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Contrariety   Listen
Contrariety

noun
(pl. contrarieties)
1.
The relation between contraries.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Contrariety" Quotes from Famous Books



... that you may be kept spiritual and humble: eminence in God's service is truly desirable, if the heart be kept humble. If the Lord open the eyes to behold more of the extent and spirituality of his law, the holiness and purity of his nature, the evil of sin, and its contrariety to all that is in God; and if he turn the eyes inward to the hidden corruptions of the heart, when it is evident to the soul that all is of grace, then may eminent ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... the people, and the nature of the climate, were less violent than in the other nations which it had visited. A board of health was established, which made a daily report of cases. Concerning the disease, there was great contrariety of opinion among medical men. The main points on which they differed were as to whether the disease was contagious or not; whether it was the Asiatic cholera or a new complaint; whether it was imported ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... fair; So strong a plea does beauty make That, where 'tis seen, discretion's there. If, by a monstrous chance, we learn That this illustrious vaunt's a lie, Our minds, by which the eyes discern, See hideous contrariety. And laugh at Nature's wanton mood, Which, thus a swinish thing to flout, Though haply in its gross way good, Hangs such a jewel in ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... English, by an easy logic, which begins with begging the question, and then moving in a circle, comes round to the point where it began,—each of the two divisions has been made to define the other by a mere reassertion of their assumed contrariety. The physiologist has luminously explained Y plus X by informing us that it is a somewhat that is the antithesis of Y minus X; and if we ask, what then is Y-X? the answer is, the antithesis of YX,—a reciprocation of great service, that may remind us of the twin ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... substance, nor the ridicule of the doctrine of contraries by Paracelsus and Van Helmont, nor the fact that the contraries of Boerhaave, by his own explanation, merely signify whatever substances prove their contrariety to the disease by curing it—to pass by these, we find one of the main objects of homoeopathy, the discovery of specifics, insisted upon by Lord Bacon in his words already quoted. Not that homoeopaths, while they depend upon specifics, believe that there ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... poor, To consult for a cure, Crowd on to his doore in their carts and their carriages, Showin' their tongues Or unlacin' their lungs, For divle one symptom the docther disparages. Troth, an' he'll tumble, For high or for humble, From his warm feather-bed wid no cross contrariety; Makin' as light Of nursin' all night The beggar in rags as ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... for though laughter may come with delight, yet cometh it not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of laughter; but well may one thing breed both together. Nay, in themselves, they have, as it were, a kind of contrariety. For delight we scarcely do, but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves, or to the general nature. Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature: delight hath a joy ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... espoused the cause of the augurs, he combats and defeats his false reasonings with a force, and at the same time with so refined and delicate a raillery, as leaves us nothing to wish; and he demonstrates by proofs, each more convincing than the other, the falsity, contrariety, and impossibility of that art. But what is very surprising, in the midst of all his arguments, he takes occasion to blame the generals and magistrates, who on important conjunctures had contemned the prognostics; and maintains, that the use of them, as great an abuse as it was in his own opinion, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... which do not concern us, instead of those in which we are most deeply interested; we dream of persons to whom we are indifferent, instead of those to whom we are attached. But, in the midst of all this curious and perplexing contrariety, it is remarkable—and may be esteemed a proof of the immateriality of the mind—that we always preserve the consciousness of our own identity. No man dreams that he is a woman, or any other person than himself; we have heard of persons who have ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... who have no teeth:" which ancient Spanish proverb of contrariety comes strongly to mind as I set ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... rind[F] and silver coloured, With little hands and fingers long and small To grace a lute, a viol, virginal. In length each finger doth his next excel, Each richly headed with a pearly shell. Thus every part in contrariety Meet in the whole and make a harmony, As divers strings do singly disagree, But form'd by ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... dream of being in difficulties, denotes that she is threatened with ill health or enemies. For lovers, this is a dream of contrariety, denoting ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... "Hail, Mary"], with the public litany; and at night prayers for the souls in purgatory, usually relating some miracle, which was of great profit to many. Nor need your Reverence think that we lost any time because of the contrariety of the winds at Point Nasso that I mentioned; for orders were despatched to the Pintados Islands by the Indian volunteers, and sent to Othon with the falua [80] by Adjutant Don Francisco Olozaran—who returned in a champan with the father ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... honor; and I could wish, for your own sake, as well as that of others, there was less of contrariety in your character. One cannot ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... particular room, and at a particular hour of a certain day, a man was raised from the dead, in which room, and at the time specified, we, being present and looking on, perceived no such event to have taken place. Here the assertion is contrary to experience properly so called; and this is a contrariety which no evidence can surmount. It matters nothing, whether the fact be of a miraculous nature, or not. But although this be the experience, and the contrariety, which Archbishop Tillotson alleged in the quotation with which Mr. Hume opens his Essay, it is certainly not that experience, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... character for honesty, independence, and industry, that his father had borne before him, to support in credit and comfort the sister whom he loved so well, and one whom he loved still better, formed the safe and humble boundary of his wishes. But with the contrariety with which fortune so often seems to pursue those who do not follow her, his success far outstripped his moderate desires. The neighbouring gentlemen soon discovered his talent. Employment poured in upon him. His taste proved to ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... girl should wish to reflect in solitude upon the grave problem which had been given her for consideration. It would be wiser, too, not to disturb her, but to leave her to herself to reach her own conclusions. Matilde knew that Veronica had considerable gifts of contrariety, and that it would be a mistake to press her too closely for a definite answer. Besides, it was always a tradition in such cases that a young girl should have, in name at least, perfect independence of action, and the ultimate right to refuse ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... Mann. "Some think he is only a machine, and that the only difference between a man and a mill is, that one is carried by blood and the other by water." Says Pascal: "What a chimera is man! what a singular phenomenon! what a chaos! what a scene of contrariety! A judge of all things yet a feeble worm; the shrine of truth, yet a mass of doubt and uncertainty; at once the glory and the scorn of the universe. If he boasts, I lower him; if he lowers himself I raise him; either way I contradict him, till he learns ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... of all he flees the too common contrariety of amusing himself with his thought. Thought is a tool, with its own proper function: it isn't a toy. Let us take an example. Here is the studio of a painter. The implements are all in place: everything indicates that this assemblage of means is arranged with view to an end. Throw ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... of contrariety that never seemed to forsake him, Borrow proceeded to learn, not law but Welsh. When the eyes of authority were on him he transcribed Blackstone, but when they were turned away he read and translated the poems of Ab Gwilym. He performed his tasks "as well as could be expected in one ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... that there was any contrariety between his principles of religious belief and those on which legislation in their case ought to proceed, he said that the only use he could make of these principles was to apply them to the decisive performance of a great and important act, founded on the everlasting ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... The same contrariety of impulse may be perhaps discovered in the motions of men: we are formed for society, not for combination; we are equally unqualified to live in a close connexion with our fellow-beings, and in total separation from them; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... put a spoke in that lass's wheel the which she rolleth toward our Walter: yet this know I, that if you shall give an hint to a young man that he were best not to wed with a certain maid, mine head to a porridge-pot but he shall go and fall o' love with her, out of pure contrariety. Men be such dolts! And, worser yet, they will not be ruled by the women, that have all the ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt

... came into direct collision with those of the more promising demeanour. Persons brimful of secrets, persons pining for affection, persons perishing for lack of help or counsel, he was sure he could perceive on every side; but by some contrariety of fortune, each passed upon his way without remarking the young gentleman, and went farther (surely to fare worse!) in quest of the confidant, the friend, or the adviser. To thousands he must have turned an appealing countenance, and yet not one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his cause and his reputation, that principles fundamentally at variance with those of his book are fundamentally false. What those principles, the antipodes to his, really are, he can only discover from their contrariety. He is very unwilling to suppose that the doctrines of some books lately circulated are the principles of the party; though, from the vehement declarations against his opinions, he is at some loss how to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... contrariety of opinion among the judges on certain points ruled in Prigg's case, but there was none in regard to the great principle, that slavery is limited to the range of the laws under which ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... about the future, as they would do in their earnestness to help us, we can easily see that, being finite as they are, and unable to look into the future, they might involve us in serious mistakes, either by their ignorance, or by the contrariety of their information. Far better is it for man to look only to God, who sees the end from the beginning, with whom is no variableness, and who is able, as our anxious friends would not be, to conceal from us the future, or any information respecting it, which it ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... "Humble or afflict," which are both on one side, cannot be right. "Approveth or maketh sick," are on opposite sides, but will hardly pick one another out for antagonists. "Laugheth or sigheth," has the vividness and simplicity of Chaucer, the most exact contrariety matches them—and the two phenomena cannot be left out of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... physician, baffled by some disease that did not yield to his treatment of bleeding and to his doses of garlic and horses' dung, would suggest that witchcraft was the reason for his failure. In fact, if any contrariety met the path of the ordinary man or woman, he or she immediately thought of the black art, and considered the most likely person for denunciation. This would naturally be the nearest old woman, especially if she had a tang ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... St. Barnabas. As a matter of fact, The Victim of Virtue was up to a very great deal, but its points were so delicate that one must have been educated rather broadly to grasp them, which is again perhaps a foolish contrariety of terms. At all events they carried no appeal to the theatre-goers from the sailing ships in the river or the regiments in the fort, who turned as one than that night to ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... whose portion is in this life,' is for us broken, and we are strangers, scattered abroad, solitary, not by reason of the inevitable loneliness in which, after all love and companionship, every soul lives; not by reason of losses or deaths, but by reason of the contrariety between the foundation of our lives, and the foundation of the lives of the men round us; therefore we stand lonely in the midst of crowds; strangers in the ordered communities of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... back-road to Berkeley, Daylight saw nothing of Dede Mason and her chestnut sorrel. But he had little time for disappointment, for his own chestnut sorrel kept him busy. Bob proved a handful of impishness and contrariety, and he tried out his rider as much as his rider tried him out. All of Daylight's horse knowledge and horse sense was called into play, while Bob, in turn, worked every trick in his lexicon. Discovering that his martingale had more slack ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... respects it stands in singular contrast with Europe. If then the tribes which inhabit a cold country have, generally speaking, more energy than those which are relaxed by the heat, it follows that you will have in Asia two descriptions of people brought together in extreme, sometimes in sudden, contrariety with each other, the strong and the weak. Here then, as some philosophers have argued,[22] you have the secret of the despotisms and the vast empires of which Asia has been the seat; for it always possesses those who are naturally fitted to be tyrants, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman



Words linked to "Contrariety" :   opposition, oppositeness



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