"Casuistry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all, Christ's message is a simpler thing than we have supposed. One can go into a theological library today and find stacks and stacks of volumes on religion, ethics, theology, casuistry, exegesis, philosophy, the Bible, ecclesiastical history, mysticism, apologetics, metaphysics and a dozen other subjects, all designed to illuminate, define and expound the realities that Jesus taught; but somehow they seem worthless when we note the clear ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... this book have often quite unexpected turns of humour, and are filled with oversubtle questions of casuistry and curious reasonings. From one point of view the novel is a huge, commonplace book, into which Dostoevski put all sorts of whimsies, queries, and vagaries. Smerdakov, the epileptic, is a thorn in the side ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... which are judged to be good or bad only because their consequences are known to be so, whilst the great catholic acts of life are entirely (and, if we may so phrase it, haughtily) independent of consequences. For instance, fidelity to a trust is a law of immutable morality subject to no casuistry whatever. You have been left executor to a friend—you are to pay over his last legacy to X, though a dissolute scoundrel; and you are to give no shilling of it to the poor brother of X, though a good ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... distinction) if he did not ask her to do for David all that she had done for him. He would give up everything rather than desert David Sechard; David must witness his success. It was one of those wild letters in which a young man points a pistol at a refusal, letters full of boyish casuistry and the incoherent reasoning of an idealist; a delicious tissue of words embroidered here and there by the naive utterances that women love so well—unconscious revelations of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... nature, and it will take care of the intellectual. In other words, the best thing for the intellect is the cultivation of the conscience, not in casuistry, but in conduct. It may take longer to arrive; but the end will be the highest possible health, vigor, and ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... explanation. The philosophy of our Household Cavalry, like the religion of Napoleon's "Old Guard," is adapted for action rather than casuistry. He did not tell her that in the journey of life for some the path is made smooth and easy, for others paved with flint and choked with thorns; but that a wise Director knows best the capabilities of the wayfarer, and the amount ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... republicanism or democracy, which inculcate the doctrine of as much personal freedom as at all comports with the public good. He is, indeed, a most sneaking democrat, who finds it necessary to consult a neighbourhood before he can indulge his innocent habits and tastes. It is sheer meddling, and no casuistry can fitly give it any ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and stratagem was early and universally condemned; but no nation has yet got rid of that kind of robbery which acts through talent, labor, and possession, and which is the source of all the dilemmas of casuistry and the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... account of this shameful robbing of the people of their Divine birthright that the just soul of Jesus, abhorring both casuistry and oppression under the cloak of religion, gave utterance to that fine invective that he used on several occasions, the only times that he spoke in a condemnatory or accusing manner: "Now do ye, Pharisee, make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... that, to occupy, by a thought, and by a definition which may convey that thought into the mind of another—to occupy, or cover, a certain area of the phenomena of experience, as the Just. And what happens thereupon is this, that by means of a certain kind of casuistry, by the allegation of certain possible cases of conduct, the whole of that supposed area of the Just is occupied by definitions of Injustice, from this centre or that. Justice therefore- -its area, the space of experience which it covers, dissolves away, literally, as the eye is fixed ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... like pains and pleasures. 'Fictitious' as they may be, therefore, the fiction enables us to express real truths, and to state facts which are of the highest importance to the moralist and the legislator. Bentham discusses some cases of casuistry in order to show the relation between the tendency of an action and the intention and motives of the agent. Ravaillac murders a good king; Ravaillac's son enables his father to escape punishment, or conveys poison to his father to enable him to avoid torture by suicide.[401] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... either way. One of the most bitter thoughts of all was that a secular priest named Serjeant, who, with another named Morris, was of Gallican views, had given evidence in public court against the Jesuits' casuistry. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... of Peter forms a subject of Christian casuistry in patristic literature, and this passage recalls the famous classical parallel in Euripides (Hipp. 612), "the tongue hath sworn: yet unsworn is the heart." Cf. Augustine, cont. mendacium: "In that denial he held fast the truth in his heart, while with ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... it was impossible for her to think of him as a criminal. That he had been the tool of others, she knew, but it remained a question in her mind how clearly he had perceived the immorality of his course, and of theirs. He had not been given to casuistry, and he had been brought up in a school the motto of which he had once succinctly stated: the survival of the fittest. He had not been, alas, one of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... servants who ate the bread of a holy and harmless Master, against "their intolerance of light and hatred of knowledge, their fierce yet profoundly contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of their casuistry, their besotted cruelty." [273] We have been betrayed into speaking thus strongly of the extreme lengths to which superstition will carry those who yield themselves to its ruthless tyranny. But perhaps ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... unsuspected depths of human character or of moral law. But he has the gnomic faculty that can convey truths of general experience in aphoristic form, and he can wind into a debatable moral issue with adroit casuistry. Take for instance the discussion (II, i, 149-79) on the legitimacy of private vengeance, or (III, i, 10-30) on the nature and effect of sin, or (V, ii) on Nature's "blindness" in her workings. In lighter vein, but winged with ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... dangerous and alarming situation in which she had been placed. Satisfied on this topic, he proceeded to revise the memoranda which he had taken down from the mouth of the person employed to interrupt the funeral service of the late Lord Ravenswood. Bred to casuistry, and well accustomed to practise the ambidexter ingenuity of the bar, it cost him little trouble to soften the features of the tumult which he had been at first so anxious to exaggerate. He preached to his colleagues ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Monomotapan. He will prefer—and very wisely prefer—an opinion that renders him comfortable to one that in any way interferes with his appetites; and if two such opinions contradict each other, he will not fall into a silly casuistry which would attempt to reconcile them: he will quietly accept both, and serve the Higher ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... and in itself, it as little mends our hearts as it improves our temporal circumstances. And if its eulogists claim for it such a power, they commit the very same kind of encroachment on a province not their own as the political economist who should maintain that his science educated him for casuistry or diplomacy. Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of view faith. Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... no nobler life than that of a true missionary. Itried to defend the labors of the paternal missionary against disparaging criticisms. Itried to account for the small success of controversial missions, by showing how little is gained by mere argument and casuistry at home. And I pointed to the indirect missionary influence, exercised by every man who leads a Christian life in India or elsewhere, as the most encouraging sign of the final triumph of a pure and living Christianity. It is very possible, as Mr. Lyall says ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... ever knew a woman who was a more perfect 'gentleman.' Scorning all that was not direct, and true, and simple, she herself hated disguise or casuistry in any form. Her eyes looked through your soul and out at the other side, but you never felt that her judgment, whatever it was, would be harsh. She was curiously detached, and yet you always wanted her sympathy, and if she loved you it never failed you. She was a strong partisan, which ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Gospel is not a syllogism; It is not casuistry, it is not polemics, or the science of squabble. It is blood-red fact; it is warm-hearted invitation; it is leaping, bounding, flying good news; it is efflorescent with all light; it is rubescent with all glow; it is arborescent with all sweet shade. I have seen the sun rise on Mount ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... yet, in 1831, when Mr. Gladstone won his degree with double first- class honors, taken visible shape, or become, so to speak, conscious of its own purposes. But its doctrinal views, its peculiar vein of religious sentiment, its respect for antiquity and tradition, its proneness to casuistry, its taste for symbolism, were already potent influences working on the more susceptible of the younger minds. On Mr. Gladstone they told with full force. He became, and never ceased to be, not merely a High-churchman, but what may be called an Anglo-Catholic, in his theology, deferential ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... in that rather questionable amusement, although we are accustomed to use the club freely throughout the daytime. All the more reason, then, that once in a while—I need a distraction and there are some interesting psychological deductions—But hang casuistry; it is enough to say that we ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... peculiar point of view was morally justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has often haunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct with regard to Harriet prove the goodness of his heart, his openness to argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not square with his ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... in reflecting on the errors, and perhaps the crimes, of a long and variegated life; when his ties to this world are loosened, and his interest in eternity becomes more lively, and near; a religion that enables a zealous or interested priest (aided by the casuistry and argument of centuries) to barter a promise of everlasting bliss, for lands and tenements bequeathed to the church, provides amply for the acquisition of earthly treasure, for its ministers, and ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... would think that she ought to be depressed by his failure, yet she could not prevent the return of a child-like confidence in the profound goodness of life. Everything would be right, everything was eternally bound to be right from the beginning. That inherited casuistry of temperament, which had confused the pleasant with the true for generations, had become in her less a moral conviction than a fixed quality of soul. To dwell even for a minute on "the dark side of things" awoke in her the same instinct of mortal sin that she had felt at the discovery that ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... epigrammatic form of teaching and that personal attitude toward the individual and his problems which was one of their greatest sources of strength. The honor which the early scribes enjoyed was well deserved. Their methods were free from the casuistry that characterized many of the later scribes. They not only copied and guarded the law, but were its interpreters, applying it practically to the every-day problems of the people as well as to their duties in connection with the temple service. Their influence upon the Jews in ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... then let us calmly and deliberately resolve this point: In a matter of so vital importance, of so immense interest, and of so sacred a character as the worship of the Supreme Being, who declares Himself to be a jealous God, ought we to suffer any refinements of casuistry to entice us from the broad, clear light of revelation? If it were God's good pleasure to make exceptions to his rule—a rule so repeatedly, and so positively enacted and enforced—surely the analogy of his gracious dealings with mankind would have taught us to look for an announcement ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... safeguard against infection. The learned botanist observes, with respect to these supposed virtues, 'Gustus foliorum tamen virtutem tantam indicare non videtur.' Like coffee, Kat, from its acknowledged stimulating effects, has been a fertile theme for the exercise of Mahomedan casuistry, and names of renown are ranged on both sides of the question, whether the use of Kat does or does not contravene the injunction of the Koran, Thou shalt not drink wine or anything intoxicating. The succeeding notes, borrowed chiefly from De Sacy's researches, may be deemed worthy ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... of his ecclesiastical connexion and general principles. If I cannot but be viewed as an enemy of the Church of England as a Methodist, it is a poor compliment to tell me that I am friendly to it as a man. I do not understand the hair-splitting casuistry which separates the man from ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... thoughts of bringing her over and declaring her Queen Dowager, one can hardly believe that a ceremonial divorce had passed, the existence of which process would have glared in the face of her royalty. But though German casuistry might allow her husband to take another wife with his left hand, because his legal wife had suffered her right hand to be kissed in bed by a gallant, even Westphalian or Aulic counsellors could not have pronounced that such a momentary adieu constituted adultery; and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... scholastic and smell of the lamp. He ransacked cosmography, astrology, alchemy, optics, the canon law, and the divinity of the schoolmen for ink-horn terms and similes. He was in verse what Browne was in prose. He loved to play with distinctions, hyperboles, paradoxes, the very casuistry and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Aggression, cloaked at the very utmost in the garb of retaliation for counter aggressions on the part of the enemy, stands forward uniformly in the van of such motives as it is thought worth while to plead. But in French casuistry it is not held necessary to plead anything; war justifies itself. To fight for the experimental purpose of trying the proportions of martial merit, but (to speak frankly) for the purpose of publishing and renewing to Europe the proclamation of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... say, are these poor Majesty's Ministers summoned over; to be questioned, tutored; nay, threatened, almost bullied! They answer what, with adroitest simulation and casuistry, they can: of which a poor Legislative knows not what to make. One thing only is clear, That Cimmerian Europe is girdling us in; that France (not actually dead, surely?) cannot march. Have a care, ye Ministers! Sharp Guadet ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... upon a definite ratio of income or property of universal obligation, will give constant ground for questions of casuistry inevitably tending rather to screen the conscience, than to stimulate to ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... him," answered the Duke, smiling at her casuistry. "Nor had I any scruple in disappointing ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... of politicians, and even of statesmen, for the last three hundred years. All that Peter thought of was the end; he cared nothing for the means. I wonder why Carlyle or Froude has not bolstered up and defended this great hyperborean giant for doing evil that good may come. Casuistry is in their line; the defence of scoundrels seems to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... mischievous; but it was altogether inefficient as a means of binding the supple and slippery consciences of cunning priests, who, while affecting to hold the Jesuits in abhorrence, were proficients in that immoral casuistry which was the worst part of Jesuitism. Some grave divines had openly said, others had even dared to write, that they had sworn fealty to William in a sense altogether different from that in which they had sworn fealty to James. To James they had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... most carefully preserved by these people were those relating to Pilate and Mary Magdalene:—"What is truth?" and the story of the blessed foolish virgin.—And their boulevard Christs were horribly loquacious and well up in all the latest tricks of worldly casuistry. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... moisten the sufferer's parched lips through the long night-watches, to bear up the drooping head, to lift the helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond the feeble motion of the hand or beseeching glance of the eye—these are offices that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls where the stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is subdued,—where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... the book was brought to him; and in the almost incredible space of forty-two short days, on the 27th of the 12th Month (March) 1671-2, he had fully analysed 'The Design,' exposed the sophistry, and scripturally answered the gross errors which abound in every page of this learned and subtle piece of casuistry. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... thousands of pounds to him who after his death would instantly go to heaven; twice as much to him who would go to purgatory: and nobody knows what to him who would adventure to go to hell." Such was the pious casuistry of a witty usurer. Whether he undertook this last adventure, for the four hundred thousand pounds he left behind him, how can a sceptical biographer decide? Audley seems ever to have been weak when ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... brought up under the Jewish dispensation, and had the formalities of the Law of Moses in their very blood, the apostle battles with their dangerous conservatism. It is a very noble piece of spiritual casuistry, but it is signally unfitted for the comprehension of a child. Suddenly by my flushing up with anger and saying, 'Oh how I do hate that Law,' my Father perceived, and paused in amazement to perceive, that I took the Law to be ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... thrown from his horse, and had not felt much concern. But then he was not a friend; and he fell into a soft ditch: and there was something ridiculous in it which prevented people from caring about it. With such nice casuistry she went on pretty well; and besides, she was so innocent—so ignorant, that it was easy for her to be deceived. She went on, telling herself that she loved Beauclerc as a brother—as she loved the general. But when she came to comparisons, she could not but ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... like answering West's pepper-fire of casuistry by throwing Eva Bernheimer at his head. Despite his determination to avoid a "scene," he felt his bottled-up indignation rising. A light showed in ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... won and had been disqualified. Those were the simple facts; and no casuistry by the cleverest of London lawyers ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... officers and of the fate of the hostages, cancelled the agreement, and contented themselves with surrendering to the enemy those who had concluded it as personally responsible for its fulfilment. Impartial history can attach little importance to the question whether in so doing the casuistry of Roman advocates and priests kept the letter of the law, or whether the decree of the Roman senate violated it; under a human and political point of view no blame in this matter rests upon the Romans. It was a question of comparative indifference whether, according ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... false guardians drawn, Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn, Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord, And dies, when ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Cyprian re-baptizes heretics; St. Stephen accepts their baptism. The early ages administer, the later deny, the Holy Eucharist to children.[22] Who shall say that in such practical matters, and especially in points of casuistry, points of the when, and the where, and the by whom, and the how, words written in the fourth century are to be the ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... feature of his Parliamentary management which proved disastrous to his cause, and this was his tendency to what the vulgar call hair-splitting and the learned casuistry. At Oxford men are taught to distinguish with scrupulous care between propositions closely similar, but not identical. In the House of Commons they are satisfied with the roughest and broadest divisions between right and wrong; they see no shades of ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... adequate account in this place. Let it suffice to say that the principal theme of the two epistles to the Thessalonians is the expected return of Christ to earth; that those to the Corinthians are largely occupied with questions of Christian casuistry; that those to the Galatians and the Romans are the great doctrinal epistles unfolding the relation of Christianity to Judaism, and discussing the philosophy of the new creed; that the Epistle to the Philippians ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... moderately respectable life, Phormio should be paid off. And with this burden off his mind, for reformation was very easily promised, Lucius had time to consider whether it was worth his while to mix in a deed that none of Pratinas's casuistry could quite convince him was not a foul, unprovoked murder, of an innocent man. The truth was, Ahenobarbus was desperately in love with Cornelia, and had neither time nor desire to mingle in any business not connected with the pursuit of his "tender passion." None of his former ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... resolutions. The first half of them he carried out perfectly: he did go straight to Cecil Tresilyan, and tell her of his intentions to depart. She did not betray much of her disappointment or surprise, but she argued with so fascinating a casuistry against the necessity of such a sudden step, that it was no wonder if she soon convinced her hearer of the propriety of at least delaying it. In a case like this an excuse of "urgent private affairs" that ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... steeped in passion and crime, but talented and adorned with manly beauty, exclaims to his beloved, 'As long as you hope for my amendment you have never loved my personal self.' It also appears to correspond with this casuistry of erotic fancy, when the heroes of her tragedies, of sky-storming earnestness, but adorned with all unnatural qualities, give themselves up to the latter as to an intoxicating spell, and in the delirium of self-delusion ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... business to offer sacrifices which the other party ought not to accept. It is true that in the application of this simple rule difficult problems may arise; but a little tact will generally go a long way towards solving them. In these matters an ounce of tact is worth a pound of casuistry. And in our every-day England, in all classes, it is my profound conviction that a reasonable selflessness is very far from uncommon, very far from being confined to the "converted" of any religion. For forty years I have watched it growing and spreading before my very eyes. Reading ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... oil and seasoned with garlick, and the wine and grapes were sour. However, we had excellent beds. In my room there was a small collection of books, on a dusty shelf, which I should not have expected to find in such hands. Among them were some old works of theological casuistry, Metastasio, a translation of Voltaire's plays, and a geographical dictionary in Italian. I learnt that they had belonged to the proprietor's uncle, a medico at Padua, and were heirlooms with his property, which our host inherited. The position of these small ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... public demonstration of the extent to which the crude Puritanism of his youth has been mellowed by sympathies more in keeping with his later political alliances. He is credited with the intention of putting to appropriate use his peculiar gifts of non-committal prophecy and persuasive casuistry, and at the same time making sure of a profitable holiday in the open air by "doing" the Sussex Fortnight, beginning with the Goodwood meeting, in the capacity of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... before all true thought and emotion. A zealous Irishman, especially if he lives much out of Ireland, spends his time in a never-ending argument about Oliver Cromwell, the Danes, the penal laws, the rebellion of 1798, the famine, the Irish peasant, and ends by substituting a traditional casuistry for a country; and if he be a Catholic, yet another casuistry that has professors, schoolmasters, letter-writing priests, and the authors of manuals to make the meshes fine, comes between him and English literature, substituting arguments and hesitations for the excitement ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... he had gone there to see: what would she think of him? He knew well enough that her trenchant classifications of life admitted no overlapping of good and evil, made no allowance for that incalculable interplay of motives that justifies the subtlest casuistry of compassion. Miss Talcott was too young to distinguish the intermediate tints of the moral spectrum; and her judgments were further simplified by a peculiar concreteness of mind. Her bringing-up had fostered this tendency and she was surrounded ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... the etherial plain; As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest, Closed one by one to everlasting rest; Thus at her felt approach and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all is Night. See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head! Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more; Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense! See Mystery to Mathematics ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... found it in the hands of a poor man who dared not offer it for sale. Once in his possession, the thought of giving it up, or of letting the owner redeem it, had never even occurred to him. Yet the treasure made him rejoice with a trembling which all his casuistry would have found it hard to explain; for he would not confess to himself its real cause—namely, that his God-born essence was uneasy with a vague knowledge that it lay in the bosom of a thief. "Don't you think, sir," said Dawtie, "that whoever has ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... revulsion she spurned it all: the moral casuistry that beguiled him, the church that cloaked him; spurned psalm and prophet and apostle, ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... said, a few verses by no means destitute of merit, but they are so few, in comparison to the bulk of his work, that they may be neglected. Taylor's strong point was not accuracy of statement or logical precision. His longest work, the Ductor Dubitantium, an elaborate manual of casuistry, is constantly marred by the author's inability to fix on a single point, and to keep his argumentation close to that. In another, the Unum Necessarium, or Discourse on Repentance, his looseness of statement and want of care in driving several horses at once, involved him in a charge ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... wife reasoned it all out with him. She convinced me, perfectly, so that what Tedham proposed to do seemed not only sentimental and foolish, but unnatural and impious. I confess that I admired her casuistry, and gave it my full support. She was a woman who, in the small affairs of the tastes and the nerves and the prejudices could be as illogical as the best of her sex, but with a question large enough to engage the hereditary ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... displeasure and half-humorous astonishment that a poet should have any opinions about Russia, or, having some, should find anybody to take them seriously. It is all cant, my friends—nothing but cant; and at its base lies the old dispute between principle and casuistry. If politics and statecraft rest ultimately on principles of right and wrong, then a poet has as clear a right as any man to speak upon them: as clear a right now as when Tennyson lifted his voice on behalf of the Fleet, or ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ceased. He gave up his speculations and casuistry, and concluded to take things as he found them and to make them better. He became more than ever the friend and patron of his servants, rendered to them, to the best of his ability that which was just and equal, felt in buying servants and in having ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... political bargain in which he was too good to take part, but not too good to take profit. Charles Sumner happened to be the partner to receive these stolen goods, but between his friend and his father the boy felt no distinction, and, for him, there was none. He entered into no casuistry on the matter. His friend was right because his friend, and the boy shared the glory. The question of education did not rise while the conflict lasted. Yet every one saw as clearly then as afterwards that a lesson of some sort must ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... lay in such enforcement. She had been made to feel that the responsibility for good order and morals rested on every one, and that to conceal a known crime was to share deeply in the guilt. She also was not skilled in that casuistry which would enable her to promise anything with mental reservations. The shock of their savage and threatening reception had been severe, but she was not at all inclined to be hysterical; and though her heart seemed to stand still with a ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... about taking possession of it; and, once reclaimed, in what way were the best intentions to be satisfied with the disposition of the gold? To find the owners would probably be impossible; and a question in casuistry remained. Mary pondered much on this subject, and came to the conclusion that, were she the person to whom such a treasure were committed, she would set aside a certain period for advertising; and failing to discover those who had the best claim ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the echoes of this casuistry in his brain. It seemed to him but a part of the ingenious system of evasion whereby a society bent on the undisturbed pursuit of amusement had contrived to protect itself from the intrusion of the disagreeable: a policy summed up in Mr. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... which differs very little, perhaps scarcely enough, from that appointed for the Baptism of Infants, is attributed to Griffith, the Bishop of St. Asaph. The compiler of the Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea was Bishop Sanderson, famous among English theologians as an authority on casuistry. He must have found it rather a nice case of conscience to decide whether a Stuart divine in preparing forms of prayer for a navy that had been the creation of Oliver Cromwell ought wholly to omit an acknowledgment of the nation's ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... straightforward," said the great physician. "There is at least no diseased casuistry about you. I do not ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Choiseul, I detest Madame du Barri and her faction. You, who are a Foreign Minister, and can distinguish like a theologian between the two natures perfectly comprehend all this; and, therefore, to the charity of your casuistry I recommend myself in this jumble of contradictions, which you may be sure do not give me any sort of trouble either way. At least I have not three distinctions, like Chatelet when he affronted Czernichew, but neither in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... on Sundays, though, as he never entered it on week-days, it was easy to turn the proposition into ridicule. If, therefore, Mrs. Mallet was a woman of an exquisite moral tone, it was not that she had inherited her temper from an ancestry with a turn for casuistry. Jonas Mallet, at the time of his marriage, was conducting with silent shrewdness a small, unpromising business. Both his shrewdness and his silence increased with his years, and at the close of his life he was an extremely ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... M. de Denonville marched toward Lake Ontario with a force of 2000 French and 600 Indians, having already received all the supplies and re-enforcements which he had expected from France. His first act of aggression was one that no casuistry can excuse, no necessity justify—one alike dishonorable and impolitic. He employed two missionaries, men of influence among the savages, to induce the principal Iroquois chiefs to meet him at ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... grace to feel sorry for the misdeed, at the same time as he lamented that "his nature was so content to follow the pleasure still." Pepys compounded with his conscience for such breaches of his oath by all manner of casuistry. He excused himself for going, contrary to his vow, to the new theatre in Drury Lane, because it was not built when his vow was framed. Finally, he stipulated with himself that he would only go to the theatre once a fortnight; but if he went ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... and particularly of Petrarch. Their favorite pieces were Sirventes (satirical pieces), love-songs, and Tensons, which last were a sort of dialogue in verse between two poets, who questioned each other on some refined points of loves' casuistry. It seems the Provencials were so completely absorbed in these delicate questions as to neglect and despise the composition of fabulous histories of adventure and knighthood, which they left in ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... or vicious reasoning; show of reason.] Sophistry. — N. intuition, instinct, association, hunch, gut feeling; presentiment, premonition; rule of thumb; superstition; astrology[obs3]; faith (supposition) 514. sophistry, paralogy[obs3], perversion, casuistry, jesuitry, equivocation, evasion; chicane, chicanery; quiddet[obs3], quiddity; mystification; special pleading; speciousness &c. adj.; nonsense &c. 497; word sense, tongue sense. false reasoning, vicious reasoning, circular reasoning; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Aquinius his Case. This is, I take it, some confused allusion to the great Dominican Doctor, S. Thomas Aquinas, who was regarded as being the supreme Master of scholasticism and casuistry. Casuistry must be taken in its true and original meaning—the balancing and deciding of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... edition call for no remark, excepting this, perhaps, that the present little volume has no pretensions to be anything more than an Essay. To judge such it performance as if it professed to be an exhaustive Treatise in casuistry, is to subject it to tests which it was never designed to bear. Merely to open questions, to indicate points, to suggest cases, to sketch outlines,—as an Essay does all these things,—may often be a process not without its ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... with certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to secure these rights governments are established among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.' There is no casuistry, however dextrous, that can take woman out of that charter." He referred to pioneer days and the heavy part borne by women and said: "But when the foundations had been established and the pioneer fathers got down to writing the constitutions they left the pioneer ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... language can be low and degenerate enough?" In the Apology for Smectymnuus, Milton sets forth his own defence of his acrimony and violence: "There may be a sanctified bitterness," he remarks, "against the enemies of the truth;" and he dares to quote the casuistry of ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... pampering of its emperor and populace. Naturally the balance which accrued for the feeding of Borne, for Roman enjoyment and Roman buildings was very large; and doubtless this fact was bad for the morale of Rome itself and requires considerable casuistry to defend it. But it would be a monstrous misconception to imagine that all the "tribute paid to Caesar" was absolutely drained, by an act of sheer oppression, clean out of the province year by year. No country can be protected, policed, and have its ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... other extreme stand relations like that with Anne Park, the heroine of Yestreen I had a Pint o' Wine, which were purely passionate and transitory. Between these come a long procession affording excellent material for the ingenuity of those skilled in the casuistry of the sexes: the boyish flame for Handsome Nell; the slightly more mature feeling for Ellison Begbie; the various phases of his passion for Jean Armour; the perhaps partly factitious reverence for Highland Mary; the respectful adoration for Margaret Chalmers to ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Zenobia's secret. But, as the breeze grew stronger, its voice among the branches was as if it said, "Hush! Hush!" and I resolved that to no mortal would I disclose what I had heard. And, though there might be room for casuistry, such, I conceive, is the most equitable rule in ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have him hung, because that is his trade." This episodic discussion ended, the story of the will is resumed. The father, when on the point of destroying it, was seized with a scruple of conscience, and hastened to a cure well versed in casuistry. As in England the agents of the law itself not seldom play the part of arbitrary benevolence, which the old Diderot would fain have played against the law, the scene may perhaps ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... had experience of Vooda's persuasive tongue and knack of casuistry, did not wish to argue the point—knowing, as he did full well, the object of Vooda's visit—and at once made up his mind that he would not see ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... her was, that before so sudden and unexpected a demand she found herself confused and helpless; had she been able to reflect, the temptation would probably have been resisted, for the pleasantness of the thought made her regard it as a grave temptation. Casuistry and sophistical reasoning with her own heart ensued, to the increase of her morbid sensitiveness; she persuaded herself that greater insight into the world's evil would be of aid in her struggle, and so the contents of Waymark's first letter led her to a continuance of the ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... anything in reply to her casuistry; they both looked equally posed by it, for different reasons; and Agatha went on as vehemently as before, addressing herself now to one and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for the complicated problems of delectation that thus arose, but he was constrained to admit that no rules are really possible, and that such matters must be left to the judgment of a prudent man. At that point casuistry dissolves and the modern point of view emerges (see, e.g., Lea, History of Auricular Confession, vol. ii, pp. 57, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... casuistry, Wilks, and I want you, as a judge of what a loyal citizen should do, to say what is our duty in ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... especially whilst in the centre of fiery partisans. But sorrow, in such a case, is a sentiment of deeper vitality than anger; and this sorrow for the result will co-operate with the original scruples on the casuistry of the questions, to reproduce the demur and the struggle many times over, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... who had been walking the floor at night in the struggle to reconcile the teachings of the church with his own doubts—knowing that Eternal Damnation was held to be the reward for doubt of Christ's divinity—was so horrified by the casuistry of the man who could be an orthodox minister and yet speak of preaching as just one way to make a living, that he swung sharply from any wish to enter ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... between vice and virtue; or which in fact was indifferent to neither, where neither properly was called in question; that happy breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual moral questioning—the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted casuistry—is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to the interests of society. The privileges of the place are taken away by law. We dare not dally with images, or names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic representation of ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... since swineherds could hardly avoid contact with their charges, their calling was implicitly forbidden.[111] Unfortunately, the authorised version expressly says "dead carcase"; and thus the most rabbinically minded of reconcilers might find his casuistry foiled by that great source of surprises, the "original Hebrew." That such check is at any rate possible, is clear from the fact that the legal uncleanness of some animals, as food, did not interfere with their being lawfully possessed, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... till this night had we talked with absolute mutual confidence, for Davies broke down the last barriers of reserve and let me see his whole mind. He loved this girl and he loved his country, two simple passions which for the time absorbed his whole moral capacity. There was no room left for casuistry. To weigh one passion against the other, with the discordant voices of honour and expediency dinning in his ears, had too long involved him in fruitless torture. Both were right; neither could be surrendered. If the facts showed them irreconcilable, tant pis ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Avesta as "the Code of a very small religious sect; it is a Talmud, a book of casuistry and strict observance. I have difficulty in believing that the great Persian empire, which, at least in religious matters, professed a certain breadth of ideas, could have had a law so strict. I think, that had the Persians possessed a sacred book of this description, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... think it presumptuous,' he went on, as he held the umbrella over her; 'I am sure any man would speak as I do. A distinct permission to be with you on probation—that was what you gave me at Carlsruhe: and flinging casuistry on one side, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... brief notice. It was entitled the Sic et Non, and remained unpublished in the public documents of France till recent years.(269) It is a collection of alleged contradictions, which exist on a series of topics, which range over the deepest problems of theology, and descend to the confines of casuistry in ethics.(270) In the discussion of them Abelard collects passages from the scriptures and from the fathers in favour of two distinctly opposite solutions. He has however prefixed a prologue to the work, which ought to be ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... brought home to him, or indeed—save in one instance soon to be noticed—seriously charged against him. There is not in the Diary the faintest trace of any act which might be so much as questionable or susceptible of defence only by casuistry. That he should have perpetuated evidence of any flagrant misdoing certainly could not be expected; but in a record kept with the fulness and frankness of this Diary we should read between the lines and detect as it were in its general flavor any ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... automata under the command of the fiends. This was known as possession, or obsession. It was another of the mediaeval beliefs against which the reformers steadily set their faces; and all the resources of their casuistry were exhausted to expose its absurdity. But their position in this respect was an extremely delicate one. On one side of them zealous Catholics were exorcising devils, who shrieked out their testimony to the eternal truth of the ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... however, there would seem to be no pressing need of his long soliloquy. He being ex proposito a man of few words, his sudden volubility is a little surprising, though it should be duly noticed that the soliloquy is not a self-defense. There is no casuistry in it. Tell does not argue the case with himself, like one in doubt about the rightness of his conduct. That is as clear as day to him, and he never wavers for a moment. But he has time to think while waiting, and his soliloquy ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... refuge in casuistry and told the king that it was not for a pope to be bound to the cardinal's promises, in which contention he would have been supported by the Jesuits. However, in his heart Ganganelli had no liking for the Jesuits. He was a Franciscan, and not a gentleman by birth. He had not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the stone who can take oath that in their own morality there is no casuistry. Probably ours is worse than hers, because hers was ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... to know what our real teaching is, as on other subjects, so on that of lying, let them look, not at our books of casuistry, but at our catechisms. Works on pathology do not give the best insight into the form and the harmony of the human frame; and, as it is with the body, so is it with the mind. The Catechism of the Council of Trent was drawn up for the express purpose of providing preachers with subjects ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the name of the Socratic irony. With this fine weapon, in great part, it was, wielded like a magician's invisible wand, that Pascal did his memorable execution on the Jesuitical system of morals and casuistry, in the "Provincial Letters." In great part, we say; for the flaming moral earnestness of the man could not abide only to play with his adversaries, to the end of the famous dispute. His lighter cimeter blade he flung aside before he had done, and, toward the last, brandished ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... agent. Nay, it seems to be a sin to act so as to induce him to suppose himself such. Contingent consequences must be excluded; but would, I am persuaded, weigh in favour of annulling on principle an oath sinfully extorted. But I hate casuistry so utterly, that I could not without great violence to my feelings put the case in all its bearings. For example:—it is sinful to enlarge the power of wicked agents; but to allow them to have the power of binding the conscience of those, whom they have ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... courtesy depends upon clothes with the best people; but, with others, behavior hangs almost entirely upon dress. Many good habits are easily got rid of in the woods. Doubt sometimes seems to be felt whether Sunday is a legal holiday there. It becomes a question of casuistry with a clergyman whether he may shoot at a mark on Sunday, if none of his congregation are present. He intends no harm: he only gratifies a curiosity to see if he can hit the mark. Where shall he draw the line? Doubtless he might throw a stone at a chipmunk, or shout at a loon. Might he fire ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dedications; for he says in the famous one "to the Free-thinkers:"—"I could never approve the custom of dedicating books to men whose professions made them strangers to the subject. A Discourse on the Ten Predicaments to a Leader of Armies, or a System of Casuistry to a Minister of State, always appeared to me a ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... you have gained my respect. Frankness in a Jesuit? Come; what has the Society come to that frankness replaces cunning and casuistry? Bah! There never was an age but had its prude to howl 'O these degenerate days!' Corrupt and degenerate you say? Yes; that is the penalty of greatness, richness, and idleness. It began with the Egyptians, it struck ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... their special patronage those passive virtues which man least loved, and found it must difficult to cultivate; and of exhibiting, in their preference of the spiritual to the ceremonial, and their treatment of many of the most delicate questions of practical ethics and casuistry, a justness and elevation of sentiment as alien as possible from the superstition and fanaticism of their predecessors who had corrupted the Law—and the superstition and fanaticism of their followers very ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... No earthly casuistry could ever lead her to doubt that he had heard her prayer that morning. She might reply simply ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... cream-faced loon," he does not lose his sense of the Devil's dignity. In Milton's great epic Satan is really the central figure, and he is always splendid and heroic. Shelley, in fact, complained in his preface to Prometheus Unbound that "the character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry, which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure." Goethe's Mephistopheles is less dignified than Milton's Satan, but he is full of energy and intellect, and ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Superior had a long upper lip, which she was in the habit of drawing still further down; it gave her an air of great diplomatic caution, almost of casuistry. Her face was pale and narrow; she had eyes that desired to be very penetrating, and a flat little stooping figure within her voluminous draperies. She carried about with her all the virtues of a monastic order, patience was written ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... establishment, by parity of reason, retained upon its rolls all the degrees, all the modifications, all who had exercised a wise discretion, who, in so great a cause, had thought it a point of religion to be cautious; whose casuistry had moved in the harness of peace, and who had preferred an interest of conscience to a triumph of partisanship. We honour them for that policy; but we cannot hide from ourselves, that the very principle which makes such a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Socrates should have lived and preferred to a glorious death the good which he might still be able to perform. 'A rhetorician would have had much to say upon that point.' It may be observed however that Plato never intended to answer the question of casuistry, but only to exhibit the ideal of patient virtue which refuses to do the least evil in order to avoid the greatest, and to show his master maintaining in death the opinions which he had professed in his life. Not 'the world,' but the 'one wise man,' is still the paradox of ...
— Crito • Plato
... consider the moral aspect of the play at this juncture. Vanderdecken is merely a greedy, selfish skipper who, having got into some trouble, is anxious that a pure young maiden should throw away her life that he may be comfortable. Not any casuistry or splitting of hairs can alter ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... generous passion, to shew itself in ten thousand little and undefinable acts of sedulous attention, which love alone can pay, and of which, when paid, love alone can estimate the value. Love outruns the deductions of reasoning; it scorns the refuge of casuistry; it requires not the slow process of laborious and undeniable proof that an action would be injurious and offensive, or another beneficial or gratifying, to the object of affection. The least hint, the slightest surmise, is sufficient to make it start ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... doubt, by subtle casuistry persuaded himself that he was doing good to the boy. He would be educated by the Jesuits, with whom he had cast in his lot; he would be trained as a son of the Catholic Church, and by this he hoped to gain favour, and strike off ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... of red wine, but sometimes of white, with the addition of sugar and spices. Sir Walter Scott ("Quarterly Review," vol. xxxiii.) says, after quoting this passage of Pepys, "Assuredly his pieces of bacchanalian casuistry can only be matched by that of Fielding's chaplain of Newgate, who preferred punch to wine, because the former was a liquor ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and awkward, between Freeman and Lady Desbro', which give The Roundheads unity and dramatic point, are entirely her own invention. In the original Rump neither cavaliers nor Lady Desbro' appear. Ananias Goggle also, the canting lay elder of Clements, with his subtle casuistry that jibs at 'the person not the office,' a dexterous character sketch, alive and acute, we owe to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Atonement of our LORD nothing but a stone of stumbling and a snare. It is true of Popish error also;—for what else is this but a setting up of the Human above the Divine,—(Tradition, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, the casuistry of the Confessional, and the like,)—and so, once more substituting the creature for the Creator?—What again is the fashionable intellectual sin of the day, but the self-same detestable offence, under quite a different disguise? The idea of Law,—(that old idea which is declared ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... against any possible infringement." And they contrived, by an artful and technical interpretation, to find statutes which favored their ends. They wrought out asceticism into a system, and observed the most painful ceremonials—the ancestors of rigid monks; and they united a specious casuistry, not unlike the Jesuits, to excuse the violation of the spirit of the law. They were a hierarchical caste, whose ambition was to govern, and to govern by legal technicalities. They were utterly deficient in the virtues ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... full smile; "but is not this good advice? I have consulted God and demigod; the nymph of the river, and what I far more admire and trust, my blue-eyed Minerva. Both have said the same. My own heart was telling it already. Action, then, be mine; and into the deep sea with all this paralysing casuistry. I am happy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Throned on high sat the president, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in his grand robes, and before him in rows sat his robed court—fifty distinguished ecclesiastics, men of high degree in the Church, of clear-cut intellectual faces, men of deep learning, veteran adepts in strategy and casuistry, practised setters of traps for ignorant minds and unwary feet. When I looked around upon this army of masters of legal fence, gathered here to find just one verdict and no other, and remembered that Joan ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... then. How grand the unity and simplicity thus breathed into our duties and through our lives! All duties are capable of reduction to this one, and though we shall still need detailed instruction and specific precepts, we shall be set free from the pedantry of a small scrupulous casuistry, which fetters men's limbs with microscopic bands, and shall joyfully learn how much mightier and happier is the life which is shaped by one fruitful principle, than that which is hampered by a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... parents of a young noble might well try to prevent him from marrying an unknown and penniless girl. The Marchese Vivaldi only adopts the ordinary paternal measures; the Marchesa, and her confessor the dark-souled Schedoni, go farther—as far as assassination. The casuistry by which Schedoni brings the lady to this pass, while representing her as the originator of the scheme, is really subtle, and the scenes between the pair show an extraordinary advance on Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier art. The mysterious ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... not to be supposed for an instant; but that his conscience troubled him may be fairly inferred from the fact that he withheld from the World for twenty years afterward the knowledge that he was their author. It is probable that in this case, as in others, he was a victim of that casuistry which teaches that "the end justifies the means;" that he hoped and believed that the assertion of these baleful doctrines would act solely as a check upon any tendency to further centralization of power in the General Government and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... Meir (about 1085-1158) studied under his grandfather. As we have seen[136] he discussed exegetic questions with Rashi, and went so far as to express opinions in his presence concerning points of casuistry. On Rashi's death, it seems, he assumed the direction of the school at Troyes; but he was more prominently identified with the academy which he, following in the steps of his master, founded at Rameru, and which soon became prosperous. It was at Rameru, too, that he wrote his valuable ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... gift for casuistry one may, at least conceivably, hold that the felt need of Imperial self-aggrandisement may become so urgent as to justify, or at least to condone, forcible dispossession of weaker nationalities. This might, indeed it has, become a sufficiently perplexing question of casuistry, both ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... manner. He can vary his elaborate periods with a terse, strong statement which comes with the force of an unexpected blow. He has a knack of happy illustration, and a way of enforcing his points by putting problems in casuistry which have an alluring human interest. The book moved his own generation profoundly, and even to-day his more enthusiastic passages convey an irresistible ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... Church to slavery, and the duties of private Christians, the whole casuistry of this portion of the question, so momentous among descendants of the Puritans,—have been discussed with great acuteness and rare common-sense by Messrs. Garrison, Goodell, Gerrit Smith, Pillsbury, and Foster. They have never attempted to judge ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... conversation with the rector, who I found could not endure the sight of me again, under my present forlorn or rather accusing form. The remembrance however that I had saved his life was predominant. How his casuistry settled the account between his two oaths I never heard; on that subject he was eternally silent. He was probably ashamed of having taken the first, and of having been tricked out of the second. His orders were that I should go ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... people? But be it a customs union or annexation that Germany plans, the steel had entered the hearts of all Belgians with red corpuscles; and King Albert and his "schipperkes" were still fighting the Germans at Dixmude. A British army appearing before Brussels would end casuistry; and pessimism would pass, and the German residents, too, with the huzzas of all Belgium as the gallant king once more ascended the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest; Thus, at her felt approach and secret might, Art after art goes out, and all is night. See skulking truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heap'd o'er her head. Philosophy, that lean'd on heaven before, Shrinks to her second ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... from the difficulty of his position by a play upon the word evil. He would have seen that he had undertaken to justify the conduct of the Father of Lights, by supposing it to be governed by the most corrupt maxim of the most corrupt system of casuistry ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... lord); "but the cob's lame, and I can't take Mirah without my lady's leave." "Never mind. I'm going such a little way. Mamma never says anything when I go a little way." Was it a lie, or only a fib? This question of casuistry gave Geoff great trouble afterwards; for (he said to himself) it was only a little way, nothing at all, though mamma of course thought otherwise, and was deceived. "You'll be very careful, Master Geoff," said the old man. Black had his own reasons for not desiring to go out ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... reason, for a woman—" It was the answer she would have given to Popple or Van Degen, but she saw in an instant the mistake of thinking it would impress her father. In the atmosphere of sentimental casuistry to which she had become accustomed, she had forgotten that Mr. Spragg's private rule of conduct was as simple as ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... warrant for devoting the address which marks the conclusion of my service in the dignified and honorable office to which, through your unmerited favor, I have been twice chosen, to the consideration of some of the questions in casuistry the answers to which will be found to furnish a basis for a code of professional ethics. It is not asking too much of the engineer that his professional morality shall conform to higher standards ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... what sort of a fellow Lord Bacon was, and how he contrived to get into a mess about taking bribes, when so many other fellows had done it quietly enough before the Lord of Verulam's day, and even yet more quietly since—agreeably instigated thereto by the casuistry ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... believed would be best for him, she forgot that the boy whom she had brought up was no longer a child, and thus she unpardonably ignored his rights as a man. And now Miss Josephine's disapproval was vindicated, and her own casuistry was doubly punished. Miss Rieppe's astute journey of investigation—for her purpose had evidently become suspected by some of them beforehand—had forced Miss Eliza to disclose the truth about the phosphates to her nephew ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... models of Bologna, Paris and Oxford. In these logic and scholastic divinity were for centuries the reigning subjects of pursuit. The works of Aristotle were studied with great eagerness. Upon the logic of Aristotle was founded the cultivation of scholastic theology and casuistry, which is a department of morals; its object is to lay down rules for directing us how to act where there is any room for doubt or hesitation. To this belongs the decision of what are called cases of conscience, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... ecclesiastical habit excels, or perhaps simply from a happy want of intelligence, a helpful stupidity, the old nun brought formidable support to the conspiracy. They had imagined her timid; she proved herself bold, verbose, violent. She was not troubled by any of the shilly-shallyings of casuistry, her doctrine was like a bar of iron, her faith never wavered, her conscience knew no scruples. She considered Abraham's sacrifice a very simple affair, for she herself would have instantly killed father or mother at an order from above, and nothing, she averred, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... is a pure freak in poetry. Perhaps it might be asserted of James Thompson, without too much casuistry, that he was, poetically speaking, not a materialist but a pessimist, and that the strength of his poetic gift lay in the thirst of his imagination for an ideal world in which his reason would not permit him to believe. One cannot say of him, as of Coleridge, that "his unbelief never touched ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... words the benevolent Mr. Wilkinson fell flat on his face in the road, but continued to laugh softly, and turned towards his flying companion a face of peculiar peace and benignity. Evan's mind went through a crisis of instantaneous casuistry, in which it may be that he decided wrongly; but about how he decided his biographer can profess no doubt. Two minutes afterwards he had overtaken Turnbull and told the tale; ten minutes afterwards he and Turnbull ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton |
