"Special pleading" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better carried on upon the barrister principle of special pleading upon two sides before an impartial ignorant tribunal, to whom things have got to be explained, than it would be if nobody were to maintain any opinion in which he ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... The threat at the beginning of this, and also in the following paragraph, is characteristic; it was tried, but without effect, on other occasions. The insinuations and special pleading throughout these paragraphs are amply answered in the letters of Lord Clarendon and the Hon. R. Boyle, which follow this extraordinary address, which abounds alternately and successively in affected helplessness ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... by Abacucks Prickett, a servant of Sir Dudley Digges, whom the Mutineers had Saved in hope to procure his Master to worke their Pardon." Purchas wrote that "this report of Prickett may happely bee suspected by some as not so friendly to Hudson." Being essentially a bit of special pleading, intended to save his own neck and the necks of his companions, it has rested always under the suspicion that Purchas cast upon it. Nor is it relieved from suspicion by the fact that it is in accord with his sworn testimony, and ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... the former case, it can no longer be produced when the organism perishes; in the latter case, that it ceases to sustain the organism is a proof that it has itself decayed."22 In this specious bit of special pleading, unwarranted postulates are assumed and much confusion of thought is displayed. It is covertly taken for granted that every thing seen in a given phenomenon is either product or producer; but something may be an accompanying part, involved in the conditions of the phenomenon, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and its purpose so perverted, that its ideas are mere fantasy to common men. Whether the artist becomes poet or philosopher, moralist or founder of a religion, his sexual doctrine is nothing but a barren special pleading for pleasure, excitement, and knowledge when he is young, and for contemplative tranquillity when he is old and satiated. Romance and Asceticism, Amorism and Puritanism are equally unreal in the great ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... the consideration of the reader. Ever since the completion of the fatal experiment which ruined Sutherland, the noble family through which it was originated and carried on have betrayed the utmost jealousy of having its real results made public. Volumes of special pleading have been written on the subject; pamphlets have been published; laboured articles have been inserted in widely-spread reviews; statistical accounts have been watched over with the most careful surveillance. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... races lose that morale and discipline which come from contests with their military peers, so minds steeped in the degrading atmosphere of Oriental diplomacy become inevitably corrupted, and lose the fine distinction between right and wrong. But so specious a piece of special pleading cannot serve Clive's turn. English diplomacy at home and abroad has always, with the rarest exceptions, plumed itself on its truthfulness, and has often been successful by reason of that very truthfulness. The practically unanimous condemnation which Clive's countrymen then and since have ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... think that Pitt is guilty in this merely of special pleading, that he is putting forward excuses for his hero. I think that in those days there was a good deal to oppress Peter Blood. There was the thought of Arabella Bishop—and that this thought loomed large in his mind we are not permitted to doubt. ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... idea of letting him off on definitions and general rules, and he plunged at once into special pleading, as presented by Chitty, in his chapter on Replications. No severer test could have been applied, and the young men thought it a little rough. Bart answered the questions with some care, and gave the reason of ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... Tennyson in artistic technique is Virgilian, we are aware of the style; but both Virgil and Tennyson remain classic in matter, in universality, and the elemental in man. Browning in substance is Euripidean, being individualistic, psychologic, problematic, with special pleading; classicism had departed from him, and left not even the style behind. The great opposition lies in the subject of interest. Is it to know ourselves in others? Then art which is widely interpretative of the common nature of man results. Is ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... The men whose names are best known to you in British literature are at the service of the government and at this moment are writing exclusively for the Foreign Office. They are engaged in answering the special pleading of the Germans and in writing monographs, appeals for recruits, explanations of why England is at war. They do not sign what they write. They are, of course, not paid for what they write. They have their reward in knowing that to direct public opinion ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... eminent theologian, the Hulsean Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He declares, "No attempt at reconciling genesis with the exacting requirements of modern sciences has ever been known to succeed without entailing a degree of special pleading or forced interpretation to which, in such a question, we should be ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... entered; and that some of the other charges may not be crimes, after all. There is still room for a wide difference of opinion on many points involved in the design of reinforced concrete, and too much zeal for conviction, combined with such skill in special pleading as this paper exhibits, may possibly serve to obscure the truth, rather than to ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... is for ever crying out for someone to give her keener sympathy, fuller appreciation, and exhibit herself and her grievances to the world in a true light. The result is that kind of insincerity and special pleading which has been the curse of Irish or Anglo-Irish literature. I write of a literature which has its natural centre in Dublin, not in Connemara; which looks eastward, not westward. That literature begins ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... preliminary interviews with the Lord High Admiral and the Lord Treasurer at Hampton Court, where the queen was then residing. The plundering business was warmly discussed between himself and the Admiral, and there was much quibbling and special pleading in defence of the practices which had created so much irritation and pecuniary loss in Holland. There was a good deal of talk about want of evidence and conflict of evidence, which, to a man who felt as sure of the facts and of the law as the Dutch envoy did—unless ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... two days to show some of his colleagues, and then returned them. One single extract was published by the Journal Officiel—a German report upon the defences of Paris. No man in the House of Commons is more fond of special pleading than Sir Roundell Palmer. When anyone complains of it, the reply is, that he teaches some children their catechism on Sundays. So, when anyone ventures to question the veracity of Trochu, one is told that he has adopted ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... years Lord Campbell delighted to trace his legal pedigree to the great pleader and 'pupillizer' of the last century, Tom Warren. The chart ran thus: "Tom Warren had for pupil Sergeant Runnington, who instructed in the mysteries of special pleading the learned Tidd, who was the teacher of John Campbell." With honest pride and pleasant vanity the literary Chancellor maintained that he had given the genealogical tree another generation of forensic honor, as Solicitor General Dundas and Vaughan Williams, of the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... had studied his profession with Judge James Prescott, who was impeached and removed from the office of Judge of Probate for the county of Middlesex in the year 1821. Judge Prescott, whom I never saw, was a good lawyer in his time, especially in the department of special pleading. That branch of the profession was then passing away, but there were lawyers who lived by their skill in preparing answers, rejoinders, sur-rejoinders, rebutters, and sur-rebutters. Russell had acquired a large amount of special ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... style, but indiscriminating in its defense of Massachusetts and without any understanding of the purpose and attitude of the English authorities. In somewhat the same class are G. E. Ellis, The Puritan Age (1888), a dry book but less given to special pleading, and Justin Winsor, The Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols. (1880-1882), a series of essays with elaborate notes and bibliographies, presenting in a fragmentary way the conventional view of the period. Less frankly favorable to New England is J. ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... interpolates] as in former letters specified." If he had not then "ingaged" (as Robinson intimates), as an Adventurer, he surely did later, contrary to the pastor's prediction, and the above may have been a bit of special pleading. Robinson naturally wished to keep their, affairs, so far as possible, in known and supposedly friendly hands, and had possibly some assurances that, as a merchant, Pickering would be willing to invest in a ship for which he could get a good charter for an ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... in this pathetic piece of special pleading is, that man may sink himself below the brute, may wallow in filth like the swine, may turn his home into a hell, beat and torture his children, forsake the marriage-bed for foul rivals; yet all ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
