"Polemic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sequestration stands the term polemic. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of all knowledge; so there is of every science. The radical and characteristic idea concerned in this term polemic is found in our own Parliamentary distinction of the good speaker, as contrasted ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... held for a tacit surrender of the question. And as for the apparent license temporarily permitted sometimes, to the bad over the good (as was by implication alleged with regard to Goneril and the unfortunate man), it might be injudicious there to lay too much polemic stress upon the doctrine of future retribution as the vindication of present impunity. For though, indeed, to the right-minded that doctrine was true, and of sufficient solace, yet with the perverse the polemic mention of it might but provoke the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... he says, 'had at times only a secondary share in the ecclesiastical controversies in the Eastern Church, though the circumstance of these controversies having been carried on in the Greek language has made the natives of Western Europe attribute them to a philosophic, speculative, and polemic spirit, inherent in the Hellenic mind. A very slight examination of history is sufficient to prove that several of the heresies which disturbed the Eastern Church had their origin in the more profound religious ideas of the oriental nations, and that many of the opinions called heretical ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... the first page that he has written his book "for those who are called the bourgeois," in order to dissuade them from the concessions which they themselves, in their own minds, can not prevent themselves from making to the undeniable truth of the socialist ideal, when he reaches the end of his polemic, the irresistible implications of the facts force M. Garofalo to a series of eclectic compromises, which produce on the reader, after so many accusations and threats of repression, the depressing impression of a mental collapse, as unforeseen as ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... Casanova had decided to await the expected pardon in the modest but respectable inn where he had stayed in happier years. To make only passing mention of less spiritual amusements, with which he could not wholly dispense—he spent most of his time in writing a polemic against the slanderer Voltaire, hoping that the publication of this document would serve, upon his return to Venice, to give him unchallenged position and prestige in the eyes of ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... orchards and empty houses, instead of being there to hear the sermon, and that the drunkards, being rarely church-goers, get little good by the statistics and eloquent appeals of the preacher. Every now and then, however, the Reverend Mr. Fairweather let off a polemic discourse against his neighbor opposite, which waked his people up a little; but it was a languid congregation, at best,—very apt to stay away from meeting in the afternoon, and not at all given to extra evening services. The minister, unlike his rival of the other side ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... polemic against Mr. Jones his adversary has therefore to combat a dragon with three heads, and the heroic method would be to strike all three of them off at one blow. To effect this it seems to me that one has only to remark that a system which is forced to teach a dialect [a dialect, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... and the influences of German literature and of the German character and state of society had made a very perceptible change in his views of life. His personal disposition was much softened; he was less militant and polemic; his tastes had begun to turn themselves towards the poetic and contemplative. He attached much less importance than formerly to outward changes; unless accompanied by a better cultivation of the inward nature. He had a strong distaste for the general meanness of English ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... a demoralisation which would ultimately limit numbers in the worst way. We shall see directly how nearly he accepts this view. Meanwhile, by insisting upon the need of limitation, he was led to speak often as if limitation by any means was good and the one thing needful, and the polemic against Godwin in the first edition had given prominence to this side of the question. Had he put his views in a different shape, he would perhaps have been so edifying that he would have been disregarded. He certainly avoided that risk, and had whatever ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... of ascetic countenance and venerable age—one whom Gerard Douw respected much, forasmuch as he was a veteran polemic, though one, perhaps, more dreaded as a combatant than beloved as a Christian—of pure morality, subtle brain, and frozen heart. He entered the chamber which communicated with that in which Rose reclined, and immediately on his arrival she requested him to pray for her, as for ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... critic, and violent polemic on political as well as theological subjects; born at Saxe-Altenburg; regarded the Christian religion as overlaid and obscured by accretions foreign to it; denied the historical truth of the Gospels, and, like a true disciple of Hegel, ascribed the troubles of the 19th century to the overmastering ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... learning and the abilities of the author had raised him to a just eminence; but he reigned the dictator and tyrant of the world of literature. The real merit of Warburton was degraded by the pride and presumption with which he pronounced his infallible decrees; in his polemic writings he lashed his antagonists without mercy or moderation; and his servile flatterers, (see the base and malignant Essay on the Delicacy of Friendship,) exalting the master critic far above Aristotle and Longinus, assaulted ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... Mencken and George Jean Nathan for many years have sung praises of the Moral in the Smart Set. But its production on the English speaking stage still remains an event eagerly to be awaited. Briefly, the play is a polemic against the "men higher up," ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... dropped into the class of books which are more quoted than read. In reading it, it is of the utmost importance to comprehend clearly and to bear constantly in mind the purpose of the author in writing it. This purpose is evidently not artistic but polemic, to show in the most unmistakable characters the vileness and folly of the anti-royalist party. Anything like a regular plot—the absence of which has often been deplored or excused—would have been for this end not merely a superfluity but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... scarcely find any passage to alter. I continue to think that the general ideas therein expressed are just, the great social facts properly estimated, the political personages well understood and drawn with fidelity. As an incidental polemic, the work is too positive and harsh; I do not sufficiently consider difficulties and clouds; I condemn situations and parties too strongly; I require too much from men; I have too little temperance, foresight, and patience. At that time I was too exclusively ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... her, every velvety pat, drew blood. And something comic mingled with what my mother felt to be paramount tragedy. Far different was Mr. Clowes: holy, visionary, apostolic, he could not be treated disrespectfully. No man could deny him a qualified homage. But for any polemic service he wanted the taste, the training, and the particular sort of erudition required. Neither would such advantages, if he had happened to possess them, have at all availed him in a case like this. Horror, blank horror, seized him upon seeing a woman, a young ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... receptions. But I occasionally heard they were getting on famously. Arthur was composing a piano concerto, and Ellenora engaged upon a novel—a novel, I was told, that would lay bare to its rotten roots the social fabric; and knowing the girl's inherent fund of bitter cleverness I awaited the new-born polemic with gentle impatience. I hoped, however, like the foolish inexperienced old bachelor I am, that her feminine asperity would be tempered by the suavities ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... innocent victims of this distressing disease; it is well-known what strange masculine proclivities several eminent female novelists and artists have shown; and whenever a woman shows great creative power or polemic aggressiveness the chances are that her brain is of the masculine type. It is therefore quite possible that Sappho may have been personally a pure woman, her mental masculinity ("mascula Sappho" Horace calls her) ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... produced a gusty shower of articles, sermons, and pamphlets, and raised him without will or further act of his to the high place of the heresiarch. With admirable singleness of mind, he held modestly aloof. 'There is no scholar,' he wrote to a friend, 'less willing or less able to be a polemic. I could not give account of myself if challenged. I delight in telling what I think, but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men,' The year before, his oration on the American Scholar had filled Carlyle with delight. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... not those of a polemic divine, but of a Christian, concerned for his own salvation and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... world, though. The specialists were beginning to know about Dredge. His remarkable paper on Sexual Dimorphism had been translated into several languages, and a furious polemic had broken out over it. When a young fellow can get the big men fighting over him his future is pretty well assured. But Dredge was only thirty-four, and some people seemed to feel that there was a kind of deflected nepotism ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... is mentally unsound, and that he has been trying for years to oust him from his position on the Blanley faculty but has been unable to do so because of the provisions of the Faculty Tenure Act of 1963. Most of his remarks were in the nature of a polemic against this law, generally regarded as the college professors' bill of rights. It is to be stated here that other members of the Blanley faculty have unconditionally confirmed the fact that Doctor Chalmers did make the statements attributed to him a month ago, long before the ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... perennial. He feared that these Judaising teachers, who dogged his heels all his life long, and whose one aim seemed to be to build upon his foundation and to overthrow his building, should find their way into this church and wreck it. The keenness of the polemic, in this and in the contextual chapters, shows how real and imminent the danger was. Now what they did was to tell people that Jesus Christ had a partner in His saving work. They said that obedience to the Jewish law, ceremonial and other, was a condition ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... are Scott and Byron. The first, whose Fair Maid of Perth is read as a new book, is praised for his "objective" qualities. The second is pronounced the greatest modern poet of England, but censured for his polemic tendency. Goethe's rapture is kindled when he speaks ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... unequal dispute, derived, from the popular work of their Imperial missionary, an inexhaustible supply of fallacious objections. But in the assiduous prosecution of these theological studies, the emperor of the Romans imbibed the illiberal prejudices and passions of a polemic divine. He contracted an irrevocable obligation to maintain and propagate his religious opinions; and whilst he secretly applauded the strength and dexterity with which he wielded the weapons of controversy, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... was occupied with the problem in all these forms. In Greece, the problem of art and of the artistic faculty arose for the first time after the sophistic movement, as a result of the Socratic polemic. ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... the tireless polemic which Locke carried on against Descartes. The outraged plain facts had to be defended against sweeping and arbitrary theories. There were no innate ideas or maxims: children were not born murmuring that things equal to the same thing were equal to one another: and an urchin knew that pain ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... be. Mrs. Malt said it made her feel quite idolatrous to look at them, and for her part she couldn't be sorry they had fallen so much into decay—it was only right and proper. This launched Mr. and Mrs. Malt and my parents upon a discussion which threatened to become unwisely polemic if Emmeline had not briefly decided it in ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and levelling principles which are expected from their titled pulpits. The new evangelists will, I dare say, disappoint the hopes that are conceived of them. They will not become, literally as well as figuratively, polemic divines, nor be disposed so to drill their congregations, that they may, as in former blessed times, preach their doctrines to regiments of dragoons and corps of infantry and artillery. Such arrangements, however favourable to the cause of compulsory ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Martinius. Abraham Ecchellensis. Maccarius, Theolog. Polemic. Peter Cevaller. Robert de Retz, translator of the Koran. See also the support of this assertion in Jackson's Account of the Empire of Marocco, enlarged edition, published by Cadell and Davies, Strand, from p. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... of another cure of a dumb demoniac. It is possible that the incident now before us may be the same as this, but there is nothing improbable in the occurrence of such a case twice, nor in the repetition of what had become the commonplace of the Pharisaic polemic. But what a piercing example that explanation is of the blinding power of prejudice, determined to hold on to a foregone conclusion, and not to see the sun at noon! Jesus in league with 'the prince of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... with the usual polemic ability of Milton; but by its very plan and purpose it threw upon him difficulties which no ability could meet. It had that inevitable disadvantage which belongs to all ministerial and secondary works: the order and choice of topics being all determined by the "Eikon," ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... so he did not listen. He employed himself thinking over practicable answers to the question before the house, and was just in time to avert a polemic about the authenticity of the Bible, a subject on which the General held strong views. "What helps me to an idea of a possible attitude of mind before a resurrection of this sort," he said, "is what ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... whose infirmity had kept her so far in the rear of the crowd, now came hobbling on, glided unobserved by the polemic group, and paused on the left brink of the fountain, within a few feet of the two spectators. She was a magnificent old dame, as ever mortal eye beheld. Her spangled shoes and gold-clocked stockings shone gloriously within the spacious circle of a red hoop-petticoat, ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the war is not doubtful. The whole power of Rome, civil and ecclesiastical,—emperors, kings, princes, pope, cardinals and prelates, were baffled; and this too, whether in the use of the sword of the Spirit,—polemic theses,—or of the material sword, in literal warfare. When the Lord Jesus "mustered the hosts to the battle," he furnished them "with the whole armour of God to stand in the evil way." When Zuingle, Luther, Calvin, Knox, their compeers and successors, were obliged to wrestle with the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... Mr. Orage and the "New Age," is associated with a polemic against "political" action, and in favor of direct economic action by trade-unions. It shares this with syndicalism, from which most of what is new in it is derived. But I see no reason for this attitude; political ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... communicating the truths of revelation to his prisoner, and both he and his chaplain, Father Valverde, labored in the same good work. Atahuallpa listened with composure and apparent attention. But nothing seemed to move him so much as the argument with which the military polemic closed his discourse, - that it could not be the true God whom Atahuallpa worshipped, since he had suffered him to fall into the hands of his enemies. The unhappy monarch assented to the force of this, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... pseudo-Meredithian and decayed Paterese. His narrative style is concise and brisk. His book may undoubtedly best be compared among English classics with Whiggism in its Relations to Literature, although it is less discursive and does not possess the personal element of that vivacious piece of polemic. In this recurrence of Mr. Strachey to a pellucid stream of prose we see an argument against his own theory of revolt. The procedure of the arts, the mechanical tricks of the trade, do they really improve or decline from age to age? Are they not, in fact, much more the result ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... judicious summing up of the case of Aristophanes vs. Euripides in Professor Jebb's lectures on Greek poetry. The soberer view seems to be that while predominantly a comic artist, obeying the instincts of his genius, he did frequently make his comedy the vehicle of an earnest conservative polemic against the new spirit of the age in Literature, Philosophy, and Politics. He pursued Euripides with relentless ridicule because his dramatic motives lent themselves to parody, and his lines were on the lips of every theatre-goer; but also because he believed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sea-wave, north-wind element, the denier of persons, the democratizer—is banished because it jars too much on the desire for communion. Now, it is the very enjoyment of this element that throws many men upon the materialistic or agnostic hypothesis, as a polemic reaction against the contrary extreme. They sicken at a life wholly constituted of intimacy. There is an overpowering desire at moments to escape personality, to revel in the action of forces that have no respect for our ego, to let the tides flow, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... constitution in which theology had its best justification, if not its earliest source. He regards it as an enemy to be mercilessly routed, not as a force with which he has to make his account. Still, as a piece of rough and remorseless polemic, the second part of the System of Nature remains full of remarkable energy and power. The most eager Nescient or Denier to be found in the ranks of the assailants of theology in our own day is timorous and moderate compared ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... "A vastly entertaining polemic. It directs attention to many undoubtedly neglected facts which writers of the North have ignored or minimized."—The New York Times ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... least curious among the results of this state of things was the war of pamphlets. From Rome, Bologna, and other centres of thought, even from Paris and Frankfort, polemic tractates rained upon the Republic. The vast majority of their authors were on the side of the Vatican, and of this majority the leaders were the two cardinals so eminent in learning and logic, Bellarmine and Baronius; but, single-handed, Sarpi was, by general consent, a match for the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Poise balanci, ekvilibri. Poison veneno. Poisonous venena. Poke the fire inciti la fajron. Poker fajrincitilo. Polar polusa. Pole (wooden) stango. Pole (shaft of car) timono. Pole (geography) poluso. Polecat putoro. Polemic disputo, polemiko. Police polico. Policeman policano. Polish poluri. Polish (substance) polurajxo. Polished (manners) gxentila. Polite gxentila. Politic sagxa. Political politika. Politician politikisto. Politics politiko. Poll ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... craft: it is for the mason, for the carpenter, for the labourer, that the skilful architect studies his orders, lays down well-proportioned elaborate plans. Whatever may be the pretended utility of Pneumatology, whatever may be the vaunted advantages of superstitious opinions, the wrangling polemic, the subtle theologian, cannot boast either of toiling, of writing, or of disputing for the advantage of the people, whom, notwithstanding, he contrives to tax, very exorbitantly, for those systems ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... all have our weak points and our strong ones. I'm no polemic, I!—I prefer meddling with things that will not bring me into trouble. There was a factory ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... so rare and delightful a thing. And, like all poetic humour, it oscillates between cynicism and passion almost bewilderingly. For a little more of this what pages and pages of jocularity about Bottles and the Rev. Esau Hittall would we not have given! what volumes of polemic with the Guardian and amateur discussions of the Gospel of St John! In the first place, note the metrical structure, the sober level octosyllables of the overture changing suddenly to a dance-measure which, for a wonder in English, almost keeps ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... to speak in her company; for, instead of assisting and palliating his natural deficiencies, she is the first to ridicule and expose them. Her passions, having never been checked, have become exceedingly violent. She converses on politics and divinity with all the fury of a partizan and a polemic; she seems impatient of the trammels of her sex; and her conversation frequently goes beyond the bounds of decency and good manners. One cannot help pitying the lot of Imperitus, who has a large share of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... toy hoe, and pulling weeds with my fingers, through long July days, to effect a compromise. Experience had taught me that this was the best way to get concessions from Elizabeth. Little could be gained by polemic argument. Besides, it was dangerous. She would resign, and a good deal more than half the joy would go out of that precious employment if I was left to finish it alone. Women are so volatile. ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... exposition of what seemed to him the most valuable portion of their teachings on evolution. His analysis of Buffon's true meaning, veiled by the reticences due to the conditions under which he wrote, is as masterly as the English in which he develops it. His sense of wounded justice explains the vigorous polemic which here, as in all his later writings, he carries ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... moved to set down some theology of his own, and did so in a manuscript which he entitled, "If I Could Be There." It is in the dialogue form he often adopted for polemic writing. It is a colloquy between the Master of the Universe and a Stranger. It begins: I. If I could be there, hidden under the steps of the throne, I ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... counter-force of exquisite brutality. Where the style of public intercourse had been so deformed by ruffianism, in private intercourse it happened, both as a natural consequence, and as a difference sought after by prudence, that the tendencies to such rough play incident to all polemic conversation (as in the De Oratore) should be precluded by a marked extremity of refined pleasure. Hence indeed it is, that compliments, and something like mutual adulation, prevail so much in the imaginary colloquies ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of the Unknown God has been prepared for, and now follows, and with it is bound up a polemic against idolatry. Conciliation is not to be carried so far as to hide the antagonism between the truth and error. We may give non-Christian systems of religion credit for all the good in them, but we are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... would have proved but a very indifferent polemic; she seems to have had a certain delicacy in her manners which rather belongs to the fine lady. We cannot but smile at an observation of hers on the Apostles which we find in her letters:—"We read that the apostles, even ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... work is not only historic but it is also polemic; polemic, however, not in the spirit or interest of any party or conventicle, but in the spirit and interest of science and humanity. Orthodoxy insists on doctrines whose irrationality in their current forms is such that ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... enthusiasms and to be made the vehicle of deeper emotions and interests than perhaps a northern people could ever find in art, pure and simple, it was not like the time that followed it, a "prosaic" age. Enthusiasm burned fierce and clear, displaying itself in the passionate polemic of Milton, in the fanaticism of Bunyan and Fox, hardly more than in the gentle, steadfast search for knowledge in Burton, and the wide and vigilant curiousness of Bacon. Its eager experimentalism tried the impossible; wrote poems ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... of the Intellectual Development of Europe, he could, of course, relate only such facts as exist; and should it appear that this history has but two cycles, one of them incomplete, he would be under no obligation to make more. But such is not the case. His "history" is purely a piece of polemic. His aim is to establish a formula for all history, past, present, and to come; and, in this view, the paucity of instances on which his induction ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... resistance. Mr. Irving has, in fact, without leave asked or a licence granted, converted the Caledonian Chapel into a Westminster Forum or Debating Society, with the sanctity of religion added to it. Our spirited polemic is not contented to defend the citadel of orthodoxy against all impugners, and shut himself up in texts of Scripture and huge volumes of the Commentators as an impregnable fortress;—he merely makes use of the stronghold of religion as a resting-place, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... on this endless polemic again, Vera. We are meeting for the last time, as you determined we should. Let us make an ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... this point of view the dissertation becomes too much of a polemic to be accepted as a scientific treatise. Too much space is devoted to the task of unifying the widely different views of the colonizationists, too much effort is made to contrast the methods of the colonizationists with those of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... and expansions appear to have been made on various principles. Sometimes one can see that a passage has been added for the mere poetic enrichment of the text, and to prove that the hand that was writing was not that of a musty polemic, but of an artist, at home in splendours. There is a striking instance in point in Chap. VI. of Book I., where there is interpolated a gratuitously gorgeous myth or fable, which may be entitled Eros and Anteros, or Love ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... made much use of his; the assertion that Ophelia's "Come, my coach!" has reference to Montaigne's remark that he has known ladies who would rather lend their honour than their coach; and a dozen other propositions, if possible still more amazing. But when, with no foregone conclusion as to any polemic purpose on Shakspere's part, we restrict ourselves to real parallels of thought and expression; when we find that a certain number of these are actually textual; when we find further that in a single soliloquy in the play there are ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Mr. George is a polemic without a peer, and you say that "no other living man could have made so absurd a theory appear so plausible, deceived hundreds of abler men than himself." Surely there is something very faulty in the position you assume here. If what you say be so, how do you know that you are not ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the first place towards Shakespere, and then towards all other literary craftsmen. William Gifford, his first competent editor, set himself to work to destroy this, and undoubtedly succeeded. But the acrimony with which Gifford tinctured all his literary polemic perhaps rather injured his treatment of the case; even yet it may be doubted whether Ben Jonson has attained anything like his proper ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... not not have been a compliance with the popular errors of the time, but must be taken to express the absolute truth. And so grew the anti-Galilean fanatics. Out of similar notions have risen the absurdities of a polemic Bible chronology, &c. [Footnote: The Bible cosmology stands upon another footing. That is not gathered from a casual expression, shaped to meet popular comprehension, but is delivered directly, formally, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... Seventeen's afternoon bridge. She had learned the elements of the game from the Sam Clarks. She played quietly and reasonably badly. She had no opinions on anything more polemic than woolen union-suits, a topic on which Mrs. Howland discoursed for five minutes. She smiled frequently, and was the complete canary-bird in her manner of thanking ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... useful classes a community could possess, that a wise government ought to do all it could to encourage their enterprise instead of thwarting it, and that the best policy therefore was to leave the rate of interest alone. In conducting his polemic Bentham wrote as an admiring pupil towards a venerated master, to whom he said he owed everything, and over whom he could gain no advantage except, to use his own words, "with weapons which you have taught me to wield and ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... Dryden's political and polemic discussions naturally interfered at this period with his more general poetical studies. About the period of James's accession, Tonson had indeed published a second volume of Miscellanies, to which our poet contributed ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... no logical affinity between the formal quality of an experience and the impulse to welcome it will thereby be disclosed. We find, however, that pleasure suffuses certain states of mind and pain others; which is another way of saying that, for no reason, we love the first and detest the second. The polemic which certain moralists have waged against pleasure and in favour of pain is intelligible when we remember that their chief interest is edification, and that ability to resist pleasure and pain alike is a valuable ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... heart was not in such party-doings— "why," he complains on one occasion, "do ye call me from my pure life into the filth of your senate-house?" He belonged to the good old time, when the talk savoured of onions and garlic, but the heart was sound. His polemic against the hereditary foes of the genuine Roman spirit, the Greek philosophers, was only a single aspect of this old-fashioned opposition to the spirit of the new times; but it resulted both from the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... his attention too much from the luminous field of philosophic disquisition to the sterile regions of polemic divinity, and the still more ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... Symposium! Yet they're not engaged In compotations. Argument hath raged Four hours by the dial; But zealotry of party, creed, or clique Marks not the clock, whilst of polemic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... (1505-1572), the great Scotch reformer and polemic, while more prominent as the preacher and spokesman of the Scotch Reformation, wrote First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regimen of Women (1558), and the Historie of the Reformation of Religion within the Realme of Scotland, published after his death. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... idolatry was Luxury. So successful to our minds is the polemic of a prophet like Isaiah against idolatry that the wonder to us is that it was ever necessary; and, indeed, there are few things more puzzling to the ordinary reader of Scripture than the constant lapses of the ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... boys should make sure that the boys are on their side before they raise the standard of virtue. Nor ought they to summon morality for support of a polemic. Matey Weyburn's object of worship rode superior to a morality puffing its phrasy trumpet. And, somehow, the sacrifice of an enormous number of women to Lord Ormont's glory seemed natural; the very thing that should be, in the case of a first-rate military hero and commander—Scipio notwithstanding. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the fame of a religious dispute which he had held in Latin with two popish priests attached to the Irish chieftain O'Neal. A place in reversion freely bestowed on him by the king at once rewarded the zeal of the young polemic, and encouraged him to desert the profession of the law, in which he had ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... pretty, and sensual, but spiritual, lofty, ideal—Oho! cried the German, he means me again. I am ideal. And so the game went merrily on. Being the greatest egotist that ever lived, Wagner knew that this music could not make its way without a violent polemic, without extraneous advertising aids. So he made a big row; became socialist, agitator, exile. He dragged into his music and the discussion of it, art, politics, literature, philosophy, and religion. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... interrupted the King, "We have not met this morning, I presume, to indulge in a religious polemic! My power is, as you very truly suggest, merely temporal—yours is spiritual. Yours should be the strongest! Go your way now to your Vicar-General with the straight answer I have given you,—but if by your 'spiritual' power ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... have been guided by his advice seems only an additional offense. But such was not the case; Hutchinson came of old and prominent Massachusetts stock; he was a descendant of Anne Hutchinson, of polemic fame, and when appointed to office he appeared a man of good standing and ability. The English government had a perfect right to rely upon the soundness of his statements and opinions. Thus it was really of great moment for Franklin to be able to convince ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... more than elsewhere in this chapter, are we trying to turn the family into a field of ceaseless polemic. No one who knows the stuff of which life is made, the pressure of material cares, the play of passion, the busy energising of the affections, the anxieties of health, and all the other solicitudes, generous or ignoble, which ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... however exalted in rank or power, they were not the leaders in the enterprise. Men of a widely different description, men who redeemed great infirmities and errors by sincerity, disinterestedness, energy and courage, men who, with many of the vices of revolutionary chiefs and of polemic divines, united some of the highest qualities of apostles, were the real directors. They might be violent in innovation and scurrilous in controversy. They might sometimes act with inexcusable severity towards opponents, and sometimes connive disreputably at ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... voluminous as it is, is nothing beside his numberless treatises in dogma and polemic. These were the work of his life, and it is by these posterity has known him. The theologian and the disputer ended by hiding the man in Augustin. To-day, the man perhaps interests us more. And this is a mistake. He himself would not ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position, for I well know there is no scholar less willing or less able than myself to be a polemic. I could not give an account of myself, if challenged. I could not possibly give you one of the 'arguments' you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands; for I do not know what arguments are in reference ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... history has inspired—the passages where Shakespeare brings his rays to focus on "this earth, this realm, this England,"—or where the dread of national dishonour has kindled Chatham to an iron glow,—or where Milton rises from the polemic into the prophet, and Burke from the partisan into the philosopher. The armoury of Wordsworth, indeed, was not forged with the same fire as that of these "invincible knights of old." He had not swayed senates, nor directed policies, nor gathered into one ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... upon which this course was based, were those so commonly assumed by the party in Ireland, when it was needful to justify violence and bigotry there; namely, that the Roman Catholic Church, being the true church, should have immunity from polemic charges against its doctrines and worship; and that, as all attacks upon it are sure, amidst a Roman Catholic population, to lead to a breach of the peace, Gavazzi ought to have been punished by the authorities, and the authorities who neglected to do that should be regarded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... instances, and chooses at once myths that had been for generations the mock of the sceptic, and in his own day furnished abundant ammunition for the artillery of Christian polemic. He takes first Hesiod's story of Kronos swallowing his children; then the Judgement of Paris; then comes a long and earnest explanation of the myth of Attis and the Mother of the Gods. It is on the face of it a story highly discreditable both to the heart and ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... possess this knowledge in the ordinary sense but they are the knowledge manifest in human form, and Prajna is often personified as a goddess. All these works lay great stress on the doctrine of sunyata, and the non-existence of the world of experience. The longest recension is said to contain a polemic ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... responsive affection on our part which that grace induces, will ever knit men together in a kingdom of God, a spiritual society. As long ago as the second century Celsus understood that. He says in his polemic against Christianity, as quoted by Origen, "If any one suppose that it is possible that the people of Asia and Europe and Africa, Greeks and barbarians, should agree to follow one law, he is hopelessly ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... bowed his head and walked slowly back to his seat. He sat down, and with great fatigue evident in his voice, he concluded his polemic. ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar |
