"Dogmatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... authority went on fermenting in the nations till its last great outburst at the French Revolution; and Schiller was born at this convulsive period, and bears strong traces of his parentage in his anti-dogmatic spirit. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... bits of Cicero, bits of Seneca, soundly and nobly moral, did service on behalf of Paganism; we remembered them certainly almost as if an imp had brought them from afar. Nor had we any desire to be in opposition to the cause he supported. What we were opposed to was the dogmatic arrogance of a just but ignorant man, who had his one specific for everything, and saw mortal sickness in all other remedies or recreations. Temple ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... truth of my arguments, and however sure I may be that many others will not only agree with my conclusions, but will see that in "Introspection" rather than in "Intellectualism" lies the key to the Mystery, I do not wish to appear dogmatic in any of the suggestions contained in this volume; I am stating my own convictions, but at the same time I fully recognise that the presentation of the Absolute, with its infinite variety of aspects, must necessarily be different to every individual; we are all of the same genus, but each individual ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... first to one and then to another, his eye-glass incrusted in his eyebrow, stiffening his wee form as long as he could make it, rattling his high-heeled boots as loudly as he could contrive, stretching out his round, dogmatic face, puffing and blowing to give himself importance, dying to be the Coryphaeus of the company, and mortified to see himself reduced to sing his enthusiasm in the chorus; he frisked about the room, and seemed to be handing ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... compare with it. Again, we find portions which treat of events connected in a thousand places with the affairs of the Roman Empire, of which we have several credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical balloon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony, according ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... philosophical systems in pagan Greece had prepared the way for the subsequent vagaries of heresy, and we must look to our own times, so prolific of absurd theories, in order to find a parallel to the incredible variety of dogmatic assertions among the Greek heresiarchs of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... they constantly rejected the very idea of the balance of power, and treated it as the true cause of all the wars and calamities that had afflicted Europe; and their practice was correspondent to the dogmatic positions they had laid down. The Empire and the Papacy it was their great object to destroy; and this, now openly avowed and steadfastly acted upon, might have been discerned with very little acuteness of sight, from the very first dawnings of the Revolution, to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... support. But he kept alive Hering's work when it bade fair to sink into the limbo of obsolete hypotheses. To use Oliver Wendell Holmes's phrase, he "depolarised" evolutionary thought. We quote the words of a young biologist, who, when an ardent and dogmatic Weismannist of the most pronounced type, was induced to read "Life and Habit": "The book was to me a transformation and an inspiration." Such learned writings as Semon's or Hering's could never produce such an effect: they do not penetrate to the heart of man; they cannot ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... the most foolish fools I have ever known stayed still and didn't do anything. Rushing shows a certain movement of the mind, even if it is in the wrong direction. However, Mr. Macdonald is both opinionated and dogmatic, but his worst enemy could never call ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... are kept from the twelfth to the eighteenth year of their age, and for ten hours every day (from eight A.M. to six P.M.), God and the Gospel shall be treated as if they never existed; not only religion shall never be mentioned, but these girls shall be taught morality independent of any dogmatic ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... dreadful railways, which he would never travel by. All this in his bright and lively way; but when we came to discuss Chevet, who wishes to supplant musical notes by ciphers, he maintained in an earnest and dogmatic tone that the system of notation, as it had developed itself since Pope Gregory's time, was sufficient for all musical requirements. He certainly could not withhold some appreciation for Chevet, but refused to indorse the certificate granted by the Institute in his favor; ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... degraded the mighty god into a demon huntsman, who pursued his nightly round in chase of human souls, saw in the train of the infernal master of the hunt only the spectres of suicides, drunkards, and ruffians; and, with all the uncharitableness of a dogmatic faith, the spirits of children who died unbaptized, whose hard fate had thrown them into such evil company. This was the way in which that wide-spread superstition arose, which sees in the phantoms of the clouds the shapes of the Wild Huntsman and his accursed crew, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... able to answer why, they found their answer through another factor "who." The unknown was called, Gods or God. But with the progress of science the "why" became more and more evident, and the question came to be "how." From the early days of humanity, dogmatic theology, law, ethics, and science in its infancy, were the monopolies of one class and ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... superficial or thorough? Does he belong to a particular school? Is his criticism in any way helpful? Does he try to interpret the author? Is he chiefly concerned to show his own learning or brilliancy? Is he genial and tolerant? Is he dogmatic and intolerant? Is he courteous and kind? Is he ill-mannered and unkind? What ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... who affected certain quarters as in our day the Tartshah of Alexandria and the Hosh Bardak of Cairo. Here says Herr Carlo Landberg (p. 57, Syrian Proverbs) "Elles parlent une langue toute elle." So pretentious and dogmatic a writer as the author of Proverbes et Dictons de la Province de Syrie, ought surely to have known that the Hosh Bardak is the head-quarters of the Cairene Gypsies. This author, who seems to write in order to learn, reminds me of an acute Oxonian undergraduate of my day ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... she drew was, in truth, the picture of one of those social facts on which perhaps the future of England depends. She drew it girlishly, quite unconscious of its large bearings, gossiping about this person and that, with a free expenditure of very dogmatic opinion on the habits and ways which were not hers. But, on the whole, the picture emerged, and David had never liked her talk so well. The little self-centred thing had somehow been made to wonder and admire; which is much ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Introduction to the Science of Politics," these words: "Herbert Spencer's contributions to political and historical science seem to us mere commonplaces, sometimes false, sometimes true, but in both cases trying to disguise their essential flatness and commonness in a garb of dogmatic formalism."[212] Such an opinion, evidencing a conflict between two intellectual guides, staggered me, and it was with some curiosity that I looked subsequently, when the Index to Periodicals came out, to see who had the ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... dogmatic way women seem to have, she had attached this antagonistic influence to his new abode. Was ever anything so absurd! "You'll never finish Romilly here." ... Why not? Was this her idea of the luxury that saps the springs of action and brings a man down to indolence and dropping ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... far as they had ever said they would go. But the partisans of the English Parliament are not of such a temper. They are Whigs, or Radicals, or Tories, but they are much else too. They are common Englishmen, and, as Father Newman complains, "hard to be worked up to the dogmatic level". They are not eager to press the tenets of their party to impossible conclusions. On the contrary, the way to lead them—the best and acknowledged way—is to affect a studied and illogical ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... to interpret the scenery and the setting of these Apocalyptic visions with dogmatic confidence, but it seems to me as if the emblems of this final vision coincide with dim hints in many other portions of Scripture; to the effect that some cosmical change having passed upon this material world in which we dwell, it, in some regenerated ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... to go to the Radicals, Dick. They're the dogmatic party nowadays, and they'll be just as ready to manage your soul for you ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... what Bryant "ascertained."[8] The remarks of Warton and Tyrwhitt suddenly seemed hasty and superficial. Warton had clearly outlined his reasons for skepticism, but he offered to show "the greatest deference to decisions of much higher authority."[9] Tyrwhitt had also hesitated to be dogmatic. He saw fit to suggest that, since Chatterton had always been equivocal, the authenticity of the poems could be judged only on internal grounds. Merely to show what might be gleaned from the poems themselves, ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... surprised a Pagan, and therefore nothing characteristic of Christianity. Meantime my second remark was substantially this which follows: What is a religion? To Christians it means, over and above a mode of worship, a dogmatic (that is, a doctrinal) system; a great body of doctrinal truths, moral and spiritual. But to the ancients (to the Greeks and Romans, for instance), it meant nothing of the kind. A religion was simply a cultus, a thrskeia, a mode of ritual worship, in which ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... spoken of as "chilling, and, frankly speaking, tedious."[150] Bach himself escapes with this qualification: "If he is great, it is not because of, but in spite of the dogmatic and parching ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... effect of the amiable dogmatic voice and lean, loose swaggering figure, is that of the face with which so many caricaturists have fantastically delighted themselves, the Mephistophelean face with the fierce tufted eyebrows and forked red beard. Yet those caricaturists in their natural delight ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... but the truth, without considering whether the truth is in my favour or no. My book is not a work of dogmatic theology, but I do not think it will do harm to anyone; while I fancy that those who know how to imitate the bee and to get honey from every flower will be able to extract some good from the catalogue of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... man as Pastor Tappau could have been supposed to entertain so evil a passion. However that might be, two parties were speedily formed, the younger and more ardent being in favour of Mr. Nolan, the elder and more persistent—and, at the time, the more numerous—clinging to the old grey-headed, dogmatic Mr. Tappau, who had married them, baptized their children, and was to them literally as a 'pillar of the church.' So Mr. Nolan left Salem, carrying away with him, possibly, more hearts than that of Faith Hickson's; but certainly she had never ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... refuge from this flummery, as Hawthorne called it; "an extremely interesting, sincere, earnest, independent, warm and generous hearted man; not at all dogmatic; full of questions, and with ready answers. He is highly cultivated, and writes for the Westminster,"—a man who respected formalities and could preserve decorum in his own household, but liked a simple, unostentatious mode ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... talking as though you could kick the past to pieces; as though one could get right out from oneself and begin afresh. It is your weakness—if you don't mind my being frank—it makes you seem harsh and dogmatic. Life has gone easily for you; you have never been badly tried. You have been lucky—you do not understand the other way ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... would like you," I say, with a dogmatic shake of the head. "I told her that you were—well, that I got on with you, and we always like the ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... cannot talk like this in the bush unless you are also capable of confirming the insult with your fists. But Carmichael could; and he was much too blind to fight without his glasses. He was, in fact, the same strenuous character who had set his dogmatic face against the most harmless expletives in dormitory at school, and set it successfully, because Carmichael was a mighty man, whose influence was not to be withstood. His standard alone was changed. Or he was playing ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... question as to whether descent was monophyletic or polyphyletic Darwin expressed no dogmatic opinion. "I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number.... I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... circles of Boston society soon evaporated, as his faults of temper and of manner, and his rough criticisms on men and affairs, began to be felt. Massachusetts was then in the midst of the great conservative and proslavery reaction of 1850, and Gurowski's dogmatic radicalism was not calculated to recommend him to the ruling influences in politics, literature, or society. He denounced with vehemence, and without stint or qualification, slavery and its Northern supporters. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... and power, but requires first of all His own feeling of pity to be roused, is an outrage on God and a darkening of the foundation of religion." So Eucken objects to the attempt to formulate the mystery into dogma. "All dogmatic formulation of such fundamental truths of religion becomes inevitably a rationalism and a treatment of the problem by means of human relationships, and according to human standards." "It is sufficient for the religious conviction ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... don't," was the dogmatic rejoinder. "Nor nobody knows as much now as they did in ancient times a'ready. I ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... attempt to write that life eliminating the supernatural are constrained to recognize that he had marvellous power as an exorcist and healer of some forms of nervous disease. So E. A. Abbott, The Spirit on the Waters, 169-201. Our knowledge of nature does not warrant a dogmatic definition of the limits of the possible; see James, The Will to Believe, vii.-xiii., 299-327. The question is confessedly one of adequate evidence. The evidence for the supreme miracle—the transcendent character of Jesus—is clear, see Part III. chap. ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... of duty which have been wrought out by the meditations of the studious, confirmed by the allegiance of the good and wise, and stamped as sterling by the response they find in every uncorrupted mind. It does not dogmatize, nor vainly imagine dogmatic certainty to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... a picture, a dogmatic statement if you like, about the actual condition of human nature apart from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... lastly a dramatic writer. But he is not only that: he is at once the most subjective, the most sympathetic, and the most self-witholding of dramatic writers. Conceiving all situations, all epochs, in terms of his own psychology, he is yet the furthest removed from all dogmatic design on the opinions of his listeners; and it is only after a most vigilant process of moral logic that we can ever be justified in attributing to him this or that thesis of any one of his personages, apart from the general ethical sympathies ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... that the restorer ever expected, when he did so, that any one would entertain the idea that this gigantic beast was in the habit of climbing trees; but I would fain ask your correspondent on what grounds he makes the dogmatic assertion that "Palms there were none, at that period of telluric formation." I will simply remind him of the vast numbers of fossil fruits, and other remains of palms, in the London clay of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... comically dogmatic little chorus in Samson. But the universality of the law must be held to have failed in the case of Mr. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... the already undue respect for authority. Such and such are the meanings of these words, says the teacher of the dictionary. So and so is the rule in this case, says the grammar. By the pupil these dicta are received as unquestionable. His constant attitude of mind is that of submission to dogmatic teaching. And a necessary result is a tendency to accept without inquiry whatever is established. Quite opposite is the mental tone generated by the cultivation of science. Science makes constant appeal to individual reason. Its truths are not ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... is a temperate critic, MacColl a brilliant, revolutionary one. The critical temper in either man is not dogmatic. Seurat, the French Neo-Impressionist, has defended his theories; indeed, the number of talented Frenchmen who paint well and write with style as well as substance is amazing. Rossetti would no longer be a rare bird in these days of piping painters, musicians who are poets, and sculptors ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... laboriously studied, and affected to despise other knowledge, while suspicious that those possessing such would take advantage of him. Self-educated men, as they are called, deprived of the side light thrown on a particular subject by instruction in cognate matters, are narrow and dogmatic, and, with an uneasy consciousness of ignorance, soothe their own vanity by underrating the studies of others. To the vanity of this class he added that of the demagogue (I use the term in its better sense), and called the wise policy left him by his predecessor ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... wisest of the Grecian sages. Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small; yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence. These speculations, instead of being treated as the amusement of a vacant hour, became the most serious business of the present, and the most useful preparation for a future, life. A theology, which it was incumbent ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Wurzburg Cathedral are the pillars of Boaz and Jachin, and in the altar of the Church of Doberan, in Mecklenburg, placed as Masons use them, and a most significant scene in which priests are turning a mill grinding out dogmatic doctrines; and at the bottom the Lord's Supper in which the Apostles are shown in well-known Masonic attitudes. In the Cathedral of Brandenburg a fox in priestly robes is preaching to a flock of geese; and in the Minster at Berne the Pope is ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... therefore, no halting place in Deism, he remained in a state of perplexity, until, doubtless after many struggles, he yielded to the conviction, that concerning the origin of things nothing whatever can be known. This is the only correct statement of his opinion; for dogmatic atheism he looked upon as absurd; as most of those, whom the world has considered Atheists, have always done. These particulars are important, because they show that my father's rejection of all that is called religious ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... dogmatic, and the reverse of conciliatory. One should not, in attempting to convert any person, begin by reviling his religion. Knox adopted the same method with Mary Stuart: the method is impossible. It is not to be marvelled at if the Regent did style ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... invites us to trample on is, under certain forms, an ennobling and sustaining thing; and for such theism as that of Charles Kingsley's he has expressed his deepest reverence. Again, there is Professor Huxley. He denies with the most dogmatic and unbending severity any right to man to any supernatural faith; and he 'will not for a moment admit' that our higher life will suffer in consequence.[29] And yet 'the lover of moral beauty,' he says wistfully, 'struggling through a world of sorrow and sin, is surely as much the ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... the source of his knowledge, that knowledge made him intensely dogmatic in his creed, and a firm believer in the supernatural nature of everything ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... order to get the most they can out of the world; wisdom is acknowledgment of these propositions; folly is to hanker after what may lie beyond the sphere of sense. The supporter of these doctrines by no means permits himself to be regarded as a rampant and dogmatic atheist; he is simply the modest and humble doubter of what he cannot prove. He even recognizes the persistence of the religious instinct in man, and caters to it by a new religion suited to the times—the Religion of ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... favourite air, they clung about her like a favourite perfume. Their minister was a marrowy expounder of the law, and my lord sat under him with relish; but Mrs. Weir respected him from far off; heard him (like the cannon of a beleaguered city) usefully booming outside on the dogmatic ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless and ineffectual woman, but she was a true enthusiast, and might have ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... here gone into the enemy's camp, and defeated him on his own ground. The work is a masterly defence of faith against dogmatic unbelief on the one hand, and that universal skepticism on the other, which neither affirms nor denies, on the ground of an assumed deficiency of evidence as to the reality of God and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... a world of shadow deepening into darkness. The light grows more murky, the shadows more insistent, as we pass down, or out, or back from that illumined center. We cannot tell how much of the shadow is really a part of us, nor do we dare to be dogmatic about what may, or may not, ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... can most of us remember when, in this country, the whole story of regal Rome, and even the legend of the Trojan settlement in Latium, were seriously placed before boys as history, and discoursed of as unhesitatingly and in as dogmatic a tone as the tale of the Catilline Conspiracy ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... said. No, the real danger to spiritual religion, and therefore to the immediate future of mankind in every department of thought and action, arises from practical materialism on the one hand and an antiquated dogmatic theology on the other. I hope it will be understood by readers of these pages that in any references I may make to dogmatic theology I am passing no reflection upon the scientific theologian whose work is being done in the field of historical criticism or archaeology or any of the departments ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... these respects. In other men it might be right and possible that they should live on in the ministry of the Church, doing the humane and charitable work of the Church, while refusing assent to the intellectual and dogmatic framework on which the Church system rests; but for himself it would be neither right nor wrong, but simply impossible. He did not argue or reason about it. There was a favourite axiom of Mr. Grey's which had become part ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been so much a part of my life that my autobiography could scarcely be written without jotting down my reflections upon it, and I merely make this little preparatory explanation to apologise for any dogmatic tone that they may possess, and to say that I present them merely as a seeker after truth ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... Rudyard Kipling. There is nothing in the least broad minded about Mr. Bernard Shaw. The paganism of Mr. Lowes Dickinson is more grave than any Christianity. Even the opportunism of Mr. H. G. Wells is more dogmatic than the idealism of anybody else. Somebody complained, I think, to Matthew Arnold that he was getting as dogmatic as Carlyle. He replied, "That may be true; but you overlook an obvious difference. I am dogmatic and right, and Carlyle is dogmatic and wrong." The strong humour ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... same positive, dogmatic way that he assures us that Peer Gynt is a poem, not a satire; The League of Youth a 'simple comedy and nothing more'; Emperor and Galilean an 'entirely realistic work'; that in Ghosts 'there is not a single opinion, a ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... was by no means unqualified. While fully admitting their extraordinary learning, industry, and ingenuity, he complained that their too common infirmity was 'a passion for making history without historical materials,' basing the most dogmatic and positive statements upon faint indications, or upon ingenious conjectures that could not legitimately go beyond a very low degree of probability. The assurance with which these writers undertook by internal evidence to decompose ancient documents, assigning each ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... devout admiration of the works of creation: even the tone of Ausonius and Fortunatus, in their charming descriptions of scenery, was now a thing of the past. Feeling for Nature—sentimental, sympathetic, cosmic, and dogmatic—had dwindled down to mere pleasure in cultivating flowers in the garden, to the level Aachen landscape and such like; and the power to describe the impression made by scenery was, like the impression itself, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the stage everybody cannot be great, any more than students of music can all become great musicians; but very many will do sound artistic work which is of great value. As for any question of conduct, Heaven forbid that I should be dogmatic; but it does not seem to me logical that while genius is its own law in the pursuit of a noble art, all inferior merit or ambition is to be deterred from the same path by appalling pictures ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... almost every thing that makes its appearance. Not because he understands all about it, but because he knows nothing about it. It is his very ignorance of a matter that makes him dogmatic. He knows nothing of the distinction between truth and the appearances of truth. So fond is he of talking and showing off his superior intelligence and acumen, that he is never a listener in any company, unless by a kind of compulsion, and then he rarely hears any thing in the eagerness ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... expression; received traditionally in an altered age, it is the shadow of a shadow, a mere [Greek: triton eidolon], twice removed from substance and reality. The true method then in the treatment of dogmatic theology must be historical. Englishmen are gradually finding out how much that method has done since the beginning of modern criticism by the hands of such writers as Baur. Coleridge had many of the elements of this ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of the ingenuous simplification of opinions peculiar to assemblies is offered by the Jacobins of the French Revolution. Dogmatic and logical to a man, and their brains full of vague generalities, they busied themselves with the application of fixed-principles without concerning themselves with events. It has been said of them, with reason, that they went through the Revolution without witnessing it. With the aid of the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... claims made in behalf of this department to supply the spiritual void in case the old theology is no longer accredited. When one looks closely at the stream and tendency of thought, one sees a growing alliance and kinship between religion and poetry or art. There is, as we know, a dogmatic, precise, severe, logical side of theology, by which creeds are constructed, religious tests imposed, and belief made a matter of legal compulsion. There is also a sentimental, ideal, imaginative side that resists ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... mixture of the rough and the smooth. He had sprung from a rigid Puritan stock, and had been brought up to think much more intently of the duties of this life than of its privileges and pleasures. His progenitors had submitted in the matter of dogmatic theology to the relaxing influences of recent years; but if Rowland's youthful consciousness was not chilled by the menace of long punishment for brief transgression, he had at least been made to feel that there ran through all ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... make their characters conform to the established antecedents of greatness. These established antecedents of greatness have for the most part been created out of superstitions, credulities, blank idealism, and mere dogmatic bosh. No living, active men have ever conformed, or could conform, to the standards which the logicians, the philosophers, and the priests have fixed up for them; and if any of them should conform to such a standard, their place under classification ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... spirit, and rather prides itself on having demolished Materialism without the aid of metaphysics. Perhaps a Platonist might say that the recognition of a future existence is consistent with a very practical and even dogmatic materialism, but it is rather to be feared that such a materialism as this would not greatly disturb the spiritual or intellectual repose of our modern phenomenalists.* Given the consciousness with its sensibilities safely housed in the psychic body which demonstrably survives the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... proportion of the people in the world. Thus the character of God appeared unlovely, and it was wicked not to love God; and this was my condemnation. I had learned the shorter catechism with the proofs from Scripture, and I understood the meaning of the dogmatic theology. Watts's hymns were much more easy to learn, but the doctrine was the same. There was no getting away from the feeling that the world was under a curse ever since that unlucky appleeating ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... mere impulse, and that impulse was the most abject terror. Where, then, lurks the transcendent power of Christianity as an organ of political movement? Simply in the fact that it brings men into the most tender and affecting relations with God, and, over and above this, that it rests upon a dogmatic or doctrinal basis. These features were never suspected even as possible until Christianity revealed them. Hence Christianity 'carried along with itself its own authentication; since, while other religions introduced men simply ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the Italian troops entered the Eternal City—a Supreme Rite and Central Organisation of Universal High Grade Masonry, the act of creation being signed by the American Grand Master and the Italian liberator, the two founders also sharing the power between them. A Supreme Dogmatic Directory was created at Charleston, with Pike at its head, under the title of Sovereign Pontiff of Universal Freemasonry. Mazzini took over the Supreme Executive, having Rome as its centre, under the title of Sovereign ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... circumstances and education of Godwin and of Mathilda's father were different. But they produced similar men, each extravagant, generous, vain, dogmatic. There is more of Godwin in this tale than the account of a great man ruined by character and circumstance. The relationship between father and daughter, before it was destroyed by the father's unnatural passion, is like that between Godwin and Mary. She herself ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... government, contrary to its nature, being only a ministerial stewardship, distinct from the civil government, in its nature, causes, ends, officers, and actings; and giving to the magistrate the power of the keys, without and against Christ's donation and authority, even the dogmatic, critic and diatactic decisive suffrage and power in causes ecclesiastic, which Christ hath intrusted to the church representative; and denying to the church the exercise of these keys and powers, without the magistrate's warrant and indulgence. We crave ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... article. I wrote this week nearly six pages, which was very good for me; this work is very painful in every way. The difficulty is in knowing what not to say. I shall console myself a little in blurting out two or three dogmatic opinions on the art of writing. It will be an opportunity to express what I think; a sweet thing and one ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... new parliament Brissot, the inspirer of the Gironde, the dogmatic statesman of a party which needed ideas and a leader, ascended the tribune in the midst of anticipated plaudits which betokened his importance in the new Assembly. His voice was for war, as the most efficacious ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... the influence of women more important than in religion. Much might be said of the obstacles placed in the way of religious progress by the crude and dogmatic prepossessions of ignorant women, who will rush in with confident assertion where angels might fear to tread: but this is neither the time nor the place for such remarks. It is enough to remind you that in no part of your life do you more need the width and modesty and courage of ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... of the bishops against the monks, and even against the pope. The Gallican bishops welcomed at that time with lively satisfaction, its eloquent pleadings in favor of their cause. But, at a later period, the French clergy discovered in St. Cyran's book free-thinking concealed under dogmatic forms. "In case of heresy any Christian may become judge," said Petrus Aurelius. Who, then, should be commissioned to define heresy? So M. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... be guaranteed in advance. The invasion of the unknown is of the nature of an adventure; we cannot be sure in advance. The conclusions of thinking, till confirmed by the event, are, accordingly, more or less tentative or hypothetical. Their dogmatic assertion as final is unwarranted, short of the issue, in fact. The Greeks acutely raised the question: How can we learn? For either we know already what we are after, or else we do not know. In neither case is learning possible; on the first ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... commonest mistake. Scepticism, positivism, and agnosticism agree with ordinary dogmatic rationalism in presupposing that everybody knows what the word 'truth' means, without further explanation. But the former doctrines then either suggest or declare that real truth, absolute truth, is inaccessible to us, and that we must fain put ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... be unduly familiar; you will merit contempt if you are. Neither should you be dogmatic in your assertions, arrogating to yourself such ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... stick to the promise I gave him, when I was ten years old, to have no dealings with the Jews. It was in vain that I endeavoured to give my explanation of the word dealings. My father's temper, naturally positive, had, I observed, become, as he advanced in years, much more dogmatic and intolerant. I avoided contradicting his assertions; but I determined to pursue my own course in a matter where there could be nothing really wrong or improper. That morning, however, I must, I perceived, as in duty bound, sacrifice to my father; he took me under the arm, and carried ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... in presence of objects possessing a distinct and peculiar plan of structure." Two years later, however, in a lecture before this association, he took a truer position. "Our views of the universe," he said, "are undergoing important changes; let us wait for more facts with minds unfettered by any dogmatic theory, and, therefore, free to receive the teaching, whatever it may be, of ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... be dogmatic, but it may be worth while to state from the pupil's point of view and from memory what kind of teacher a college student who is really interested in literature would like ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... being servile and obsequious—traits, I tell you, boys, unknown in England—but this splendid system of fagging? Did you ever hear of an insolent Englishman, a despotic Englishman, a surly Englishman, a selfish Englishman, an obstinate Englishman, a domineering Englishman, a dogmatic Englishman? Never, boys, never. These things are all taken out of them by fagging. It stands to reason they should be. If I shy my boots at a fellow's head, is he likely to domineer? If I kick a small boy who contradicts ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... enough, if we are entirely honest, to force us to hold our conclusions with an open mind ready to admit new evidence. It is entirely the fault of the teacher if the pupil gets a dogmatic, too-sure habit of mind as the result of his biological studies. And yet, as has been said, it is exact enough to enable us to reach just the same sort of approximations to truth which are possible in our own lives. The ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... directed itself exclusively to this joyful consummation, and personified the negation of all conceivable existence and of all pain into a positive bliss. This was all the more easy, as Gautama refused to give any dogmatic definition of Nirvana. There is something analogous in the way in which people commonly talk of the "happy release" of a man who has been long suffering from mortal disease. According to their own views, it must always be extremely doubtful whether the man will be any happier after the "release" ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Lectures. It was the belief of the testator that any orderly presentation of the facts of nature or history contributed to the end of this foundation more effectively than any attempt to emphasize the elements of doctrine or of creed; and he therefore provided that lectures on dogmatic or polemical theology should be excluded from the scope of this foundation, and that the subjects should be selected rather from the domains of natural science and history, giving special prominence to astronomy, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... printed when he was only twenty-three, enjoyed a popularity now rather hard to account for. Gray complained of its obscurity and said it was issued nine years too early, but admitted that now and then it rose "even to the best, particularly in description." Akenside was harsh, formal, and dogmatic, as a man. Smollett caricatured him in "Peregrine Pickle." Johnson hated his Whig principles and represents him, when settled at Northampton, as "having deafened the place with clamors for liberty."[47] He furthermore disliked the class of poetry to which Akenside's work belonged, and he told ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... its early days, the university of Salamanca was justly celebrated for its progress in astronomy and familiarity with Greek and Arabian writers; but, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it seems to have remained very stationary, little attention being paid to aught beside medicine and dogmatic theology. ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the various members of the Bovine Family according to the Procrustean method of stretching and chopping, Mr. Swainson continues in his peculiarly dogmatic style "The types of form of the Genus Bos, above enumerated, we shall now demonstrate to be a natural group. We have seen that the first represented by the Bos Scoticus, or Scotch Wild Ox, is an untameable savage race, which preserves, even in the domestication ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... constitution of a new family of monks, was in the beginning anti-monastic. It is not rare for history to have similar contradictions to record. The meek Galilean who preached the religion of a personal revelation, without ceremonial or dogmatic law, triumphed only on condition of being conquered, and of permitting his words of spirit and life to be confiscated by a ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... preachers who was able to exchange the obscurity of a country parish for the public fame of a London pulpit, by reason of a certain gift of rhetorical power, the value of which it is impossible to estimate to-day. Such of his sermons as are still extant are prosy, long-winded, dogmatic absurdities, overloaded with periphrastic illustrations in scriptural language. They are meaningless to a degree, which would make one wonder at the docility and patience of a seventeenth century congregation, if one had not witnessed a similar ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... vastly curtailed. It would be seen that there was such a tendency of disease to get well of itself, or by virtue of natural processes, of which people had at present but a very poor idea, that the art of physic would pass into directions how to live rather than into dogmatic assertions that particular means must be employed in addition to the common details of life for the process of cure. If therefore they learned in this hospital by their reduced death-rates the true lesson, ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea has been added to the speculative systems of antiquity, and a succession of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers of the next servile generation. Not a single composition of history, philosophy, or literature, has been saved from oblivion by the intrinsic beauties of style or sentiment, of original fancy, or even of successful imitation. In prose, the least offensive of the Byzantine writers ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... breaks away from any one of these fundamental principles of belief, then of him it is said that he has gone out of the general body of Israel and he denies the root-truths of Judaism.' This formulation of a dogmatic test was never confirmed by any body of Rabbis. No Jew was ever excommunicated for declaring his dissent from these articles. No Jew was ever called upon formally to express his assent to them. But, as Professor Schechter justly writes: 'Among the Maimonists we ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... his mischievous brown eyes had sometimes a look of imperious audacity which was in perfect keeping with the scar on his sunburnt cheek that bore witness that he had not devoted his whole time and energy to the study of dogmatic theology. "Yes," he said to himself as he sat there waiting for his cousin, "I must get myself out of this difficulty! I could bear it as long as it was far off, for there was always plenty of time to come to a decision, but two things must be settled today beyond ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... all this stands to Christianity is a very curious question. The splendour, beauty, and spirituality of it all are evident enough, but the references to anything like dogmatic or definite Christian doctrine are confusing and obscure. Perhaps it was impossible that one so literally a child of nature, and who had led such an open-air life from his childhood, could possibly have done otherwise than to rebel. It was the gipsy in him that revolted against Christianity ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... interpretation which commends itself to his own judgment. This will no doubt ultimately lead to a variety of sects, and already there is a considerable diversity of opinion between different communities; but this diversity has not yet been recognised, and I may say that I nowhere found that fanatically dogmatic, quibbling spirit which is usually the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... dogmatist in the school of Leibnitz and Wolf; that is, according to his trisection of all philosophy into dogmatic, sceptical, and critical, he was, upon all questions, disposed to a strong affirmative creed, without courting any particular examination into the grounds of this creed, or into its assailable points. From this slumber, as it is called by himself, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... observed that for the purposes of this discussion we are on 'dogmatic' ground,—ground, I mean, which leaves systematic philosophical scepticism altogether out of account. The postulate that there is truth, and that it is the destiny of our minds to attain it, we ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... to them render evil." Now if this account be in the least degree true, how is it possible to suppose that the martyr could have found means to write so many long epistles, entering minutely into dogmatic teaching, and expressing the most deliberate and ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... the dividing ridge of the back, and always were careful and fair in our attempts. I am of opinion that a tiger over ten feet long is an exceptionally long one, but when I read of sportsmen denying altogether that even that length can be attained, I can but pity the dogmatic scepticism that refuses credence to well ascertained and authenticated facts. I believe also that tigers are not got nearly so large as in former days. I believe that much longer and heavier tigers—animals ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... to rational discussion. Thus was introduced the second or palmy period of Christian Scholasticism, whose chief industry, we may fairly say, was directed to the refutation of the two leading doctrines of Averroes. Aiming at this, Thomas Aquinas threw the whole dogmatic system of the Church into the forms of Aristotle, and thus produced that colossal system of theology which still prevails in the Roman Catholic world; witness the Encyclical AEterni Patris of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... 1793 the Municipal party, guided by Hebert and Chaumette, made their memorable attempt to extirpate Christianity in France. The doctrine of D'Holbach's supper-table had for a short space the arm of flesh and the sword of the temporal power on its side. It was the first appearance of dogmatic atheism in Europe as a political force. This makes it one of the most remarkable moments in the Revolution, just as it makes the Revolution itself the most remarkable moment in modern history. The first political demonstration ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... little fragment of the universe within our ken. Art, the expression of that consciousness, the outward manifestation of the effort to solve the problem of Life. Genius, the power of expressing in some way or other what many thought but could not articulate. I do not mean to be dogmatic. Words fail us to define our meaning when we speak of these things. Any quibbler can twist the meaning of words, while only those who think the thought can understand. That is why one does not speak much of them. Perhaps we should speak of ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... pigments were of deep and varied hues. When he is sententious and didactic he seems to have caught something of Emerson's manner. And indeed there is in all his writings a flavor of optimism and a slightly dogmatic, even when thoroughly gentle and persuasive, tone which he has in common with ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... needlessly upon the difficult field of dogmatic history if we note here the widely important diversities of Christian teaching that belong to this which we ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... later period of his life, reached a point of view from which he was able to answer them, is a groundless assumption. The real progress of Plato's own mind has been partly concealed from us by the dogmatic statements of Aristotle, and also by the degeneracy of his own followers, with whom a doctrine ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... Aristotle, chiefly drawn from the Ethics and Politics—both widely diffused at an early period—became the common property of educated Italians, and how the whole method of abstract thought was governed by him; the latter, when we remember how slight was the dogmatic influence of the old philosophies, and even of the enthusiastic Florentine Platonists, on the spirit of the people at large. What looks like such an influence is generally no more than a consequence of the new culture in general, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... of Clare and Castlereagh on the detested list of public traitors. Yet though in such treason, united and identified, no two men could be more unlike in all other respects. Lord Clare was fiery, dogmatic, and uncompromising to the last degree; while Lord Castlereagh was stealthy, imperturbable, insidious, bland, and adroit. The Chancellor endeavoured to carry everything with a high hand, with a bold, defiant, confident swagger; ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... made acquaintance at Behring's Straits sixty-five years after this occurrence, and I would be disposed to dispute entirely the truthfulness of the statement, had not the history of our own part of the world taught us that blood has flowed in streams for dogmatic hair-splittings, which no one now troubles himself about. Perhaps the breath of indifferentism has reached even the ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Minus and Opus Tertium he pours forth a violent tirade against Alexander of Hales, and another professor, not mentioned by name, but spoken of as alive, and blamed even more severely than Alexander. This anonymous writer,[1] he says, acquired his learning by teaching others, and adopted a dogmatic tone, which has caused him to be received at Paris with applause as the equal of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... dogmatic assertions, that the Roman Catholics "conformed" for the twelve years, and that Popes Paul IV. and Pius IV. offered to confirm the Book of Common Prayer if Elizabeth would acknowledge the papal supremacy, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... practices, are demanded. Our very right to exist as a distinct society is questioned. Our old literature—the precious journals and biographies of early and later Friends—is comparatively neglected for sensational and dogmatic publications. We bear complaints of a want of educated ministers; the utility of silent meetings is denied, and praying and preaching regarded as matters of will and option. There is a growing desire for experimenting upon the dogmas and expedients and practices of other sects. I ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... not only appears simultaneously in various countries, but manifests itself in widely separated groups in the same country; in every city it embraces the "smart set" and the hard-driven working women; sometimes it is sectarian and dogmatic, at others philosophic and grandiloquent, but it is always vital and constantly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... grandfather keeps on prevailin' along in them views ontil he jest conquers his county an' carries her for Jackson. Shore! he has trouble at the polls, an' trouble in the conventions. But he persists; an' he's that domineerin' an' dogmatic they at last not only gives him his way, but comes rackin' along with him. In the last convention, he nacherally herds things into a corner, an' thar's only forty votes ag'in him at the finish. My grandfather allers says when relatin' of it to me ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... of celebrated contemporaries, as Politian, Marsilio Ficino, and others,—but always of flesh-and-blood people, living, moving, and having a being. That group of Platonists, with their looks of profound wisdom and dogmatic eloquence, are lifting their forefingers, pricking up their ears, opening their mouths, (each obviously interrupting the flow of the others' rhetoric,) in most lifelike fashion. One almost catches the winged syllogisms as they fly from lip to lip. We are almost drawn into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of Moltke's nature a fine sense of proportion, an artistic vein, and, not the least element, a Christian philosophy of life just as far removed from mere perfunctory indifferentism as from cocksure dogmatic bigotry and self-sufficiency. We have striking evidence of this in the Trostgedanken, the Consolatory Thoughts on the Earthly Life and a Future Existence, which he laid down as the last literary utterance of his full and eventful career. But this is not all; for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... children with and without the golden spoon; there were men whose names were known on both sides of the Atlantic and whose reputations for integrity, sagacity, intellect, and,—it must be confessed,—corruptness, (with the author's apology for the inclusion); doughty but dogmatic university men who had penetrated the wildernesses as naturalists, entomologists, mineralogists, archaeologists, explorers; sportsmen who had forsaken the lion, rhinoceros, hartebeest and elephant of Africa for the jaguar, cougar, armadillo and anteater of South America; soldiers of ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... read and studied the lectures of Father Perrone, Professor of Dogmatic Theology in the Collegio Romano, and had had frequent occasion to mention his name in my own humble pages; for I had nowhere found so clear a statement of the views held by the Church of Rome on the important doctrine of Original ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... that the admission of the principle of Rationalism would ultimately drive us, not only to reject Christianity, but to reject Theism in all its forms, whether Monotheism, or Pantheism, and even positive or dogmatic Atheism itself. Nor could we stop, indeed, till we had arrived at that absolute pyrrhonism which consists, if such a thing be possible, in the negation of all belief,—even to the belief that we do ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... there were gathered in a room a dozen or so of well-bred persons, talking such small talk as will pass the time and hurt no susceptibilities. It may be that the Englishman in his small talk is unduly dogmatic, but in the main he complies with the usages of the circle and helps the game along. To them enters a newcomer who will hear nothing of what the others have to say—will take no share in the discussion of topics of common interest—but insists on telling the company of his ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson |
