"Controversial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dealing with so-called spiritualistic revelations. I might even say, in fact, that I am profoundly sceptical of them all, though to say so may reveal my abysmal ignorance. So be it; my thumbs are crossed. This is not a controversial treatise on spiritualism, and all that appertains thereto. One thing, however, I will say—in my ignorance, of course. Until some of the great thinkers of the world have beaten down the jungle of facts beyond our ken, and made a track—be ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... he studied minutely both the text and the authorities of Gibbon, for whom he had a deep and growing admiration. An excellent edition of Gibbon was one of the first results. Milman's notes have been included in Smith's later edition, and, though a large proportion of them were naturally somewhat controversial, being devoted to refuting some of the conclusions of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, it is impossible to read them without recognising the candour as well as the learning and the acumen of the critic. Few things that Milman has written are finer than ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... have been so seriously and persistently discussed as in New England in the colonial period. The long sermons of the clergymen were usually learned and elaborate arguments of doctrinal points, bristling with quotations from the Bible, or from famous books of controversial divinity, and in the long winter evenings the questions thus raised afforded the occasion for lively debate in every household. The clergy were, as a rule, men of learning, able to read both Old and New Testaments in ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... to St. Ambrose's with the greatest energy, and perhaps somewhat less judgment than if Mr. Dutton had been at hand. Being without natural taste for intellectual pursuits, unless drawn into them by his surroundings, he had dropped them entirely, and read nothing but the ephemeral controversial literature of his party, and not much of that, for he was teaching, preaching, exhorting, throughout his spare time; while the vicar was in too great need of help to insist on deepening the source from which his zealous assistant ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on as to whether the Son were of the 'same substance' (homo-ousion) or 'similar substance' (homoi-ousion) with the Father. The latter view was held by Arius and his party at the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325. Athanasius held the former view, which in time, but only after many years of controversial strife and actual warfare, became established as orthodox. The Arians regarded the Son, as a subordinate being, though still divine. Another variety of opinion was put forth by Sabellius (c. 250 A.D.), who took the different Persons to be so many diverse modes or manifestations of the One God. ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... The controversial literature of this period is not pleasant reading. The socialists and anarchists were literally at each other's throats, and the spirit of malignity that actuated many of their assaults upon each other is revolting to those of to-day who cannot appreciate the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... books, old plays, pamphlets, manuscript records, and catalogues of that age, but also from the fallacious and unsatisfactory nature of the facts and assumptions on which the evidence rests. In that age, when the press was chiefly occupied with controversial or practical divinity,—when the law, the Church, and the State engrossed all honour and respectability,—when a degree of disgrace, levior quaedam infamiae macula, was attached to the publication of poetry, and even to have sported with ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... that the weather, or the ferule's stings, Colds in the head, or fifty other things, Transformed the helpless Hebrew thrice a week To guttural Pequot or resounding Greek, The vibrant accent skipping here and there, Just as it pleased invention or despair; No controversial Hebraist was the Dame; With or without the points pleased her the same; If any tyro found a name too tough. And looked at her, pride furnished skill enough; She nerved her larynx for the desperate thing, And cleared the five-barred syllables at ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... both, and confine myself in this letter to the decency, the utility, and the necessity of scrupulously preserving the appearances of both. When I say the appearances of religion, I do not mean that you should talk or act like a missionary or an enthusiast, nor that you should take up a controversial cudgel against whoever attacks the sect you are of; this would be both useless and unbecoming your age; but I mean that you should by no means seem to approve, encourage, or applaud, those libertine notions, which strike at religions equally, and which are the poor threadbare ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... sons of mine, I do not hear the sounds I used to hear formerly. That great bowman, viz., the son of Drona, who was the refuge of my sons, upon him Brahmanas and Kshatriyas and Vaisyas, and a large number of disciples used to wait, who took pleasure day and night in controversial disputations, in talk, in conversation, in the stirring music of diverse instruments, and in various kinds of delightful songs, who was worshipped by many persons among the Kurus, the Pandavas, and the Satwatas, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... passed the fifteen years yet remaining to him. Death surprised him at last, at Leyden, in the year 1598, while steadily laboring upon his Flemish translation of the Old Testament, and upon the great political, theological, controversial, and satirical work on the differences of religion, which remains the most stately, though unfinished, monument of his literary genius. At the age of sixty he went at last to the repose which he had denied to himself on earth. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... they were before the prevalence of this verbal decorum. This hysterical horror of poor Pope's not very well ascertained, and never fully proved amours (for even Cibber owns that he prevented the somewhat perilous adventure in which Pope was embarking) sounds very virtuous in a controversial pamphlet; but all men of the world who know what life is, or at least what it was to them in their youth, must laugh at such a ludicrous foundation of the charge of "a libertine sort of love;" while the more serious will look upon those who bring forward such charges ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... numbers are concerned, I believe our clergymen, when called on to make a showing, have never had occasion to blush, if comparisons were drawn between the free and slave States. And although our presses do not teem with controversial pamphlets, nor our pulpits shake with excommunicating thunders, the daily walk of our religious communicants furnishes, apparently, as little food for gossip as is to be found in most other regions. It may be regarded as a mark of our want of excitability—though that ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... however, he expressed the fear that the bold statement which Flacius had retained, "Sin is substance," would be dangerously misinterpreted. (Preger 2, 327.) And before long a storm was brewing, in which animosity registered its highest point, and a veritable flood of controversial literature (one publication following the other in rapid succession) was poured out upon the Church, which was already distracted and divided by numerous ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... but his Love's Labour Lost, and Titus Andronicus. Politics and abuse have totally corrupted our taste. Nobody thinks of writing a line that is to last beyond the next fortnight. We might as well be given up to a controversial divinity, The times put me in mind of the Constantinopolitan empire; where, in an age of learning, the subtlest wits of Greece contrived to leave nothing behind them, but the memory of their follies and acrimony. Milton did not write ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... them is learned the secret of his influence upon the Western world. The literary activity of Augustine was especially developed in connection with the prolonged controversies, in which he was engaged throughout his episcopate (see 83, 84), but he wrote much in addition to controversial treatises. The group of characteristic doctrines known as "Augustinianism," viz.: Original Sin, Predestination, and Grace and the doctrines connected with them, were, to a large extent, the outcome of his own religious experience. He had known the power and depth of sin. He had discovered the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... were called Herrnhuters, of which he became one of the leaders and chief apostles, labouring far and wide in the propagation of their doctrines and suffering no small persecution by the way; he was an earnest man, the author of religious writings, controversial and devotional; wrote a number of hymns, and died at Herrnhut, from which he was driven forth, but to which he was allowed to return before ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... religious education in elementary schools has long been the centre of a perfect whirlpool of controversial talk. The greater part of this talk is, to speak plainly, blatant cant. Every candidate for a seat in the House of Commons thinks it incumbent upon him to say something about religious education, but not one in a hundred of them has ever been present ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... not within the province of this work to deal in matters of controversial sort, especially with those that may have affected the religious features of the Mormon settlement but there may be mention of a few of the difficulties that came to the people of St. Johns in ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... depend for their support on readers who prefer that classical language to the vulgar dialects. There is The Pandit, published at Benares, containing not only editions of ancient texts, but treatises on modern subjects, reviews of books published in England, and controversial articles, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... suitable for high-school and college classes in history or civics, and for the general reader. The first book on reconstruction, written in a candid, non-controversial ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... new constitution contained the main features which were needed to secure reinstatement of Virginia's sovereignty. In addition, however, it contained a controversial provision which, in effect, disenfranchised thousands who had served the Confederacy. Thus, the choice offered in the impending ratification referendum was difficult for most Virginians. So controversial was this matter ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... try to take his part in the conversation and neither speak too seldom nor too little. It is not "good form" for two guests to converse privately among themselves, nor for anybody to dwell on unpleasant or controversial topics. Aristophanes has laid down after his way the proper kind of things to talk about.[*] "[Such as]'how Ephudion fought a fine pancratium with Ascondas though old and gray headed, but showing great form and ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... entirely hospitable to me now, for my tales of the Indian and the miner had created a friendlier spirit among their readers. My later themes were, happily, quite outside the controversial belt. Concerned less with the hopeless drudgery, and more with the epic side of western life, I found myself almost popular. My critics, once off their guard, were able to praise, cautiously it is true, but to praise. Some of them assured me with paternal ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... in the leading coffee house of Ispahan, appointed a mollah—an ecclesiastical teacher and expounder of the law—to sit there daily to entertain the frequenters of the place with nicely turned points of history, law, and poetry. Being a man of wisdom and great tact, he avoided controversial questions of state; and so politics were kept in the background. He proved a welcome visitor, and was made much of by the guests. This example was generally followed, and as a result disturbances were rare in the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... from ham to ham Stirring the water in his bath. The masters of the subtle schools Are controversial, polymath. ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... itself an ample enough subject to occupy their powerful imaginations. They were enacting a kind of sacred epic, the dangers and the dignity and exaltation of which they felt most fervently. The Bible, the Bay Psalm Book, Bunyan, and Milton, the poems of George Wither, Baxter's Saint's Rest, and some controversial pamphlets, would suffice to appease whatever yearnings the immense experiment of their lives failed to satisfy. Gradually, of course, the native press and new-comers from England multiplied books in a community which ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... there is nothing to be said by the unbeliever to this, the attestation of the Christian consciousness to the truth of the truths which it has tried. 'Whether this man be a sinner or no, I know not.' You may jangle as much as you like about the questionable and controversial points that surround the Christian revelation, I do not care in the present connection what answer you give to them. 'Whether this man be a sinner or no, I know not. One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.' And we may push the war into the enemy's quarters, and say: 'Why! herein ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... moral earnestness and the use of a cultivated rhetorical style, his works formed a model for Latin theologians as long as that language continued to be habitually used by Western scholars; and to-day both the spirit and the style of the great man have a wide influence on the devotional and the controversial style of writers on ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... with a mind so spiritual as that of his wife, the special sympathies and differences which were elicited by it, may have quickened his religious imagination, while directing it towards doctrinal or controversial issues which it had not ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... satirist, will outlive all shots with his gray-goose shaft; for it shines with the gleam of tempered steel. An exactness of knowledge that defines all its landmarks, how is it master of the situation. A precision of speech, born of clear thinking, what controversial battlefields of sulphurous smoke and scattering fire might it prevent. He has been called a public benefactor who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before. He is as great a benefactor, who in an age of verbiage makes one word perform the function ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... natural springs. Highlands Water Project - a series of dams constructed jointly by Lesotho and South Africa to redirect Lesotho's abundant water supply into a rapidly growing area in South Africa; while it is the largest infrastructure project in southern Africa, it is also the most costly and controversial; objections to the project include claims that it forces people from their homes, submerges farmlands, and squanders economic resources. Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) - represents the 145,000 Inuits of Russia, Alaska, Canada, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... made by heretics, in the form of dictionaries, concordances, etc., are to be prohibited until they have been purged and revised by censors of the press. The same regulation extends to polemical and controversial works touching on matters of doctrine in dispute between Catholics and Protestants. Next follow regulations concerning books containing lascivious or obscene matter, which are to be rigidly suppressed. Exception is made in favor ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... said I expected anyone to know?" But in spite of his controversial method, he did not go away to give this message; and evidently wanted a helping hand, or at ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... when any one believes in any argument as true without being skilled in the art of reasoning, and then shortly afterward it appears to him to be false, at one time being so and at another time not, and so on with one after another,[34] and especially they who devote themselves to controversial arguments, you are aware, at length think they have become very wise and have alone discovered that there is nothing sound and stable either in things or reasonings but that all things that exist, as is the case with the Euripus, are in a constant state of flux and reflux, and never continue in ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... relation to contemporary philosophy. Above all, we have not got an exact knowledge of the Hellenistic philosophical terminologies in their development up to the fourth century. I have keenly felt this want, which can only be remedied by well-directed common labour. I have made a plentiful use of the controversial treatise of Celsus against Christianity, of which little use has hitherto been made for the history of dogma. On the other hand, except in a few cases, I have deemed it inadmissible to adduce parallel passages, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... somewhat controversial at times, were nevertheless cordial and sympathetic. In "My Life" he tells of his first visit, and the impression left upon his mind by their conversation. It occurred somewhere about 1862-3, shortly after he and Bates had read, and been greatly impressed by, Spencer's "First Principles." "Our ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... ills, feeble health has its compensations, especially for those who unite restless vanity and ambition to a feminine desire for sympathy. It has been much the habit of Mr. Stephens to date controversial epistles from "a sick chamber," as do ladies in a delicate situation. A diplomatist of the last century, the Chevalier D'Eon, by usurping the privileges of the opposite sex, inspired grave ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... this book by mentioning the literary controversial part chiefly to be found in Chapter IV, but cropping up elsewhere. It refers to interpolations made in the authorised translation of Krause's "Life of Erasmus Darwin." Only one side is presented; ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... obeying its own instincts, he perhaps reduced the following his instincts too much to a system, mistook his own resentments for the promptings of his natural genius, and, compelling principle to the measure of his own temperament or even of the controversial exigency of the moment, fell sometimes into the error of making naturalness itself artificial. If a poet resolve to be original, it will end commonly in ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... particular suffers, at the door of this training. His painful elaboration of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, his insistence upon the dialectic, and his continual use of the Hegelian philosophical expressions are due to his earlier controversial experiences. Still, on the other hand, his patient investigation of actual facts, his insistence on the value of positive knowledge as compared with abstract theory, and his diligent and persistent use of ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... the decalogue. A great library easily begets affection, which may deepen into love; but devotion and awe are plants hard to rear in our harsh climate; besides, can it be well denied that there is something in a huge collection of the ancient learning, of mediaeval folios, of controversial pamphlets, and in the thick black dust these things so woefully collect, provocative of listlessness and enervation and of a certain Solomonic dissatisfaction? The two writers of modern times, both pre-eminently sympathetic towards the past, who have best described this somewhat ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... social life of various European peoples—a series long needed and sure to receive a warm welcome. Her style is frank, vivacious, entertaining, captivating, just the kind for a book which is not at all statistical, political, or controversial. A special excellence of her book, reminding one of Mr. Whiteing's, lies in her continual contrast of the English and the French, and she thus sums up her praises: 'The English are admirable: the French are ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... been less in earnest he would have been grotesque. As it was, Sharlee was by no means sure that he escaped it; and she could not keep a controversial note out of her voice ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to a little village in the West, I paid the usual visit to the place, and requested a free expression of views as to the suitability of the books that had been given. One venerable old native, with eyes of fire, called out: "This Paisley Library has one fatal lack: it contains no works on controversial divinity." I ventured to hint that perhaps the omission was intentional, but that he absolutely refused ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... against Spain under Raleigh, and went on the 'Islands Voyage'; later on, at different periods, he travelled over many parts of the Continent, with rich patrons or on diplomatic offices. Born a Catholic, he became a Protestant, deliberately enough; wrote books on controversial subjects, against his old party, before he had taken orders in the Church of England; besides a strange, morbid speculation on the innocence of suicide. He used his lawyer's training for dubious enough purposes, advising the Earl ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... gathered that, in the opinion of the servants' hall, Theresa's offence was rank, it stank to heaven. She therefore, being covetous of continued contentment, turned the conversation to less controversial subjects; and, after passing notice of the fair weather, the brightness of the geraniums and kindred trivialities, successfully incited Mary to talk of Brockhurst, Sir Richard Calmady's famous place in the north of the county, where—prior to his retirement ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... long walk, the other had had two full services, a baptism, and a funeral. The armistice continued a good quarter of an hour, which Charles and Willis spent in easy conversation; till Bateman, who had been priming himself the while with his controversial points, found himself ready for the assault, and opened it ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... the conscience of the Parson. The first idea that then occurred to him was the proper and professional one—viz., the conversion of Dr. Riccabocca. He hastened to his study, took down from his shelves long neglected volumes of controversial divinity, armed himself with an arsenal of authorities, arguments, and texts; then, seizing the shovel-hat, posted ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... These great sacrifices, whether called for or not, argue a great strength in the religious principle at that era. Yet the decay of external religion towards the close of that century is proved incontestably. We ourselves are inclined to charge this upon two causes; first, that the times were controversial and usually it happens—that, where too much energy is carried into the controversies or intellectual part of religion, a very diminished fervour attends the culture of its moral and practical part. This was perhaps one reason; for the dispute with the Papal church, partly, perhaps, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... of a more or less controversial character, on this work, have appeared since the publication of the second edition; and Dr. Whewell has lately published a reply to those parts of it in which some of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... fact that these particular arguments always dealt with the inconsistencies and difficulties of ecclesiastical institutions revealed their origin. The fact was that at this time Hugh was accustomed to assert with much emphasis some extremely provocative and controversial position. He was markedly scornful of Anglican faults and mannerisms, and behaved both then and later as if no Anglicans could have any real and vital belief in their principles, but must be secretly ashamed ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the Penitentiary, putting his toothpick into the last of his back teeth, "are no doubt more inclined to controversial studies. An excellent idea has just occurred to me, Senor Don Jose; you ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... right," said the MARKISS; "if there's one thing the Heligolanders have been pining for since date of their birth, it is for union with Germany. If we'd only been generous, we ought to have gratified their desire long ago. I don't wish to touch on controversial matters, but I must say if the Government, of which my noble friend was an ornament, had, when in office, only ceded Heligoland to Germany, they would have deserved well of their country, and might have been assured of the enthusiastic support of noble Lords on this side of the House, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... Athanasius, is perhaps the most important of all these biographies; because first, Antony was generally held to be the first great example and preacher of the hermit life; because next, Athanasius, his biographer, having by his controversial writings established the orthodox faith as it is now held alike by Romanists, Greeks, and Protestants, did, by his publication of the life of Antony, establish the hermit life as the ideal (in his opinion) of Christian excellence; and lastly, because that biography exercised ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... And, so far, the difference is rather in the process than the conclusion. Newman believes in God on the testimony of an inner voice, so conclusive and imperative that he can dismiss all apparently contradictory facts, and even afford, for controversial purposes, to exaggerate them. Fitzjames, as a sound believer in Mill's logic, makes the facts the base of his whole argumentative structure, though he thinks that the evidence for a benevolent Deity is much stronger ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the United Kingdom into one; but I believe that if she were here now, and saw the changes that the past eighteen months have brought to Ireland, she would be quick to welcome the hope that Irish politics are lifting at last out of the controversial rut of centuries, and that although it has been said of East and West that "never the two shall meet," North and South will yet prove that in Ireland it is always ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... repugnant to his whole view of life and history. And if able advocacy of this determinist view of society for at least the past five generations has not carried general conviction, why raise so controversial a suggestion, in the guise too of a method professing to harmonise all comers? Yet this is advisedly done; and as no one will deny some civil importance to geographical factors, let patience be granted to examine this aspect of the city's map and shield, and to get from it what it can teach, ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... 1622, at a time when, says Sir Erskine May (in his 'Constitutional History of England', 1760-1860), 'political discussion was silenced by the licenser, the Star Chamber, the dungeon, the pillory, mutilation, and branding.' The contest between King and Commons afterwards developed the free controversial use of tracts and newspapers, but the Parliament was not more tolerant than the king, and against the narrow spirit of his time Milton rose to his utmost height, fashioning after the masterpiece of an old Greek orator who sought to stir the blood of the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... verse, the reading requires first to be established. Instead of the reading [Hebrew: iqrav] which is found in the text, and which is the third pers. Sing. with the Suffix, several MSS. (compare De Rossi), have the third pers. Plur. [Hebrew: iqrav]. Several controversial writers, such as Raim. Martini, Pug. Fid. p. 517, and Galatinus, iii. 9, p. 126, (The Jews of our time assert that here Jeremiah did not say "they shall call," [Hebrew: iqrav], as we read it, but "he shall call him," [Hebrew: iqrav]; and they declare this ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... "Works" (London, 1649) are in the Library, was born at Cambridge, became rector of St. Peter Hungate, Norwich, in 1636, and afterwards settled at Yarmouth. John Collinges, a Presbyterian, who came to Norwich in 1646, published controversial and devotional tracts and sermons. He is only represented by "A Short Discourse against Transubstantiation" (London, 1675), and "On the Intercourse of Divine Love" (1676), but the Local Collection of the Public Library contains many of his writings. "The Notion of Schism" (London, 1676) is ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... citizens do at least so far love freedom as to like to have their hands free. It might be suggested, on the other hand, that they keep their hands for the handles of many machines. And that the hand on a handle is less free than the hand on a stick or even a tool. But these again are controversial questions and I am only noting ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... furnish their shelves with the current literature of the day, without much scrutiny or nicety of discrimination. Throughout this ample realm Edward was permitted to roam at large. His tutor had his own studies; and church politics and controversial divinity, together with a love of learned ease, though they did not withdraw his attention at stated times from the progress of his patron's presumptive heir, induced him readily to grasp at any apology for not extending a strict and regulated survey towards his ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... which is practised by the many, will have just the opposite effect upon him; and as he grows older, instead of turning philosopher, he will come to hate philosophy. I would recommend you, therefore, as I said before, not to encourage yourself in this polemical and controversial temper, but to find out, in a friendly and congenial spirit, what we really mean when we say that all things are in motion, and that to every individual and state what appears, is. In this manner you will consider whether knowledge ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... years; a year a period of 360 years. The air means "church and state;" waters, "peoples, multitudes, tongues;" seven, the number of perfection; twelve, totality or all; hail storms, armies of northern invaders. If the work were divested of its controversial character, it would produce more effect. Agreeably to this author, the downfall of Popery will take place about ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... produced entirely by his absence. Anxious as he was to return, he did not find an opportunity till 1699; the interval was chiefly employed in religious travel through England and Ireland, and in the labor of controversial writing, from which he seldom had a long respite. His course as a philanthropist on his return to America is honorably marked by an endeavor to ameliorate the condition of Negro slaves. The society of Quakers in Pennsylvania had already come ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... if you, my dear young friend, were pouring, till the crack of doom, every kind of human light—philosophical, dogmatic, controversial—upon the retina of the soul without the optic nerve of faith, you will be blind, and go ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... your readers oblige me with the name of the author of a controversial sermon, entitled Whigs no Christians, preached at London, on the anniversary of the martyrdom of King Charles, in 1712-13, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... possible to understand certain recently published passages (Ibid., vol. iii. page 798) I have either partially or wholly again fallen into error. It is consolatory to me that others find Professor Owen's controversial writings as difficult to understand and to reconcile with each other, as I do. As far as the mere enunciation of the principle of natural selection is concerned, it is quite immaterial whether or not Professor Owen preceded me, for both of us, as shown in this historical sketch, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... proceeding?—some sentence easily handled, some commonplace of the moralist, some copybook maxim, I care not what. 'Contentment breeds Happiness'—That is a proposition with which you can hardly quarrel; sententious, sedate, obviously true; provoking delirious advocacy as little as controversial heat; in short a very fair touchstone. Now hear how the lyric treats it, in ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... stubborn sort of a creature, a lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this means it lies in the power of every fine woman to secure at least half-a-dozen able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. The female world are likewise indispensably necessary in the best causes to manage the controversial part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to refute them. Arguments out of a pretty ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... and he will be able to visualise the whole "blunderbuss" very clearly by the help of the illustrations of Mr. ERNEST BLAIKLEY, of the late Lieut. B. HEAD, and of the camera. There is undoubtedly much controversial matter in the book, which must necessarily give rise to the most remarkable gun-room discussions. I can well imagine some stout-hearted Colonel, prompted by his love for the plain soldier-man and his rooted dislike of all "specialists," becoming very heated in the small hours of the morning about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... feared: hurting or distressing his friends. This was especially a danger for one, so many of whose friends were also his opponents in politics or religion: and who was now editing a paper of so controversial a character. With H. G. Wells he had a real bond of affection, and an interesting correspondence with and about him illustrates all Gilbert's qualities; consideration for his subordinates: for his friendships; concern for the integrity of his paper: ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... tract and his poem see the writer's article, "The Conclusion of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel" in the Huntington Library Quarterly, X (1946-7), 69-82.) In addition to its historical interest Dryden's tract is a fine specimen of his masculine, vigorous style so well suited to controversial writing. ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden
... nor even an early Greek Bible or Testament! What struck me, on the score of rarity, as most deserving of being secured, were some little scarce grammatical and philological pieces, by the French scholars of the early part of the sixteenth century; and some controversial tracts ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... references to the sources of Dutch institutions. Douglas Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England, and America (2 vols., 1892), is a vivacious work including much description of conditions in Holland and England during this period. It is, however, written in a spirit of controversial exaggeration which reduces its historical value to small proportions. The long and valuable paper "William Usselinx," by J. P. Jameson (American Historical Society, Papers, II., 1888), contains much ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... The origin of the renal organ and duct has very considerable controversial interest.* In Figure 13, Sheet 22, a diagrammatic cross-section, of an embryo is shown. I. is the intestine, coe. the coelom, s.c. the spinal cord; n.c. the notochord, surrounded by n.s., the notochordal sheath, ao. is the dorsal ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... family, he spent the years which remained to him in a graceful old age. To the last his mind remained alert and active. He busied himself with the classical and theological studies which had been the delight of his young manhood, and the relaxation of his active years. His translations, his controversial pamphlets, his letters on public questions, showed the refinement and vigor of his remarkable intellect. When he died the English-speaking world paid a universal tribute of ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... with quite another sort of clergyman—the Rev. Amos Barton, who did not come to Shepperton until long after Mr. Gilfil had departed this life—until after an interval in which Evangelicalism and the Catholic Question had begun to agitate the rustic mind with controversial debates. A Popish blacksmith had produced a strong Protestant reaction by declaring that, as soon as the Emancipation Bill was passed, he should do a great stroke of business in gridirons; and the disinclination of the Shepperton parishioners generally to dim the unique glory ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... service being held in a barn-like room, which on weekdays serves for school, and is capable of accommodating a thousand children. No money has been expended in architectural embellishment, and no question of a controversial character is likely to arise in connection with accessories in the shape of altar, surplice, or candles. The Ragged Church avoids these stumbling-blocks by the simple expedient of doing without candles, surplices, or altar. It does not even boast a pulpit, but draws the line so as ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... applied beyond nominal history,—to the geological data on the ancient rock,—the handwriting of the ages upon race, costume, language,—the incidental, but genuine history innate in all true literature, vivid elements whereof live in passages of Milton's controversial writings, in Petrarch's sonnets, De Foe's fictions, our Revolutionary correspondence, South's sermons, Swift's diaries, Burke's speeches, French memoirs, Walpole's letters, in the poems, plays, and epistles of the past, and every fact and person which society ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... liked), 'Let us calculate.'" This optimism has now appeared to be somewhat excessive; there still are problems whose solution is doubtful, and disputes which calculation cannot decide. But over an enormous field of what was formerly controversial, Leibniz's dream has become sober fact. In the whole philosophy of mathematics, which used to be at least as full of doubt as any other part of philosophy, order and certainty have replaced the confusion and hesitation which formerly ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... though he had been lax in his interest during early manhood. This was one of the matters which he had expected marriage to correct, and he had taken up again, not merely with resignation but complacency, the custom of attending service regularly. Dr. White had been a controversial Methodist, but since his wife's death, and especially since the war, he had abstained from religious observances, and had argued himself somewhat far afield from the fold of orthodox belief. Consequently Selma, though she attended church at Westfield when her father's ailments did not require her ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... question, ventilate a question, torture a question; take up a side, take up a case. contend, take one's stand upon, insist, lay stress on; infer &c 480. follow from &c (demonstration) 478. Adj. reasoning &c v.; rationalistic; argumentative, controversial, dialectic, polemical; discursory^, discursive; disputatious; Aristotelian^, eristic^, eristical^. debatable, controvertible. logical; relevant &c 23. Adv. for, because, hence, whence, seeing that, since, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to an edict for the destruction of Tyndale's English bible, with all the controversial works on both sides of which it had been the fertile parent, an injunction that "the kingdom should be purged and cleansed of all religious plays, interludes, rhymes, ballads, and songs, which are equally pestiferous and noisome ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the author's controversial methods, take his observations on my alleged attempt to account for the metamorphosis of Daphne into a laurel tree. When I read these remarks (i. p. 4) I said, 'Mr. Max Muller vanquishes me there,' for he gave no reference to my statement. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... as were his hearers. There was no agnosticism in his congregation, for he laid down the law and the gospel in a way that discouraged theological speculation. Nevertheless, among his followers there were controversial spirits who never doubted that they were right, however much they might question his ecclesiastical methods and views. To many, freedom meant the right to have their say, and, as is often true, those having the least weighty matter on their ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... unpleasant to present this subject on controversial and sectarian grounds. Let those people—and they are numerous—who believe in the divine right of bishops, enjoy their opinion; it is not for me to assail them. Let any party in the Church universal advocate the divine institution ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... accompany him to that town to see what they can discover, and he retails a good deal of lively scandal about the rope-maker's sons. "Have with you" is perhaps the smartest and is certainly the most readable of Nash's controversial volumes. It gives us, too, some interesting fragments of autobiography. Harvey had accused him of "prostituting his pen like a courtisan," and Nash makes this curious and not very ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... was a subject of distaste at best—more likely revulsion—to the vast majority of the reading public? Perhaps the nature of the novel itself led him to consider publishing it anonymously, although we know he was not averse to controversial subjects. In his first book, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, which he thought had the best plot of all his novels, the principal female character is seduced by a scoundrel and dies giving ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... on at page 82 in the date of Arnobius and Lactantius, I said that I had not "admitted any actual interference with known facts without notice," questions of religious controversy, when I said it, not even coming into my thoughts. I did not consider my Tale to be in any sense controversial, but to be specially addressed to Catholic ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... ground for my embarrassment regarding my position. She talked for a while of South Africa, and the life she had lived there prior to her father's death; but she touched no topic which contained any controversial element. It seemed her aunt, a sister of her father's, had accompanied her to England, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... to be beaten, but desirous of giving word for word, summoned to their aid the Rev. Jeremie Ferrier, of Alais, who at the moment was regarded as the most eloquent preacher they had. Needless to say, Alais was situated in the mountains, that inexhaustible source of Huguenot eloquence. At once the controversial spirit was aroused; it did not as yet amount to war, but still less could it be called peace: people were no longer assassinated, but they were anathematised; the body was safe, but the soul was consigned to damnation: the days as they passed were used by both sides to keep ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all controversial matter has been omitted as irrelevant to a work intended as a handbook for either ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... begin truly to see the man, and to discover the sort of ability on which the success of his closetings depended. We find Baillie holding, in his simplicity, that in order to draw the heart of the King from Episcopacy, nothing more could be necessary than just fairly to submit to him some sound controversial work, arranged on the plan of the good man's own Ladensium; and urging on Sharpe, that a few able divines should be employed in getting up a compilation for the express purpose. Sharpe writes in return, in a style sufficiently quiet, that His Majesty, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... By which to adjust their unhappy relations. With this object in view, it occurred to Buccleuch That a great deal of mutual good would accrue If they settled that he and Lord Scroop's nominee Should meet once a year, and between them agree To arbitrate all controversial cases And grant an award on an equable basis. A brilliant idea that promised to be a Corrective, if not a complete panacea— For it really appears that for several years, These fines of 'poll'd Angus' and Galloway steers Did greatly conduce, during seasons of truce, To abating ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... you've found your way to St. Teresa's. We don't often get such a strong contingent from the other side." By "the other side" Mr. Reed meant Middlesex, but to Audrey the phrase was insidiously controversial. She determined to take her ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... seems to have bestowed a certain amount of labour on portraits painted by other men, in order to bring them into harmony with the collection that Philip was making. It is difficult to deal with this matter within limited space because the details are distinctly controversial, but it is as well to remember that some of the portraits attributed to Velazquez in the Prado Gallery are of people who were dead before Velazquez was painting, so they could not have sat for him; and in the days of Philip ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... most valuable of the conquests it has retained were already made; and the period of its reverses had not begun. The great division which aided Catholicism afterwards to recover so much lost ground was not openly confessed; and the effectual unity of the Reformed Churches was not yet dissolved. In controversial theology the defence was weaker than the attack. The works to which the Reformation owed its popularity and system were in the hands of thousands, while the best authors of the Catholic restoration ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... England and was employed by Cranmer in connection with the 1st Liturgy of Edward VI. Returning to Leipsic he passed the remainder of his days in peace and honour, and was twice elected Rector of the University. His writings were both exegetical and controversial, but chiefly the latter. They include Expositio Libri Psalmorum Davidis (1550). His controversial works refer to such subjects as the translation of the Bible into ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... thus read consisted of two parts,—the text, and the "glosses" or comments. A glance at the selection on page 60 will reveal the nature of the latter: they were summaries, explanations, controversial notes, and cross-references, written by more or less learned scholars, in the margin of the text. In the course of generations the mass of glosses became so great as fairly to smother the original work. The selection just referred ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... Annals; these works were 15 in number, namely 1. Historia Disceptativa de Avaritia; 2. Two books of Historiae Convivales; 3. An essay De Nobilitate; 4. Ruinarum Urbis Romae Descriptio; 5. A treatise De Humanae Conditionis Miseria; 6. Controversial Writings; 7. Funeral Orations; 8. Epistles; 9. Fables; 10. Facetiae; 11. A Dialogue De Infelicitate Principum; 12. Another entitled "An Seni sit Uxor ducenda"? first published in Liverpool in 1807, and edited by the Rev. William Shepherd; 13. Four books De Varietate Fortunae first published ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... of observation; That accordingly, his philosophy seems made up of scraps from several conflicting metaphysical systems—All this is literally and amply borne out by the many inconsistencies and contradictions which Mr Mill has brought to view in the preceding chapters. It would appear that the controversial disposition was powerful with Sir W. Hamilton, and that a present impulse of that sort (as has been said respecting Bayle, Burke, and others) not only served to provoke new intellectual combinations in his mind, but also exercised a Lethaean influence in causing obliviscence ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... dialectic as it was in moral tone. For this is a little curious, that Rousseau, so diffuse in expounding his opinions, and so unscientific in his method of coming to them, should have been one of the keenest and most trenchant of the controversialists of a very controversial time. Some of his strokes in defence of his first famous assault on civilisation are as hard, as direct, and as effective as any in the records of polemical literature. We will give one specimen from the letter to the Archbishop of ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Mouchy, a doctor of the Sorbonne and an inquisitor of the faith, his controversial pamphlet, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... death, and his body was so distended from gorging that it was as round as a ball. Colonel Roosevelt also photographed it, so that there will be no lack of evidence if the incident ever reaches the controversial stage. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... scathing words in reference to the "covetousness"[38] of the Papacy, which has put the world out of joint—words which may be taken as summing up in brief all the passages throughout the poem in which political affairs are touched upon. With this, if we except one bitter jibe at Florence (xxxi. 39) all controversial matters are dismissed, and the last three cantos of the poem are devoted to a description, rising ever in sublimity, of the joys ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... in Canada, where tradition was weaker, and the need for sound administration far more vital, the movement became dominant in the form of Liberal-conservatism. In other words, in place of small violently antagonistic parties, moderate men inclined to come together to carry out a broad, non-controversial, national programme. ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... Linz, Kepler issued another work, in 1618, entitled 'Epitome of the Copernican Astronomy,' in which he gave a general account of his astronomical observations and discoveries, and a summary of his opinions with regard to the theories which in those days were the subject of controversial discussion. Almost immediately after its publication it was included by the Congregation of the Index, at Rome, in the list of prohibited books. This occasioned Kepler considerable alarm, as he imagined it might interfere with ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... him at the tea-table Mr. Givemfits. He is the very antipodes of Dr. Butterfield; and when the two talk, you get both sides of a subject. I have to laugh to hear them talk; and my little girl, at the controversial collisions, gets into such hysterics that we have to send her with her mouth full into the next room, to be pounded on the back to stop her from choking. My friend Givemfits is "down on" almost everything but ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... at all familiar with this branch of controversial literature, probably knows how that distressing case is put. One is presented with a poor man of inconceivable industry, goodness and virtue; he has worked, he has saved; at last, for the security of his old age, he holds a few shares in a business, a "bit of land" or—perhaps ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... he had not been astray in his estimate of the controversial value—in the eyes of a girl, of course—of the appeal which he made to her. A girl understands nothing of the soundness of an argument on a Biblical question (or any other), he thought; but she understands an appeal made to her by a man whom she had loved, and whom she therefore loves ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... his great love for the Church which made him take pen in hand. Varied as were the subjects on which he wrote, his writings, whether controversial, dogmatic, devotional or even light and entertaining, had but one single aim and end—the instruction of mankind ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Thacher was hardly twenty years old when the "Anthology" was founded, and died when he was only a little more than thirty. He contributed largely to that periodical, besides publishing various controversial sermons, and ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... old man. With a Protestant missionary for his guest, the priest thought all words wasted that were not employed on controversial subjects. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Mikado, evidently a man of singular penetration and elevated views; and his eminence looked as if the mission of Yokohama would speedily end in an episcopal see; but he knew where he was and studiously avoided all controversial matter. ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... this lecture is to establish a theory of congruence. You must understand at once that congruence is a controversial question. It is the theory of measurement in space and in time. The question seems simple. In fact it is simple enough for a standard procedure to have been settled by act of parliament; and devotion to metaphysical subtleties is almost the only crime which has never been imputed ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... had to-day, and was obliged to buy camel's flesh for dinner: found it pretty good. My turjeman and taleb both joined me. After dinner, the taleb began in his usual controversial spirit. He insisted, that "Any person who should make himself well acquainted with the Koran must become a Mussulman." "If the French teach their children to read the Koran, in order to learn the Arabic," said he, "they must conquer the Russians and the English." Not "εν τουτω νιχα[51]," ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... or intelligently thought out. We might give an answer offhand, but are less likely to give a reply so. We may give any kind of answer to a question, but if we give a reply, the implication is that we have answered it definitely, perhaps satisfactorily. On the other hand, in controversial matters we may, though we by no means always do, imply a more conclusive meeting of objections through answer than through reply. A response is an expected answer, one in harmony with the question or assertion, or in some way carrying the thought farther. A rejoinder is a ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... much all The Rest amounts to. There is plenty, exclusive of her, to think about. More than enough, indeed, to keep one hard at work all day, and send one to bed honestly tired, to sleeping-point, at night. Politics for instance, science, literature, entertaining little controversial rows of sorts—the simple, almost patriarchal duties of a great land-owner; pleasant hobbies such as the collection of first editions, or a pretty taste in the binding of favourite books—the observation of this mysterious, ever young, ever fertile nature around him now, immutable order ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... dimensions the author has minimized the number of authorities and foot-notes. There is really very little controversial matter regarding Napoleon which is not a matter of opinion: the evidence has been so carefully sifted that substantial agreement as to fact has been reached. Accordingly there have been introduced at the opening of chapters or divisions short lists of good references for those ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... was plainly not controversial; no, it was as if he were pleased that at last they had tapped a vein of common interest. In one glance Carlisle's trained eye, going over him, took in his sartorial eccentricities: in particular the "shined" shoes, the large brass shirt-studs, and the "full-dress-suit" (exactly that) so obviously ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... right to vote wrong? If a man has a right to choose his wife, has he not a right to choose wrong? I have a right to express the opinion which I am now setting down; but I should hesitate to make the controversial claim that this proves the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... is of great consequence that you should fix in your minds— and hold, against the baseness of mere materialism on the one hand, and against the fallacies of controversial speculation on the other—the certain and practical sense of this word "spirit;" the sense in which you all know that its reality exists, as the power which shaped you into your shape, and by which you love and hate ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... my dear!" said Mrs. Merryweather, comfortably. "One of the boys is sure to be about, and will bring in the book. Sibbes IS a little dry, Bell, but very sound writing, much sounder than a good deal of the controversial writing of—bless me! ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... and sixty and one[FN230]; and there delivered salutary exhortations to the folk from the professorial chair. Now there used to visit her house a number of students of divinity and persons of learning and polite letters, who would discuss with her questions of theology and dispute with her on controversial points. I went to her one day, with a friend of mine, a man of years and education; and when we had taken our seats, she set before us a dish of fruit and seated herself behind a curtain. Now she ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Grace." Against her foes Religion well defends Her sacred truths, but often fears her friends: If learn'd, their pride, if weak, their zeal she dreads, And their hearts' weakness, who have soundest heads. But most she fears the controversial pen, The holy strife of disputatious men; Who the blest Gospel's peaceful page explore, Only to fight against its precepts more. Near to these seats behold yon slender frames, All closely fill'd and mark'd with modern names; Where no fair science ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... without cost, since, as an incident of it, he spent twenty years in banishment. His admirers credit him with "a deep mind, invincible courage, and living faith," but as his orations and discourses were largely controversial, the interest which now attaches to them is chiefly historical. The following was preached from the seventh and eighth verses of the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... so far removed from it; because the legend of Bethlehem and the mythology of the Trinity are no longer matters of particular interest or debate with me; because after a period of three-fourths assent, followed by one lasting over years of critical analysis and controversial reading, I have passed of late into a conception of Christianity far more positive, fruitful, and human than I have yet held. I would fain believe it the Christianity of the future. But the individual must beware lest he wrap his ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been maid-in-honour to Queen Mary—and educated along with the King under George Buchanan. He was transferred to a comfortable room in the Tower: he was now permitted to see friends, and also to write. It was in literary labour he occupied his time. He wrote at least one controversial pamphlet, a reply to a Defence of Episcopacy written by a dignitary of the English Church, and circulated gratis in Scotland among the ministers; he also translated many of the Psalms. It was in poetical composition, ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... you are writing a Roman History. But you have not been asked to Lecture at the Ipswich Mechanics' Institution, as I have—'any subject except controversial Divinity, and party Politics.' In the meantime I have begun Livy: I have read one book, and can't help looking at the four thick octavos ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... it at the Seminary," he writes, "for the purpose of exposing the impropriety of it. I do not think any professor ever quoted the statement, without adding that it is untenable. The Andover argument was ——"[5] He adds the proper controversial language, which, it seems, went solidly out of my head. Tenable or untenable, my memory has clutched ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... corresponding distinction in religious character, and as separating the body of Christian worshippers into two parts by a mechanical rather than spiritual process. Though he meets objections with abundant controversial ability, the strength of his position is due not so much to his negative arguments as to his affirmative statements; for his statements have in them the peculiar vitality of that mood of meditation in which spiritual things are directly beheld ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... performances of The Promise of May. But people of advanced minds had got it into their heads that their doctrines were to be attacked, so they went and made a hubbub in the sacred cause of freedom of thought and speech. The truth is, that controversial topics, political topics, ought not to be brought into plays, much less into sermons. Tennyson meant Edgar for "nothing thorough, nothing sincere." He is that venomous thing, the prig-scoundrel: he does not suit the stage, and his place, if anywhere, is in the novel. ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... popped the question: the diabolical suitor was jailed as a punishment. Champlain relates how a pugnacious parson was dealt with by a pugnacious clergyman of a different persuasion respecting some knotty controversial points. The arguments, however irresistible they may have been, Champlain observes, were not edifying either to the savages or to the French: "J'ay veu le ministre et nostre cure s'entre battre e coup de poing sur le differend de la religion. Je ne scay pas qui estait ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... was quickly dried up. Conversation soon found other springs. I never knew the talk to get heated or noisy. Religion and politics rarely came up, and never in any controversial way. The bitterest politician I met at table was a quadruped,—a lady's dog,—who refused a desirable morsel offered him in the name of Mr. Gladstone, but snapped up another instantly on being told that it came from Queen Victoria. I ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... stirrings of the Reformation upon enthusiastic minds. He had studied the Vulgate, made out something of the Greek Testament, read all fragments of the Fathers that came in his way, and also all the controversial "tractates," Latin or Dutch, that he could meet with, and attended many a secret conference between Lucas and his friends, when men, coming from Holland or Germany, communicated accounts of the lectures and sermons of Dr Martin Luther, which ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thinking, as a small electrical battery to the terrestrial currents. Well-built rhetorical climaxes, sharp and sudden contrasts, Poor Richard's common-sense, a page boiled down to a sentence, a fresh simile from Nature, a subtle mood projected upon Nature, a swift controversial retort, all these things are called thoughts. The pleasure in them is so great, that one fancies they leave him in their debt. That depends upon one's standard of indebtedness. Now a penny-a-liner is indebted to a single phrase which furnishes his column; a clergyman near Saturday ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... would speak as a victim. All the bores of the House would be upon him. He would be put upon examination. He would have to answer interrogatories. He would be put through the figures and cross-questioned in detail. The whole effect of what he said would be lost in quaestiunculae and hidden in a controversial detritus. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... informed of coming events, and see that the library is provided with the books for which there is sure to be a future demand. He should avoid personal hobbies and be impartial on all controversial questions. He should not be overconfident in his knowledge of what will ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... superior intellect is shown not by impressive eloquence, but by energetic loquacity, and hence fails to receive full recognition. B. has the dignity and power in which A. is deficient, but lacking in the organs of love, sympathy and liberality, he becomes harsh, censorious and bitterly controversial, making many enemies and leading a wretched home-life. C. has a grand oratorical energy and dignity, but lacking in the organs of reverence and humility, he overrates himself and becomes famous for his vanity. D. has the intellect, wit, humor, and social qualities to shine in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... not toned down to too sober and quaker-like a suit of drab and dove-colour. You were meant by nature for the sunshine and the summer; you shall not be worried and chilled and killed with doses of heterodox political economy and controversial ethics. Better even a country rectory (though with a bad Late Perpendicular church), and flowers, and picnics, and lawn-tennis, and village small-talk, and the squire's dinner-parties, than bread and cheese and virtuous poverty in a London lodging with Ernest ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... old story: Plato's philosopher in the cave, the saint in politics, the modern poet in the world of war, {51} commerce, or industry: the eye that sees heaven often blunders on earth. Milton's divorce pamphlets, like nearly all his controversial writings, have three fatal defects. They are utterly blind to the temper of those to whom they were addressed, to the reasonable arguments of opponents, and to the practical difficulties inherent in their proposals. He argues that, ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... Herberay des Essarts and his continuators. That Herberay[121] deserves, according to the best and most catholic students of French, a place with the just-mentioned writers among the formers or reformers of the French tongue, is a point of some importance, but, for us, minor. Of the controversial part of the Amadis subject it must, as in other cases, be once more unnecessary for us to say much. It may be laid down as certain, on every principle of critical logic and research, that the old idea of the Peninsular cycle being borrowed direct from ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... simply brutal attack upon Pawkins, in the form of a paper upon the development of moths in general, a paper showing evidence of a most extraordinary amount of mental labour, and yet couched in a violently controversial tone. Violent as it was, an editorial note witnesses that it was modified. It must have covered Pawkins with shame and confusion of face. It left no loophole; it was murderous in argument, and utterly contemptuous ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... their assemblies, upon which the dove sate visibly brooding. Others again I have watched, when my thoughts should have been better engaged, in which I could possibly detect nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was in all, and the disposition to unanimity, and the absence of the fierce controversial workings.—If the spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have abated, at least they make few pretences. Hypocrites they certainly are not, in their preaching. It is seldom indeed that you shall see one get up amongst them to hold forth. Only now and then a trembling, female, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... captain feels himself being worsted in argument, he shouts for support to the engineer and his brother. "N'est-ce pas?" he says, turning furiously to them. "Oui, oui, certainement," they say dutifully and calmly, and then he, refreshed by their support, dashes back to his controversial fray. He even tries to get up a row with me on the subject of the English merchants at Calabar, whom he asserts have sworn a kind of blood oath to ship by none but British and African Company's steamers. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... newspapers followed, into the details of which it is not necessary to go. The Federalists, with the tide going steadily against them, had the good luck to secure the aid of a pen which had no match in Europe. The greatest master of English controversial prose that ever lived was at that time in America. Normally, perhaps, his sympathies would have been with the Democrats. But love of England was ever the deepest and most compelling passion of the man who habitually abused her institutions so roundly. ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton |
