"Confute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tobacco be not the true one, we must despair of ever finding it, and people will go on smoking and 'hearing reason' as long as the world goes round. Robert Hall received a pamphlet denouncing the pipe. He read it, and returned it. 'I cannot, sir, confute your arguments, and I cannot give up smoking,' was his comment. It is loosely asserted that smoking is more prevalent among scholars, intellectualists, and men who live by their brains, than among artisans and subduers of the soil. This is an error. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... if not worse. We should remember, however, that Plato was not considering any altruistic virtue such as kindness, sympathy, benevolence, generosity and the like, but only what nature indicates to be the essential condition of successful association. Thus interpreted, are we prepared to confute the statement? Do we know of any state of society in human or animal life at any time, past or present, of which the contrary of Plato's ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... for some little time endeavoured mildly to confute her arguments, and convince her that in doing so, she was only forming her own misery; but still she pleaded, and ungoverned fury at length burst forth. He had been too long the victim of passions always to keep them in bounds, even when most required; and for a few minutes ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... I say, Okusama! The expression of your face has changed. Heigh-ho! Whither away? Alas! It is plain that she would go to the yashiki of Okumura. Evil her purpose. She would confute the malice spoken by Koume, by parent and child. She would fetch away with her Iemon Dono. Iya! Ho, there! Your honoured judgment strays. She believes in what Gombei has said; that he is with the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... view was originally stated in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Argei." I endeavoured to confute it in the Classical Review, 1902, p. 115 foll., and Wissowa replied in Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 211 foll. Since then my conviction has become stronger that this great scholar is for once wrong. Ennius alluded to the Argei as an institution of Numa, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... myself, as accusing others, &c." Op. Tom. 4. p. 2. p.:256. Middleton's Free Enquiry, p. 158. It is remarkable that the names mentioned by Jerom are the names of the early apologists for Christianity. When the Church got the upper hand however, they found a better way to confute those wicked men, Celsus and Porphyry, than by "slippery problems" and by speaking "not what they thought (to be true) but what was necessary against those who are called Gentiles," viz. by seeking after, and burning carefully their troublesome works. Of the fathers ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... providence, but the consent of the people, in the possession of the kingdom; 2 Chron. xxii, 10, 12. Again, the practice of nations, in owning those for their lawful sovereigns, who, by providence, were put from the actual exercise of their rule and authority, contributes to confute this absurd notion. Thus, the people of Israel, who had risen up for Absalom, do even, when David was out of the land, own him for their king. So, during the Babylonish captivity, there are several persons noted as princes of Judah, ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... given evidence, would have been the sole voice against the suit. If he had said that in his belief the association of her ladyship with Rochester had been adulterous there was the physical fact adduced by the jury of matrons to confute him. And being confuted in that, what might he have said that would not be attributed to rancour on his part? That her ladyship, with the help of Mrs Turner and the wizard of Lambeth, had practised magic upon her husband, giving him powders that went near to killing him? That she had lived in ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Rachel made her appearance in Miss Williams's little sitting-room. "I am ready to submit to any test that Captain Keith may require to confute himself," she said to Ermine; "and I do so the more readily that with all his mocking language, there is a genuine candour and honesty beneath that would be quite worth convincing. I believe that if once persuaded of the injustice of his suspicions he would ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... same Father adds,—'In the uncorrected copies ([Greek: en tois adiorthotois antigraphois]) is found "He wept,"' Epiphanius is instructive. Perfectly well aware that the expression is genuine, he goes on to state that 'Irenaeus quoted it in his work against Heresies, when he had to confute the error of the Docetae[495].' 'Nevertheless,' Epiphanius adds, 'the orthodox through ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... was wrong in this opinion, so wrong that I confute him by subjoining his own account of what befell, somewhat later in ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... apparently the purpose of the writer to convey the impression that his period of waiting had been passed without pleasure; but yet we may easily confute him with another quotation from The Lantern-Bearers. "One pleasure at least," says Stevenson, "he tasted to the full—his work is there to prove it—the keen pleasure of successful literary composition." Was this honorable author ever moved to such eloquence ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... seniority was entirely adverse to the invaliding, as, without he could invalide too, he would have to go to the West Indies in the place of our surgeon. The youngest was indifferent just then to anything but to confute the other two, and prove the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... numberless difficulties. It was contrary to Thorpe's aims in business to invest a dedication with any cryptic significance, and thus mystify his customers. Moreover, his career and the circumstances under which he became the publisher of the sonnets confute the assumption that he was in such relations with Shakespeare or with Shakespeare's associates as would give him any knowledge of Shakespeare's early career that was not public property. All that Thorpe—the struggling pirate-publisher, 'the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth' wares mysteriously ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... weake and vnlearned do thus familiarly accompanie the vnbealeuers / They can not chose but they must heare many subtill reasons and see many other thinges which do mutch make against the true religion that they do profes: Which thinges when they se and be not able to disproue and confute / They do it not: And so they ronne into two mischeifs. The furst is / That they ar as it wer witnesses of the blasphemie / and of the reproche that the vnbeleauers do to the truthe: the seconde / that they maie happ ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... close of the journal of the Liman campaign Jones's bitterness is pathetically expressed in inflated self-praise, called out by the desire to confute the calumnies of his enemies. "Every one to whom I have the honor to be known," he wrote, "is aware that I am the least selfish of mankind.... This is known to the whole American people.... Have I not given ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... Niedermeyer; not exactly in triumph, but with the alacrity of all felicitous confutation. He looked at it much longer than was needful to read it, stroking down his beard gravely, and I felt it was not so easy to confute a pupil of the school of Metternich. At last, folding the note and handing it back, "Has your friend mentioned Madame Blumenthal's errand at Wiesbaden?" ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... mean) the event would be a corollary to the fable of the peasant who made the real pig squeak against the imitator, while the sapient audience hissed the poor grunter as if inferior to the biped in his own language. The peasant could, indeed, confute the long-eared multitude by showing piggy; but were I to fail as a knight with a white and maiden shield, and then vindicate my claim to attention by putting "By the Author of Waverley" in the title, my good friend Publicum would defend itself by stating I had tilted so ill, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... have held that the evangelists do not record an historic life at all, but describe a Saviour-God who existed in the faith of the Church of the First Century. The allusions, however, in the letters of Paul alone to definite historical associations connected with Jesus are sufficient to confute this view. There undoubtedly was a Jesus of Nazareth. Moreover, the divine redeemers of mythology, of whom this theory makes so much, are most unlike the Jesus of the gospels in moral character and religious power; and the old argument is still pertinent ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... he had written. There can be no doubt that, had there been no misprints in Shakespeare's quartos and folios, half the occupation of Shakespeare scholarship would have been lacking. Sometimes the original manuscript turns up—unfortunately not in Shakespeare's case—to confute some or all of the ingenious editors. A learned professor changed the word "unbodied" in Shelley's "Skylark" to "embodied," and some critics approved the change; but the poet's manuscript in the Harvard University Library makes the former reading clear beyond question. One ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... Duodecim Caesares, Domitian c. 15. The soothsayer's power of divination was tested by asking what his own fate would be. He said he would very soon be devoured by dogs. Domitian desiring to confute such uncanny powers of prediction ordered him to be killed and securely buried. The funeral pyre was knocked down by a storm, and dogs devoured ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... for Erasmus and Agrippa, they had another foundation than the superficial part would promise. Marry, these other pleasant fault-finders, who will correct the verb before they understand the noun, and confute others' knowledge before they confirm their own; I would have them only remember, that scoffing cometh not of wisdom; so as the best title in true English they get with their merriments, is to be called ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... leaven, invited Palladius hither, who obtaining liberty from Celestine, and being enjoined to introduce the hierarchy as opportunity should offer, came into Scotland, and succeeded so effectually in his commission, as both to confute Pelagianism and new-model the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... invent a novelty in art, or improve upon any thing of their Saxon predecessors. The instance of the building before us, which is said by its monastic historians to have been raised between the years 1117 and 1250, is sufficient evidence to confute the reasoning, or rather dogmatic assertions, of those who wish to exalt the Saxons by depreciating the Normans: and we have a still stronger confutation of this theory in the style and general character of the Trinity chapel, ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... in due time, had made a convert of his companion; "a young man," as he afterwards remarked to Lord Mounteney, "in whom he knew not which most to admire, the soundness of his own views, or the candour with which he treated those of others." If you wish to win a man's heart, allow him to confute you. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the fourth tome of the letters of St. Teresa, relates, that an eminent Lutheran minister at Bremen, famous for several works which he had printed against the Catholic church, purchased the life of St. Teresa, written by herself, with a view of attempting to confute it; but, by attentively reading it over, was converted to the Catholic faith, and from that time led a most edifying life. The examples of Mr. Abraham Woodhead and others were ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... o' the tide:] It has been a very old opinion, which Mead, de imperio solis, quotes, as if he believed it, that nobody dies but in the time of ebb: half the deaths in London confute the notion; but we find that it was common among the women of the poet's ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... like not."—"'Tis approved by all." Thus, resolute not from one fault to fall, If there's a symbol as to which you doubt, 'Tis a sure reason not to blot it out. Yet still he says you may his faults confute, And over him your power is absolute. But of his feigned humility take heed: 'Tis a bait laid to make you hear him read; And when he leaves you, happy in his muse, Restless he runs some ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... therefore lay no further stress upon it. I go one step further; and shall endeavor, at least, to prove, that, supposing man is just as he was created, yet also supposing, what neither Mr. Parker nor Mr. Newman will deny, (and if they did, the whole history of the world would confute them,) that man's religious faculty is not uniform or determinate in its action, but is dependent on external development and culture for assuming the form it does, ample scope is still left for an external revelation. I contend that the entire condition ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... taught many who afterward became great men, and wrote a treatise to confute heresies of all kinds. As the pagans began to treat the christians with great severity, Justin wrote his first apology in their favour. This piece displays great learning and genius, and occasioned the emperor to publish an edict ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Mine earnest vehement botcher, And deacon also, I cannot dispute with you: But if you get you not away the sooner, I shall confute you ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... restraint— By her own act to galling bonds consigned,— Self-doomed, with wilful purpose, to acquaint Herself with sin and sorrow, and pollute Aethereal essence with corporeal taint? How doth thy helpless misery confute That frantic boast of vain conceit, untaugh The paltriest of ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... difficult. "Winter time; so dangerous, so precarious," answer Bruhl and Comte de Saxe: There is this danger, this uncertainty, and then that other;—which the King and Valori, with all their eloquence, confute. "Impossible, for want of victual," answers Maurice at last, driven into a corner: "Iglau, suppose we get it, will soon be eaten; then where is our provision?"—"Provision?" answers Valori: "There is M. de Sechelles, Head of our Commissariat in Prag; such ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... special form, which I am compelled to notice briefly because they set up the mark for the whole intellectual artillery of the Utilitarians. Reid, in fact, invented what J. S. Mill called 'intuitions.' To confute intuitionists and get rid of intuitions was one main purpose of all Mill's speculations. What, then, is an 'intuition'? To explain that fully it would be necessary to write once more that history of the philosophical movement from Descartes to Hume, which has been summarised ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... secretary, all that I want said. They regard everyone as a blasphemer and desecrator who thinks that anything written in that roll is erroneous, or even merely human. Plato's doctrines are not amiss, and yet Aristotle had criticised them severely and attempted to confute them. I myself incline to the views of the Stagyrite, you to those of the noble Athenian, and how many good and instructive hours we owe to our discussions over this difference of opinion! And how amusing it is to listen when the Platonists on the one hand ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brought promises of military assistance on a scale far beyond anything France had yet afforded. It is almost needless to say he was received at Galway and Limerick with an enthusiasm which silenced, if it did not confute, his political enemies, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... misconception which embittered her whole life, the mainspring of that calumny which made fame a mockery and glory a deceit. But I may say, that, when slander was busiest with her reputation, we had the best means to confute it,—and did. For some years there was not a single week during which, on some day or other, morning or evening, she was not a guest at our house; yet this blight in her spring-time undoubtedly led to the fatal marriage which eventuated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... wrought. Probably this party (whosoever he was) took little notice of, or was little troubled at the notice of these distempers in himself before; least of all sought out for help against them. And I have the rather inserted this to confute that scorn which, I hear, some have since put upon that conscientious desire. As if one had complained, that since his swearing to the covenant he could not forbear swearing, and that this sacred ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... brought Shakspeare, to a tragical conclusion. Mr. Pope suggests the last choice of a subject for writing a book, by making the Nonsense of others his argument; while his own puts it out of any writer's power to confute him." In another fling at Pope, he gives the reason why Mr. Pope adds the dirty dialect to that of the water, and is in love with the Nymphs of Fleet ditch; and in a lecture on the spleen he announced "an anatomical discovery, that Mr. Pope's spleen ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... to consider briefly what can be said for her position. We must begin by looking at the matter from the Church's standpoint. It is a good rule to endeavour to understand your opponent's position before you try to confute him; an excellent rule seldom complied with by anti-Catholic controversialists. Now the Church starts with the proposition that man has an immortal soul destined to eternal happiness or eternal misery, and she proceeds to claim that she has been divinely constituted to help ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... and shut quickly. There was an implied accusation against him in the fervor of her admiration for the wife who had deserted him. He groped for something in self-justification with which to confute Lois ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... occasions avoided fights (quarrels), but would not allow even others to quarrel. See in Xenophon's Symposium how many quarrels he settled, how further he endured Thrasymachus and Polus and Callicles; how he tolerated his wife, and how he tolerated his son who attempted to confute him and to cavil with him. For he remembered well that no man has in his power another man's ruling principle. He wished therefore for nothing else than that which was his own. And what is this? Not that this or that man may act according to nature, ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... was no energy about the poor fellow, unless, perhaps, when he was hunting; but he possessed a readiness which enabled him to lie at a moment's notice with the most perfect ease. Lady Monk did not believe him; but she could not confute him, and therefore ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... maxim is that of necessity. It prevails, 'not that all men know the law, but because it is an excuse which every man will make, and no man can tell how to confute him.' Selden, (as quoted in the 2d edition of Starkie on Slander, Prelim. Disc., p. 140, note.)" Law Magazine, ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... when Defoe issued his Argument showing that a Standing Army, with consent of Parliament, is not inconsistent with a Free Government. He was able to boast in his preface that "if books and writings would not, God be thanked the Parliament would confute" his adversaries. Nevertheless, though coming late in the day, Defoe's pamphlet was widely read, and must have helped to consolidate ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... said Mr. Rylands. "It was Jane who lied about you, and your return with me will confute ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... him, it was given to Mr. Molineux, one of the commissioners of the Admiralty, who engaged in it with no great inclination to favour me; but, however, thought one of the instruments, which, to confirm my own opinion, and to confute Mr. Whiston's, I had exhibited to the Admiralty, so curious or useful, that he surreptitiously copied it on paper, and clandestinely endeavoured to have it imitated by a workman for ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... a sigh of relief. She credited herself with having secured Persis's car very neatly. The man might, perhaps, get into trouble, but she could make that up to him by a generous tip. Her one idea was to contradict and confute the disgraceful announcement at its fountain-head. It was providential that the unknown Lord Chilminster's place was so near; but had it been ten times as far off, Jeannette, boiling with justifiable indignation, and with her mind made up to exact ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... To confute them do I set down these facts of which my knowledge cannot be called in question, and also that you may know the true story of Paola di Santafior—and more particularly that part of it which lies beyond the ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... Plunkett. The lord-chancellor had a difficult task to perform. He was among those who up to this period had earnestly refuted all the pleas of concession which were now brought forward, and he had now to confute all these refutations. As late as last year he had declared his conviction, that emancipation, though accompanied by weighty securities, was pregnant with danger to the constitution and establishment; and he now declared his equally conscientious conviction, that emancipation, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... instances to which objection had been taken on the score of supposed "influence," or of "signalling," were carefully investigated by Krall in order to clear up any implied doubts. For this purpose a blind horse, by name "Bertho," was taken in hand, proof being thus provided to confute the mythical "code of signals" supposed to exist between master and pupil. Other tests undertaken with Bertho were equally successful; Krall was, in fact, always eager and willing to submit every objection brought forward to investigation, evident though it ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... my poor Collection whenever the public taste calls for a new edition. But the original, what would I not give to have it in my hands, to touch the very parchment which came from the press of my revered ancestor, and, gloating on the crabbed letters, confute MacCribb to his face ipso visu et tactu of so inestimable a rarity. Exchanges—or "swaps," as the vulgar call them—are not unknown among our fraternity. Ask what you will for this treasure, to the half of my kingdom: ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... was what I was suspecting to be your notion; yet I would not have you wonder if by-and-by I am found repeating a seemingly plain question; for I ask not in order to confute you, but as I was saying that the argument may proceed consecutively, and that we may not get the habit of anticipating and suspecting the meaning of one another's words; I would have you develope your own views in your own way, whatever may be ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... these rose the old building, partly from a foundation of red rock scarped down to the sea-beach, and partly from the steep green verge of the moat. The trees of the avenue have been already mentioned, and many others rose around of large size,as if to confute the prejudice that timber cannot be raised near to the ocean. Our walkers paused, and looked back upon the castle, as they attained the height of a small knoll, over which lay their homeward road; for it is to be supposed they did not tempt ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... constantly been shifting them, from Paris to London and from London to Paris. In London he set up for a patriot, and engaged seriously in the disputes and parties of the day, and what was very diverting, sat down for a few weeks to study the laws of England in order to confute Blackstone. His rank, to which his birth entitles him, gives him admittance to court, and the extravagancy of his wit and humor serves to divert and please men in high office, and he consequently at times ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... in different directions; it has been constituted by fitting methods, and with dispassionate research, laying aside fanciful hypotheses and systems more or less prompted by a desire to support or confute principles which have no connection with science. We have now in great measure arrived at the fundamental facts whence myth is derived, although, if I do not deceive myself, the ultimate fact, and the cause of this fact, have not yet been ascertained; namely, for ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... thirty-six to forty-eight hours old, had spent its force, and would soon give place to a serene and lucid atmosphere. I believe the Barometer at no time countenanced this augury, which a brief experience sufficed most signally to confute. Before we had passed Coney Island, it was abundantly certain that our freshening breeze hailed directly from Labrador and the icebergs beyond, and had no idea of changing its quarters. By the time we were fairly outside of Sandy Hook, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... fencible persons in the shires on the north side of Forth? Believe it who please we cannot stop our own consciences, and put out our own eyes. Let the rolls of several shires be looked to, and it shall confute that testimony. Nay, are there not more persons not formerly secluded, in all those shires? What meant the levy appointed immediately after Dunbar? Was not 10,000 foot, and 1,400 horse put upon these shires which are not under the power ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... remained of painting and sculpture among us. Even within our own times this deadly hostility to art was not extinct; for when a proposal was made gratuitously to decorate our places of worship by a series of religious pictures, and English artists, in pure devotion to Art, zealous to confute the Continental calumniators, asked only for walls to cover, George the Third highly approved of the plan. The design was put aside, as some had a notion that the cultivation of the fine arts in our naked churches was a return to Catholicism. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... it," again, in his impulsiveness, snapping at the controversial bait, "and I will confute you there ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... darkness where Isabel's own special chairs were, and her own special books, and the two great walnut wardrobes filled with her dresses and wraps? What tragic argument might be there vainly striving to confute the gentle dead? "In God's name, what else could I have done?" For his mother's immutable silence was surely answering him as Isabel in life would never have answered him, and he was beginning to understand how eloquent the dead can be. They cannot stop their eloquence, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... tears; especially when he happened to advert unto the impudence of that hypocrisy which reconciled goodness and villainy, and made it possible for men to be saints and devils both together; whereby religion became ruinous to itself, and faith became instructed to confute and baffle duty. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... There is hardly in English a better example of the blending and conciliation of the two modes of argumentative writing referred to in Bishop Kurd's acute observation, that if your first object is to convince, you cannot use a style too soft and insinuating; if you want to confute, the rougher and more unsparing the better. And the description and characterisation ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... to her, till it was pretty generally understood throughout the mill that Katie Robertson was a thief, who appeared in unbecoming finery bought with ill-gotten gains. The rumor never took sufficient definiteness of shape to reach the girl so that she could confute it and explain its origin. Of course, she was not likely to tell any one in the mill about the finding of the fifty-dollar bill and what had passed between Mr. James Mountjoy and herself, since it was largely to her own credit, nor had he ever thought of mentioning ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Subjects—to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics—upon the divine authority of the holy Scriptures—upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church—upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ—upon ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... League; and it is not possible to get rid of facts such as I have stated, by vague and general complaints, by imputations against parties, imputations against England, or imputations against Government. You must meet them, and confute them, if you can. None will rejoice more than myself if you can attain such an end. But in the meantime they stand, and they stand uncontradicted, in the face of the British House of Commons." The speech in which this tremendous indictment was delivered attracted loud cheers from Liberals and Conservatives ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... hear that?" said the general, appealing to Trudaine. "Have you proofs to confute him? If you ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... that this is a truth which we have great need, my friends, to lay to heart. It is of no great consequence that we should practically confute the impotent old sneer about religion as being a gloomy thing. One does not need to mind much what some people say on that matter. The world would call 'the joy of the Lord' gloom, just as much as it calls 'godly sorrow' gloom. But we are losing for ourselves a power and an energy of which we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... laws of realistic phenomena - are never suspended at the prayers of man. To this conclusion the educated world is now rapidly coming. If, nevertheless, men thoroughly convinced of this still choose to believe in the efficacy of prayer, reason and science are incompetent to confute them. The belief must be tried elsewhere, - it must be transferred to the tribunal of conscience, or to a metaphysical court, in which reason ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... irregularly by twos and threes. "It may be hard—for some while—to make her see the—the necessity. Women fight for their own by instinct—right or wrong, they do not ask themselves. If you reason, they will seize upon any sophistry to confute you—to persuade themselves. Doubtless the instinct comes from God; but to men, sometimes, it ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... man. But not in James Lee's Wife is the top-note of magnanimity more strained than in The Worst of It. Moral gymnastics should not be practised at the expense of others. No one knew that better than Browning, but too often he allowed his subtle intellect to confute his warm, wise heart—too often he fell to the lure of "situation," and forgot the truth. "A man and woman might feel so," he sometimes seems to have said; "it does not matter that no man and woman ever have ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... march of Avison "whilom of Newcastle organist"; and before he has done, the memory masters him, and the pedestrian blank verse breaks into a hymn "rough, rude, robustious, homely heart athrob" to Pym the "man of men." Or he calls up Bernard Mandeville to confute the formidable pessimism of his old friend Carlyle—"whose groan I hear, with guffaw at the end disposing of mock—melancholy." Gerard de Lairesse, whose rococo landscapes had interested him as a boy, he introduces only to typify an outworn way of art—the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... education or knowledge, the more incredulous people are apt to become. Two of the most enterprising travellers of modern days, Bruce and Le Vaillant, were ridiculed and discredited upon their return. Subsequent travellers, who went the same track as the former, with a view to confute, were obliged to corroborate his assertions; and all who have followed the latter have acknowledged the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Clergy, and especially such as were Ministers in the congregation, should (by often reading, and meditation in God's word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth; and further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) might continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... says: "With the fair attitude of mind and influenced only by the student's desire to procure knowledge, this book becomes at once something to fascinate. On every page authoritative facts confute the stereotyped statement ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover. I would entreat the wise and prudent fathers to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... phenomena of religious and social decline to the one head of failing authority, he founds on the state of Protestantism the apology of the Papacy. He abandons to the Protestant theology the destruction of the Protestant Church, and leaves its divines to confute and abjure its principles in detail, and to arrive by the exhaustion of the modes of error, through a painful but honourable process, at the gates of truth; he meets their arguments simply by a chapter of ecclesiastical history, of which experience ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... weather," said Henrietta, surprised at the accurate remembrance, which she could not confute. "She misses the ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... those who mean their destruction. Suppose a Popish king on the throne, will the clergy adhere to passive obedience and non-resistance? If they do, they deliver up their religion to Rome; if they do not, their practice will confute their own doctrines. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... the previous evening they had learned by heart a poem of their great poet, Jacob Catz, and that they were probably on their way to some agricultural convention of which the programme was in their pockets, where with arguments drawn from their modest experience they would confute the propositions of some scientific farmer from Goes or Middelburg. Ludovico Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman, the author of an excellent work on the Netherlands printed in Antwerp in the sixteenth century, says that there was hardly a man or woman in Zealand ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... perished at the St. Bartholomew,' said the cure, fixing his eyes on him, as though to confute ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... commensurate, commiserate, communal, compatibility, compendium, complaisant, comport, composite, compulsive, compulsory, computation, concatenate, concentric, concessive, concomitant, condign, condiment, condolence, confiscatory, confute, congeal, congenital, conglomerate, congruity, connivance, connoisseur, connubial, consensus, consistence, consort, constriction, construe, contentious, context, contiguity, contiguous, contingent, contortion, contravene, contumacious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... "I will not confute thee, Bab, though it be but metely possible," said the lively old lady, laughing. "I came to see the child Clare; but hearing she was hence, I then demanded thee. I will go down to the parsonage anon. I would like well to see Robin, ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... Insects seem to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered: so that the notion that bats go down chimnies and gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down on a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more dispatch than I was aware of; but in a most ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... for describing it with so much modesty and brevity; for with whatever amplifications we might have chosen to decorate the subject, you lay entirely at our mercy, since the Fathers Conscript of our city have decreed that the venerable edifice itself shall not remain in existence to confirm or to confute its." ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... named George Hakewill published in 1627 a folio of six hundred pages to confute "the common error touching Nature's perpetual and universal decay." [Footnote: An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World, consisting in an Examination and Censure of the common Errour, etc. (1627, 1630, 1635).] He and his pedantic book, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... door behind. He locked it. He stepped away from the girl, leaving her standing there. She was a picture to confute slander. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... may be learned not only from the study of the right road in science, but from observing where and how men may go astray. I know, indeed, few more useful exercises for the learner than to examine a few paradoxes, when leisure serves, and to consider how, if left to his own guidance, he would confute them. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... said Annette, with a tragic gesture of the hand, 'hear me. The window of our dressing-room happens—just happens, by God's providence to confute a fool—to command a view of Dr. Laurent's door. I saw you go in; I could even hear you knock. Do you think you can deceive ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... reasonings the phenomena of this river have put mankind to the expense of. Yet there are people so bigoted to antiquity, as not to pay any regard to the relation of travellers who have been upon the spot, and by the evidence of their eyes can confute all that the ancients have written. It was difficult, it was even impossible, to arrive at the source of the Nile by tracing its channel from the mouth; and all who ever attempted it, having been stopped by the cataracts, and imagining ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... with logic absolute Both Standard Oil and Copper can confute; The Sovereign Alchemist that in a trice National Lead can into ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... replied; "depend upon it, no man was ever written down but by himself."' He observed to me afterwards, that the advantages authours derived from attacks, were chiefly in subjects of taste, where you cannot confute, as so much may be said on either side. He told me he did not know who was the authour of the Adventures of a Guinea, but that the bookseller had sent the first volume to him in manuscript, to have his opinion if it should be printed; and he thought ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... have said before, to pit oneself against another's praise and reputation is by no means fitting for a public man: however, in important matters, where mistaken praise is injurious and detrimental, it is not amiss to confute it, or rather to divert the hearer to what is better by showing him the difference between true and false merit. Anyone would be glad, I suppose, when vice was abused and censured, to see most people voluntarily keep aloof from it; but if vice should ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... division of the continuum to infinity. And infinity, that is to say, the accumulation of an infinite number of substances, is, properly speaking, not a whole any more than the infinite number itself, whereof one cannot say whether it is even or uneven. That is just what serves to confute those who make of the world a God, or who think of God as the Soul of the world; for the world or the universe cannot be regarded as an animal or as ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... a great critic, Profoundly skill'd in Analytic; He could distinguish and divide A hair 'twixt south and southwest side; On either side he would dispute, Confute, change hands, and still confute; He'd undertake to prove by force Of argument, a man's no horse; He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a Lord may be an owl; A calf an Alderman, a goose a Justice, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... used to say he had well discerned that nothing could be propounded by human reason and understanding, were it never so wise, cunning, or sharp, but that a man, even out of the selfsame proposition, might be able to confute and overthrow it; but God's Word only stood fast and sure, like a mighty wall which neither can ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... elsewhere in a special work he admits that science as a whole is harmful. He holds that only a few people should have to do with it, in order that the tradition of human knowledge may not perish, and particularly that there may be no want of intellectual athletes to confute the sophisms of the heretics. For all others, grammar, morals, and religious teaching ('litterae sacrae') suffice. Culture and education would thus return wholly into the charge of the monks, and as, in his opinion, the 'most learned ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... could best combat and confute, both by his words and writings, the subtle and deadly heresies which were especially rife there. "False Christs," such as Simon Magus, the first heretic, Menander, Dositheus, and others, no longer troubled the Infant ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... Captain. "But cheer up, Heart; ye're not weighed for the Long Journey yet." Nor had I; for I presently recovered, and in less than a month after my Mishap was again whole and fit for Duty. And I have set this down in order to confute those malignant men who have declared that all my Wounds were from Stripes between the Shoulders; whereas I can show the marks, 1 deg., of an English Grenadier's bayonet; 2 deg., of a Frenchman's sword; 3 deg., ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... to be believed from things not to be believed: in this way knowledge is a gift and is common to all holy persons. The other is a knowledge about matters of belief, whereby one knows not only what one ought to believe, but also how to make the faith known, how to induce others to believe, and confute those who deny the faith. This knowledge is numbered among the gratuitous graces, which are not given to all, but to some. Hence Augustine, after the words quoted, adds: "It is one thing for a man merely to know what he ought to believe, and another to know how to dispense what he ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the University Church on as many Sunday mornings in full term, "between the commencement of the last month in Lent term and the end of the third week in Act term, upon either of the following subjects:—to confirm and establish the Christian faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics; upon the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures; upon the authority of the writings of the primitive fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church; upon the divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; upon the divinity ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... voyage. With her was a girl-twin she had rescued. She had saved both, a boy and girl, but whilst she was absent from the house for a little, the relatives came, and, by false pretences, obtained possession of the boy, and killed him. She was determined that the girl should live and grow up to confute their fears, and she would not incur the risk ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... manifestly that, of course, countless others are also setting to work upon it. It is a research. It is a research exactly like a scientific exploration. Each of us will probably get out a lot of truth and a considerable amount of error; the truth will be the same and the errors will confute and disperse each other. But it is clear that there is no simple panacea in this matter, and that only by intentness and persistence shall we disentangle a general conception of the road the peace-desiring multitude ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the birth, teaching, miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, if the New Testament should be lost. If Paine quotes the New Testament to ridicule it, no man can deny that such a book was in existence at the time he wrote. If he takes the pains to write a book to confute it, it is self-evident that it is in circulation, and possessed of influence. So Celsus' attempt to reply to the Gospels, and his quotations from them, are conclusive proofs that these books were generally circulated and believed, and held to be of authority ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson |
