"Reasoning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... son but France. Do you remember what I told you that night in my room? Better the one should suffer than the many. And now there is a double reason, a double incentive to us both. Mademoiselle de Vesc's life hangs upon it. Follow the chain of reasoning, and, for God's sake, Stephen, follow closely. There is more than the life of a girl in all this. Jean Saxe cannot be suppressed even if we dared attempt it; Francois Villon, the King's jackal, who holds his life by a thread, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... satellites, of the planets, the last of which she thought had other uses than as subordinates. She spoke with disapprobation of Dr. Whewell's attempt to prove that our planet was the only one inhabited by reasoning beings; she believed that a higher order of beings ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... She got off at least an hour ahead of us; and if we have not been gaining on her, she ought to be about ten miles ahead," argued Washburn. I was willing to accept his logic, for we had been over the reasoning times enough to understand the case in precisely the ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... obseruing the feast of [Sidenote: Beda lib.2. ca.2.] Easter, and other rites from the vse of the Romane church, Augustine thought it necessarie to mooue them to agree with him in vnitie of the same, but after long disputation and reasoning of those matters, they could not be induced to giue their assent in that behalfe. Augustine to prooue his opinion good, wrought a miracle in restoring sight to one of the ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed
... have considered that the moral character of a revelation enters into the evidence in its favour; whence, morality must be considered as independent, and exclusively human, in its origin. It would be reasoning in a circle to derive the moral law from the bible, and then to prove the bible from the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... between the dingy cottage and the Everglade School, was as full of power and beauty as this velvety specimen of plutocracy. It was sentimental, however, to ignore the present facts. Evidently Miss Hitchcock had followed the same line of reasoning, for when she spoke again she referred distantly to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... no belief which we entertain has so complete a logical basis as that to which I have just referred. It tacitly underlies every process of reasoning; it is the foundation of every act of the will. It is based upon the broadest induction, and it is verified by the most constant, regular, and universal of deductive processes. But we must recollect that any human belief, however broad its basis, however ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Captain Miles as if reasoning with himself, "keeping on like this if we were in the Gulf of Mexico now, for it looks like what they call a norther there; but I've never heard of one of those winds being met ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... that case she would have spoken differently she had granted, and clearly with sincerity, his power to do what he threatened. And then the fact remained that he could injure Hood irremediably by means short of criminal proceedings. Emily—his reasoning was accurate enough—had not been careful to distinguish between modes of ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... by means of physics. The latter, the followers of the old orthodox Lutherans, sought to confirm the truths of the gospel also by philosophical means, and were denominated Supernaturalists, as believers in a mystery surpassing the reasoning powers of man. The celebrated Schleiermacher of Berlin mediated for some time between both parties. But it was in Prussia more particularly that both parties stood more rigidly opposed to one another and fell into the ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... duplicate key to the gun-cabinet. It seemed to me impossible that none of these considerations should have occurred to young Ashiel, if he were really reluctant to believe in Sir David's guilt. But at the same time I remembered the almost incredible lack of reasoning powers shown by most members of the public where a deed of violence has been committed, and knowing that there is nothing so improbable that it will not find a host of ready believers, I did not attach much importance to the ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... that fungous tribe, greatly distinguished themselves. They demonstrated in a manner absolutely convincing, that it was impossible for any person to possess any ability, knowledge, or virtue, any capacity of reasoning, any ray of fancy or faculty of imagination, who was not a supporter of the existing administration. If any one impeached the management of a department, the public was assured that the accuser had embezzled; ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... world had lain between us, me—and this woman whom I had worshipped, of whom a consuming jealousy had made ten years of my life a mad fever, which only her death had cured. Saner men have protested against the same situation that ruined me—and yet, even in my reasoning moments, like this, I knew that to have rebelled would have been to have forced a tragic climax before the hour at which ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... only sermon of Mr. Emerson's ever published. It was impossible to hear or to read it without honoring the preacher for his truthfulness, and recognizing the force of his statement and reasoning. It was equally impossible that he could continue his ministrations over a congregation which held to the ordinance he wished to give up entirely. And thus it was, that with the most friendly feelings on both sides, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... depends upon his worldly means or prospects. A man who has much to lose, whatever the property may consist of, will be less inclined to fight than another whose whole capital consists of a "light heart and a thin pair of breeches." Upon the same reasoning, a man in love will not be inclined to fight as another. Death then cuts off the sweetest prospects in existence. Lord St. Vincent used to say that a married man was damned for the service. Now (bating the honeymoon), I do not agree with his lordship. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... horses were the subjects of discussion he was fiercely intolerant of the wise looks and book-inspired remarks of the would-be authorities in the regiment. To his cavalry nature the horse had an affiliation that was simply strong as a friendship. Nothing could shake Ray's conviction in the reasoning powers, the love, loyalty, gratitude, and devotion of the animal that from his babyhood he had looked upon as a companion,—almost as a confidant. He had little faith in Mrs. Turner's voluble admiration of Dandy. To use his Blue Grass vernacular, he "didn't take any stock ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... body had not come ashore. He had had time to get to the wreck before the gale from the north came on at all. And why should a fair wind, though powerful, upset the boat? On these slender things she began to build a superstructure of hope; but soon her heart interrupted the reasoning. "What would he do in my place? would he sit guessing while hope had a hair to hang by?" That thought struck her like a spur. And in a moment she bounded into action, erect, her lips fixed, and her eye on fire, though her cheek was very pale. She ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... newly discovered country corresponds to its extent of sea coast, it doubtless exceeds Asia in size. In this way we find that the land forms a much larger portion of our globe than the ancients supposed, who maintained, contrary to mathematical reasoning, that it was less than the water, whereas actual experience proves the reverse, so that we judge in respect to extent of surface the land covers as much space as the water; and I hope more clearly and more satisfactorily to point out and explain to your Majesty the great extent of that new land, ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... and in some respects differ. Mr. Walker maintains that when both parents are of the same breed that either parent may transmit either half of the organization. That when they are of different varieties or breeds (and by parity of reasoning the same should hold, strongly, when hybrids are produced by crossing different species) and supposing also that both parents are of equal age and vigor, that the male gives the back head and locomotive organs and the female the face and nutritive organs—I ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... the orders of my Government for this seizure. In short, you would have no right to inquire into the matter at all. My ship being regularly commissioned, I am responsible to my Government for my acts, and my Government, in the case supposed, would be responsible to France, and not to you. If this reasoning be correct—and with all due submission to his lordship I think it is sustained by the plainest principles of the international code—it follows that the condemnation of a prize in a prize court is not the only mode of changing the character of a captured ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... the dark, had been thinking also, but (as women will at such times) with clearer perception, so that her ideas forming in logical sequence, and growing more clear and decisive (as an argument becomes more lively and conclusive by successful reasoning) served to stimulate her intellect and excite her activity. And the end of it was that she rose quickly from her bed and looked into the next room, where she saw her husband sitting, with his chin ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... disputation. The disputation was a preparation for the disputations which formed part of what we should now term the degree examinations. A thesis was propounded, attacked, and defended ("impugned and propugned") with the proper forms of syllogistic reasoning. ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... as destitute of all imagination, though when to a certain degree educated, he attributes to him facility in learning, a clearness of understanding, a natural turn for reasoning, and a particular aptitude to subtilize and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... instant did it enter her head that she could marry Ingram. Nothing that he had urged, or Chevenix counselled, made the smallest difference to her. She did not love Nevile any more; he was horrible to her: enough of that. Whatever her fate was to be, she would accept it: she chose it so. Without reasoning it out, that was final for her. She had always had sic volo for her final cause. Stet pro ratione voluntas. Marriage, even nominal marriage, with Nevile was the accursed thing: none of it. And why? Because she ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... indicate greater losses of pressure than D'Aubuisson's formula. M. Deviller, in his Rapport sur les travaux de percement du tunnel sous les Alpes, states that the losses of pressure observed in the air pipe at the Mont Cenis Tunnel confirm the correctness of D'Aubuisson's formula; but his reasoning applies to too complicated a formula ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Reasoning from analogy and from the different varieties of the same species, and the different species under one genus, among all other animals, he pointed out their different modes of living, and the different designs of the Creator, that appeared to be evinced with respect ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... sense of that which inevitably hung over him. For he knew, by an inward compulsion of his mind that admitted of no argument, that he had to tell Sylvia all that had happened in those ten minutes while the grey morning grew rosy. This sense of compulsion was deaf to all reasoning, however plausible. He knew perfectly well that unless he told Sylvia who it was whom he had shot at point-blank range, as he leaped the last wire entanglement, no one else ever could. Hermann was buried now in the same grave as others who had fallen that morning: his name would be given out as missing ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... with love. And when her sire, Who in his dream of hope already grasped The golden circlet in his hand, rejected 10 My suit with insult, and in memory Of ancient feuds poured curses on my head, Her blessings overtook and baffled them! But thou art stern, and with unkindly countenance Art inly reasoning whilst thou listenest to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Taylor, the full stop does not come to release the thought till all the circumstances have been grouped around it, and the necessary qualifications made. In Macaulay the circumstances and the qualifications are set out sentence by sentence. So the steps of reasoning in the example which we have given are stated with that distinct pause between each of them which the reader would make if he thought them out for himself. They ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... paws, and fire also issuing from the tassel-like ends of their tails, which doubtless denote the lightning, the death-dealing servant of the Chac." By the mention of this last word—chac—Dr Seler has shown that correct reasoning by a different line leads to precisely the same result as that which appeals to the phonetic or ikonomatic character of the symbol. Here again the ch sound appears as the chief element of the character. The rain or field deities, the chacs, are usually represented in the ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... were familiar to Sir Samuel Bentham, and though his name has been almost forgotten, it may be safely asserted that he gave to the world more useful inventions than any other man of his age. His work shows throughout a constant method and system of reasoning, which point rather to a life of persistent labor than to one of what would ordinarily be called genius. That latter quality he must certainly have possessed in the highest degree, for without it even his knowledge and experience ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... meetings earnestly desired to attain to that exaltation, and considered it an indication of my graceless state, that I was so insensible to the "spirit," which was another term for the frenzy, I found it impossible to provoke it. It is a curious subject, this usurpation of the reasoning faculties by the irrational, which is permitted when religion becomes emotional, either in the revolutionary condition of the revivalist or that of the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... and back again was a forlorn hope, but Robbins was past reasoning. Lurching through the door, he ran outside the hut and toward the tulles. Young Robbins cried after his father, and ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... at the zayat had no inconsiderable powers of reasoning and argument; one in particular, named Moung-Shwa-gnong; who would spend whole days at the zayat, and engage Mr. Judson in endless discussions.—Not satisfied with the Buddhist faith he had become a ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... of the leading discoveries which the Principia first announced to the world. The grandeur of the subjects of which it treats, the beautiful simplicity of the system which it unfolds, the clear and concise reasoning by which that system is explained, and the irresistible evidence by which it is supported might have insured it the warmest admiration of contemporary mathematicians and the most welcome reception in all the schools of philosophy throughout Europe. This, however, is not the way in which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... implicit in the peculiar behavior of the stock were confirmed. The corporation had evidently fallen into the hands of unscrupulous promoters who manipulated for the small but steady "take" its fluctuations on the market afforded. Without attempting to operate the factory, my reasoning ran, they had taken advantage of the stock's low price to double whatever they cared to invest twice yearly. It was a neat and wellshaped little racket and discovery, as the broker admitted, would have exposed them to legal action. Only my recklessness ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... distinct, and the varied pouting of his huge lips remarkably obvious. The extended left hand, too, with the frequent thrusting of the index finger of the other into the palm, was suggestive of argument, and of much reasoning ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... however, that every time anything occurs in the mind, there is a change in some part of the nervous system. Applying this fact to study, it is obvious that when you are performing any of the operations of study, memorizing foreign vocabularies, making arithmetical calculations, reasoning out problems in geometry, you are making changes in your nervous system. The question before us, then, is, What is the nature ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... forgiveness, of her friendship, of her trust; and every generous impulse urged her to grant it. She knew that if she refused he would get up and go away, cut to the heart. She seemed to feel him pleading with her, earnestly beseeching her, reasoning against prejudice, against the shackles of conventionality, against reason itself. And through it all her love for the man throbbed at the very heart of her, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... conversation. Just before lunch the jolting of the train deposited the major's coat at my feet. I picked it up and handed it to him. He received it with thanks and a trace of a smile. He was polite, but icily so. I was an American, he was a German officer. In his way of reasoning my country was unneutrally making ammunition to kill himself and his men. But for my country the war would have been over long ago. Therefore he hated me, but his training made him polite in his hate. That is the difference between the better class of army and ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... wished to be blind! How many times had he risen to his feet in the combat, held fast to the rock, leaning against sophism, dragged in the dust, now getting the upper hand of his conscience, again overthrown by it! How many times, after an equivoque, after the specious and treacherous reasoning of egotism, had he heard his irritated conscience cry in his ear: "A trip! you wretch!" How many times had his refractory thoughts rattled convulsively in his throat, under the evidence of duty! Resistance to God. Funereal sweats. What secret wounds which he alone ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... equally justified in refusing to pay the whole; and, therefore, if this country had not been put in possession of the Dutch colonies, Holland would have retained her colonies and would have no debt to pay. But England had the colonies, and to what Power then, according to the reasoning of the hon. member, ought England to make the payment of her portion of the loan? Surely to Holland. It might be very convenient, for ensuring Russian acquiescence, to make the payment to Russia, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... fees and considering public questions. They discussed error and wrong with the same eloquence and zeal that they discussed truth and justice, their purpose being to foster eloquence rather than discover truth. Hence, we have the word "sophistry," which means fallacious reasoning. And yet, in the words of Schwegler, "It cannot be denied that Protagoras also hit upon many correct principles of rhetoric, and satisfactorily established certain grammatical categories. It may in general be said of the Sophists that they gave the people a great ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... 61.).—Probabilism, so far as it means the principle of reasoning or acting upon the opinion of eminent teachers or writers, was the principle of the Pythagoreans, whose ipse dixit, speaking of their master, is proverbial; and of Aristotle, in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... American as an American, and not as a traveler or a naturalized citizen, the mission had disappeared from the land, and the land was inhabited by a race calling itself the gente de razon, in presumed contradistinction to human beasts with no reasoning powers. Of this period the lay reader finds such conflicting accounts that he either is bewildered or else boldly indulges his prejudices. According to one school of writers—mainly those of modern fiction—California before the ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... did not serve to show him the falsehood of his reasoning, for his heart was in the lie. "Ought I or he," he went on, "to be punished because he kept the thing ill? And how far would the quixotic obligation descend? A score of righteous men may by this time have bought and sold the cup!—is it some demon-talisman, that the last ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... And amid the silence that followed it he mistily perceived that the remainder of the group, instead of becoming more jolly, had grown grave. For them the political situation was serious. They did not trouble to argue against the Labour candidate. All their reasoning was based on the assumption, which nobody denied or questioned, that at any cost the Labour candidate must be defeated. The success of the Labour candidate was regarded as a calamity. It would jeopardise the entire social order. It would deliver into the destroying ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... conciliatory, and peaceably argued against all this bad reasoning. She tried to soften the Lorilleuxs. But the husband ended by no longer answering her. The wife was now at the forge scouring a piece of chain in the little, long-handled brass saucepan full of lye-water. She still ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... amuse and gratify the reader, to receive a specimen of a lecture,[5] descriptive of Mr. C.'s composition and reasoning, delivered at this time, and by which it will appear that his politics were not of that inflammable description which would ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... until four in the evening the enemy's entire force was in sight and forming for attack, yet in view of the strong position we held, and reasoning from the former course of the rebels during this campaign, nothing appeared so improbable as that they would assault. I was so confident in this belief that I did not leave General Schofield's headquarters until ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... not contain his indignation against this fallacious reasoning. He knew that his words might lose him a thousand livres; nevertheless he said bravely: "Monsieur le Marquis, it is such men as yourself who make the age what it is; it is philosophy such as yours that corrupts and ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... acknowledge it, and, in his own person, was the first object on which to exercise a wish hitherto unknown to her, to be herself loving and lovable. The boy's firm faith, which was not to be shaken by any reasoning or by any of the myths which she knew, touched her deeply and led to her asking Hannah what was the real bearing of one and another of his statements. It had always seemed a comfort to her that the miseries of our earthly life would come to an end with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... concerned, and we feel instinctively that we can succeed only by obeying these laws. The purely mental faculties are connected during life with material organs, and are hence subjected to precisely the same laws. If, therefore, we wish to improve these faculties—the reasoning powers, for example—we must exercise them regularly in tracing the cause and relations of things. In like manner, if our aim is the development of the sentiments of attachment, benevolence, justice, or respect, we must exercise each of them directly and for its own sake, otherwise neither it nor ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... which were paid to me yesterday. Ten thousand crowns in gold is a sum sufficiently ... (Aside, on perceiving ELISE and CLEANTE whispering together) Good heavens! I have betrayed myself; my warmth has carried me away. I believe I spoke aloud while reasoning with myself. (To CLEANTE and ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... a certain class of people who always shake their heads, and purse up their lips, at the mere suggestion of "chance," or "accident," having a fortunate or happy application. They do not apply the same train of reasoning to the reverse side of the picture; the bias of their nature is evidently suspicious. These are the minds that refuse to credit those little misfortunes of picnic and pleasure parties, by which young people lose themselves in mysterious ways, and get into wrong boats and carriages, ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... did have any reasoning power, Mary Virginia," said Laurence, with brotherly tact. "Our black cat Panch would put it all over you. Allow me to inform you I'm not biggity, miss! I'm logical—something a girl can't understand. And ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... of invincible discomfort, a far-away terror had momentarily frozen him. Without being guided by any clear train of reasoning, he had felt the need of protecting himself against any cowardly temptation, any possible abomination. He could not have told what course of ideas had induced him to write those four lines without a moment's delay, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the flesh of beasts and fishes; in bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial: and so in that glorious chapter which we read in the Burial Service, St. Paul tells the Corinthians, who went altogether by sense, and reasoning about the things which they could see and handle, that sense and reasoning were on his side, on God's side; and that the mysteries of faith, like the resurrection of the body, were not contrary to reason, but ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... earth's atmosphere was denser and more heavily charged with vapors than it is at present; yet even then forms of life suited to their environment existed, and from those forms the present inhabitants of our globe have been developed. There are several lines of reasoning which may be followed to the conclusion that Venus, as a life-bearing world, is younger than the earth, and, according to that view, we are at liberty to imagine our beautiful sister planet as now passing through some ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... "close up every hostile port, and the slow steamers and the helpless sailing ships might cross the seas in such security (privateering not being admissible) that merchandise would be as safe in the English ship as in the neutral." The fault in all this reasoning is that a ship of inferior speed is certain to meet with a swifter antagonist, and therefore become a capture. Our experience with the Confederate cruisers was that the efforts of a very large navy may be eluded and defied for years, without ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... strength and of weakness. He was the ablest polemic this country has ever produced. His command of strong, idiomatic, controversial English was unrivaled. His faculty of lucid statement and compact reasoning has never been surpassed. Without the graces of fancy or the arts of rhetoric, he was incomparable in direct, pungent, forceful discussion. A keen observer and an omnivorous reader, he had acquired an immense fund of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... to experimentally smash the most beautifully constructed theories which were advanced and taught in the colleges and universities of the world, and when he couldn't smash them by experimental evidence, to attack them from the standpoint of philosophical reasoning and to twist around the data on which they were built and make it prove, or seem to prove, the exact opposite of what was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... independent of their friendship to their comrades, they would in point of luxury prefer the plump, well-fed Chinese to their own emaciated shipmates. The first mandarin acquiesced in the justness of this reasoning, and told the Commodore that he should that night proceed for Canton; that on his arrival a council of mandarins would be summoned, of which he himself was a member, and that all that was demanded would be amply and speedily granted. ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... remembering Gail's gay company and the gloom of understanding the complete implications of the Colonel's clarifying lectures. Against the background of his remarks, I could find myself appreciating the Ghopal-Klueng-Natalenko reasoning: the only way to cut the Gordian knot was to have another Solar League ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... Virtuous less from reasoning and fixed principle, than from elegance, and a lovely delicacy of mind; naturally tender, even to excess; carried away by a romance of sentiment; the helpless sex are too easily seduced, by engaging their confidence, ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... to do after discussion, the decision of the question to those who raise it. It is of little avail to prove a work of art beautiful,—of less, to prove it ugly. Spectators and generations cannot be taken one by one and convinced. But where the operation of judgment is from the reasoning rather than from the intuitive nature, facts, opinions, and impressions ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... know it with my understanding, Ethel, but as to reasoning about her as if she was anybody else, the thing is mere mockery. What can my father be about?' he added, for the twentieth time. 'Talking to her in the morning always knocks her up. If he had only let me warn him; but he hurried me off in his ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that she could not understand. Life was too clearly simple to her. It was only the youth who was arguing with him, the youth with youth's pure-minded and invincible reasoning. Hers was only the boy's soul in a woman's body. He looked at her flushed, eager face, at the great ropes of hair coiled on the small head, at the rounded lines of the figure showing plainly through the home-made gown, and at the eyes—boy's eyes, under cool, ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... unequal." I stick to it still; it's the truth. They say it takes three generations to make a gentleman; nonsense utterly; it takes at least a dozen. You can't work out the common fibre in such a ridiculous hurry. That results as a simple piece of deductive reasoning from all modern theories ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... sum, and a generous desire to benefit his patron, he would never have risked in so uncertain a venture as that of quail-fighting. Although the facts were laid in the form of a dignified request instead of a demand by legal means, and the reasoning carefully drawn up in columns of fine parchment by a very illustrious writer, the reply which this person received showed him plainly that a wrong view had been taken of the matter, and that the time had arrived when it became necessary for him to make a ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... Lesbia alike agreed with Beric's reasoning; the former, indeed, himself took but comparatively little interest in what passed around him. The latter was, on the other hand, absorbed in the politics of the hour. She was connected with many noble families, and knew that a member of these might ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... possible to give instruction in this subject in such a manner as not only to confer knowledge which is useful in itself, but to serve the purpose of a training in accurate observation, and in the methods of reasoning of physical science."—Huxley. ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... the powers to declare war, to provide and maintain a navy, and to raise and support armies. At the same time, it would be a misuse of these powers and a violation of the Constitution to undertake to build upon them a great system of internal improvements. And similar reasoning applies to the assumption of any such power as is involved in that to establish post-roads and to regulate commerce. If the particular improvement, whether by land or sea, be necessary to the execution of the enumerated powers, then, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... looked upon the case more calmly. Arthur was very young and inexperienced; his decision could hardly be, as yet, irrevocable. Surely there was still time to win him back by gentle persuasion and reasoning from the dangerous path upon ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... hostility even greater than had met Cobden himself. In the Anti-Corn Law movement the two speakers were the complements and correlatives of each other. Cobden had the calmness and confidence of the political philosopher, Bright had the passion and the fervour of the popular orator. Cobden did the reasoning, Bright supplied the declamation, but like Demosthenes he mingled argument with appeal. No orator of modern times rose more rapidly to a foremost place. He was not known beyond his own borough when Cobden called him to his side in 1841, and he entered parliament towards ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Clip a newspaper editorial in which the reasoning is weak. (b) Criticise it. (c) ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Philippe, as the king, was shown to us. Here the poet, statesman, philosopher and orator, Lamartine, stood in February 1848, and, by the power of his eloquence, succeeded in keeping the people quiet. Here he forced the mob, braved the bayonets presented to his breast, and, by his good reasoning, induced them to retain the tri-coloured flag, instead of adopting the red flag, which he considered ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... this reasoning, he got the master of a neighbouring school to give me after-time lessons in mathematics and geography; and, in the course of a few months, I was able to be inducted into the mysteries of great circle sailing and the art of taking lunars, much ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and most prominent is the combustion theory, which, though bearing the seal of ages, is obnoxious both to common and philosophic reasoning. This theory presupposes a consumption of material beyond all conception, and the supply of which has been no small tax upon the scientific imagination. The source of this supply has been claimed to be the subsidence of useless worlds, and of asteroids, ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... And the number who may be justifiably advised to give any part of the time they spend at college to the study of painting or sculpture ought to depend, and finally must depend, on their being certified that painting and sculpture, no less than language, or than reasoning, have grammar and method,—that they permit a recognizable distinction between scholarship and ignorance, and enforce a constant distinction between ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... brain-light, so to call it, struck out by the surprise of this curious discovery. He felt his bellicose temper leap up furiously at being balked in a way so unexpected and withal so inexplicable. Of course he did not stand there reasoning it all out. The rush of impressions came, and at the same time he acted with promptness. Changing the rapier, which he held in his right hand, over into his left, he drew a small pistol from the breast ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... when I asked him to give me five pounds for this purpose. He told me it was impossible, as we had barely enough for the journey to China. As I left him I wondered why I seemed to have these gifts so definitely laid upon me to send away, when there was no money. Reasoning that if the thing were really of the Lord he could himself give me what he wished me to send, I put ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... governess, and does she make you give a reason for every thing, and give you her reason in return? That's what Dr. Strickland does with me. It tires me dreadfully, and I don't see what use it is, for I always know things without reasoning about them; they come ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... cultivation of the mind, he was an equally ardent supporter of the cultivation of the body. Indeed, the necessary dependence of the sanity of the one on the good keeping of the other, was one of his favourite theories, and one which, this day, he was supporting with pleasant and facetious reasoning. His Lordship was delighted with his new friend, and still more delighted with his new friend's theory. The Marquess himself was, indeed, quite of the same opinion as Mr. Grey; for he never made a speech without ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... rate, the note was not followed by action. Throughout the whole Summer the President maintained a correspondence with the Germans, distinguished by patient reasoning on his part and continual shiftings and equivocations on theirs. Meanwhile nothing was done; the public sentiment of the first days after the Lusitania had been sunk had slackened; division and dissension ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... first few miles I discovered abundance of excellent reasons for justifying the opinion of our neighbors. A young fellow, apparently in somewhat better circumstances, who came to take the seat beside me from preference, listened to my reasoning with inoffensive smiles. An approximate nearness of age, a similarity in ways of thinking, a common love of fresh air, and of the rich landscape scenery through which the coach was lumbering along,—these things, together with an indescribable magnetic something, drew ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... general idea of travel. He knew that he and his lord were on a journey together, that certain temporary separations were an unavoidable feature of this sort of traveling, and that, the journey done, the two of them would come together again. The sum of Jan's knowledge, his reasoning powers, and his faculties of observation and deduction were a hundredfold greater now than at the time of his ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... revelation that God had suffered the Maid to be taken because of her growing pride, because she loved fine clothes, and preferred her own will to any guidance. We do not know whether this contented the city of Rheims; similar reasoning however seems to have silenced France. Nobody uttered a protest, nor struck a blow; the mournful procession of Tours, where she had been first known in the outset of her career, the prayers of Orleans which she had delivered, are the only exceptions we know of. Otherwise there was ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... As a matter of fact he had taken elaborate, and, as it proved, unnecessary precautions to avoid such a consummation. Even now, the necessity passed, he did not alter his plans. Not that he was afraid of the red man. He had proven to himself by an incontrovertible process of reasoning that such was not the case. It was merely to avoid unpleasantness for himself and for the girl—particularly for the latter. Moreover, no possible object could be gained by such a meeting. Things were as they were and inevitable. He merely decided to hasten the move. It was the forming ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... shelter I turned without even a bid, unsaddled my horse and picketed him, and turned into the cabin for the night. Early the next morning I was out and saddled my horse, and the question was, Which way is camp? As soon as the sun rose clearly, I got my bearings. By my reasoning, if the river yesterday was south of camp, this morning the wagon must be north of the river, so I headed in that direction. Somehow or other I stopped my horse on the first little knoll, and looking back towards the bottom, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... deceived with airy shadows! The reasoning may be plausible, but it is no better than sophistry. Thou must be taught, fair and unsuspecting virgin, under a beautiful outside to apprehend deceit; and to guard against the thorn which closely environs the flower. Thou must learn, loveliest of thy sex, to dread ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... whether in or out of the Constitution, do not avail to justify and uphold slavery. Says Lord Mansfield in the famous Somerset case: "The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being now introduced by courts of justice upon mere reasoning or inferences from any principles, natural or political; it must take its rise from positive law; the origin of it can in no country or age be traced back to any other source. A case so odious as the condition of slaves, must be taken strictly." Grotius says, that "slavery places man ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... on his heel and made off without waiting for my answer. It never occurred to him that a reasoning being could refuse an introduction to Foedora. How can the fascination of a name be explained? FOEDORA haunted me like some evil thought, with which you seek to come to terms. A voice said in me, 'You are going to see Foedora!' In vain I reasoned with that voice, saying that it lied ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... my room I began thinking and reasoning about a wonderful change that I knew had crept all through me. If God should now come at any moment of the day or night and turn over every secret page of heart and mind, He would not find one thought or glimmer of any sort ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... of drink on the Indian is: to dethrone his; reason; cloud, even narcotize, his reasoning faculties; annul his self-control; confine and fetter all the gentler, enkindle and set ablaze, all the baser, emotions; of his nature, inciting him to acts lustful and bestial; and, with direful transforming power, to make the man the fiend, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... Pursuing this reasoning brought Madeline Taylor to the sycamore tree that night where Willis Hubbard's car waited. She went with Willis, not to please him, not to please herself, but to spite Ted Holiday. She had hinted to Ted she would do something desperate if he failed ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... supposed to be a very great event in the progress of the entire scheme, seeing that astronomy has taught us to regard such systems as no more than particles in the dust-cloud or grains of sand on the sea-shore. It must, then, in sober reasoning be admitted, that our mere abhorrence of so much destruction is no guidance to our judgment on this point; and that for anything we can see of the plans of Providence, an entanglement of our globe with a comet may take place any day, with consequences incalculably damaging ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... reasoning but a blind instinct that moved her to get up at length and go to the room that Guy had occupied for so long, the room that was Burke's. It was just as Guy had left it that morning. She noted mechanically ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... young Man, I confess, yet I honour the grey Head as much as any one; however, when in Company with old Men, I hear them speak obscurely, or reason preposterously (into which Absurdities, Prejudice, Pride, or Interest, will sometimes throw the wisest) I count it no Crime to rectifie their Reasoning, unless Conscience must truckle to Ceremony, and Truth fall a Sacrifice to Complaisance. The strongest Arguments are enervated, and the brightest Evidence disappears, before those tremendous Reasonings and dazling Discoveries of venerable old Age: You are young ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and his chief illustrations are sought in the history of Roman law. The topics of the other chapters are selected largely with a view to supplying confirmation of the theory in question and, as we shall see in a moment, Maine's later works do but serve to carry the train of reasoning a step further by the use of the Comparative Method in invoking evidence from other sources, notably from Irish and Hindu Law. Let us, however, confine ourselves for the moment to "Ancient Law." Maine works out the implications of his theory by ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... absorbed in his chain of reasoning that he scarcely heeded the interruption. "Twelve life convicts, which by the laws of this state means twelve murderers, men without mercy, who would hesitate at nothing, are for several days and nights close to a party of four who do not even keep a watch at night. Why do they ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Satan's reasoning, ever since the flood,—when specimens of every kind emerged from the ark,—have run through the veins of all human philosophy. Human reason is a blind guide, a continued series of mortal hypotheses, antagonistic to Revelation ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... solution. On such subjects she incessantly exercised her remarkably keen powers of analysis and investigation, and no doubt cultivated and strengthened her peculiar mental faculties and tendencies by the perpetual processes of metaphysical reasoning which she pursued. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... had failed, I was not discouraged. I thought of no other name. Everything else had been definitely abandoned. Without reasoning upon it I knew that the name was right, and I knew, as if by intuition, how to proceed to a conclusion. I tried again, and knew beforehand ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... after laboring for nearly three weeks under a morbid melancholy, which brought on stupor not unmixed with some indications of a disordered fancy, that the queen expired. During all this time she could neither by reasoning, entreaties, or artifices be brought to make trial of any medical aid, and with difficulty was persuaded to receive sufficient nourishment to sustain nature; taking also very little sleep, and that not in bed, but on cushions, where she would sit whole days motionless ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Jack? and with Jill? And still more with Joan? They cannot be permanently isolated, neither are they restrained by any "mythical ideas of sin." They have been educated to the idea that their highest duty is to enjoy themselves. Why should they not do what they like? And consequently, as any reasoning person can see, "The Inevitable" must happen; and where is your experiment and where the Coming Race? It is perfectly useless for doctrinaires to argue, as doctrinaires will, about ethical restraints. Nature has no ethical restraints; and any ethical restraints ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... Cockermouth, and partly with his maternal grandfather at Penrith. His first teacher appears to have been Mrs. Anne Birkett, a kind of Shenstone's Schoolmistress, who practised the memory of her pupils, teaching them chiefly by rote, and not endeavoring to cultivate their reasoning faculties, a process by which children are apt to be converted from natural logicians into impertinent sophists. Among his schoolmates here was Mary Hutchinson, who afterwards ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... This was logical reasoning enough for kings and their counsellors. There was much that might be said, however, in regard to special laws. There was no doubt that great countries, with all their livestock—human or otherwise—belonged to an individual, but ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... nakedness remained. He treated our prejudices and our effete institutions as though they were something external to us, which had come out of nowhere and could be flung into the void from whence they came. When you have called opinion a prejudice, or traced an institution to false reasoning, you have, after all, only exhibited an interesting zoological fact about human beings. We are exactly the sort of creature which evolves such prejudices. Godwin in unwary moments would talk as though aristocracy and positive law had come to us from without, by a sort of diabolic revelation. This, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... weighty scholar, pressed down and running over with the produce of immense research, to demonstrate how common men in a barbarous age were tempted and demoralised by the tremendous power over pain, and death, and hell. We have to learn by what reasoning process, by what ethical motive, men trained to charity and mercy came to forsake the ancient ways and made themselves cheerfully familiar with the mysteries of the torture-chamber, the perpetual prison, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... companions. That the selection of the white box occurs in various ways in different individuals, and even in the same individual at different periods in the training process, is the only indication of anything suggestive of implicit reasoning. Naturally enough comparison of the two boxes is the first method of selection. It takes the dancers a surprisingly long time to reach the point of making this comparison as soon as they are confronted by the entrances to the two ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... and down the room; "it is impossible that it should be a mere coincidence. The very pills which I suspected in the case of Drebber are actually found after the death of Stangerson. And yet they are inert. What can it mean? Surely my whole chain of reasoning cannot have been false. It is impossible! And yet this wretched dog is none the worse. Ah, I have it! I have it!" With a perfect shriek of delight he rushed to the box, cut the other pill in two, dissolved ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with much interest to an exposition of the evils of salt. Salted food, I was told, is the cause of our troubles. We are salted and dried until all power of recuperation is driven out of our nerves and muscles. I was asked to study the subject. The theory was well supported by scientific reasoning and evidence, and on the following evening I had thoroughly entered into the saltless ideal. A vision of the dispirited haddock had materially assisted my conclusion when a visitor was announced. He was preceded by a card showing impressively that he was a man of learning in theories ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... proof of this. He could not explain why he accepted it as fact. He merely wrote it down as one of his hunches. And with his old-time faith in the result of that subliminal reasoning, he counted what remained of his money, paid his bills, and sailed from Kingston northward as a steerage passenger in a United Fruit ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... feelings are quick, his fancy lively, and his taste good. Talents for speculation and original inquiry he has none, nor has he formed the invaluable habit of pushing things up to their first principles, or of collecting dry and unamusing facts as the materials for reasoning. All the solid and masculine parts of his understanding are left wholly without cultivation; he hates the pain of thinking, and suspects every man whose boldness and originality call upon him to defend his ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... then why—" He stopped himself. Any "why" required inductive reasoning, and of that the Cow was not capable. Instead of asking why they were moving north with a south thrust, Mike broke his question into parts. He'd have to answer the ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond |
