"Reasoner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be spoken when it involved the greatest peril to the position and prospects of the speaker. But how much moral considerations were apt to be present to his mind, I do not know. He was mostly known—so we of the North thought—as an impracticable reasoner. Miss Martineau said, "He was like a cast-iron man on ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... a deductive reasoner—from the girl's attitude toward him that she had fallen into relations of uncommon friendliness with this Maitland, young as Anisty believed their acquaintance to be. There had plainly been a flirtation—wherein lay the explanation of ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... I come to that third point which I said I should deal with here, but which I have not yet touched upon. Every logical reasoner who admits the power of will must admit not only the possibility of miracles, but also the actual fact of their daily and hourly occurrence. Every exertion of the human will is a miracle in the strictest sense of the word; only it takes place privately, within the closed walls of the brain. ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... everything it probes,—is relieved by a richly sympathetic and imaginative nature,—indeed, is so welded with it, that insight and analysis serve each other, and cool reason gives solidity to ecstatic experience. Perhaps as a seer Dr. Bushnell may be more certain of recognition than as a reasoner. Whatever may be thought of the orthodoxy of the doctrines he has rationalized, there can be no doubt as to the reality of the spiritual states he has described. His intellectual method may be wrong or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... inclined to suspect him of deceit. But they were finally converted, for having during a whole month guarded every approach to his cabin, and having during that time detected no one in taking food to him, they were convinced that for that time at least he had lived without food. The sceptical reasoner of the present day would probably regard the ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... to show, from the brevity of the interval between Marie's disappearance and the finding of the floating corpse, that this corpse cannot be that of Marie. The reduction of this interval to its smallest possible dimension, becomes thus, at once, an object with the reasoner. In the rash pursuit of this object, he rushes into mere assumption at the outset. 'It is folly to suppose,' he says, 'that the murder, if murder was committed on her body, could have been consummated soon enough to have enabled her murderers to throw ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... young man. And yet I must confess that, some how or other, a masculine seems to be often attached to the thought of strong reasoning powers in the female sex. To say of such or such a young woman, She is a bold and powerful reasoner—would it not be a little uncommon? Would it be received as a compliment? Would it not be regarded as a little out of the way—and, to coin a term, ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... Here is a reasoner, who would not hesitate to deny that there is any distinct science or philosophy possible concerning the Supreme Being; since every single thing we know of Him is this or that or the other phenomenon, material or moral, which already falls under ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... animated passages, and apparently evincing the preacher's struggle with emotion, rather served to heighten the sympathy of the audience. But, for the most part, the original stammer was replaced by a felicitous pause, the pause as of a thoughtful reasoner or a solemn monitor knitting ideas, that came too quick, into method, or chastening impulse into disciplined zeal. The mind of the preacher, thus not only freed from trammel, but armed for victory, came forth with that power which is peculiar to an original intellect—the power which suggests ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Thou art a subtle reasoner, my friend," said Ferdinand, smiling gently. "Peace go with thee! our conference for the time is ended. What ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... writers, in obedience to a theory, either about the impossibility of the supernatural, or about the fatal and final issues of human death, are victims of prejudice, in the strictest meaning of the word; and are no more logical than the well-known and proverbial reasoner who, when told that facts were against him, with sublime confidence in his own infallibility, is reported to have said, 'So much the worse for the facts.' Let us deal with evidence, and not with theory, when we are talking about alleged facts ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... have named the cause of the disease, and thence inferred the remedy immediately. By many measurements of triangles, one might find their area always equal to their height multiplied by half their base, and one might formulate an empirical law to that effect. But a reasoner saves himself all this trouble, by seeing that it is the essence (pro hac vice) of a triangle to be the half of a parallelogram whose area is the height into the entire base. To see this he must invent additional lines; and the geometer ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Trumbull, the bosom friend of General Washington), good to confer on almost any matter, scientific, political, or religious—any subject, in short, wherein common sense and general good to all concerned was the issue. As a philosophical reasoner, casuist, and good counselor, he was "looked up to," and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... because he can not be a mother, than on woman's because she can be. Surely maternity is an added power and development of some of the most tender sentiments of the human heart and not a "limitation." "Yes," says another pertinacious reasoner, "but it unfits woman for much of the world's work." Yes, and it fits her for much of the world's work; a large share of human legislation would be better done by her ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... and his often sweeping assertions are characteristic of the same contradictions in his nature as his almost tyrannical premises and his practically tender-hearted conclusions. A hard thinker, he was never a close reasoner; in all that relates to human affairs he relies on nobility of feeling rather than on continuity of thought. Claiming the full latitude of the prophet to warn, exhort, even to command, he declines either to preach or to accept the rubric of the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... them. Thus revelation is to be received on evidence, indeed, but an evidence conclusive only on a presupposition or series of presuppositions, evidence that is supplemented by an act of imagination, or by the grace of faith, shall we say? At any rate, the fact is, that the genius of the great reasoner, of this great master of the abstract and deductive sciences, turned theologian, carrying the methods of thought there formed into the things of faith, was after all of the imaginative order. Now hear what he says of imagination: Cette faculte trompeuse, qui semble nous etre donnee expres ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... stand out with special prominence, by reason of their unusual mental qualities. They differed widely from each other. One was a born actor and imitator, who loved human partnership in his daily affairs. The other was an original thinker and reasoner, with a genius for invention, and at all times impatient of training and restraint. The first was named Rajah, the latter ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... which fell in his way chimed in with this primary belief, and next came the question of the Scripture revelation, which he argued over with much metaphysical power and acuteness, being a very powerful reasoner, and well trained in the literature of his own country. Meantime three simpler minds—Moung Thaahlah, Moung Byaay, and Moung Ing—had been thoroughly convinced, and, though aware that they would expose themselves to considerable danger, resolved ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... born about 315, Zeno about 350, though the dates are uncertain. Dissereret: was a deep reasoner. Bentl. missing the meaning conj. definiret. Peracute moveretur: Bentl. partiretur; this with definiret above well illustrates his licence in emendations. Halm ought not to have doubted the soundness of the text, the words refer not to the ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... libertinism. With the blood of his gallant adversary and his country's idol on his hands, the penalties of debt and treason hanging over him, the fertility of an acute intellect wasted on vain expedients,—an outlaw, an adventurer, a plausible reasoner with one sex and fascinating betrayer of the other, poor, bereaved, contemned,—one holy, loyal sentiment lingered in his perverted soul,—love for the fair, gifted, gentle being who called him father. The only disinterested sympathy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... you this general statement doubtfully, and only as that towards which an impartial reasoner will, I think, be inclined by existing data. But I shall be able to show you, without any doubt, in the course of our studies, that the achievements of art which have been usually looked upon as the results of peculiar inspiration have been arrived at only through ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... course, pleases me greatly. But I am very curious to know who wrote the Protozoa article: I shall hear, if it be not a secret, from Lubbock. It strikes me as very good, and, by Jove, how Owen is shown up—"this great and sound reasoner"! By the way, this reminds me of a passage which I have just observed in Owen's address at Leeds, which a clever reviewer might turn into good fun. He defines (page xc) and further on amplifies his definition that creation means "a process he knows not what." ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... mother, wife, sisters, daughters and many of his best friends belong to the feminine half of humanity, any man who is a careful observer, a logical reasoner, and an adequate writer ought to be able to say something of worth and interest to the women and girls to whom he is permitted to address himself. If in this volume the author is able to impart to others, in a small degree, the ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... is offensive to the dogmatic reasoner. For him the intellect as such is the organ of religious truth. He insists on speaking of the Scriptures in formally theological terms. That the Scripture writers employed theological terms there can be no doubt, but they did not speak as systematic theologians. ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... impartial writer, is the only political foreign reasoner who has done justice to Canada; but it is par parenthese only; and even his powers of mind and of reasoning, nurtured as they have been in republicanism, fail to convince fearless hearts that democracy is ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... variety of knowledge, which yet had not oppressed his imagination nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original combinations and at once exerted the powers of the scholar, the reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits were too eager to be always cautions. His abilities gave him a haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal or mollify, and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his adversaries with such ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... of Reason with such quick feet that we pass from the outmost to the inmost and back again in the twinkling of an eye; but the bridge is still there and, retracing our steps more leisurely, we shall find that, viewed from within, Beauty is no less the province of the calm reasoner and analyst. What the poet and the artist seize upon intuitionally, he elaborates gradually, but the result is the same in both cases; for no intuition is true which does not admit of being expanded into ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... boldest and most creative reasoner of his time. As a wandering teacher he drew after him thousands of enthusiastic students. He gave a strong impetus to learning. He was a marvelous logician and an accomplished orator. Among his pupils were men who afterward became prelates of the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... every clever man who cannot make up his mind as an impartial judge, and regarding every clever man who can make up his mind as a servile fanatic. As it is, we seem to regard it as a positive objection to a reasoner that he has taken one side or the other. We regard it (in other words) as a positive objection to a reasoner that he has contrived to reach the object of his reasoning. We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... the speech of a glittering orator, guarding unitarians by the arguments that had (or perhaps I should say had not) guarded Irish catholics, Peel and Gladstone made political speeches lofty and sound, and Macaulay the speech of an eloquent scholar and a reasoner, manfully enforcing principles both of law and justice with a luxuriance of illustration all his own, from jurists of imperial Rome, sages of old Greece, Hindoos, Peruvians, Mexicans, and tribunals beyond the Mississippi.[196] We do not ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... or reasoner, and not a rhetorician, in the common sense. He was a poet, who wrote chiefly in prose, but also in verse. His verse was usually rough, but sometimes finished and melodious; it was always extraordinarily concise and expressive. ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... naturalist and philosopher, thus nobly speaks[XIII-5]—continued through succeeding ages, and illuminated by the Light which has come into the world—may still express the worthiest thoughts of the modern scientific investigator and reasoner. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... African gorilla, the nearest approach to man, the Negro. You believe firmly in Number and in Motion, a force and a result both inexplicable, incomprehensible, to the existence of which I may apply the logical dilemma which, as we have seen, prevents you from believing in God. Powerful reasoner that you are, you do not need that I should prove to you that the Infinite must everywhere be like unto Itself, and that, necessarily, it is One. God alone is Infinite, for surely there cannot be two Infinities, ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... reasoner," said Mr. Delancy, "it was the bodily form—with face, eyes, hands, feet and material garments—that was seen, not the spirit. If our spirits have eyes that see, why they ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... by that law: "If you kill one of us you die," just as by display of the pistol the individual whose life is attacked says: "Desist or be shot." To be effective the warning in either case must be more than an idle threat. Even the most unearthly reasoner among the gallows-downing unfortunates would hardly expect to frighten away an assassin who knew the pistol to be unloaded. Of course these queer illogicians can not be made to understand that their position commits them to absolute non-resistance to any kind of ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... cases where the art of the reasoner should be used rather for the sifting of details than for the acquiring of fresh evidence. The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete and of such personal importance to so many people, that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... in Bayle were equally so in Warburton. In his early studies he had particularly applied himself to logic; and was not only a vigorous reasoner, but one practised in all the finesse of dialectics. He had wit, fertile indeed, rather than delicate; and a vast body of erudition, collected in the uninterrupted studies of twenty years. But it was the SECRET PRINCIPLE, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... than seventy, when the shadows of evening are gathering around, and, in a retrospective glance, the whole field of past vision appears, in all its complexities, like the indistinct tumults of a dream. The acute reasoner—the fiery politician—the eager polemic—the emulous aspirant after fame; and many such have I known, where are they? and how mournful, if any one of them should be found, at last, to have directed his solicitudes, alone, to material ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... reasoner, analyzer, and metaphysician that ever was born; and therefore whatever I say on the subject can be worth very little, as a reply to your question, but may furnish you with some data for making a theory about ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Navarre had meanwhile been looking on at a distance. Too keen an observer, too subtle a reasoner to doubt the secret source of the movements then agitating France to its centre, he was yet unable to foresee the turn that all these intrigues were about to take. He could hardly doubt that Spain was playing a dark and desperate game with the unfortunate Henry III.; for, as we have seen, he had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... this heresiarch attempted to overturn the creed of the Church. He was neither a profound thinker nor a logical reasoner; and he certainly had not maturely studied the science of theology. But he possessed an ardent temperament, and he seems to have mistaken the suggestions of his own fanaticism for the dictates of inspiration. The doctrine of the personal reign of Christ during the millennium appears ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... submerged his body in the water; and so Pouchskin concluded, and also Ivan—though both were puzzled by the odd behaviour of the bear, in swimming open-mouthed, and at intervals snapping his jaws as he did. Alexis, however, was a better reasoner; and soon discovered the why and the wherefore of these mysterious demonstrations. Alexis saw that the surface of the water was thickly coated with something; and, on scrutinising it more closely, he made out this something ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... most ingenious preacher he had ever heard; and said, it was worth while to go twenty miles to hear him. But, perhaps, the greatest proof of his persuasive powers was, when he drew from Franklin's pocket the money which that clear, cool reasoner had determined not to give; it was for the orphan-house at Savannah. "I did not," says the American philosopher, "disapprove of the design; but as Georgia was then destitute of materials and workmen, and it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... something more than a mere coincidence in his unexpectedly finding himself in such favorable conditions for making her acquaintance. For the rest—if there was any rest—he would simply trust to fate. And so, believing himself a cool, sagacious reasoner, but being actually, as far as Miss Dows was concerned, as blind, fatuous, and unreasoning as any of her previous admirers, he rode complacently forward until he reached the lane that led ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... requisition, with the implication of inequality. That these properties ought to be so far distinguished in grammar, as never to be supposed to co-exist in the same terms and under the same circumstances, must be manifest to every reasoner. Some grammarians who seem to have been not always unaware of this, have nevertheless egregiously forgotten it at times. Thus Nutting, in the following remark, expresses a true doctrine, though he has written ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... "The process of reasoning adds nothing to knowledge (in the reasoner). It only displays what was there before, and brings to conscious possession what before was unconscious." And again: "Mind can do its work without knowing it. Consciousness is the light that lightens the process, not the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... application of such reasoning sound! The Victorian era is certainly one of the most "brilliant and prosperous of" English "history"; hence no one can ever speak now of "the good old times." Such language is simply impossible; we never hear it! So if some astute reasoner of the future comes across such allusion in any writings, it will be clear proof that the author was post-Victorian! Far more so if, as here, such writer rebukes ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... the strength of which the Court was convicting and taking the lives of innocent persons. No such piece of reasoning has come to us from that age. Its author must be acknowledged to have been an expert in dialectic subtleties, and a pure reasoner of unsurpassed acumen and force. It requires, but it will reward, the closest attention and concentration of thought in following the threads of the argument. It reaches its conclusions on a most ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... is the motto of the savage philosophy of causation. The untutored reasoner speculates on the principles of the Egyptian clergy, as described by Herodotus.(1) "The Egyptians have discovered more omens and prodigies than any other men; for when aught prodigious occurs, they keep good watch, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the cases of progressive modification which are cited from among the Invertebrata appear to me to have a foundation less open to criticism than these; and if this be so, no careful reasoner would, I think, be inclined to lay very great stress upon them. Among the Vertebrata, however, there are a few examples which appear to be far less ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... to B. C. 450, during that eventful and stirring period intervening between the battle of Thermopylae and the commencement of the five years' truce with Sparta, followed by the death of Cimon (B. C. 449), this eminent and most accomplished reasoner resided in Athens [247]. His doctrines were those most cherished by Pericles, who ranked the philosopher among his intimate friends. After an absence of some years, he again returned to Athens; and we shall then find him subjected to a prosecution in which religious prejudice was stimulated ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the highest talents, and how few lawyers in the country can become eminent in all these various and important departments of mental labor. In their whole extent Mr. Choate was not only thoroughly informed as a student and profound as a reasoner, but his genius produced such a fusion of imagination and understanding as to give creativeness to argumentation and philosophy to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... therefore, hence it is that a Christian is not called a doer, a reasoner, an objector, and perverse disputer, but a believer. Be thou an example to "the believers;" and, "believers" were ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... Tusculan Questions,—with what success those who have read it may easily determine. It consists of a series of dialogues: in each of these a person is introduced who has experienced some happy or some adverse event: he gravely states his case; and a reasoner, or rather Reason personified, confutes him; a task not very difficult, since the disciple defends his position only by pertinaciously repeating it, in almost the same words at the end of every argument of his antagonist. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mind, like those of all truly great men, was open to conviction. He was a quick and powerful reasoner; and a moment's reflection sufficed to remind him of the impotency of his rage. It subsided as quickly as it had been roused. He panted for breath, and looked benignantly round upon ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... understood that we are bound to pay insincere compliments to a good man's understanding when he disagrees with our views. Now I am quite willing to admit that Manning was a most amiable and well-meaning person; but I am unable to consider him seriously as a reasoner. The spectacle which he presented on this occasion, at least, was that of a fluent popular preacher, clutched by a powerful logician, and put into a witness-box to be thoroughly cross-examined. The one quality I can discover in his articles is a certain dexterity in evading plain issues ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... his peculiar way of thinking himself into his idealism has given to the term a richer and more spacious meaning, which combines excellently the Greek and the Hebrew elements. His great ideal is that of manhood. Be a man, he cries aloud, not an artist, not a reasoner, not any other kind or detail of humanity, but be a man. But then that means, Be a creature whose life swings far out beyond this world and its affairs—swings dangerously between heaven and hell. Eternity is in the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... skip over three lesser writers on witchcraft. During the early eighties John Brinley, Henry Hallywell, and Richard Bovet launched their little boats into the sea of controversy. Brinley was a bold plagiarist of Bernard, Hallywell a logical but dull reasoner from the Bible, Bovet ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... to inscribe the answer of the Princess in its records?" A magistrate high in favour with the Minister, M. Cotta, an honest but a light and credulous individual, published a work entitled, 'On the Necessity of a Dictatorship.' A publicist, a fanatical but sincere reasoner, M. Madrolle, dedicated to M. de Polignac a memorial, in which he maintained the necessity of remodelling the law of elections by a royal decree. "What are called coups d'etat," said some important journals, and avowed friends of the Cabinet, "are social ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... as a theologian on whose head no learned academy had laid its hand of patronage, or let fall its anointing dews, but who, whether confronting the fanatics of his time or the distinguished latitudinarian divines, showed himself so powerful a reasoner, so acute and clear and practical a thinker, and so mighty in his knowledge of the Scriptures—Bunyan himself, in his position and merits as a theologian, furnishes a standing monument of the power of the divine Spirit to fashion, by prayer ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... one of my father's—so naive an imitation of that subtle reasoner's use of the rhetorical figure called Antanaclasis (or repetition of the same words in a different sense)—that I laughed and my mother smiled. But she smiled reverently, not thinking of the Antanaclasis, as, laying her hand on Roland's arm, she replied in the yet more formidable figure of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... themselves in the mind of the reasoner. Gladly would he do anything that would further the interest of his young friend, yet there might be a likelihood of stretching this prerogative if it in anywise interfered with the direct affairs ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... both of them showed. No matter of the outside; this was in the grain. If mind had lacked much opportunity, it had also made good use of a little; his host, Mr. Carleton found, had been a great leader, was well acquainted with history, and a very intelligent reasoner upon it; and both he and his sister showed a strong and quick aptitude for intellectual subjects of conversation. No doubt aunt Miriam's courtesy had not been taught by a dancing- master, and her brown satin gown had seen many a fashion come and go since it was made, but a lady was in both; ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... we have to find upon what proposition already known the new one depends, and from all the consequences of this known principle select just the one required. According to this method the most exact reasoner, if not naturally inventive, must be at fault. And the result is that the teacher, instead of making us discover demonstrations, dictates them to us; instead of teaching us to reason, he reasons for us, and ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Cowperwood's outward vicissitudes as heralded by the newspapers and the local gossip with as much interest and bias and enthusiasm for him as her powerful physical and affectional nature would permit. She was no great reasoner where affection entered in, but shrewd enough without it; and, although she saw him often and he told her much—as much as his natural caution would permit—she yet gathered from the newspapers and private conversation, at ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... not argue as an educated person might have done. Egremont's zeal in his various undertakings made no plea for his character, in her mind. To be sure, a more subtle reasoner might have given it as little weight, but that would have been the result of conscious wisdom. Lydia could only argue from her predisposition regarding the class of 'gentlemen.' We know how she had shrunk from meeting Egremont. Guided by Gilbert and Thyrza, she had taught herself ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... privacy more than publicity. He had acquaintances numberless, and facile and gracious manners, but his heart was open to very few. His eloquence was luxuriant and efflorescent, but he was also a close and compact reasoner. He had a vein of playful exaggeration in his common speech, but his temperament was earnest, impassioned, almost melancholy. The more nearly one knew Mr. Choate, the more cause had he to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... against the fire of objections with which Kellogg would undoubtedly seek to shake his stand. Kellogg could talk, Heaven alone knew how winningly he could talk! with all the sound logic of a close reasoner, all the enthusiasm of youth and self-confidence, all the persuasiveness of profound conviction singular to successful men. Duncan had been wont to say of him that Kellogg could talk the hind-leg off of a mule. He recalled this now with a sour grin: ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... good of God," said the reasoner, but with such a self-satisfied air in his approval, that Marion ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... technical or artificial, but natural, and emphatically natural (as compared with classifications in an inferior degree also natural, which are based on properties important with reference to the reasoner's special practical objects), when the classification is based on those properties which would most impress one who knew all the properties, but was not interested particularly in any one. Further, it is a great recommendation of a classification, that ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... Astute reasoner! the dilemma is very just, and is very formidable; and upon the one or other of its horns, has been transfixed every adventurer that has hitherto gone forth on the knight-errantry of speculation. Every man who lays claim ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... that he wanted 'the strength of bulls, the fur of bears?'[2] Or could it be worth while to meet his complaints in a serious poem? Pope, in short, is not merely a bad reasoner, but he wants that deep moral earnestness which gives a profound interest to Johnson's satires—the best productions of his school—and the deeply pathetic religious feeling ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Stoddart making no reply, I take the opportunity of the break in our conversation to say to my readers, that I know there was no satisfactory following out of an argument on either side in the passage of words I have just given. Even the closest reasoner finds it next to impossible to attend to all the suggestions in his own mind, not one of which he is willing to lose, to attend at the same time to everything his antagonist says or suggests, that he may do him justice, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... combining brilliancy of execution with never-failing good sense. It must be allowed that he is deficient in depth; that he skims over rather than dives into the subjects of which he treats; that he had too great command of the plausible to be a patient investigator or a sound reasoner. Yet if he has less originality of thought than others, if he does not grapple with his subject, if he is unequal to a regular and lengthened disquisition, if he is frequently inconsistent in his opinions, we must remember that mere soundness of view, without talent ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Curio was probably a very typical man of his age. He was personally of voluptuous habits, fearfully extravagant, endowed with very few scruples and a very weak sense of right and wrong. But he was clear-headed, energetic, a good orator, a clever reasoner, an astute handler of men, courageous, versatile, full of recourse, and on the whole above the commission of any really glaring moral infraction. He was now in his early prime, and he came before Fabia as a man tall, athletic, deep-chested, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... public expression. As a compositor Franklin was engaged in setting up one of the many religious treatises then pouring out against the deists, and as the author's arguments seemed insufficient to the young reasoner, he wrote and printed a rejoinder. This is the pamphlet called "A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain," which he inscribed to his friend Ralph, and whose printing he afterwards regretted as one of the errata of his life. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... find Shakespeare saying, that death is only sleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a sentence which in the friar is impious, in the reasoner is foolish, and in the poet trite ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... man, with a blue eye, a thick head of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the greatest ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... In like manner, before that editor who should trouble himself and his readers with attempting to refute Johnson's arguments, paradoxical as they often were, should be placed Reynolds's portrait of that 'labouring working mind[9].' It might make him reflect that if the mighty reasoner could rise up and meet him face to face, he would be sure, on which ever side the right might be, even if at first his pistol missed fire to knock him down with the butt-end of it[10]. I have attempted therefore not to criticise but to illustrate Johnson's statements. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... not doubt but the wickedness of Durazzo will be thought a proper parallel to Richard's. But parallels prove nothing: and a man must be a very poor reasoner who thinks he has an advantage over me, because I dare produce a circumstance that resembles my subject in the case to which it is applied, and leaves my argument just as strong as it was ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... morality is to be displayed by proving the deformity, the reproach, and the misery of all deviations from it. Yet it is to be remembered, that the laws of mere morality are of no coercive power; and, however they may, by conviction, of their fitness please the reasoner in the shade, when the passions stagnate without impulse, and the appetites are secluded from their objects, they will be of little force against the ardour of desire, or the vehemence of rage, amidst the pleasures and tumults of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... jocular, and the young one very pleasant. You would have imagined you had been at some comedy had you heard our peals of laughter. They, indeed, tried which could 'pepper the highest,' and it is not clear to me that the lexicographer was really the highest reasoner." ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... emerge, if the right cue is not given, he is helpless. All he can do is to hold fast to his problem and wait. As the associations are offered, he can select and reject, but that is all. The marvelous power of the genius, the inventor, the reasoner in all fields, is merely an exhibition of the laws of association working with extremely subtle elements. It seems to transcend all experience because these elements and the bonds which experience has formed cannot be observed. A child fails in his thinking ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... work of prudence is to take good counsel, as stated in Ethic. vi, 7. Now counsel is a research proceeding from certain things to others. But this is the work of reason. Wherefore it is requisite for prudence that man should be an apt reasoner. And since the things required for the perfection of prudence are called requisite or quasi-integral parts of prudence, it follows that reason should be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... reason rendered him jealous of everything like a concession to the faith of those who believed in the Son of God; and he was very apt to dissent from all admission that had even the most remote bearing on its truth. Still, as a kind-hearted commander, as well as a judicious reasoner on the economy of his fellow-creatures, he fully felt the policy of granting relaxation to labour. Nor was he indisposed to believe in the care of a Divine Providence, or in its justice, though less believing in this respect than the illiterate but earnest-minded ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... frowns black over against the sunny slopes of the mountain of blessing with its blushing grapes. The indolence was illogical, for, if the master was such as was thought, the more reason for diligence; but fear is a bad reasoner, and the absurd gap between the premises and the conclusion is matched by one of the very same width in every life that thinks of God as rigidly requiring obedience, which, therefore, it does not give! Still another error is in the indolent servant's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... forward by various newspapers or private individuals, there were one or two which were feasible enough to attract the attention of the public. One which appeared in The Times, over the signature of an amateur reasoner of some celebrity at that date, attempted to deal with the matter in a critical and semi-scientific manner. An extract must suffice, although the curious can see the whole letter in the issue ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Origin provided us with the working hypothesis we sought. Moreover, it did the immense service of freeing us for ever from the dilemma—refuse to accept the creation hypothesis and what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner? In 1857 I had no answer ready, and I do not think that any one else had. A year later we reproached ourselves with dullness for being perplexed with such an inquiry. My reflection, when I first made myself ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... mere personal affection for a bantling of my own, which leads me still to think that the change of phrase is of importance, and that the sooner it is made, the sooner shall we get rid of a number of pitfalls which beset the reasoner upon the facts and ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... general topic of "discovery". Indeed, we are still on the topic of perception; we come now to that form of perception which is different from sense perception. The reasoner is an explorer, and the culmination of his explorations is the perception of some fact previously unknown ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Man alone in wailing weakness born, No horns protect him, and no plumes adorn; No finer powers of nostril, ear, or eye, Teach the young Reasoner to pursue or fly.— 120 Nerved with fine touch above the bestial throngs, The hand, first gift of Heaven! to man belongs; Untipt with claws the circling fingers close, With rival points the bending ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... addresses to her daughter, and Captain Lovelock had a grotesque theory that she had set her heart upon seeing this young lady come into six thousand a year. Miss Evers's devoted swain had never struck Bernard as a brilliant reasoner, but our friend suddenly found himself regarding him as one of the inspired. The form of depravity into which the New England conscience had lapsed on Mrs. Vivian's part was an undue appreciation of a possible son-in-law's income! In ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... luxury of bishops, they exclaim very naturally against honours which they can never attain to. Figure to yourself the haughty Diogenes trampling under foot the pride of Plato. The Scotch Presbyterians are not very unlike that proud though tattered reasoner. Diogenes did not use Alexander half so impertinently as these treated King Charles II.; for when they took up arms in his cause in opposition to Oliver, who had deceived them, they forced that poor monarch to undergo the hearing ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... is the reason why the scientific mind is so often wrong. I've had a good deal to do with it in the copper-mine business. It's always barking up the wrong tree. I've often heard it said that the clever scientist is generally a poor reasoner." ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... cling to the God-fable, and I should like to know if I have convinced my Horseherd. I belong, above all, to those who do not consider the world an irrational chaos, and also to those who cannot concede that there can be reason without a reasoner. Reason is an activity, or, as others have it, an attribute, and there can neither be an activity without an agent, nor an attribute without a subject; at least, not in the world in which we live. When ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... well-known three, the enthusiast, the poet, and the formularist, the echoes of whose teachings had influenced him even in his obscure home. A start of aversion appeared in his fancy to move them at sight of those other sons of the place, the form in the full-bottomed wig, statesman, rake, reasoner, and sceptic; the smoothly shaven historian so ironically civil to Christianity; with others of the same incredulous temper, who knew each quad as well as the faithful, and took equal freedom in haunting ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... few can explain—Time and Space, and Being and Cause, and consciousness and choice, and the moral law—Bacon is content with a loose and superficial treatment of them. Bacon certainly was not a metaphysician, nor an exact and lucid reasoner. With wonderful flashes of sure intuition or happy anticipation, his mind was deficient in the powers which deal with the deeper problems of thought, just as it was deficient in the mathematical faculty. The subtlety, the intuition, the penetration, the severe precision, even the force ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... very keen and cogent reasoner. Like a powerful logician who is confident that he has the truth upon his side, and like a pureminded man who has no sinister ends to gain, he often takes his stand upon the same ground with his opponent, adopts his positions, and condemns ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... legs dangling and his mouth perpetually moving, as though he were sharpening his tongue for thrust and counter-thrust; his brow was furrowed and worn as though with fruitless thought, his eyes glowered like those of a serpent watching for its prey. That was the Sophist, Protagoras, the reasoner for hire, who for a few figs or a pair of obols, could make black seem white, but was tolerated in this brilliant society, because he could carry on a dialogue. They used him to enliven their meetings, and pitted him in argument against Socrates, who, however, always entangled him in the meshes ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... third, to oppose argument to argument, so that, objection and reply meeting face to face, the stronger may break down the weaker, and shiver it to atoms. By that method only can you boast of having conquered, and compel me to regard you as an honest reasoner, and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... greatness—these were the objects for which he was ready to devote the best energies of heart and brain, and if need were, to lay down his life. He might be skilled in every elegant accomplishment, an acute reasoner, an orator, a musician, a poet; and to some extent he was all of these. But before all else he was in the highest sense a practical man, finding in strenuous action his chief glory and pride. And ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... is intense in all things; he has got into the essence of all. His intellectual insight as painter, on occasion too as reasoner, is but the result of all other sorts of intensity. Morally great, above all, we must call him; it is the beginning of all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his love;—as indeed, what are they but the inverse or converse of his love? 'A Dio ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... am not reasoner enough to persuade you that all women have souls. Very likely in Persia and India they have not. I only want you to believe that there may be women so fortunate as to possess a modicum of immortality. Well, pardon my interruption, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... other," to work out something good: in short, there is nothing so convenient as this "some how or other" way of accommodating one's self to circumstances; it is the main-stay of a heedless actor, and tardy reasoner, like Dolph Heyliger; and he who can, in this loose, easy way, link foregone evil to anticipated good, possesses a secret of happiness almost ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving |
