"Polemic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged her from the truths ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... entertaining polemic. It directs attention to many undoubtedly neglected facts which writers of the North have ignored or minimized."—The New York Times Saturday ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... passages where Shakespeare brings his rays to focus on "this earth, this realm, this England,"—or where the dread of national dishonour has kindled Chatham to an iron glow,—or where Milton rises from the polemic into the prophet, and Burke from the partisan into the philosopher. The armoury of Wordsworth, indeed, was not forged with the same fire as that of these "invincible knights of old." He had not swayed senates, nor directed policies, nor gathered into one ardent bosom all ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... evening are gathering around, and, in a retrospective glance, the whole field of past vision appears, in all its complexities, like the indistinct tumults of a dream. The acute reasoner—the fiery politician—the eager polemic—the emulous aspirant after fame; and many such have I known, where are they? and how mournful, if any one of them should be found, at last, to have directed his solicitudes, alone, to material objects;—should have neglected to cultivate his own little plot of earth, more valuable than ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... drawn up with the usual polemic ability of Milton; but by its very plan and purpose it threw upon him difficulties which no ability could meet. It had that inevitable disadvantage which belongs to all ministerial and secondary works: the order and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... perilepsis[obs3], a priori reasoning, reductio ad absurdum, horns of a dilemma, argumentum ad hominem [Lat.], comprehensive argument; empirema[obs3], epagoge[obs3]. [person who reasons] reasoner, logician, dialectician; disputant; controversialist, controvertist[obs3]; wrangler, arguer, debater polemic, casuist, rationalist; scientist; eristic[obs3]. logical sequence; good case; correct just reasoning, sound reasoning, valid reasoning, cogent reasoning, logical reasoning, forcible reasoning, persuasive ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... whose infirmity had kept her so far in the rear of the crowd, now came hobbling on, glided unobserved by the polemic group, and paused on the left brink of the fountain, within a few feet of the two spectators. She was a magnificent old dame, as ever mortal eye beheld. Her spangled shoes and gold-clocked stockings shone gloriously within the spacious circle of a red hoop-petticoat, which ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... book today at two sittings. It is the most effective polemic on the subject, I have yet seen. You have marshalled the evidence of mathematics against the delusion of man's descent from brute ancestry, with telling effect."—PHILIP ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... indiscretion he himself, the professed deliverer of a new and spiritual religion, had in a moment untuned the spirituality of his audience. He would find that he had awakened within them the passion of curiosity—the most unspiritual of passions, and of curiosity in a fierce polemic shape. The very safest step in so deplorable a situation would be, instantly to recant. Already by this one may estimate the evil, when such would be its readiest palliation. For in what condition ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... the power of changing the temper of its critics. It provoked the amiable Berkeley to a harshness equally unwonted and unwarranted; while it softened the rugged Warburton so far as to dispose the fierce, yet not altogether ungenerous, polemic to price an enemy in the very heat ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... Tarphon (probably the Tryphon of polemic fame) that he was very rich, but gave nothing to the poor. Once Rabbi Akiva met him and said, "Rabbi, dost thou wish me to purchase for thee a town or two?" "I do," said he, and at once gave him four thousand gold ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... the copyright of my article belongs to the Editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes, without whose permission I can do nothing. As I shall be in Paris before long I will ask him for it, should your polemic attack seem to me to require ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... this phrase without any polemic purpose. The question of origins is not here under discussion. Of course at some stage in the history of any ballad the poet, the individual artist, is present, though the precise ration of his agency to the communal element in the work is obscure. For an acute and learned ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... written in verse, but did not prove a success as a drama. In one he attacked the tyranny of the German petty princes, and in the other the intolerance of the Established Church. We may assume that is the reason why Lowell admired them; but Lowell was also too critical and polemic to be wholly a poet,—except on certain occasions. In 1847 he published the "Fable for Critics," the keenest piece of poetical satire since Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,"—keen and ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... they were not the leaders in the enterprise. Men of a widely different description, men who redeemed great infirmities and errors by sincerity, disinterestedness, energy and courage, men who, with many of the vices of revolutionary chiefs and of polemic divines, united some of the highest qualities of apostles, were the real directors. They might be violent in innovation and scurrilous in controversy. They might sometimes act with inexcusable severity towards opponents, and sometimes connive disreputably ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Thuillier, not disturbed himself, the admission of the "Echo" into the polemic making another Pangloss of him. "I'll ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... years ago, Thomas Hollis, of London, made a bequest to the university at Cambridge, with a provision that on every Thursday a professor should sit in his chair to answer questions in polemic theology. All well enough then; but the public sentiment of to-day ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... would listen to his friendly voice, which were about as many as called 'God save King Richard,' to shelter themselves from its delusive radiance in the obscure haunt of Old Philosophy. This word Old had great charms for him. The good old times were always on his lips; meaning the days when polemic theology was in its prime, and rival prelates beat the drum ecclesiastic with Herculean vigour, till the one wound up his series of syllogisms with the very orthodox conclusion ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... unbounded for his personality as well as his method and his conclusions. His opponents were regarded as obscurantists, who, rather than the object of their attack, were endangering Judaism. All Jewry was divided into two camps, the Maimunists and the anti-Maimunists; and the polemic and the struggle between them was long and bitter. Anathema and counter anathema, excommunication and counter excommunication was the least of the matter. The arm of the Church Inquisition was invoked, and the altar of a Parisian Church furnished ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... oscillates between cynicism and passion almost bewilderingly. For a little more of this what pages and pages of jocularity about Bottles and the Rev. Esau Hittall would we not have given! what volumes of polemic with the Guardian and amateur discussions of the Gospel of St John! In the first place, note the metrical structure, the sober level octosyllables of the overture changing suddenly to a dance-measure which, for a wonder ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... that Mr. George is a polemic without a peer, and you say that "no other living man could have made so absurd a theory appear so plausible, deceived hundreds of abler men than himself." Surely there is something very faulty in the position you ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the crowded theater, care and pain and poverty were banished from the memory, while Oldfield's face spoke, and her tongue flashed melodies; the lawyer forgot his quillets; the polemic, the mote in his brother's eye; the old maid, her grudge against the two sexes; the old man, his gray hairs and his lost hours. And can it be, that all this which should have been immortal, is quite—quite lost, is as though it had never been?" he sighed. "Can ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... the Bible implying the earth to be stationary, and central to our system, could not not have been a compliance with the popular errors of the time, but must be taken to express the absolute truth. And so grew the anti-Galilean fanatics. Out of similar notions have risen the absurdities of a polemic Bible chronology, &c. [Footnote: The Bible cosmology stands upon another footing. That is not gathered from a casual expression, shaped to meet popular comprehension, but is delivered directly, formally, and elaborately, as a natural preface to the history of man ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... Dryden's political and polemic discussions naturally interfered at this period with his more general poetical studies. About the period of James's accession, Tonson had indeed published a second volume of Miscellanies, to which our poet contributed a critical preface, with various ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... In a polemic against Mr. Jones his adversary has therefore to combat a dragon with three heads, and the heroic method would be to strike all three of them off at one blow. To effect this it seems to me that one has only to remark ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... Poison veneno. Poisonous venena. Poke the fire inciti la fajron. Poker fajrincitilo. Polar polusa. Pole (wooden) stango. Pole (shaft of car) timono. Pole (geography) poluso. Polecat putoro. Polemic disputo, polemiko. Police polico. Policeman policano. Polish poluri. Polish (substance) polurajxo. Polished (manners) gxentila. Polite gxentila. Politic sagxa. Political politika. Politician politikisto. Politics ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... this continued polemic against the popedom and false teachers, we must not omit to mention some characteristic controversial writings, provoked from him by his indignation at the attacks on Christianity by Jews, nay, by their seduction of many Christians. As early as 1538, a strange rumour ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... getting on famously. Arthur was composing a piano concerto, and Ellenora engaged upon a novel—a novel, I was told, that would lay bare to its rotten roots the social fabric; and knowing the girl's inherent fund of bitter cleverness I awaited the new-born polemic with gentle impatience. I hoped, however, like the foolish inexperienced old bachelor I am, that her feminine asperity would be tempered by ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... thieves were prowling round orchards and empty houses, instead of being there to hear the sermon, and that the drunkards, being rarely church-goers, get little good by the statistics and eloquent appeals of the preacher. Every now and then, however, the Reverend Mr. Fairweather let off a polemic discourse against his neighbor opposite, which waked his people up a little; but it was a languid congregation, at best,—very apt to stay away from meeting in the afternoon, and not at all given to extra evening services. The minister, unlike his rival of the other side of the way, was a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... all possible modifications, it is essentially erroneous; and this small treatise has originated in no love of discord, or taste for polemic excitement, but in a solemn sense of duty,—the duty of aiding, in some humble measure, the more learned and important labours of others who are "set for the defence of the truth." The writer aims only at a common sense view of the subject, showing that Calvinism ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... was competent to judge of the situation impartially, through direct personal contact throughout his boyhood with the realities of slavery. His object was not the object of the reformer, warped with prejudice and fired by animosity. He saw clearly; for his aim was not polemic, but artistic. Hence it is, I believe, that Mark Twain stands out as, in essence and in fundamentals, a remarkable sociologist. Certain passages in his books on the subject of slavery, as the historian ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... (of London, England). There was a "send-off" to give to the retiring member, there was a critical inspection to make of the new candidate, and there was Mr Alfred Hesketh, of London, England, and whatever he might signify. They were big, quiet, expectant fellows, with less sophistication and polemic than their American counterparts, less stolid aggressiveness than their parallels in England, if they have parallels there. They stood, indeed, for the development between the two; they came of ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... were to enter into a polemic on this subject, or simply to make conscientious researches, there would be many chances of proving, in opposition to the axiom, that the fault of these great men lay in the bad choice of their helpmates. In truth, if there have been a Gemma Donati and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... afterward sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections; they were small chapmen's books, and cheap, 40 or 50 in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way since it was now resolved I should not be a clergyman. Plutarch's Lives there was in which I read abundantly, and I still think that ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Eastern Church, though the circumstance of these controversies having been carried on in the Greek language has made the natives of Western Europe attribute them to a philosophic, speculative, and polemic spirit, inherent in the Hellenic mind. A very slight examination of history is sufficient to prove that several of the heresies which disturbed the Eastern Church had their origin in the more profound religious ideas of the oriental nations, and that many of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... sufficient to notice that the next occupation of Pascal, after his conversion, was to write these eighteen "Letters," which as prose are of capital importance in the foundation of French classical style, and which as polemic are surpassed by none, not by Demosthenes, or Cicero, or Swift. They have the limitation of all polemic and forensic: they persuade, they seduce, they are unfair. But it is also unfair to assert that, in these Letters to a Provincial, Pascal ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... accomplishments beside those of the polemic. He was not, it is true, overloaded with the learning of "the schools"—was, in fact, quite ignorant of some of the branches of knowledge which he imparted to his pupils: yet this was never allowed to become apparent, for as ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... who was the author of it, praised, some dozen years later, where now he cursed. There was exaggeration in his panegyric, pronounced in 1850 under the impulse dictating generosity to the memory of a dead foe; and there was exaggeration also in his polemic indited under the smart of Balzac's gibes against the press. However, the closing words of the article, save for the tone, can hardly be gainsaid: "Never," asserted Janin, "has Monsieur de Balzac's talent been more diffuse, never has his invention been more languishing, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the morning, rapped on the ceiling for him to come down; and then they would dispute and discuss, sometimes half-days long, about the different tenets of the Christian Sects;—and my Father said, the Prince was perfectly at home in the Polemic Doctrines of the Reformed (Calvinistic) Church, even to the minutest points. As my Father brought him proofs from Scripture, the Prince asked him one time, How he could keep chapter and verse so exactly in his memory? Father drew from his ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... soon arrived—a man of ascetic countenance and venerable age—one whom Gerard Douw respected much, forasmuch as he was a veteran polemic, though one, perhaps, more dreaded as a combatant than beloved as a Christian—of pure morality, subtle brain, and frozen heart. He entered the chamber which communicated with that in which Rose reclined, and immediately ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Louis Philippe to this covert imperialism, that, later under the republic, could stand up against it as a deadly competitor in the person of Louis Bonaparte. The fought the aristocracy of finance just the same as did the rest of the bourgeois opposition. The polemic against the budget, which in France, was closely connected with the opposition to the aristocracy of finance, furnished too cheap a popularity and too rich a material for Puritanical leading articles, not to be exploited. The industrial bourgeoisie was thankful to it for its servile ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... before Marx and Ruge became intellectually estranged, and the third essay, "The King of Prussia and Social Reform," which appeared in the Paris socialist journal Vorwaerts, contains a severe polemic against Ruge. In the same organ Marx published an elaborate defence of Engels in particular and communists in general from the strictures of Karl Heinzen, a radical republican politician. In both essays Marx ranges over a wide field, and develops his own views upon economic, political ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... tell him that every word of it, with all its details, has been written in a situation which sternly denied me the use of books bearing on my subject. A few volumes of rhetorical criticism and of polemic divinity, that have not, nor, to my knowledge, could have furnished me with a solitary fact or date, are all the companions of my solitude. Other voice than the voice of the wind I have rarely heard. Even my quotations are usually ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... phases and progress of the war, and whenever opportunity offered or could be made, those of us who were inclined to talk were speedily involved in an argument with crowds of soldiers and citizens. But, owing to the polemic poverty of our opponents, the argument was more in name than in fact. Like all people of slender or untrained intellectual powers they labored under the hallucination that asserting was reasoning, and ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... was silent for a moment, and gave token of succumbing to this unexpected polemic strength. Then, taking thought and courage together, "Ye can't say the Bible ain't down on 'strong drink'?" There was no answer from the vanquished, and he went on in the overwhelming miller's voice: "Hil'ry hed better be purtectin' his-self from strong drink, 'stiddier the boy—by makin' ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... head and walked slowly back to his seat. He sat down, and with great fatigue evident in his voice, he concluded his polemic. ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
... of faith in writing Jean-Christophe were only concerned with France, if the polemic of it were not directed against a universal evil, there would be no reason for translation. But, like Zarathustra, it is a book for all and none. M. Rolland has written what he believes to be the truth, and as Dr. Johnson observed: "Every man has ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... King, "We have not met this morning, I presume, to indulge in a religious polemic! My power is, as you very truly suggest, merely temporal—yours is spiritual. Yours should be the strongest! Go your way now to your Vicar-General with the straight answer I have given you,—but if by your 'spiritual' power you can persuade the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli |
