kinds of queer things happened. Odd, what things impress children! I can remember the look of the place to this day. It's a fallacy to think that children are happy. They're not; they're unhappy. I've never suffered so much as I did when I was ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... an instance of the pathetic fallacy which attributes to inanimate objects the feelings of men: comp. ll. 194, 195. As in this line (after such) has the force ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... desirous of looking at the Wellington Channel floe, as the accumulation of many years of continued frost, might have some grounds upon which to base his supposition. A year's observation, however, has shown me the fallacy of supposing that in deep-water channels floes continue to increase in thickness from year to year; and to that subject I will return in a future chapter, when ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... party, and by what authority? By what reasoning is nullification denounced, and secession supported, as a constitutional remedy? If there be any real difference, the former is check, and the latter a check-mate, to the movements of the Government of the Union. The same reasoning demonstrates the fallacy of nullification or secession, with equal clearness and certainty. A State cannot nullify a law of the Union, because the Constitution and laws of the State are made subordinate to the Constitution ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a fallacy in the argument of the opponents of the Republican party. They affirm that all the States and all the citizens of the States ought to have equal rights in the Territories. Undoubtedly. But the difficulty is that they cannot. The slaveholder moves into a new Territory ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... recollect they have been instilled, perhaps, from the earliest period, by one from whom they must have been received with all confidence—from a father to a son; and that son has never yet been sufficiently in the world to have proved their fallacy." ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... would remain, the remedy being withheld, it would follow that the owner would be practically debarred by the circumstances of the case, from taking slave property into a territory where the sense of the inhabitants was opposed to its introduction. So much for the oft repeated fallacy of forcing slavery ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... lot of projects. We bought up practically all the stock of the Westville street car lines, when that municipal ownership talk drove the price so low, because we expected to get a new franchise through your smashing this municipal ownership fallacy. We have counted on big things from the water-works when you got hold of it for us. And we have plans on foot in several other cities of the state, and we've been counting on the failure of municipal ownership in Westville to have a big influence ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... and alarmed by this information. Pleyel had told his tale to my brother, and had, by a plausible and exaggerated picture, instilled into him unfavorable thoughts of me. Yet would not the more correct judgment of Wieland perceive and expose the fallacy of his conclusions? Perhaps his uneasiness might arise from some insight into the character of Carwin, and from apprehensions for my safety. The appearances by which Pleyel had been misled, might ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... Y-ts'un smiled. "You now perceive," he said, "that my argument is no fallacy, and that the several persons about whom you and I have just been talking are, we may presume, human beings, who, one and all, have been generated by the spirit of right, and the spirit of evil, and come to life by the same ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... One of the principal tenets of. Style of writing admired by Utilitarians. Barren theories of the Utilitarians. Duty of exposing the fallacy of their arguments. Lord Bacon's description of the Utilitarian philosophy. Mr Bentham's exposition of the Utilitarian principle. Remarks on the Utilitarian theory of government. Delusion of the Utilitarians. Origin of their faults. Real ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fatal fallacy adopted by a large number of the American people, which, if not rejected, will lead us down to national oblivion. That fallacy is exposed in the following pages, by showing what is right, and what is wrong, and explaining the fundamental error by which our public opinion is divided, ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... themselves—who prided themselves on knowing where the best oysters were sold, the cheapest horses to be hired, or the cheapest boats to be engaged for the Sunday's excursion. Young men were ready to think, "If I don't do this, I may do something worse." The fallacy and danger of this mode of reasoning were exposed. It might be employed to excuse any sin. Public places of amusement were highways to destruction. Ah! how those old people in that little cottage—surrounded with a stone wall—on the hill side—far away—would weep, if they knew their son was ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... to deny that assertion. Do not fear that I shall insult your understanding by the popular platitude; namely, that if celibacy were universal, in a very few years the human race would be extinct. As you have justly observed, in answer to that fallacy, 'It is the duty of each human soul to strive towards the highest perfection of the spiritual state for itself, and leave the fate of the human race to the care of the Creator.' If celibacy be necessary ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the New Testament, so far as concerns Jesus Christ, are confined to a very short space of time, less than two years, and all within the same country, and nearly to the same spot, the discordance of time, place, and circumstance, which detects the fallacy of the books of the Old Testament, and proves them to be impositions, cannot be expected to be found here in the same abundance. The New Testament compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act, in which there is not room for very numerous violations of the unities. There are, however, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... absurdum—the lawyers' argument, technically flawless, though proceeding upon a transparent fallacy. That fallacy I shall consider hereafter; the question of the moment is the reporters'—"Have you any ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... of the paramount navy by Great Britain is that the soil of Great Britain cannot support her people. In an essay, entitled "Naval Power," which I contributed to the United States Naval Institute in 1911, the fallacy of this was shown; and it was pointed out that even if Great Britain grew more than enough to feed her people, life could be made unendurable to the 60,000,000 living there (or to the people in any civilized and isolated ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... exception of a few hours of head winds, that week had been a week of dream. We now awoke fully to the fact that in low water season the Missouri is not swift. In our early plans we had fallen in with the popular fallacy that one need only cut loose and let the current do the rest; whereas, in low water, one would probably never reach the end of his journey by that method. In addition to this, our gasoline was running low. We had trusted to irrigation plants for replenishing ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... the first and most important requisites for having healthy children is to avoid the eating-for-two fallacy. Most people overeat, anyway, and there should be no encouragement ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... the worst thing that can happen to a man, or to an idea—some wretched fallacy, perhaps, that has governed the minds of men, some gross superstition, ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens |
