"Contraries" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cured only with diet and tendering. Celsus[53] could never have spoken it as a physician, had he not been a wise man withal, when he giveth it for one of the great precepts of health and lasting, that a man do vary and interchange contraries, but with an inclination to the more benign extreme: use fasting and full eating, but rather full eating; watching and sleep, but rather sleep; sitting and exercise, but rather exercise; and the like. So shall nature be cherished, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... the ruffian to prison, she'll hear of it and run to see him at once. But if she hears that he has beaten me, a weak old man, within an inch of my life, she may give him up and come to me.... For that's her way, everything by contraries. I know her through and through! Won't you have a drop of brandy? Take some cold coffee and I'll pour a quarter of a glass of brandy into it, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... America; he drew the man, and described the day, and what is done in it; he read the hearts of men and women, their probity, and their second thought and wiles; the wiles of innocence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices slide into their contraries; he could divide the mother's part from the father's part in the face of the child, or draw the fine demarcations of freedom and of fate; he knew the laws of repression which make the police of nature; and all the sweets and all the terrors of human lot lay in his mind as truly but as softly ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... sympathy with the wild water, their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away." "Satque superque satis"—we cannot go on. There is nothing like calling things by their contraries—it is truly startling. Whenever you speak of water, treat it as fire—of fire, vice versa, as water; and be sure to send them all shattering out of reach and discrimination of all sense; and look ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... general sources of pleasure are, I believe, a certain seal, or impress of divine work and character, upon whatever God has wrought in all the world; only, it being necessary for the perception of them, that their contraries should also be set before us, these divine qualities, though inseparable from all divine works, are yet suffered to exist in such varieties of degree, that their most limited manifestation shall, in opposition to their most abundant, act as a foil or contrary, just as we conceive of cold as ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... like. These, even as steps and ladders that support one another and are clinched together, conduct the soul to heaven. Lo, to these we are commanded to cleave after baptism, and to abstain from their contraries. ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... is, therefore, the drama, the real results from the wholly natural combination of two types, the sublime and the grotesque, which meet in the drama, as they meet in life and in creation. For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud—and it is here above all that exceptions prove the rule—that everything that exists in ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... to work by paradoxes and contraries. In the transformations of grace, the bitter is the base of the sweet, night is the mother of day, and death is the ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... "Homer a conqueror Agamemnon shows, And makes the Trojan seem of coward vein, And from the suitors, faithful to her vows, Penelope a thousand wrongs sustain: Yet — would'st thou I the secret should expose? — By contraries throughout the tale explain: That from the Trojan bands the Grecian ran; And ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... "Dreams go by contraries, luckily," said Peter, "otherwise I should worry. I always see her in some kind of trouble. If it isn't one darned thing it's another. And I look for her by day when I'm up in town. I think, what if I should see her face framed in some car window? This afternoon I even looked for her in our store—though ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... the radical and universal opposition tion of causes; panti logo logos antikeitai. Having reached this conclusion, he was able to assimilate the physical theory of Heraclitus, as is explained in the Hypotyposes of Sextus Empiricus. For admitting that contraries co-exist for the perceiving subject, he was able to assert the co-existence of contrary qualities in the same object. Having thus disposed of the ideas of truth and causality, he proceeds to undermine the ethical criterion, and denies ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... we once plaid this merry Epigrame of an importune and shrewd wife, thus: My neighbour hath a wife, not fit to make him thriue, But good to kill a quicke man, or make a dead reuiue. So shrewd she is for God, so cunning and so wise, To counter with her goodman, and all by contraries. For when he is merry, she lurcheth and she loures, When he is sad she singes, or laughes it out by houres. Bid her be still her tongue to talke shall neuer cease, When she should speake and please, for spight she holds her peace, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... slackened. Suddenly I woke and turned to question my groom: "We have gone a hundred paces since you fell asleep." Body and spirit for a while had exchanged place; Swift and slow had turned to their contraries. For these few steps that my horse had carried me Had taken in my dream countless aeons of time! True indeed is that saying of Wise Men "A hundred years are but a ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... indivisible. "God is the totality of all things which are and are not, which can and cannot be. He is the similarity of the similar, the dissimilarity of the dissimilar, the opposition of opposites, and the contrariety of contraries. All discords are resolved when they are considered as parts of the universal harmony." All things begin from unity and end in unity: the Absolute can contain nothing self-contradictory. And so God cannot be called Goodness, for Goodness is opposed to Badness, and God is above ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... I was not dreaming of you last night; I dreamt that your honor's honor gave me a pound of tobacco, and her ladyship gave me a pound of taa." "Aye, my good woman," says the general, "but you know dreams always go by contraries." "Do they so?" replied she, "then it must be that your honor will give me the taa, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... men presuming themselves to be the only masters of right reason, put aside the votes and opinions of the rest of mankind. Thus, notwithstanding the innate light, we are as much in the dark as if it did not exist; a rule that will warp any way is not to be distinguished amidst its contraries. If these rules are so liable to vary, through adventitious notions, we should find them clearest in children and in persons wholly illiterate. He grants that there are many opinions, received by men of different ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... below, to right, to left, and around, to draw the blood and the vital spirits from within outward. ... For the bedsore, he must be put in a fresh, soft bed, with clean shirt and sheets... Having discoursed of the causes and complications of his malady, I said we must cure them by their contraries; and must first ease the pain, making openings in the thigh to let out the matter. ... Secondly, having regard to the great swelling and coldness of the limb, we must apply hot bricks round it, and sprinkle them with a decoction of nerval herbs in wine and vinegar, and ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... alike, that God and the devil, in short, are but two sides of the same Force. We have seen how this is worked out by Boehme, and that the central point of his philosophy is that all manifestation necessitates opposition. In like manner, Blake's statement, "Without Contraries is no progression," is, in truth, the keynote to all his vision ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... the following story, that an old man's prayers are sometimes reversed in response, as dreams are said to "go by contraries": An old Arab left his house one morning, intending to go to a village at some distance, and coming to the foot of a hill which he had to cross he exclaimed: "O Allah! send some one to help me over this hill." Scarcely ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... victual in case of siege.—No, Broglio will not go with Cavalry; must have those Ten Battalions, must have Sign-manual; won't, in short!"—Will stay, then, thinks Belleisle; and one must try to drive him, as men do pigs, covertly and by the rule of contraries, while Prag falls ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... reading of Gibbon, Rousseau, Voltaire, etc., how far to self- reflection, is uncertain; but he already found himself unable, in any plain sense, to subscribe to the Westminster Confession or to any "orthodox" Articles, and equally unable by any philosophical reconciliation of contraries to write black with white on a ground ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... say so of a witch's prayer, and dreams and Dutch almanacs are to be understood by contraries. But there's regularity and method in that; she is a medal without a reverse or inscription, for indifference has both sides alike. Yet, while she does not seem to hate me, I will pursue her, and know her if it be possible, in spite of the opinion ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... usually by contraries that the truth is determined. Even in the midst of the apparent plenty of fish, fishing crews sometimes came home empty-handed after continued effort. ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... failures, but by the opposite course even more successes, and greater, were attained. If he had merely followed this method without complications, he would have had no protection against such as had come to know him; they would have taken everything by contraries and would have deemed his saying that he did not wish something to be equivalent to his ardently desiring it, and that he was eager for something equivalent to his not being concerned about it. It happened, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... up Presbytery as the national Religion, with a determination to revert in detail to those symbols and forms of the Presbyterian system which the triumph of Independency had set aside during the Commonwealth, and which had been allowed only partially, and side by side with their contraries, in the broad Church-Establishment of the Protectorate. The unanimity and rapidity of the House in their votes in this direction must have alarmed the Independents and Sectaries. It was on Feb. 29 that the House appointed a Committee of twenty-nine on the whole subject ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... smiled and said, "Dreams go by contraries, dear heart; but tell me your dream, and your sweet voice will speed the time till ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... Buonaparte spoke more to officers than to any one else, affected to be gracious to the English. He said, "L'Angleterre est une grande nation, aussi bien que la France, il faut que nous soyons amis!" Great men's words, like little men's dreams, are sometimes to be interpreted by the rule of contraries. ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... emotions I mean those which draw a man in different directions, though they are of the same kind, such as luxury and avarice, which are both species of love, and are contraries, not ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... either," replied Flambeau frowning, while the other went on eating fish with an air of entire resignation. "If all you can suggest is that notion of a message conveyed by contraries, I call it uncommonly clever, but...well, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... and pithiness are intended to make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those two monosyllables express the precisely accurate contraries of right character, in the two great offices of the Church—those of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... thing is not the cause of contraries. Now fear and hope are contraries, as stated above (I-II, Q. 23, A. 2): and faith begets hope, as a gloss observes on Matt. 1:2. Therefore fear is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... powerful, high-souled, and mighty being was born, various kinds of fearful phenomena occurred. And the nature of males and females, of heat and cold, and of such other pairs of contraries, was reversed. And the planets, the cardinal points and the firmaments became radiant with light and the earth began to rumble very much. And the Rishis even, seeking the welfare of the world, while they observed all ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... these with dream books, still sold and used, and with a more extensive collection of superstitions, retained in this and other continents, would no doubt offer curious results. At present attention may be called only to one remarkable trait, namely: the interpretation of dreams by contraries. This practice I conceive to be altogether modern, and to have resulted from the extension of scientific culture, which has lead to the discredit of more direct explanations. So far as I am aware, dreams in literature, ancient or mediaeval, are always presumed symbolically to represent ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... to say.'—'Yes,' cried Olivia, 'he is well enough for a man; but for my part, I don't much like him, he is so extremely impudent and familiar; but on the guitar he is shocking.' These two last speeches I interpreted by contraries. I found by this, that Sophia internally despised, as much as Olivia secretly admired him.—'Whatever may be your opinions of him, my children,' cried I, 'to confess a truth, he has not prepossest me in his favour. Disproportioned friendships ever terminate ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... lacking also the mouldiness, the mustiness, the insufferable artificiality of older communities. And the atmosphere! Day after day brought its cloudless sky, the weather, for once, having failed to observe the rule of contraries; evening after evening flooded valley and hilltop with its deluge of golden glory; night after night a crisp temperature sent her reaching for comforters. Sleep? She felt that she had never slept before. Eat? Her appetite was insatiable; all ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... prosperity and happiness, your highness," laughingly responded Munnich, "for dreams are always interpreted by contraries. You saw yourself as a beggar because you were to become our ruler—because a purple mantle will this day be placed ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... up. She was wise enough to know, too, that after such an unlucky beginning, it would be better for Gianluca if a long time passed before he had another chance of pouring out his heart to the young girl. Things might go by contraries, she thought. Contempt might turn to familiarity, familiarity to friendship, and friendship to love. The first change had already taken place, and the others might ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... the non-identical are identical;" and this proposition passes for nonsense. Perhaps if he had said: "May become identical," it would be understood that he meant to speak, in general, of that reconciliation of contraries which united the calm genius of Delsarte and the bristling, prickly spirit of ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... of locomotion. These animals and their leaders deserve a whole chapter of description for themselves. Fancy a brass-bound peaked pack-saddle rising a foot above the animal's back, with a crupper-strap slanting down to clasp the tail. The oft-bandied slur, that in Japan everything goes by contraries, has a varnish of truth on it when we notice that the most gorgeous piece of Japanese saddlery is the crupper, which, even on a pack-horse, is painted crimson and gilded gloriously. The man who leads the horse is an animal that by long contact and companionship with the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... such as incorporeal, infinite, &c. (3) So, also, many conceptions really affirmative are expressed negatively, and vice versa, such as uncreate, independent, infinite, immortal, &c., inasmuch as their contraries are much more easily imagined, and, therefore, occurred first to men, and usurped positive names. (89:4) Many things we affirm and deny, because the nature of words allows us to do so, though the nature of things ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... ter take sober thought, Sim, afore ye contraries me too fur. Ye says I compelled ye ter layway Parish Thornton—but ye kain't nuver prove thet—an' ef I hed ther power ter fo'ce ye then hit war because I knowed things erbout ye thet ye wouldn't love ter hev told. I knows them things ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... yourself softly by keeping back all news of your health, and by not saying a word of the effect on you of the winter which has done its spiriting so ungently. Which brings me down to myself. For somebody has been dreaming of me, and dreams, you know, must go by contraries. And how could it be otherwise? Although I am on the whole essentially better—on the whole!—yet the peculiar severity of the winter has acted on me, and the truth is that for the last month, precisely the last month, I have been feeling ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... that affection in his eyes that sometimes does exist between men, Carrick saw the thought with the weird prescience of the dying. "Dreams go by contraries, sir," he ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... be observ'd, the Sea, its Depth, degree of Saltness, Tydes, Currents, &c. Next, Rivers, their Bigness, Length, Course, Inundations, Goodness, Levity (or their Contraries) of Waters, &c. Then, Lakes, Ponds, Springs, and especially Mineral waters, their Kinds, Qualities, Vertues, and how examined. To the Waters belong also Fishes, what kinds of them (whether Salt or Fresh-water fish) are to be found in the Country; their Store, Bigness, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... Mr. Sloane. His attitude toward the bonhomme quite passes my comprehension. It's the queerest jumble of contraries. He penetrates him, disapproves of him—yet respects and admires him. It all comes of the poor boy's shrinking New England conscience. He's afraid to give his perceptions a fair chance, lest, forsooth, they should look over his neighbor's wall. He'll not understand that he may as well sacrifice the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... by the enemy, having arms in his hands, and he leaves them behind him voluntarily, choosing base life instead of honourable death, let justice be done. The old legend of Caeneus, who was changed by Poseidon from a woman into a man, may teach by contraries the appropriate punishment. Let the thrower away of his shield be changed from a man into a woman—that is to say, let him be all his life out of danger, and never again be admitted by any commander into the ranks of his army; and let him pay a heavy fine according to his ...
— Laws • Plato
... peruse it: Some will undoubtedly approve of the Captain's Production because 'tis scandalous and malicious; others will disapprove of it for the very same Reasons; for the Tasts of Mankind being as different as their Constitutions, they must of Consequence be often as opposite as the most absolute Contraries in Nature: A Knave loves and delights in Scandal, Detraction, Infamy, in blasting, ruining his Neighbour's Character, because these are consonant to the Depravity of humane Nature, and in themselves vile: Upon the very same Account an honest Man ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... the result of the more profound views which they entertain on ethical and metaphysical subjects, start from the cardinal vices and not the cardinal virtues; since the virtues make their appearance only as the contraries or negations of the vices. According to Schmidt's History of the Eastern Mongolians the cardinal vices in the Buddhist scheme are four: Lust, Indolence, Anger, and Avarice. But probably instead of Indolence, we should read Pride; for so it stands in the Lettres edifiantes ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... in stony soil, or bitumen in marshes, and speculate in projected railways. The stupidity of the Paris commercial world is conspicuous in these attempts to do the same thing twice, for success lies in contraries; and in Paris, of all places in the world, success spoils success. So beneath the title of Strelitz, or Russia a Hundred Years Ago, Fendant and Cavalier rashly added in big letters the words, "In ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... explain many words by their opposition to others; for contraries are best seen when they stand together. Thus the verb stand has one sense, as opposed to fall, and another, as opposed to fly; for want of attending to which distinction, obvious as it is, the learned Dr. Bentley has squandered his criticism ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... from its correlative opposite, there can be no high behavior. This is the reason why qualities loftiest in kind and largest in measure are vulgarly mistaken, not for their friendly opposites, but for their mere contraries,—why a very profound sensibility, a sensibility, too, peculiarly of the spirit, not of nerve only, is sure to be named coldness, as Mr. Ruskin recently remarks,—why vast wealth of good pride, in its often meek acceptance of wrong, in its quiet ignoring of insult, in its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... from a fleshly encasement, on the other hand, is a pure hypothesis wholly removed from sensible apprehension. There is no parallel in the cases. So the ridiculousness has been made evident of Plato's famous analogical argument that by a general law of nature all things are produced contraries from contraries; warmth dies ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... way, is the strangest encounter recorded in history; Napoleon and Wellington are not enemies, but contraries. Never did God, who delights in antitheses, produce a more striking contrast, or a more extraordinary confrontation. On one side precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, a retreat assured, reserves ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... to Michael Cassio. He frequented their house, and his free and rattling talk was no unpleasing variety to Othello, who was himself of a more serious temper: for such tempers are observed often to delight in their contraries, as a relief from the oppressive excess of their own: and Desdemona and Cassio would talk and laugh together, as in the days when he went ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Rowcliffe's face leaned near to hers without ever touching it, and his arms made as if they clasped her and never met. Even then, always at the first intangible approach of him, she woke, terrified because dreams go by contraries. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... best; for as ladies wear black patches to make their complexions seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did; for contraries are best set off with contraries. He has found out a new sort of poetical Georgics—a trick of sowing wit like clover-grass on barren subjects, which would yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, wherein, some men say, there is no ...
— English Satires • Various
... Cartesians, he could not conceive a body acting where it is not. Indeed, inconceivableness depends so completely on the accident of our mental habits, that it is the essence of scientific triumphs to make the contraries of once inconceivable views themselves appear inconceivable. For instance, suppositions opposed even to laws so recently discovered as those of chemical composition appear to Dr. Whewell himself to be inconceivable. What ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... not thyself! Can this be true, 'twas good to banish him? And is this true, to call him home again? Such reasons make white black, and dark night day. Y. Mor. My Lord of Lancaster, mark the respect. Lan. In no respect can contraries be true. Q. Isab. Yet, good my lord, hear what he can allege. War. All that he speaks is nothing; we are resolv'd. Y. Mor. Do you not wish that Gaveston were dead? Pem. I would he were! Y. Mor. Why, then, my lord, give ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... fiery morsel of engaging caprice and naughtiness that a quiet spinster could well have lit upon. It really sometimes seemed to Honora as if there were scarcely a fault in the range of possibilities that she had not committed; and indeed a bit of good advice generally seemed to act by contraries, and served to suggest mischief. Softness and warmth of feeling seemed to have been lost with her father; she did not show any particular affection towards her brother or Honora. Perhaps she liked Miss Wells, but that might ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you ought to make a good magazine story—not one of those comic ghost -tales that can be dashed off in a minute, and ultimately get published in a book at the author's expense. You stir so little that, as things go by contraries, you'll make a stirring tale. You're long enough, I might say, for a three-volume novel—but—ah— I can't do you unless I see you. You must be seen to be appreciated. I can't imagine you, you know. Let's see, now, if I can guess what kind ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... by contraries. Strange that so black a night should be followed by a noon so brilliant—so ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... July he began to have some doubts if his improved weather-system was correct; he was convinced that it must work by contraries. So when Professor Jones asked him if it would be safe to attempt to have a display of fireworks on the night of the 5th, Bradley brought the improved system into play, and discovered that it promised rainy weather on that night. So then ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... contraries. It may be a long time before we meet again. But we shall have many a good talk over old times, if not here, why, in the better home, for your 'peaked-faced little chap' will surely lead you there," and he explained ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... not only be in all requisite knowledge, but likewise in all intelligence and wisdom; for these [qualities] would inflow into those loves from heaven, that is, from the Divine through heaven. As, however, man is not born into those loves, but into their contraries, that is to say, into the loves of self and of the world, therefore he cannot but be born in complete ignorance and want of knowledge But by Divine means he is brought to something of intelligence and wisdom, yet not actually into any, unless the ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of beads and silk—were used up before the chain assumed the length and richness I wished; I had wrought it double, as I knew, by the rule of contraries, that to, suit the particular taste whose gratification was in view, an effective appearance was quite indispensable. As a finish to the ornament, a little gold clasp was needed; fortunately I possessed it in the fastening of my sole necklace; I duly detached and ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... exclaimed. "Pride cometh before a fall, 'tis said. Then, in sooth, by the rule of contraries, a fall should presage humility's reward. What says ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labors, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts, lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries. ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... cannot justify both sides, when the question lies between opposite and contradictory principles. By this sort of simplicity, which approves of errors, if much practised, and of opposites, or essential contraries, when authorities may be found for them, no work, perhaps, is more strikingly characterized, than the popular School Grammar of W. H. Wells. This author says, "The use of but as a preposition is approved by J. E. Worcester, John Walker, R. C. Smith, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... as it was in itself, had a certain effect upon Camilla; it might be an effect of fear. I do not say, for I do not know, what her feelings towards Vaudemont exactly were. As the calmest natures are often those the most hurried away by their contraries, so, perhaps, he awed and dazzled rather than pleased her;—at least, he certainly forced himself on her interest. Still she would have started in terror if any one had said to her, "Do you love your betrothed ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from two or three of the early readers of the Chronicle (I never care to see it till the evening) that the verses are there—so that my wishes have fulfilled themselves there at least—strangely, for wishes of mine ... which generally 'go by contraries' as the soothsayers declare of dreams. How kind of you to send me the fragment to Mr. Forster! and how I like to read it. Was the Hebrew yours then ... written then, I mean ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... God" and "the voice of man," we have an instance of propositions which in logic are called contraries. Both, therefore, cannot be exclusively and simultaneously true, but both may be simultaneously false. Thus, "all men are white" and "no men are white" are contraries, but they are both false. And this, I submit, is the judgment to be pronounced on these two exclusive definitions of conscience. Neither is, exclusively speaking, true, but there is a measure of truth common ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... maintain his liberty, with the reputation of his nation, and to help to banish the Spaniard, with his tongue intreated and incited them to persevere in their accustomed valour and reputation, abasing the enemy and advancing his nation; condemning their contraries of cowardliness, and confirming it by the cruelty used with him and other his companions in their mishaps; showing them his arms without hands, and naming his brethren whose half feet they had cut off, because they might be unable to sit on ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of the Parmenidean sect, through all Greek philosophy, congruously with the proper vocation of the [60] people of art, of art as being itself the finite, ever controlling the infinite, the formless. Those famous systoichiai ton enantion, or parallel columns of contraries: the One and the Many: Odd and Even, and the like: Good and Evil: are indeed all reducible ultimately to terms of art, as the expressive and the inexpressive. Now observe that Plato's "theory of ideas" ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... his head en say, sezee, dat, fur ez his 'membunce go back, he aint come 'cross nothin' in de lawyer-book ter de contraries er dat, en den dey all 'gree dat Brer ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... supposed that Australia is topsey-turvey mad, but in India it seems that matters also go by contraries, when compared with their mode of procedure at home. A lawsuit has been occasioned in Calcutta through white ants devouring a will. In England our Aunts (who are generally whites) make wills (bless them!) and we devour them, or at least live ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... contraries in the Moon, and when the Man wished to keep warm he knocked off a few chunks of ice and put them in his stove; and he cooled his drinking water by throwing red-hot coals of fire into the pitcher. Likewise, ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... which arises from contraries is horrible and coarse, and has often no tie of communion; but that which arises from likeness is gentle, and has a tie of communion, ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... entire philosophy of Hegel. But as he has given to the world a new logic, it may be needful to glance at its general features as a help to the comprehension of his philosophy of religion. The fundamental law of his logic is the identity of contraries or contradictions. All thought is a synthesis of contraries or opposites. This antithesis not only exists in all ideas, but constitutes them. In every idea we form, there must be two things opposed ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... TANS. Because both the contraries in excess—that is, in so far as they exceed—are vices, because they pass the line; and the same, in so far as they diminish, come to be virtues, because they ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... contencion, when the reason stdeth by contrary wordes or contraries be rehearsed by cparison, thus: Flattery hath pleasa[un]t begynnynges, but the same hathe verye bytter endynges. Cicero agaynst Catiline: when they coulde not lyue honestlye, they had rather dye shamefully. They that be after the fleshe, care for these thynges y^t be of the fleshe. ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... his house, with a view of making up the dish himself. I came home, rolling the magic words 'as a sweet morsel under my tongue,' and immediately sought out a curious dictionary, in which various strange things are expounded; and failing in that, looked into CRABBE'S Synonymes, (by the rule of contraries, I suppose, for there certainly could be nothing like Zounds and Sounds,) but as LONGFELLOW says, 'All in vain!' FANNY having retired, I got into my slippers and sat down by the fire to ruminate a little. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Diseases which arose from excess of heat were to be attacked by cooling remedies; those from excess of cold, by heating ones; and so of the other derangements of balance. This was truly the principle of contraries contrariis, which ill-informed persons have attempted to make out to be the general doctrine of medicine, whereas there is no general dogma other than this: disease is to be treated by anything that is proved to cure it. The means ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... would by contraries Execute all things: for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; no use of service, Of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, Succession; bound of land, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; No use ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... laid no claim to the contraries of these epithets. But in proportion as she abjured thought, she claimed speech, both by word of mouth and by letter. Why not? There was nothing in it. She considered reason as an awful enemy to the soul, and obnoxious to God, especially when applied to find out what he means when he ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... All see 'tis vice, and itch of vulgar praise. When flattery glares, all hate it in a queen, While one there is who charms us with his spleen. But these plain characters we rarely find; Though strong the bent, yet quick the turns of mind: Or puzzling contraries confound the whole; Or affectations quite reverse the soul. The dull, flat falsehood serves for policy; And in the cunning, truth itself's a lie: Unthought-of frailties cheat us in the wise; The fool lies hid in inconsistencies. See the same man, in vigour, in the gout; Alone, in company; ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Things always went by contraries with Jo. Her first book, laboured over for years, and launched full of the high hopes and ambitious dreams of youth, foundered on its voyage, though the wreck continued to float long afterward, to the profit of the publisher at least. The hastily ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... fellow-creatures would never have inspired, had he himself remained without the verge of misfortune, were now produced from the sensation of his own calamities; and, for the first time, his cheeks were bedewed with the drops of penitence and sorrow. "Contraries," saith Plato, "are productive of each other." Reformation is oftentimes generated from unsuccessful vice; and our adventurer was, at this juncture, very well disposed to turn over a new leaf in consequence of those salutary suggestions; though he ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... about it, and stood at the door of my dressing-room wishing to comfort me, Mounet-Sully, who was playing Hippolyte, told me that he had dreamed "we were playing Phedre, and you were hissed; and my dreams always go by contraries—so," he cried, "we ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... lightless hell; For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold, And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell; These contraries such unity do hold, Only to flatter fools, and make them bold; So Priam's trust false Sinon's tears doth flatter, That he finds means to burn ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Meanders, Shifts, Turns, Tricks, and Contraries, are so exactly Delineated and Describ'd, That they are in hopes in time to draw a pair of Globes out, to bring all ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... of conduct might have been very plausibly pursued. And, upon my word, I am at a loss to know how or why it was that we pursued neither the one nor the other. But, perhaps, the true reason is to be sought in the spirit of the age, which proceeds by the rule of contraries altogether, and is now usually admitted as the solution of every thing in the way of paradox and impossibility. Or, perhaps, after all, it was only the Mummy's exceedingly natural and matter-of-course air that divested his ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... stars and planets revolved around it, each fastened in a crystalline ring; the moon and sun revolved in the same manner, only at a farther distance. The generation of the universe was by the action of contraries, by heat and cold, the moist and the dry. From the moisture all things were originally generated by heat. Animals and men came from fishes by a process of evolution. There is evidence in his philosophy of a belief in the development of the universe by the action of heat and cold on matter. It is ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... melodious. But Theophile Gautier tarried in Venice, and, as for M. Charles, the man of pronounced tastes and keen nose, stuck in the main to Paris. Failing them as guides, go you first to the Piazza del Campo where horses race in August—all roads lead thither. Contraries again! A square? It is a cup. A field? It is a Gabbatha: a place of burning pavements. Were red brick and Gothic ever so superbly compounded before, to be so strong and yet so lithe? That is the Palazzo Publico, the shrine of Aristotle's Politics ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... explanation of basic terms, description of religious rites, and astronomy). He was a perfect master in reconciling contradictory texts and differentiating in applying general principles to particular cases, as also in interpreting contraries by reference to differences in situation, eloquent, resolute, intelligent, possessed of powerful memory. He was acquainted with the science of morals and politics, learned, proficient in distinguishing inferior things from superior ones, skilled in drawing inference ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Les Burgraves, which is an epic in dialogue. Aspiring to revolutionary freedom, the romantic drama disdained the bounds of art; epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy met and mingled, with a result too often chaotic. The desired harmony of contraries was not attained. Past ages were to be revived upon the stage. The historic evocation possessed too often neither historic nor human truth; it consisted in "local colour," and local colour meant a picturesque display of theatrical bric-a-brac. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... everybody knows, are the countries where everything goes by contraries. And it is here that the parrot group has developed some of its strangest and most abnormal offshoots. One would imagine beforehand that no two birds could be more unlike in every respect than the gaudy, noisy, gregarious cockatoos and the sombre, nocturnal, solitary owls. Yet the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... sprang rather by others incitement, than of their owne seeking. Thus we se what alterations happen in the actions of men, and that euill things manie times (though naturallie bad) doo inferre their contraries, as one aptlie saith, ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... I speak any more of false dice, of fullons, high-men, lowe-men, gourds, and brisled dice, grauiers, demies, and contraries, all which haue his sundry vses: but it is not my meaning to stand on this subiect: I would rather vse my pen, and spend my time, to disswade and perswade all gamesters, to beware not onely with what dice, but with what company and where they exercise gaming: ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... "By contraries!" said Richard, smiling. "That is what I was afraid of. I don't half understand or follow her, and when I think a thing nonsense, I see you all calling it very fine, and I don't know ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... word Profane, is usually taken in the Scripture for the same with Common; and consequently their contraries, Holy, and Proper, in the Kingdome of God must be the same also. But figuratively, those men also are called Holy, that led such godly lives, as if they had forsaken all worldly designes, and wholly devoted, and given ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... own whim, Not matters, in the end, to any one but him; And he as soon Shall map the other side of the Moon, As trace what his own deed, In the next chop of the chance gale, shall breed. This he may know: His good or evil seed Is like to grow, For its first harvest, quite to contraries: The father wise Has still the hare-brain'd brood; 'Gainst evil, ill example better works than good; The poet, fanning his mild flight At a most keen and arduous height, Unveils the tender heavens to horny human eyes Amidst ingenious ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... in there that we find the root and the germ of permanent social relations. And I wish you to note another very significant fact. You hear people talking about selfishness and unselfishness, as though they were direct contraries, mutually exclusive of each other, as though, in order to make a selfish man unselfish, you must completely reverse his nature, so to speak. I do not think this is true at all. Unselfishness naturally and necessarily springs out of selfishness, and, in the deepest sense of the word, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... a terrible look in the beautiful eyes, that he half expected to see her spring at him like a wild cat, and bury the dagger in his own breast. But the rule of life works by contraries: expect a blow and you will get a kiss, look for an embrace, and you will be startled by a kick. When the virago spoke, her voice was calm, compared with what it had been ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... and Saint Angela. On the other hand her Treatise on Purgatory is clear. It declares that she alone has penetrated into the spaces of unknown sorrows, and that she has disentangled and taken hold of the joys; she has in fact succeeded in reconciling two contraries which seemed eternally repugnant; the suffering of the soul in its purification from sin, and the joy of the same soul, which at the very moment it is enduring frightful torment experiences immense ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... text, published in accordance with a royal rescript in 1726, so far as I can make out; but the different readings of the other texts are all given in top-notes, instead of foot-notes as with us, this being one of the points in which customs in the east and west go by contraries. Very occasionally, the editor indicates by a single character, equivalent to "right" or "wrong," which reading in his opinion is to be preferred. In the notes to the present republication of the Corean text, S stands for Sung, M for Ming, and J for Japanese; R for ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... mere curiosity, you know. It's purely a scientific matter with me. The science of deduction. The voice, you know, tells little or nothing. I may say that I have made something of a study of voices, and have discovered that they always go by contraries. For this reason," he laughed gayly, "when you first spoke, I—but perhaps I am ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... though diversely inclined; But heart with heart and mind with mind, Where the main fibres are entwined, Through Nature's skill, May even by contraries be joined ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... kind of good, that which is honourable. This cannot come to a bad man, for he would cease to be bad if virtue entered into him; but as long as he is bad, no one can bestow a benefit upon him, because good and bad are contraries, and cannot exist together. Therefore, no one can do good to such a man, because whatever he receives is corrupted by his vicious way of using it. Just as the stomach, when disordered by disease and secreting bile, changes all the food which it receives, and turns every kind of sustenance into ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... or death, though they are not revealed with sufficient perspicuity to ascertain their meaning: To interpret his dream, therefore, he taxes his wits to the uttermost, and if, by taking it literally or figuratively, directly or by contraries, he can put no explanation upon it that perfectly satisfies him, he has recourse to the cawin, or priest, who assists him with a comment and illustrations, and perfectly reveals the mysterious suggestions of the night. It generally appears that the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... Contrary terms are those which are most opposed under the same head. Thus 'white' and 'black' are contrary terms, being the most opposed under the same head of colour. 'Virtuous' and 'vicious' again are contraries, being the most opposed under the same ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... nature, which often gives a bigot a rake for a daughter, and makes a frivolous woman the mother of a narrow pietist; that rule of contraries, which, in all probability, is the "resultant" of the law of similarities, drew Victurnien to Paris by a desire to which he must sooner or later have yielded. Brought up as he had been in the old-fashioned provincial house, among the quiet, gentle ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... that universal doctrine of contraries may work here as elsewhere; and it might not he difficult to demonstrate that a majority of thieves are better fitted by their nature and capacity for almost any other position in life than the one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... by contraries, you know," said Laura cheerfully. "You'd better go up to the Pinery early and get the fires on, for the house will be cold. Remember the McGinnises and the dog. Weigh the turkey so that you'll know exactly how long to cook ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... And those two, give these Lessons, not good meaning, What trial is there of my honestie, When I am mew'd at home? to what end Husband, Serves all the vertuous thoughts, and chast behaviours Without their uses? Then they are known most excellent When by their contraries they are set off, and burnish'd. If ye both hold me fair, and chast, and vertuous, Let me goe fearless out, and win that greatness: These seeds grow not in shades, and conceal'd places: Set 'em i'th' heat of ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... we did set out, and after a good passage of four hours and a half, landed at Dover. I begin to count my comforts, for I find their contraries thicken on my apprehension. I have, at least, done for a while with postchaises. My trunks were a little opened at Calais, and they would have stopped my medals, but with much ado and much three louis's they let them pass. At Dover I found the benefit of the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... well. Thorstan was consumed by love, and must always be with her if he could. She was gentle with him, as she was with everybody, and had to own to herself that it was Thorstan who now possessed her thoughts. That may have been going by contraries, for if Leif paid her nothing but the good-humoured civility he had ready for everybody, Thorstan, on his part, seemed afraid of her, and was speechless in her company. But there's all the difference in the world between a man completely easy in your ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... "Because he goes by contraries, Jud. He wouldn't of started for the ladder at all, if you hadn't told him he'd probably break his neck on it. Only when he seen I didn't care, he made up his mind he didn't ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... attentive business from day to night, that, with the grace of God, she shall be whole and sound, as soon as is possible." Almost right in the same wise the physicians answered, save that they said a few words more: that right as maladies be cured by their contraries, right so shall man warish war (by peace). His neighbours full of envy, his feigned friends that seemed reconciled, and his flatterers, made semblance of weeping, and impaired and agregged [aggravated] much of this matter, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... a very confusing game of contraries for five players. Four of them hold each the corner of a handkerchief. The other, who stands by to give orders, then shouts either "Let go!" or "Hold fast!" When "Let go!" is called, the handkerchief must be held as ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... thus of two contraries is a lore, 645 I, that have in love so ofte assayed Grevaunces, oughte conne, and wel the more Counsayllen thee of that thou art amayed. Eek thee ne oughte nat ben yvel apayed, Though I desyre with thee for to bere 650 Thyn hevy charge; ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... ceased and she started up and rubbed her eyes. It was only to see the moonlight falling through the latticed windows on to the floor of her dainty chamber. She was alone and she bethought herself sadly that dreams go by contraries. ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... said Paula, whose advocacy went much by the rule of contraries, 'it must be a good thing to give people books to read. I dare say it prevents them from going to ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... some of the milder medicines now in use, for the terrible and often fatal drugs employed by the Greek and Roman physicians. The fanciful classification of diseases into four kinds—hot, cold, moist and dry, with the corresponding arbitrary classification of remedies to be administered by contraries, continued to be the only recognized theory of medicine for many centuries ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... since these flow from an internal principle. The other is natural necessity, resulting from the natural principles—either the form (as it is necessary for fire to heat), or the matter (as it is necessary for a body composed of contraries to be dissolved). Hence, with this necessity, which results from the matter, Christ's body was subject to the necessity of death and other like defects, since, as was said (A. 1, ad 2), "it was by the consent of the Divine will that the flesh was allowed to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... 'tis out! A word I never breathed to man before. Can you, who are a miracle of grace, Feel what it is to be a wreck like me? Paolo, look at me. Is there a line, In my whole bulk of wretched contraries, That nature in a nightmare ever used Upon her shapes till now? Find me the man, Or beast, or tree, or rock, or nameless thing, So out of harmony with all things else, And I'll go raving with bare happiness,— Ay, and I'll marry ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... some time in the autumn, and arrangements were talked over. Marian began to have little doubt that she was secretly unhappy, and grew more and more tender in feeling towards her; while, by an effect of contraries, her manner became more frigid and severe, in proportion to the ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of that picturesque child of nature, just as loneliness caused him to open his eyes to the existence of that, which in the logical and ordinary course of events, he would have entirely overlooked. But since life is made up almost entirely of contraries, it is not so much with reasons that we have to deal as with facts—things as they are. Clothe human nature in whatever garb you like, at heart it remains the same. Time and place and condition make little difference; the real man within is sure to assert himself at some time or other ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... or unwritten; they would have no man call himself their master. Such is the glorious beginning of things out of which tyranny springs. 'Glorious, indeed; but what is to follow?' The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; for there is a law of contraries; the excess of freedom passes into the excess of slavery, and the greater the freedom the greater the slavery. You will remember that in the oligarchy were found two classes—rogues and paupers, whom we compared ...
— The Republic • Plato
... that do it, but sin that dwells in me' (Rom 7). Thus you see Paul is forced to make two men of himself, saying, I and I; I do; I do not; I do, I would not do; what I hate, that I do. Now it cannot be the same I unto whom these contraries are applied; but his sinful flesh is one I, and his godly mind the other: and indeed so he concludes it in this chapter, saying, 'So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... experience and what we may call the unsubstantialness of the dream. He may, indeed, have learned that the dream is not to be relied on for telling the truth; the Zulu, for example, has even reached the perverse triumph of critical logic achieved by our own Aryan ancestors in the saying that "dreams go by contraries." But the Zulu has not learned, nor had the primeval Aryan learned, to disregard the utterances of the dream as being purely subjective phenomena. To the mind as yet untouched by modern culture, the visions seen and the voices heard in sleep possess as much objective ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... was, as I am informed, he composed this loyal Poem. For, though fate, more than choice, seems to have placed him in the service of a Knight so notorious, both in his person and politics, yet, by the rule of contraries, one may observe throughout his whole Poem, that he was most orthodox, both in his religion and loyalty. And I am the more induced to believe he wrote it about that time, because he had then the opportunity to converse with those living characters of ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... doubt have in Chicago some friend who can and will oblige you. Request this friend to insert in three of the city papers here an advertisement as follows: If you accept you will say, "Number three, we decline," which I will read by contraries. You will then send by express, to be called for, a package containing ten thousand dollars in bank-notes—none larger than one hundred nor smaller than ten—and a letter in which you shall bind yourself not to take advantage in any way of my application for this packet at the ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... still jogging on homewards, I thought that a great many were called their Graces, not for any grace or favour they had truly deserved with God or man, but for the same reason of contraries, that the Parcae or Destinies, were so called, because they spared none, or were not truly the Parcae, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... last is the key-stone of religious philosophy. Its diverse interpretations. Its mathematical expres ion[TN-1] shows that it does not relate to contradictories. But certain concrete analytic propositions, relating to contraries, do have this form. The contrary as distinguished from the privative. The Conditioned and Unconditioned, the Knowable and Unknowable are not true contradictions. The synthesis of contraries is ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... the nation rules, it is a Kingdom; where more than one rule according to Reason and Fight, it is an Aristocracy; where the government is according to Desire and offices depend on money, that constitution is called a Timocracy. The contraries are: to Kingdom tyranny, for Kingdom does all things with the guidance of reason and tyranny nothing; to Aristocracy oligarchy, when not the best people but a few of the worst are rulers; to Timocracy democracy, when not the rich but the common folk ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... that it is never advantage to himself that moveth a man in this kingdom to undertake this or that. The thing that alone advantageth a man here is the thing which he doth without thought unto that advantage. To your world, this world goeth by contraries. The man here that doeth most service, that aideth others the most to the obtaining of their honest desires, is the man who standeth highest with the Lord of the place, and his reward and honour ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... it be market, mass, or mischief—and no one will look at you twice. At home it should be the same. There may be visitors; if Monna Olimpia can contrive it, there will be a good many. You may judge of their quality by her anxiety to receive them. Be guarded then, my dear, and go by contraries. They will not find the pattern of the carpet so interesting as you should do. Give them prose for their poetry, vinegar for their sweet wine, bitter herbs when they look to you for cane of sugar. Keep your honeycomb for him who is trying to earn it. Think where ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... most limited understanding that any squire in the world has or ever had. Is it possible that all this time thou hast been going about with me thou hast never found out that all things belonging to knights-errant seem to be illusions and nonsense and ravings, and to go always by contraries? And not because it really is so, but because there is always a swarm of enchanters in attendance upon us that change and alter everything with us, and turn things as they please, and according as they are disposed to aid or destroy us; thus what seems ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... almost to acquire the strength and quick responsiveness of emotional sensibility. And this, without the too common drawback to great openness of mind. This drawback consists in loose beliefs, taken up to-day and silently dropped to-morrow; vacillating opinions, constantly being exchanged for their contraries; feeble convictions, appearing, shifting, vanishing, in the quicksands ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... Parody, like those of Wit, If well contrasted, never fail to hit; One half in light, and one in darkness drest, (For contraries oppos'd still shine the best.) When a cold Page half breaks the Writer's heart, By this it warms, and brightens into Art. When Rhet'ric glitters with too pompous pride, By this, like Circe, 'tis un-deify'd. So Berecynthia, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... appearance than motive. Of the strength of the tie that held them we shall sufficiently take the measure; but it was meanwhile almost obvious that if the great possibility had come up for them it had done so, to an exceptional degree, under the protection of the famous law of contraries. Any deep harmony that might eventually govern them would not be the result of their having much in common—having anything, in fact, but their affection; and would really find its explanation in some sense, on the part of each, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... proposed to write a book of Parallels, and has furnished a specimen in that of Petrarch and Rousseau, and intended for another that of Erasmus with Cicero. It is amusing to observe how a lively and subtle mind can strike out resemblances, and make contraries accord, and at the same time it may show the pinching difficulties through which a parallel is pushed, till it ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... only together: the science of contraries is one. Subject and object, mind and matter, are known only in correlation and contrast, and in the same common act: which knowledge is at once a synthesis and an antithesis of both, and may be indifferently defined an antithetic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... deplorably in the power of the demon, began to consider what was best to be done, and recollecting that it was customary with that supernatural race to act by the rule of contraries, in opposition to an expressed desire, said in reply, for he knew that if he was thrown into the sea there would be a good chance ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... true, are not very engaging; he is rough, but he is sincere. It is very useful sometimes to see the things which one ought to avoid, as it is right to see very often those which one ought to imitate, and my friend Hop's manners will frequently point out to you, what yours ought to be by the rule of contraries. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and desires which people the Unconscious, like a diver walking the strange world beneath the sea. But the laws by which thought is governed on this sub-surface level are not those of our ordinary waking consciousness. During outcropping association by contraries does not seem readily to take place. Thus the mal-association, which neutralised the desired idea and so prevented acceptation, no longer presents itself. We all know what happens during a "day-dream" or "brown-study," when the Unconscious tide is high. A succession of bright images glides smoothly ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... that he would not, till, having waited till the last minute, I was driven to buy a ticket, and, five minutes after the irrevocable deed was done, he would be at my service, with all manner of helpful documents and directions. Everything goes by contraries with me; so, having made up my mind to be disappointed, of course I wasn't; for, presently, in walked Dr. H., and no sooner had he heard my errand, and glanced at my credentials, than he said, ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... "it be true, as certain mystics maintain, that the world is an effect of the antagonisms of spiritual beings, having their stations in opposite quarters of the heavens, then, I think, MacCarthy and myself must represent such a pair of contraries, and move in an antithetic balance through the cycle of experience. I, perhaps, am the Urthona of his prophet Blake, and he the Urizen, or vice versa, it may be, I cannot tell. But our opposition involves, on my part at least, no hostility; and looking ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson |
