"Fallacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be more fallacious than the claims he would found upon this fact, any more than those of the American revolution of 1776, to the clergy reserve land. For the Lord Bishop himself, when Archdeacon of York, in a printed discourse on the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... recourse to the debilitating plan, and with the greatest certainty of success. Before I viewed diseases and their causes in this way, I must confess that I often felt great hesitation in practice; and judging merely from symptoms, which are frequently very fallacious, the operation of a remedy often disappointed me, and I could not pretend to predict the event with the certainty that I now can. This observation is of the greatest consequence in the cure both of predisposition and of disease. Though excitement regulates all the phenomena of ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... that definitions of it are wholly deceitful. Often it would be unjust to society to do what would, in the absence of that consideration, be pronounced just to the individual. General propositions of man's right to this or that are ever fallacious: and not infrequently it would be most unjust to the individual himself to do for him what the theorist, as a general proposition, would say was right ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and fine clothes were all solid enough; but they seemed most disconcertingly unreal. One letter from old Samuel had made them tremble, and the second had reduced them to illusions, or delusions. Even George's reputation as a rising sculptor appeared utterly fallacious. What rendered him savage was the awful injustice of Samuel. Samuel had no right whatever to play him such a trick. It was, in a way, worse than if Samuel had cut off the allowance altogether, for in that case he could at any rate have gone majestically to Samuel and said: "Your niece and her child ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... invisible chimera of her entranced imagination into effective operation. Argument with a man who denies first premises, and we submit the assertion that vitality is no exception to the treatment of the dead, amounts to that. We say, argument with such a man is worse than nothing; it would be fallacious as the Eolian experiment of whistling the most inspiriting jigs to an inanimate, and consequently unmusical, milestone, opposing a transatlantic thunder-storm with "a more paper than powder" "penny cracker," or setting an owl to outstare the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... architectural and horticultural beauties of mansions which have sprung out of the profits or artifices of trade. The multiplication of these dormitories of avarice is considered by too many as the sign of public prosperity. Fallacious, delusive, and mischievous notion! Was the world made for the many, or the few? Can any one become rich from domestic trade without making others poor; or can another bring wealth from foreign countries except by adding to the circulating medium, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... Hon. WM. H. SEWARD would be present at the dedication of the Geological Hall, excited great interest among the citizens; but the hope of his appearance proved fallacious. His place was occupied by seven picked men of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of whom (Prof. HENRY) declared his inability to compute the problem why seven men of science were ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... having bid farewell to their companions in misfortune. Already the minds of our people were singularly altered; some believed they saw land, others ships which were coming to save us; all talked aloud of their fallacious visions. ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... were they fallacious? Does this spectacle of a nation drowned look 'fallacious' to you? Why didn't you study the matter until you understood it? Why did you issue officially, and with my ignorant sanction—may God forgive ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... may safely trust the State governments, though we have no means of resisting them; but we cannot confide in the national government, though we have an effectual constitutional guard against every encroachment. This is the essence of their argument, and it is false and fallacious beyond conception. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... corporeal eye perceives, and nothing useful but what pampers the appetite or fills the purse; but unfortunately, their perceptions, like Homer's frail dreams, pass through the ivory gate; and are consequently empty and fallacious, and contain nothing belonging to the vigilant soul. To such as these a treatise on the beautiful cannot be addressed; since its object is too exalted to be approached by those engaged in the impurities ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... throngs upon the 'pave' for want of employment, yet M. de Calonne either did not see, or pretended not to see, the errors he had committed. Being informed that the Comte de Vergennes had attributed the public disorders to his fallacious policy, M. de Calonne sent a friend to the Count demanding satisfaction for the charge of having caused the riots. The Count calmly replied that he was too much of a man of honour to take so great ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Jerome Fandor by one of our agents, for the purpose of compromising the false Corporal Vinson.... But if I have acted thus, it was not so much through a desire for the money they gave me for my treachery, not so much for the fallacious promises of eventual riches which Vagualame was always trying to dazzle me with—it was through rancour, spite, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... in rather less time; but in the Estimate he now proposes to make, he will govern himself by the same data on which his original Calculations were made, for he is desirous rather to repress too sanguine Expectations than to encourage such as may prove fallacious. ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... back on her general non-possumus; and most of the would-be critics of the Proceedings have been contented to oppose to the phenomena recorded the simple presumption that in some way or other the reports must be {318} fallacious,—for so far as the order of nature has been subjected to really scientific scrutiny, it always has been proved to run the other way. But the oftener one is forced to reject an alleged sort of fact by the use of this mere presumption, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... whether other minds are affected by the same causes in the same manner. Yet by this criterion we must be content to judge, because no other can be obtained; and, indeed, we have no reason to think it very fallacious, for excepting here and there an anomalous mind, which either does not feel like others, or dissembles its sensibility, we find men unanimously concur in attributing happiness or misery to particular conditions, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... first two of Murray's, give any other rules for the discrimination of quantities, we must infer, that these were judged sufficient. Now, of all the principles on which any have ever pretended to determine the quantity of syllables, none, so far as I know, are more defective or fallacious than these. They are liable to more objections than it is worth while to specify. Suffice it to observe, that they divide certain accented syllables into long and short, and say nothing of the unaccented; whereas ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... reduced to 1s.) amounted to L.3257. The average weight of the elephant's tusk is 60 lbs.; and therefore 3040 elephants have been killed to supply this quantity of ivory.' But these calculations are in many respects quite fallacious. In the first place, the average weight of our imported tusks is not 60 lbs.: we have the authority of one of the first ivory-merchants in London for stating that 20 lbs. will be a much closer approximation. This at once involves a threefold ratio of destruction. In place of 3040, we should have ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... were in hopes that after such a repulse he might take himself off, but we soon perceived that our hopes were fallacious; neither the stabs nor the shot had seriously injured him. They had only served to render him more furious and vengeful; and after tumbling about for a while, and angrily biting at his own bleeding paw, he returned once ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... Devonshire was still detained in the Tower on Wyat's information, as was pretended, and on other indications of guilt, all of which were proved in the end equally fallacious: and at the time of Elizabeth's removal hither this state-prison was thronged with captives of minor importance implicated in the designs of Wyat. These were assiduously plied on one hand with offers of liberty and reward, and subjected on the other to the most rigorous treatment, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... sycamore, middle-aged and without any singularities, ought to have had the painful feeling that it served in a measure to deceive the public. In fact, upon the advertisement of the Batifol institution (Cours du lycee Henri IV. Preparation au baccalaureat et aux ecoles de l'Etat), one read these fallacious words, "There is a garden;" when in reality it was only a vulgar court graveled with stones from the river, with a paved gutter in which one could gather half a dozen of lost marbles, a broken top, and a certain number of shoe-nails, and after recreation hours ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... we regard her socially, for the good that that little woman does in a quiet, unobtrusive way is almost incredible. D'ye know, Frank, I have a sort of triumphant feeling in regard to the sour, cynical folk of this world—whom it is so impossible to answer in their fallacious and sophistical arguments—when I reflect that there is a day coming when the meek and lowly and unknown workers for the sake of our Lord shall be singled out from the multitude, and their true place and position assigned them. Miss Tippet will stand higher, I ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... with unrestrained earnestness the amount of the succession, and the probability of its destination. The principal expectants, however, kept a prudent silence, indeed ashamed to express hopes which might prove fallacious; and the agent or man of business, who alone knew exactly how matters stood, maintained a countenance of mysterious importance, as if determined to preserve the full interest ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... turns out jest as Captain Moon says. Before they'd gone a half mile, them wards of the gov'ment, as I once hears a big chief from Washin'ton call 'em, takes the nephy from this yere fallacious agent an' by fourth drink time that mornin', or when it's been sun- up three hours, that nephy is ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... fallacious prophecies were further shattered by a shell from works placed far back on the table top of Bulwaan. It did not demolish anything else, but it makes us very chary now about predicting what the Boers can or cannot do. Through telescopes they had been watched building ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... they suppose that the fallacious idea of a cessation of hostilities will render these States remiss in their preparations ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... and magic were not entirely fruitless. Their counterfeit learning has been a genuine help to the progress of human knowledge. Because they awakened chimerical hopes and fallacious ambitions in the minds of their adepts, researches were undertaken which undoubtedly {195} would never have been started or persisted in for the sake of a disinterested love of truth. The observations, collected with untiring patience ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... cases, the argument is from a small and partial effect, to a great and general effect, which will in numberless instances be found to be a very fallacious mode of reasoning. The busy and active man may in some degree counteract, or what is perhaps nearer the truth, may disregard those slight disorders of frame which fix the attention of a man who has nothing else to think of; but this ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... West, and thus to diminish the value of the public lands and prevent the growth of the Western States, Mr. H. proceeded thus:] "That portion of the Union could participate in no part of the bill, except in its burdens, in spite of the fallacious hopes that were cherished, in reference to cotton bagging for Kentucky, and the woolen duty for Steubenville, Ohio. He feared that to the entire region of the West, no 'cordial drops of comfort' would ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... help to investigation. We should recognize it as a wise provision of nature that the regulation of our thoughts and the belief in the objective validity of our anticipation of future events have not been confided to the weak, inconstant, inert, and fallacious reason, but to a powerful instinct. In life and action we are governed by this natural impulse, in spite of all the scruples of the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... its nominal value, but that the labor which I can obtain for it expresses its real value—I reply, that the quantity of labor is no more any expression of the real value than the quantity of money; both are equally fallacious expressions, because equally equivocal. My hat, it is true, now buys me x quantity of labor, and some years ago it bought x/2 quantity of labor. But this no more proves that my hat has advanced in real value according to that proportion, than a double ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Tyler assigns this sonnet to the year 1598 or later, on the fallacious ground that this line was probably imitated from an expression in Marston's Pigmalion's Image, published in 1598, where 'stanzas' are said to 'march rich bedight in warlike equipage.' The suggestion ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... One remains, the Many change and pass," sums up the teaching of the line of thinkers which culminated in Plato. In their view, knowledge derived from the senses was fallacious because it touched only the diverse and changing appearances of things; absolute knowledge of the one abiding spiritual reality could, they held, only be obtained by the exercise of spiritual faculty of reason, which, unlike the animal power of ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... wisdom, of very useful wisdom—though of poetry it has latterly uttered little that was original. Poetry and romance! They are splendid mountain views seen in the distance. So let men be content to see them, and not attempt to tread upon the fallacious ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... to be regarded as a substance not only of chemical but also of high mechanical complexity. The idea of this material as a simple homogeneous compound or as a mixture of such compounds is absolutely fallacious. Protoplasm is to-day known to be made up of parts harmoniously adapted to each other in such a way as to form an extraordinarily intricate machine; and the microscopist of to-day recognizes clearly that the activities ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... that man thinks, is ready to think, that he must give up the very noblest part of his life, his powers of thinking, in order that he may enter into Christianity. It seems to me that there are certain reasons for it which we can see; but how fallacious those reasons are! Is it not partly because man, when he is called upon to live Jesus' life, when he is called upon to be a spiritual creature, immediately sees that he is entering into a new and different region from that in which his ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... grounds to give distinct names to some of the varieties now suppressed, merely because they found them in rocks so widely remote in time that they deemed it contrary to analogy to suppose that the same species could have endured so long: a fallacious mode of reasoning, analogous to that which leads some zoologists and botanists to distinguish by specific names slight varieties of living plants and animals met with in very remote countries, as in Europe and Australia, for example; it being assumed that each species has had ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... was the excessive taxation, which oppressed the nation and made it discontented and rebellious. The fourth most prominent cause of agitation was the writings of infidel philosophers and economists, whose unsound and sophistical theories held out fallacious hopes, and undermined those sentiments by which all governments and institutions are preserved. These will be incidentally presented, as thereby we shall be able to trace the career of the remarkable man who controlled the National Assembly, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... called attention to the fact, that the impression of Marlowe's being an earlier writer than Shakspeare, was founded solely upon the circumstance that his plays were printed at an earlier date. That nothing could be more fallacious than this conclusion, the fact that many of Shakspeare's earliest plays were not printed at all until after his death is sufficient to evince. The motive for withholding Shakspeare's plays from the press is as easily understood as that for publishing Marlowe's. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... under flowers, and at last only gives back to humanity its old idol, newly carved and painted. This idol is no other than humanity itself. This mixture of atheism and sensibility was particularly dangerous, because it met preexistent tendencies, and colored them with a fallacious poesy. The art of the historian, or rather of the romance-writer [Renan], consisted in his hiding the entire absence of all belief under graceful metaphors and an unctuous style, just as the brilliant snow of the Alps covers up the abyss and deprives the traveler of the salutary horror ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... of men's unconscious pessimism, the faith, pathetically clung to, that in frustration of desire is the soul's health, is but too apt to prove itself fallacious just where its efficiency would show most glorious. Is there not lurking somewhere in your mind, not withstanding the protests of your realistic intelligence, more than half a hope that Richard Dagworthy will emerge radiant from the gulf into which his passions have plunged him? For the credit of ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... fallacious as prophecies against second marriages, but I don't believe they will. She is too quietly dignified for the full brunt of reports to reach her, and too much concentrated on her ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and economy required by trade. The competition of those who speculate at random would then cease, or what is the same, as money obtained at a premium could not then be laid out with the same advantages by the merchants as if it was their own, it will be necessary to renounce the fallacious profits held out by the public charities, till at least they are placed on a level with existing circumstances, and brought in to be of real service to the honorable planter and laborious merchant, in their accidental exigencies, ceasing to be, as hitherto, the indirect ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... impossible that any notion can be more fallacious or more misleading in its consequences. All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song. With deliberate didactic purpose the tragedians—with pure and native passion the lyrists —fitted their perfect words to their dearest faiths. "Operosa parvus ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... therefore resolved to go himself, instead of sending any one else, to bring his supposed son to the farm. It is more easy to imagine than describe Mrs Broderick's state of anxiety. Was her long-lost boy to be restored to her? or were the anticipations she had formed to be fallacious? Her daughters shared her feelings, but they were so much occupied from morning till night in their various duties, that their minds consequently dwelt less on the subject than did hers. Rupert had satisfied himself ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... difficulties, not to an election, but to a revolution. Further, he has told us that, eager as he might be for a revolutionary stroke, he could not lose sight of the obstacles. To those who held up French revolutions as a model, he pointed out that the analogy was fallacious: in France "long years of tyranny had exasperated the people to its very depths. In Greece the people had a king who, only two years earlier, had headed his armies in two victorious campaigns." [3] So he scouted the idea of intervention at Athens, convinced that ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... are dependent on the various aspects of the stars and conjunctions of the planets, the most unfounded apprehensions, as well as the most delusive hopes, have been excited by the professors of this fallacious science. Such impositions on the credulity of mankind are founded on the grossest absurdity and the most palpable ignorance of the nature of things; still, in the midst of the light of science which the present century ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... when the arts and the virtues, like the moral and intellectual faculties, were still undistinguished. Among early enquirers into the nature of human action the arts helped to fill up the void of speculation; and at first the comparison of the arts and the virtues was not perceived by them to be fallacious. They only saw the points of agreement in them and not the points of difference. Virtue, like art, must take means to an end; good manners are both an art and a virtue; character is naturally described ...
— The Republic • Plato
... went on, until both children were sent to a school for little children kept by a gentlewoman named Merlin, in the Rue de l'Homme Arme. According to the fallacious circular which Mademoiselle Merlin sent to the folks of the quarter, there was a garden—that is to say, four broomsticks in a sandy court; and it was there, the first day during recess, that the innocent Leon burst into ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... it is, therefore, a matter of importance that they should think aright. It is of importance, that they should be guarded against fallacious Utopian promises. Henceforth, there is no security for the stability of the world but in the contentment of minds. There is no rest for mankind, unless men will understand the conditions of their destiny; unless, instead ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... commissioners; but he refused to ratify it, and complained that they had exceeded their powers. He desired, however, to enter into a new negotiation at Newcastle. The committee willingly accepted this fallacious offer. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... probationary period of life, most fitted to afford the promise of better things. There is a constant struggle between reality and hope throughout the whole of this slow-moving and treacherous period, which has an unavoidable tendency to deceive. All that is said of its grateful productions is fallacious, for the earth is as little likely to yield a generous tribute without the quickening influence of the summer heats, as man is wont to bring forth commendable fruits without the agency of a higher moral power than any he possesses ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... heroic role long after the appropriate circumstances had passed away. Yet, in spite of the cynical lucidity of her judgment, the romantic in her heart longed to have Stephen, by one generous act of devotion, prove her theory fallacious. Her strongest impulse, the impulse to create happiness, to repair, as her father had once described it, crippled destinies; this impulse urged her now to help Patty's pathetic romance in every way in her power. It would ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... principle so inconstant and fallacious should lead us into errors, when implicitly followed (as it must be) in all its variations. It is this principle, which makes us reason from causes and effects; and it is the same principle, which convinces us of the continued existence of external objects, when absent from the senses. But though ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... we suppose the existence of the object as its ground. This being so, the theoretical analysis of the Buddhists that each unit of effect produced in us is not exactly the same at each new point of time, and that therefore all things are momentary, is fallacious; for experience shows that not all of an object is found to be changing every moment; some part of it (e.g. gold in a gold ornament) is found to remain permanent while other parts (e.g. its form as earrings ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... there is much fallacious reasoning, and many conclusions that are not borne out by the facts. For example, he says that no species of bird of paradise has been diminished in number by slaughter for the feather trade; that Florida ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... he entirely relied upon victory and drew an anticipatory picture of France triumphant, entitled, "Le Passage du Rhin." But the French never crossed the Rhine, and the drawing was given to this friend with the words: "My sketch has no longer any raison d'etre. Keep it in memory of our fallacious hopes." ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... been suffering the first uneasiness which want of money brings to honest souls, and to young wives on whom life has hitherto smiled, and who conceal their alarms. Also Lisbeth had immediately guessed that her mother had given her no money. Adeline's delicacy had brought her so low as to use the fallacious excuses that ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... cursory examination of the Constitution of the United States; but a partial knowledge of its history and of the motives of the men who formed it, to see how utterly fallacious it is to ascribe to them the purpose of interfering with the domestic institutions of any of the States. But if a disrespect for that instrument, a fanatical disregard of its purposes, should ever induce a majority, however large, to seek by amending the ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... the semen to be ejected at certain times from the body; that its retention is incompatible with sound health and vigor of body and mind. This is a very fallacious idea. The seminal fluid is too precious—nature bestows too much care in its elaboration for it to be wasted in this unproductive manner. It is intended, when not used for the purpose of procreation, to be reabsorbed again into the system, giving vigor of body, elasticity ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... and fallacious method of dealing with Japan is that of regarding it as an Oriental nation, essentially Oriental with a thin veneer of Occidentalism. People who so reason, or occasionally do not reason at all but confine themselves to mere assertions, suggest that the ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... broad pennant, should certainly have led the way: he clung, instead, to his moorings, and the Germans doggedly followed his example: semi-belligerents, daring each other and the violence of heaven. Kane, less immediately involved, was led in error by the report of residents and a fallacious rise in the glass; he stayed with the others, a misjudgment that was like to cost him dear. All were moored, as is the custom in Apia, with two anchors practically east and west, clear hawse to the north, and a kedge astern. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... error has been committed, O conscript fathers, owing to a groundless and fallacious hope, let us return into the right road. The best harbour for a penitent ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... perform my promise of giving you an account of a visit made many years since to Abbotsford. I hope, however, that you do not expect much from me, for the travelling notes taken at the time are so scanty and vague, and my memory so extremely fallacious, that I fear I shall disappoint you with the meagreness and crudeness of ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... an expression of stern indignation replaced the benign look that usually reigned over his noble features, and he now resolutely closed all the avenues of compassion, along which divers fallacious excuses and charitable conjectures had marched into his heart, and stifled for a time the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... death?" I went on with this dream. "It is not fair—their overpowering personality—it is not fair to others. It overpowers me, though I know it is all fallacious." ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... were fallacious or otherwise, induced me to try whether any alteration would be made in the constitution of fixed air, by this mixture of iron filings and brimstone. I therefore put a mixture of this kind into a quantity of as pure fixed air as I could ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... cases with a certain naivete—with good faith in the possibility of his being able to found a free commonwealth, if not by the swords of others, at any rate by his own. We perceive without difficulty that this faith was fallacious, and that no one takes an evil spirit into his service without becoming himself enslaved to it; but the greatest men are not those who err the least. If we still after so many centuries bow in reverence before what Caesar willed and did, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... this operation of the mind, by which we infer like effects from like causes, and vice versa, is so essential to the subsistence of all human creatures, it is not probable, that it could be trusted to the fallacious deductions of our reason, which is slow in its operations; appears not, in any degree, during the first years of infancy; and at best is, in every age and period of human life, extremely liable to error and mistake. It is more conformable to the ordinary wisdom ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... maintained usefully, and without a thought of doing them away. The notion that money alone makes those divisions into castes which are everywhere to be found, and which will probably continue to be found as long as society itself exists, is a very vulgar and fallacious notion. It comes from the difficulty of appreciating those tastes and qualities which, not possessing ourselves, are so many unknown and mysterious influences. In marrying Sarah Pennock, John Woolston was slightly conscious ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the philosophy of this controversy. There are few positions more relied on by Roman Catholics, or more thoroughly unsound and fallacious, than the assertion that there are no essential differences between the position of Roman Catholics and of Protestants as regards the state ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... man has called in the friendly assistance of philosophy, and heaven seeing the incapacity of that to console him, has given him the aid of religion. The consolations of philosophy are very amusing, but often fallacious. It tells us that life is filled with comforts, if we will but enjoy them; and on the other hand, that though we unavoidably have miseries here, life is short, and they will soon be over. Thus do these consolations destroy each other; for if life ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... regulate the operations of inanimate nature; in other words, he tacitly assumes that the Laws of Similarity and Contact are of universal application and are not limited to human actions. In short, magic is a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false science as well as an abortive art. Regarded as a system of natural law, that is, as a statement of the rules which determine the sequence of events throughout the world, it may be ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... it in motion, as if it were carried from place to place. A little after midnight, the joyful sound of "Land! Land!" was heard from the Pinta, which kept always ahead of the other ships. But, having been so often deceived by fallacious appearances, every man was now become slow of belief, and waited in all the anguish of uncertainty and impatience for the return of day. As soon as morning dawned, all doubts and fears were dispelled. From every ship an island was seen about ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... the police a government within a government. He had left Paris before my return thither, but I had frequent occasion to speak of that famous personage to Savary, whom, for the reason above assigned, I do not always term Duc de Rovigo. Savary knew better than any one the fallacious measures of Fouche's administration, since he was his successor. Fouche, under pretence of encouraging men of letters, though well aware that the Emperor was hostile to them, intended only to bring them into contempt by making them write verses at command. It was ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... The fallacious views about the nature and sphere of politics, which the Irish bring with them from Ireland, and which are perpetuated in America, have the effect not only of debarring the Irish from real political progress, but ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... true lover of all curious cultivation, in favour of the vineyard; and endeavours to shew, by a comparison of the profit and expense, that it was a most advantageous improvement. Such comparisons, however, between the profit and expense of new projects are commonly very fallacious; and in nothing more so than in agriculture. Had the gain actually made by such plantations been commonly as great as he imagined it might have been, there could have been no dispute about it. The same point is frequently at this day a matter of controversy in ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... fashion to this day to dish up the great poets' lines more or less seasoned or to repeat, one or the other of the fabulous stories, or fallacious theories so constantly put forward in regard to the origin of chess, so it may be not amiss to state what is known or can be gathered in regard to it, concerning the claims of countries other ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... granting a toleration to the Protestants; but the interested violence of the duke of Guise, covered with the pretence of religious zeal, broke through this agreement; and the two parties, after the fallacious tranquillity of a moment, renewed their mutual insults and injuries. Conde, Coligny, Andelot assembled their friends and flew to arms: Guise and Montmorency got possession of the king's person, and constrained the queen regent to embrace their party: fourteen armies were levied and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... without hesitation. If the action of Parliament was any sort of index to popular sentiment, the idea that there was any widespread or deep- rooted feeling in the country against a war of religion is certainly fallacious; while there can be no question that the entire sea-going population—which had attracted into its ranks all that was most adventurous, most daring, most energetic, and most capable in the country—was heart and soul hostile to Spain. How much of that feeling was due to ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... cordially for giving me the desired explanation. "I now feel better satisfied with reference to your action upon that occasion," I assured him. "While I do not agree with you in your conclusions, and while I believe your reasoning to be unsound and fallacious, still I cannot help giving you credit for having been actuated by no other motive than to do what you honestly believed was for the best interest of the country and the ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... of the love that both of them felt for her. They spoke English and French equally well (they had had an English nurse since their babyhood), so their mother talked to them in both languages; directing the bent of their childish minds with admirable skill, admitting no fallacious reasoning, no bad principle. She ruled by kindness, concealing nothing, explaining everything. If Louis wished for books, she was careful to give him interesting yet accurate books—books of biography, the lives of great seamen, great captains, and famous men, for little incidents in their history ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... more knowing or orthodox: since subtlety, in those who make profession to teach or defend truth, hath passed so much for a virtue: a virtue, indeed, which, consisting for the most part in nothing but the fallacious and illusory use of obscure or deceitful terms, is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance, and more obstinate ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... unpopular minister. The public fermentation subsided; the patriot lords reappeared at court; and the Prince of Orange acquired an increasing influence in the council and over the stadtholderess, who by his advice adopted a conciliatory line of conduct—a fallacious but still a temporary hope for the nation. But the calm was of short duration. Scarcely was this moderation evinced by the government, when Philip, obstinate in his designs, and outrageous in his resentment, sent an ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... do not think that it has, Socrates: at least, if the argument is fallacious, it would be difficult for me to find ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... the reception accorded him and the missionaries, and hoped the time was coming for again using the lots in Savannah, but the hope again proved to be fallacious. The missionaries all suffered greatly from fever, always prevalent on the rice plantations in the summer, and on Oct. 11th, 1775, Mueller died. The outbreak of the Revolutionary War made Wagner's and Broesing's position precarious, for ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... much good for Africa, it proved impracticable as a remedy at home. Madison, who in early life disliked slavery so much that he wished "to depend as little as possible on the labor of slaves;" Madison, who held that where slavery exists "the republican theory becomes fallacious;" Madison, who in the last years of his life would not consent to the annexation of Texas, lest his countrymen should fill it with slaves; Madison, who said, "slavery is the greatest evil under which the nation labors—a portentous evil—an evil, moral, political, and economical—a ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability, the commonly accepted standards being artificial, arbitrary and fallacious; for, as "Sir Sycophas Chrysolater" in the play has justly remarked, "the true use and function of property (in whatsoever it consisteth—coins, or land, or houses, or merchant-stuff, or anything which may be named as holden of right to one's own subservience) as ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... anchor can be trusted even on the best of holding ground. In time of stress it is bound to drag, for implements and men must be treated fairly to give you the "virtue" which is in them. The anchor is an emblem of hope, but a foul anchor is worse than the most fallacious of false hopes that ever lured men or nations into a sense of security. And the sense of security, even the most warranted, is a bad councillor. It is the sense which, like that exaggerated feeling of well-being ominous ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... production of leucocytes or protective white blood corpuscles and that the tonsil is not, as generally understood, a lymphatic gland; that the general ignorance of this fact has led to the useless sacrifice of thousands of tonsils, on the fallacious assumption that their functional activities may be vicariously undertaken by other lymphatic glands; and finally, that the physiologic integrity of the tonsil is of the utmost importance ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... family is the basis of the State thus taken by itself is entirely false; but even if true, the use made of it as an argument against giving suffrage to women is equally fallacious. This can be shown by a single illustration. We will suppose there are two families, in both of which the father dies, leaving in one case a widow and one son, and in the other a widow and six daughters. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... magistrates to interfere in behalf of the truth formally recognized. The right of the individual conscience was a right for the most part ignored by thinking men on both sides during the sixteenth century—covered and hidden by the fallacious application of the principle of universal obligation to the inflexible law of right and of God. The lesson of liberty based upon order was learned only in the school of long and severe persecution. Even after thirty-seven or eight years of violent ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... opposite sides, and submitted to the enlightened judgment of an assembly, the same arguments which are looked upon as satisfactory and unanswerable by one set of men should be deemed without exception utterly fallacious by another. If any proof were requisite of the mighty influence of party spirit, it would be found in a still stronger light in the State trials in the House of Lords. I have in my mind the trial of Lord Melville; when each Peer had to deliver ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... fallacious? Our position is not that of the British Isles half a century since, exhausted by a war of twenty years, without a railway, with less than half the wealth and half the population, and one twentieth of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... efficient way! But aside from what we should have done, today we're fighting neither Mexico nor Spain. We're fighting a blood-glutted monster whose breath is poisonous gas, whose touch is fever, whose thoughts are leprous. This is too serious an emergency to trust in the hands of a fallacious volunteer system! The Government, by which I mean ourselves, must look to its knitting with an alertness never before found necessary, or this time we perish. And I want to tell you, Roger, with all solemnity, that there may be a score of legitimate reasons why ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... enumerators at the national wealth of the United States, twelve years later, in 1870. Can one guess be said to be any nearer the fact than the other? May we not be pardoned for treating all estimates as utterly fallacious that are not based upon known facts and figures? Why do we hear so much of the "approximate correctness" of so many statistical tables, when, in point of fact, the primary data are incapable of proof, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... seemed just a chance of something better. During two successive winters the lad, being then from sixteen to seventeen years old, went to a night-school, which was opened for twenty-six weeks in each "session," and for four hours in each week. But the hope proved fallacious. In those hundred and four hours a year—hours which came after a tiring day's work—his brain was fed upon "mensuration" and "the science of horticulture," the former on the chance that some day he might want to measure a wall for paper-hanging or do some other job of the sort, and the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... closely criticized, and, I think, with justice. Pretending to deal with matters of pure reason, it constantly though surreptitiously proceeds on the methods of applied logic; its conclusions are as fallacious logically as they are experimentally. The laws of thought are formal, and are as binding in transcendental subjects as in those ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... through which he looks out on humanity at large has panes of a ruddier hue, he cultivates a mildness of tone, which a Briton is apt to despise as weakness. His desire to oblige sometimes impels him to uncharacteristic actions, which lead to fallacious generalisations on the part of his British critic. He shrinks from any assumption of superiority; he is apt to think twice of the feelings of his inferiors. The American tends to consider each stranger he meets—at any rate within his own social sphere—as a good fellow until ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... acts, will seldom contain an equal sum of wisdom. Scientific discovery is not advanced by a multitude of curious and ingenious amateurs in learned folly. Whether the claims of spiritualism are warrantable or fallacious, Mrs Browning, gifted as she was with rare powers of mind, was not qualified to investigate those claims; it was a waste of energy, from which she could not but suffer serious risks and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... house-porters were coming out to wash pavements and entrances: the collective life of the town was waking up to another uneventful day; but they two were hastening off to long hours of sunlight and fresh air, unhampered by the passing of time, or by fallacious ideas of duty; were setting out for a new bit of world, to strange meals taken in strange places, reached by white roads, or sequestered wood-paths. In the train, they were crushed between the baskets of the marketwomen, who were journeying ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... knowledge of writing gained from having at some time seen a person write is the most fallacious of all testimony respecting handwriting; it can be only a mental comparison of writing in question with such a vague idea or mental picture as may remain from a casual view of the writing at some ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... the adverse French power. As there happens, in the Ducal Palace, to be a joint in the pinnacles which exactly separates the "part which bears the lily" from that which is fastened to the cornice, it is no wonder that the omen proved fallacious. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the peninsula at more than from 6 to 7 millions. If its whole population at this time was equal to that of the present day, we should have to assume accordingly a mass of slaves amounting to 13 or 14 millions. It needs however no such fallacious calculations to render the dangerous tension of this state of things apparent; this is loudly enough attested by the partial servile insurrections, and by the appeal which from the beginning of the revolutions was at the close of every outbreak addressed to the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... event in this serenity was the report of the Mavick ball, already referred to, and the interpretation put upon it by the newspapers. In this light his plans seemed the merest moonshine. What became of his fallacious hope of waiting when events were driving on at this rate? What chance had he in such a social current? Would Evelyn be strong enough to stem it and to wait also? And to wait for what? For the indefinite and improbable event of a poor ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to promote him in the favour of this young lady; the greenness of his years secured him from any appearance of fallacious aim; so that he was indulged in frequent opportunities of conversing with his young mistress, whose parents encouraged this communication, by which they hoped she would improve in speaking the language of her father. Such ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... make the Bible; but I have gained this advantage, that my feelings and thoughts can no longer refuse their assent to what is evidently framed to engage that assent; and what is it to me that I cannot disprove the bare logical possibility of my whole nature being fallacious? To seek for a certainty above certainty, an evidence beyond necessary belief, is the very lunacy of skepticism: we must trust our own faculties, or we can put no trust in anything, save that moment we call the present, which escapes us while we articulate its name. I am ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... how much more correct is the contention that great social abuses will and must influence different minds and temperaments in a different way. And how utterly fallacious the stereotyped notion that the teachings of Anarchism, or certain exponents of these teachings, are responsible for the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... objections raised by others. They now, in order to safeguard their own position, proceed to demolish the positions held by those very adversaries. For otherwise it might happen that some slow-witted persons, unaware of those other views resting on mere fallacious arguments, would imagine them possibly to be authoritative, and hence might be somewhat shaken in their belief in the Vedic doctrine. Another pda therefore is begun to the express end of refuting the theories of others. The ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... cabinet, either mistaking our desire of peace for a dread of British power or misled by other fallacious calculations, has disappointed this reasonable anticipation. No communications from our envoys having reached us, no information on the subject has been received from that source; but it is known that the mediation was declined in the first instance, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... of the wrongness that inhabited this muck of house and grove and matted bush. He said this loudly to the prostrate form; then, waiting a little, repeated it. He would smash the print with its fallacious expanse of peace. The broken glass of the smitten picture jingled thinly on the floor. Woolfolk turned suddenly and defeated the purpose of whatever had been stealthily behind him; anyway it had disappeared. He stood in a strained attitude, listening ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... than servilely to wait at a great man's gate, or to sit at his table, meerly to afford him diversion: Competence and independence have surely more substantial charms, than the smiles of a courtier, which are too frequently fallacious. But who can read Mr Otway's story, without indignation at those idols of greatness, who demand worship from men of genius, and yet can suffer them to live miserably, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... amazing what popular ideas there are in existence about the digestibility of foods. Many of these are fallacious. For instance, it is common belief that nuts are difficult to digest. This is not well founded. Of course nuts like all foods which are used as a part of the dessert are considered merely as an addition to the meal, and not a part ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... mixed blood, who in Lima form a considerable portion of the population. Stevenson[25] gives a long list of these mixed races, and specifies the proportionate degree, that is to say, how many eighths or sixteenths of black, brown, or white color belong to each. But these data respecting tint are fallacious, for, being founded solely on external appearance, they are liable to endless modifications. Stevenson falls into the mistake of giving to the children of a negro father and a white mother, the name of Zambos; whilst to the offspring of a white father and a black mother, he gives ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... meanwhile, the autumn of 1816 was probably occupied with the preparation of Persuasion for the press; and, on the whole, we should gather from the evidence before us that the earlier part of the winter saw one of those fallacious instances of temporary improvement which so often deceive nurses and patients alike, in cases of internal complaints. 'I have certainly gained strength through the winter,' she says, on January 24, 1817. On the 23rd: 'I feel ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... easy to understand how tired Eve might well become (even before the fallacious fruit was tasted) of Adam's carefully maintained superiority. On thinking, however, of the judgment that she may have to suffer, and of her own death, she resolves to draw him in, her motive being not fear, but a sudden movement of jealousy at the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... expenditure at the present time and what it was ten or twenty years ago are altogether fallacious. The rapid increase of our country in extent and population renders a corresponding increase of expenditure to some extent unavoidable. This is constantly creating new objects of expenditure and augmenting the amount required for the old. The true questions, then, are, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... "free trade" and "protection" both, and let me see—I—there's the "Board of Works," too; and round on the other side I see "Municipal Corporations."' I will endeavour before I sit down to prove that the arguments of my honourable friend Mr. Hazen are fallacious. He has been developing at a great rate yesterday; he was not asked to develop the money, but to bring down such measures as would develop the provincial resources; this is the meaning of the resolution, and, had not my honourable friend become alarmed for the safety of the ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... like a deadly leprosy, has involved man in uncertainty and darkness in all his conceptions of purity and holiness, is the fallacious hope of producing some good works to blot out transgressions; or that man is not so polluted, but that he may justify himself by works performed through some kind of ability communicated by the Saviour—an ability ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
