"Infallibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that infallibility is not the property of man, or you may entail disappointment on yourself, by expecting what is never to be found. The best men are sometimes inconsistent with themselves. They are liable to be hurried, by sudden starts of passion, into expressions and actions, which their cooler reason ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... felt the need of forming illusions about the alleged weakness of his rival. As he made ready for this great invasion, he hesitated to regard the result as certain; for he no longer was conscious of his infallibility, nor had that military assurance which the force and fire of youth give, nor had he that conviction of success which makes it sure." There had been no lack of warnings. Those of his advisers who knew Russia well, such as the Count of Segur and the Duke of Vicenza, ambassadors at Saint Petersburg, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... the Lithuanians, foreigners, and every one at Wilna, even to the minister himself, had been deceived. They did not believe our disaster until they saw it; and in that, the almost superstitious belief of Europe in the infallibility of the genius of Napoleon was of use to him against his allies. But the same confidence had buried his own officers in a profound security; at Wilna, as well as at Moscow, not one of them was prepared for ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... this gross misapplication of language, on the part of men whose learning is sometimes magnified almost into infallibility, is found in their distressing emergency. In no other way can they, with any plausibility, meet their opponents. The usefulness of this term "permit" is admirably indicated by the account which a Presbyterian colporteur gives of an interview with some who objected to the Calvinistic ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... disposed of the men. She talked of it until they got to the door of the Woodburn house, and, as she went away along the street Clara thought she swaggered a little. She stood by the door and watched her friend until she had disappeared around a corner. A flash of doubt of the infallibility of Kate's method with men crossed her mind. She remembered suddenly the soft brown eyes of the younger of the two men in the park and wondered what was back of the eyes. Perhaps after all, had she been alone with ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... leads to questions which can not be decided. As long as a hereditary succession goes smoothly on, like a river keeping within its banks, we can decide subordinate and incidental questions which may arise; but when a case occurs in which we have the omnipotence of Parliament to set off against the infallibility of the pope—the sacred obligations of a will against the equally sacred principles of hereditary succession—and when we have, at last, two contradictory actions of the same ultimate umpire, we find all technical grounds ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... rightly into this matter, to determine with any infallibility whether what we call a fault is in very deed a fault, we must previously have settled two points, neither of which may be so readily settled. First, we must have made plain to ourselves what the poet's aim really and truly was, how the task ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... is full of doleful creatures, who move about demanding our sympathy. I have nothing to offer them but doses of logic, and stern commands to move on or fall back. Catholics in distress about Infallibility; Protestants devoting themselves to the dismal task of paring down the dimensions of this miracle, and reducing the credibility of that one—as if any appreciable relief from the burden of faith could be so obtained; sentimental sceptics, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... her severity, that I felt a childish delight in setting her control at defiance, and contradicting in my secret soul all that I was openly obliged to listen to with reverence. Freedom of religious opinion brings on, I suppose, freedom of political creed; for I had no sooner renounced the Pope's infallibility, than I began to question the doctrine of hereditary and indefeasible right. In short, strange as it may seem, I came out of a Parisian convent, not indeed an instructed Whig and Protestant, but with as much inclination to be so as if I had been bred up, like ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... evils and corruptions, of course, like all other human institutions. As a religion, although it superadded many dogmas and rites which Protestants do not accept, and for which they can see no divine authority,—like auricular confession, the deification of the Virgin, indulgences for sin, and the infallibility of the Pope,—still, it has at the same time defended the cardinal principles of Christian faith and morality; such as the personality and sovereignty of God, the divinity of Christ, salvation in consequence of his sufferings and death, immortality, the final judgment, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... not boast infallibility: in short, if I stayed, the probability was that, in three months' time, a practical modern French novel would be in full process of concoction under the roof of the unsuspecting Pelet. Now, modern French novels are not to my ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... generally accepted as truths, without any thought whatever on the subject; so universally accepted, indeed, that it is considered a waste of time to think upon them at all; but which, upon a thorough investigation, might possibly lose some of their old-time infallibility, and the consideration of which might well repay the trouble, by opening a field of thought at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... assumed the gigantic load; and naturally she staggered under it. While he had lived, she had worked, indeed, with regularity and conscientiousness; but it was work made easy, made delicious, by his care, his forethought, his advice, and his infallibility. The mere sound of his voice, asking her to sign a paper, had thrilled her; in such a presence she could have laboured gladly for ever. But now there was a hideous change. Now there were no neat piles and docketings under the green lamp; ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... position, but found even repose, security, mystery, and general respect therein. On the contrary, in the debasement of a common or humble attachment, he would encounter, even among his meanest subjects, carping and sarcastic remarks; he would forfeit his character of infallibility and inviolability. Having descended to the region of petty human miseries, he would be subjected to paltry contentions. In one word, to convert the royal divinity into a mere mortal by striking at his heart, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... watchful doubt he harbors a most active zeal for knowledge, with a sincere spirit of belief (which has been wrongly disputed by Lange, Zeller, and Puenjer) a demoniacal pleasure in bringing to light absurdities in the doctrines of faith, with absolute confidence in the infallibility of conscience an entirely pessimistic view of human morality. His strength lies in criticism and polemics, his work in the latter (aside from his hostility to fanaticism and the persecution of those ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... they effected. But still the light was imperfect. Dark shades remained. This particularly appeared in the dogmatism and bigotry of these same reformers, who often prohibited further inquiries, or emendations! They had differed from Rome, but no body must differ from them! As though the infallibility which they denied to another, had been ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... sacrificed myself, and for not having accompanied the Emperor to the Island of Elba regardless of what might have been said. Nevertheless, I may be allowed to say in my own defense, that in this combination of physical and mental sufferings which overwhelmed me all at once, a person must be very sure of infallibility himself to condemn completely this sensitiveness so natural in a man of honor when accused of a fraudulent transaction. This, then, I said to myself, is the recompense for all my care, for the endurance of so much suffering, for unbounded devotion, and a refinement of feeling for which the Emperor ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... important result of the supreme position accorded to the Papacy was the gradual emergence of the doctrine of papal infallibility. "The Church of Rome," says Gregory VII, "through St. Peter, as it were by some privilege, is from the very beginnings of the faith reckoned by the Holy Fathers the Mother of all the Churches and will so be considered to the very end; for in ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... if learned men be the first receivers out of books and dispreaders both of vice and error, how shall the licensers themselves be confided in, unless we can confer upon them, or they assume to themselves above all others in the land, the grace of infallibility and uncorruptedness? And again, if it be true that a wise man, like a good refiner, can gather gold out of the drossiest volume, and that a fool will be a fool with the best book, yea or without book; there is no reason that we should deprive a wise ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... of the priesthood—the perpetual intrigue for the extension of the forms without the spirit of religion—the usurpation of that Church over the consciences of men—and her impious pretensions to infallibility, are as inconsistent to my mind as they can seem to yours, with common-sense, rational liberty, freedom of conscience, and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... said Hester Jennings, with inflexible calmness, "and I am not surprised that you do not like it when you have got it—few people do. The truth is not generally palatable. Not that I go in for infallibility of judgment. Wait and see what ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... that judgeth me'—not, 'will judge,' but now, at this very moment. That is to say, whilst people round us are passing their superficial estimates upon me, and whilst my conscience is excusing, or else accusing me—and in neither case with absolute infallibility—there is another judgment, running concurrently with them, and going on in silence. That calm eye is fixed upon me, and sifting me, and knowing me. That judgment is not fallible, because before Him 'the hidden things' that the darkness shelters, those creeping ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... mechanical infallibility. "Since the year 2100 when the Ringwave propulsion-communication principle was discovered. That principle ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... and cauterise The wound; spare not thy flesh, nor dread the event: Vulcan shall save when Aesculapius fails. Here, should the knowing Muse recount the means To stop this growing plague. And here, alas! Each hand presents a sovereign cure, and boasts 290 Infallibility, but boasts in vain. On this depend, each to his separate seat Confine, in fetters bound; give each his mess Apart, his range in open air; and then If deadly symptoms to thy grief appear, Devote the wretch, and let him greatly fall, A generous victim ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... cannot now avoid it. I have endeavoured to keep to my title, and offered but an essay; which any one is at liberty to go on with as they please, for I can promise no supplement. As to errors of opinion, though I am not yet convinced of any, yet I nowhere pretend to infallibility. However, I do not willingly assert anything which I have not good grounds for. If I am mistaken, let him that finds the error inform the world better, and never trouble himself to animadvert upon this, since I assure him I shall not enter into any pen-and-ink ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... distorting influences and facing such questions in a perfectly dry light, nobody suggests that objective truth on such matters is non-existent or for ever unattainable. A claim for objective validity for the moral judgement does not mean a claim for infallibility on behalf of any individual Conscience. We may make mistakes in Morals just as we may make mistakes in Science, or even in pure Mathematics. If a class of forty small boys are asked to do a sum, they will probably not all bring out the same answer: but nobody doubts that one answer ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... needed all the folly of despair to doubt of her death on beholding this beautiful creature, it also needed all the infallibility ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... falling into the hands of one Lyons, a surgeon, author of a book entitled "The Infallibility of Human Judgment," it occasioned an acquaintance between us. He took great notice of me, called on me often to converse on those subjects, carried me to the Horns, a pale alehouse in——Lane, Cheapside, and introduced me to Dr. Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the Bees," who had a club there, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... imperfect observation. However grand, however widely accepted, however useful its conclusions, none is so sure that it cannot be called into question by a newly discovered fact. In the domain of the world's knowledge there is no infallibility." ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... moment of his fate was arrived. The rope of the belfry had loosened one of the carved corbels which ornamented the interior of the roof beneath which the Magician knelt; before he could remove, the sharp and heavy mass descended on his forehead, and whilst it confirmed the infallibility of his prescience, in an instant deprived him of life. Michael, however, according to the account of Benvenuto da Imola, had strength enough to lift up the stone, and ascertain its weight, after which he declared it was of the exact size he expected; and that nothing was left him but to die, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... in this matter was the attitude of the Church generally, in opposition to science, for it assumed its position in an age of dense ignorance, and claimed too much infallibility to admit of enlightenment. Nevertheless, the Church feels the spirit of the age and slowly moves. At the present time it is being slowly permeated by the modern spirit of agnostic scepticism, which is another form ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... remark, that there are two extraordinary circumstances attending this trial. One is, that Richard Crowninshield, Jr., the supposed immediate perpetrator of the murder, since his arrest, has committed suicide. He has gone to answer before a tribunal of perfect infallibility. The other is, that Joseph Knapp, the supposed originator and planner of the murder, having once made a full disclosure of the facts, under a promise of indemnity, is, nevertheless, not now a witness. Notwithstanding his disclosure and his ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... indiscretion breathe her last sad sigh, and expire in all the extremity of penury and wretchedness. The two quacks, whose injudicious treatment, has probably accelerated her death, are vociferously supporting the infallibility of their respective medicines, and each charging the other with having poisoned her. The meagre figure is a portrait of Dr. Misaubin, a foreigner, at that ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... and Sapphira! Then the same family strain inevitably crops out, in the loosely-woven web of defensive presumptive evidence—whose pedigree we trace to the same parentage. God forbid that I should commit the sacrilege of arrogating His divine attribute—infallibility—for any human authority, however exalted; or claim it for any amount of proof, presumptive or positive. 'It is because humanity even when most cautious and discriminating is so mournfully fallible and prone to error, that in judging its own frailty, we require the aid and reverently ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... have a better understanding of the mind of Christ than the apostles had. For my own part, whenever I come across any writer who tries to correct Paul by Jesus, I find it safest to assume that he has misread Paul, or Jesus, or both. Moreover, though we need make no claim of infallibility for the Church, yet, if we believe in a Holy Spirit given to guide the disciples of Christ into all the truth of Christ, we shall find it difficult to believe at the same time that the whole Church has from the beginning missed the right ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... a meddling, presumptuous, reading-and-writing, socially and politically powerful ignorance inconceivable by Thomas Aquinas or even Roger Bacon, was incapable of so convenient an arrangement; and science was strangled by bigoted ignoramuses claiming infallibility for their interpretation of the Bible, which was regarded, not as a literature nor even as a book, but partly as an oracle which answered and settled all questions, and partly as a talisman to be carried by soldiers in their breast pockets or placed ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... formed a chimerical scheme of uniting Arabella with a prince of the house of Savoy; the pretext, for without a pretext no politician moves, was their descent from a bastard of our Edward the Fourth; the Duke of Parma was, however, married; but the Pope, in his infallibility, turned his brother the Cardinal into the Duke's substitute by secularising the churchman. In that case the Cardinal would then become King of England in right of this ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... have it then. You have gone your way boastfully, arrogantly, unscrupulously and it has been the fool's way. You are playing the losing game and it isn't even in you to lose like a man. You have stared at the glitter of gold so long that you have gone blind looking at it. Your own infallibility has loomed so large before you that you have lost your sanity. I say listen to me!" her voice ringing with its command. "I am going to tell you something. I am going to tell you why I came to you, why I suffered you day after day to come to me. And what ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... teachers is not known, but it is of course large. The Wellesley College Christian Association is of great assistance to the alumnae recorder in keeping in touch with Wellesley missionaries, but even the Christian Association disclaims infallibility in questions of numbers. An article in the News for February, 1912, by Professor Kendrick, the head of the Department of Bible Study, states that no record is kept of missionaries at work in our own country, but there were ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... science did not attempt to ignore the moral government of God; that laws were a terror to evil-doers; that philanthropists did not seek to reform the world by mechanical inventions, or elevate society by upholding the majesty of man rather than the majesty of God,—teaching the infallibility of congregated masses of ignorance, inexperience, and conceit. Even in those rude times there were the certitudes of religious faith, of domestic endearments, of patriotic devotion, of respect for parents, of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... trouble him. It gnawed at his huge moral strength. Like a hidden seepage of water, it undermined (in anticipation) his terrible resolution. It was a sign perhaps of age, a slipping away of the reckless infallibility ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... foundation than those they opposed: for them, as for their opponents, the question was not to be solved by an appeal to evident truths and experience, but to historical documents and traditions, supposed, to be infallible. For a clear intelligence, there is nothing to choose between the infallibility of oecumenical councils or of Popes, and that of the Bible. Both have been in their time the expression of very worthy and very human sentiments; both ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... who has boldly maintained a proposition on the strength of individual recollection, but begins to recognize the instability of his position: "I either witnessed the occurrence or dreamt it." This is sufficient to prove that, with all people's boasting about the infallibility of memory, there are many who have a shrewd suspicion that some of its asseverations will not ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Jesus warned His disciples. They were not to love to be called Rabbi, a title which occurs in three forms, Rab, Teacher, Doctor; Rabbi, My Doctor or Teacher; Rabboni, My great Doctor. Nor were they to call any man 'Father,' in the sense of granting him any infallibility of judgment or power over their consciences.... 'Papa,' as the simple Moravians call their great man, Count Zinzendorf: 'Founder,' as Methodists denominate good John Wesley; 'Holy Father in God,' as bishops are sometimes called; 'Pope,' which is the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... said Lucy undaunted. "That is no answer." She was untrammelled by any respect for Euclid, and would have freely questioned the infallibility of an axiom, with a courage such as only ignorance possesses. She was thinking not only of Jock, but had an eye to distant contingencies, when there might be question of a still more precious boy. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... their game. Would they be tolerant? Why ask such a question? When was Roman Catholicism tolerant, and where? Is not the whole system of Popery based on intolerance, on infallibility, on strict exclusiveness? Let me give you a few local ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... and ought to be a Catholic, when the reactionaries were setting themselves up as gods or saints, just as a mulatto passes for a white man in Kaffirland. But with all that, he ate meat during Lent, except on Good Friday, never went to confession, believed neither in miracles nor the infallibility of the Pope, and when he attended mass, went to the one at ten o'clock, or to the shortest, the military mass. Although in Madrid he had spoken ill of the religious orders, so as not to be out of harmony with his surroundings, considering them anachronisms, and had hurled ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... enemies to all manner of fatigues. But, to make amends, the sciences flourish among them. The effendis (that is to say, the learned) do very well deserve this name: They have no more faith in the in inspiration of Mahomet, than in the infallibility of the Pope. They make a frank profession of Deism among themselves, or to those they can trust; and never speak of their law but as of a politic institution, fit now to be observed by wise men, however at first introduced ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... happened that at this moment Innocent died, and his successor, Zosimus, annulled his judgment and declared the opinions of Pelagius to be orthodox. These contradictory decisions are still often referred to by the opponents of papal infallibility. Things were in this state of confusion, when the wily African bishops, through the influence of Count Valerius, procured from the emperor an edict denouncing Pelagins as a heretic; he and his accomplices were condemned to exile and ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... that an additional cause of my anxiety was the not receiving a reply to a private and confidential note to Pierce, in which I remonstrated with him against the propriety of holding a thing so open to base ridicule as a Congress of American Ministers at Ostend. That fraternity of infallibility, kings and princes, might become somewhat uneasy at its presence, many honest-hearted republicans would be deceived, and its result be only the illustration of an unprecedented amount of folly on the part of the American Executive. But the thing ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... arm; where the Flopper, a wretched tatterdemalion from the gutter, licked greedy lips and gloated in his rascality; where Helena, flushed-faced, inhaled her interminable cigarettes and dangled her legs from the table edge; where Madison, suave, flippant, so certain of his own infallibility, glorying in his crooked masterpiece, laid the tribute to genius ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... their questions became so searching as to completely confound me; and as no one likes being confounded, and it is especially regrettable when a parent is placed in such a position, I brought the course to an abrupt end by assuming that owl-like air of wisdom peculiar to infallibility in a corner, and telling them that they were too young to understand these things for the present; and they, having a touching faith in the truth of every word I say, gave three contented little purrs of ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... clear that the irascible miller was a man to interpret any chance-shot that grazed him as an attempt on his own life, and was liable to entanglements in this puzzling world, which, due consideration had to his own infallibility, required the hypothesis of a very active diabolical agency to explain them. It is still possible to believe that the attorney was not more guilty toward him than an ingenious machine, which performs ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... that happened yesterday. Mr. Pelham(467) is dead! all that calm, that supineness, of which I have lately talked to you so much, is at an end! there is no heir to such luck as his. The whole people of England can never agree a second time upon the same person for the residence of infallibility; and though so many have found their interest in making Mr. Pelham the fermier-general for their Venality, yet almost all have found too, that it lowered their prices to have but one purchaser. He could not have died at a more critical time: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... serious man was surrounded by a "nimbus" of infallibility; no one had ever enlightened me on the fact that serious-minded men had themselves once been young, and had learned the student jargon of Heidelberg; that this director himself, after a noisy youth, had arrived at the idea that every young man has malicious propensities, and that what seems ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... petulance, procacity[obs3], bluster; swagger, swaggering &c. v.; bounce; terrorism. assumption, presumption; beggar on horseback; usurpation. impudence, assurance, audacity, hardihood, front, face, brass; shamelessness &c. adj.; effrontery, hardened front, face of brass. assumption of infallibility. saucebox &c. (blusterer) 887[obs3]. V. be insolent &c. adj.; bluster, vapor, swagger, swell, give oneself airs, snap one's fingers, kick up a dust; swear &c. (affirm) 535; rap out oaths; roister. arrogate; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... ultramontanism of the Spanish clergy. Never had those doctrines more fanatical defenders, nor sectarians more fiery partisans, than the ecclesiastical writers of the Peninsula; the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope, the superiority of his jurisdiction with respect to the bishops and to the general councils, was propagated not only in books but in the pulpit and the confessional. Nevertheless the enlightened ministers of Charles III., Aranda, Campomanes, and Floridablanca (the ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... snares which necessity forced him to invent and construct for himself, for want of just such a volume. Several of these original inventions will appear in the present work for the first time in book form, and the author can vouch for their excellence, and he might almost say, their infallibility, for in their perfect state he has never yet found them to "miss" ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... England, and that he should outlive his intimacy at the Vatican and his influence on the general policy of the Church of Rome. With the accession of Leo XIII. a new order began, and Newman's elevation to the sacred purple seemed to affix the sanction of Infallibility to views and methods against which Manning had waged a Thirty Years' War. Henceforward he felt himself a stranger at the Vatican, and powerless beyond the limits ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... impulsive, the other was sure. Fort loved to take a chance; the other, would not act until he was absolutely certain. Billie decided that he was the steadier, the more reliable of the two; also, the least likable, for that very reason. Infallibility ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... pretensions of the chair of Rome, and the corruption of the clergy, had been for some time since looked upon in Bohemia with private disgust and open disapprobation; and when the professors Huss, Jerome, and Jacobellus, began to declaim against monks, auricular confession, and the infallibility of the pope, they found a responding echo in the breasts of their hearers; and all that was novel in their doctrines, was the boldness with which they were pronounced, and the logical consistency with which ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... the want of examining the traditional teachings which had been transmitted to him. Byron felt the necessity of inquiring on what irrevocable proofs the dogmas which he was called upon to believe were based. Holy writ, aided by the infallibility of the teachings of the Church, etc., were adduced as the proofs ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... son's admiration, as her care for him demanded his gratitude, but, despite the common opinion, he never had that sense of companionship with her that he enjoyed with his father. Mrs. Rizal was a strict disciplinarian and a woman of unexceptionable character, but she arrogated to herself an infallibility which at times was trying to those about her, and she foretold bitter fates for those who ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... of such things, truly! why, I have been at both places, and have seen what I describe. I went to Roma on purpose to see the Holy Father, in order to make certain whether our French opinions of his character and infallibility were true or not, before I set up ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... man may turn 50 Spinning Wheels, which shall serve 100 persons to Spin with at once; so that the Spinners shall have nothing to do but employ both hands to draw Tire from the Distaff. The Demonstration of the Infallibility of this Invention may be easily made ...
— Proposals For Building, In Every County, A Working-Alms-House or Hospital • Richard Haines
... expression of ethical judgments, the approval or condemnation of Julius Caesar or of Caesar Borgia is not a thing within the historian's province. Let the controversy go on! It is well worth one's while to read the presentations of the subject from the different points of view. But infallibility will nowhere be found. Mommsen and Curtius in their detailed investigations received applause from those who adhered rigidly to the scientific view of history, but when they addressed the public in their endeavor, it is ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... solution. For instance, in one discourse Benedetto says: "The Catholic Church, which proclaims itself the fountain of truth, opposes to-day the search for Truth when it is carried on on its own foundations, on the holy books, on the dogmas, on its asserted infallibility. For us this means that it has no longer faith in itself. The Catholic Church which proclaims itself the minister of Life, to-day shackles and stifles whatever lives youthfully within it, and to-day it props itself on all its decadent and ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... believed that it was only the want of power that prevented the Catholics from renewing the fires of Smithfield and the terrors of the Inquisition. It was believed that the infallibility and supremacy of the Pope bound the Catholic citizen to yield unquestioning obedience to the Catholic clergy in matters civil and political, as well as spiritual. There was a natural and very strong dread ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Pope, to whom he is a pitiful purveyor.[458] His very Christianity may be questioned.[459] He ought to expect more severity than other men, as he is most unmerciful in his own reflections on others.[460] With as good a right as his holiness, he sets up for poetical infallibility.[461] ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... little better than that of the brute.... Convicted of so many errors, the papacy makes no attempt at explanation. It ignores the whole matter. Nay, more, relying on the efficacy of audacity, although confronted by these facts, it lays claim to infallibility." ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... keeps the Catholic clergy in a constantly explanatory attitude to show that the Syllabus does not really mean what to the ordinary reader it unmistakably seems to mean; and the work of explanation is made the more necessary and the more difficult by the decree of papal infallibility, which followed the Syllabus after a ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... of honour were to be his guide in the first and last appeal; and for his conduct through life, as a man and as a gentleman, he proudly professed to trust to the sublime instinct of a good heart. His guardian's doubts of the infallibility and even of the existence of this moral instinct wounded Mr. Vincent's pride instead of alarming his understanding; and he was rather eager than averse to expose himself to the danger, that he might prove his superiority to the temptation. How different ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... The practice of holding public lectures in order to increase his reputation was discouraged in the physician, and he was especially warned against lectures tricked out with quotations from the poets. Physicians who pretended to infallibility in detecting even the minutest departure from their prescriptions were laughed at; and finally, there were precise by-laws to regulate the personal behaviour of the physician. He was enjoined to observe the most scrupulous cleanliness, and ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... arraign their fellows before any standard of orthodoxy, or claim the right of dictating forms of belief or modes of worship under pains or penalties, are guilty of assuming the prerogative of the Most High, and of claiming, for their frail opinions, infallibility. Such are guilty of high treason against the Majesty of heaven—and all their machinations have a direct tendency to destroy human happiness—the wealth of the nation, and that universal good-will among men which the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pretend not to be opposed to the natural aspirations of man? These objectors do not, or will not, see that the Church, by enlarging the domain of her teaching to cover all things with the mantle of infallibility, would most effectually crush the action of the human intellect, which was meant for use, not rust, which must be allowed something to act upon, and which in independent action is bound to rush into a variety of differences according to the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... neither Catholics nor Protestants, could not long retain sufficient prestige to keep its adherents together. The destiny of such a body is written in the history of the 'Old Catholics,' who seceded from Rome because they would not accept the dogma of Papal infallibility. The seceders included many men of high character and intellect, but in numbers and influence they are quite insignificant. The Church of England has only one title to exist, and it is a strong one. It may claim to represent the religion of the ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Greeks were subdued by the authority of an impostor, who, in the sixth century, assumed the character of Dionysius the Areopagite. 2. A just apprehension that the grammarians might become more important than the theologians, engaged the council of Trent to fix the seal of their infallibility on all the books of Scripture contained in the Latin Vulgate, in the number of which the Apocalypse was fortunately included. (Fr. Paolo, Istoria del Concilio Tridentino, l. ii.) 3. The advantage of turning those mysterious prophecies against the See of Rome, inspired the Protestants with uncommon ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... against Pope's use of names made such a defense desirable. See, for example, Ward (p. 9) and "A Letter to a Noble Lord: Occasion'd by the Late Publication of the Dunciad Variorum," in Pope Alexander's Supremacy and Infallibility Examin'd (London, 1729), p. 12. Boileau's Discourse is a particularly apposite reply to the latter, which had contrasted Pope's satiric practice with that of ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... where he was sheltered after his condemnation by the Elector of Saxony he denounced not merely, as at first, the abuses of the Papacy, but the Papacy itself. The heresies of Wyclif were revived; the infallibility, the authority of the Roman See, the truth of its doctrines, the efficacy of its worship, were denied and scoffed at in vigorous pamphlets which issued from his retreat and were dispersed throughout the world by the new printing-press. Germany ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... all might witness the fish of Tukuran taking a constitutional on the beach, after the manner of the oysters in "The Walrus and the Carpenter." Nothing daunted, the officer agreed to the proposition, and so confident was he that even Mrs. Munchausen became less apologetically sure of his infallibility. But on our arrival at the beach, not a fish was to be seen, and loud was the laughter at both Munchausens, and numerous the jokes ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... of the universe, by Inferences which are as irresistible to the mind as the axioms with which we started. In no other domains of Thought can this be done by any methods now in vogue. In no other realms, therefore, are complete precision and infallibility attainable. It is this which constitutes the peculiar character of these three Sciences, and distinguishes them radically from ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... and she now asked herself, if the hunchback would ever accept them on such terms. But Florine had gone too far to recede, and she durst not tell all. She resolved, therefore, to leave the future to chance and as those, who have themselves fallen, are little disposed to believe in the infallibility of others, Florine said to herself, that perhaps in the desperate position in which she was, Mother Bunch would not be so scrupulous after all. Therefore she said: "I see, mademoiselle, that you ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... that father, Lady Mabel had full faith, and also some of the faith of inexperience in the beautiful theory which teaches that the general knows best, that after him the second in command approaches nearest to infallibility, and so on through every gradation of rank, in all services, civil and military. Had she made an exception to the application of this rule, it would have been in her father's case; for she inclined to the belief, that notwithstanding the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... centuries the Gospelized communities developed into an organized Church, with doctrine, worship, and government based upon God's Word. These primitive Christians were careful to preserve the apostolic simplicity, purity, manner, and substance, of Divine service. The Infallibility of the Bible, the Divinity of Christ, the Inspired Psalmody, and the Presbyterian form of government, were fundamentals in the faith of the Church of Scotland from her youth. She appears exceedingly beautiful in her first love, coming ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... Fifth, although his Holiness carefully superintended every sheet as it passed through the press, has ever remained without a rival in typographical inaccuracy. Still more curious was the fact, that the Pope, in the plenitude of pontifical infallibility, prefixed to the first volume a bull of excommunication against any and every printer, who in reprinting the work, should ever make any alteration in the text. To the amazement of the public, however, when the Bible appeared, it swarmed with errors too numerous for an errata. In a multitude ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hand, spilling the cold liquor on more than one ankle—whose owners frisked—but not disturbing a muscle in his own long face, which, in the total eclipse of reason, retained its gravity, primness, and infallibility. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... of slowness; but it is this very slowness that constitutes its strength and surety, its almost infallibility. One scarcely knows what a time evidence takes to produce itself. There is no knowing what important testimony investigations ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... France, on the other hand, in close alliance with the civil power, became almost irresistible in her own sphere. The Catholic Church throughout Europe had been the great schoolmaster of civilization. It had fallen into the common fault of schoolmasters, the assumption of infallibility. It was, moreover, a state within all states. Its sovereign, the Pope, the most powerful monarch in Christendom, is chosen in accordance with a curious and elaborate set of regulations, by electors appointed by his predecessors. His rule, nominally despotic, is limited by powers ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... end up with Thos. J. Brown, who, disguised as a corporal, really runs the business. "Our Mr. Brown," as Ross calls him, is one of those nice old gentlemen who wear large spectacles and cultivate specialist knowledge on the intensive system. Owing to his infallibility in all details and upon all occasions he was much sought after in peace time by the larger commercial houses. When War broke out our Mr. Brown disdained peace. He made at once for the Front; but his aged legs, though encased in quite the most remarkable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... Vatican is "Infallibility." It not only never errs, but it never changes. It dons another mask, adopts another slogan, and is now engaged in a ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... already seen enough of regular troops to doubt their infallibility in wild bush-fighting, and who knew the dangerous nature of the ground they were to traverse, ventured to suggest, that on the following day the Virginia rangers, being accustomed to the country and to Indian warfare, might be thrown in the advance. The proposition drew an angry ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... inchoare longam. I then accepted the doctrine, in profound obedience to the absolutely infallible system of precepts. I now see that the falsity and mischief of the doctrine is one of the very many disproofs of the assumed, but unverified infallibility. However, the hold which the apostolic belief then took of me, subjected my conscience to the exhortations of the Irish clergyman, whenever he inculcated that the highest Christian must necessarily decline ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... which he believed to be imminent. No war occurred, and the loss of a few hundred pounds obliged him to apply to his father for supplies. The Marquis sent the money, and wrote good-naturedly that the mishap might teach Camille to moderate his belief in his own infallibility. He thought himself the only young man in the world in whom there was a ready-made minister, banker, manufacturer, and speculator; and if he did not take care the idea that he could never be wrong might prevent him from turning to account the superior gifts with which ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... always liable to error; nature and certainty is very hard to come at, and infallibility is ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... claimed by any mob or party constituting the majority of a city, town, or neighbourhood, as well as by the Colony of Massachusetts, against the Parliament or supreme authority of the nation. They had no doubt of their own infallibility; they had no fear that they "should hereafter be of a malignant spirit;" but they thought it very possible that the Parliament might be so, and then it would be for them to fight if they should have "strength sufficient." But after the restoration they thought it ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... by that name he has since been known. Voltaire began to think, to doubt, to inquire. He studied the history of the church of the creed. He found that the religion of his time rested on the usurpation of the scriptures—the infallibility of the church—the dreams of insane hermits—the absurdities of the fathers—the mistakes and falsehoods of saints—the hysteria of nuns—the cunning of priests and the stupidity of the people. He found that the Emperor Constantine, who lifted christianity into power, murdered ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the period considered, be it early or late in the Middle Ages, it will be found that the anniversary was commemorated, piously and merrily, by sneering and adoring multitudes For the one did not prevent the other; people caricatured the Church, her hierarchy and ceremonials, but did not doubt her infallibility; they laughed at the devil and feared him. "Priests, deacons, and sub-deacons," says the Pope, are bold enough, on those mad days, "to take part in unbecoming bacchanals, in the presence of the people, whom ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all the doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false. And, perhaps, the same may be justly said of every sect, church, and society of men, when they assume to themselves that infallibility which they deny ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... combined with the most resistless charms of feminine loveliness. An unfeminine woman can never be loved by men. She may be respected for her talents, she may be honored for her philanthropy, but she can not win the warmer emotions of the heart. But Madame Roland, with an energy of will, an infallibility of purpose, a firmness of stoical endurance which no mortal man has ever exceeded, combined that gentleness, and tenderness, and affection—that instinctive sense of the proprieties of her sex—which gathered around her a love as pure and as enthusiastic as ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... difficulty that authoritativeness has to contend with is some other authoritativeness. When an infallibility clashes with a pontification— ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... cloth. At the east end is a recess in which are some well-executed Chinese statues, the chief figure is of large dimensions, and is intended to represent the Durmah Rajah, whose statue is supposed to give infallibility. Two bells were suspended, one from the centre, the other from the balcony, the tongues of which were long, of ivory, and moved by a string. The Rajah received us in state, amidst discordant sounds of horns, pipes, and drums; his followers for the most part were badly clothed, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... more quickly than others, all the individuals in the family have persevered till they have solved the questions; and the timid seem to have been more encouraged by this practical demonstration of the infallibility of persevering attention, than by any other methods which have been tried. When, after a number of small successful trials, they have acquired some share of confidence in themselves, when they are certain of the possibility of their performing any given operations, we ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... or, if it do no harm, at least retards the perfect understanding that should obtain between the deeply felt reality and our manner of interpreting and accepting it? What were the divine right of kings, the infallibility of the Church, the belief in rewards beyond the grave, but illusions whose sacrifice reason deferred too long? Nor was anything gained by this dilatoriness beyond a few sterile hopes, a little deceptive ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... its Creator, and instead of flowering into a morbid and maudlin sentimentality which craves low-browed, long straight-nosed, undraped statuettes in every nook and corner,—or dwarfs the soul and pins it to the surplice of some theologic dogmata claiming infallibility—or coffins the intellect in cramped, shallow, psychological categories,—it bore fruit in a wide-eyed, large-hearted, liberal-minded eclecticism, which, waging no crusade against the various Saladins of modern systems, quietly possessed ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... famous Sentences of Peter Lombard (p. 171), it formed a splendid textbook of the new faith. Calvin based his work on the infallibility of the Bible, as against that of the Church and Pope, and presented, in a remarkably clear and logical manner, the principles of Calvinistic doctrine. Before 1630, as many as seventy-four full editions and fourteen ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Angeles is a preacher by the name of McIntyre, a type of the blatant Bellarmine who exiled Galileo—a man who never doubts his own infallibility, who talks like an oracle and continually tells of perdition for ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... of the Jansenist movement to Gallican liberties was not such that the Gallican party accepted Jansenist theology. The Jesuits upheld papal infallibility and, in general, the Ultramontane position. The Jansenists were opposed to the Jesuits, but Gallicanism was one thing ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... beside the stricken man, whose breath came stertorous and slow, he was in that condition of mind of all others most perilous to the Southern man—he had begun to doubt: to doubt the infallibility of his hereditary notions; to doubt the super-excellence of Southern manhood, and the infinite superiority of Southern womanhood; to doubt the incapacity of the negro for self-maintenance and civilization; to doubt, in short, all those dogmas which ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... those undesirable coxcombs, who have not been bred by the High Church movement, but have taken refuge in its cracks, as they would have done forty years ago in those of the Evangelical,—youths who hide their crass ignorance and dulness under the cloak of Church infallibility, and having neither wit, manners, learning, humanity, or any other dignity whereon to stand, talk loud, pour pis aller, about the dignity of the priesthood. Such men Frank had met at neighbouring clerical meetings, overbearing and out-talking ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... imagine me as a youth who no longer believed in the special inspiration of the Scriptures, or in their infallibility, but who was still a Christian as thousands of "liberal" Church people in the present day ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... will lack nothing but the presence of a perfect charity to turn the nineteenth century into a complete kingdom of heaven. Amongst changes, then, so great and so hopeful—amongst the discoveries of the rights of women, the infallibility of the Pope, and the physical basis of life, it may well be doubted if the great fathers of ancient song would find, if they could come back to us, anything out of the way or ludicrous in a ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... principles of liberty and humanity cannot, by virtue of their very nature, be sectional, any more than light and heat. Prevention is not abolition, and unjust laws are the only serious enemies that Law ever had. With history before us, it is no treason to question the infallibility of a court; for courts are never wiser or more venerable than the men composing them, and a decision that reverses precedent cannot arrogate to itself any immunity from reversal. Truth is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... agent's course at the Vatican, I have come over to Rome to see about it. He is an Irishman, with a little of Father TOM in him, and has got into a "controversy" with his Holiness about infallibility. Our African bishop (otherwise PHELIM BURKE) insists that PUNCHINELLO is infallible! The Pope says this is ridiculous! Father PHELIM replies that "there are two that can play that same game." I found them in the midst of this ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... tones the Bishop put forth the claims of the Church of Rome to infallibility. He spoke of the importance of unity, of the crime of heresy and schism; and, finally, he enlarged on the duty of all Catholics to deliver over to justice all who were in the slightest degree guilty ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... seemed to think that I was the one for you, too," said March; and he laughed. "That's what makes me doubt his infallibility. But he couldn't ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... unanimous conclusion. If they believed their Lord's parting words, they could not doubt that His Spirit had guided them. If we lived more fully in that Spirit, we should know more of the same peaceful assurance, which is far removed from the delusion of our own infallibility, and is the simple expression of trust in the veracious ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Englishwoman who has married a French Duke. He is a delightful old fellow, the pink of courtesy, and the model of perfect egotism. A true Parisian, and of course an atheist,—a very polished atheist, too, with a most charming reliance on his own infallibility. His wife writes novels which have a SLIGHT leaning toward Zolaism,—she is an extremely witty woman sarcastic, and cold-blooded enough to be a female Robespierre, yet, on the whole, amusing as a study of what curious nondescript forms the feminine nature can adopt unto itself, if it chooses. She ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... pope called Frederick the "heretical Marchese di Brandenburgo," the king returned the compliment by calling him the "Grand Lama," and delighted himself over the assumed infallibility of the vicegerent of the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Lord, pronounces forgiveness upon all in every generation who truly repent and believe on the Son of God; and preachers in every age, with the Bible in their hand, are authorized to do the same declaratively. But when it is urged, as by Catholic writers, that this infallibility for teaching and absolution, which was committed to the apostles, has descended through a succession of ministers called the clergy, the answer seems to be, that this authority has not been perpetuated in any body of men apart from the Scriptures, but was transferred to the ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... Of the infallibility of the Pope, and his right to the deposing power, our author thus expresses himself in one of his letters on Mr. Bower's History of the Popes; "Mr. Bower having been educated in the Catholic schools, could not but know that, though some private divine ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... demons, had once gained an extraordinary influence over him by casting some mysterious spell upon him and reducing his will to abject subjection to his own; and this magician, who had recovered his own self-possession, had assured him, with an inimitable air of infallibility, that the fall of the Temple of Serapis would involve no greater catastrophe than that of any old worn-out statue. Since this announcement Medius had laughed at his own alarms; he had recovered his "strong-mindedness," ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
