"Illogical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Americans; the British, in turn, looked upon our blockade-runners which entered the French ports exactly as we regarded, at a later date, the British steamers that ran into Wilmington and Charleston. It is curious to see how illogical writers are. The careers of the Argus and Alabama for example, were strikingly similar in many ways, yet the same writer who speaks of one as an "heroic little brig," will call the other a "black pirate." Of course there can be no possible comparison as to the causes ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... metastasis. As it is the proliferation of the myeloid tissue and not the accompanying swelling of spleen or lymph glands that is specific in the process, the nomenclature "lienomedullary or medullary-lymphatic" leukaemia must also be described as illogical ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... grave at all. Now let us seriously consult about this unhappy affair. Ah, duelling, duelling! how wicked, childish, illogical, despotic, bloody, and at the same time ludicrous it is! Come, you have lost your key, you say—we cannot go to your lodgings: let us find a room in the 'Raleigh,' and arrange this ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... above all pity and sympathize with us when we defiled ourselves, because we couldn't help it, and they believed it. We told them they didn't really care for moral probity in man, and they believed it. We told them they had no brains, that they were illogical, unreasoning, and incapable of thought in the true sense of the word, and, by Jove! they took all that for granted, such was their beautiful confidence in us, and never even tried to think—until one day, when, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... surprising that such a substance, if taken into the stomach, should cause digestive disturbance. Fat in itself is a very valuable food, and the objection to fried foods because they may be fat seems illogical. If they supply burned fat there is a good reason for suspicion. Many housekeepers cook bacon in the oven on a wire broiler over a pan and believe it more wholesome than fried bacon. The reason, of course, is that ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... treasury of knowledge in history how we are deceived! All attempts of philosophy to reconcile what the moral world demands with what the real world gives is belied by experience, and nature seems as illogical in history as she is ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... efforts, the Abolitionists of this country have drawn inferences, which appear to be not only illogical, but false. Because individuals in their own community have aroused their fellow citizens to correct their own evils, therefore they infer that attempts to convince their fellow-citizens of the faults of another community will lead that community to ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... extremely illogical, as was demonstrated a few days later, when one of the other "alternatives" was adopted with success. This successful movement was essentially the same as that which had been previously made to ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... sent Jimmy a letter. It was confused and incoherent—a series of half-completed, illogical, but shyly joyous sentences, out of which Jimmy gathered much: a little from what was written; more from what was left unwritten. After all, did he ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... Schoolmistresses, again, will sometimes come near boasting to the inquiring parent of our "ethical hour," and if you probe the facts you will find that means no more and no less than an hour of floundering egotism, in which a poor illogical soul, with a sort of naive indecency, talks nonsense about "Ideals," about the Higher and the Better, about Purity, and about many secret and sacred things, things upon which wise men are often profoundly uncertain, to incredulous or imitative children. All that is needed to do this sort of thing ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... and of history will be disposed to recognize that, in a democratic country governed as this is by the suffrage of its citizens and given over as this is to the principle and practice of educating women, a distinction based on difference of sex is artificial and illogical, and thus suspicious.... For myself, I believe that ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... now and then in those halls of justice, which remain all too frequently closed to the living wave of public sentiment, some more intelligent and serene judge who is touched by this painful understanding of the actual human life. Then he may, under the illogical conditions of penal justice, with its compromise between the exactness of the classic and that of the positive school of criminology, seek for some expedient which may ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... friend. He first saw Jos sliding down from a third-story balcony on a tin waterspout. In the light of later years Escosura felt that in this boyish prank the child was father of the man. The boy who preferred waterspouts to stairways, later in life always scorned the beaten path, and "the illogical road, no matter how venturesome and hazardous it was, attracted him to it by virtue of that sort of fascinating charm which the abyss exercises over certain eminently nervous temperaments." The belief that Espronceda ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... parents. What right had he to point it out to them, and above all how was he to do it? He halted irresolutely at what he believed was his sober second thought, but which, like most reflections that take that flattering title, was only a reaction as impulsive and illogical as the emotion that ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... over the whole melancholy tale of what is called Christian history. When Archbishop Cranmer overpowered the reluctance of young Edward VI. to burn to death the pious and innocent Joan of Kent, who moreover was as mystical and illogical as heart could wish, was Cranmer not actuated by deep religious convictions? None question his piety, yet it was an awfully wicked deed. What shall I say of Calvin, who burned Servetus? Why have I been so slow to learn, that religion is an impulse which animates us to execute ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... filled with tears; she was unhappy, and, as always, this knowledge roused in Maudelain a sort of frenzied pity and a hatred, quite illogical, of all other things existent. She was unhappy, that only he comprehended: and for her to ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... the realm of the knowable, so as to leave no place for the poet's, or the philosopher's view of the world. The scientific investigator who, like Mr. Tyndall, so far forgets the limitations of his province as to use his natural data as premises for religious or irreligious conclusions, is as illogical as the popular preacher, who attacks scientific conclusions because they are not consistent with his theological presuppositions. Looking only at their primary aspects, we cannot say that religious presuppositions and the scientific interpretation of facts are either ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... away,—yes, you dog, for you did run away, don't deny it,—well, what with sorrow for the loss of you, and trouble with your mother, for she declared I had driven you from home by not encouraging you to write, and women are most illogical and unreasonable when they once get a fixed idea into their heads,—well, between one and the other of you I had a very bad time. The fact remained that you were gone, never gave us any address, and I got all the blame for it. But the thing that annoyed Mum more than anything else was my everlasting ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... (1888-96).—After the Democrats had settled down to the enjoyment of their hard-earned victory, President Cleveland in his message of 1887 attacked the tariff as "vicious, inequitable, and illogical"; as a system of taxation that laid a burden upon "every consumer in the land for the benefit of our manufacturers." Business enterprise was thoroughly alarmed. The Republicans characterized the tariff message as a free-trade assault upon the industries ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... of our writing.) Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in his conversation? You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him! All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people to those who are not used to them. Try him ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... words have no technical class-name; they are merely extreme examples of the ambiguity common to most words, which grows up naturally from divergence of meaning. True homophones are separate words which have, or have acquired, an illogical fortuitous identity.] ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... qualifications for Yoga is "right notion" "Right notion" means that the thought shall correspond with the outside truth; that a man shall he fundamentally true, so that his thought corresponds to fact; unless there is truth in a man, Yoga is for him impossible. Missing the point, illogical, stupid, making the important, unimportant and vice versa. Lastly, instability: which makes Yoga impossible, and even a small amount of which makes Yoga futile; the unstable man cannot be ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... of his system unnecessarily difficult, to say nothing of his illogical arrangement in the grammar of the art of memory, which he makes the first of his lessons. He analyzes ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... their virtues will get them what they want, and at times their vices, and at other times they will be neither punished nor rewarded; in fine, Madam, they will be just human beings stumbling through illogical lives with precisely that lack of common-sense which so pre-eminently distinguishes all our ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... his father struck me as an ideal blending of affectionate comradeship with old-fashioned respect.[E] True, this was in Philadelphia, "the City of Homes," and even there it may have been an exceptional case. I am not so illogical as to pit a single observation against (presumably) a wide induction; I merely offer for what it is ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... inclined to punish others most harshly where we ourselves are most guilty. And there is still another side to the matter. When an honest, well-conducted woman commits petty crimes, she does not consider them as crimes, she is unaware of their immorality, and it would be illogical for her to see as a crime in others that which she does not recognize as a crime in herself. It is for this reason that she tends to excuse her neighbor's derelictions. Now, when we try to find out from ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... not come—why should he, on her account? Between them all was over—why should he? The question was absurd in her mind, and yet the fact that she had expected him, that she so WANTED him, was so illogical and incongruous and vividly true that it raised her to a sitting posture on the log, and she ran her fingers over her forehead and down her dazed face until her chin was in the hollow of her hand, and her startled ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... history. But a Christianity which tells us to think of Christ doing good, but to forget and put out of sight Christ risen from the dead, is not true to life. It is as delusive to the conscience and the soul as it is illogical ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... illogical, dogmatic way women seem to have, she had attached this antagonistic influence to his new abode. Was ever anything so absurd! "You'll never finish Romilly here." ... Why not? Was this her idea of the luxury that saps the springs of action and brings a man down to indolence and dropping out ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... the high mantel-shelf and her head against her hand, Celia stood looking down on the vacant hearth. There was something of weariness in the attitude. What a delicate bit of porcelain she seemed! Allan had a sudden, illogical vision of a fire of blazing logs, and himself and Celia ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... patronized by his wife. I neither excuse nor blame her for thus deciding and transacting. Should I censure, a majority of my readers—nearly all of the masculine portion—would pick holes in my unpractical philosophy, scout my reasoning as illogical, brand my conclusions as pernicious—winding up their protest with the sigh of the mazed disciples, when stunned by the great Teacher's deliverance upon the subject of divorce, "If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... defiance of the dogmatic injunctions of Paul, have entered the vineyard of practical reform, while still maintaining the anomalous position of defending the verbal inspiration of the New Testament. This singularly illogical position, however, is always met with in a transition period, when a larger and more purposeful life is struggling with time-hallowed traditions and the memories and teachings made almost sacred by the childlike ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... performing duties for which they were mentally well suited. But those militant days are past. Animal strength and brute force are no longer needed in the councils of the nation; and the time has arrived when women should cease to be oppressed by the disparaging, illogical deductions of former generations, and when their assistance ought to be invoked in the great work of promoting the ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... had practical experience of the scientific stove. I want the old-fashioned, unsanitary, wasteful, illogical, open fireplace. I want the heat to go up the chimney, instead of stopping in the room and giving me a headache, and making everything go round. When I come in out of the snow I want to see a fire—something that says to me with a ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... rectorship of the parish of Cailsham. Sally was then fourteen years of age. Her mother, one of those hard yet well-featured women upon whom the struggle of life wears with but little ill-effect, had endeavoured to bring her up in the first belief of social importance consistent, to an illogical mind, with the teachings of her husband's calling. But she had failed. It was grained in the nature of Sally to let the morrow take thought for the things of itself. The other three children, the boy up at Oxford, the two girls, one older, the other younger ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... more unphilosophical and illogical than to compare the young doctor, or any other young professional man, to a new piece of machinery, fresh from the manufactory, complete and perfect in all its parts? And yet something like this is attempted in the article before us. Even as Minerva sprang from the brain ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... and the ages of carp and pike, must probably have referred. He often mentions "Sir Francis Bacon's" History of Life and Death, which is included in the volume. No doubt it would be more reasonable and more "congruous" that Bacon's book should suggest Bacon. But there it is. That illogical "succession of ideas" which puzzled my Uncle Toby, invariably recalls to me, not the imposing folio to be purchased "next to the Mytre Tauerne" in Fleet Street, but the unpretentious eighteenpenny octavo which, two years later, was on sale at Richard Marriot's in St. Dunstan's churchyard ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... which involved more delay than on the surface appears. The bunkers of this ship and of her sister, the Columbia, are minutely subdivided,—an arrangement very suitable, even imperative, in a battleship, in order to localize strictly any injury received in battle, but inconsequent and illogical in a vessel meant primarily for speed. A moment's reflection upon the services required of cruisers will show that their efficiency does not depend merely upon rapid going through the water, but upon prompt readiness to leave port, of which promptness quick ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... in England, or in the world!" cried her lover; and now he was close at her side. Her hand, she knew not how, rested in his own. Something of the honesty and freedom from coquetry of the young woman's nature showed in her next speech, inconsequent, illogical, almost unmaidenly in its swift sincerity ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... an indication of its having experienced life in the past, as well as anticipating life in the future—there is a sense of "oldness" pervading every thought of the soul regarding its own nature. It is claimed as an illogical assumption to hold that back of the present there extends an eternity of non-existence for the soul, while ahead of it there extends an eternity of being—it is held that it is far more logical to regard the present life as merely a single point in ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... chief personage, and, as he had the habit of monopolizing the talk when he took any part, it was suggested that I should try my strength against his. Although Emerson had a high opinion of Alcott, he seemed to me a shallow and illogical thinker, and I have always felt that the good opinion of Emerson was due rather to the fact that Alcott presented him with his own ideas served up in forms in which he no longer recognized them, and so appeared to Emerson as original. Such originality as he had was rather in ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... keys of the rooms on the first and second floor to make a visitation. The first door that I opened revealed the meaning of the phrases which I took for mad ravings; and I saw the length to which covetousness goes when it survives only as an illogical instinct, the last stage of greed of which you find so many examples among misers in ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... loving mother to throw her child into the Ganges. Nature never prompted men to exterminate each other for a difference of opinion concerning the baptism of infants. These crimes have been produced by religions filled with all that is illogical, cruel and hideous. These religions were produced for the most part by ignorance, tyranny, and hypocrisy. Under the impression that the infinite ruler and creator of the universe had commanded the destruction of heretics ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... And so undoubtedly they might, if we were all childish enough to rush into a supernatural explanation whenever a natural explanation is found sufficient to account for the facts. Once admit the glaringly illogical principle that we may assume the operation of higher causes where the operation of lower ones is sufficient to explain the observed phenomena, and all our science and all our philosophy are scattered to the winds. For the ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... did not England interpose? There were a great many reasons given, but I think they were all various inferences from one reason; indirect results and sometimes quite illogical results, of what we have called the Germanisation of England. First, the very insularity on which we insisted was barbaric, in its refusal of a seat in the central senate of the nations. What we ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... Confederate Army, and he is said to have been a very religious man.) In this sentence two distinct thoughts are embodied, and in such a way that their relation to each other is altogether illogical. The effect is not that of a single thought. To possess unity the two or more thoughts of a compound sentence should sustain some particular relation, like cause and effect, contrast, series, details ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... system, which is as universal as the renting system, is even more illogical and oppressive. The utter viciousness of both systems in their mutual dependence is sufficiently illustrated by the single fact that, after fourteen years of freedom and labor on their own account, the great mass of the negroes depend for their living on an ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... nothing seems to me more illogical than the argument that this power is acquired by a grant from the Congress, connected with the other argument that Congress have not got the power to do the act themselves; that is to say, that the recipient takes ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... was trying to shake off a haunting feeling that was enveloping him like a mist—a feeling that everything the young Englishman was saying he had heard before. It left him dazed, and made Durwent's voice sound far away. He tried to dismiss it as an illogical prank of the mind, but the thing was relentless. He could not rid himself of the thought that sometime in the past—months, years, perhaps centuries ago—this pitiful scene had ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... was thoroughly illogical, of course; it left the question whether slaves are population or chattels for theorizers to wrangle over, and for future events to decide. It was easy for James Wilson to show that there was neither rhyme nor reason in it: but he subscribed to it, nevertheless, just as the northern ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... he said. "You'll think I'm an illogical sort of person, but I've changed my mind about your role in ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... see for themselves after meeting his allusion to the massacre at Perugia in 1859 as in some sort a defensive action on the part of the papal troops. Mr. Hare's reasoning on all that relates to this subject is weak and illogical, sometimes puerile. Any one who loves what is venerable and picturesque must share the impatience and regret with which he sees so much beauty and antiquity disappearing before the besom of progress or the rage for improvement, especially in Rome. But we must remember that Italy is not the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... and last, and, by all tales, not worth an owld tobacco-pipe." Thus adjured, and somewhat embarrassed by the stern attitude I had adopted, I suffered myself to be invested with a considerable quantity of what is called "wild-cat stock," in which this excellent if illogical female had been squandering her hard-earned gold. It could scarce be said to better my position, but the step quieted the woman; and, on the other hand, I could not think I was taking much risk, for the shares in question (they were those of what I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... awkward units of value for any one accustomed to a decimal coinage: so unreasonable and illogical," the stranger continued blandly, turning over the various pieces with a dubious ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... continue our coinage of silver at a ratio different from that of any other nation. The most vital part of the silver-coinage act remains inoperative and unexecuted, and without an ally or friend we battle upon the silver field in an illogical and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... nature's own system. But our philosophy of matter cannot overturn any truth, because, if erroneous, it will necessarily sink into oblivion; if real, it will tend only to instruct and to enlighten the world. Wise are ye in your generation, O ye sages of Gaur, yet withal wondrous illogical." And ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... upon his feet pacing up and down the narrow room. To lose an object one cares for most is one thing; to have it filched by another is something very different. He was elemental, this man from the plains, and in some phases very illogical. The ways of the higher civilization, where man loves many times, where he dines and wines in good fellowship with him who is the husband of a former love—these were not his ways. White anger was in his heart, not against the woman, but against that other man. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... On a division the amendment was rejected by a majority of three hundred and forty-nine against two hundred and twenty-six. The house having thus pronounced in favour of the principle of a sliding-scale of corn-duties, it might have seemed illogical and superfluous afterwards to discuss a proposition of which the affirmative had been involved in the preceding decision; namely, whether corn should be subjected to any duties at all. Nothing daunted, however, Mr. Villiers brought forward ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... it may be, but error is often popular. The work is illogical, and not altogether in harmony with facts." Benjamin's criticisms impressed Mr. Watts somewhat, though he thought he ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... It seemed suddenly as though she craved with all her soul the protecting shadows of the tenement, and that every impulse bade her cling there, flattened against the wall, until she could make her escape. She was afraid now; she shrank from the next step. It wasn't illogical. She had set out with a purpose in view, and she had not been blind to the danger that she ran, but the prospective and mental encounter with danger did not hold the terror that the tangible, concrete and actual presence of that peril did—and ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... torture, and slower death. Was it just to himself to choose the latter, simply because human law had made a mistake and put him outside the human race? The answer was obvious enough; but while his intelligence made it promptly, something else within him—some illogical emotion—seemed to lag behind with ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Mr. Eassie, she has only seen the world in soirees. Every girl has her day-dreams, and Clarrie has perhaps made a dream of me. She is impulsive, given to idealisation, and hopelessly illogical." ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... learned and logical are accused by other learned and logical of false assumptions, of invalid reasoning, of foregone conclusions, of pride and prejudice and passion. One would say that the result of your profound researches was only to make you more intensely illogical than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... hopeless people," said Del Ferice. "They are utterly illogical, and it is impossible to deal with them. If you like old cities, why do you not like old women? Why would you not rather paint Donna Tullia's old Countess ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... upon curious personal matters—matters upon which a lawyer or a doctor should rather be consulted. He himself had never encouraged such confidences. What did he keep curates for? His curates had saved him many a long hour of talk with inconsequent men and illogical women who had come to him with their stories. What were to him the stories of men whose wives were giving them trouble? What were to him the stories of wives who had difficulties with their housemaids or who could not keep their boys from reading ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... her life as practically finished. The past and the present were moulding her into something that only the future could determine. Sometimes April, sometimes July, sometimes witch, sometimes woman; impetuous, intrepid, romantic, tempestuous, illogical,—these were but the elements of which the coming years of experience had yet to shape a character. Young Mrs. Loring had plenty of briars, but she had good roots and in favorable soil would be ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... examined the bonnet of the manse housekeeper, while Knox stood in the breach for the liberties of Scotland, and when Carmichael began to meddle with Mary, he distinctly lost the sympathies of his audience and entered on dangerous ground. Scots allow themselves, at times, the rare luxury of being illogical, and one of the occasions is their fondness for Queen Mary. An austere Puritan may prove that this young woman was French in her ways, an enemy to the Evangel, a born and practised flirt, and art and part ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... there was no hope. On the other hand, we have it in our power to attempt that very education of which you speak. She has brains, and doesn't belong to the vulgar. It seems to me that you are moved by illogical impulses—and certainly anything ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... turned her face to the wall and went to sleep, leaving Aunt Molly powdering her nose and asking mother, "Does it look all right now—" and adding, "Oh, I'm such a fool." In so illogical a world, the reader must not be allowed to think that Molly Brownwell lamented the folly of mourning for a handsome young gentleman in blue serge with white spats on his shoes and a Byronic collar and a fluffy necktie of the period. Far be it from her to lament that sentiment as folly; however, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... paper controverting the theory of the sun's motion. The paper was declined with thanks by that bigoted body 'as opposed to Newtonian astronomy.' 'That paper I published,' says Mr. Reddie, 'in September 1863, with an appendix, in both thoroughly exhibiting the illogical reasoning and absurdities involved in the theory; and with what result? The members of Section A of the British Association, and Fellows of the Royal Society and of the Royal Astronomical Society, to whom I sent copies of my paper, were, without exception, dumb.' ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... is as diverse from the living Lord God, the creator of heaven and earth. Nay, this equivoque on God is as mischievous as it is illogical: it is the sword and buckler ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... the attention of the hearer to another subject; suggests an irrelevant fact or makes a remark, which confuses him and gives him something to think about; throws dust into his eyes; states some truth, from which he is quite sure his hearer will draw an illogical and untrue conclusion, and the like. Bishop Butler seems distinctly to sanction such a proceeding, in a passage which I ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... factor is added, an emotion, the love of the German fatherland. Understanding and logic must share the supremacy with love, no, what am I saying—they must be subordinate to love; yes, actually subordinate. So I too am quite ready to be at times illogical for love of the fatherland. Yes, my dear count, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... would,' I said: 'for although I confess you are logically right in your conclusions, I know Sir Thomas did not mean anything of the sort. He was only misled by his love of antithesis into a hasty and illogical remark. The whole tone of his book is against such a conclusion. Besides, I do not doubt he was thinking only of good people, for whom he believed all suffering ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... through the gate and Kit resumed his walk, struggling with an annoyance he felt was illogical. He knew something about Bell's household and imagined that Janet's life was not smooth. He was sorry for her, and it was, of course, unjust to blame her for her father's deeds. All the same, the favor she had sometimes shown him was embarrassing. He was not ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... may be quarrelled with as illogical, but the feeling that led to it was beautiful beyond question; and, indeed, all her ideas on that subject ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... might say too much. She admired his persevering industry, but had begun to feel that he was slipping away from her and devoting himself to his farm. Sometimes she indulged an angry jealousy, and then tried to persuade herself it was illogical. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... else too. They are common Englishmen, and, as Father Newman complains, "hard to be worked up to the dogmatic level". They are not eager to press the tenets of their party to impossible conclusions. On the contrary, the way to lead them—the best and acknowledged way—is to affect a studied and illogical moderation. You may hear men say, "Without committing myself to the tenet that 3 2 make 5, though I am free to admit that the honourable member for Bradford has advanced very grave arguments in behalf of it, I think I may, with the permission of the Committee, assume that ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... Observatory, and other scientific associations. At this juncture the discoveries of Captain Inglefield, R. N., in Smith Sound, afforded to Kane a new route for his activities. The scheme, as far as the search for Franklin was concerned, was well-meaning, but none the less fallacious and illogical. Kane was personally cognizant of the fact that Franklin had gone into Lancaster Sound, and had wintered in 1845-46 at Beechy Island, plainly following the direct and positive orders of the Admiralty, that he should push southward ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... when we enter on the examination of the dogma of evolution, we find its parentage among ignoble superstitions; its fundamental facts still lie in the darkness of ignorance and assumption; and its reasoning is illogical and absurd. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... scowling at the eight foot high grass. Usually about a foot high, the hardy and ubiquitous purple grass of Naraka grew far more lushly around the edges of the swamps. He felt that it would be a risky business at best to plunge into it after an unknown number of enemy. At the same time he had an illogical determination not to leave the bodies of his men in the hands of the Rumi. He looked at the broad, big-mouthed exaggerations of Irish faces around him, heaved a sigh that came from deep in his chest and ordered, "All right, men. Spread out. Keep low and keep your eyes open. And ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... the University of Illinois Experiment Station shows by numerous experiments, and reiterates again and again, that shear rods do not act until the beam has cracked and partly failed. This being the case, a shear rod is an illogical element of design. Any element of a structure, which cannot act until failure has started, is not a proper element of design. In a steel structure a bent plate which would straighten out under a small stress and then resist final rupture, would be a menace to the rigidity ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... failures, and of my victories. Yes, I write the word proudly, victories, for I have been beyond my hopes successful. How well I remember my dear mother's distress at my queer notions, as she called them—her entreaties, her tender illogical protests against my making myself "conspicuous"! Dear mother! I can see now that it was very natural she should have disliked and dreaded my becoming a "strong-minded woman," for anything narrower than her ideas of a woman's education and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... did." The joyous look on his face was gone now—his hand had fallen to his side. "It gets to be more of a muddle every day—" and then he added, with the illogical reasoning of youth—"all the lawyers that ever lived couldn't paint a picture like ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... much better known to that public than we are, Miss West. It's our little vanity—rather harmless after all. We're a pretty decent lot, sometimes absurd, especially in our tragic moments; sometimes emotional, usually illogical, often impulsive, frequently tender-hearted as well ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... with smallpox and cholera is illogical, for these diseases endanger the innocent public, while the man who makes use of prostitution is quite aware of the danger he runs. Society is under no obligation to provide healthy prostitutes for the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... her knees, putting her hands over her face down which the tears were streaming, those strange illogical tears which are life's tribute to death, however it may come. Yet even while she wept, phrases of thanksgiving sang melodiously through her brain and echoed in her heart. For to this brother of hers it had been given to redeem a life of ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... to recount his small adventures to Caesar in the evenings and was encouraged to form his own conclusions from what he had noticed and to confirm existing ideas from actual life. Such conclusions and ideas were naturally often childish and illogical, but Caesar never appeared to find them laughable and would give careful and illuminating consideration to ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... interpretation is simplified; for if we consider the mobility of the sun and how it is in a certain sense the soul and heart of the universe, it is not illogical to say that it gives not only light, but also motion to the bodies round it. In this manner, by the standing still of the sun at Joshua's command, the day might be lengthened without disturbing the order of the universe ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... of fact our position regarding the whole matter is illogical and unsatisfactory, and we ought to alter it by honestly facing the facts that we cannot satisfactorily prove that our symbol was adopted as a representation of the instrument of execution to which Jesus was affixed, and that we do not even know for certain that the ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... There is nothing so illogical as accidents. They are bound by no rules, and we cannot profit by one, as we might ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... to my lot, I am determined to award them according to my theory, and lest my reasons for bestowing them may not be perfectly clear to all, and the system of reasoning by which my results are attained appear somewhat illogical, I will endeavor ...
— Silver Links • Various
... the illogical feeling of the lamented critic, difficulties arise. We have grown very velvet-tongued in these days. There was no nonsense about our predecessors; if the leading lady was plain, they said so, whilst if one of us were to suggest that the heroine, whose beauty is talked of tiresomely during the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... is a mongrel one, a cross between desire not to interfere with State taxation and desire at the same time not utterly to crush out interstate commerce. It is a practical, but rather illogical, device to prevent duplication of tax burdens on vehicles in transit. It is established in our decisions and has been found more or less workable with more or less arbitrary formulae of apportionment. Nothing either in theory or in practice commends it for transfer to air ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... seemed even gloomier than it was. His practice had been slowly dwindling of late, and now threatened to die out altogether, the irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing patients up to Fitzpiers's very door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest cause of his unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, the second branch of his sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for the first—a letter from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her again. To bring about their severance still more effectually, she added, she had decided during his absence upon almost immediate ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... my ideas. Everything had to be planned to make money; the last consideration was the work. And the most curious part of it all was the insistence that it was the money and not the work that counted. It did not seem to strike any one as illogical that money should be put ahead of work—even though everyone had to admit that the profit had to come from the work. The desire seemed to be to find a short cut to money and to pass over the obvious short ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... the weakness that was in his strength, the bitterness of his grudge against a fate that forced him to go on in this way of life, the remembrance of a life more beautiful which he had abandoned—all mingled with those other qualities of pride and comradeship, and that illogical sense of humor which made up the strange complexity ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... instruction fees of any kind; that the policy which prevails in the public schools of the State should be carried out in the new institution at the summit of the system. This demand was plausible, but the more I thought upon it the more illogical, fallacious, and injurious it seemed; and, in spite of some hard knocks in consequence, I have continued to dissent from it, and feel that ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... sneer of the world, and again the weakness of woman, the frivolity of humanity, is deplored by those who demand that grief shall co-survive with remembrance. We do not suffer so much as we think we ought to, and yet, foolish and illogical, we call upon our fate in a grand monotony of complaint at the heaviness of our ills. The young man falls in love. His love is not returned. He has believed himself capable of undying and unalterable affection for a maiden. Unselfish, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It's worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... standing rule never to go against the popular feeling of the moment, above all when it was manifestly illogical and cruel, "because in that case," he would say, "the voice of the people was the voice of God." But Brotteaux proved himself untrue to his principles; he asseverated that the old man, whether he was a Capuchin or not, could not have robbed the citoyenne, having never ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... is the usual illogical contention of all religions. It is not the question whether an Almighty Being can do a given thing: the question is whether He has or ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... been in torment—first the torment of an irresistible hatred of Kate. He knew that this hatred was illogical, that it was monstrous; but it supported his pride, it held him safe above self-contempt in being present at the wedding. When the carriage drew up at the church gate, and he helped Kate to alight, he thought ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... states that "Aether is made up of positive and negative electricity," then, unless we postulate atomicity for the aether, we have to suppose that it is possible for a non-atomic body (aether) to be made up of atoms or corpuscles, which conclusion is absurd, and therefore must be rejected as illogical and unphilosophical. ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... after day during shearing, just when the days are growing hot and hotter still, the spare herbage browning, and the water becoming scanty and scantier. And for a recompense? There is none in working with sheep. They are quiet, peaceable, stupid, illogical, incapable of exciting affection, very capable of rousing wrath; far different from the terrible excitement of a bellowing herd of long-horned cattle as they break away in a stampede, among whom is danger and sudden death and the glory ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... drummer-boys hated both lads on account of their illogical conduct. Jakin might be pounding Lew, or Lew might be rubbing Jakin's head in the dirt, but any attempt at aggression on the part of an outsider was met by the combined forces of Lew and Jakin; and the consequences were painful. The boys were ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... Sometimes, to say all that can be said, it consents to cure certain ailments, cleanses an ulcer, closes a wound, heals a lung, strengthens or makes supple an arm or leg, or even sets bones, but always as it were by accident, without reason, method or object, in a deceitful, illogical and preposterous fashion. One would set it down as a spoilt child that has been allowed to lay hands on the most tremendous secrets of heaven and earth; it has no suspicion of their power, jumbles them all up together and ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... diseases, is directly contraindicated. If, as shown by M. Robin, 'the acts of oxidation are defensive processes' against bacterial infections, then certainly the administration of alcohol to patients with such infections is in the highest degree illogical and injurious. The oxygen being obtained for oxidation purposes in the blood and tissues, through the respiratory process, it would be equally absurd to administer alcohol in all cases in which it is desirable to increase the processes of oxidation, as a long series of experiments has shown that ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... to me a Rock ... for Thou art a Rock.' Is that not illogical? No, for notice that little word, 'to me'—be Thou to me what Thou art in Thyself, and hast been to all generations.' That makes all the difference. It is not merely 'Be what Thou art,' although that would be much, but it is 'be it to me,' and let me have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... supernaturally early age the purple-born are appointed to high titular positions in the State Administration or in the army. In Russia, where the "right divine of kings to govern wrong" is pushed to its most logical or illogical consequences, this royal custom flourishes to excess. At the mature age of eight, Alexander was appointed Chancellor of the University of Finland. His brother Constantine was nominated in early youth High Admiral of the Fleet. One day, Constantine, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... the highest degree, to certain theories which were developed, and which made their way, pari passu, with the advancements of electrical and electro-magnetic science. These theories, specious, inconsistent, illogical, yet withal plausible, and even fascinating, served to blind the mental vision so that mankind ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... arrangement, but one which he did not complete till years afterwards. I have just digressed a little about Parsifal, because it, and not the Mastersingers, is the true contrary and complement to Tannhaeuser. Parsifal is pitilessly logical, Tannhaeuser wildly illogical; Parsifal preaches the gospel of renunciation, of the will to dwarf and stunt one's physical, mental and moral growth: Tannhaeuser preaches nothing at all, but is an affirmation of the necessity and moral loveliness of healthy relations between the two sexes, with a totally ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... environments could also adapt lunar life to the environments in the moon. We are seeking no shelter in the miraculous, nor do we run from a dilemma to the refuges of religion. Apart from our theological belief in the potency of the Creator and Controller of all worlds, we simply regard it as illogical and inconclusive to argue that because organization, life, and intelligence obtain within one sphere under one order of circumstances, therefore the same order obtains in every other sphere throughout the system to which that one belongs. The unity of nature is as clear to us as ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... sorry—not altogether sorry this has happened!" He moved slowly across the room, and laid a friendly palm on Vyse's shoulder. "In a queer illogical way it evens up things, as it were. I did you a shabby turn once, years ago—oh, out of sheer carelessness, of course—about that novel of yours I promised to give to Apthorn. If I had given it, it might not have made any difference—I'm not sure it wasn't too good for success—but ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... high-souled with the worldly and cynical, the pure with the impure—are correlative themes of some of the strongest of the novels. In these, pathos is the prevailing tone. We have the spectacle of the woman's blind, illogical trust abused, her helplessness in self-inflicted misery, or the tenacity with which, in temptation, she clings to the safeguards of conventional morality. In most cases this tenacity, which the author accounts ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... The strange, illogical, ironical god of chance, or was it Providence acting through some careless maid, had left an area window unlocked in the biggest and newest house on the avenue. Any house would have been easy for "Crackerjack" if he had possessed the open sesame of his kit of burglar's tools, but he had not ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... There is an illogical argument for the new spelling drawn from the published facts of illiteracy. We are told that the last national census reports 5,658,144 persons, ten years of age and over, who cannot read and write, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... virtue, that there were four characters of mind which were protective or preservative of all that was best in man, namely, Prudence, Justice, Courage, and Temperance,[142] these were afterwards, with most illogical inaccuracy, called cardinal virtues, Prudence being evidently no virtue, but an intellectual gift: but this inaccuracy arose partly from the ambiguous sense of the Latin word "virtutes," which sometimes, in mediaeval language, signifies virtues, sometimes ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... a miracle would fail to make a salutary impression upon such a heart. A French infidel declared that, should he be told that the most remarkable miracle was occurring close by his house, he would not take a step out of his way to see it. Pride never surrenders; it prefers rather to take an illogical position than to bow even to the authority of reason. Furious, beside itself, and absurd, it revolts against evidence. To all reasoning, to undeniable evidence, the infidel—the man without religion—opposes his own will: "Such is my determination." It is sweet to him to be stronger, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... wish you wouldn't say such things. Besides seeming to imply a sort of distrust of my love for you, they are illogical; and you know there is nothing ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... is very possible that if he had lived a hundred years he would never have become a man; he was penetrated with modern ideas, but penetrated as a boy would be, crudely, overmuch, and with a constant tendency to the extravagant and illogical; so that I call ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... at him reflectively a moment. "I am very illogical, I fear. I once told myself that anything I might want to do to help Littleton would be over your dead body, almost. And, now, I never make a move without looking to you for the encouragement and support that make it perfectly satisfactory. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... that the four men in her life were opposed in groups of two: Gordon and Porter stood arrayed on the side of logical preferences; Barry and Roger on the side of illogical sympathies. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... cut in, speaking very quietly, "for argument's sake I will admit, if you like, that your injuries are both real and deep. Still, does it not seem to you absurdly illogical that because certain persons have injured you, you must yield to this insane craving to wreak your revenge upon somebody else who has had no hand in ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... same freedom from ill-temper, whether on private or public grounds, as we may hope will be felt by those who will call us ancient! Otherwise, the looking before and after, which is our grand human privilege, is in danger of turning to a sort of other-worldliness, breeding a more illogical indifference or bitterness than was ever bred by the ascetic's contemplation of heaven. Except on the ground of a primitive golden age and continuous degeneracy, I see no rational footing for scorning the whole present population of the globe, unless I scorn every previous generation from whom they ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... eyes of the world at large, a sovereign body. Time soon showed that the continued exercise of such powers was not compatible with the absence of the power to tax the people. In truth the situation of the Continental Congress was an illogical situation. In the effort of throwing off the sovereignty of Great Britain, the people of these states were constructing a federal union faster than they realized. Their theory of the situation did not keep ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... does not create joy, and that, somehow or other, a great knowledge can be used ill, as anything else can be used ill. Also in their bewilderment, many turn to a yet further extension of physical science as promising, in some illogical way, relief. ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... self-sacrifice of the sailors. I was the proudest when the last of them referred to Aristides and the reports which he had sent home from America, and said that without some such study as he had made of the American character they never could have understood such an act as they were now witnessing. Illogical and insensate as their system was, their character sometimes had a beauty, a sublimity which was not possible to Altrurians even, for it was performed in the face of risks and chances which their happy conditions relieved them from. At the same ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... of O'Meara interests me. But what right have you to slip out of your stern character as a merely spiritual man, and assume the guise of a good Samaritan? Really it is not fair; your tender compassion is illogical, and, however benign, I cannot accept it as evidence in your favour. But your account of the poor man's distress touched my heart. And you ask me what ought to be done with the little goblin boy. Dear Philip, could ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... to the public opinions which, by an absurd, illogical and pernicious tradition, are supposed to be those of the public, but which, in reality, are those either of a single capitalist or syndicate, Mr. Belloc is not merely the avowed enemy but the most active enemy. It was his persistently inimical ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... The compromise brought forward by Madison consisted in agreeing that five slaves should count in population as three. By this curious device a negro was equivalent to three fifths of a white man. Such a compromise was, of course, illogical, leaving the question whether negroes were chattels or human beings with even a theoretical civil character undecided. But many of the members, who saw the illogic quite plainly, voted for it, being dazzled if not seduced by the thought that it was a compromise ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... exasperatingly uncertain and illogical about it all. Was it possible that St. Pierre Boulain was playing a huge joke on him? Even that was inconceivable. For there was Carmin Fanchet, a fitting companion for a man like Black Roger, and there was Marie-Anne, who, if it had been a joke, would not have ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... abused, and the red blood will rush to my head from rage. And when I look and look upon the labour of a moujik or a labourer, I am thrown into hysterics for shame at my algebraic calculations. There is—the devil take it!—there is something incongruous, altogether illogical, but which at this time is stronger than human reason. Take to-day, now ... Why do I feel at this minute as though I had robbed a sleeping man or deceived a three-year-old child, or hit a bound person? And why does it seem to me to-day that I myself am guilty of the evil of prostitution—guilty ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... the students and Porcupine. Where in thunder would be a peach of damfool who always swipes other people's faults and says "these are mine?" It was a stunt made possible only by Badger. Having made such an illogical statement, he glanced at the teachers in a highly pleased manner. But no one opened his mouth. The teacher of natural history was gazing at the crow which had hopped on the roof of the nearby building. The teacher of Confucius was folding ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... British Government, and officially communicated to Gordon by Sir E. Baring. In view of this appointment, most readers will concur in the opinion of Mr. Egmont Hake, the editor of Gordon's Journals, that "it is as unfair as it is illogical to talk about General Gordon having exceeded the instructions conveyed to him by Her Majesty's Government." The real truth is that it was impossible for Gordon to exceed his instructions. He himself again ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... was buried and, despairing finally of recovering their child's body, they returned South. Though don't think," said pretty Ruth suddenly regarding Mr. Dilke's attentive face while she laughed, "that I received the story from Mrs. Buckley in any such direct fashion. Such people are not only illogical and irrelevant, they are secretive,—if ever you have to do with them as my work leads me to, you'll understand what I mean. But to continue with Mrs. Buckley. In order to convince her that neither Rosy nor the child, despite her evidence, were dead, I took her straight back to the hospital, ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... usually hold his head, because politics isn't his place. There are priest-inventors; but somehow we forget the priest in the inventor, and feel that the latter title makes him a little less worthy of the former—rather illogical, is it not? The Abbot Mendel was a scientist, but it is only now that he is coming into his own; and how many know him only as Mendel, forgetting his priestly office? Liszt was a cleric, but few called him Abbe. A priest as a priest can ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... with people; he always reproved them. "You make a great mistake—and an extremely feminine one—Miss Farringdon, in invariably deducting general rules from individual instances. Believe me, this is a most illogical form of reasoning, and leads to erroneous, ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... an expression of doubt as to its accuracy, his follower frequently quotes the same date as if it were absolutely correct. One wrong date is made to depend upon another wrong date, and one bad inference is often deduced from another inference equally unwarranted and illogical. And consequently, if the correctness of any particular date given by these writers is to be ascertained, the whole structure of Indian Chronology constructed by them will have to be carefully examined. It will ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... loud-talking woman, whom experience had not softened in her ways of speech or thought or action. She was generally at strife with her husband, but the strife was most illogical. It did not admit of a single legitimate deduction in the mind of a third person. It seemed sometimes as if the pair were possessed of the instincts of those animals which unite for mutual destruction, and as if their purpose were to fulfil their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... capite ad pedes is commenced, and produces some curious associates. To the modern physician the sudden transition from diseases of the scalp to fractures of the cranium seems at least abrupt, if not illogical. It seems, therefore, wiser, in a hasty review like the present, to take up the various pathological conditions described by Gilbert in their modern order and relations, and to thus facilitate the orientation of ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... the greater artist of the pair, knew that Tolstoy was on the wrong path with his crack-brained religious and social notions; knew that in his becoming the writer of illogical tracts and pamphlets, Russia was losing a great artist. What would he have said if he had lived to read the sad recantation and artistic suicide of Tolstoy: "I consign my own artistic productions to the category of bad art, except the story, God Sees the Truth, which seeks a place in the first ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... concerning which Miss Elizabeth expressed, in the imperative mood, her will that it be dratted,—a feminine wind, truly, as was clear from its unexpected flarings up and sudden calmings down, its illogical whiskings around and eccentric changes of direction. Now it swept down the slope from the east, as if it meant to bombard the travellers with all the brown leaves of the hillside. Now it assailed them from the north, as if to impede their ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... to you, but I didn't like to. Passing you by, just now, I made a sudden resolution. You have thought badly of me on account of my attitude towards Phyllis Gedge. I want to tell you that you were quite right. My attitude was illogical and absurd." ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... doctrinaire who refuses to sympathize with the illogical processes by which the world is gradually being made better. With him it is the millennium or nothing. He will tolerate no indirect approach. He will give no credit for partial approximations. He insists on holding every ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... had twice defeated, or apparently defeated, his own in a war and his distinguished colleagues might misinterpret the spirit which moved him. Nevertheless, he could not refrain from remarking that it appeared to him that a Just Providence had wiped out the United States and therefore it would be illogical if not blasphemous for this august body to admit a delegation ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... have gone to him and told him that I had allowed myself to think of him as a murderer for the illogical but none the less potent reason that I hated his father. And I apologised to him, having ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... him a few tasks; but in a few weeks the quick-witted Clarence acquired such a colloquial proficiency from his casual acquaintance with vaqueros and small traders that he was glad to leave the matter in his young kinsman's hands. Again, by one of those illogical sequences which make a lifelong reputation depend upon a single trivial act, Clarence's social status was settled forever at El Refugio Rancho by his picturesque diversion of Flynn's parting gift. The grateful peon to whom the boy had scornfully tossed ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... myself for instance. Besides, your people never would consent to it. You will be a lawyer, or something great, some of these days, while we shall be cutting up capers in the circus ring at so much per caper. It's a wonderful life but you keep out of it," was Phil Forrest's somewhat illogical advice. ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington |
