"Cogency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the uselessness of any words, knowing that in this monstrous Ragnarok of all humanity no ordinary relations of life could bear either cogency or meaning, he took her ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... FOLLIOTT. Well, sir, well; there is cogency in a good supper; a good supper in these degenerate days bespeaks a good man; but much more is wanted to make up an Athenian. Athenians, indeed! where is your theatre? who among you has written a comedy? where ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... is here demonstrated with rare cogency and conclusiveness that war is not only a factor, but the main factor, in true, genuine Kultur—not only its creator but its preserver.... Although the author thus recognizes war as an element in the divine world-order, he by no means ignores the blessings of peace, as the second factor ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... I must work on Andrew Fraser and not needlessly alarm both his greed and fear. As soon as it is safe, you shall take up your post near to her; but Hawke must come and go first. He must find no sign of your presence here." There was cogency in ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... of invective untrammeled. He called his pamphlet "A Vindication of the British Colonies against the Aspersions of the Halifax Gentleman, in his Letter to a Rhode Island Friend." A single passage from the work may serve to show the cogency of the writer's style and especially his anticipation of the doctrines of the Declaration ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... decision of the nation, is that to which it will come whenever again appealed to; and is supported by reasons of cogency. The nation is thoroughly aware of the immense importance of upholding and protecting the agriculture of the country, and that to secure this grand object, it is necessary to admit foreign corn into the country, only when our deficiencies absolutely require it. That in the operation of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... to recapitulate all the arguments offered again and again by Lord Cochrane, with ever fresh-force and cogency, in presenting massive petitions to the House, and in introducing into the occasional debates on reform with which the House amused itself a vigour and practicalness in which few other members cared to sympathize. Nor need we enumerate all the meetings, in London and the provinces, in which he ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... such, because he might else enable B to defraud persons who had trusted him upon the faith of the apparent partnership and joint responsibility: when these reasons, and such as these, are given, every man at once perceives their cogency, and needs not to be told how, that he may know why, the law was settled on its present footing. The fitness of this subject for compression is, therefore, hardly questionable. The difficulty of compressing it is, however, extreme. The author who attempts to do so, must continually ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... further, that should her people set their hearts pretty strongly on those national seminaries, which in many parts of the country would become, if opened up, wholly their own de facto, and which are already their own de jure, they might not be quite able to feel the cogency of the argument that, while it left Socinians and Papists in the enjoyment of at once very liberal and very flexible Government grants, challenged their right to choose, on their own responsibility, State-paid teachers for their children; and which ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... on one occasion the venerable head of this institution ventured to "tackle" him in a religious argument. Bill, after listening with a deference which was evidently a tribute of respect to the Doctor's position rather than an acknowledgment of the cogency of his reasoning, settled the question by an interrogatory: "Dr. Hopkins, do you suppose I'm goin' to believe that when I die I'll go up and sit on one of those clouds with ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... Angle, is as unlikely as that a King of Prussia should propose that all Germany should be known as Austria. Of course, if the evidence in favour of the word Saxon being native was of a certain degree of cogency, we must take the preceding improbability as we find it; but no such cogent evidence can be found. Saxon is always a name that some one may give to some one else, never one that he ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... than any we have given, going indeed so far as to justify the introduction of a manuscript into the pulpit itself, if the case supposed fell for certain under the idea of a University Sermon. It may be urged with great cogency that a process of argument, or a logical analysis and investigation, cannot at all be conducted with suitable accuracy of wording, completeness of statement, or succession of ideas, if the composition is to be prompted at the moment, and breathed out, as it were, from the intellect together ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... slow.... We all know of persons convicted, perhaps even habitually, whom the world could ill spare. Therefore I hesitate to proscribe the criminal. Proscription... is a weapon with a very nasty recoil. Might not some with equal cogency proscribe army contractors and their accomplices, the newspaper patriots? The crimes of the prison population are petty offenses by comparison, and the significance we attach to them is a survival of other ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... reasons for willing may present themselves to me with all their most lively and affecting attendants, and the Supreme Being may also attract me by His most persuasive inspirations. But yet for all this actual attraction of objects, cogency of reasons, and even inspiration of a Superior Being, I still remain master of my will, and am free either to will ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... difficult question need not be discussed here. It is allowed by all that there is a multitude of beliefs which we hold tenaciously and on which we are ready to act, which, to the mature mind, wear the appearance of intuitive truths, owing their cogency to nothing beyond themselves. A man's belief in his own merits, however it may have been first obtained, is as immediately assured to him as his recognition of a real object in the act of sense-perception. It may be added that many of our every-day ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... reject it.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} But an eminent philologist already quoted, deeply versed in these studies, A. Weber, has expressed in some of his writings a totally different opinion; and the authority of his name, if not the number and cogency of his arguments, compels me to say something on the subject. From the fact or rather the assumption that Megasthenes(1184) who lived some time in India has made no mention either of the Mahabharat or the Ramayan Professor Weber argues that neither of these poems ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... different turn, had another accident fixed his home among the hills instead of on the shore. Is it only the result of disease? he would ask himself sometimes with a sudden suspicion of his intellectual cogency—this persuasion that myself, and all that surrounds me, are but a diminution of that ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... betokens the vivid flights of imagination, or the meteoric brightness of inspiration; his actions are distinguished by coolness, intrepidity, and good sense. He does not pretend to second sight, or a knowledge of futurity; but on the present and the past there are few who can reason with more cogency of remark, or with more classic elegance of diction: with such a concentration of qualities, it is not wonderful that his influence extends through every gradation of the juvenile band. His particular attachments are not numerous; but those who have experienced the sincerity of his private friendship ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the King of Poland, the Empress of Russia, and the King of Prussia, 's'entendent comme larrons en foire', though the former must not appear in it upon account of the stupidity, ignorance, and bigotry of his Poles. I have a great opinion of the cogency of the controversial arguments of the Russian troops, in favor of the Dissidents: I am sure I wish them success; for I would have all intoleration intolerated in its turn. We shall soon see more clearly into this matter; for I do not think ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... ascendency[obs3], sway, control; prepotency, prepollence|; almightiness, omnipotence; authority &c. 737; strength &c. 159. ability; ableness &c. adj[obs3].; competency; efficacy; efficiency, productivity, expertise (skill) 698; validity, cogency; enablement[obs3]; vantage ground; influence &c. 175. pressure; conductivity; elasticity; gravity, electricity, magnetism, galvanism, voltaic electricity, voltaism, electromagnetism; atomic power, nuclear power, thermonuclear power; fuel cell; hydraulic power, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... revelation to the more intellectual and cultivated. Lincoln afterwards told of a professor of rhetoric at Yale College who was present. He made an abstract of the speech and the next day presented it to the class as a model of cogency and finish. This professor followed Lincoln to Meriden to hear him again. The Tribune gave to the speech unstinted praise, declaring that "no man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... ascendency[obs3], sway, control; prepotency, prepollence|; almightiness, omnipotence; authority &c. 737; strength &c. 159. ability; ableness &c. adj[obs3].; competency; efficacy; efficiency, productivity, expertise (skill) 698 ; validity, cogency; enablement[obs3]; vantage ground; influence &c. 175. pressure; conductivity; elasticity; gravity, electricity, magnetism, galvanism, voltaic electricity, voltaism, electromagnetism; atomic power, nuclear power, thermonuclear ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Mike admitted the cogency of the objection, and they agreed to be off. Mike started for the window. "I'll just pick up the Sergeant," he said, "and signal you 'All clear.' ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... the whole, lower in organisation, and less specialised in structure than the later. Now evidence of evolution of these varied kinds is what we do find, and almost every fresh discovery adds to their number and cogency. In order, therefore, to show that the testimony given by geology is entirely in favour of the theory of descent with modification, some of the more striking of the facts ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... better is a man than a sheep," was his text, from which with great ingenuity and eloquence he proceeded to develop the theme of the supreme value of the human factor in modern life, social and industrial. With great cogency he pressed the argument against the inhuman and degrading view that would make man a mere factor in the complex problem of Industrial Finance, a mere inanimate cog in the ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... whisper—a line or two—would suffice to suggest to him a truly admirable and conclusive argument, which he instantly elaborated as if he had prepared it deliberately beforehand in his chamber; and he would put the point with infinitely greater cogency than could have been exhibited by him who suggested it, and defend it from the assaults of his opponents and the bench with truly admirable readiness and ingenuity. He exhibited great judgment and discrimination, however, on these occasions. A false or doubtful point he quietly rejected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... unreal. But too often in his works does the unreal fail to satisfy the reader. There is an effort felt, an effect sought for, and, while the amalgamation of the two worlds is perfect, the world to which Hoffmann is able to take us proves to be without the cogency which our imaginations expect. Here Hoffmann fails. His world of the imagination cannot always be ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... while, on the other hand, if such intermediate forms are to be found, that is so much to the good of evolution; although, for reasons which I will lay before you by and by, we must be cautious in our estimate of the evidential cogency of facts ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... admits their practical cogency, an attentive reader will not fail to be interested in the attempt Mr. Saintsbury has made to give technical rules of metre for the production of the true prose rhythm. Any one who cares to do so might test the validity of those rules in the nearest possible way, by applying them to the varied examples ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... conducive to energy as a combination of different figures, when two or three uniting their resources mutually contribute to the vigour, the cogency, and the beauty of a speech. So Demosthenes in his speech against Meidias repeats the same words and breaks up his sentences in one lively descriptive passage: "He who receives a blow is hurt in many ways which he could not even describe to another, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... in his account of the year seventy-five, when Waller was only seventy. His name, as a speaker, occurs often in Grey's Collections; but I have found no extracts that can be more quoted, as exhibiting sallies of gaiety than cogency of argument. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... responsible for her arrest and detention for trial. To the scrutiny of the Court I have submitted every fact that influenced my action, and the estimate of their value decided by the jurymen, must either confirm the cogency of my reasoning, or condemn my rash fallibility. Having under oath conscientiously given all the evidence in my possession, that the prosecution would accept or desire, I now respectfully request, that unless the prisoner chooses to exercise her right of cross-examination, my colleagues of the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... from God. Things must come within the range of thought or go out of existence. There is no alternative. Now, thought implies a thinker, and this implication carries us at once to God. Here, again, we have no desire to question the cogency of the argument. We are ready to admit that this is the strongest theistic argument that has thus far been built. To be sure, there are some questions that inevitably suggest themselves: What is the thinker? Is it impersonal thought, as some have maintained? Is it just the sum ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... a pregnant little volume of essays entitled The Negro Problem. Seven of its phases are discussed by Booker Washington, Professor DuBois, Charles W. Chestnutt, Wilfred H. Smith, H. T. Kealing, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and T. Thomas Fortune. As a collection, these essays are noteworthy for their cogency and clearness, for their earnest and self-respectful plea for full justice and opportunity, and their calmness and candor. The race that can speak for itself in such tones has an assured future,—if democracy, evolution, Christianity, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... into which he groups the very same things. In these islands, we are in the habit of regarding mankind as of one species, but a fortnight's steam will land us in a country where divines and savants, for once in agreement, vie with one another in loudness of assertion, if not in cogency of proof, that men are of different species; and, more particularly, that the species negro is so distinct from our own that the Ten Commandments have actually no reference to him. Even in the calm region of entomology, where, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... very speech of Clytemnestra betrays its symbolical import, as much as the attributes of the Furies, the serpents, and their sucking of blood. The same may be said of Apollo's aversion for them; in fact, this symbolical character runs through the whole. The equal cogency of the motives for and against the deed is denoted by the equally divided votes of the judges. And if at last a sanctuary within the Athenian territory is offered to the softened Furies, this is as much as to say that reason is not everywhere to enforce ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... to be found in his manner of composition. That derives its immense power from other sources; from passion, intensity, imagination, size, truth, cogency of logical reason. Those who insist on charm, on winningness in style, on subtle harmonies and fine exquisiteness of suggestion, are disappointed in Burke: they even find him stiff and over-coloured. And there are blemishes of this kind. His banter is nearly always ungainly, his wit blunt, as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... might, force, energy &c 171; dint; right hand, right arm; ascendency^, sway, control; prepotency, prepollence^; almightiness, omnipotence; authority &c 737; strength &c 159. ability; ableness &c adj.^; competency; efficacy; efficiency, productivity, expertise (skill) 698; validity, cogency; enablement^; vantage ground; influence &c 175. pressure; conductivity; elasticity; gravity, electricity, magnetism, galvanism, voltaic electricity, voltaism, electromagnetism; atomic power, nuclear power, thermonuclear power; fuel cell; hydraulic power, water power, hydroelectric power; solar ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Nyall had ordered the changes made. The tabulated figures proved that his reasoning had been correct. He was positive, forceful, and insistent in driving home his argument and in compelling his superior to admit their force and cogency. When it was all admitted and Burton, fighting to the last ditch, had been over-whelmed, Nyall's unconcealed air of triumph was keenly and painfully exasperating to ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... here is awful, grubbin' up old stones and stumps; 'tain't fit for women." (William much impressed with the cogency of this repetition.) ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... of another. Its effect is simply to leave both unproved, and neither, therefore, in condition for acceptance. In the present case the weight of disproof is small. The facts in support of the evolution hypothesis are multitudinous, and many of them of great cogency; the facts against it are few, and none of them absolute. It is simply argued that some questions remain unsolved, and that there are facts which seem inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of development, and which no supplementary hypotheses have explained. ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... certain, because rocks of cretaceous, or still later, date have shared in the elevatory movements which gave rise to these mountain chains; and may be found perched up, in some cases, many thousand feet high upon their flanks. And evidence of equal cogency demonstrates that, though, in Norfolk, the forest-bed rests directly upon the chalk, yet it does so, not because the period at which the forest grew immediately followed that at which the chalk was formed, but because an immense lapse of time, represented ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Mr. Arneel, with a cogency of reasoning which did not at the moment appear on the surface, inquired: "Do any of you happen to know anything in particular about the state of Mr. Cowperwood's finances at present? Of course we know of the Lake Street 'L' and the Northwestern. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... expertness, readiness, aptitude, dexterity, faculty, skill, capability, efficacy, force, strength, capacity, efficiency, might, susceptibility, cleverness, energy, qualification, talent. cogency, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald |
