"Polemics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... embers of jealousy and hate. To the employers they predicted ruin; to the houseowners, desolation and emptiness; to the publicans the reign of puritanism; to the emancipists the ascendancy of the free, to be followed by unextinguishable persecution. All the sentiments and epithets known in Irish polemics and Irish seditions were re-arranged in the convict service, and scattered with profusion. The League was assailed with peculiar virulence, and all its distinguished adherents held up to scorn as religious and immoral men, as hateful for their covetousness ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... lecture, could not have been very deep, for he had only lately quitted the student's bench himself. His duties forced him to learn what he did not know. In teaching he taught himself. It was at this time that he did most of the reading which afterwards added substance to his polemics and treatises. He tells us himself that he read in those days all that he could lay hands on. He is very proud of having read by himself and understood without any assistance from a master, the Ten Categories of Aristotle, which was considered one of the most abstruse works of the Stagirite. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... opinions by observations extremely pertinent. It was hardly to be expected that the champions should not seek to enlist partisans. "What do you yourself think?" they asked, each of his neighbor. These polemics kept Mme. de Bargeton ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... facts. The question of promiscuity itself I cannot examine in detail here, as it hardly comes within the scope of this book. In view of the confusion Westermarck has already created in recent scientific literature by his specious pleading, I need not apologize for the frequency of my polemics against him. His imposing erudition and his cleverness in juggling with facts by ignoring those that do not please him (as e.g., in case of the morality of the Kaffirs and Australians, and the "liberty of choice" of their women) make him a serious obstacle ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Julian Schmidt recognized his power and the poetic charm of many of his passages, but thought him in danger of crossing the line which separates sense from nonsense, genius from insanity. Hebbel was restive under criticism, and the method of his polemics tended rather to exasperate than to conciliate his adversaries. Meanwhile Maria Magdalena and Judith were performed at the Hofburgtheater, with Christine as the heroine. But in 1850 Heinrich Laube became director of this theatre, and he not only rejected one play of Hebbel's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... handling a delicate problem. He recognized this, but desired that the pioneer studies, then in progress might escape harsh polemics. This was difficult of realization for less than a month later fuel was added to the fire by Maclean, when in writing Mitchill, who had sent him Priestley's printed letter, he emphatically ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... not, however, by his original contributions to knowledge that Huxley's name is best known to readers outside of technical science, but rather by his labors in popularisation and in polemics. He was one of the foremost and most effective champions of Darwinism, and no scientist has been more conspicuous in the battle between the doctrine of evolution and the older religious orthodoxy. Outside of this particular issue, he was a vigorous opponent of supernaturalism ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... principles of the ancient religion, reasserted and illuminated with amazing learning and voluminous commentary the archaic documents, expounded and defended the ancient cosmogony, and in the usual style of Japanese polemics preached anew the doctrines of Shint[o]. With wonderful naivete and enthusiasm, Motooeri taught that Japan was the first part of the earth created, and that it is therefore The Land of the Gods, the Country of the Holy Spirits. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... harmonious grouping, as of the petals of a flower, the melody and rhythm of its language, notably in the explanation of the Second Article, its clarity, perspicuity, and popularity; its simplicity, coupled with depth and richness of thought; the absence of polemics and of theological terminology, etc. However, with all this and many other things which have been and might be said in praise of the Catechism, the feature which made it what it truly was, a Great Deed of the Reformation, has not as yet been pointed ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... cause this fourfold reform to force its way first into ideas, then into the laws. Reckon up the speeches, the writings, the newspaper articles, the projects of laws, the counter-projects, the amendments, the amendments to amendments, the reports, the counter-reports, the facts, the incidents, the polemics, the discussions, the assertions, the denials, the storms, the steps forward, the steps backward, the days, the weeks, the months, the ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... did not therefore lay down a pen that had become in his hands a powerful weapon. He published a number of books on political, social, and philosophic subjects, in the form of stories, dramas, aphorisms, or polemics. Noteworthy among these are his fine parables, the novel 'La Sainte Vierge' (The Holy Virgin); the drama in blank, 'Vorstenschool' (School for Princes), containing many fine thoughts, and still one of the most popular plays of the day; and the incomplete 'Geschiedem's van Wontertje Pieterse' ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... in the midst of poverty and privation, Jonathan Edwards wrote the treatise on the Freedom of the Will, the greatest of all existing polemics. A portion of the old parsonage remains in the village, and there are still shown marks and scratches on the wall, made by him, as it is said, in the night, to recall by daylight the abstruse meditations of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the pyrotechnics of a past age, will take here and there a vivid touch to illustrate his theories or brighten his narrative. They will retain, too, a certain importance as autobiography. But fortunately the great mass of the work which Victor Hugo has left behind him can be separated from the polemics of his troubled age and fiery temper. It is not in any sense a peaceful literature. Conflict is its very inspiration. The struggle of human misery with all the confusing and overbearing forces of life; of poverty with the requirements and oppressions of wealth; of the small with the great; of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... of this period exist. The x Club was doing its work. Most of those to whom he would naturally have written he met constantly. Two letters to Professor Haeckel give pieces of his experience. One suggests the limits of aggressive polemics, as to which I remember his once saying that he himself had only twice been the aggressor in controversy, without waiting to be personally attacked; once where he found his opponent was engaged in a flanking movement; the other when a man of great public reputation had come forward ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... making the most of the fair weather. The cloudless sky and the auspicious forecast of fine days still to come did more to prove to the farmer the existence of an all-wise, overruling Providence than all the polemics of the world might accomplish. The furrows multiplied everywhere save in Nehemiah's own fields, where he often stood so long in the turn-row that the old horse would desist from twisting his head backward in surprise, and start at ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... friendly council I perceived my danger, and set about to avoid the fault of mixing my fiction with my polemics. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... owing to the commotions of the Civil War in which "fears and jealousies had soured the people's blood, and politics and polemics had almost driven mirth and good humour out of the nation," or whether it was from a dearth of eminent talent, humour seems to have made little progress under the Restoration. The gaiety of the Merry Monarch and his companions ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Lutheran Church in European countries where the war has upset political, social, and religious conditions; to adjust matters on the Home Mission field, in order to restrict and stop destructive competitive church-work; to discourage, ignore, and abandon public polemics among Lutherans; to prepare a statement defining the essentials of a catholic spirit as viewed by the Lutheran Church. With the exception of the Synodical Conference (always wary of entangling and unionistic alliances), practically all of the Lutheran synods in America are connected ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... her townspeople of the poorer sort, an occasional call upon or from some distant neighbor of a rank approaching her own; for the rest, embroidery in the newest patterns and most elegant style, some few books, chiefly religious and polemical works—and what can be drearier than Roman Catholic polemics, unless, indeed, Protestant ones eclipse them?—a large house, vast estates, servants who never raised their voices beyond a certain tone; the envy of all the middle-class women, the fear and reverential courtesies ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... modicum of righteous indignation at the unblushing heresy of the author, not unmixed with a little scornful pity at his inability to believe very preposterous stories upon very meagre evidence. "Conservative" polemics of this sort have doubtless their function. They serve to purge scientific literature of the awkward and careless statements too often made by writers not sufficiently instructed or cautious, which in the absence of hostile criticism might get accepted by the unthinking reader along with the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... German traveller, is about abandoning the fruitless polemics which have gained him so many foes, to devote himself to more useful labors. He himself desires to be at peace with all the world, and the antagonists which his trenchant pen has so often unsparingly scarified, need fear him no longer. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... that therefore they are not felt quite as much in earnest by sober and tolerant people, and that they may not be stated in their real force without giving occasion for the remark that this is reviving the old cruel war against Rome, and rekindling a fierce style of polemics which is now out of date? And how is Dr. Pusey to state these objections if, when he goes into them, not in a vague declamatory way, but showing his respect and seriousness by his guarded and full and definite manner of proof, he is to be met by the ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the depths of your own soul, if you've got the moral eyesight to look through mud," declaimed Mr. Niles, refusing to descend from polemics to plain business, "and you'll see what is the matter. You have made yourself the voice by which this district has spoken in the halls of state for fifty years, and that voice is not the voice of the people!" He stood on tiptoe and roared ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... This is the power that a minister ought to have with every soul with whom he comes in contact: his word should quickly touch a vital spot. No one to-day cares much for mere oratory, literary discussion, polemics, or cursory exegesis; "marked ability in writing and in public speaking" means that grip on reality which makes ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... Zurich friends in my new home, which was so much more conveniently situated than my former one; only I quite spoilt all my hospitality for a long time by my fanatical agitation for a water diet and my polemics against the evils of wine and other intoxicating drinks. I adopted what seemed almost a new kind of religion: when I was driven into a corner by Sulzer and Herwegh, the latter of whom prided himself on his knowledge of chemistry ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the baronet's wife was a vigorous adherent of the Church of England, wherein she saw the hope of the country and of mankind. But her orthodoxy discriminated; ever combative, she threw herself into the religious polemics of the time, and not only came to be on very ill terms with her own parish clergyman, but fell foul of the bishop of the diocese, who seemed to her to treat with insufficient consideration certain letters she addressed to him. Then it was that, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... Eyolf, Borkman, and When We Dead Awaken. He returned to Norway in July 1891, for a stay of indefinite length; but the restless wanderer over Europe was destined to leave his home no more.... He had not returned, however, to throw himself, as of old, into the battle of the passing day. Polemics are entirely absent from the poetry of his old age. He leaves the State and Society at peace. He who had departed as the creator of Falk [in Love's Comedy] now, on his return, gazes into the secret places of human nature and the ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... of his against me, called "A Brotherly Examination Re-examined" (I think he would or should have said examined, for this is the first examination of it), I find it more full of railing than of reasoning, of gibing than of gravity; and when polemics do so degenerate, the world is abused not edified. He tells me if I have not work enough I shall have more. I confess the answering of this piece is no great work; and the truth is, I am ashamed I have so little to make ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... in the service of the Harley Ministry. On his installation as Dean of St. Patrick's he had been received in Dublin with jeering and derision. He had even been mocked at in his walks abroad. In 1720, however, he entered for the second time the field of active political polemics, and began with renewed energy the series of writings which not only placed him at the head and front of the political writers of the day, but secured for him a place in the affections of the people of Ireland—a place which has been kept sacred ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... the three Scandinavian countries, Grundtvig, Runeberg, and Wergeland. From the beginning of 1865 to the middle of 1867 he had been director of the Theater, and since March, 1866, as editor no less than as author, active in polemics, political and literary. His election early in December, 1869, as president of the Students' Union, was a demonstration in his favor, shortly after which this poem was written. Compare also the poem, Oh, When Will You Stand Forth?, and note thereto. The twelfth and thirteenth stanzas refer ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... writer takes leave to refer to two essays of his own, in "Irenics and Polemics" (New York, Christian Literature Co., 1895), for a fuller statement of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... be seen whose arguments I am, in form, reproducing here. I would fain lay down the truth without polemics or recrimination. But unfortunately we never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. The error is needed to set off the truth, much as a dark background is required ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... the danger of the church was felt by every good and pious divine; and her most active defenders were her best friends. His lordship would therefore perhaps be glad to hear that Mr. Trevor had particularly devoted himself to polemics, was intimately acquainted with the writings of the fathers and the known orthodox divines, and was qualified to be a powerful advocate and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... professor, when it often means bind and gag that the strongest may work his will. It is a plea for the survival of the fittest—for the strongest male to take possession of the herd by a process of extermination. If we examine this battle cry of political polemics, we find that it is based upon the conception of the divine right of property, and the preoccupation by older or more favored or more alert or richer men or nations, of territory, of the forces of nature, of machinery, of all the functions of what we call civilization. Some of these men, who ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... had no distinct vision of the benefit that would accrue to him from this change of courses. But Mr. Barton, being aware that Miss Fodge had touched on a delicate subject in alluding to the roast goose, was determined to witness no more polemics between her and Mr. Spratt, so, saying good morning to the latter, he ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... cultivator of the memory of Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have pomme de terre [potato] pronounced parmentiere, and succeeded therein not at all. The Abbe Gregoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionary, ex-senator, had passed, in the royalist polemics, to the state of "Infamous Gregoire." The locution of which we have made use—passed to the state of—has been condemned as a neologism by M. Royer Collard. Under the third arch of the Pont de Jena, the new stone with which, the two ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... itself? And this, it can do, only through the organization of the whole people, that is, through the nation (I, 202). Adam Smith's theory of labor would be correct if it considered the entire national life of a people itself as one huge piece of labor. (II, 265). And so, Mueller directs his polemics against Adam Smith's premise of a merely mercantile world-market. (II, 290). Similarly, the protective tariff theoreticians, Ganieh, Theorie de l'Economie politique (1822), II, 198 ff. and Fr. List, Nationales System der politischen ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... e.g., Jarchi, have retained this explanation, although a strong doctrinal interest, to which others yielded, tempted them to give another interpretation to this passage, which occupied so prominent a place in the polemics of the Christians. (Compare the passage in Raim. Martini Pug. Fid. ed. Carpzov; Jac. Alting's Shiloh, Franc. 1660, 4to [also in the opp. t. v.]; Schoettgen, hor. Hebr. ii. p. 146; and, most completely, in "Jac. Patriarch. de Schiloh vatic. a depravatione Clerici assertum, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... Doctor Rochecliffe regained his living of Woodstock, with other Church preferment, and gave up polemics and political intrigues for philosophy. He was one of the constituent members of the Royal Society, and was the person through whom Charles required of that learned body solution of their curious problem, "Why, if a vessel ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Clyde north to the Bristol Channel south, and varying in distance from 20 to 100 miles; so that the subjugation of Ireland would compel us to guard with ships and soldiers a new line of coast, certainly amounting, with all its sinuosities, to more than 700 miles—an addition of polemics, in our present state of hostility with all the world, which must highly gratify the vigorists and give them an ample opportunity of displaying that foolish energy upon which their claims to distinction are founded. Such ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... corruption of the age required heroic and terror-striking means to rouse and to move the masses; and so the dissensions and troubles between Paul and the nascent Church increased with the success of Paul among the Gentiles. His epistles, one and all, are polemics, not against heathenism or against Judaism, but against his colleagues in Jerusalem, whom, together with their doctrines, he treats in a most reckless manner. They could not write to counterbalance Paul—in fact, there were no writers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... selectors or censors), and moreover secures separation from the original stock and thus eliminates or lessens the reactionary dangers of panmixia. Darwin accepted Wagner's theory as "advantageous." Through the heated polemics of the more ardent selectionists Wagner's theory came to grow into an alternative instead of a help to the theory of selectional evolution. Separation is now rightly considered a most important factor by modern ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... multitude of persecuted sects, from the Albigenses and Cathars to the eastern Paulicians. The catholic church found it necessary to prohibit the circulation of the Old Testament among laymen very largely on account of the polemics of the Cathars against the Hebrew God. But in this book, be it noted, the word Christian, when it is not otherwise defined, is used to indicate only the Trinitarians who accept ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... it all at the valuation of its own professors, assailed it with a disbelief as prosaic as their belief, but intellectually more honest. His interpretation of the Bible is unscientific, if you will, but it is nearer to the truth of history than the conventional belief of his day. If his polemics seem rough and superfluous to us, it is only because his direct frontal attacks forced on the work of Biblical criticism, and long ago compelled the abandonment of most of the positions which he assailed. In spite of its grave faults of taste and temper and manner, The Age of Reason performed ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... subsequently murdered by the Indians. But the force of mental exercise which she had put in motion still continued. It is worthy of remark that almost the only intellectual peculiarity to which Franklin refers, in speaking of his father, is 'a turn for polemics.' The great features of New England character were, at that day, opinion and faith. It was these, as boldly and defiantly expressed, which excited the fears and jealousy of Charles the Second, and instigated the deprival ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... then is WRITING? Ye tons of invoices, groaning shelves of incalculable legers, parchment abhorrences of rare Charles Lamb, we think not now of you; dreary piles of unhealthy-looking law-books, hypochondriacal heaps of medical experiences, plodding folios of industrious polemics, slow elaborations of learned dullness, we spare your native dust; letters unnumbered, in all stages of cacography, both physical and metaphysical, alack! most of you must slip through the meshes of our definition yet unwove; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... retained by the kings of England. Luther, who was in the heat of controversy, soon published an answer to Henry; and, without regard to the dignity of his antagonist, treated him with all the acrimony of style to which, in the course of his polemics, he had so long been accustomed. The king, by this ill usage, was still more prejudiced against the new doctrines; but the public, who naturally favor the weaker party, were inclined to attribute to Luther the victory in the dispute.[*] And as the controversy ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... the immense sum (L1,200) contributed to make good the personal losses of a few passengers and seamen. The liberality of the hand is here unrestrained by religious antipathies. Bigotry assumes the character of ill temper and puffing. Two parrots in Philadelphia trained to polemics were set over against each other, one crying all day, "there can be no church without a prelate;" the other, "there can be a church without a prelate;" the passengers were divided in opinion, but laughing walked on. ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... and yet calm repudiation of the statement at once follows, as if classical education were a kind of witchcraft, blessing its followers, and demonstrating itself to them by this blessing. There is no attempt at polemics . "We have been through it all." "We know it ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... primarily for comparisons, in order that they may have value for this purpose they must include only such items of expenditure as will regularly recur. If this limitation were more generally recognized, a good deal of dispute and polemics on the subject might be saved. For this reason it is quite impossible that all the expenditure on the mine should be charged into working costs, particularly some items that arise ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... of a complex bad system,—a system, however, notwithstanding—and such is Popery,—should take heed above all things not to disperse himself. Let him keep to the sticking place. But the majority of our Protestant polemics seem to have taken for granted that they could not attack Romanism in too many places, or on too many points;—forgetting that in some they will be less strong than in others, and that if in any one or two they are repelled from the assault, the feeling of this ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the most famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would ever believe! People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would spread as far as Forges, as Neufchatel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could say if his colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would ensue; he would have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte might even prosecute him. He saw himself dishonoured, ruined, lost; and his imagination, assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed amongst them like an empty cask borne by the sea ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the neutrality of Belgium. Shorn from their context as they were, these sentences are by no means illuminating, and it cannot be said that their citation in this form by Sir Edward Grey was a very felicitous one. During the paper polemics of the past months these detached words of Gladstone have been freely used by Germany's defenders and apologists to maintain that Great Britain of 1870 would not have deemed the events of 1914 a casus belli, and that its entrance into the present war on account of the violation of Belgium's ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... bit of breezy polemics for the dreary fifties—a fine bit of moral courage too for the University professor who ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her tears flowing faster than her apron could dry them, and made him a signal to follow her. "How," said the monk, "is she then so near her end?—nay, the Church must not break or bruise, when comfort is yet possible;" and forgetting his polemics, the good Sub-Prior hastened to the little apartment, where, on the wretched bed which she had occupied since her misfortunes had driven her to the Tower of Glendearg, the widow of Walter Avenel had rendered up her spirit to her Creator. "My God!" said the Sub-Prior, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... theological controversy and literary productions. It was during this period that he collected his miscellaneous writings, entitled "Gleanings from Past Years." A little more than a year had elapsed when he again entered the political arena. "He threw aside polemics and criticisms, he forgot for awhile Homer and the Pope," and "rushed from his library at Hawarden, forgetting alike ancient Greece and modern Rome," as he flung himself with impassioned energy and youthful vigor into a new crusade ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... were studied with a closeness and assiduity for which the monks have not always received due credit.[2] A great deal of room was given up to the works of the Fathers—their confessions, retractations, and letters, their polemics against heresies, their dogmatic and doctrinal treatises, and their sermons and ethical discourses. Of all these writings those of Hilary, Basil, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome, and the great Augustine ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... dispraised a poetical fellow-countryman merely for urging the duties of national union and national defence. A critic, however, writes thus of Tennyson: "When our poet descends into the arena of party polemics, in such things as Riflemen, Form! Hands all Round, . . . The Fleet, and other topical pieces dear to the Jingo soul, it is not poetry but journalism." I doubt whether the desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a fleet really is within the arena of PARTY polemics. If any ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... discerned, we cannot clearly see how the present volume either makes the problems more intelligible, or points the way to feasible solutions. Though he tries, in perfect good faith, to be the dispassionate student, he often comes very close to the polemics of the hour. The truth is that scientific lawyers have seldom been very favourable to popular government; and when the scientific lawyer is doubled with the Indian bureaucrat, we are pretty sure beforehand ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... at some length from one of his many polemics to show the absolute and fearless sincerity of the man, mistaken though he may have been in his ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... things. He wrote lyrics, songs, dramas, romances, sermons, Platonic dialogues, newspaper articles, children's fairy books, scientific manuals, philosophical essays, lectures, extravaganzas, and theological polemics. Hardly any of these were quite in the first rank, and some of them were thin, flashy, and almost silly. But most of them had the saving gift of getting home to the interests, ideas, and tastes of the great public, and he made them think even when he was ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... expression which was always there when she began her sorceries. She triumphed over everything, and I complacently told myself that the woman who loses all, sacrifices the future, and makes love her only virtue, is far above Catholic polemics. ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... more turbulent, in Ireland, more artistic in Italy, more philosophic in Germany, more literary and discursive in France, more idolatrous in the States of South America, more reserved and modest, more decent and tolerant, less ambitious in its aspirations, and less audacious in its polemics, in England than in any other ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... thought this day would have passed off entirely without polemics; but I was mistaken. In the evening Harrington, after a very cheerful morning, relapsed into one of his pensive moods. Conversation flagged; at last I heard Fellowes say, "I have this advantage of you, my friend, that my sentiments have, at all events, produced that peace of which you are in quest, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... information, under the following general title. Scarce Tracts: Old and New Testaments (including almost all the first English editions of the New Testament, which are now of the rarest occurrence): Commentators: Ecclesiastical History: Polemics: Devotions, Catholic and Calvinistical: Enthusiasm: Monastical History: Lives of Saints: Fathers: Missionaries: Martyrs: Modern Divines and Persons of eminent piety: Free Thinkers: Old English Primers: ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... No improvements of the new philosophy were even attempted. Wherein it was defective and indistinct, defective and indistinct it remained. The system was not thought out to its end and independently adopted. Polemics, ontology, ethics, theology, marvels, heroes—all were enthusiastically adopted on faith. It is to be added that the new system was superior to the old, and so much of discrimination was shown."[AD] And somewhat earlier he likewise asserts that "There is not an original ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... contemporary dramas, and from some clear passages in 'Hamlet' itself, it follows at the same time that the polemics carried on by Shakspere in 'Hamlet' are in most intimate connection with a controversy in which the public took a great interest, and which, in the first years of the seventeenth century, was fought out with much bitterness on the stage. The remarkable ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the followers of the Lutheran opinion. At the same time Bucer, who presided over the flourishing church of Strasburg, was engaged in framing yet another explication of this important rite, by which he vainly hoped to accommodate the consciences of all these zealous and acute polemics. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... summary of the internal evidences attesting the genuineness of these letters, to the headings omitted (2, 3) on the Theological Polemics and the Ecclesiastical Conditions. That summary is as ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... Stanch polemics, like a Bull, (Judicium Eccles. Cathol. c. 2,) insist on the orthodoxy of the Nazarenes; which appears less pure and certain in the eyes ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... opponent for his betters in education, struck forcibly, dexterously, was always alert for debate. An encounter between Swift and Johnson, were it imaginable, would present us probably the most prodigious Gigantomachy in literary polemics. It is not imaginable among comparative pygmies. But Rockney's combat with his fellow-politicians of the Press partook of the Swiftian against the Johnsonian in form. He was a steam ram that drove straight at the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... controversy in which this experience was so strong a factor has not become obsolete. The "horrible decrees" have indeed been very generally driven from the pulpit, but not entirely. Our work as polemics will not be finished until they leave the schools and the books, and cease to be pillows for the multitudes who lull themselves to slumber over the notion of "sovereign grace and waiting God's time," and cease to goad despondent souls to despair, with the charge of being "from eternity passed ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... topic must now be considered. Overbeck in 1813 relinquished the Protestant faith of his forefathers and joined the Roman Catholic Church. Obviously in these pages polemics are out of place, and the step which the conscientious painter thought fit to take has to be here noted so far only as it serves as an index to character and as an interpretation of art. Rightly to judge the case, it were well correctly to estimate Overbeck as a man: his ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... motives of the actions, the only method is to compare the actions, firstly, with the declarations of those who performed them; secondly, with the interpretation of those who witnessed their performance. There is often a doubt remaining: this is the field of party polemics; every one attributes noble motives to the actions of his own party and discreditable motives to those of the opposite party. But actions described without any indication of motive ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... ancestors. The rude but often beautiful political lyrics of the early days of the Stuarts were far more interesting and important to the people who heard or repeated them, than any similar compositions can be in our time. When the printing press was the mere vehicle of polemics for the educated minority, and when the daily journal was neither a luxury of the poor, a necessity of the rich, nor an appreciable power in the formation and guidance of public opinion, the song and the ballad appealed to the passion, if ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... so, transforming manuscripts into fine works of art which their subject-matter would have classified as scientific works, as reports of action, as historical documents, as philosophical treatises, as doctrinal expositions, as sermons, polemics, dissertations and demonstrations. It transforms even dictionaries and operates from Descartes to Condillac, from Bossuet to Buffon and Voltaire, from Pascal to Rousseau and Beaumarchais, in short, becoming prose almost entirely, even in official dispatches, diplomatic and private correspondence, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... secular clergy. By raising up a body of virtuous, educated, and active priests, the Jesuits met that argument. The theological difference remained, and they dealt with it through the best controversialists. And when their polemics failed, they strove, as pamphleteers, and as the confessors of the great, to resist the Protestants with the arm of the flesh. For the multitudes that had never heard the Catholic case stated, they ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... have been a separate work appended to the Memorabilia on Polemics or Archics ["Science of War" and "Science ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... matter," and his conduct cost him the patronage of the duke of York. In ecclesiastical matters he threw in his lot with Thomas Tillotson and John Tenison, and at the time of the Revolution had written some eighteen polemics against encroachments of the Roman Catholic Church. At the suggestion of Sir William Jones, the attorney-general, he began his History of the Reformation in England, based on original documents. [v.04 p.0852] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... researches, scientific inventions, sketches of society, biographical memoirs, essays on fine arts, and miscellaneous articles on drama, music and literary intelligence." Thus Jerdan followed his friend Canning's advice by avoiding "politics and polemics" and by aiming to present "a clear and instructive picture of the moral and literary improvement of the times, and a complete and authentic chronological literary record for general reference." He secured the services ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... only of the church, but of the palace, for Gregory VII., the popes and the Latin communion. The style of Cinnamus and Nicetas is still more vehement. Yet how calm is the voice of history compared with that of polemics!] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Reformation opened the way for a critical treatment of the history of dogma.[17] But even in Protestant Churches, at first, historical investigations remained under the ban of the confessional system of doctrine and were used only for polemics.[18] Church history itself up to the 18th century was not regarded as a theological discipline in the strict sense of the word, and the history of dogma existed only within the sphere of dogmatics as a ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... women. On the one hand, the inspiration of scripture, on the other, the admission of women to Harvard, is at stake, and it is these that lend the peculiar animus and animation to the discussion. In both polemics, arguments are not accepted because they are demonstrated, but enlisted because they are useful; ranged with others recruited from the most distant quarters, with nothing in common but the regiment into which they are all thrust, to be ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... psychology, aesthetics, grammar, rhetoric, history, philology, mathematics, arithmetic, astronomy, anatomy, geography, stenography, physiology, architecture, and hundreds more in similar domains; the subdivisions and ramifications of theology as exegesis, hermeneutics, apologetics, polemics, dogmatics, ethics, homiletics, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... teetotaller-led local governing bodies over theatres. Fifth, there were the playwrights, without political power, but with a very close natural monopoly of a talent not only for play-writing but for satirical polemics. And since every interest has its opposition, all these influences had created hostile bodies by the operation of the mere impulse to contradict them, always strong in ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... Luther any better than he makes himself. Still, the question is pertinent whether violent polemics can ever be engaged in by Christians with a good conscience. Luther has asserted that, while he hurled his terrible denunciations against the adversaries of the truth, his heart was disposed to friendship and peace with them. (16, 1718 f.) Is a state of mind like this altogether ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... such notes on Philosophy, Morals and Polemics, have been included in this section as occur as independent texts in the original MSS. Several moral reflections have already been given in Vol. I, in section "Allegorical representations, Mottoes and Emblems". Others will be found in ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... of mind and tolerance of the customs of other lands, lacking which the Englishman abroad is always an offence. Charlotte and Emily hated the land and people. They had been brought up ultra-Protestants. Their father was an Ulster man, and his one venture into the polemics of his age was to attack the proposals for Catholic emancipation. With this inheritance of intolerance, how could Charlotte and Emily face with kindliness the Romanism which they saw around them? How heartily they ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... commercial blood stains upon his hand, they were hidden by the glove of success. After a manner he had had peace; now all was disquiet; the turmoil of an awakened gentler feeling clashing with the polemics of self-satisfying selfishness. And all because of a girl! To him that was the peculiar feature of the disturbance in his nature. He, Philip Crane, the strong man of strong men, to be shorn of his indifference to everything ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the wealth of chaste language stored up within the covers of "The Hymnary." A rare musician-poet is needed to resolve its pulpy flavour and discipline to the polemics of common life; whilst one, a connoisseur, would readily congratulate the sanguine, sensible, and all-seeing management, as regards to authors of words, indices of composers, indices of metres, metronome marks, which heralds and places it, in respect of completeness, ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... instinct, and according to his powers to become a metaphysician. There is no discipline which so well consists with solitude, none which so instantly enfranchises the mind from the tyranny of mean self-interest or vain and envious polemics. Men do not grow sour and quarrelsome about the Absolute: everything that is polemical is inspired, as Michelet once said, by some temporal and momentary interest. The man who has climbed to the Idalian spring comes down benevolent. He does not grudge this toiling ant his grain, that snarling ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... the city was first stimulated by the polemics against the political and social disorders of urban life. There were those who would destroy the city in order to remedy its evils and restore the simple life of the country. Sociology sought a surer basis for the solution of the problems from a study of the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... political circumstances of North America, which could not but exercise an irritating and galling effect on so warm a patriot as Whitney, an effect which was transferred unconsciously to his literary criticisms and polemics, whenever he felt ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... now Tolstoy tells us that Uncle Tom's Cabin is greater than Shakespeare. Is it any wonder Turgenieff remonstrated with him? Is it any wonder if, after reading one of his latter-day tracts, we are reminded of The Washerwoman of Finchley Common, that classic in the polemics of sniffling piety? The truth is that Tolstoy, a wonderful artist in plastic portraiture, consciously or unconsciously fashioned the Tolstoy legend, as did Richard Wagner the Wagner legend, Victor Hugo the Hugo legend. Men of genius ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... osteria will convince you. To one man the oil is a delight: he will soak himself in it till his thought swims viscid in his pate. To another it is abhorrent: straightway he calls for his German vinegar and drowns the native flavour in floods as bitter as polemics. Your wine too! Overweak for water, says one, who consumes a stout fiaschone and spends a stertorous afternoon in headache and cursing at the generous home-grown. Frizzante! cries your next to all his gods; and flushes the poison with ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... the English Roman Catholic world, but once more it was considered prudent by the Vatican to leave him alone. In spite of his reservations, he regarded "communion with Rome as dearer than life.'' Thenceforth he steered clear of theological polemics. He devoted himself to persistent reading and study, combined with congenial society. With all his capacity for study he was a man of the world, and a man of affairs, not a bookworm. Little indeed came from his pen, his only notable publications being a masterly essay in the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is confirmed by the works of Constantine himself. They must be regarded as far better authority than the writings of religious polemics. A medal was struck, on which was impressed his title of "God," together with the monogram of Christ. Another represented him as raised by a hand from the sky while seated in the chariot of the Sun. But more particularly the great porphyry pillar, a column 120 feet in height, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... stones as he went along; and in like manner authors trace the course of their life's peregrinations by the pamphlets and articles they cast down as they go. Sometimes they throw stones, sometimes they throw bread. In '92 and '93 Mrs. Barbauld must have been occupied with party polemics and with the political miseries of the time. A pamphlet on Gilbert Wakefield's views, and another on 'Sins of the Government and Sins of the People,' show in what direction her thoughts were bent. Then came a period of comparative calm again and of literary work and interest. She seems ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... change his religion, change his coat, change his master, and yet never change his nature." He never changed his nature, he was as free from cynicism as a barrister who represents successively opposing parties in suits or politics; and when he wrote polemics in prose or verse he lent his talents as a barrister lends his for a fee. His one intellectual interest was in his art, and it is in his comments on his art—the essays and prefaces in the composition of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... this question is usually not understood at all by those critics who presume to answer the question off-hand in a spasm of polemics. It is interesting, as an evidence of the shallowness of most contemporary dramatic criticism, to read over, in the course of Mr. Shaw's nimble essay on The Quintessence of Ibsenism, the collection which the author ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... species would in his eyes absolutely lose its importance if a transition from species to species under the influence of conditions of life were admitted. His disciples (Littre, Robin) continued to direct against Darwin the polemics which their master had employed against Lamarck. Stuart Mill, who, in the theory of knowledge, represented the empirical or positivistic movement in philosophy—like his English forerunners from Locke to Hume—founded ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... following passage, too, is curious as showing how polemics, like history, repeat themselves. "As his reasonings were, so is his eloquence. One character pervades his whole being. Words on words, finely arranged, and so dexterously consequent that the whole bears the semblance of argument and still keeps awake a sense of surprise; but, when all is ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... sacrifices probability to polemics. Too often he is merely the emotional controversialist. Bias and Life are with him not always welded into the harmonious whole, which one is entitled to ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... the greater number of my fairy tales. On the banks of quiet lakes, amid the woods, on the green grassy pastures, where the game sprang past me and the stork paced along on his red legs, I heard nothing of politics, nothing of polemics; I heard no one practising himself in Hagel's phraseology. Nature, which was around me and within me, preached to me of my calling. I spent many happy days at the old house of Gisselfeld, formerly a ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... sweetness of her disposition had made her submit with complacency, and even pleasure, to the course of reading prescribed by her father, although it not only comprehended several heavy folios of history, but certain gigantic tomes in high-church polemics. In heraldry he was fortunately contented to give her only such a slight tincture as might be acquired by perusal of the two folio volumes of Nisbet. Rose was indeed the very apple of her father's eye. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Railway of England and, I should say, the leading railway accountant in the United Kingdom. On railway matters he was a writer of great skill, and all he wrote was enlivened with the happiest humour. To the Railway News he was a valued contributor, and in railway polemics a master. ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... {ant. 477} reasoning ratiocination rationalism; dialectics, induction, generalization. discussion, comment; ventilation; inquiry &c. 461. argumentation, controversy, debate; polemics, wrangling; contention &c. 720 logomachy[obs3]; disputation, disceptation[obs3]; paper war. art of reasoning, logic. process of reasoning, train of reasoning, chain of reasoning; deduction, induction, abduction; synthesis, analysis. argument; case, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 'Tinnen' occurs in Sylvester's Du Bartas; where also we meet with "Jove's milken alley", as a name for the Via Lactea, in Bacon also not "the Milky", but "the Milken Way". In the coarse polemics of the Reformation the phrase, "breaden god", provoked by the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation, was of frequent employment, and occurs as late as in Oldham. "Mothen parchments" is in Fulke; "twiggen bottle" in Shakespeare; ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... on the boat were almost all New Englanders, seeking their fortunes. They had brought with them their habits of calculation, their cautious manners, their love of polemics. It grieved me to hear these immigrants who were to be the fathers of a new race, all, from the old man down to the little girl, talking not of what they should do, but of what they should get in the new scene. It was to them a ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... partisans and functionaries of the Empire, hastened in many cases to trim their sails to the turn of the tide. However, there was a relative liberty of the press which permitted the honest expression of party opinion, and polemics were keen. At the Sorbonne, Guizot, Cousin, and Villemain were the orators of the day. Frayssinous lectured at Saint-Sulpice, and de Lamennais, attacking young Liberalism, denounced its tenets in an essay which de Maistre called a heaving of the ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the party's old leaders used the same language. "There must be nought but a scarf any longer between us," Du Plessis-Mornay would say. Two great Protestant names were still intact at this epoch: one, the Duke of Sully, without engaging in religious polemics, had persisted in abiding by the faith of his fathers, in spite of his king's example and attempts to bring him over to the Catholic faith: the other, Du Plessis-Mornay, had always striven, and was continuing to strive, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lunar rather, not of the genial or solar kind: but, in good truth, it was the best then going; and Sophie Charlotte, who was her Mother's daughter in this as in other respects, had made it her own. They were deep in literature, these two Royal Ladies; especially deep in French theological polemics, with a strong ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... learn from her, there are things as to which she has no message to the world. The Minor Prophets of science are never tired of advising theologians to keep their hands off science. The Major Prophets are too busy to occupy themselves with such polemics. But the theologian is abundantly in his right in saying to the scientific writer "Hands off morals!" for with morality science has nothing to do. Let us at any rate avoid that form of kultur which consists in bending Natural History to the teaching of conduct, ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... Polemics, I must try to set you right upon one or two points. In the first place, I do not identify you with the blasphemies of Cain no more than I do myself with the impieties of my Mokanna,—all I wish and implore is that you, who are such a powerful manufacturer of these ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron |
