"Polemics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... actions, firstly, with the declarations of those who performed them; secondly, with the interpretation of those who witnessed their performance. There is often a doubt remaining: this is the field of party polemics; every one attributes noble motives to the actions of his own party and discreditable motives to those of the opposite party. But actions described without any indication of ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... "A Brotherly Examination Re-examined" (I think he would or should have said examined, for this is the first examination of it), I find it more full of railing than of reasoning, of gibing than of gravity; and when polemics do so degenerate, the world is abused not edified. He tells me if I have not work enough I shall have more. I confess the answering of this piece is no great work; and the truth is, I am ashamed I have so little to make answer unto; yet ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... cultivator of the memory of Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have pomme de terre [potato] pronounced parmentiere, and succeeded therein not at all. The Abbe Gregoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionary, ex-senator, had passed, in the royalist polemics, to the state of "Infamous Gregoire." The locution of which we have made use—passed to the state of—has been condemned as a neologism by M. Royer Collard. Under the third arch of the Pont de Jena, the new stone with which, the two years previously, the mining aperture made ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... his original contributions to knowledge that Huxley's name is best known to readers outside of technical science, but rather by his labors in popularisation and in polemics. He was one of the foremost and most effective champions of Darwinism, and no scientist has been more conspicuous in the battle between the doctrine of evolution and the older religious orthodoxy. Outside of this particular issue, he was a vigorous ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the city was first stimulated by the polemics against the political and social disorders of urban life. There were those who would destroy the city in order to remedy its evils and restore the simple life of the country. Sociology sought a surer basis ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the flourishing church of Strasburg, was engaged in framing yet another explication of this important rite, by which he vainly hoped to accommodate the consciences of all these zealous and acute polemics. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... said something that leaped and tingled through our very being? This is the power that a minister ought to have with every soul with whom he comes in contact: his word should quickly touch a vital spot. No one to-day cares much for mere oratory, literary discussion, polemics, or cursory exegesis; "marked ability in writing and in public speaking" means that grip on reality which makes ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... applauds or hisses. To seek the truth is my only preoccupation. If some are dissatisfied with the result of my observations- -if their pet theories are damaged thereby—let them do the work themselves, to see whether the facts tell another story. My problem cannot be solved by polemics; patient study alone can throw a little ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... Protestant side, that therefore they are not felt quite as much in earnest by sober and tolerant people, and that they may not be stated in their real force without giving occasion for the remark that this is reviving the old cruel war against Rome, and rekindling a fierce style of polemics which is now out of date? And how is Dr. Pusey to state these objections if, when he goes into them, not in a vague declamatory way, but showing his respect and seriousness by his guarded and full and definite manner of proof, he is to be met by the charge that he does not show sufficient ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... "Religious polemics, indeed, have seldom formed a part of my studies; though whenever I happened accidentally to turn my thoughts to the subject of the Protestant doctrine of the Godhead, and compared it with Arian ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... if he had been so misguided as to offer it; they did not come to hear him "preach" in the full sense of the word,—they came to hear him "say things,"- -witty observations on the particular fad of the hour—sharp polemics on the political situation—or what was still more charming, neat remarks in the style of Rochefoucauld or Montaigne, which covered and found excuses for vice while seemingly condemning viciousness. There is nothing perhaps ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... and corruption of the age required heroic and terror-striking means to rouse and to move the masses; and so the dissensions and troubles between Paul and the nascent Church increased with the success of Paul among the Gentiles. His epistles, one and all, are polemics, not against heathenism or against Judaism, but against his colleagues in Jerusalem, whom, together with their doctrines, he treats in a most reckless manner. They could not write to counterbalance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... ancient religion, reasserted and illuminated with amazing learning and voluminous commentary the archaic documents, expounded and defended the ancient cosmogony, and in the usual style of Japanese polemics preached anew the doctrines of Shint[o]. With wonderful naivete and enthusiasm, Motooeri taught that Japan was the first part of the earth created, and that it is therefore The Land of the Gods, the Country ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... had accused the Republicans of desiring to demolish the churches. Vuillet was Aristide's bugbear. Never a week passed but these two journalists exchanged the greatest insults. In the provinces, where a periphrastic style is still cultivated, polemics are clothed in high-sounding phrases. Aristide called his adversary "brother Judas," or "slave of Saint-Anthony." Vuillet gallantly retorted by terming the Republican "a monster glutted with blood whose ignoble purveyor ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... takes leave to refer to two essays of his own, in "Irenics and Polemics" (New York, Christian Literature Co., 1895), for a fuller statement ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Borkman, and When We Dead Awaken. He returned to Norway in July 1891, for a stay of indefinite length; but the restless wanderer over Europe was destined to leave his home no more.... He had not returned, however, to throw himself, as of old, into the battle of the passing day. Polemics are entirely absent from the poetry of his old age. He leaves the State and Society at peace. He who had departed as the creator of Falk [in Love's Comedy] now, on his return, gazes into the secret places of human nature and the wonder ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... of this period exist. The x Club was doing its work. Most of those to whom he would naturally have written he met constantly. Two letters to Professor Haeckel give pieces of his experience. One suggests the limits of aggressive polemics, as to which I remember his once saying that he himself had only twice been the aggressor in controversy, without waiting to be personally attacked; once where he found his opponent was engaged in a flanking movement; the other ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... and apologetic writings of those days, called forth by the discussions between Rabbanites and Karaites and by the constant attacks of Christianity, are still of uncommon interest. Specimens of the former kind are the polemics of Moses of Shavli, which caused consternation in the camp of the Karaites. Of the apologetic writings should be mentioned the reply, in Polish, of Jacob Nahman of Belzyc to Martin Chekhovic (Lublin, 1581), and the Hizzuk Emunah of the Karaite ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... fuller explanations. Vasubandhu then expanded his verses into a prose commentary, but meanwhile his views had undergone a change and when he disapproved of any Vaibhashika doctrine, he criticized it. This enlarged edition by no means pleased the brethren of Kashmir and called forth polemics. He also wrote a controversial work ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... this Crichton of France had proved himself an associate nowise desirable. His sleepless intellect was matched with a spirit as restless, vain, unstable, and ambitious, as it was enterprising and bold. Addicted to dissent, and enamoured of polemics, he entered those forbidden fields of inquiry and controversy to which the Reform invited him. Undaunted by his monastic vows, he battled for heresy with tongue and pen, and in the ear of Protestants professed himself a Protestant. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... polemics. Too often he is merely the emotional controversialist. Bias and Life are with him not always welded into the harmonious whole, which one is entitled to claim ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... Stanch polemics, like a Bull, (Judicium Eccles. Cathol. c. 2,) insist on the orthodoxy of the Nazarenes; which appears less pure and certain in the eyes of Mosheim, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and gather into denominational and political parties. We take our places on the ball ground. Some are to pitch; they are the radicals. Some are to catch; they are the conservatives. Some are to strike; they are those fond of polemics and battle. Some are to run; they are the candidates. There are four hunks—youth, manhood, old age and death. Some one takes the bat, lifts it and strikes for the prize and misses it, while the man who was behind catches it and goes in. This man takes his turn at the bat, sees the flying ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... had no distinct vision of the benefit that would accrue to him from this change of courses. But Mr. Barton, being aware that Miss Fodge had touched on a delicate subject in alluding to the roast goose, was determined to witness no more polemics between her and Mr. Spratt, so, saying good morning to the latter, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... noting the summary of the internal evidences attesting the genuineness of these letters, to the headings omitted (2, 3) on the Theological Polemics and the Ecclesiastical Conditions. That summary is ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... liquors, fiercely determined to resist any extension of the authority of teetotaller-led local governing bodies over theatres. Fifth, there were the playwrights, without political power, but with a very close natural monopoly of a talent not only for play-writing but for satirical polemics. And since every interest has its opposition, all these influences had created hostile bodies by the operation of the mere impulse to contradict them, always strong in ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... conviction could scarcely avoid engaging in it.[2] Nelson valued the name of Protestant next only to that of Catholic, and was therefore drawn almost necessarily into taking some part in the last great dispute with Rome.[3] But polemics would be deprived of their gall of bitterness if combatants joined in the strife with as much charity and generosity ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... well known to you from the wonderful print of it by Drevet. The representation is worthy of the original; for Bossuet was one of the last of the really great men of France. He had a fine capacity and fine scholarship: and was as adroit in polemics as Richelieu was in politics. He resembled somewhat our Horsley in his pulpit eloquence,—and was almost as pugnacious and overbearing in controversy. He excelled in quickness of perception, strength of argument, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... explanation of this myth of Pele, the volcano god and Kama-pua'a, who, on occasion, was a sea-monster, there is no necessity to hark back to the old polemics of Asia. Why not account for this remarkable myth as the statement in terms of passion familiar to all Hawaiians of those impressive natural phenomena that were daily going on before them? The spectacle of the smoking mountain pouring out its fiery streams, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... Dr. Kuyper, who in his letter, March 28th, wrote: "The copyright of my article belongs to the Editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes, without whose permission I can do nothing. As I shall be in Paris before long I will ask him for it should your polemics seem to me ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... general title. Scarce Tracts: Old and New Testaments (including almost all the first English editions of the New Testament, which are now of the rarest occurrence): Commentators: Ecclesiastical History: Polemics: Devotions, Catholic and Calvinistical: Enthusiasm: Monastical History: Lives of Saints: Fathers: Missionaries: Martyrs: Modern Divines and Persons of eminent piety: Free Thinkers: Old English Primers: Meditations: Some of the earliest Popish ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... language," their "feeble style," intolerable. The, apparently, pretty sensitive poet replied in his prologues—which properly were not intended for any such purpose—with counter-criticisms full of defensive and offensive polemics; and appealed from the multitude, which had twice run off from his -Hecyra- to witness a band of gladiators and rope-dancers, to the cultivated circles of the genteel world. He declared that he only aspired to the approval of the "good"; in which doubtless there ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to become a metaphysician. There is no discipline which so well consists with solitude, none which so instantly enfranchises the mind from the tyranny of mean self-interest or vain and envious polemics. Men do not grow sour and quarrelsome about the Absolute: everything that is polemical is inspired, as Michelet once said, by some temporal and momentary interest. The man who has climbed to the Idalian spring comes ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... with Fortsch [How the deuce did Fortsch teach these things?]; Hermeneutics and Polemics with Walch [editor of—Luther's Works,—I suppose]; Hebraics with Dr. Danz; Homiletics with Dr. Weissenborn; PASTORALE [not Pastoral Poetry, but the Art of Pastorship] and MORALE with Dr. Buddaeus.' ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... this friendly council I perceived my danger, and set about to avoid the fault of mixing my fiction with my polemics. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the limitations of the Dom as a newspaper—it is almost exclusively occupied with the person and programme of Mr. Radi['c]—yet that brings with it the virtue, most exceptional in Yugoslavia, of refusing to engage in polemics. This would otherwise take up a good deal of its space, as Radi['c] has become such a bogey-man that nothing is too ridiculous for his opponents to believe. A Czech newspaper not long ago informed the world that this monstrous personage had told ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... dispute was the consequence. Much abuse passed between them, whilst I stood by, shrugged my shoulders, and said tipotas. {21} At last, as they were leaving the house, I said, "Who would have thought, gentlemen, that the polemics of the Greek and Latin churches were so closely connected with the comparative merits of Seville, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... German traveller, is about abandoning the fruitless polemics which have gained him so many foes, to devote himself to more useful labors. He himself desires to be at peace with all the world, and the antagonists which his trenchant pen has so often unsparingly scarified, need fear him no longer. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... still more useful. Both friend and foe will join in the conviction that objective truth is always the best guarantee for subjective success; and thus both will pass beyond the purely utilitarian apologetics or polemics to the questions as to the objective reality of ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... distance from 20 to 100 miles; so that the subjugation of Ireland would compel us to guard with ships and soldiers a new line of coast, certainly amounting, with all its sinuosities, to more than 700 miles—an addition of polemics, in our present state of hostility with all the world, which must highly gratify the vigorists and give them an ample opportunity of displaying that foolish energy upon which their claims to distinction are founded. ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... needed at this juncture, was not so much a fiery defender of the faith, or a scholar to taunt the heretics in finely-pointed sarcasm with their want of learning, as a saint, demonstrating in his own life the beauty of holiness, while laying aside polemics, he expounded the philosophy of Catholic doctrine. The need for reform was patent to all; many, like the zealous Carmelite provincial, were already putting their hands to the plough. The movement had been set on foot, but it lacked an apostle to lead and govern it. Such ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... thus at some length from one of his many polemics to show the absolute and fearless sincerity of the man, mistaken though he may have ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... the wilderness, and was subsequently murdered by the Indians. But the force of mental exercise which she had put in motion still continued. It is worthy of remark that almost the only intellectual peculiarity to which Franklin refers, in speaking of his father, is 'a turn for polemics.' The great features of New England character were, at that day, opinion and faith. It was these, as boldly and defiantly expressed, which excited the fears and jealousy of Charles the Second, and instigated the deprival ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... thousand years throughout Christendom: they were held by a great multitude of persecuted sects, from the Albigenses and Cathars to the eastern Paulicians. The catholic church found it necessary to prohibit the circulation of the Old Testament among laymen very largely on account of the polemics of the Cathars against the Hebrew God. But in this book, be it noted, the word Christian, when it is not otherwise defined, is used to indicate only the Trinitarians who accept the ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... power and abused it as soon as she saw in my eyes the ardent expression which was always there when she began her sorceries. She triumphed over everything, and I complacently told myself that the woman who loses all, sacrifices the future, and makes love her only virtue, is far above Catholic polemics. ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... with a closeness and assiduity for which the monks have not always received due credit.[2] A great deal of room was given up to the works of the Fathers—their confessions, retractations, and letters, their polemics against heresies, their dogmatic and doctrinal treatises, and their sermons and ethical discourses. Of all these writings those of Hilary, Basil, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome, and the great Augustine were most popular. John Cassian, Leo, Prosper, Cassiodorus, ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... these days of doubt, rank infidelity, and abominable schism, the danger of the church was felt by every good and pious divine; and her most active defenders were her best friends. His lordship would therefore perhaps be glad to hear that Mr. Trevor had particularly devoted himself to polemics, was intimately acquainted with the writings of the fathers and the known orthodox divines, and was qualified to be a powerful ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... No improvements of the new philosophy were even attempted. Wherein it was defective and indistinct, defective and indistinct it remained. The system was not thought out to its end and independently adopted. Polemics, ontology, ethics, theology, marvels, heroes—all were enthusiastically adopted on faith. It is to be added that the new system was superior to the old, and so much of discrimination was shown."[AD] And somewhat earlier ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... Luther any better than he makes himself. Still, the question is pertinent whether violent polemics can ever be engaged in by Christians with a good conscience. Luther has asserted that, while he hurled his terrible denunciations against the adversaries of the truth, his heart was disposed to friendship and peace ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... believe, it stands to this day. I was very glad to receive my Zurich friends in my new home, which was so much more conveniently situated than my former one; only I quite spoilt all my hospitality for a long time by my fanatical agitation for a water diet and my polemics against the evils of wine and other intoxicating drinks. I adopted what seemed almost a new kind of religion: when I was driven into a corner by Sulzer and Herwegh, the latter of whom prided himself on his knowledge of chemistry and ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... what is that faith which unlocks heaven? Go not to wrangling polemics, or creeds and forms of theology, but draw to thy bosom thy little one, and read in that clear, trusting eye the lesson of eternal life. Be only to thy God as thy child is to thee, and all is done. Blessed shalt thou be, indeed, "when a little ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The protest declared that "in the persons of Horvitz and Chatzkin an insult has been offered to the entire (Russian) people, to all Russian literature," which has no right to let "naked slander" pass under the disguise of polemics. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... intensified by the fact—as contemporary naval literature shows—that by Nelson's success and death the memorandum became consecrated into a kind of sacred document, which it was almost sacrilege to discuss. The violent polemics of such men as James, the naval chronicler, made it appear profanity so much as to consider whether Nelson's attack differed in the least from his intended plan, and anyone who ventured to examine the question in the light of general principles was ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... to make good the personal losses of a few passengers and seamen. The liberality of the hand is here unrestrained by religious antipathies. Bigotry assumes the character of ill temper and puffing. Two parrots in Philadelphia trained to polemics were set over against each other, one crying all day, "there can be no church without a prelate;" the other, "there can be a church without a prelate;" the passengers were divided in opinion, but laughing walked ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... people delight. He woke them up in all sorts of ways, about all sorts of things. He wrote lyrics, songs, dramas, romances, sermons, Platonic dialogues, newspaper articles, children's fairy books, scientific manuals, philosophical essays, lectures, extravaganzas, and theological polemics. Hardly any of these were quite in the first rank, and some of them were thin, flashy, and almost silly. But most of them had the saving gift of getting home to the interests, ideas, and tastes of the great public, and he made them ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... of the Midland Railway of England and, I should say, the leading railway accountant in the United Kingdom. On railway matters he was a writer of great skill, and all he wrote was enlivened with the happiest humour. To the Railway News he was a valued contributor, and in railway polemics a master. ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... belief, but in the authority of another person who believed in that thing and thus mediately in the thing itself) was constantly attacked by the learned assailants of popery,—it naturally happened that many unlearned readers of these protestant polemics caught at a phrase which was so much bandied between the two parties: the spirit of the context sufficiently explained to them that it was used by protestants as a term of reproach, and indicated a faith that was ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... and I was to find that out with a vengeance. All my friends and colleagues became more and more averse to me, and even went so far as to take my patients from me by incensing them against me in every possible manner. Soon they began to drag my name into professional polemics, into professional newspapers; and when I had defeated and silenced them in one place, they began to annoy me in another. At home, in Hungary, the reorganisation of the counties was begun. For twenty years ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... the Lutheran Church in European countries where the war has upset political, social, and religious conditions; to adjust matters on the Home Mission field, in order to restrict and stop destructive competitive church-work; to discourage, ignore, and abandon public polemics among Lutherans; to prepare a statement defining the essentials of a catholic spirit as viewed by the Lutheran Church. With the exception of the Synodical Conference (always wary of entangling and unionistic alliances), practically ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... eyes absolutely lose its importance if a transition from species to species under the influence of conditions of life were admitted. His disciples (Littre, Robin) continued to direct against Darwin the polemics which their master had employed against Lamarck. Stuart Mill, who, in the theory of knowledge, represented the empirical or positivistic movement in philosophy—like his English forerunners from Locke to Hume—founded his theory of ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... insufficiency of the secular clergy. By raising up a body of virtuous, educated, and active priests, the Jesuits met that argument. The theological difference remained, and they dealt with it through the best controversialists. And when their polemics failed, they strove, as pamphleteers, and as the confessors of the great, to resist the Protestants with the arm of the flesh. For the multitudes that had never heard the Catholic case stated, they trained the most eloquent school of modern preachers. For security in ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the works of Constantine himself. They must be regarded as far better authority than the writings of religious polemics. A medal was struck, on which was impressed his title of "God," together with the monogram of Christ. Another represented him as raised by a hand from the sky while seated in the chariot of the Sun. But more particularly the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... to utter a word in disparagement of this education, an unanimous and yet calm repudiation of the statement at once follows, as if classical education were a kind of witchcraft, blessing its followers, and demonstrating itself to them by this blessing. There is no attempt at polemics . "We have been through it all." "We know ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... poorer sort, an occasional call upon or from some distant neighbor of a rank approaching her own; for the rest, embroidery in the newest patterns and most elegant style, some few books, chiefly religious and polemical works—and what can be drearier than Roman Catholic polemics, unless, indeed, Protestant ones eclipse them?—a large house, vast estates, servants who never raised their voices beyond a certain tone; the envy of all the middle-class women, the fear and reverential courtesies of the poorer ones—a cheerful existence, and one which accounted for some of the ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... religious striving, the hidden aim of the wars and persecutions, the polemics and martyrdoms, which have so busied and bloodied the world. This satisfies the rational postulates of religion. Does some one say that it does not stimulate its emotional elements, that it does ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... waste in following Marx, either through his exposition of his battle theory, his explanations of the other movements of the Symphony, or his polemics against previous writers. His programme seems to us little, if at all, better than those which he controverts. Instead of this, we venture to offer our own to the reader's common sense, which, if it does not satisfy, at least shows that Marx has not put ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... sweetness of her disposition had made her submit with complacency, and even pleasure, to the course of reading prescribed by her father, although it not only comprehended several heavy folios of history, but certain gigantic tomes in high-church polemics. In heraldry he was fortunately contented to give her only such a slight tincture as might be acquired by perusal of the two folio volumes of Nisbet. Rose was indeed the very apple of her father's eye. Her constant liveliness, her attention to all those little observances most gratifying to those ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... have a casting vote in regard to the agitating claims for the extension of new powers to women. On the one hand, the inspiration of scripture, on the other, the admission of women to Harvard, is at stake, and it is these that lend the peculiar animus and animation to the discussion. In both polemics, arguments are not accepted because they are demonstrated, but enlisted because they are useful; ranged with others recruited from the most distant quarters, with nothing in common but the regiment into which they are all thrust, to be hurled ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... in Ireland, more artistic in Italy, more philosophic in Germany, more literary and discursive in France, more idolatrous in the States of South America, more reserved and modest, more decent and tolerant, less ambitious in its aspirations, and less audacious in its polemics, in England than in any other ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... tons of invoices, groaning shelves of incalculable legers, parchment abhorrences of rare Charles Lamb, we think not now of you; dreary piles of unhealthy-looking law-books, hypochondriacal heaps of medical experiences, plodding folios of industrious polemics, slow elaborations of learned dullness, we spare your native dust; letters unnumbered, in all stages of cacography, both physical and metaphysical, alack! most of you must slip through the meshes of our definition yet unwove; poor deciduous leaves of the forest, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... notes on Philosophy, Morals and Polemics, have been included in this section as occur as independent texts in the original MSS. Several moral reflections have already been given in Vol. I, in section "Allegorical representations, Mottoes and Emblems". Others will be found in the following section. Nos. 9 to ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... confesses in his autobiography that "it was a great error in me to appear in this matter," and his conduct cost him the patronage of the duke of York. In ecclesiastical matters he threw in his lot with Thomas Tillotson and John Tenison, and at the time of the Revolution had written some eighteen polemics against encroachments of the Roman Catholic Church. At the suggestion of Sir William Jones, the attorney-general, he began his History of the Reformation in England, based on original documents. [v.04 p.0852] In the necessary research he received some pecuniary help from Robert Boyle, but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... powerful, closely reasoned, and eloquent speech made last night by Mr. Bingham, the Member for Pillham, will, we feel certain, produce as great an effect on the country as it did in the House of Commons. We welcome it, not only on account of its value as a contribution to the polemics of the Irish Question, but as a positive proof of what has already been suspected, that the Unionist party has in Mr. Bingham a young statesman of a very high order indeed, and one whom remarkable and rapid success at the Bar has ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... organization of the whole people, that is, through the nation (I, 202). Adam Smith's theory of labor would be correct if it considered the entire national life of a people itself as one huge piece of labor. (II, 265). And so, Mueller directs his polemics against Adam Smith's premise of a merely mercantile world-market. (II, 290). Similarly, the protective tariff theoreticians, Ganieh, Theorie de l'Economie politique (1822), II, 198 ff. and Fr. List, Nationales System ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... middle of the argument. Stanislas and Chatelet vied with each other in backing up their opinions by observations extremely pertinent. It was hardly to be expected that the champions should not seek to enlist partisans. "What do you yourself think?" they asked, each of his neighbor. These polemics kept Mme. de Bargeton and Lucien ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... whether these be new stimuli to variation, or only acting as their selectors or censors), and moreover secures separation from the original stock and thus eliminates or lessens the reactionary dangers of panmixia. Darwin accepted Wagner's theory as "advantageous." Through the heated polemics of the more ardent selectionists Wagner's theory came to grow into an alternative instead of a help to the theory of selectional evolution. Separation is now rightly considered a most important factor by ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... fact that the Christian dervish who is represented in chapter lix. as publicly disputing with the mollahs in a medresseh at Ispahan, and as writing a refutation of the Mohammedan creed, was no other than the famous Henry Martyn, who created a prodigious sensation by the fearlessness of his polemics while at Shiraz, and who subsequently died at Tokat, in Asiatic Turkey, in 1812. The incidental mention of the great diamond or 'Mountain of Light' that was worn by Fath Ali Shah in one of his bazubands or armlets, though ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... led to another storm in the English Roman Catholic world, but once more it was considered prudent by the Vatican to leave him alone. In spite of his reservations, he regarded "communion with Rome as dearer than life.'' Thenceforth he steered clear of theological polemics. He devoted himself to persistent reading and study, combined with congenial society. With all his capacity for study he was a man of the world, and a man of affairs, not a bookworm. Little indeed came from his pen, his only notable publications being a masterly essay in the Quarterly ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and scattering stones as he went along; and in like manner authors trace the course of their life's peregrinations by the pamphlets and articles they cast down as they go. Sometimes they throw stones, sometimes they throw bread. In '92 and '93 Mrs. Barbauld must have been occupied with party polemics and with the political miseries of the time. A pamphlet on Gilbert Wakefield's views, and another on 'Sins of the Government and Sins of the People,' show in what direction her thoughts were bent. Then came a period of comparative calm again and of literary work and interest. ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... of those vices which a state of celibacy is calculated to promote in both sexes. The chained book is not an uncommon feature in the ancient ecclesiastical repositories, and even in certain churches; and apart from the Scriptures, it almost invariably enters into the department of early divinity or polemics. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... in which this experience was so strong a factor has not become obsolete. The "horrible decrees" have indeed been very generally driven from the pulpit, but not entirely. Our work as polemics will not be finished until they leave the schools and the books, and cease to be pillows for the multitudes who lull themselves to slumber over the notion of "sovereign grace and waiting God's time," ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... England has produced; but the translation and publication of his prose works have identified him with the political history of England, and the discovery in 1823, of his Treatise on Christian Doctrine, has established him as one of the greatest religious polemics in an age when every theological sect was closely allied to a political party, and thus rendered the strife of contending factions more bitter and relentless. Thus it is that the name of John ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... indifferently as "Jehovah, Jove, or Lord." Dryden and Pope were professed Catholics, but there is nothing to distinguish their so-called sacred poetry from that of their Protestant contemporaries. Contrast the mere polemics of "The Hind and the Panther" with really Catholic poems like Southwell's "Burning Babe" and Crashaw's "Flaming Heart," or even with Newman's "Dream of Gerontius." In his "Essay on Man," Pope versified, without ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... was in the heat of controversy, soon published an answer to Henry; and, without regard to the dignity of his antagonist, treated him with all the acrimony of style to which, in the course of his polemics, he had so long been accustomed. The king, by this ill usage, was still more prejudiced against the new doctrines; but the public, who naturally favor the weaker party, were inclined to attribute to Luther the victory ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... that the Reformation opened the way for a critical treatment of the history of dogma.[17] But even in Protestant Churches, at first, historical investigations remained under the ban of the confessional system of doctrine and were used only for polemics.[18] Church history itself up to the 18th century was not regarded as a theological discipline in the strict sense of the word, and the history of dogma existed only within the sphere of dogmatics as a collection of testimonies to the truth, theologia patristica. It was only after ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... excuses for the very outrage which it lashes: thinking of this, we do not marvel that he has furrowed for himself so deep a groove in so many hearts. Nor, on the other hand, is it difficult to see, even from so genial a book as this, whence polemics are not so much banished as where there is no niche for them, should they apply, why it is that he is so fiercely opposed. When a man like Mr. Beecher encounters that which excites his moral disapprobation, there is no possibility of mistaking him. He flings himself against it with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... fellow of his college, in 1633, having obtained his B.A. four years previously. He was ordained by JOHN WILLIAMS in 1636, and received the important appointment of Sunday afternoon lecturer at Trinity Church. His lectures, which he gave with the object of turning men's minds from polemics to the great moral and spiritual realities at the basis of the Christian religion, from mere formal discussions to a true searching into the reason of things, were well attended and highly appreciated; and he held the appointment for twenty years. In 1634 ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... could hit upon nothing. But the most famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would ever believe! People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would spread as far as Forges, as Neufchatel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could say if his colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would ensue; he would have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte might even prosecute him. He saw himself dishonoured, ruined, lost; and his imagination, assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Sterne developed in that year, and which his nephew very likely did not, in his opinion, sufficiently share. But this is quite consistent with the younger man's having up to that time assisted the elder in his party polemics. He certainly speaks in his "Letters" of his having "employed his brains for an ungrateful person," and the remark is made in a way and in a connexion which seems to imply that the services rendered to his uncle were mainly literary. If ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... eager to subject the offending work to a scathing scrutiny, displaying withal a modicum of righteous indignation at the unblushing heresy of the author, not unmixed with a little scornful pity at his inability to believe very preposterous stories upon very meagre evidence. "Conservative" polemics of this sort have doubtless their function. They serve to purge scientific literature of the awkward and careless statements too often made by writers not sufficiently instructed or cautious, which in the absence of hostile criticism might get accepted by the unthinking reader ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... modest protest against being made, as you are, one of the vice-presidents of the Liberal Congress organization; but the very reason you urged against it is the very reason for putting you on. We want you not for what you can do but for what you are. We can not take the congress into the polemics of the woman question, but George Washington went into the first Continental Congress with his uniform on, said nothing, yet that was his speech. So we organize with Susan B. Anthony's name among our vice-presidents, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... all. If there were commercial blood stains upon his hand, they were hidden by the glove of success. After a manner he had had peace; now all was disquiet; the turmoil of an awakened gentler feeling clashing with the polemics of self-satisfying selfishness. And all because of a girl! To him that was the peculiar feature of the disturbance in his nature. He, Philip Crane, the strong man of strong men, to be shorn of his indifference to everything ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... to profit by illumination wherever it may be discerned, we cannot clearly see how the present volume either makes the problems more intelligible, or points the way to feasible solutions. Though he tries, in perfect good faith, to be the dispassionate student, he often comes very close to the polemics of the hour. The truth is that scientific lawyers have seldom been very favourable to popular government; and when the scientific lawyer is doubled with the Indian bureaucrat, we are pretty sure beforehand that in such a tribunal it will go hard with democracy. That ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... puffs. It has bought up the last page of nearly every Paris journal which owns the patronage and confidence of the advertising public of the French capital. At the end of the same dark passages are the rooms specially used for the editors and writers. In France, journals are bought for their polemics, and not for their news: many of them have fallen considerably, however, from the high estate which they held in public opinion previous to the last revolution. There are men who wrote in them to advocate and enforce principles, but ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the mere polemics sent forth a cry of his impiety; the philosopher was branded with Atheism;—one of those artful calumnies, of which, after a man has washed himself clean, the stain will be found to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... and third volumes of the Decline and Fall. My ecclesiastical history still breathed the same spirit of freedom; but protestant zeal is more indifferent to the characters and controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. My obstinate silence had damped the ardour of the polemics. Dr. Watson, the most candid of my adversaries, assured me that he had no thoughts of renewing the attack, and my impartial balance of the virtues and vices of Julian was generally praised. This truce was interrupted only ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... book of Breshith Rabba. Several even of the modern commentators, e.g., Jarchi, have retained this explanation, although a strong doctrinal interest, to which others yielded, tempted them to give another interpretation to this passage, which occupied so prominent a place in the polemics of the Christians. (Compare the passage in Raim. Martini Pug. Fid. ed. Carpzov; Jac. Alting's Shiloh, Franc. 1660, 4to [also in the opp. t. v.]; Schoettgen, hor. Hebr. ii. p. 146; and, most completely, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... victory! This was truly a fire upon an altar. There are a succession of soaring passages, near the end of the third movement, which touch me most deeply. Though soaring, they hold on with a stress which almost breaks the chains of matter to the hearer. O, how refreshing, after polemics and philosophy, to soar thus on strong wings! Yes, Father, I will wander in dark ways with the crowd, since thou seest best for me to be tied down. But only in thy free ether do I know myself. When I read Beethoven's life, I said, "I will never repine." ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... be seen whose arguments I am, in form, reproducing here. I would fain lay down the truth without polemics or recrimination. But unfortunately we never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. The error is needed to set off ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... miles to attend them. One of these clubs held its meetings at an old store-house in New Salem, and the first speech young Lincoln ever made was made there. He used to call the exercising "practicing polemics." As these clubs were composed principally of men of no education whatever, some of their "polemics" are remembered as the most laughable of farces. Lincoln's favorite newspaper at this time was ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Laissez-faire, says the professor, when it often means bind and gag that the strongest may work his will. It is a plea for the survival of the fittest—for the strongest male to take possession of the herd by a process of extermination. If we examine this battle cry of political polemics, we find that it is based upon the conception of the divine right of property, and the preoccupation by older or more favored or more alert or richer men or nations, of territory, of the forces of nature, of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... difficult and important negotiations, an orator whose discourses on many great public occasions attracted the attention of Europe, a soldier whose bravery was to be attested afterwards on many a well-fought field, a theologian so skilful in the polemics of divinity, that, as it will hereafter appear, he was more than a match for a bench of bishops upon their own ground, and a scholar so accomplished, that, besides speaking and writing the classical and several modern languages with facility, he had also translated for popular ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... philosophical basis for this question is usually not understood at all by those critics who presume to answer the question off-hand in a spasm of polemics. It is interesting, as an evidence of the shallowness of most contemporary dramatic criticism, to read over, in the course of Mr. Shaw's nimble essay on The Quintessence of Ibsenism, the collection which the author has made of the adverse notices of Ghosts which appeared in the London ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... bitter opponents of Germany, for example the Philadelphia Inquirer, favor an early embargo for purely material reasons. It is to be expected that this question will be one of the first to come up at the opening of the approaching session of Congress, when the Press polemics of the opponents of the embargo, with the arriere pensee of protecting England's interests and those of her Allies, should reach ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... of sling, regarded him with feelings of terror and aversion. The doughty little cobbler made nothing of attacking them single-handed, and putting them utterly to rout; for he was a dabster at debate, and entertained as strong a liking for polemics as for books. Nay, he was a thorn in the side of the parson himself, for whom he used to lie in wait with knotty questions,—snares set to entrap the worthy divine, in the hope of beguiling him into a controversy respecting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... little sympathy, even for a little praise. "It is really needful to me that you should have some small good opinion of it [Nathan], in order to make me once more contented with myself," he writes to Elise Reimarus in May, 1779. That he was weary of polemics, and dissatisfied with himself for letting them distract him from better things, appears from his last pathetic letter to the old friend he loved and valued most,—Mendelssohn. "And in truth, dear friend, I sorely need a letter like yours from time to time, if I am not to become wholly out ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... fine bit of breezy polemics for the dreary fifties—a fine bit of moral courage too for the University professor who ventured to ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... topic must now be considered. Overbeck in 1813 relinquished the Protestant faith of his forefathers and joined the Roman Catholic Church. Obviously in these pages polemics are out of place, and the step which the conscientious painter thought fit to take has to be here noted so far only as it serves as an index to character and as an interpretation of art. Rightly ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... Comnena (Alexiad, l. i. p. 31—33) represents the abhorrence, not only of the church, but of the palace, for Gregory VII., the popes and the Latin communion. The style of Cinnamus and Nicetas is still more vehement. Yet how calm is the voice of history compared with that of polemics!] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... mind to put himself before the public, and talked of his plans to his friends. In order to keep in practice in speaking he walked seven or eight miles to debating clubs. "Practicing polemics," was ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... am a young man, unskilled in polemics and unpractised in the art of advocacy, no match for one of mature age, ripe experience, and stored learning; but if an enthusiasm for mercy, a belief that human life itself is not fitly bought by the torturing of the helpless, an amazement that ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... of your own soul, if you've got the moral eyesight to look through mud," declaimed Mr. Niles, refusing to descend from polemics to plain business, "and you'll see what is the matter. You have made yourself the voice by which this district has spoken in the halls of state for fifty years, and that voice is not the voice of the people!" He stood on tiptoe ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... imprisoned by the Inquisition. Milton saw and visited him under the restraint of that scientific body in his own house. Yet Galileo did more by his disclosures of the stars towards elevating our ideas of the Creator, than all the so-called saints and polemics that screamed at one another in the pulpits of East ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... theological controversy and literary productions. It was during this period that he collected his miscellaneous writings, entitled "Gleanings from Past Years." A little more than a year had elapsed when he again entered the political arena. "He threw aside polemics and criticisms, he forgot for awhile Homer and the Pope," and "rushed from his library at Hawarden, forgetting alike ancient Greece and modern Rome," as he flung himself with impassioned energy and youthful vigor into a new crusade against Turkey. A quarter of a century ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... and doctrines, and confessions of faith, which he had ever considered the foundations upon which Christian life was to be built, seemed, for a moment or two, useless lumber before the simple creed of this loving, pure-hearted maiden. To seek to disturb this state of innocence and obedience by moody polemics, he ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... word of the nineteenth century has been for realities—realities which live however and move. Passion, in short, an element unknown in Voltaire's philosophy, has been brought into play. Here a diatribe against Voltaire, and as for Rousseau, his characters are polemics and systems masquerading. Julie and Claire are entelechies—informing ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac |
