"Casuist" Quotes from Famous Books
... heroic folly and draw upon themselves ruin in things temporal, may there not be some atom of divine wisdom at the heart of the folly, which is itself indestructible, and which ensures for them a welfare out of time and space? Prophet and casuist—Browning is both; and to each he will endeavour to be just; but his heart must give a casting vote, and this cannot be in favour of the casuist. Every self-transcending passion has in it a divine promise and pledge; even the passion of the ... — Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... are not advised to follow his example. Surely he was better employed in plying the trades of tinker and smith than in having recourse to vice, in running after milk-maids, for example. Running after milk-maids is by no means an ungenteel rural diversion; but let any one ask some respectable casuist (the Bishop of London for example), whether Lavengro was not far better employed, when in the country, at tinkering and smithery than he would have been in running after all the milk-maids in Cheshire, ... — The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... plausible excuses for indulgence. Instead of laying it down as a broad principle that men must keep their word, they taught them how to lie with spiritual impunity and with credit to their reputation as sons of the Church. Thus the inventive genius of the casuist, bent on dissecting immorality and reducing it to classes; the interrogative ingenuity of the confessor, pruriently inquisitive into private experience; the apologetic subtlety of the director, eager to supply his penitent with salves and ... — Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... come to him, one from abroad full of advice and affection, another soon after he had been confirmed by the Bishop of Hexton, in which Father Holt deplored his falling away. But Harry Esmond felt so confident now of his being in the right, and of his own powers as a casuist, that he thought he was able to face the father himself in argument, ... — Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... casuist—that he knew of, at least—and I don't mean to say that when he began to take to the Bells, and to knit up his first rough acquaintance with them into something of a closer and more delicate woof, he passed through these considerations one by one, or held any formal review or great field-day ... — The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... them in the depths of my heart, traced by nature in characters which nothing can efface. I need only consult myself with regard to what I wish to do; what I feel to be right is right, what I feel to be wrong is wrong; conscience is the best casuist; and it is only when we haggle with conscience that we have recourse to the subtleties of argument. Our first duty is towards ourself; yet how often does the voice of others tell us that in seeking our good at the expense ... — Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... their mysterious horoscopes, I know the issues ere great battles begin, The ashen values of bright-burning hopes, The ultimate hours of sacrifice or sin. Do I obey the Wisdom? If I list, I too, beloved, can play the casuist. ... — The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... {exegou}. "Prescribe the form of words we must lay hold of to achieve the object, and we will set to work, arch-casuist." ... — The Symposium • Xenophon
... years, and, when the people themselves at last formulated their demands in the early part of the nineteenth century, it is notorious that the clergy opposed them. The teaching of abstract moral principles is of no avail. Man is essentially a casuist. Leave to him the application of your principles, and he will adapt almost any scheme of conduct to them. The moralist who does not boldly and explicitly point the application of his principles is either too ignorant of human nature to discharge his duty with effect or is a coward. The plain ... — The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... group from the "Turk's Head" could have been transported for an afternoon to Grandval, perhaps Johnson would have been the less impatient and disgusted of the two. He had the capacity of the more genial sort of casuist for playing with subjects, even moral subjects, with the freedom, versatility, and ease that are proper to literature. Burke, on the contrary, would not have failed to see, as indeed we know that he did not fail to see, that a social pandemonium ... — Burke • John Morley
... but Nehemiah still went about repeating his rival prophecies. The more zealous of the Sabbatians, angry at the pertinacious and pugnacious casuist, would have done him a mischief, but the Prophet of Lemberg thought it prudent to escape to Adrianople. Here in revenge he sought audience ... — Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... home to himself, our divinity student puts this acute difficulty to his spiritual casuist: Whether a man of God, and especially a minister of Christ, can be right who does not love God for Himself, for His nature and for His character solely and purely, and apart altogether from all His benefactions both in nature and in grace. James Beattie ... — Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... whatever, quoth the abbess, turning casuist in the distress they were under, are held by the confessor of our convent to be either mortal or venial: there is no further division. Now a venial sin being the slightest and least of all sins—being halved—by taking ... — The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... of one idea, and that a false one. He was a gigantic crank,—an arch-Jesuit, indifferent to means so long as he could bring about his end; and he became not merely a casuist, but a dictatorial and arrogant politician. He defied that patriotic burst of public opinion which had compelled him to change his ground, that mighty wave of thought, no more to be resisted than a storm upon the ocean, and which he saw would gradually ... — Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... prisoner to Halifax, but released on taking an oath in the above terms. Thereupon he wrote to Longueuil at Quebec that his parishioners wanted to submit to the English, and that he, having sworn to be true to the British King, could not prevent them. "Though I don't pretend to be a casuist," writes Longueuil, "I could not help answering him that he is not obliged to keep such an oath, and that he ought to labor in all zeal to preserve and increase the number of the faithful." Girard, to his credit, preferred to leave ... — Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... moved her to tears; but she saw nothing in my situation so hopeless as I had depicted it. Brought up in a convent, she knew nothing of the world, its wants, its cares;—and, indeed, what woman is a worldly casuist in matters of the heart!—Nay, more—she kindled into a sweet enthusiasm when she spoke of my fortunes and myself. We had dwelt together on the works of the famous masters. I had related to her their histories; the high reputation, ... — Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... politics, Madame Novikoff was, as we have seen, passionately in earnest. Himself at once an amateur casuist and a consistent Nothingarian, whose dictum was that "Important if true" should be written over the doors of churches, he followed her religious arguments much as Lord Steyne listened to the contests between Father Mole and the ... — Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... his vow, but it was overruled; Madeline proved herself a most exquisite casuist in setting it aside. One by one his objections were broken down; and how, as he gazed into those eyes, could he keep any resolution, that Madeline wished him to break! The power she possessed over him seemed exactly in proportion to his ... — Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... himself, therefore, with great decorum, heard mass in Wimbledon Church at Easter, and, for the better ordering of his spiritual concerns, took a priest into his house. Dr. Nares, whose simplicity passes that of any casuist with whom we are acquainted, vindicates his hero by assuring us that this was not superstition, but pure unmixed hypocrisy. "That he did in some manner conform, we shall not be able, in the face of existing documents, to deny; while we feel in ... — Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... home that night in a flutter of happiness—a happiness so sweet and strange and yet so vague that she could not have analysed it even had she been casuist enough to try to do so. But she was content to accept the fact as a fact; beyond that she cared nothing. No syllable of love had been spoken between her and George: they had passed what to an outsider would have seemed a very common-place afternoon. They had talked ... — The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... Dr. Frederic, with four hundred thousand commentators, are reading new lectures—and I should say, thank God, to one another, if the four hundred thousand commentators were not in worse danger than they. Louis XVI. is grown a casuist compared to those partitioners. Well, let us simple individuals keep our honesty, and bless our stars that we have not armies at our command, lest we should divide kingdoms that are at our bienseance! What a dreadful thing it is for such a wicked little imp as man to have absolute power! ... — Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... cavalier to himself; "her words and ways are unlike anything in her class.—Father," he added, touching his sword, "we soldiers are fond of cutting all Gordian knots, whether of love or religion, with this. The sword, father, is the best theologian, the best casuist. The sword rights wrongs and punishes evil-doers, and some day the sword may cut the way ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... sword I think I was telling you of, Mr. Sharper. This sword I'll maintain to be the best divine, anatomist, lawyer, or casuist in Europe; it shall decide a controversy or split ... — The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Nature created these animals simply for our service, assuredly bountiful Nature left them in ignorance of the fact. And it is to the sportsman and the colt-breaker that we must apply, if we wish to know whose victims are the most willing. Not to the cockney casuist, whose knowledge of the stag is confined to his venison, and who never trusts himself on the horse till it has been "long trained, in shackles, to procession pace." If he did, he would find that the unfettered four-year-old ... — Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... "you've presented a problem that would give any casuist pause, and it's beyond my powers without some further thought. Your doubt, as I now understand it, is not of immortality, but of mortality; and there I can't meet you in argument without entirely forsaking my ... — A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... he in the bead-roll of heroic avengers. The poet's indignant denunciation of his lovers at the close, apparently for not violating the vows of marriage, is puzzling to readers who do not appreciate the extreme subtlety of Browning's use of figure. He was at once too much and too little of a casuist,—too habituated to fine distinctions and too unaware of the pitfalls they often present to others,—to understand that in condemning his lovers for wanting the energy to commit a crime he could be supposed to imply approval of the crime they failed ... — Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... most welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on the Change. Accordingly there is not a Lady at Court, nor a Banker in Lombard Street, who is not verily persuaded that Captain STEELE is the greatest Scholar and best Casuist of any ... — An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... spoke of Jethro. Ephraim was not a casuist, and his sense of right and wrong came largely through his affections. It is safe to say that he never made an analysis of the sorrow which he knew was afflicting the girl, but he had had a general and most sympathetic understanding of it ever since the time when Jethro had gone ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... oath was made to them, and by consequence it was in their power to release the obligation that did arise from it to themselves.—Swift. Bad casuist. ... — The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... and inhuman posture, where I must practise my lying in the grave by lying still.' This preying upon itself of the brain is but one significant indication of a temperament, neurotic enough indeed, but in which the neurosis is still that of the curious observer, the intellectual casuist, rather than of the artist. A wonderful piece of self-analysis, worthy of St. Augustine, which occurs in one of his funeral sermons, gives poignant expression to what must doubtless have been a common condition of so sensitive a brain. 'I throw myself down in my chamber, ... — Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... But here was I, an Englishman, already, in legal but inaccurate phrase, a "naturalised" one, having, as Mr. Romaine put it, a stake in the country, not to speak of a nascent interest in its game-laws and the local administration of justice. In short, here was a situation to tickle a casuist. It did not, I may say, tickle me in the least, but played the mischief with my peace. If you, my friends, having weighed the pro and contra, would have counselled inaction, possibly, allowing for the hebetude de ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cowardice, between frugality and avarice, between liberality and prodigality? Who has ever been able to say how far mercy to offenders ought to be carried, and where it ceases to deserve the name of mercy and becomes a pernicious weakness? What casuist, what lawyer, has ever been able nicely to mark the limits of the right of selfdefence? All our jurists bold that a certain quantity of risk to life or limb justifies a man in shooting or stabbing an assailant: but they have long given up in despair the attempt to describe, in precise words, that ... — The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this master of romance. George Eliot's dictum that we are, each one of us, but an omnibus carrying down the traits of our ancestors, does not appear at all to hold here. This fanciful realist, this naive-wistful humorist, this dreamy mystical casuist, crossed by the innocent bohemian, this serious and genial essayist, in whom the deep thought was hidden by the gracious play of wit and phantasy, came, on the father's side, of a stock of what the world regarded as a quiet, ingenious, demure, practical, ... — Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... I should destroy all his projects, and be his ruin. Had I had more affection for my husband, I should have expressed my contempt of this time-serving politeness: now I imagined that I only felt pity; yet it would have puzzled a casuist to point out in ... — Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... "Oh, you casuist!" I said. And I said nothing more because at that moment Mrs. Fyne stepped out into the porch. We rose together at her appearance. Her clear, colourless, unflinching glance enveloped us both critically. I sustained ... — Chance • Joseph Conrad
... circumstances betrayed him into an avowal of his passion; and he was not without the indignant feeling that Ninitta's act had freed him from all obligations to her. It might have required an ingenious casuist to arrive logically at the conclusion that an injury which the Italian had done to another released him from his plighted word, but the person injured was the woman he loved, and he blindly felt ... — The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... rampart against reality," against that false reality of daily life which is a mere drapery of civilisation, and has nothing to do with the primitive reality of nature. The realistic drama begins with Euripides; and Euripides, the casuist, the friend of Socrates (whom Nietzsche qualifies as the true decadent, an "instrument of decomposition," the slayer of art, the father of modern science), brings tragedy to an end, as he substitutes pathos ... — Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... and no state of things genuine reliability. Fifine at the Fair, like Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, is one of Browning's apologetic soliloquies—the soliloquy of an epicurean who seeks half-playfully to justify upon moral grounds an infidelity into which he afterwards actually falls. This casuist, like all Browning's casuists, is given many noble outbursts and sincere moments, and therefore apparently the poem is called cynical. It is difficult to understand what particular connection there is between seeing ... — Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... that his scruples arose entirely from private reflection; and that on consulting his confessor, the bishop of Lincoln, he found the prelate possessed with the same doubts and difficulties. The king himself, being so great a casuist and divine, next proceeded to examine the question more carefully by his own learning and study; and having had recourse to Thomas of Aquine, he observed that this celebrated doctor, whose authority was great in the church, and absolute with him, ... — The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... against the evils of the time, so he was likewise a great textuary, close in handling any truth he discoursed upon, and in the application most home, warm and searching, shewing himself a most skilful casuist. His sermons were not so plain, but the learned might admire them; nor so learned, but the plain understood them. His fellow-soldier and companion[169] in tribulation gives him this testimony, "That the whole of his sermons, ... — Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... casuist, and found himself without words to reply. The girl's sharp challenging of his motives had disconcerted him without helping him to a clearer understanding of his own mind, and in spite of the cheering turn his fortunes had taken it was in no very amiable mood that he left her at last, no ... — The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... casuist, but merely a believer, and Ithuel applied the end of the flask to his mouth, at that moment, from an old habit of drinking out of jugs and bottles, the Genoese made no answer; keeping his eyes on the flask, which, ... — The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... prophetess speaks here with all the coolness and judgment of a skilful casuist. "The essence of a lawful vow, is a lawful purpose, and the vow of which the end is wrong must not be ... — Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... laughing, and he said to himself, "Remorse is perhaps the condiment which keeps passion from being too unappetizing to the blase." Then aloud he jestingly, "Speaking of confessors, if I were a casuist it seems to me I would try to invent new sins. I am not a casuist, and yet, having looked about a bit, I believe I have found ... — La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... heavens themselves seemed to be shielding us and working for us. Do the heavens generally shield accessories after the fact, and ladies who have shortened the careers of their lords? These questions I leave to the casuist, the meteorologist, the compilers of weather forecasts, and other constituted authorities on matters connected with theology and the state of ... — Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... of such a writer be attacked after he is in his grave? A physiological casuist would suggest, for instance, that although for forty years connected with a medical school, Dr. Bigelow really knew little or nothing about vivisection except what he had chanced to see in France, although his writings abound with allusions indicative of familiarity with laboratory scenes. It might ... — An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... curious little casuist. I am glad you like her. It shows that you are human. There are strange creatures in the woods and wilds ... — A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... not blame them. Wee Jennie even came up with her slate one day and asked him to set her a sum in multiplication; he did so; but he knew that she would rub it out as soon as she could get out of sight, and he laughed quietly to himself at this tiny casuist, who was trying so ... — The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... go so far as to call it a doubtful case? One that a casuist could argue either way?" Beaumaroy was ... — The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... can venture to bring on the stage, and who could be perpetually before the scene, as a protagonist should be. He is particularly suited, by our received ideas of his energy and restlessness, for the principal character. The devil of the German patriarch's Faust is, after all, but a profligate casuist; and the high poetical tone of sublimity of Milton's Satan is no less to be avoided in a delineation that has truth and nature for its inspiration. In short, the devil, the true romantic devil, must speak, as the devil would naturally speak, under the various circumstances in ... — The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... and sensuous emotions. Cornelia had been the door through which he had passed into a consciousness of its existence; the fragrant pass leading to the mighty valley. Unfortunately neither he nor she was in a position to comprehend this fact: she was no metaphysical casuist, and never imagined but that he would find the end, as well as the beginning of his newly-opened world in her; and he, dizzied by the tumult and novelty of the vision, was naturally disposed to attribute most value and importance to the only element in it of which he had ... — Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... be the worse for a ghostly adviser at hand,' my father said to me with his quaintest air of gravity and humour mixed, which was not insincerely grave, for the humour was unconscious. 'An accredited casuist may frequently be a treasure. And I avow it, I like to travel ... — The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were far away; he would be acquitted, as Bothwell was acquitted of Darnley's death. Philip could not face the situation. He bade Perez consult the President of the Council, De Pazos, a Bishop, and tell him all, while De Pazos should mollify young Escovedo. The Bishop, a casuist, actually assured young Escovedo that Perez and the Princess 'are as innocent as myself.' The Bishop did not agree with the Inquisition: he could say that Perez was innocent, because he only obeyed the King's murderous orders. Young Escovedo retreated: Vasquez persevered, ... — Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... very bad casuist; and the pleasure I take in writing to you, who are the only one to whom I can disburden my mind, may make me, as I have hinted, very partial to my own wishes: else, if it were not an artful evasion beneath an open and frank heart to wish to be complied ... — Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... sentiment in it as would have puzzled a Turk, upon his principles of female materialism, to account for. Her beneficence was unbounded; indeed the natural tenderness of her heart might have been argued, by the frigidity of a casuist, as detracting from her virtue in this respect, for her humanity was a feeling, not a principle: but minds like Harley's are not very apt to make this distinction, and generally give our virtue credit for all that benevolence which is instinctive ... — The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... not swear to his having come by his money with absolute honesty—since indeed the case was one for the most subtle casuist—Israel knew not what to reply. This honest confusion confirmed the farmer, who with many abusive epithets drove him into the road, telling him that he might thank himself that he did not arrest him on ... — Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... in the old frank, Joliffe; well victualled too. How the knave solved my point of conscience!—the dullest of them is a special casuist where the question concerns profit. Look out if there are not some of our own ragged regiment lurking about, to whom a bellyful would be a God-send, Joceline. Then his fence, Joceline, though the fellow foins well, very sufficient well. But thou saw'st how I dealt with him when ... — Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... (1587-1663).—Theologian and casuist, b. of good family at Rotherham in Yorkshire, was at Oxf. Entering the Church he rose to be Bishop of Lincoln. His work on logic, Logicae Artis Compendium (1615), was long a standard treatise on the subject. His sermons also were admired; but ... — A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... mother his word of honour that Flick should not be released from the stable till their visitor had left. But no casuist ever realised more clearly than did Timothy Tosswill, the delicate distinctions which spread, web-like, between the spirit, and the letter, of a law. And while he moved nimbly about his bedroom, the plan, or rather the plot he had formed, ... — What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... us. Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep sense of the fair ideal of human life, considered in its social relations. His more serious theories of love agree especially with mine. He often expresses things lightly too, which have serious meanings of a very beautiful kind. He is a moral casuist, the opposite of the Christian, stoical, ready-made, and worldly system of morals. Do you remember one little remark, or rather maxim of his, which might do some good to the common, narrow-minded conceptions of love,—'Bocca baciata non perde ventura; anzi rinnouva, come fa la luna'?" Dante and Petrarch ... — Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... valuable princes, the desirable princes, are the czars and their sort. By their mere dumb presence in the world they cover with derision every argument that can be invented in favor of royalty by the most ingenious casuist. In his time the husband of this princess was valuable. He led a degraded life, he ended it with his own hand in circumstances and surroundings of a hideous sort, and was buried ... — Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... No casuist observer could have thought that the nine apparently light-headed and careless party who now wended their way to Blackheath Station, looking as if they were not up to anything in particular, were really an Antiquarian Society ... — New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... Casuist, or the Cheats of Rome Laid open in the Exorcism of a Despairing Devil.... By ... — A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... "Casuist!" was all the answer vouchsafed to him; and baffled—but not yet defeated—he went out into the May sunlight, quite determined, for once in his life, to take by storm the citadel ... — Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... France that God has sent us a bright light for all Israel in the person of R. Solomon ben Isaac." Rashi was also cited in terms of praise by the brilliant commentator and philosopher Menahem ben Solomon Meiri, of Perpignan (1249-1306), and by the casuist and theologian Jacob de Bagnols (about 1357- ... — Rashi • Maurice Liber
... tortured him for many days with slender results.[1] Burchard, the papal prothonotary, states that he was put to the torture seven times. It made very little difference whether these tortures were inflicted per modum continuationis or per modum iterationis, as the casuist of the Inquisition put it. At any rate, it was ... — The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... of her position till it should be too late for him to object to them, she found her conscience inconveniently in the way of her theory, and the oracle before her afforded no hint. 'Ah—it is a point for a casuist!' she said. ... — The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... trick lurked under the whole. He therefore opened the box carefully for fear that a mouse or rat should be concealed within. When he beheld the wondrous cup, which he had seen at Vence, he was dreadfully shocked, for Monsieur Hautmartin was a skilful casuist, and knew that the inventions and devices of the human heart are evil from our youth upward. He saw at once that Colin designed this cup as a means of bringing misfortune upon Marietta: perhaps to give out, when it should be in her possession, that it was ... — The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... believe Christ to be present with His sacrament, inasmuch as He is alway with His people to the end of time. But as I am not skilful in matters of such nicety, I would ask of this reverend casuist, who is more able to answer in questions of such weight than I; who am, as I said before, unlearned in disputed points; and truly I am in nothing more wishful than to come at a right knowledge and understanding ... — Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... in Filipinas. The majority have studied in Manila in the same manner as they did a century ago in Espana. It might be said that they belong to the casuist school. The preparation for any lawsuit is consequential and the superfluous writs innumerable, as our system has always been to open all the doors to the innocence of the natives; and many of the advocates are of that same class or are Chinese mestizos. The language ... — The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... Abbe de la Bleterie, (Hist. de Jovien, tom. i. p. 212-227.) though a severe casuist, has pronounced that Jovian was not bound to execute his promise; since he could not dismember the empire, nor alienate, without their consent, the allegiance of his people. I have never found much delight or instruction in ... — The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... entertained at Rome, did not seem to him at all incompatible with the precepts of Jesus. Hanging, drowning, burning and butchering heretics were the legitimate deductions of his theology. He was no casuist nor pretender to holiness: but in those days every man was devout, and Alexander looked with honest horror upon the impiety of the heretics, whom he persecuted and massacred. He attended mass regularly—in the winter mornings by torch-light—and would ... — The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Vivian decide whether we ought to let it make us miserable," said Bernard. "Dear Mrs. Vivian, you are a casuist, and this ... — Confidence • Henry James
... to what was so much my own desire. But whether the reasoning was quite just or not, I am not yet sure. Perhaps it might be so for her, and yet not for me: I do not know; I am a poor casuist. ... — The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald |