"Confute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... biography of the celebrated scholar Alcuin, says that Charlemagne met him in Parma; but Hume is probably right in his statement that he was sent by Offa as the most proper person to meet the Emperor's views in aiding him to confute certain alleged heresies. This scholar was much esteemed and venerated by Charlemagne, and his family, and from his long domestication in his household, and familiarity with his habits and pursuits, could scarcely be ignorant of Charlemagne's ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... matters, soch as in London commonlie cum to the hearing of the Masters of Bridewell. Here is base stuffe for that scholer, that should becum hereafter, either a good minister in Religion, or a Ciuill Ientleman in seruice of his Prince and contrie: except the preacher do know soch matters to confute them, whan ignorance surelie in all soch thinges were better for a Ciuill Ientleman, than knowledge. And thus, for matter, both Plautus and Terence, be like meane painters, that worke by halfes, and be cunning onelie, in making the worst ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... knew that the arrest was a farce, instigated by the jealous fur traders whom Ismyloff's lying letters had aroused. For just a second Ledyard lost his head and called on Billings as a man of honor to confute the charge. However Ledyard might lose his head, Billings was not willing to lose his. He advised Ledyard not to provoke conflict with the Russian authorities, but to go back to St. Petersburg and disprove the charge. Was it a case of one explorer being jealous of ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... rare seduction of her smile. She also was entertaining an emotion or two. She had not at all known where she would find the strength to confront and confute a grandmotherly old ruffian. But luck was with ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... men of little weight: he had appropriated material without giving due credit for it, and he had puffed his own work. Their only claim upon our notice lies in the fact that Irving thought it worth while to confute them at length. He was perhaps especially sensitive to critical attacks at this time. His income from literary property had nearly ceased. Some of his books were out of print, and the rest were having comparatively ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... 'feel no shame whatever in the retrospect of their idiocy. To convert a mind is a subject for high rejoicing; to confute a temper ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... raw flesh when offered; so that the notion, that bats go down chimneys and gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down upon a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more despatch than I was aware of, but in a ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... question Mr. Watts seemed to be setting himself to confute some extremely ill-considered remarks made in a certain quarter upon the structure of the sonnet, where (following Macaulay) the critic says that there exists no good reason for requiring that even the conventional limit ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... in from Ireland. Really, Sir, this is not a subject on which any public man ought to be now making up his mind. My mind is made up. My reasons are such as, I am certain, no petition from Ireland will confute. Those reasons have long been ready to be produced; and, since we are accused of flinching, I will at once produce them. I am prepared to show that the Repeal of the Union would not remove the political and social evils which afflict Ireland, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Philippus, my hump-backed secretary, all that I want said. They regard everyone as a blasphemer and desecrator who thinks that anything written in that roll is erroneous, or even merely human. Plato's doctrines are not amiss, and yet Aristotle had criticised them severely and attempted to confute them. I myself incline to the views of the Stagyrite, you to those of the noble Athenian, and how many good and instructive hours we owe to our discussions over this difference of opinion! And how amusing it is to listen when the Platonists on the one hand and the Aristotelians ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that any boy, if rightly trained, can be made into a gentleman and a great man; and in order to confute a friendly objector decides to select from the workhouse a boy to experiment with. He chooses a boy with a bad reputation but with excellent instincts, and adopts him, the story narrating the adventures ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... great deal more; and, what was still more mortifying, he was able, by reference to dates, charters, and other evidence of facts, that, as Burns says, "downa be disputed," to correct many of the vague tales which I had adopted on loose and vulgar tradition, as well as to confute more than one of my favourite theories on the subject of the old monks and their dwellings, which I had sported freely in all the presumption of superior information. And here I cannot but remark, that much of the stranger's arguments and ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... that, when he went into other company, and met with men of Sir Ulick's own party, he should obtain proofs of the falsehood of these stories, and by that he might be able, not only to contradict, but to confute them. People, however, only smiled, and told him that he had better inquire no farther, if he expected to find Sir Ulick an immaculate character. Those who liked him best, laughed off the notorious instances of his public defection of principle, and of his private jobbing, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... as some have supposed. For a liquid of this kind cannot be used for Baptism, as neither can the blood of an animal, or wine, or any liquid extracted from plants. It was pure water gushing forth miraculously like the blood from a dead body, to prove the reality of our Lord's body, and confute the error of the Manichees: water, which is one of the four elements, showing Christ's body to be composed of the four elements; blood, proving that it was composed of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... which we owe the finer scenes or passages of "Lust's Dominion," the whole of the opening scene bears such apparent witness as requires no evidence to support and would require very conclusive evidence to confute it. The sweet spontaneous luxury of the lines in which the queen strives to seduce her paramour out of sullenness has the very ring of Dekker's melody: the rough and reckless rattle of the abrupt rhymes intended ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and it is not possible to get rid of facts such as I have stated, by vague and general complaints, by imputations against parties, imputations against England, or imputations against Government. You must meet them, and confute them, if you can. None will rejoice more than myself if you can attain such an end. But in the meantime they stand, and they stand uncontradicted, in the face of the British House of Commons." The speech in which this tremendous indictment was delivered attracted loud cheers from Liberals ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... scrupulous perhaps to a Fault in quoting the Authors of several Passages which I might have made my own. But as this Assertion is in reality an Encomium on what I have published, I ought rather to glory in it, than endeavour to confute it. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... proposed here, but only that the every-day life for every-day purposes has this shape and nature. The utter materialist may say that life to him is a fortuitous concurrence of atoms, a chance kinking in the universal fabric of matter. It is not our present business to confute him. The fact remains this is the form the kinking has taken. The believer, sedulous for his soul's welfare, may say that Life is to him an arena of spiritual conflict, but this is the character of the conflict, this is the business from which all the tests and exercises of his soul are drawn. ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... made, ruminating with myself on the like things, that no one of those dotards (who lived by such a trade, and whom I longed to attack, and with derision to confute) might urge against me that Firminus had informed me falsely, or his father him; I bent my thoughts on those that are born twins, who for the most part come out of the womb so near one to other, that the small interval (how much force soever in the nature of things folk may pretend ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... most popular in the making of programmes. However, Henry T. Finck says of his sonatas: "As regards the sonatas, I ought to bear MacDowell a decided grudge. After I had written and argued a hundred times that the sonata form was 'played out,' he went to work and wrote four sonatas to confute me. To be sure, I might have my revenge and say they are 'not sonatas'; but they are no more unorthodox than the sonatas of Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Grieg, though they have a freedom of their own which is captivating. ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... with their six thousand errata, like the false Duessa, covered their crafty deformity with a fair raiment; for when the great Selden, in the assembly of divines, delighted to confute them in their own learning, he would say, as Whitelock reports, when they had cited a text to prove their assertion, "Perhaps in your little pocket-bible with gilt leaves," which they would often pull out ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... question the existence of spirits; for my part, I have ever be- lieved, and do now know, that there are witches. They that doubt of these do not only deny them, but spirits: and are obliquely, and upon consequence, a sort, not of infidels, but atheists. Those that, to confute their in- credulity, desire to see apparitions, shall, questionless, never behold any, nor have the power to be so much as witches. The devil hath made them already in a heresy as capital as witchcraft; ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... employ the forenoon in temporal affairs; the afternoon in reading, writing, learning Sanskrit, etc.; and the evening by candle light in translating the Scriptures...Except I go out to preach, which is often the case, I never deviate from this rule." Three years before that he had been able to confute the Brahmans from their own writings; in 1798 he quoted and translated the Rig Veda and the Purana in reply to a request for an account of the beliefs of the priesthood, apologising, however, with his usual self-depreciation:—"I ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... language, at least; this was the case for the prosecution, stripped of all pedantic juggling; and Raleigh now drew himself together to confute these charges as best he might. 'Let me answer,' he said; 'it concerns my life;' and from this point onwards, as Mr. Edwards remarks, the trial becomes a long and impassioned dialogue. Coke refused to let Raleigh speak, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... answered Alasco, "and as yet burning bricks in Egypt; or, at best, wandering in the dry desert of Sinai. Thou didst ill to speak to such a man of such matters. I will, however, give thee proof, and that shortly, which I will defy that peevish divine to confute, though he should strive with me as the magicians strove with Moses before King Pharaoh. I will do projection in thy presence, my son,—in thy very presence—and thine eyes shall ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... whilst she was absent from the house for a little, the relatives came, and, by false pretences, obtained possession of the boy, and killed him. She was determined that the girl should live and grow up to confute their fears, and she would not incur the ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... was wrong in this opinion, so wrong that I confute him by subjoining his own account of what befell, somewhat ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... was what I was suspecting to be your notion; yet I would not have you wonder if by-and-by I am found repeating a seemingly plain question; for I ask not in order to confute you, but as I was saying that the argument may proceed consecutively, and that we may not get the habit of anticipating and suspecting the meaning of one another's words; I would have you develope your own views in your own way, whatever may ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... diligent to study the law, that thou mayest know how to confute the Epicurean; consider also in whose presence thou art laboring, for the Master of thy work is faithful to pay thee the ...
— Hebrew Literature
... don't disappoint your papa and your aunt, and all your kin—besides myself. Don't you know that all male children are begotten for the express purpose of being graduates? and that even I am an A.M., though how I became so, the Public Orator only can resolve. Besides, you are to be a priest: and to confute Sir William Drummond's late book about the Bible, (printed, but not published,) and all other infidels whatever. Now leave Master H.'s gig, and Master S.'s Sapphics, and become as immortal ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... women from their fashions. "The ladies of quality here, of late," says a writer from Paris, in 1642, "addict themselves to the study of philosophy, as the men; the ladies esteeming their education defective, if they cannot confute Aristotle and his disciples. The pen has almost supplanted the exercise of the needle; and ladies' closets, formerly the shops of female baubles, toys, and vanities, are now turned to libraries and sanctuaries of learned works. There is a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover. I would entreat the wise ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... and dangerous doctrine which it was needful to confront and confute was what Mr. Muller calls that "awful error," spread almost universally among believers in that land, that at last "all will be saved," not-sinful men only, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... the Gentiles, there was no use of alledging the Scriptures, which they beleeved not. The Apostles therefore laboured by Reason to confute their Idolatry; and that done, to perswade them to the faith of Christ, by their testimony of his Life, and Resurrection. So that there could not yet bee any controversie concerning the authority to Interpret Scripture; seeing no man was obliged during his infidelity, to follow any mans Interpretation ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... transformed into one of their deities, and that God and he should be mixed into one divinity, which is the reward of a Bonza after death. Though the king could not hear his madness without smiling, yet he had so much compassion on his folly, that he took upon him to confute those extravagant propositions; but Xavier desired him to defer it to a fitter time, till he had digested his fury, and was more capable of hearing reason. Then the king said only to Faxiondono, "That he should go and do penance for the pride and insolence of his speech, wherein ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... repute of a teacher under whose influence his own political faith developed, was always at pains to confute the popular opinion as to Mill's hardness. Addressing the Economic Society in 1909, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Lee's Wife is the top-note of magnanimity more strained than in The Worst of It. Moral gymnastics should not be practised at the expense of others. No one knew that better than Browning, but too often he allowed his subtle intellect to confute his warm, wise heart—too often he fell to the lure of "situation," and forgot the truth. "A man and woman might feel so," he sometimes seems to have said; "it does not matter that no man and ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... ladyship's pretty little garden, he advocated a complete change in the system of cultivation, and justified his revolutionary views by misquoting the published work of a great authority on gardening with such polite obstinacy that Iris (eager to confute him) went away to fetch the book. The moment he had entrapped her into leaving the room, the doctor turned to Lord Harry with a sudden change to the imperative mood in look ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... three large folios—De Republic Ecclesiastic, of which the original still exists among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. "He exclaims," says Fuller, "'in reading, meditation, and writing, I am almost pined away,' but his fat cheeks did confute his false tongue in that expression." In this book he shows that the authority of the Bishop of Rome can easily be disproved from Holy Scripture, that it receives no support from the judgment of history and antiquity, that the early bishops of that see had no precedence over other bishops, nor ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... these matters, that the two sets of opinions are incompatible, and that the belief in the unity of origin of man and brutes involves the brutalization and degradation of the former. But is this really so? Could not a sensible child confute by obvious arguments, the shallow rhetoricians who would force this conclusion upon us? Is it, indeed, true, that the Poet, or the Philosopher, or the Artist whose genius is the glory of his age, is degraded from his high estate by the undoubted ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... logic absolute Both Standard Oil and Copper can confute; The Sovereign Alchemist that in a trice National Lead ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... and then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them: for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... door behind. He locked it. He stepped away from the girl, leaving her standing there. She was a picture to confute slander. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... be overcome; he must exhibit once in the Academy. The Academicians would be satisfied with that. Mr. Jones did exhibit in the Academy; he was elected on the strength of this one exhibit. He has never exhibited since. These are the facts: confute them who may, explain them ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Ephesus St. John could best combat and confute, both by his words and writings, the subtle and deadly heresies which were especially rife there. "False Christs," such as Simon Magus, the first heretic, Menander, Dositheus, and others, no longer troubled the Infant Church with their ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... going in and out with that feverish excitement which always prevails on the eve of a great parliamentary change. A large majority against the Government was considered to be certain; but there was an idea abroad that Mr. Daubeny had some scheme in his head by which to confute the immediate purport of his enemies. There was nothing to which the audacity of the man was not equal. Some said that he would dissolve the House,—which had hardly as yet been six months sitting. Others were of opinion that he would simply resolve not to vacate his place,—thus defying the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the purpose of the writer to convey the impression that his period of waiting had been passed without pleasure; but yet we may easily confute him with another quotation from The Lantern-Bearers. "One pleasure at least," says Stevenson, "he tasted to the full—his work is there to prove it—the keen pleasure of successful literary composition." Was this honorable ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... were already recognized," said Mr. Rylands. "It was Jane who lied about you, and your return with me will confute her slanders." ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... takes up. Reducing the chief phenomena of religious and social decline to the one head of failing authority, he founds on the state of Protestantism the apology of the Papacy. He abandons to the Protestant theology the destruction of the Protestant Church, and leaves its divines to confute and abjure its principles in detail, and to arrive by the exhaustion of the modes of error, through a painful but honourable process, at the gates of truth; he meets their arguments simply by a chapter ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the score of supposed "influence," or of "signalling," were carefully investigated by Krall in order to clear up any implied doubts. For this purpose a blind horse, by name "Bertho," was taken in hand, proof being thus provided to confute the mythical "code of signals" supposed to exist between master and pupil. Other tests undertaken with Bertho were equally successful; Krall was, in fact, always eager and willing to submit every objection brought forward to investigation, evident ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... Challis Court Library. Herr Grossmann was delivering an impromptu lecture on the limits of variation from the normal type, when Elmer came in and joined the group of the great Professor's listeners, every one of whom was seeking some conclusive argument to confute their guest's ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... instruments, no lasting mischief has ensued; and therefore, however unusual, in hands so cautious they were proper. It has been objected, that the respondent admits the charge of cruelty, by producing no evidence to confute it. Let it be considered, that his scholars are either dispersed at large in the world, or continue to inhabit the place in which they were bred. Those who are dispersed cannot be found; those who remain are the sons of his persecutors, and are not likely to support ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Greek, and Shakspeare resolves to bring him, as he has brought Shakspeare, to a tragical conclusion. Mr. Pope suggests the last choice of a subject for writing a book, by making the Nonsense of others his argument; while his own puts it out of any writer's power to confute him." In another fling at Pope, he gives the reason why Mr. Pope adds the dirty dialect to that of the water, and is in love with the Nymphs of Fleet ditch; and in a lecture on the spleen he announced "an anatomical discovery, that Mr. Pope's ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... an idea that I was actually dead. This idea I endeavored to confute, kicking and plunging with all my might, and making the most furious contortions—for the operations of the surgeon had, in a measure, restored me to the possession of my faculties. All, however, was attributed to the effects ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... colossal, comatose, combustible, commendatory, commensurate, commiserate, communal, compatibility, compendium, complaisant, comport, composite, compulsive, compulsory, computation, concatenate, concentric, concessive, concomitant, condign, condiment, condolence, confiscatory, confute, congeal, congenital, conglomerate, congruity, connivance, connoisseur, connubial, consensus, consistence, consort, constriction, construe, contentious, context, contiguity, contiguous, contingent, contortion, contravene, contumacious, contumacy, contumelious, convergent, conversant, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Atlantic as to 'Which is the best of the Two Parts' in the style of Macaulay & Co. 'Oh for a Pot of Ale, etc.,' rather than such Alarums. Better dull Woodbridge! What bothered me in London was—all the Clever People going wrong with such clever Reasons for so doing which I couldn't confute. I will send an original Omar ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... how little the world can have advanced in civilization, while grown-up men are still forced to spend their days in such grotesque performances. Those to whom the "pomps and circumstances" are dear— nay, those by whom they are considered simply necessary—will be able to confute me by a thousand arguments. I readily own myself confuted. There must be soldiers, and soldiers must be taught. But not the less pitiful is it to see men of thirty undergoing the goose-step, and tortured by orders as to the proper mode of handling a long instrument ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... grounds that the great avowed philosopher of Shakespeare's day, Francis Bacon, wrote Shakespeare's plays. There is no need to confute the theory, which confutes itself. But, if a confutation were needed, it lies on the surface in the conflicting attitudes which Shakespeare and Bacon assume towards philosophy. There is no mistaking Bacon's attitude. The supreme aim of his writings ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... foolish quest, a hopeless one. So reason said. Romance and youth, and the longing that he could not define, rose to confute this sober argument, flushed and eager, violet ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... met: But if we count the greedy race, The knaves fill up the greater space. 'Tis a gross error, held in schools, That Fortune always favours fools. 120 In play it never bears dispute; That doctrine these felled oaks confute. Then why to me such rancour show? 'Tis folly, Pan, that is thy foe. By me his late estate he won, But he by folly ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... by professed ministers of the gospel of mercy that Heaven too was opposed to their liberation, and had blotted them out from the catalogue of man. We recognize, too, with delight, the spirit of enlightened and evangelical piety which breathes through your work, and serves to confute the calumny that none but infidels are interested in the cause of abolition—a calumny which cuts at Christianity with a yet sharper edge than at abolition, but which you have proved to be a foul and malignant falsehood. We congratulate you not only on the richness of the laurels ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... eels abound in Avernus, and coot and teal also blunder here occasionally, as if to contradict Virgil and confute etymology—for Avernus is [Greek: aornos] (birdless,) and Latinised as every one knows. However, few birds are to be found here. The Lucrine is now a mere salt-water pond of small extent, affording the little sea fish, in rough weather, a sort of playground. No Lucrine oysters now, though these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the similar controversies on Biblical subjects, his chief aim was not simply to confute his adversary. To demolish once more the legend of the Flood, or the literal truth of the Creation myth, in which a multitude of scholars and critics and educated people generally had ceased to believe, was not an otiose slaying of the slain. It made people think of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... my brain a-whirl, and doth connive to part sense from understanding and mind from body. To be sure, 'twas dark,—and allowing that I was well-nigh intoxicated with love—my brain could truly swear 'twas Sir Julian; and yet this he flung aside doth confute reason, and I must either ponder upon the this and that in endeavouring to conjoin mental and physical forces to sweet amity or give over that reaching wife's estate hath made of me a sordid fool, as hath it oft made woman heretofore. ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them. Read not to contradict and confute, or to believe and take for granted, or to find talk and discourse, but ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... knowledge, the more incredulous people are apt to become. Two of the most enterprising travellers of modern days, Bruce and Le Vaillant, were ridiculed and discredited upon their return. Subsequent travellers, who went the same track as the former, with a view to confute, were obliged to corroborate his assertions; and all who have followed the latter have acknowledged the correctness ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a public school, taught many who afterward became great men, and wrote a treatise to confute heresies of all kinds. As the pagans began to treat the christians with great severity, Justin wrote his first apology in their favour. This piece displays great learning and genius, and occasioned the emperor to publish an edict ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... that is to say, the accumulation of an infinite number of substances, is, properly speaking, not a whole any more than the infinite number itself, whereof one cannot say whether it is even or uneven. That is just what serves to confute those who make of the world a God, or who think of God as the Soul of the world; for the world or the universe cannot be regarded as an animal or as ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... antiquity; undertaking not only to frame new words of science at pleasure, but to confound and extinguish all ancient wisdom; insomuch as he never nameth or mentioneth an ancient author or opinion, but to confute and reprove; wherein for glory, and drawing followers and disciples, he took the right course. For certainly there cometh to pass, and hath place in human truth, that which was noted and pronounced in the highest truth:- Veni in nomine partis, nec recipits me; si quis venerit in nomine suo ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... the office assigned him, it was given to Mr. Molineux, one of the commissioners of the Admiralty, who engaged in it with no great inclination to favour me; but, however, thought one of the instruments, which, to confirm my own opinion, and to confute Mr. Whiston's, I had exhibited to the Admiralty, so curious or useful, that he surreptitiously copied it on paper, and clandestinely endeavoured to have it imitated by a workman ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... This view was originally stated in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Argei." I endeavoured to confute it in the Classical Review, 1902, p. 115 foll., and Wissowa replied in Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 211 foll. Since then my conviction has become stronger that this great scholar is for once wrong. Ennius alluded to the Argei as an institution of Numa, i.e. as primitive (frag. 121, Vahlen, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... had been openly confuted, and also that the Accused of Heresy might as well have been admitted to reason their Articles with Counsel, whether they were heresy or no[t], as the Accused of Treason against the King is admitted to his Council to confute his cause and Articles, whether they be treason or not, they should never have murdered nor prisoned so many good Christian men ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... for concurring with the Fanatic party in opposing the Court. COLE'S MSS.] and another stranger, and Creed and I fell a- talking; they of the errours and corruption of the Navy, and great expence thereof, not knowing who I was, which at last I did undertake to confute, and disabuse them: and they took it very well, and I hope it was to good purpose, they being Parliament- men. Creed and I and Captn. Ferrers to the Parke, and there walked finely, seeing people slide, we talking all the while; and Captn. Ferrers telling me, among other Court passages, how ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... do for Meat and Drink, Who o'er so many Desarts ran With Brats and Wives in Caravan; Unless perchance they'd got the Trick, To eat no more than Porker sick; Or could with well contented Maws Quarter like (v) Bears upon their Paws. Thinking his Reasons to confute, I gravely thus commenc'd Dispute, And urged that tho' a Chinese Host, Might penetrate this Indian Coast, Yet this was certainly most true, They never cou'd the Isles subdue; For knowing not to steer ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... embarked for this country, which articles had been entrusted to the Rev. Mr. Johnson, to be disposed of according to the intention of the subscribers after our arrival, Mr. Johnson wrote to his friends in England to confute this report; and by accounts lately received, it appeared that no such public collection had ever been made; at Mr. Johnson's request, therefore, the governor published a contradiction of the above report in the general orders of the settlement. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... me in my absence, and affect to make love to my lady par amours! And she, too—methinks Brenhilda allows more license than she is wont to do to yonder chattering popinjay. By the rood! I will spring into the apartment, front them with my personal appearance, and confute yonder braggart in a manner ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... little time endeavoured mildly to confute her arguments, and convince her that in doing so, she was only forming her own misery; but still she pleaded, and ungoverned fury at length burst forth. He had been too long the victim of passions always to keep ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... and his tongue had a keen Shropshire tang, which indeed it never lost, giving thereby evidence to confute those who afterwards claimed for him kinship with a noble family. In truth Benbow was the son of an honest tanner of our town, and took no shame of his origin: his greatness was above such pettiness of spirit. He had run away to sea at an early ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... earnest vehement botcher, And deacon also, I cannot dispute with you: But if you get you not away the sooner, I shall confute ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... ordinary minds, has a tendency to suffocate, rather than to develop, original genius. It was universally acknowledged that, in the literary contest, the Jansenists were completely victorious. To the Jesuits nothing was left but to oppress the sect which they could not confute. Lewis the Fourteenth was now their chief support. His conscience had, from boyhood, been in their keeping; and he had learned from them to abhor Jansenism quite as much as he abhorred Protestantism, and very much more than he abhorred Atheism. Innocent the Eleventh, on the other hand, leaned to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Egypt Jove's own land, Yet would I with my sword make Jove to stoop. I will confute those blind geographers That make a triple region in the world, Excluding regions which I mean to trace, And with this pen [233] reduce them to a map, Calling the provinces, cities, and towns, After my name and thine, Zenocrate: Here at Damascus will I make the ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... made her appearance in Miss Williams's little sitting-room. "I am ready to submit to any test that Captain Keith may require to confute himself," she said to Ermine; "and I do so the more readily that with all his mocking language, there is a genuine candour and honesty beneath that would be quite worth convincing. I believe that if once persuaded of the injustice of his suspicions he would in the reaction become a fervent supporter ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a witness against some of the offenders. The persons he saw executed were, Thomas Foord, John Shert, Robert Johnson, William Filbie, Luke Kirbie, Lawrance Richardson, and Thomas Cottom; and he seems to have been publicly employed to confute them at the foot of the gallows, and to convince the populace that they were traitors and Papists, denying the supremacy of Queen Elizabeth. He there had a long dispute with Kirbie upon matters of fact, and, according ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... unhappy divisions among the professors of it:—much it is to be wished, though little to be hoped, that both sides would be prevailed upon to recede a little from their present stiffness in opinion, or be at least less virulent in maintaining it; since each, by endeavouring to expose and confute what they look upon as an absurdity in the other, join in contributing to render the truth of the whole suspected, and not only give a handle to the avowed enemies, of depreciating and ridiculing all the sacred mysteries of religion, but also stagger the faith ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... fable of the peasant who made the real pig squeak against the imitator, while the sapient audience hissed the poor grunter as if inferior to the biped in his own language. The peasant could, indeed, confute the long-eared multitude by showing piggy; but were I to fail as a knight with a white and maiden shield, and then vindicate my claim to attention by putting "By the Author of Waverley" in the title, my good friend Publicum would defend itself by ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... in carrying on the altercation at this juncture, Timothy, having bound up his jaws, could not withstand the inclination he had to confute his master. He therefore, in a muttering accent, protested, that, if the knight would give him leave, he should prove that his honour had tied a knot with his tongue, which he could not untie with all his teeth. "How, caitiff!" cried Sir Launcelot, "presume to contend ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... opinion, Philinus, you seem to be out in your first argument, where you suppose the beasts use more simple food and are more healthy than men; neither of which is true. The first the goats in Eupolis confute, for they extol their pasture as full of variety and all sorts ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... was at any time at a loss for arguments to defend his unsocial principles, viva voce, he always used to say—"I have published my opinions; consult my works; and, if I am wrong, confute me publicly." To most persons this mode of confutation was by far too operose; but they might have confoundedly puzzled the philosopher in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... of the colloquy, there appeared five or six cardinals, about as many bishops, and fifteen or sixteen theologians of the Sorbonne, laden with thick folios—the writings of the Fathers of the first five centuries, with which the Cardinal of Lorraine still professed his ability to confute the Reformed.[1147] Again the twelve Huguenot ministers were admitted; but the lay deputies of the churches were excluded.[1148] The discussion was long and desultory. Beza began by replying to the first ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... on Vision as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for striking the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's Theory of Matter and Spirit, and saying, "Thus I confute him, Sir." Coleridge drew a parallel (I don't know how he brought about the connection) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no two things could be more distinct. The one was a shop-boy's quality, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... to justify God, he had to justify all His ways to man; that if the good rules at all, it rules absolutely; and that a single exception would confute his optimism. ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... which I accordingly obeyed. When I came into her presence she said she could not have believed I would ever have been wanting in my duty to that degree as to wound the memory of the late King, her lord. I had such reasons to offer as she could not herself confute, and therefore referred me to the Cardinal, but I found he understood those things no better than her Majesty. He spoke to me with the haughtiest air in the world, refused to hear my justification, and commanded me in the King's name to retract publicly the next day in full assembly. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... should make so much noise; but since I am engaged, I take myself obliged in honour to go on in my lucubrations, and by the help of these arts of which I am master, as well as my skill in astrological speculations, I shall, as I see occasion, proceed to confute other dead men, who pretend to be in being, that they are actually deceased. I therefore give all men fair warning to mend their manners, for I shall from time to time print bills of mortality; and I beg the pardon of all such who shall be named therein, if they who are good for nothing ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... proceeded to confute by experience: he had repeatedly been called in to cases of mania described as sudden, and almost invariably found the patient had been cranky for years; which he condensed thus: "His conduct and behaviour for many years previously ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that leads to such shocking conclusions. The idea is detestable, and such as, it ought to be hoped, can enter into the mind of none but a virulent republican, or bloody jacobite. There is not one honest man in the nation unconvinced, how weak an attempt it would be to endeavour to confute this insinuation; an insinuation which no party will dare to abet, and of so fatal and destructive a tendency, that it may prove equally dangerous to the author, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... as, influenced by envy and calumny, have persuaded you, and those who, being themselves persuaded, have persuaded others, all these are most difficult to deal with; for it is not possible to bring any of them forward here, nor to confute any; but it is altogether necessary to fight, as it were with a shadow, in making my defense, and to convict when there is no one to answer. Consider, therefore, as I have said, that my accusers are ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... it means to experiment with the future of a people. To overthrow their traditions: to confute their beliefs and superstitions, and to subvert their gods! And what do you offer them in return? Other traditions; other beliefs; another God—and education! Do you dare to assume the responsibility? Do you dare to implant in the minds of these people an education—a culture—that will render ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... whenever the public taste calls for a new edition. But the original, what would I not give to have it in my hands, to touch the very parchment which came from the press of my revered ancestor, and, gloating on the crabbed letters, confute MacCribb to his face ipso visu et tactu of so inestimable a rarity. Exchanges—or "swaps," as the vulgar call them—are not unknown among our fraternity. Ask what you will for this treasure, to the half of my kingdom: my gold Aurelius (found at ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... disproof, conviction, redargution[obs3], invalidation; exposure, exposition; clincher; retort; reductio ad absurdum; knock down argument, tu quoque argument[Lat]; sockdolager * [obs3][U. S.]. correction &c. 527a; dissuasion &c. 616. V. confute, refute, disprove; parry, negative, controvert, rebut, confound, disconfirm, redargue[obs3], expose, show the fallacy of, defeat; demolish, break &c. (destroy) 162; overthrow, overturn scatter to the winds, explode, invalidate; silence; put to silence, reduce to silence; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... "With the fair attitude of mind and influenced only by the student's desire to procure knowledge, this book becomes at once something to fascinate. On every page authoritative facts confute the stereotyped statement of the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... Append. p. 239, 240. So vain and groundless are these and the like evasions and subterfuges of our modern sceptics and unbelievers, and so certainly do thorough inquiries and authentic evidence disprove and confute such evasions and subterfuges ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... progress in different directions; it has been constituted by fitting methods, and with dispassionate research, laying aside fanciful hypotheses and systems more or less prompted by a desire to support or confute principles which have no connection with science. We have now in great measure arrived at the fundamental facts whence myth is derived, although, if I do not deceive myself, the ultimate fact, and the cause of this fact, have not yet been ascertained; namely, for what reason man personifies all ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... will no doubt proceed to the greatest lengths against me, I being the only surviving officer, and they most inclined to believe a prior story, all that can be said to confute it will probably be looked upon as mere falsity and invention. Should that be my unhappy case, and they resolved upon my destruction as an example to futurity, may God enable me to bear my fate with the ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... constantly been shifting them, from Paris to London and from London to Paris. In London he set up for a patriot, and engaged seriously in the disputes and parties of the day, and what was very diverting, sat down for a few weeks to study the laws of England in order to confute Blackstone. His rank, to which his birth entitles him, gives him admittance to court, and the extravagancy of his wit and humor serves to divert and please men in high office, and he consequently at times fancies himself in their secrets. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... Church and the doge, employed a negro boy to help him in his office. This little black boy was believed to be an imp of Satan, and went by the name of the "printer's devil." In order to protect him from persecution, and confute a foolish superstition, Manutius made a public exhibition of the boy, and announced that "any one who doubted him to be flesh and blood might come ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... youth, the spring of life and fancy that keeps men young. He has not grown a day older since this time five years. I found he had taken a great deal of trouble about me, recommended me strenuously, brought forward my papers on foreign policy, and been at much pains to confute that report that was afloat against me. He treated my appointment as a personal favour; and he is a man of weight now. You were right, Theodora; it would have been abominable to sulk in our corner, because we had behaved ill ourselves, and to meet such ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hands without speaking. She made room for Philip and his luggage amidst the loud indignation of the unsuccessful driver, whom it required the combined eloquence of the station-master and the station beggar to confute. The silence was prolonged until they started. For three days he had been considering what he should do, and still more what he should say. He had invented a dozen imaginary conversations, in all of which his logic and eloquence procured ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... the remembrance of the covenant wrought. Probably this party (whosoever he was) took little notice of, or was little troubled at the notice of these distempers in himself before; least of all sought out for help against them. And I have the rather inserted this to confute that scorn which, I hear, some have since put upon that conscientious desire. As if one had complained, that since his swearing to the covenant he could not forbear swearing, and that this sacred oath had taught him profane ones. But what holy thing is there which ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... no complaint. In these words there was too much of indifference for a complaint. This simple soul thought according to her understanding—thought and proceeded to form a certain conclusion which she expressed aloud, and which I could not confute for fear of contradicting myself. Therefore I was silent, and she, as if she had not noticed me, continued to ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... him, said: "Embrace me, my dear marshal; I am glad to see you. I want no explanation or justification: I have honoured and esteemed you as the bravest of the brave."—"Sire, the newspapers have told a heap of lies, which I wish to confute: my conduct has ever been that of a good soldier, and a good Frenchman."—"I know it, and accordingly never doubted your attachment."—"You were right, Sire. Your Majesty may always depend upon me, when my country is concerned.... ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... no doubt that Hermocrates was right in his view of the motive which brought the Athenians to Sicily, and the arguments of Euphemus, the advocate for Athens, who strove to confute him, will not bear examination. But the people of Camarina were in a difficult position; their city had suffered many things in the past at the hands of Syracuse, and they had reason to fear that her oppressions might be renewed, if ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... that country, if the world has been as justly, as it has always been firmly, persuaded that the people of Italy are effete in point of good faith. I have seen much to justify this opinion, and something also to confute it; and as long as Garibaldi lives, I shall not let myself believe that a race which could produce a man so signally truthful and single-hearted is a race of liars and cheats. I think the student of their character should also be slow to upbraid Italians for their duplicity, without admitting, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... madam, are the eternal humorist, The eternal enemy of the absolute, Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist! With your air indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—" And—"Are we then ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... mean their destruction. Suppose a Popish king on the throne, will the clergy adhere to passive obedience and non-resistance? If they do, they deliver up their religion to Rome; if they do not, their practice will confute ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... To confute the generall claime and unlawfull title of the insatiable Spaniardes to all the West Indies, and to prove the justenes of her Majesties title and of her noble progenitours, if not to all, yet at leaste to that parte of America which is from Florida beyonde the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... Christendom. Whitelocke's friends were much startled at this news, and the more because of former intelligences of designs of that nature against him, whereof they wrote him word; and he was glad to read the news, and that, through the goodness of God, he was able to confute those reports. They were kept from Whitelocke's wife by the care of his friends, till one in gladness came to give her joy that the ill news of her husband was not true; which brought the whole matter to her knowledge, and herself to great perplexity upon the sudden apprehension and fright of ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... will yet descend more particularly to confute our opposites' several answers and defences, which they have used against our argument of scandal. And I begin with our Lord Chancellor: "As for the godly amongst us (saith he(397)), we are sorry they ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... reasoning from principles, come to a point decisive of the question, and which will either confirm the theory, if it be just, or confute our reasoning, if we have erred. Let us, therefore, open the book of Nature, and read in her records, if there had been a world bearing plants, at the time when this present world was forming at the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... persistent; she completes her syllogism after we have long been feeding the roots of her grasses, and has her own way in spite of us. Some ancestral Cromwellian trooper leaps to life again in Nathaniel Greene, and makes a general of him, to confute five generations of Broadbrims. The Puritans were good in their way, and we enjoy them highly as a preterite phenomenon: but they were not good at cakes and ale, and that is one reason why they are a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... the Clergy, and especially such as were Ministers in the congregation, should (by often reading, and meditation in God's word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth; and further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) might continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... professors held public meetings twice a week to settle knotty points of doctrine, John Robinson was always there, listening eagerly to both sides. Many a famous talk he bad with the ministers and professors. We must have Mr. Robinson confute the Arminians, cried ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... English liberties have ever run a graver danger in modern times than at the trial of the twelve reformers. The Government sought to overwhelm them with a mass of evidence which they lacked the means to sift and confute. But no definite act was charged against them, and the whole case turned on a monstrous attempt to give a wide constructive interpretation to the law of high treason. High treason in English law has the perfectly ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... publishing his narrative, however offensive it might be to the lady and her relations, because her alledged unnatural and cruel conduct to her son, and shameful avowal of guilt, were stated in a Life of Savage now lying before me, which came out so early as 1727, and no attempt had been made to confute it, or to punish the authour or printer as a libeller: but for the honour of human nature, we should be glad to find the shocking tale not true; and, from a respectable gentleman[493] connected with the lady's family, I have received such information and remarks, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... even from motives of self defence, which would justify a certain degree of egotism, especially if it be considered, how often and grossly I have been attacked for sentiments, which I have exerted my best powers to confute and expose, and how grievously these charges acted to my disadvantage while I was in Malta. Or rather they would have done so, if my own feelings had not precluded the wish of a settled establishment in that island. But I have mentioned it from the full persuasion that, armed with the two-fold knowledge ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... start business on a large scale. He was an impracticable lad and even now he couldn't help smiling when he thought of the abruptness with which he would go down to the river-side to seek a new argument wherewith to confute his mother, to return happy when he had found one, and sit watching for an opportunity to ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... justice of this description, there is a strange mixture of sense and nonsense in Collier's celebrated treatise. Not contented with resting his objections to dramatic immorality and religion, Jeremy labours to confute the poets of the 17th century, by drawing them into comparison with Plautus and Aristophanes, which is certainly judging of one crooked line by another. Neither does he omit, like his predecessor Prynne, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... figure of speech; and some may say, that the imperfection I speak of, is but an incident of the common weakness or ignorance of human nature; and that if a man always knew what to say to an other in order to persuade or confute, to encourage or terrify him, he would always succeed, and no insufficiency of this kind would ever be felt or imagined. This also is plausible; but is the imperfection less, for being sometimes traceable to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... lineally descended from the Gods. And the Romans affirme that Mars was father vnto their first founder Romulus. Right well therefore and iudicially sayth Titus Liuius: Neither meane I to auouch (quoth he) ne to disable or confute those thinges which before the building and foundation of the Citie haue beene reported, being more adorned and fraught with Poeticall fables then with incorrupt and sacred monuments of trueth: antiquitie is ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... they had learned by heart a poem of their great poet, Jacob Catz, and that they were probably on their way to some agricultural convention of which the programme was in their pockets, where with arguments drawn from their modest experience they would confute the propositions of some scientific farmer from Goes or Middelburg. Ludovico Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman, the author of an excellent work on the Netherlands printed in Antwerp in the sixteenth century, says that there was hardly a man or woman in Zealand who ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... those who believed his sentiments to be genuine, any who wished it could not rejoice because of fear, nor the others lament because of hopes. And as many as disbelieved it did not venture to accuse him and confute him, some because they were afraid and others because they did not care to do so. Hence they all either were compelled or pretended to believe him. As for praising him, some did not have the courage ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... says, "is the guide of life;" and an older philosopher than Butler has warned us that to demand demonstrative proof in the sphere of contingent matter is the same kind of absurdity as to demand probable reasoning in mathematics. You cannot confute a prophet before the event; you can only disbelieve him. The advocates of Home Rule believe that their policy would in general have an exactly contrary effect to that predicted by their opponents. In truth, every act of legislation is, before experience, amenable to such destructive ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... we have more than enough. Most people have not the time, patience, or ability, to set down quietly with close observation, and investigate the subject thoroughly. Hence it has been found easier to receive error for truth, than to make the exertion necessary to confute it; the more so, because there is no guide to direct the investigation. I shall, therefore, pursue a different course; and for every assertion endeavor to give a test, that the reader may apply and ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby |
