"Contentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lone revellers remain at the pier-table; moody and hectic. Mr. Snivel drops into a sound sleep, his head resting on the marble. Weak-minded, jealous, contentious-with all the attendants natural to one who leads an unsettled life, sits George Mullholland, his elbow resting on the table, and his head poised thoughtfully in his hand. "I will have revenge-sweet revenge; yes, I will have revenge to-night!" ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... victims was greater. The ill results of the accomplished fact was largely due to the condition of religion which existed during the period of emancipation. No society can endure without vital religion, and any revolution effected at a time when religion is moribund or dissipated in contentious fragments, is destined to be evacuated of its ideals and its potential, and to end in disaster. Now the freeing of the slaves of the Renaissance and the post-Reformation, and their absorption in the body politic, was one of the greatest revolutions in history, and it came at a time ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... peace. It furnishes the central idea of the presidential policy for the next four years; indeed, it contains the first statement of that famous "Article X" of the Covenant of the League of Nations which was Mr. Wilson's most important contribution to that contentious document. This was the article which pledges the League "to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence" of all its members; it was the article which, more than any ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... it—as, indeed, he was constantly saying about all his books—that it will serve every reader just according to his constellation, his inclination, his disposition, his complexion, his profession, and his whole condition. 'You will be soon weary of all contentious books,' he wrote to CASPER LINDERN, 'if you entertain and get The Threefold Life of Man into your mind and heart.' 'The subject of regeneration,' says Christopher Walton, 'is the pith and drift of all Behmen's writings, and the student may here ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... The small, contentious, and active communities of Greece; the little, ill-governed, yet vigorous Republics of modern Italy, stand out in the history of mankind bright and illustrious beyond all hope of comparison; and, from ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Fletcher sent out. He was not a sodden imbecile, but he was ill-chosen for his office. He described the New Yorkers of that day as "divided, contentious and impoverished" and immediately began a conflict with them. His attitude may be judged from a passage in his remarks to the assembly soon afterward: "There never was an amendment desired by the council board but ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... obtaining a remission of taxes, and gaining two lawsuits. In every litigation he used the Public Prosecutor's name with such good effect that the matter was carried no further, and, like all undersized men, he was contentious and litigious in business, though in the ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... From contentious people, of all conditions; who are content to waste the greatest part of their own fortunes at law, to be the instruments of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... more probable that this was granted out of a particular respect, and to please Ajax, from whom this tribe received its name; for we know he could not endure to be outdone, but was easily hurried on to the greatest enormities by his contentious and passionate humor; and therefore to comply with him and afford him some comfort in his disasters, they secured him from the most vexing grievance that follows the misfortune of the conquered, by ordering that his tribe should ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... against his will. Now that an action which is voluntary should be done involuntarily is a contradiction; wherefore he who maintains that injustice is involuntary will deem that the unjust does injustice involuntarily. I too admit that all men do injustice involuntarily, and if any contentious or disputatious person says that men are unjust against their will, and yet that many do injustice willingly, I do not agree with him. But, then, how can I avoid being inconsistent with myself, if you, Cleinias, and you, Megillus, say to me—Well, Stranger, if all this be as you say, ...
— Laws • Plato
... to regard you as a guide, but now all this is at an end. Our monarchs in past times were wont to decide matters by specific ordinance, and had no prepared statutes, fearing lest the people should grow contentious. Yet even so it was impossible to suppress wrong-doing; for which reason they employed justice as a preventive, administration to bring things into line, external formality to secure respect, good faith as an abiding ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... however, poor Job who fell in for the lion's share. Alas for him! He often found the words of Solomon to be true: "It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and angry woman" (Prov. xxi. 19). As there was no wilderness into which he could fly to escape the tongue of his dear Jemima, he would fly away into a solitary room, or into the adjoining garden, or ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the spirit which permeated the raison d'etre of each noble lord in that great assembly. After the first wave of enthusiasm had passed, each man began to reflect that the best way, after all, for settling the contentious question of the Headship of the Republic, was to rule every one of the "magnificent six hundred" out of the running; and by taking the line of least resistance plump for the unassuming youths before them—Medici although ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil In the hot throng, where we become the spoil Of our infection, till too late and long We may deplore and struggle with the coil, In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong 'Midst a contentious world, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... it necessary to modify the arrangement by always visiting his friend, whom he usually found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat for the picture of Darsie Latimer, the hero of Redgauntlet,—whence we should suppose him to have been a lively, generous, susceptible, contentious, and rather helter-skelter young man, much alive to the ludicrous in all situations, very eager to see life in all its phases, and somewhat vain of his power of adapting himself equally to all these phases. Scott tells a story ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... goes through wide stretches of country to the sea, it receives greater and more numerous impurities the farther it gets from its source, until, at last, what was, in its rise, a gentle rilling through snows and over whitest stones, roars into the ocean a muddy and contentious river. Men soon long to touch and taste all that they see; savage-like, him whom to-day they deem a god and worship, they on the morrow get an appetite for and kill, to eat and barter. And thus art is degraded, made ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... infallibility. To say the truth, the parson had exercised her more ways than one; and the pious woman had so well edified by her husband's sermons, that she had resolved to receive the bad things of this world together with the good. She had indeed been at first a little contentious; but he had long since got the better; partly by her love for this, partly by her fear of that, partly by her religion, partly by the respect he paid himself, and partly by that which he received ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... these things occur to prevent the harvest of one's actions. The Bible tells us that God will render to every man according to his deeds. "To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil." How careful we should be of our actions in all departments of ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science; it will not require many words to prove, that all mankind have ever agreed in the doctrine of liberty as well as in that of necessity, and that the whole dispute, in this respect ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... rushed by. The first and comparatively non-contentious sections of the Bill passed with a good deal of talk and delay. George spoke once or twice, without expecting to speak, instinctively pleasing Fontenoy where he could. They had now but little direct intercourse. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... think," growled McCoy, who was naturally contentious and quarrelsome; "don't it warm the heart and raise the spirits and strengthen the ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... point Mrs. Transley arose, and the men moved out into the living-room to chat on less contentious subjects. After a time the women joined them, and Grant presently found himself absorbed in conversation with the old rancher's wife. Zen seemed to pay but little attention to him, and for the first time he began to realize what consummate actresses ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... every allowance for the high colours with which a tale that has grown stale is apt to be daubed, I am forced to admit the inference that a mean, sordid, contentious woman probably did as much as was in her power to harass and fret one of the best men in Germany, or in the world. Luckily for himself, Albrecht was a severe student, had much engrossing work which carried him abroad, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... distant, ill-disposed, unfriendly, alienated, cold, estranged, indifferent, unkind, antagonistic, contentious, frigid, inimical, warlike. bellicose, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... well escape the sagacity of M. Neckar, that the mode of 1614 would answer neither the purpose of the then government nor of the nation. As matters were at that time circumstanced it would have been too contentious to agree upon anything. The debates would have been endless upon privileges and exemptions, in which neither the wants of the Government nor the wishes of the nation for a Constitution would have been attended to. But as he ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Lamb, into one body only, where the peace of God rules in every heart. "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." Eph. 2:19. God has a household of saints here upon the earth where peace rules. A contentious, quarrelsome, divided family is no part of God's united household. One family in heaven and earth. Eph. 3:15. It is with great reluctancy that we pass by so many beautiful texts upon this subject, but we will only quote a few more lest this volume swell to too great proportions. ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... good enough!" I went on; to which she opposed a sound almost as contentious as my own had been. This made me, with genuine immediate horror, exclaim: "You haven't influenced her, I hope!" and my emphasis brought back the blood with a rush to poor Adelaide's face. She declared while she blushed—for I had frightened her again—that ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... remain till spring was afterwards granted Williams, but he was admonished not to go about to draw others to his opinions. As Williams was one of those contentious people who must talk, this inhibition was futile. It is true that he no longer preached in his church, as the congregation had submitted to the will of those in power. But he conversed in private with some of his friends, and arranged a plan of establishing ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... toil, Nor is it discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil[jc][316] In the hot throng, where we become the spoil Of our infection, till too late and long We may deplore and struggle with the coil, In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong Midst a contentious world, striving where ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... suddenly selecting little Bond as apparently his most dangerous enemy and scowling at him with great hostility, "if you want to let the religious life of this place, nearly dead already, pass right away, choose a man like Forsyth. But I don't wish to be contentious; there's been contention enough in this place during these last months, and I'm sick and ashamed of the share I've had in it. I won't say more than this—that if you want an honest, God-fearing man here, who lives only for God and is in his most secret chamber as he is before men, then Wistons ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... subtleties of the schools could not please him. That aversion to all scholasticism, which he rejected in one sweeping condemnation, struck root in his mind, which, however broad, always judged unjustly that for which it had no room. 'Those studies can make a man opinionated and contentious; can they make him wise? They exhaust the mind by a certain jejune and barren subtlety, without fertilizing or inspiring it. By their stammering and by the stains of their impure style they disfigure theology which had been enriched and adorned by the eloquence of the ancients. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Marcius. Two other names were announced, to the great mortification of the senators, who felt as if the indignity reflected rather upon themselves than on Marcius. He, for his part, could not bear the affront with any patience. He had always indulged his temper, and had regarded the proud and contentious element of human nature as a sort of nobleness and magnanimity; reason and discipline had not imbued him with that solidity and equanimity which enters so largely into the virtues of the statesman. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the western seas, the Swedes were pushing their crafts across the Baltic and troubling the Slavonian tribes that dwelt upon the eastern shore of that sea. Either by right of conquest or through the invitation of the contentious Slavonian clans, the renowned Scandinavian chieftain Ruric acquired, in the year 862, kingly dignity, and became the founder of the first royal line of Russia, the successive kings of which family gradually consolidated the monarchy which was destined ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... was not my only way; every one told me the Epicureans were sensual and self-indulgent, the Peripatetics avaricious and contentious, the Platonists conceited and vain; about the Stoics, on the contrary, many said they had fortitude and an open mind; he who goes their way, I heard, was the true king and millionaire and wise man, alone and ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the one you want! 'A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentions woman are alike!' I'm not contentious, Solomon!" ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... By all obeyed thus, No storms, heats, colds, no soules contentious, Nor civill war is found; I ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... Contemn malestimi. Contemplate rigardadi. Contemporary samtempa. Contempt malestimo. Contemptible malestima. Contend batali. Content kontentigi. Contentedness kontenteco. Contention kontrauxstaro. Contentious malpacula. Contentment kontenteco. Contents enhavo. Contest disputi. Contest disputo. Continence sindetenemo. Continent (geog.) kontinento. Contingent (milit.) kontingento. Contiguity apudeco. Contiguous apuda. Continue (to last) dauxri. Continue (go on) dauxrigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes |
