"Infallibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not perform miracles in the ordinary conduct of His Church. It would be a strange miracle if infallibility existed in one man. But it appears so natural for it to reside in a multitude, since the conduct of God is hidden under nature, as in all His ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that ONE man's conscience doesn't know right from wrong, it is an admission that there are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine of infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is one thing which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... not, the Church applies a remedy to their organ of hearing. These surgical operations go under the name of dogmas." The world remembers with what success an operation of this kind was performed on a number of Roman prelates, who questioned the infallibility of the Pope. The dogma was simply declared in 1870, and that put a quietus to all Catholic scruples. Some day the "assumption" of Mary will be proclaimed as a Catholic dogma. We should not feel surprised if ultimately a dogma were published to the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... critic has abandoned altogether that conception of his duty. He seems to me not infrequently to place himself on the judgment-seat with a touch of his old confidence, and to sentence poor authors with sufficient airs of infallibility. Sometimes, indeed, the reflection that he is representing not an invariable tradition but the last new aesthetic doctrine, seems even to give additional keenness to his opinions and to suggest no doubts of his infallibility. And yet there is ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... pope—I could not boast infallibility: in short, if I stayed, the probability was that, in three months' time, a practical modern French novel would be in full process of concoction under the roof of the unsuspecting Pelet. Now, modern French novels are not to my taste, either ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... by some means falling into the hands of one Lyons, a surgeon, author of a book entitled "The Infallibility of Human Judgment," it occasioned an acquaintance between us. He took great notice of me, called on me often to converse on those subjects, carried me to the Horns, a pale alehouse in —— Lane, Cheapside, and introduced me to Dr. Mandeville, author of the "Fable ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Society consists in the main of young people. The Essayists and their contemporaries have said their say: it remains for the younger people to accept what they choose, and to add whatever is necessary. Those who repudiated the infallibility of Marx will be the last to claim infallibility for themselves. I can only express the hope that as long as the Fabian Society lasts it will be ever open to new ideas, ever conscious that nothing is final, ever ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... can its promulgers give me of the infallibility of their doctrines, even supposing these events to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... entering a temple of Jupiter as a church. Religion in Roman Catholic countries being thus left, so far as the educated classes are concerned, to the priests and women, its recent developments have been inspired exclusively by priestly ambition and female imagination. The infallibility of the Pope and the worship of the Virgin have made, and are still making, tremendous strides. The Romanizing party in the Episcopal Church of England are left panting behind, in their vain efforts to keep up with the superstitions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... III.—slavery and capital punishment, and pensions and sinecures, and protection and the church establishment. The popular instinct, it is urged, has been in the right in so many cases that there is an enormous presumption in favour of the infallibility of all its instincts. The reply, of course, is equally obvious. Your boast, says the Conservative, that you please the masses, is in effect a confession that you truckle to the mob. You mean that your doctrines spread in proportion to the ignorance of your constituents. You prove the merits ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... kind of shook my disbelief in the infallibility of the serious Irish gentleman soldier of fortune. It certainly seemed that the patriotic grafters had gone about the thing in a business way. I looked upon O'Connor with more respect, and began to figure on what kind of uniform I might wear as ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... armed against that numerous class of Deistical objections which rested upon an exclusively literal interpretation of Scripture. This is eminently observable in regard of theories of inspiration. To Quakers, as to mystical writers in general, biblical infallibility has never seemed to be a doctrine worth contending for. They have always felt that an admixture of human error is perfectly innocuous where there is a living spirit present to interpret the teaching of Scripture to the hearts of men. But elsewhere, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... twenty was as old as he was at forty-two: a little more so perhaps, for as the years passed he grew less dogmatic and confident. At twenty we are likely to have full faith in our own infallibility. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... conviction fatal to concession of liberty to others? Two propositions at the base of an affirmative answer Earnestness of conviction consistent with sense of liability to error Belief in one's own infallibility does not necessarily lead to intolerance The contrary notion due to juristic analogies in social discussion Connection between the doctrine of liberty and social evolution The timid compromisers superfluous apprehension Material limits to the effect of moral speculation ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... Constance, that the pope is bound in certain specified cases to submit to an ecumenical council, and that the latter cannot be translated, prorogued, or dissolved without its own consent. The gift of infallibility, they affirmed, resides in the collective Church. It does not belong to the popes, several of whom have erred concerning the faith. The Church alone has authority to enact laws which are binding on the whole ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... dissented from the Reformed Establishment in many points of doctrine, and still acknowledged the Pope's infallibility and supremacy, yet they looked not upon these doctrines and discipline to be fundamentals, or without which they could not be saved; and, therefore, continued to assemble and baptise and communicate for the space of ten years in the Reformed ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... to have more books for review. I doubt, however, if Mr. Howells will ever reap the benefit of my criticisms, for not long since I read a note from him saying that he never looked into The Gazette. You must already have given offence by doubting his literary infallibility. ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... of great sagacity. Few statesmen have had keener insight, or more true and sane foresight. While cordially recognizing this, it is not necessary to claim for him infallibility. He had his disappointments. ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... Yes, the heroic heart is dear to the heroic heart. I would back the intuition of an honest soul for truth against piled-up centuries of theology. But this high spirit is stifled everywhere by a dull infallibility which is yet unsuccessful, on its own part, in awakening inspiration; and, in the absence of original though, we pick over the bones of dead movements, we discuss the personalities of the past, but no one asks ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... Association, and so make all knowledge vanish away, there will lack nothing but the presence of a perfect charity to turn the nineteenth century into a complete kingdom of heaven. Amongst changes, then, so great and so hopeful—amongst the discoveries of the rights of women, the infallibility of the Pope, and the physical basis of life, it may well be doubted if the great fathers of ancient song would find, if they could come back to us, anything out of the way or ludicrous in a ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... Opinions of the Learned, which you had long before assumed, and had exercised with a ferocity and a despotism without example in the Republic of Letters, and hardly to be paralleled among the disciples of Dominic; exacting their opinions to the standard of your infallibility, and prosecuting with implacable hatred every one that presumed to differ from you."—LOWTH'S Letter ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... would not have me say I am certain, would you? these are no times for Popery and infallibility; however, I assure you I think him perfectly safe. He has done a foolish and idle trick, but no man is wise always. We must get rid of his fever, and then if his cold remains, with any cough, he may make a little excursion ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... All the seers are alike; they pick names at haphazard from the columns of the newspapers, and then they pretend to be in possession of the darkest stable secrets. If they are wrong, and they usually are, they advertise their own infallibility all the more brazenly. I do not exactly know what getting money under false pretences may be if the proceedings which I have described do not come under that heading, and I wonder what the police think of the business. They very soon catch a poor Rommany wench who tells ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... from a hiding-place in the Thuringian forest where he was sheltered after his condemnation by the Elector of Saxony he denounced not merely, as at first, the abuses of the Papacy, but the Papacy itself. The heresies of Wyclif were revived; the infallibility, the authority of the Roman See, the truth of its doctrines, the efficacy of its worship, were denied and scoffed at in vigorous pamphlets which issued from his retreat and were dispersed throughout the world by the new printing-press. Germany welcomed ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... wife to let nothing come in the way of her returning to her place beside her husband, no matter what the difficulties? "'It is not good,' we are told, 'for a man to live alone,' and please remember that there is no such thing as infallibility in human nature. Sometimes temptations are so strong that one needs to be superhuman to withstand them. Why expect too much of Life?" stared up at Joyce ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... matter, to determine with any infallibility whether what we call a fault is in very deed a fault, we must previously have settled two points, neither of which may be so readily settled. First, we must have made plain to ourselves what the poet's aim really ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... a dreadful fidget whenever the Little Gentleman says anything that interferes with her own infallibility. She seems to think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the toothache,—and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter the wind blows from, she will ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... before the hour of starting. He would have liked to go to bed, but he was afraid of oversleeping himself in case Elbridge had neglected to telephone Simpson. But he did not believe this possible, and he had smoothly confided himself to his experience of Elbridge's infallibility, when he started awake at the sound of bells before the front door, and then the titter of the electric bell over his bed in the next room. He thought it was an officer come to arrest him, but he remembered that only his household was acquainted with the use of that bell, and then he wondered ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... some inexplicable means—possibly another theft—you took the cigar case out of pawn and, like a whipped hound, restored it to me in this feeble, clumsy fashion. You thought to deceive me, Hemlock Jones! More, you thought to destroy my infallibility. Go! I give you your liberty. I shall not summon the three policemen who wait in the adjoining room—but ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... birdcages were undimmed by any shadow of dulness. To Georgy's mind the gothic villa was the very perfection of a dwelling-place. The Barlingford housekeepers were wont to render their homes intolerable by extreme neatness. Georgy still believed in the infallibility of her native town, and the primness of Barlingford reigned supreme in the gothic villa. There were no books scattered on the polished walnut-wood tables in the drawing-room, no cabinets crammed with scraps of old china, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... our church and to our state. If they have once destroyed, more than once they have saved them." Burke next observed that the church of England might alter her laws without changing her identity. He said that she professed no infallibility, and had always exercised the right of reforming her doctrine, discipline, and ceremonies, instancing as examples the change which she had made in the liturgy in the reign of Edward VI. and the reduction of her articles from forty-two to thirty-nine. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... simplicity of all works of that master of sculptural calm, intellectual power and straightforward sincerity. Mr. French is said to make no mistakes in composition; his precision is not dryness but technical ease and infallibility; his classical quality is not obedience to tradition but insight, into the underlying laws that made tradition. Here we have a splendid example of his perfection of mass, balance and finish and of quiet, inspiring depth and directness of feeling. Creation ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... getting rid of these distorting influences and facing such questions in a perfectly dry light, nobody suggests that objective truth on such matters is non-existent or for ever unattainable. A claim for objective validity for the moral judgement does not mean a claim for infallibility on behalf of any individual Conscience. We may make mistakes in Morals just as we may make mistakes in Science, or even in pure Mathematics. If a class of forty small boys are asked to do a sum, they will probably not all bring out the same answer: ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... bewildered, were once more about to be entrapped. A sharp advance was followed by a cry from the votaries that I was a trickster and that what had been in reality the most notable demonstration of "the people's strength" ever given was only another evidence of the "System's" infallibility. If this deceit had prevailed, the task I have undertaken of enlightening the public would have had a setback. Relying on my previous work, I put forth the following announcement Monday morning, December 12th, and confidently ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... laboratory of Nature. I may venture to prophecy that no future Beddoes will make it the corival of the mathematical sciences in demonstrative evidence. I think it a matter of doubt whether, during the period of its supposed infallibility, physiology derived more benefit from the extension, or injury from the misdirection, of its views. Enough of the latter is fresh in recollection to make it but an equivocal compliment to a physiological position, that it must stand or fall with the corpuscular ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... course, like all other human institutions. As a religion, although it superadded many dogmas and rites which Protestants do not accept, and for which they can see no divine authority,—like auricular confession, the deification of the Virgin, indulgences for sin, and the infallibility of the Pope,—still, it has at the same time defended the cardinal principles of Christian faith and morality; such as the personality and sovereignty of God, the divinity of Christ, salvation in consequence of his sufferings and death, immortality, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... have by that manner of lot-casting encounter befallen to the curious researchers of them. Do not you nevertheless imagine, lest you should be deluded, that I would upon this kind of fortune-flinging proof infer an uncontrollable and not to be gainsaid infallibility of truth. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... A student, he had considered Napoleon the great democratic champion and mainly in the right as far as Austerlitz. Then swollen ambition had ruined everything and, in his opinion, another swollen ambition, though for far less cause, was now bringing equal disaster upon Europe. A belief in one's infallibility might come from achievement or birth, but only the former could win any respect ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wrong definition in his Dictionary of the word pastern [1119], to the no small surprise of the Lady who put the question to him; who having the most profound reverence for his character, so as almost to suppose him endowed with infallibility, expected to hear an explanation (of what, to be sure, seemed strange to a common reader,) drawn from some deep-learned source with which she ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Doctor Grandfort, of Groningen, batters another. This learned Frisian, called "the light of the world," friend and compatriot of the great Rudolph Agricola, preaches throughout the provinces, uttering bold denunciations of ecclesiastical error. He even disputes the infallibility of the Pope, denies the utility of prayers for the dead, and inveighs against the whole doctrine of purgatory ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Stanton and no violation of the right of individual judgment, makes me sick at heart; and still, I don't know what better one could expect when our ranks are now so filled with young women not yet out of bondage to the idea of the infallibility of that book. To every person who really believes in religious freedom, it is no worse to criticise those pages in the Bible which degrade woman than it is to criticise the laws on our statute books which degrade her. Everything spoken or written ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... spiritual power being concerned with education, and that of the temporal with action, in the wide senses of those terms. The defects of this dual system were due to the irrational theology. But the theory of papal infallibility was a great step in intellectual and social progress, by providing a final jurisdiction, without which society would have been troubled incessantly by contests arising from the vague formulae of dogmas. Here Comte had learned from Joseph de Maistre. But that ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... force childhood to believe in the infallibility of the priestcraft you educate the mind of that child to implicitly believe in the officials of the Catholic Church, and when you gain the implicit confidence you have established a belief that cannot be easily eradicated, as this belief has become a part of ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... believe in him. He knows (he grips his hand on the lever) he is not infallible. Once ... twice ... he might have ... he almost.... Then suddenly there is a flash ahead ... he sets his teeth, he reaches out with his soul ... masters it, he strains himself up to his infallibility again ... all those people there ... fathers, mothers, children, ... sleeping on their arms full of dreams. He feels as the minister feels, I should think, when the bells have stopped on a Sabbath morning, when he stands in his pulpit alone, alone before God ... alone ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... of the civil marriage is one of unalloyed joy. In the selection of the day even the elements are studied by men specially devoted to meteorology, who, with perfect infallibility, can predict ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... done by their posterity. They lopped off, indeed, some of the branches of Popery, but they left the root and stock when they left us under the domination of human systems and decisions, usurping the infallibility which can be attributed to Revelation alone. They dethroned one usurper only to raise up another; they refused allegiance to the Pope only to place the civil magistrate in the throne of Christ, vested with authority to enact laws and inflict penalties in his kingdom. And if we ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... to them I shall not now determine; only advise them to prepare for the worst!" Pretty good advice in all times of eclipse; and in these days even when there is no eclipse. Mark his modesty: "I do not pretend to Infallibility in my Conjectures, yet (as I said last year) they many times come out too True to make a jest of." Then he goes on: "I have read of a story which Thaurus is said to relate of Andreas Vesalius, a great Astrologer who lived ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... he had but slight veneration for men, or their feelings, or opinions; and he would sometimes pronounce a judgment in a tone of superiority justly offensive. But he possessed the uncommon virtue of sincerity: he thoroughly believed in the infallibility of his own conclusions; and for this the loftiness of ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... some dogmas still remain in politics, in religion, and in morality; but those who defend them claim no longer any infallibility, and those who attack them, however small their minority, need fear no violence, nay, may reckon on an impartial and even sympathetic hearing, as soon as people discover in their pleadings the true ring of honest conviction and the warmth ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... The Roman Catholic Church, with her elaborate canonising machinery, stands as the most prosperous example of this, though with the vital fault of postponing the sanctifying till after death. She, again, is responsible for another attempt, viz., the infallibility of her ministers, a promising enough plan, but ill regulated. The Stuart regime, urging with unpleasant vigour the divinity of kingship and the corresponding caddishness (or decadence) of much of ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Somaj, as enunciated in its creed, are not such as to grip men with power. They emphasize the unity of God, the infallibility of the Vedas; and the general aim of the Somaj is "to do good to the world by improving the physical, social, intellectual, moral, and spiritual condition of mankind." Its moral code is ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... common world. Pardon us, brother of the flesh, say they, in saintly whispers,—it is all for the Church and Christ. Boldly fortified with sanctimony, they hurl back the shafts of reform, and ask to live on sumptuously, as the only sought recompense for their christian love. Pious infallibility! how blind, to ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... not very tall man, with a somewhat vacant expression of feature, and a singular habit of looking fixedly and in apparent amazement for a full minute at anyone who happened to address him. These, with a slow ponderous movement of body, a fixed belief in his own infallibility, and an equally firm belief in the unsurpassed perfections of the Betsy Jane, were his chief characteristics; and as he is destined to figure for a very brief period only in the pages of the present history, we need ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... appertaining to the bishops and clergy of the protestant religion, or to the churches committed to their charge". They further volunteered an expression of their belief that no evil act could be justified by the good of the Church, and that papal infallibility was no article of the catholic faith. Thenceforward, frequent motions in support of the "catholic claims" were made in both houses of parliament. In 1810 such a motion was proposed in a very eloquent speech by Grattan, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... unquestioning papalino, a sincere believer in papal infallibility and the temporal power—to hear the Holy Father called a renegade, and his faithful servants stigmatized as dastards! ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... approve, but he was astonished to find it so nearly perfect. Whatever opinion he had of its errors he would sacrifice to the public good, and he hoped that every member of the convention who still had objections would on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and for the sake of unanimity put his name to this instrument. Hamilton added his plea. A few members, he said, by refusing to sign, might do infinite mischief. No man's ideas could be more remote from the plan ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... dictate to the world, on the grounds that they are incapable of producing even a catechetical discourse. But they fall back upon that universal and indisputable privilege of our race—the belief in their own infallibility. It often surprised me that the definition of Papal Infallibility, which concentrated in the Vicegerent of the Most High the reputed privilege of our race, did not create a greater outcry. It was the final onslaught of the Holy Spirit ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... who considered this unlooked-for escape as a species of resurrection, patiently awaited the time the trapper mentioned with renewed confidence in the infallibility of his judgment. The Doctor regained his tablets, a little the worse from having fallen among the grass which had been subject to the action of the flames, and was consoling himself for this slight misfortune by recording uninterruptedly such different ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... subjective and psychological criterion, and that no one has been able to devise a method for distinguishing the alleged logical from the undeniable psychological certainty. He will hesitate to say, therefore, that because a belief seems certain it is true, and to trust the formal claim to infallibility which is made in every judgment. And when 'intuitions' are appealed to, he will ask how 'true' intuitions are to be discriminated from 'false,' sound from insane, and inquire to what he is committing ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... situation more tolerable. Still more, several events that took place must have horrified him, at times, with the thought that, however he might isolate and entomb himself, yet for all this, the improbability of his being overtaken by what he most dreaded never advanced to the infallibility of the impossible. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... "Scripture"; and to determine the sense of any passage in such books. But this sense, once ascertained to the mind of the sectary, was to be taken for pure truth—for the very word of God. The controversial efficiency of the principle of biblical infallibility lay in the fact that the conservative adversaries of the Reformers were not in a position to contravene it without entangling themselves in serious difficulties; while, since both Papists and Protestants agreed ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... does not follow that there is no manner of reason in that machine, but only that such a machine has not a boundless reason. But, after all, it is a constant truth that in the operations of that machine there is a regular conduct, a marvellous art, and a skill which in many cases amounts to infallibility. Now, to whom shall we ascribe this infallible skill? To the ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... court, on January both, 1914, an expert declared that "a difference of one-eighth of an inch in the laying on of the fingers made an entirely different impression"; and "judgment was awarded against the bank," which, relying upon the infallibility of the finger record, had brought the action. At any rate, the bertillon is still a potent weapon with the police, and when they want a man for a crime committed, or when they desire to drive out of any given place on the ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... that, the Church may pretend not to be opposed to the natural aspirations of man? These objectors do not, or will not, see that the Church, by enlarging the domain of her teaching to cover all things with the mantle of infallibility, would most effectually crush the action of the human intellect, which was meant for use, not rust, which must be allowed something to act upon, and which in independent action is bound to rush into a variety of differences according to the bent of the individual mind. However, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... object propounded, which is the general education of the boy on lines in which the father believes. For the latter purpose the opinion is no disqualification. The devout Catholic accepts the multiplication table, and can impart his knowledge without reference to the infallibility of the Pope. To refuse to employ him is to impose an extraneous penalty on his convictions. It is not illiberal for an editor to decline the services of a member of the opposite party as a leader writer, or even as a political reviewer or in any capacity in which his opinions would affect ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... you this—don't stick to your opinions any more than to your words. If any one asks you for them, let him have them—at a price. A man who prides himself on going in a straight line through life is an idiot who believes in infallibility. There are no such things as principles; there are only events, and there are no laws but those of expediency: a man of talent accepts events and the circumstances in which he finds himself, and turns everything to his ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... game. Would they be tolerant? Why ask such a question? When was Roman Catholicism tolerant, and where? Is not the whole system of Popery based on intolerance, on infallibility, on strict exclusiveness? Let me give you a few local facts ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... a Place-bill. The same principle guides in both: I mean the opinion which is entertained by many of the infallibility of laws and regulations, in the cure of public distempers. Without being as unreasonably doubtful as many are unwisely confident, I will only say, that this also is a matter very well worthy of serious and ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... Israel. Nevertheless it is not to be thought that the Sanhedrim had not always that right, which from the time of Esdras is more frequently exercised, of proposing to the people, but that they forebore it in regard of the fulness and infallibility of the law already made, whereby it was needless. Wherefore the function of this Council, which is very rare in a senate, was executive, and consisted in the administration of the law made; and whereas the Council itself ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... vices and impieties of popes. Witness Platina, in the life of John X., Benedict IV., John XIII., Boniface VII., John XX., John XXII., Paul II., &c. And further, when our adversaries dispute of the Pope's infallibility, they grant, for his own person, he may be an heretic, only they hold that he cannot err ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... of the Naval Academy were open to criticism would be to claim for them infallibility. Upon the whole, however, in my time they erred rather on the side of being over-conservative than unduly progressive. Twenty years later, recalling some of our Academy experiences to one of my contemporaries, himself more a man of action than a student, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... without finding fault with his wife's cookery. All which the poor woman bore patiently. Indeed, she was so absolute an admirer of her husband's greatness and importance, of which she had frequent hints from his own mouth, that she almost carried her adoration to an opinion of his infallibility. To say the truth, the parson had exercised her more ways than one; and the pious woman had so well edified by her husband's sermons, that she had resolved to receive the bad things of this world together with the good. She had indeed been at first a little contentious; but ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... reading. The progress of the sportsman has never been better given than in "Christopher North in his Sporting Jacket." In "The Moors" the actual sporting part is perhaps a little spoilt by the affectation of infallibility, qualified it is true by an aside or two, which so often mars the Christopherian utterances. But Wilson's description has never been bettered. The thunderstorm on the hill, the rough conviviality at the illicit distillery, the evening voyage on the loch, match, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... maintained a proposition on the strength of individual recollection, but begins to recognize the instability of his position: "I either witnessed the occurrence or dreamt it." This is sufficient to prove that, with all people's boasting about the infallibility of memory, there are many who have a shrewd suspicion that some of its asseverations will not bear ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... during that night did Margery's thoughts arrange themselves in this manner. At one time she thought that nothing could possibly supersede the infallibility of the Church; at another she saw the complete impossibility of anything being able to stand for a moment against the infallibility of God. The only conclusion at which she could arrive was a determination to read the ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... but does this fact convince you of the Infallibility of the course? Have you constituted your individual reason ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. He will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... clearness that was like the breath of infallibility. "Isn't the whole point that you'd have ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... telegraphs, constructed steam-engines, launched ships, pierced isthmuses, created sciences, corrected laws, repressed factions, fed the poor, civilized barbarians, drained marshes, cultivated waste lands, without ever having a single dispute as to the infallibility of ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... mistaken, that L'Isle did not venture to hint further the possibility of it. In that father, Lady Mabel had full faith, and also some of the faith of inexperience in the beautiful theory which teaches that the general knows best, that after him the second in command approaches nearest to infallibility, and so on through every gradation of rank, in all services, civil and military. Had she made an exception to the application of this rule, it would have been in her father's case; for she inclined to the belief, that notwithstanding ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... did not perhaps consider herself called upon to admit the infallibility of his Holiness in matters of the heart. She knew better than the Pope. Mon saw that he had struck ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... supreme law, might, by a similar perversion, be claimed by any mob or party constituting the majority of a city, town, or neighbourhood, as well as by the Colony of Massachusetts, against the Parliament or supreme authority of the nation. They had no doubt of their own infallibility; they had no fear that they "should hereafter be of a malignant spirit;" but they thought it very possible that the Parliament might be so, and then it would be for them to fight if they should have "strength sufficient." But after the restoration they thought it not well to face the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... enough to act on the strong hint of that memorable conversation, never again giving her husband the slightest ground for suspecting that she thought treasonably of his ideas in relation to the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, or in the least relaxed her faith in his infallibility because Europe was not also convinced of it. It was well for her that she did not increase her troubles in this way; but to do her justice, what she was chiefly anxious about was to avoid ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... The same fate befell the Girondins, a party of phrase-makers who have enjoyed a posthumous sentimental reputation, but who, when living, had not the energy and active courage to back their fine speeches. The reductio ad horribile of all the fine arguments in favor of popular infallibility and virtue had come; neither was the reductio ad absurdum wanting. The old names of the days and months and years were changed. The statues of the Virgin were torn from the little niches in street-walls, and the busts of Marat and Lepelletier set up in their stead. The would-be God, soi-disant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... surprise at a circumstance which sorely perplexed the monks of old, they unchained and unclasped their cumbrous "Works of the Fathers," and pored over those massy expositions with increasing wonder; surrounded by these holy guides, these fathers of infallibility, they were like strangers in a foreign land, did they follow this holy saint they seemed about to forsake the spiritual direction of one having equal claims to their obedience and respect; alas! for poor old weak tradition, those fabrications of man's faulty reason were ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... government. The wave of rebellion swept over me in an instant, beginning with an heretical doubt as to the sanctity of the established order of things—that fetish which has ruled Pan-Americans for two centuries, and which is based upon a blind faith in the infallibility of the prescience of the long-dead framers of the articles of Pan-American federation—and ending in an adamantine determination to defend my honor and my life to the last ditch against the blind and senseless regulation which assumed the synonymity ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... faith, I have unavoidably created to myself two sorts of enemies: the Papists indeed, more directly, because they have kept the Scriptures from us what they could; and have reserved to themselves a right of interpreting what they have delivered under the pretence of infallibility: and the Fanatics more collaterally, because they have assumed what amounts to an infallibility, in the private spirit; and have detorted those texts of Scripture which are not necessary to salvation, to the damnable uses of sedition, disturbance, and destruction of the civil government. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... always knows what is and is not possible!—that any true version of the antecedents of the two old women would have seemed mere madness. Had either spectator noted that the bones of the two old faces were the same, she would have condemned her own powers of observation rather than doubt the infallibility of instinctive disbelief, which is the attitude of the vernacular mind not only to what it wishes to be false, but to anything that runs counter to the octave-stretch forlorn—as Elizabeth Browning put it—of its limited experience. Had either noted that the eyes of the two were ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Protestants, could not long retain sufficient prestige to keep its adherents together. The destiny of such a body is written in the history of the 'Old Catholics,' who seceded from Rome because they would not accept the dogma of Papal infallibility. The seceders included many men of high character and intellect, but in numbers and influence they are quite insignificant. The Church of England has only one title to exist, and it is a strong one. It may claim to represent the religion ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... such cases, it would be difficult to specify the precise things which the children are to feel remorseful about. It must just be, generally, because they were so wicked, and because they did not sufficiently believe the infallibility and impeccability of their ancestors. I am reminded of the woman mentioned by Sam Weller, whose husband disappeared. The woman had been a fearful termagant; the husband, a very inoffensive man. After his disappearance, the woman issued an advertisement, assuring him, that, if he returned, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... confiscated it in class that day). But I need not have troubled, she paid no attention whatever to me, continuing to hold my grandmother's hand and look into the wise, stormy, tender, emphatic, much-enduring old face. And I wondered at my relative, and saw in this marvel one more proof of her own infallibility. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... against any Abuse being offered to Probus, which, poor Man, he either is, or affects to be under Apprehensions of, for rectifying this Mistake: But as few persons beside his Honor the Pope, lay Claim to Infallibility, upon due Consideration it seemeth not, that I am guilty of such high Crime and Misdeameanour, as by any Rule in Law to be subjected to Indictment or ex officio Information. However, I think it incumbent on you to suffer your Readers to be advertiz'd, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... married. The exact proportion of teachers is not known, but it is of course large. The Wellesley College Christian Association is of great assistance to the alumnae recorder in keeping in touch with Wellesley missionaries, but even the Christian Association disclaims infallibility in questions of numbers. An article in the News for February, 1912, by Professor Kendrick, the head of the Department of Bible Study, states that no record is kept of missionaries at work in our own country, but there were then missionaries from Wellesley in Mexico and Brazil, as well as ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... unmistakable signs of anxiety and trouble in her sweet face. "My wife is right," he muttered to himself; "she always is, in such things at least,"—for with masculine perversity he could not vouchsafe a sweeping verdict as to a woman's infallibility. "There is small chance here for Holmes," he mentally added. "I only wish young McLean were out of his troubles." And the doctor's hearty voice was heard without, and the tread of feet, and the next moment Bayard was in the hall-way eagerly welcoming ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... fellows before any standard of orthodoxy, or claim the right of dictating forms of belief or modes of worship under pains or penalties, are guilty of assuming the prerogative of the Most High, and of claiming, for their frail opinions, infallibility. Such are guilty of high treason against the Majesty of heaven—and all their machinations have a direct tendency to destroy human happiness—the wealth of the nation, and that universal good-will among men which the gospel is intended to establish. Such men present ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a humbug and a scoundrel for advocating it." Beacon Street, of course, was aghast at this outburst of blasphemy; and the high circles thereof were speedily closed against the plain-spoken radical who dared to question Mr. Webster's infallibility, and who made, indeed, but small account of the other idols ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... time since looked upon in Bohemia with private disgust and open disapprobation; and when the professors Huss, Jerome, and Jacobellus, began to declaim against monks, auricular confession, and the infallibility of the pope, they found a responding echo in the breasts of their hearers; and all that was novel in their doctrines, was the boldness with which they were pronounced, and the logical consistency with which ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... lengths the principles of the Church of Rome have led their votaries: and who can assert that she is, in any respect, changed? The Romanist denies that the principles of his Church are changed: nay, he must do so, or renounce the doctrine of infallibility, which is incompatible with change: why, then, should Protestants volunteer assertions, respecting the altered character of Popery, when the Papists themselves deny the fact altogether? I may venture to assert that the individual ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... other Protestant theological treatise. It was the first orderly exposition of the principles of Christianity from a Protestant standpoint. Like Peter Lombard's Sentences, it formed a convenient manual for study and discussion. The Institutes are based upon the infallibility of the Bible and reject the infallibility of the Church and the pope. Calvin possessed a remarkably logical mind and a clear and admirable style. The French version of his great work is the first example of the successful use of that language in an ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... extraordinary influence over him by casting some mysterious spell upon him and reducing his will to abject subjection to his own; and this magician, who had recovered his own self-possession, had assured him, with an inimitable air of infallibility, that the fall of the Temple of Serapis would involve no greater catastrophe than that of any old worn-out statue. Since this announcement Medius had laughed at his own alarms; he had recovered his "strong-mindedness," and when Posidonius had given ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hangings, which are decorated with native pictures on cloth. At the east end is a recess in which are some well-executed Chinese statues, the chief figure is of large dimensions, and is intended to represent the Durmah Rajah, whose statue is supposed to give infallibility. Two bells were suspended, one from the centre, the other from the balcony, the tongues of which were long, of ivory, and moved by a string. The Rajah received us in state, amidst discordant sounds of horns, pipes, and drums; his followers for ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... my sensations now that every thought centred in Anna, what would they not become when these personal transports were cooled by habit, and nature was left to the action of the ordinary impulses! I began to doubt of the infallibility of that part of my system which had given me so much pain, and to incline to the new doctrine that by concentration on particular parts we come most to love the whole. On examination there was ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the Nazi leaders on the infallibility of the Fuehrer and the duty of obedience of the German people. In a speech on June 12, 1935, for instance, Robert Ley, director of the party organization, said, "Germany must obey like a well-trained soldier: the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... Lambert was explaining his forecast of the political weather. The young knight had a great fancy for airing his politics, and an unwavering conviction of the infallibility of his judgment. If Sir Lambert was to be believed, what King Edward would undoubtedly do was to foment civil war in Scotland, until all the rival male claimants had destroyed each other. He would then marry the daughter of one of them, and annex Scotland as her appanage. All being smooth in ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... fearful view of frail human nature is opened for a searching mind to observe that a man, who professes to have abandoned the pleasures of existence, to have broken through the very first law of nature, to have separated himself from his kind, and to have assumed perfection and infallibility, the attributes of his Creator, devoting the altar at which he serves to the wicked purposes of arraying man against man, and of embruing the hands held up before him at prayer in the blood ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... come to a psychic society that the world may learn from their papal infallibility if anything exists at all worthy of notice. This is indeed seriously proposed! Well, if a group of clergymen in synod assembled should summon all geologists and astronomers to come before them and show if there was anything in their scientific teachings, their heretical, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... deal; he has formed his opinions of men and life. We cannot expect that he will change them in your, I mean in our favour. Men of the world are of the world, worldly. I do not think they are always right; I do not myself believe in their infallibility. There is no person more clever and more judicious than papa. No person is more considerate. But there are characters so rare, that men of the world do not admit them into their general calculations, and ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... reading-and-writing, socially and politically powerful ignorance inconceivable by Thomas Aquinas or even Roger Bacon, was incapable of so convenient an arrangement; and science was strangled by bigoted ignoramuses claiming infallibility for their interpretation of the Bible, which was regarded, not as a literature nor even as a book, but partly as an oracle which answered and settled all questions, and partly as a talisman to be carried by soldiers in their breast pockets or placed under the pillows ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... clique at Richmond made this disaster the occasion of fierce assaults on Jefferson Davis and fresh complaints of the treatment of their favorite General. The dogged persistence with which this group of soreheads proclaimed the infallibility of the genius of the weakest and most ineffective general of the Confederacy was phenomenal. The more miserable Johnston's failures the louder these men shouted his praises. The yellow journals of the South continued to praise this sulking old man until half the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... the "heretical Marchese di Brandenburgo," the king returned the compliment by calling him the "Grand Lama," and delighted himself over the assumed infallibility of the vicegerent ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... which I have lately talked to you so much, is at an end! there is no heir to such luck as his. The whole people of England can never agree a second time upon the same person for the residence of infallibility; and though so many have found their interest in making Mr. Pelham the fermier-general for their Venality, yet almost all have found too, that it lowered their prices to have but one purchaser. He could not have died at a more critical time: all the elections were ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... light through whatever medium or cloud of human passion or prejudice it passes. I reverence it in the followers of Brahmah, in the disciple of Mahomet, and I wonder at in all the variety of forms it adopts in the Christian world. You must not be angry with me that I do not allow infallibility to your Church, having been myself brought up by Protestant parents, who were rigidly attached to ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... the Church and of humanity, and thrown the weight of his authority into that of Gallicanism. Here again we see how his mental intensity and impatience reduced him to the dilemma which found solution in his apostasy. Holding as he did to the Papal infallibility in a form far more extreme than that subsequently approved by the Vatican Council, he was bound in consistency to accept the Pope's decision as infallible in respect to its expediency and in all its detail. Thus it seemed to him that the ideal for which he had lived was shattered ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... the Bishop of the diocese rose, to deliver a long diatribe upon the wickedness of heresy, the infallibility of the Church, and the necessity for the amputation of diseased limbs of the body politic. As nobody disagreed with any of his sentiments, the harangue was scarcely necessary; but time was of small value in the twelfth century. Two other Bishops followed, with ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... by a sound system of Logic; including under that title, a portion—that which relates to the "Laws of Evidence"—of what is sometimes treated under the head of "Rhetoric." But the full and complete accomplishment of such an object would confer on Man the unattainable attribute of infallibility. ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... of infallibility, these countries are claimed by Rome, and wedded to her, and this doctrine of infallibility makes a divorce impossible. Rome waits only her time to reclaim her supposed own. And this doctrine of infallibility will make it a holy war, hence good and true Catholics everywhere ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... a precept the sage MacGrawler had endeavoured to obey; consequently the result of his obedience was that even by himself he was better known than trusted. Whatever he might appear to others, he had in reality no vain faith in the infallibility of his own talents and resources; as well might a butcher deem himself a perfect anatomist from the frequent amputation of legs of mutton, as the critic of "The Asinaeum" have laid "the flattering unction to his soul" that he was really skilled in the art of criticism, or even acquainted ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me. The adventure destroyed from summit to foundation three of my most important Meditations, and the catholic infallibility of my book was assailed in its most essential point. I would gladly have paid to establish the fidelity of the Viscountess V——- a sum as great as very many people would have offered to secure her surrender. But alas! my money will now be ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... marriage to be. Still, he was married and tenderly attached to his good wife. Thus it was probably not any subtle distinction between Real Presence and Transubstantiation, not misgivings as to the exact degree of worship to be paid to the Virgin, not doubts as to the limits of the personal infallibility of the Pope or objections to practical abuses in the Church of Rome—which kept Keble and has kept many a Romanizing clergyman of the Anglican Church from becoming a Roman Catholic. Nor is the reason when analysed one of which Anglican philosophy ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory outcry—transitory though it be for years, local though from a Nation. Still more lamentable is his error who can believe that there is any thing of divine infallibility in the clamour of that small though loud portion of the community, ever governed by factitious influence, which, under the name of the PUBLIC, passes itself, upon the unthinking, for the PEOPLE. Towards the Public, the Writer hopes that he feels as much deference as it is entitled to: but to the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... entirely sincere Customary oaths, to be kept with the customary conscientiousness Deadliest of sins, the liberty of conscience I regard my country's profit, not my own Made no breach in royal and Roman infallibility Neither wished the convocation, while both affected an eagerness Our pot had not gone to the fire as often Peace, in reality, was war in its worst shape Those who "sought to swim between two waters" Volatile word was thought preferable to the ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... smoothly on, like a river keeping within its banks, we can decide subordinate and incidental questions which may arise; but when a case occurs in which we have the omnipotence of Parliament to set off against the infallibility of the pope—the sacred obligations of a will against the equally sacred principles of hereditary succession—and when we have, at last, two contradictory actions of the same ultimate umpire, we find all technical ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... same tendencies; it was dejected or vile, and distressed the heart by its artistic dryness or disgusted it by its trivial realism. Science itself ... began to appear to many what it is in reality, namely, a means, not an end; its prestige declined and its infallibility was questioned.... Above all, it was clear from too evident social symptoms that if science can satisfy some very distinguished minds, it can do nothing to moralize ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... wherein duty weighs deep and desireability swings like a pendant doll: so he throws on his harness, astounded, till his blood quickens with work, at the round of sacrifices demanded of nature: which is indeed curious considering what we are taught here and there as to the infallibility of our august mother. Well, the world of humanity had done this for Beauchamp. His afflicted historian is compelled to fling his net among prosaic similitudes for an illustration of one thus degradedly in its grip. If he had been off with his love like the rover! why, then the Muse would have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... about our agent's course at the Vatican, I have come over to Rome to see about it. He is an Irishman, with a little of Father TOM in him, and has got into a "controversy" with his Holiness about infallibility. Our African bishop (otherwise PHELIM BURKE) insists that PUNCHINELLO is infallible! The Pope says this is ridiculous! Father PHELIM replies that "there are two that can play that same game." I found them in the midst of this when ANTONELLI ushered me into the Papal presence. PIUS ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... whiskers—and led the way to the mills. But once there the amusement in his eyes rapidly deepened to amazement, for there were few steps in the processes upon which the boy could not talk as fluently and technically as did the mill boss himself. And he knew timber; knew it with the same infallibility which had, even in McLean, always seemed ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... accept the court's opinion for the nation's law. Any political ignoramus, if hoisted to the "bench," has judicial authority to declare the law,—it is absolute. If he errs, "he is responsible to the proper authorities—he may be removed by impeachment;" but the jury must not question the infallibility of his opinion. For though the grand-jury is "the country," the judge is not only all that, and more so; but is ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... already in the larger world. His opinion of things had especial value even in his Junior year. After the football season, when he had been acknowledged the keenest manager the college had ever found, the under-classmen had a blind faith in his infallibility. The older students relied on him in much the same way, though there were some who said that self lay at the bottom of Lyman's system of morals, that the watchword of his philosophy was "Does it pay?" These men were sentimentalists who had ideals. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... condition of affairs arose an opportunity that Fray Antonio was not slow to make the most of. Our coming into the valley with news of the outside world that directly controverted the Priest Captain's claim to infallibility gave a great shock to the religious faith of the community, and so induced a willingness to listen to the preaching of a new and purer creed. And on the part of those of the Council who were organizing the revolution—among whom religion seemed to be regarded less as a vital fact than ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... that the public mind, just after freeing itself by an unexampled effort, from a bondage which it had endured for ages, would patiently submit to a tyranny which could plead no ancient title. Rome had at least prescription on its side. But Protestant intolerance, despotism in an upstart sect, infallibility claimed by guides who acknowledged that they had passed the greater part of their lives in error, restraints imposed on the liberty of private judgment at the pleasure of rulers who could vindicate their own proceedings only by asserting the liberty of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the Vatican is "Infallibility." It not only never errs, but it never changes. It dons another mask, adopts another slogan, and is now engaged in a great crusade ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... removed from the town.[44] The Saincte Suaire was the richest ecclesiastical treasure of the Bisuntians, being one of the two most genuine of the many Suaires, the other being that of Turin, which was supported by Papal Infallibility. Both were brought from the Crusades; and the one was presented to Besancon in 1206, the other to Turin in 1353. Bede tells a story of the proving of a Shroud by fire in the eighth century, by one of the caliphs; and as its ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... quiescent in itself and perfectly satisfied that whoever else was wrong, 'Passon Walden' in everything he did, said, or thought, was sure to be right. Wherefore, until they heard their 'man o' God's' version of the stories that were being so briskly circulated, they reserved their own opinions. The infallibility of the Supreme Pontiff was not more securely founded in the Roman Catholic Ritual than the faith of St. Rest in the 'gospel according ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... the matter of his place in the human drama much thought. He had an idea that it was proper for him to vote with his friends, and he always did it. Had he been called a tool, he would have been much ruffled; he merely trusted to the infallibility of the party. ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... has never been in France a party more truly Catholic, more devout, refined and tolerant, more fitted to heal the breach between the cultivated and the Church. However, before the Second Empire, an end had been made of that. It cannot be said that the French Church exactly favoured the infallibility. It certainly did not stand against the decree as in the old days it would have done. The decree of infallibility is itself the greatest witness of the steady progress of reaction in the Roman Church. That action, theoretically at least, does away with even that ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... circumstances; for there was a great audience to the controversy. I thought I would try a method of my own, and very gravely replied, "Because we are too far off,"—a very new argument against the universal infallibility of the Pope. It took, however; for my opponent mused a while, and then said, "Too far off! Why, Sicily is as far off as England. Yet in Sicily they believe in the Pope."—"Oh," said I, "we are ten times further off ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... done, he felt the need of forming illusions about the alleged weakness of his rival. As he made ready for this great invasion, he hesitated to regard the result as certain; for he no longer was conscious of his infallibility, nor had that military assurance which the force and fire of youth give, nor had he that conviction of success which makes it sure." There had been no lack of warnings. Those of his advisers who knew Russia well, such ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... always liable to error; nature and certainty is very hard to come at, and infallibility is mere vanity ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Lutheranism wanted. The latter had, indeed, in its favor, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want of the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual reason: but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and vital condition of all revealed religion—the principle of infallibility; because nothing can live except in virtue of the laws that presided at its birth; and, in consequence, one revelation cannot be continued and confirmed without another. Now, infallibility is nothing but revelation ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that they are for ever being taken in by plausible scoundrels; the perspective of dogs is grotesque. Not seldom have I grimly watched the gradual disillusion of deceived dogs. Nevertheless, the sentimental legend of the infallibility of women, children, and dogs, ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... celebrated pieces startled Constance somewhat, although she had come prepared by a childlike faith in Ruskin's infallibility to worship them. She was, however, too frank to attempt to conceal her real impressions, and then Merton consolingly informed her that no person could appreciate a Turner before seeing it many times. One's first impression is, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... no infallibility. I merely express my own honest opinion, formed against my earnest desire. I do not lay it down as law for others, though, of course, I believe that many others would come to the same conclusion. It appears to me that the story is one that cannot possibly be told within ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... reading, in regard to the duty of keeping a promise, he contrasts, at the close of the section, the all but infallibility of common human reason in practice with its helplessness in speculation. Notwithstanding, it finds itself unable to settle the contending claims of Reason and Inclination, and so is driven to devise a practical philosophy, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... before so felt the force of unquestioned authority as I learned to feel and appreciate it in the services of the Episcopal Church of England. The very fact of arguing a question is in itself a compromise of its one-sidedness and of the infallibility of the position the preacher may have taken; but let the clergy of an entire nation read the same mass and recite the same prayers in all their congregations, and let them refrain from discussing scriptural texts, and all give one and ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... subject of great reflection, until I feel into a deep sleep; for I had sufficient penetration to observe that my father had lost his life by not adhering to his own principles; and this perception only rendered my belief in the infallibility of these maxims to be even ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... knows how to use it, deliverance from the ignorance or half-knowledge of provincialism, from the crudity of its half-trained tastes, and from the blind passion of its rash and groundless faith in its own infallibility. ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... more the miraculous was introduced into it, the more the doctrine was strained from its meaning and the more obscure it became; and the more it was strained from its meaning and the more obscure it became, the more strongly its infallibility had to be asserted, and the less ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... Christian Science Journal:—At the prison, once a week, there are Christian papers given to the inmates. But none of those papers point out so clearly the fallibility of the mortal or carnal mind, and the infallibility of the divine Mind, as does ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... speak, a unanimous vote." There was a strong hint of approval in the President's voice. He was a good man; but he belonged to that sect which holds as one of the main articles of its faith, "I believe in the infallibility of the rich." ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... though some succeeded much more quickly than others, all the individuals in the family have persevered till they have solved the questions; and the timid seem to have been more encouraged by this practical demonstration of the infallibility of persevering attention, than by any other methods which have been tried. When, after a number of small successful trials, they have acquired some share of confidence in themselves, when they are certain of ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... hitherto has been commented upon too often to need attention here. Nor does the weakness of the evidence for miracles depend solely on the fact that it rests, in the first instance, on the senses, which may be deceived; or upon inference, which may be erroneous. It is not merely that the infallibility of human testimony discredits the miracles of the past. The impossibility that human knowledge, that science, can ever exhaust the possibilities of Nature, precludes the immediate reference to the Supernatural for all time. It is pure sophistry to argue, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke |
