"Quibble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brunt of all this legal war. But short their friendship as 'twas rare. Whom blood had join'd—and small the wonder!— The force of interest drove asunder; And, as is wont in such affairs, Ambition, envy, were co-heirs. In parcelling their sire's estate, They quarrel, quibble, litigate, Each aiming to supplant the other. The judge, by turns, condemns each brother. Their creditors make new assault, Some pleading error, some default. The sunder'd brothers disagree; For counsel one, have counsels ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... very well spared? It is a reproach to any Christian establishment if every man cannot claim the benefit of it who can say that he believes in the religion of Jesus Christ as it is set forth in the New Testament. You say the terms are so general that even Deists would quibble and insinuate themselves. I answer that all the articles which are subscribed at present by no means exclude Deists who will prevaricate; and upon this scheme you would at least exclude ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... speaking as slowly and precisely as I could, as though deliberation in speech might in some way make clearer a matter recognized as only too dark in spirit. "And it must be answered honestly, without any quibble as to the meaning of words. Were you in love with ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... classes (he might have said the same of writers, too, if he had pleased). In the lowest form he places those whom he calls les petits esprits—such things as are our upper-gallery audience in a playhouse, who like nothing but the husk and rind of wit; prefer a quibble, a conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant expression. These are mob-readers. If Virgil and Martial steed for Parliament-men, we know already who would carry it. But though they make the greatest appearance in the field, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... proposed measure, how in short, they tear the bill to rags, laugh its powers to scorn, and hold its authors in high derision. The Belfast men do not discuss the bill, do not examine it clause by clause, do not quibble over the purport of this or the probable effect of that, do not ask how the customs are to be collected, or who is to pay for this, that, or the other. They descend to no details, enter into no particulars, point out no minor fallacies, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... not attempt any quibble. The circumstances under which these articles were found place them sufficiently in your possession. What have you to ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... of the Thames. How the foul fiend can it interest the peasants and mechanics in the Strand, to know that the Earl of Huntinglen is sitting down to dinner? But my father looks our way—we must not be late for the grace, or we shall be in DIS-grace, if you will forgive a quibble which would have made his Majesty laugh. You will find us all of a piece, and, having been accustomed to eat in saucers abroad, I am ashamed you should witness our larded capons, our mountains of beef, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... an answer to that question? Nay, though in His boundless mercy He give you a thousand years to search, and spread before you all the books of science and sociology in which you were wont to find excuses for sin, what will it avail you? Will a scoff, or a quibble over a doubtful passage, serve your turn? No. You cannot scoff whilst your tongue cleaves to the roof of your mouth for fear, and there will be no passage doubtful in all the Scriptures on that ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... says there is a quibble here with asses as beasts of charge or burden. It is probable enough, seeing, as Malone tells us, that in Warwickshire, as did Dr. Johnson himself, they pronounce as hard. In Aberdeenshire the sound of the s varies ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... openness to the truth, an eager willingness to believe it simply, and to act upon it, that suggests the way they did in the Book of Acts. In our home-lands of America and Great Britain and Germany there seems to be either indifference, or an atmosphere of quibble and criticism. With questions and doubts naturalistic explanations are sought that do away with much of the ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... sense than the genuine words he delivered in the minute he did subscribe and swear. That which induced him to this, he says, was, "They gave it in his own meaning, and so far was his mind deceived, that by a quibble and nice distinction they thought that the word might bear, That this was not a disowning of that nor no declaration that ever he saw (save one of their pretending) nor that neither but in so far, or if so be; which different expressions he was taught to confound by scholastic notions infused into ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... there was a rule preventing their amending it at the time, they could pass that, and then, Chase's amendment being merged, put it in the shape they wanted. They did not choose to do so, but they went into a quibble with Chase to get him to add what they knew he would not add, and because he would not, they stand upon that flimsy pretext for voting down what they argued was the meaning and intent of their own bill. They left ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... do not see any difference between reading a book in manuscript or in print. I don't pretend to quibble on a point like that. After looking at it, I felt that it was desirable I should read the whole. You may remember, Hester, that I showed you my Modern Dissent. If I did not make restrictions, ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... his tones if anything is some low-sperited. "I takes it," he says, when he's able to command his feelin's, "that you declines them proffers with your winchester at the time when made." But the lady dismisses this as a quibble, an' merely sayin' that she won't be paltered with no farther, orders Oscar an' the Bible sharp who's ridin' inside to assemble by the edge of the trail. The Bible sharp attempts to lay the foundations ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... weeks, but the Cavaliers concealed his death. (Remember this!) That Sir John Urrey[332] is dead and buried at Oxford. (He died the same day with the Lord Wilmot.) That the Cavaliers, before they have done, will HURREY all men into misery. (This quibble hath been six times printed, and nobody would take notice of it; now let's hear of it no more!) That all the Cavaliers which Sir William Waller took prisoners (besides 500) tooke the National Covenant. (Yes, all he took (besides 500) tooke the Covenant.) That 2000 Irish Rebels ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... speeches are wanted, great guns like to have the fire to themselves. Neither did he split upon the opposite rock of "promising young men," who stick to "the business of the house" like leeches, and quibble on details; in return for which labour they are generally voted bores, who can never do anything remarkable. But he spoke frequently, shortly, courageously, and with a strong dash of good-humoured personality. He was the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sinister comedians to entertain me. And I, what can I call myself—pure reason? No, a disgusting title. Rather, Unreason, since I am after all the Indifferent One. But all this is a quibble inspired by modesty. I am God. I am that which men have worshipped—the aloof one, the ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... stranger who was at the inn called the "City of Rome" wished to see him. He went at once to the place with no misgivings, but on his arrival there found the devil, who had come to claim the fulfillment of the contract. Provoked at the quibble, he resolved to employ a ruse himself, and just as the devil was about to take possession of him he seized the infant child of the innkeeper from its cradle and held it up before him, its innocence being a sure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... great a province, you will not set yourself up any more haughtily. You will quibble no longer concerning tithes and tolls ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... approving in principle of the establishment of a special Divorce Court, yet declared that the new court was "tending to destroy marriage as a social institution and to sap female chastity," and that "everyone now is a husband and wife at will." "No one," he adds, "can now justly quibble at ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... paper, growling now and then as he read of some new quibble devised by the attorneys for the defense. As softly and as surreptitiously as it begins to rain on a cloudy day, she was crying. He turned again ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Electorial ambassadors, and lengthy, tedious negotiations commenced. The deliberations seemed endless. Did the ambassadors believe their task to be nearing completion, the other side had always a fresh plea, a new quibble; and the winter was far advanced before these unfortunate envoys declared that ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... all right as regards material and build. She would have been more comfortable if they had been "high-necked" shoes, and, in that case, the yarn hosiery would not have troubled him, but that is a minor detail. The quibble comes at the belt, and knowing that Margaret was an artist, we must be sure that Mr. Smith was mistaken. It may have been one of the woven cotton belts, not more than two inches wide, which, for a dizzy moment, were ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... short as it is, the faults seem not to be very few. Why part should be Latin, and part English, it is not easy to discover. In the Latin the opposition of immortalis and mortalis, is a mere sound, or a mere quibble; he is not immortal in any sense contrary to that in which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... of Johnston's claim on which was founded this malignant clique in Richmond was the merest quibble about the date of his commission to the rank of full general. Because its date was later than that of Robert E. Lee he felt ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... obviated by the admission. But it is still maintained that the Bay of Fundy is not a part of the Atlantic Ocean because it happens to be named in reference to the St. Croix in the same article of the treaty. To show the extent to which such an argument, founded on a mere verbal quibble, may be carried, let it be supposed that at some future period two nations on the continent of North America shall agree on a boundary in the following terms: By a line drawn through the Mississippi ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... saved. It was for their interest that the guarantee should not be given. It was withdrawn. The faith of England—till then regarded as something sacred—was violated; and the answer was a criticism on a phrase—a quibble upon the construction of a sentence, which all the world for six months had read one way. The secret history of this wretched transaction I do not seek to penetrate. Enough is written upon stock-books and in the records of courts in Canada to give ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... hopeless despair. The major was too enthusiastic to quibble over how the knowledge was gained. It was there in overflowing abundance. That was enough. Besides, his nephew's word was his bond. He would as soon ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... would persuade you only that banter, pun, and quibble are the properties of light men and shallow capacities; that genuine humour and true wit require a sound and capacious mind, which is always a grave one. Contemptuousness is not incompatible with them: worthless is that man who feels no ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... saved that day. It flashed across even his obscene mentality that he might suggest once too often contempt for Western folk who worked for Eastern potentates. It was true he regarded the difference between a contract and direct employment as merely a question of degree, and a quibble in any case, and he felt pretty sure that the Blaines would not risk the maharajah's unchancy friendship by dismissing himself; but he suspected there were limits. He could not imagine why, but he had noticed that insolence ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... perchance serve to make you think yourself better than others, quibble over texts, wear sour looks, domineer over others' consciences or give your own over to bondage; stifle your scruples, follow religious forms for fashion or gain, do good in the hope of escaping future punishment?—oh, then, if you proclaim yourself ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... in Essex, in the year 1738, that three horses (and no more than three) started for a L10 plate, and they were all three distanced the first heat, according to the common rules in horse-racing, without any quibble or equivocation; and the following was the solution:—The first horse ran on the inside of the post; the second wanted weight; and the third ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... have exercised the commentators we have but scant concern. Following Aristotle, most historians of philosophy have been metaphysicians; they have concerned themselves far less with what the ancient thinkers really knew than with what they thought. A chance using of a verbal quibble, an esoteric phrase, the expression of a vague mysticism—these would suffice to call forth reams of exposition. It has been the favorite pastime of historians to weave their own anachronistic theories upon the scanty woof of the half-remembered thoughts of the ancient ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... mind," I put in, "detective divination is merely minute observation. But why do we quibble over words and definitions when there is much work to be done? When is the formal inquest to ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... crowds of purchasers streaming in and out of Cannock and Co.'s store, from late in the morning till early in the evening. I use the last words advisedly, for the people of the West seem to have accepted Charles Lamb's humorous quibble in good faith. If they begin work later than any other civilized people, they assuredly leave off earlier. But until evening sets in there is a torrent of customers pouring in over the way, and wooing the eye from the contemplation of the Shannon at the Thomond Bridge. Of the groggeries ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... And here comes the quibble of the sophist, who singles out instances of law violated in civilized communities, and holds them up as the criterion by which to judge civilization, and triumphantly exclaims, Lo! the fruits of civilization—of that civilization which arrogates to itself the ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... and an oracle was sent, at Marcus Aurelius' request, by Alexander to the Roman army on the Danube during the war with the Marcomanni, declaring that victory would follow on the throwing of two lions alive into the river. The result was a great disaster, and Alexander had recourse to the old quibble of the Delphic oracle to Croesus for an explanation. Lucian's own close investigations into Alexander's methods of fraud led to a serious attempt on his life. The whole account gives a graphic description of the inner ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... succeeded in having the proprietary lands taxed equally with the lands of the colonists. But the proprietors attempted to construe this provision so that their best lands were taxed at the rate paid by the people on their worst. This obvious quibble of course raised such a storm of opposition that the Quakers, joined by classes which had never before supported them, and now forming a large majority, determined to appeal to the Government in England to abolish the proprietorship and put the colony under the rule of the King. In the proposal ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... forgotten the Southampton Tavern. We for some time took C—— for a lawyer, from a certain arguteness of voice and slenderness of neck, and from his having a quibble and a laugh at himself always ready. On inquiry, however, he was found to be a patent-medicine seller, and having leisure in his apprenticeship, and a forwardness of parts, he had taken to study Blackstone and the Statutes ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Cleghorn promptly declared that in the sense of the contract it was a bucketful; hence his first go at the now uncovered pots. So heated grew the debate, that finally the grimy excavators climbed to the upper air and appealed to Mayhew, who promptly denied the quibble, deciding that stones and pots were not interchangeable. The diversion drew attention from the great perforated disc itself, and as the sullen Cleghorn let the exultant Webb down upon the ancient pots, it lay badly bestowed near the curb on the crumbling ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... enough to center attention upon the quibble and then said: "My friend, I first tried, unsuccessfully, to have the United States take Texas as a gift. Not until I threatened to turn Texas over to England did I finally succeed. There may be within the sound of my voice some who have knowledge of sheep culture. They ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... it was impossible to keep steady at home; and he quite readily admitted that he had not introduced himself to Zack under his real name. But at this point his communicativeness stopped. He did not quibble, or prevaricate; he just bluntly and simply declared that he would tell nothing more than he ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... give me a ream of paper: we'll have a kingdom of gold for't: A quibble. REALM was frequently written ream; and frequently (as the following passages shew), even when the former spelling was given, the ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... said. "Put the whole thing on the expense account. You don't think I'm going to quibble about a few ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... I should say yes without a quibble," replied Fenton, "but your air is so serious that I do not dare run the risk; so I will merely answer,—I would like to do you a favor ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... Clopton is a falcon clapping his wings, and rising from a tun; and I verily believe the rose clapt on to be the miserable quibble intended."] ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... meant "like"—it was a general term, well contrasting with "hate." As for really caring, beyond a liking for Brook Johnstone, she was sure that it was impossible. But the liking was strong. She exploded her difficulty at last with the bomb of a splendidly youthful quibble. She said to herself that she undoubtedly hated him and despised him, and that he was certainly the very lowest of living men for treating Lady Fan so badly—besides being a black sinner, a point which had ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... blackface expert of the vaudeville show, but of the really great humour which, once or twice in a generation at best, illuminates and elevates our literature. It is no longer dependent upon the mere trick and quibble of words, or the odd and meaningless incongruities in things that strike us as "funny." Its basis lies in the deeper contrasts offered by life itself: the strange incongruity between our aspiration and our achievement, the eager and fretful anxieties of to-day that fade into nothingness to-morrow, ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... fundamental, chief, or great doctrines of their holy religion. Down on all such quibbling! Others have objected to the words 'substantially correct,' as meaning anything or nothing, at pleasure. This, like the other objection, is a quibble. None can err here, unless it be wilfully.... The amount of the whole is, 'In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.' This is as far as the General Synod has gone or could go; but it does not interfere with the liberty of the District ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... Geoffry's Chronicle; Men whose historical superiority Is always greatest at a miracle. But Saint Augustine has the great priority, Who bids all men believe the impossible, Because 'tis so. Who nibble, scribble, quibble, he Quiets at once ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Steunenberg of Idaho. Their leaders, Moyer and Haywood, were anarchists like themselves, and although they professed contempt for law, as soon as they were arrested and brought up for trial, they clutched at every quibble of the law, as drowning men clutch at straws to save them; and, be it said to the glory or shame of the law, it furnished enough quibbles, not only to save them from the gallows, but to let them loose again on society with the legal whitewash "not ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... give up home, religion, friends—on the ten thousandth part of a chance that you might some day care for him. I did not believe he had even so much chance as that; but he had always thought me his friend, and he trusted me. Was it a quibble that kept me from betraying him? I don't know what honor is among women; but no man could have done it. I confess to my shame that I went to your house that night longing to betray him. And then suppose your mother sent ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... opportunities, as they come, and the main road of the task is marked out; shock is minimized, if not eliminated, mutual confidence is engendered, and a priceless reward may be won. But if at that first question we falter, quibble, blush, lie, jest, or repel, we have entered the wrong road which leads eternally astray. Let no question ever be either ignored or neglected, least of all repelled. It is the golden opportunity for parent, teacher, or friend. To guarantee against the child seeking promiscuous and irresponsible ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... them, and they may hear that from them they blush at from a Woman—But I make a Challenge to any Person of common Sense and Reason—that is not wilfully bent on ill Nature, and will in spight of Sense wrest a double Entendre from every thing, lying upon the Catch for a Jest or a Quibble, like a Rook for a Cully; but any unprejudic'd Person that knows not the Author, to read any of my Comedys and compare 'em with others of this Age, and if they find one Word that can offend the chastest Ear, I will submit to all their peevish Cavills; but Right or Wrong they must ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... type of man, not overbalanced and erratic, without quirk or quibble of temperament. He was efficient, but not brilliant. His was a general all-round efficiency. He was efficient at the law; he was efficient at college; he was efficient as a sailor; he was efficient in the matter of pride, when that pride was no more than the pride ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... refutation of it. To discern its fallaciousness, requires not acuteness of understanding, so much as a little common honesty. "There is indeed no surer mark of a false and hollow heart, than a disposition thus to quibble away the clear injunctions of duty and conscience[81]:" It is the wretched resource of a disingenuous mind, endeavouring to escape from convictions before which it cannot stand, and to evade obligations which ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... became one of the best women in the world; but there are some other things that might be said of her. But I'll not argue; I'll not insist. Since you think I'm wrong, I'll take your own word for it, Derek. Just tell me once, tell me without quibble and on your honor as my cousin and a gentleman, that you believe Diane to be—what I've supposed her to be hitherto, and what you know very well I mean, and I'll ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... pun or quibble. To clinch, or to clinch the nail; to confirm an improbable story by another: as, A man swore he drove a tenpenny nail through the moon; a bystander said it was true, for he was on the other side and ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... the protection of society, somebody shall be punished when a crime has been committed.' Though English lawyers are too apt to set off 'an unreasonable hardship against an unreasonable indulgence,' 'to trump one quibble by another, and to suppose that they cannot be wrong in practice because they are ostentatiously indifferent to theory,' the temper of the law is, in the main, 'noble and generous.' 'No spectacle,' he says, 'can be better fitted ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... silence, reasons which we thought quite justifiable. But they don't hold good if we are to be brought into conflict with the police. Mr. Duclos told me this morning that if we were driven to speak we must do so with complete honesty and without quibble. What do you ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... have. Please, please don't quibble. And hidden things are so dangerous. It isn't as if I would not understand. You ought to give me credit for a little knowledge of human nature. I knew perfectly well that when you married me—you would think of Mary. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... better take care of ourselves and the boys, Charlie," said Uncle Aleck, cheerily. "It's pretty mean for Uncle Sam to leave the settlers to take care of themselves and the post at this critical time, I know; but we can't afford to quibble about that now. Safety is the first consideration. What does Younkins say?" he ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... The only quibble we have about the way Cassell's laid out the book is the amazing amount of inconsistency in the hyphenation, but we believe we have detected most of the instances, and ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... your way, when it is in order, and let society quibble. How is the world to be made any better, if each one goes on in the old way ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... under the shadow of her hat, and he could not be certain, he diagnosed as green, or maybe blue, or possibly grey. Not that it mattered, for he had a catholic taste in feminine eyes. So long as they were large and bright, as were the specimens under his immediate notice, he was not the man to quibble about a point of colour. Her nose was small, and on the very tip of it there was a tiny freckle. Her mouth was nice and wide, her chin soft and round. She was just about the height which every girl ought to be. Her figure was ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... the way, pray take great care of your teeth, and keep them extremely clean. I have likewise sent you the Greek roots, lately translated into English from the French of the Port Royal. Inform yourself what the Port Royal is. To conclude with a quibble: I hope you will not only feed upon these Greek roots, but likewise digest them ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the truth I told you, though a quibble, I own. The miniature never was mine, tho' 't ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... applied its enginery to those very parts of our citadel which we would be most likely to defend the longest. Had it contented itself with the mere discussion of minor points, with here and there a quibble about a miracle or a prophecy, we could excuse many of its vagaries on the score of enthusiasm. But its premiss was, "We will accept nothing between the two lids of this Book if our Reason cannot fathom it." Hence, all truth, every book of the Bible, even the sacraments of the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... am certain that a quibble, and a carwhichit, for a play or a sermon, will not banish her from your ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Nevertheless, there was a necessity for postponing the trial, on account of a material evidence, who, though he wavered, was not yet quite brought over; and the attorney found means to put off the decision from term to term, until there was no quibble left for further delay. While this suit was depending, our hero continued to move in his usual sphere; nor did the report of his situation at all operate to his disadvantage in the polite world; on the contrary, it added a fresh plume to his character, in the eyes of all those ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... themselves brought within the cognizance of one or other of its plainest rules. In such cases we have witnessed a sharpness and activity of intellect claiming almost our admiration. What contrivance of deception and artful evasion. What dexterity of quibble, and captious objection, and petty sophistry. What vigilance to observe how the plea in justification or excuse takes effect, and, if they perceive it does not succeed, what address in sliding into a different one. What quickness to avail themselves of any mistake, or apparent concession, in the ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... "Don't quibble with me, sir. I saw, if I did not hear. You passed Miss Wayne a note. I am astonished!" she said, in the tone of a scandalized ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... mother," he cried, exasperated. "Don't quibble. Let's get down to facts. Does your bringing her here mean ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for 'there has not been any life in the child.' Do not attempt to evade, even to man, a crime which cannot be hidden from the All-seeing. The poor mother has not herself felt the life of the child perhaps, but that is a quibble only of the laws of man, founded indeed upon the view, now universally recognized as incorrect, that the child's life began when its movements were first strong enough to be perceptible. There is, in fact, no moment after conception when it can be said ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... was a Chine-ponim, or droll, having that inextinguishable sense of humor which has made the saints of the Jewish Church human, has lit up dry technical Talmudic, discussions with flashes of freakish fun, with pun and jest and merry quibble, and has helped the race to survive (pace Dr. Wallace) by dint of a humorous acquiescence in ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Homestead Bill. On that occasion Senator Johnson of Tennessee said, 'This idea about poor foreigners somehow or other bewilders and haunts the imagination of a great many. I am constrained to say that I look upon this objection to the bill as a mere quibble on the part of the President, as being hard pressed for some excuse in withholding his approval of the measure. His allusion to foreigners in this connection looks to me more like the ad captandum of the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... defilement that comes first from within, has risen to a radiance of essential innocence ineffably beyond that whose form stood white in Faber's imagination. For I see and understand a little how God, giving righteousness, makes pure of sin, and that verily—by no theological quibble of imputation, by no play with words, by no shutting of the eyes, no oblivion, willful or irresistible, but by very fact of cleansing, so that the consciousness of the sinner becomes glistering as the raiment of the Lord ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... to think that other men do. Say I am innocent and I get a lawyer. He would be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What would he do, whether or not? Act as if I was— shut my mouth up, tell me not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence small, quibble, and get me off perhaps! But, Miss Summerson, do I care for getting off in that way; or would I rather be hanged in my own way—if you'll excuse my mentioning anything so disagreeable to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Madison became converts to Livingston's faith. Madison wrote at once that in view of these developments no proposal to exchange Louisiana for the Floridas should be entertained; the President declared himself satisfied that "our right to the Perdido is substantial and can be opposed by a quibble on form only"; and John Randolph, duly coached by the Administration, flatly declared in the House of Representatives that "We have not only obtained the command of the mouth of the Mississippi, but ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... crown, his lawyers asserting that, according to the Salic law, 'no part of the heritage of Salic land can fall to a woman,' and that therefore no woman could rule in France. As a matter of fact this was a mere quibble of the lawyers. The Salic law had been the law of the Salian Franks in the fifth century, and had to do with the inheritance of estates, not with the inheritance of the throne of France, which was not at that time in existence. The quibble, however, was ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... of this perfervid article, give an instructive clue. A mere quibble had arisen between the Central Powers and Russia. The former immediately adopted an arrogant, even threatening, attitude which thoughtful Germans condemned. Russia's willingness to submit the question to an arbitration conference consisting of four neutral ambassadors ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... of convalescence, left by the ebb of sickness, yet far enough removed from the terra firma of established health, your note, dear Editor, reached me, requesting—an article. In articulo mortis, thought I; but it is something hard—and the quibble, wretched as it was, ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... "I did not assert that I am Liber, but that I am Philocrates." In consequence of the idiom of the Latin language, his answer (non equidem me Liberam, sed Philocratem esse aio) will admit of another quibble, and may be read as meaning, "I did not say that I am a free man, but that Philocrates is." This maybe readily seen by the Latin scholar, but is not so easily explained ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... a person who was either very clever or very foolish (I have never quite determined which) claimed to have solved it in only one straight line, because, as she said, "I have taken care to make all the others crooked!" Who could have anticipated such a quibble? ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... suicide in his right. He is the master and the victim of a monstrous cleverness which is neither to hold nor to bind, and will not permit him to do things as an honest, simple person of genius would. As Shakespeare, in Johnson's phrase, lost the world for a quibble and was content to lose it, so does Mr. Meredith discrown himself of the sovereignty of contemporary romance to put on the cap and bells of the professional wit. He is not content to be plain Jupiter: his lightnings are less to him than his fireworks; and his pages so teem with fine sayings ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... see it! But, you fool, you seemed to go out of your way. You insulted him about the merest quibble—in my house!" ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... to content themselves with sending shorthand writers to Norwich to report the case fully for the benefit of their circle of readers, whose appetite for a legal quibble ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... to sit here and quibble; you're too clever altogether," I said, and I got up and wondered in which direction there was most to do, but Nina stood up, too, and put her ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... notched metal slips from a slender finger, she contemplated them: and laughed ruefully. What qualms of conscience in a burglar self-confessed! She was there for a purpose, a recognized, nefarious purpose. Granted. Then why quibble?... She would not quibble. She would be firm, resolute, determined, cold-blooded, unmindful of all kindness and courtesy and.... She would use them, accomplish her purpose, and have done, finally and for ever, with the whole ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... As to your quibble about Paul and Apollos, whether they, or others, were the persons, though I am satisfied you are out, yet it weakeneth not my argument; for if they were blame worthy for dividing, though about the highest fundamental principles, as you say, how ought you to blush for carrying it as you ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... by his opponents for alleged undue exercise of arbitrary authority. The Supreme Court, established on the Mexican model, was reproached with seeking to overstep the limits of its functions. Every legal quibble was adjusted by a dilatory process, impracticable in a colony yet in its infancy, where summary justice was indispensable for the maintenance of order imperfectly understood by the masses. But the fault lay less with the justices than with the constitution of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Bantam, ducking his poll. "Noa!" he repeated in a lower note; and then, while a sombre grin betokening idiotic enjoyment of his profound casuistical quibble worked at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thing he has to say, and it detracts little from the cardinal importance of Marx that his books will presently demand restatement in contemporary phraseology, and revision in the light of contemporary facts. He opened out Socialism. It is easy to quibble about Marx, and say he didn't see this or that, to produce this eddy in a backwater or that as a triumphant refutation of his general theory. One may quibble about the greatness of Marx as one may quibble ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... "Don't quibble, my boy," said Sir Henry smiling. "You call my sovereign the Pretender, and that is what I call the man you serve. Good heavens, boy! how could you devote your frank young life to such ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... quibble. You know, and I know, that you are keeping something back; and I ask you, in her behalf, and in the cause of justice, to tell me what ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... if he had pleased.] "In the lowest form he places those whom he calls Les Petits Esprits, such things as our upper-gallery audience in a playhouse, who like nothing but the husk and rind of wit, and prefer a quibble, a conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant expression. These are mob readers. If Virgil and Martial stood for Parliament-men, we know already who would carry it. But though they made the greatest appearance in the field, and cried the loudest, the best of it is they are but a sort ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... not so bad as your fears have represented him; it is true that he is Bury'd, altho' he is not dead; to understand this quibble you must know that he is at Bury St. Edmunds, relaxing, after the fatigues of lecturing and Londonizing. The little Rickmaness, whom you enquire after so kindly, thrives and grows apace; she is already a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... The Duke fired and missed, and then Winchelsea fired in the air. He immediately pulled out of his pocket the paper which has since appeared, but in which the word 'apology' was omitted. The Duke read it and said it would not do. Lord Falmouth said he was not come there to quibble about words, and that he was ready to make the apology in whatever terms would be satisfactory, and the word 'apology' was inserted on the ground. The Duke then touched his hat, said 'Good morning, my Lords,' mounted his horse, and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... having seen Chyd. I had no right to do so, for I knew that he was now an additional distress. But the next morning when Guinea and I were alone at the breakfast table she asked me if I had not met him down the road—said that she had seen him crossing the meadows with his dogs. I began to quibble and she spoke up spiritedly: "Oh, you shouldn't hesitate to tell me. It ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... great truth about it—and that therefore Mr. Stephens's declaration amounts substantially to saying that slavery was to be the corner stone of his new Government; and so your assertion, that 'he has made no such declaration,' is a paltry verbal quibble, unworthy of a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... casual aggregation, an incoherent accumulation with no unity whatsoever outside the unity of the personality regarding it. All science and most modern religious systems presuppose the former, and to believe the former is, to any one not too anxious to quibble, to believe in God. But I believe that these prevailing men of the future, like many of the saner men of to-day, having so formulated their fundamental belief, will presume to no knowledge whatever, will presume to no possibility of knowledge of the real being of God. They will have no positive ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... truth in this. Undoubtedly, Galileo's letters to Castelli and the grand duchess, in which he attempted to show that his astronomical doctrines were not opposed to Scripture, gave a new stir to religious bigotry. For a considerable time, then, this quibble served its purpose; even a hundred and fifty years after Galileo's condemnation it was renewed by the Protestant Mallet du Pan, in his wish to gain ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... had a pretty easy time in slavery days. They was good to us. Besides I was a house niggah." (Those who have been "house niggahs" never quibble at the word slave or negro. A subtle social distinction brewed in the black race to separate house servants from field hands as far as wealthy planters from "poor white trash.".) "Once I heard a man say of my mother, 'You could put on a white boiled shirt and lie flat down ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... been loyal, have I not? Juste ciel!" Rising, he walked about the great room, his hands clasped behind him. "My conduct was magnificent, was it not? Don't quibble with words, Brigit. In plain language, I was a scoundrel, a beast, and now I am trying to behave—not like a gentleman, but like a decent man. And why you won't ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... day. Nevertheless, in so far as "Parsifal" says anything to us, in so far as it brings, in Nonconformist cant, "a message," it is immoral and vicious, just as in so far as "Siegfried" carries a message it is entirely moral, healthful, and sane. It is useless to quibble about this, seeking to explain away plain things: the truth remains that "Siegfried" is a glorification of one view of life, "Parsifal" of its direct opposite and flat contradiction; and anyone who accepts the one view must needs loathe the other ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... he didn't write it. Sir William declares—a mere quibble! He has it from several people that Barrington was at Tallyn two days before the article appeared, and that he spoke to one or two friends next day of an 'important' conversation with Marsham, and of the first-hand information he had got ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... exclaimed Matilde. "Do not use such phrases to me. They mean nothing. For some wretched quibble of your miserable conscience—as you still have the assumption to call it—you will ruin us in ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... win: the less pertinacious and the poorer are allowed to fail: it is a process of Darwin's survival of the fittest. All this is now "too late to mend:" but I do hope that if ever I go to Engelfield Castle, Sir Richard will be kindly and genial to his far-off cousin, who (but for some legal quibble unknown) ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... George was always weak and wayward, and he did, in his great passion, marry her. That he should afterwards deny it officially seems to me to have been utterly inevitable. His denial did her not the faintest damage, as I have pointed out. It was, so to speak, an official quibble, rendered necessary by the circumstances of the case. Not to have denied the marriage in the House of Commons would have meant ruin to both of them. As months passed, more serious difficulties awaited the unhappily wedded pair. What boots it to repeat the story of the Princes ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... was a quibble, of course, but the Maynard children were surprised at themselves that they hadn't ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... it. Four unprotected girls could be taken in guarded litters to the sea- coast and shipped to Ireland or to Cadiz, Valencia, Alexandria or Morocco with no difficulty whatever unless some one got wind of the fact. As for the Irish King, a man who had the sort of record he had, was not likely to quibble over the means used by Biterres in getting himself a bride. And before the captives within the castle could reach even the nearest of their friends and bring help, the whole troop would have left ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Verstigan also gives it the same translation, as originating from Leod, Lud, or Luyd, which, he says, means "folk or people." [23] Therefore St. Leger seems to signify a folk, a gathering, a legion or "crew" of saints, a holy crowd or crew,—which may have been the quibble extorted by Spenser's "alchemy of wit" from the "upbringing" of Elizabeth Nagle, his wife. He calls her with marked emphasis his "sweet Saint," his "sovereign Saint"; and in the "Epithalamion" the temple-gates are called ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... right is very painful; especially so because most women who are under this strain do not really care about doing right at all. I have seen a woman quibble and talk and worry about what she believed to be a matter of right and wrong in a few cents, and then neglect for months to pay a poor man a certain large amount of money which he had honestly earned, and which ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... to quibble. Tell me: until you were attracted to this young man—attracted, no doubt, because he was so unlike the European of your long experience—had you deviated from the conclusion, arrived at many years before, that you had had enough of love—of sex—to satisfy any woman? You ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... "will you sit here now and quibble over what you think in your wisdom is possible or not. Get outside those doors—there's an open park beyond—and I'll knock your technicalities ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various |
