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More "Refute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "sharp" struggle. Most of our words that now have abstract emotional or intellectual connotations were once words referring exclusively to purely sensible (sense perceptual) experiences. "Anxiety" once meant literally a "narrow place," just as when we speak of some one having "a close shave." To "refute" once meant literally "to knock out" an argument. To "understand" meant "to stand in the midst of." To "confer" meant "to bring together." Sensation words themselves were once still more concrete in their meaning. "Violet" and "orange" are obviously ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... principle of government, or the recognition of an essential human right. It does not, however, follow, from this admission, that we are indifferent to our political lot,—occasional contests upon principle refute such a conjecture,—but that men are not anxious concerning those things which appear to be secure. And the differences of political parties of the last fifty years have not been so much concerning the nature of human rights, as in regard to the institutions ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... on both sides is equal, it is impossible to discover on what side the truth lies; and the controversy continues, although the parties have been recommended to peace before the tribunal of reason. There remains, then, no other means of settling the question than to convince the parties, who refute each other with such conclusiveness and ability, that they are disputing about nothing, and that a transcendental illusion has been mocking them with visions of reality where there is none. The mode of adjusting a dispute which cannot be decided upon ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... these will influence him. Mr. Le Drieux, commissioned by the Austrian government, states that you are Jack Andrews, and have escaped to America after having stolen the pearls of a noble Viennese lady. He will offer, as evidence to prove his assertion, the photograph and the pearls. You must refute this charge with counter-evidence, in order to escape extradition and a journey to the country where the crime was committed. There you will be granted a regular trial, to be sure, but even if you then secure an ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... length and with conscientious minuteness by the Commission whose award is under discussion." He admitted, with diplomatic courtesy, that "Mr. Evarts' reasoning is powerful," but still in his judgment, "capable of refutation." He did not, however, attempt to refute it, but based his case simply on the ground that the award gave the $5,500,000 to England. In all frankness his Lordship should have said that Mr. Delfosse, in his grace and benevolence, gave the large ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Bolsheviki were [*Part of the famous "Sisson Documents"] released from prison without trial, on nominal or no bail-until only six remained. The impotence and indecision of the ever-changing Provisional Government was an argument nobody could refute. The Bolsheviki raised again the slogan so dear to the masses, "All Power to the Soviets!"-and they were not merely self-seeking, for at that time the majority of the Soviets was "moderate" Socialist, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... to leave Paris for a time, Latour. My enemies refuse me the poor privilege of remaining here to refute the absurd charges preferred against me by the senseless rabble that are in their pay. During my absence, I leave you in full command of my household. You shall receive your wages until you decide to seek ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... during the many years I have had the honor to lecture in this Institution, I have not once allowed myself to indulge in any personal remarks, or attacked those who, being absent, cannot defend themselves. Even when I had to answer objections, or to refute false theories, I have always most carefully avoided mentioning the names of living writers. But as Professor Blackie has directed his random blows, not against myself, but against a friend of mine, Mr. Cox, the author of a work on Aryan Mythology, I feel that I must for once ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... question, nevertheless thanked him; and as he was thinking of an answer: "Your cousin," said the earl, "is extremely coquettish, and I have some reason to suppose she is not so prudent as she ought to be." Hamilton thought the last charge a little too severe; and as he was endeavouring to refute it: "Good God!" said my lord, "you see, as well as the whole court, what airs she gives herself: husbands are always the last people that are spoken to about those affairs that concern them the most; but they are not always ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet Ali Ben Sancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some more garrisons to help him; but they said no, he had nothing to do but hold the place, and he was competent to do that, had done it two years already. That was evidence which one could not well refute. There is nothing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you know that Nicomachus, induced by my personal enemies, brought the case into court, not hoping to prove me guilty, but expecting to be bribed. For, in proportion as such charges are most easily imputed and most difficult to refute, so much the more do all men endeavor to avoid them. 40. I, (members of the) Boule, did not think it right (to shun trial), but when he brought the charge submitted myself entirely to your disposal, nor did I try to conciliate any one of my enemies who speak evil of me ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... rather plausible certainly. If innocent, why did she not remain and boldly refute the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... you quote, may draw on me the host of judges and divines. They may cavil, but cannot refute it. Those who read Prisot's opinion with a candid view to understand, and not to chicane it, cannot mistake its meaning. The reports in the Year-books were taken very short. The opinions of the judges were written down sententiously, as notes or memoranda, and not ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... printer. His defence was so apt and learned that the judges were nearly shaken by his animated appeals. It fared ill with three doctors of the Sorbonne, Dean Nicholas Clerici, and his assistants, Picard and Maillard, who were called in to refute him; for they could not stand their ground, and were forced, avoiding proofs from the Holy Scriptures, to have recourse to the authority of the church. In the end the theologians covered their retreat with indignant remonstrances addressed to parliament ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... given by Dr. Cheyne, on grounds that refute Professor Schiaparelli's suggestion, but it is itself open to objection from an astronomical point ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... boot (he wears top boots) and small clothes, the fashion of his cravat, which is rolled round a stiffner two inches in diameter, and tied in a bow, besides a variety of other more minute characteristics, decidedly refute all suspicion of an attempt at attaining the appearance of a man of fashion. The end of a Spitalfields silk-handkerchief just appearing from the pocket hole at the top of his skirt, shews at once his regard for good things and native manufactures; ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the heart of the matter. Now Pascal's method is, on the whole, the method natural and right for the Christian; and the opposite method is that taken by Voltaire. It is worth while to remember that Voltaire, in his attempt to refute Pascal, has given once and for all the type of such refutation; and that later opponents of Pascal's Apology for the Christian Faith have contributed little beyond psychological irrelevancies. For Voltaire has presented, better than any one since, what is the ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... Reynard hypocritically regrets so many people have slandered him to the king, and tries to refute every charge. He is, however, sentenced to the gallows, but even on the road thither devises a plan to escape. Pretending regret for his past, he humbly begs the king's permission to address the spectators, and in a lengthy speech describes how he was led astray in his youth by Isegrim ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... tone of rejoinder. "The subject Mr. Casaubon has chosen is as changing as chemistry: new discoveries are constantly making new points of view. Who wants a system on the basis of the four elements, or a book to refute Paracelsus? Do you not see that it is no use now to be crawling a little way after men of the last century—men like Bryant—and correcting their mistakes?—living in a lumber-room and furbishing up broken-legged theories about ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... upon an epic crown, his zeal for what he calls the church was an equal passion, nay had, in his judgment, a paramount claim upon him, He is a zealot among the zealots; his cause is the cause of God; and the sword of the Independents is the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. He does not refute opponents, but curses enemies. Yet his rage, even when most delirious, is always a Miltonic rage; it is grand, sublime, terrible! Mingled with the scurrilities of the theological brawl are passages of the noblest English ever ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... I am far from wishing to keep up in any one's mind proofs of that which I would fain, very fain refute." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... so dishonest, to give counsels contrary to the interest of Sweden and of the High Chancellor, to whom he owed every thing; and that if his Eminence would put it in his power to do some service to France, he would much more chearfully refute these calumnies by his actions, than by his words. The Cardinal resumed an air of serenity, said several obliging things, and assured him that for the future he would behave to him with more openness. He reconducted him a pretty way, politely excusing himself ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... incident proved of great importance. Madame Evangelista invited all Bordeaux to witness the signature of the contract, and showed her intention of displaying in this last fete a luxury which should refute the foolish lies of ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... lately told, I think on the authority of a writer in the Gardener's Chronicle, that the travels of Messrs. Huc and Gabet in Thibet, Tartary, &c., was a pure fabrication, concocted by some Parisian litterateur. Can any of your readers confirm or refute this statement? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... will say no more of them, nor of your suspicions, which I do not refute one by one, because they are all equally devoid of probability. And to make amends for the unpleasant commencement of this letter, I will tell you something which ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... were called the "Preaching Friars" and were carefully trained in theology in order the better to refute the arguments of the heretics. The pope delegated to them especially the task of conducting the Inquisition. They early began to extend their influence over the universities, and the two most distinguished theologians and teachers of the thirteenth century, Albertus ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the first in its proper form, is to refute it. It amounts to this: the President would have an improper influence over the Senate, because the Senate would have the power of restraining him. This is an absurdity in terms. It cannot admit of a doubt that the entire power of appointment would ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... the prating villain!" said Beaumanoir, who was not prepared to refute this practical application of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... I were worthy to do so,' I answered, 'I might then refute certain statements in another quarter. Yet events ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... it remains logically possible to institute a metaphysical hypothesis that beyond this region of the Knowable Mind does exist. There being a necessary absence of any positive information whereby to refute this metaphysical hypothesis, any one who chooses to adopt it is fully justified in doing so, provided only he remembers that the purely metaphysical quality whereby the hypothesis is ensured against disproof, likewise, and in the same ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... iron has been proclaimed the best in the world, a proposition that none can successfully refute. Its qualities are becoming known in quarters where it would naturally be expected its superiority would be admitted reluctantly, if at all. It is now sent to New York and Ohio, and even to Pennsylvania—an agency ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... year, but not printed in the Transactions; perhaps because it was thought too strange to be true, and some ridicule might be apprehended if any member should attempt to repeat it in order to ascertain or refute it. The following is a copy of ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... his ingratitude in language which was seldom allowed to pass unchallenged in the presence of his wife, while that lady contributed examples of deceitfulness in the past of Mr. Heard, which he strove in vain to refute. Meanwhile, her daughter patted the ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... by accident than skill, to break it. The cartridges, of course, fitted into the empty cylinder. But before inserting them she closed the pistol once more, cocked it, and held it out. Her arm trembled violently as she pulled the trigger. Could she do it? As though to refute this doubt of her ability to carry out an act determined upon, she broke the weapon once more, loaded and closed it, and thrust it in the pocket of her coat. Then, washing the grease from her hands, she put on her gloves, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sallies of his pleasantry [a]. I have often heard you, my friend Messala, in the same humour. According to you, the present age has not a single orator to boast of, though your own eloquence, and that of your brother, are sufficient to refute the charge. But you assert roundly, and maintain your proposition with an air of confidence. You know how high you stand, and while in your general censure of the age you include yourself, the smallest tincture of malignity cannot be supposed ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... verba reddere, sed furcas, figere oportet; and Theodosius is commended in Nicephorus, lib. 12. cap. 15. [6613]"That he put all heretics to silence." Bernard. Epist. 180, will have club law, fire and sword for heretics, [6614]"compel them, stop their mouths not with disputations, or refute them with reasons, but with fists;" and this is their ordinary practice. Another company are as mild on the other side; to avoid all heart-burning, and contentious wars and uproars, they would have a general toleration ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... commission expressly appointed for this purpose. King James, who is represented as favourable to the connexion with France, went from Theobald's to the meeting: the Prince had drawn out for himself the arguments by which he thought to refute the objections of opponents. On the very same day he was taken ill, and was obliged to ask for an adjournment; but from day to day and hour to hour his illness became more dangerous. He exhibited a composed and, when addressed on religious questions, a devout frame ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... her. She roused herself to refute what she felt to be an unworthy accusation. "No, Charles," she said, looking at him steadily. "God is my witness that at no time did I think of living at the Eype! Such a wish ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... theory of predestination, the Calvinistic theory, which we consider unscriptural and dangerous. There is another, the Arminian theory, which we deem Scriptural and of very salutary influence. My plan is, first, to refute the false theory; and, secondly, to present the true one, and give it ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... said that all this is only a perhaps. Very well; it is only a perhaps, but that is all we want in order to refute the logic of the article just quoted. The scientific sceptic says, "I will not believe that Jesus was really seen after death, because that would be a violation of a law of nature." We reply, "No, not necessarily. It might perhaps have been thus and so." That will do; for if we can show ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... in his plays, though critics have sometimes credited him with such a use.[8] Nevertheless we should remember that precisely this kind of symbolism was very popular in Spain in the seventeenth century, and gave rise to the splendid literary art of the autos sacramentales. Galds then goes on to refute the allegation of certain critics that ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... that the private rights and interests are lost by the lapse of the State may remove the graver prejudices against the doctrine of State suicide, and dispose loyal and honest Union men to bear the reasons by which it is supported, and which nobody has refuted or can refute on constitutional grounds. A Territory by coming into the Union becomes a State; a State by going out of ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... grafted trees to bear at an early age. This tree in the nursery of Mr. Jones of Lancaster, Pa., was grafted in May and photographed in September one year following. Of course early bearing is not wholly desirable but in a way it will refute the common belief that black walnuts are necessarily tardy ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... administered by native clergymen, and pointing out the urgent necessity of intrusting the spiritual government of these provinces to the dexterous management of the former. Testimonies of such weight are more than sufficient at once to refute the calumnies and contrary opinions put forth on this subject, and at the same time serve as irrefragable proofs of the scrupulous impartiality with which I have endeavored to discuss ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... by whose judgment in the matter he expressed his determination to abide. M. Le Montey referred the matter to two commissioners—one being M. Raynouard, a well-known and useful writer, the other M. Neufchateau, the author whom Llorente's work was intended to refute. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... combat the foolish popular notion that at death men pass into their final destiny—Heaven or Hell—and then perhaps thousands of years afterwards come back to be judged as to that final destiny! To state such a belief should be enough to refute it. Those who hold it "do err not knowing the Scriptures." For the Scriptures have ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... is a regular time allowed for rebuttal. This is, however, not the only time at which it may be introduced. In the debate, put in refutation wherever it is needed. One of the best plans is, if possible, to refute with a few sentences at the opening of each speech what the previous speaker of the ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... extravagant, selfish, ostentatious, luxurious, frivolous, Epicurean in opinions and in life, oppressive in all their social relations, haughty beyond endurance, and controlling the popular elections by means of bribery and corruption. It would be difficult to refute these charges. The Patricians probably gave themselves up to all the pleasures incident to power and unbounded wealth, in a corrupt and wicked age. They had their palaces in the city and their villas in the country, their parks ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... these do not concern the reader. They led over many lands, but this book is only a narrative of my search after Livingstone, the great African traveller. It is an Icarian flight of journalism, I confess; some even have called it Quixotic; but this is a word I can now refute, as will be seen before the reader arrives at ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... contempt of the Proprietors and their government. Since no pardons could be obtained but such as they had authorised the governor to grant, the assembly took the matter under deliberation, and fell into hot debates among themselves about a bill of indemnity. When they found the governor disposed to refute his assent to such a bill, they made a law impowering magistrates and judges to put in force the habeas corpus act made in England. Hence it happened, that several of those pirates escaped, purchased lands ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... and machinery, so as to be efficient in producing the various munitions and equipments, the want of which had caused early embarrassment. Thus a good deal had been done to produce the needed material of war, and to refute the croakers who found in our poverty application for the maxim, "Ex nihilo ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... discussed the product from passing water over heated charcoal. He had been endeavoring to refute certain statements made by Cruikshank. There is no question but that he had carbon monoxide in hand, and had it as early as 1799, and that he had obtained it in several different ways. ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... preceding his death, during which, writes Bishop Benson (June 17), Butler "said kind and affecting things more than I could bear." Yet, on the whole, I submit that these extracts, if fully weighed and considered with all the attending circumstances, contain enough of even positive evidence to refute conclusively the injurious suspicions alluded to by X. Y. Z., if such ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... which so fruitful a subject might easily suggest, it is not difficult to refute; and, if we were to judge by the impression made on the mind by tragedies and comedies of equal excellence, perhaps, when we examine those impressions, it will be found that a sally of pleasantry, which diverts all the world, required more thought than a passage which gave the highest pleasure ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... refute Belle's hard common-sense, and her sister could only protest, "Well, he has no right to be stealthily watching me, nor to persecute ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... women and the clergy. He was one of the horrid creatures who write with a wink at you, which sets the wicked part of us on fire: I have known it myself, and I own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of Countess Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness. He has just the same benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are to make a choice, the beggar's breech for decency, I say: I like it vastly in preference to a Nymney, who leads you up to the curtain and agitates ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in company, that no woman ever wrote a letter without a postscript. "My next letter shall refute you!" said Lady G——. Selwyn soon after received a letter from her ladyship, where, after her signature, stood: "P.S. Who was right; ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... of the eighteenth century Dr. Nehemiah Grew, of the Royal Society, published his Cosmologia Sacra to refute anti-scriptural opinions by producing evidences of creative design. Discussing "the ends of Providence," he says, "A crane, which is scurvy meat, lays but two eggs in the year, but a pheasant and partridge, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... She did not refute this solution of her sadness. She knew it was true. And when he looked into her eyes, the blue was troubled with a mist as ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... see something new to you in art, or hear a proposition in philosophy you never heard before, do not make haste to ridicule, deny or refute. Possibly the trouble is with ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... that subsequently develop are for the most part subjective, and it is difficult therefore either to corroborate or to refute them; it will be observed that while some of them are referable to the cord the greater number are referable to the brain. They usually include a feeling of general weakness, nervousness, and inability to concentrate the attention on work ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... the habit of putting shoes on his fleas, he is kinder to them than to himself. But listen to me, boy; if you go on in this way, you will be ruined. There is an argument for you. Go to your Socrates and your Melesigenes, and tell them to refute that. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... brought to light? Ought not every person conclude: If such ministers believed that they had nothing but the truth on their side, they would freely embrace every opportunity of coming to the light, so that they might show that their works are wrought in God, and refute their opponents' calumnies? That a public debate would create animosity is no reason that it should be omitted. Would it offend real Christians? By no means. It indeed might offend false teachers and their votaries, who for the want of argument would substitute the ebullitions ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... understanding that had been between us last night seemed ruthlessly disturbed and perhaps broken. Could this be Miss Darrell's work? Had she made mischief between us? I wondered what part of my conduct or actions she had misrepresented to her cousin. It was this uncertainty that tormented me: how could I refute mere ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in question does not attempt to prove the evolution theory; therefore I need not stop to disprove it. But he makes the following application of it to our subject—an application so shocking to humanity and so revolting to common sense that, if it is logical, it is by itself sufficient to refute the whole theory of Mr. ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... read, should refuse to give Credit to every Thing that is said by such Ministers. It is easier to speak with Contempt of the recluse Lives of the Carthusians, and to laugh at the Austerities of La Trappe, than it is to refute what might be alledg'd from the Gospel to prove the Necessity there is, that to be acceptable to God, Men should fly from Lust, make War with themselves, and mortify the Flesh. When Ministers of Christ ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... my lord. Will it profit your friend and brother-in-arms if it be afterward said that when this charge was brought against him, you, my Lord Rockingham, had so little faith in his power to refute it that you bore down with all your mighty strength in a personal assault upon one so weakly as myself, and sought to put an end to the evidence against him by bodily threats against my safety, and by—what will look legally, my lord, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Falconer was perfectly certain that Miss Gryll was not yet well enough to be removed. No one was anxious to refute the proposition; they were all so well satisfied with,"the place and the company they were in, that they felt, the young lady included, a decided unwillingness to go. That day Miss Gryll came to dinner, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... his task—this was not to be his last book—the heavens were opening before him, and if he went astray it was light from heaven that dazzled him. No one could converse with him, because there was none who could understand him; none could refute him, because none could follow his winding logic, which led to heights where the air was too rarefied for mortals to breathe. He speculated on magnetism, chemistry, astronomy, anatomy, geology and spiritism. He believed a thing first and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... think there is a limit, and a highly legitimate limit, to this process. I think a man may praise Pindar without knowing the top of a Greek letter from the bottom. But I think that if a man is going to abuse Pindar, if he is going to denounce, refute, and utterly expose Pindar, if he is going to show Pindar up as the utter ignoramus and outrageous impostor that he is, then I think it will be just as well perhaps—I think, at any rate, it would do no harm—if he did know a little Greek, and even had read a little Pindar. And ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... and as strongly expected as it was two years ago, I might urge the matter further. As it is, it seems sufficient to overthrow the claims of Southerners, based upon false pretences, and supported only by unblushing effrontery, and to refute the slanders which have been thrown upon an entire section of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... on unshaken evidence—and thence, to retire, if not with the shame of defeat, yet with but doubtful and imperfect success. Paley, with his intuitive sagacity, saw through the difficulty of answering Gibbon by the ordinary arts of controversy; his emphatic sentence, "Who can refute a sneer?" contains as much truth as point. But full and pregnant as this phrase is, it is not quite the whole truth; it is the tone in which the progress of Christianity is traced, in comparison with the rest of the splendid ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Farmer threw the diamond hitch over the packs that morning, they explained to me that all camp cooks are of two kinds—the good cooks, who are evil of disposition, and the tin-can cooks, who only need a can-opener to be happy. But I lived to be able to refute that. Norman Lee was a cook, ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... amid the squadrons a full head over all. Catching him up (for that was easy amid the rout), she runs him through, and thus cries above her enemy: 'Thou wert hunting wild beasts in the forest, thoughtest thou, Tyrrhenian? the day is come for a woman's arms to refute thy words. Yet no light fame shalt thou carry to thy fathers' ghosts, to have fallen under the weapon of Camilla.' Next Orsilochus and Butes, the two mightiest of mould among the Teucrians; Butes she pierces in the [692-725]back with her spear-point between corslet and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... the trite objections of habit or fanaticism. But there are two; the first, the basis of all political mistake, and the second, the prolific cause and effect of religious error, which it seems useful to refute. ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... readily granted that chronologically it was not so old as the pyramids, but supposing it had been, would that in any way have increased its value for our studies? If we were to place it at 5000 B. C., I doubt whether anybody could refute such a date, while if we go back beyond the Veda, and come to measure the time required for the formation of Sanskrit and of the Proto-Aryan language I doubt very much whether even 5,000 years would suffice for that. There is an unfathomable depth in language, layer ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... La Blanchotte growing upon them. As for Simon, he had leaned against a tree to avoid falling, and he remained as if prostrated by an irreparable disaster. He sought to explain, but could think of nothing-to say to refute this horrible charge that he had no papa. At last he shouted at them quite recklessly: ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... body of the char-a-bancs, and Maruja seated on the box. Much to his own astonishment and that of some others of the party, Captain Carroll was among the riders. Only Maruja and her mother knew that he was recalled to refute a repetition of the gossip already circulated regarding his sudden withdrawal; only Maruja alone knew the subtle words which made that call ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" were transferred to the pages of those works from the East Anglian heaths and fairsteads. It was on a heath not far from his Suffolk home that he introduced the Jew of Fez to Jasper Petulengro in order that he might refute the theory entertained by one of his critics that the Romanies were nothing less than the descendants of the two lost tribes ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... know it, because you have not religion, and religion alone teaches us what Nature is, wherein it is good, and how it has been made evil. However, you must not expect me to answer you; God has vouchsafed me, to refute your errors, neither eloquence nor force of intellect. I should only be afraid, by my inadequate replies, of giving you occasion to blaspheme and further reasons for hardening your heart. I feel a strong desire to ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... rather about the language in which his ideas were clothed than about the ideas themselves, and that he did not hold the same opinions for long together; but the accusation of instability has been made in such high quarters that it is necessary to refute it still ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... criticism, which is perhaps not less keen than that I must expect from my colleagues. Contradiction of the thesis that all dreams are the fulfillments of wishes is raised by my patients with perfect regularity. Here are several examples of the dream material which is offered me to refute this position. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... old man admitted as the only and silent witness of these erotic scenes! The miserable mother applauded her daughter's reserve, and went so far as to lecture the elderly lover, who, in his turn, dared not refute her maxims, which savoured either too much or too little of Christianity, and resisted a very strong inclination to hurl at her head any object he had at hand. Anger would then take the place of lewd desires, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... lying behind gambling systems, which are bound up with the laws of chance and the law of averages and much else that philosophers will quarrel about till the end of time. It requires an exceptional mathematical brain really to refute those fallacies, whereas the one we are dealing with is due simply to the difficulty experienced by most of us in carrying in our heads two facts at the same time. It is so much easier to seize on one fact and forget the other. Thus we realize that when Germany has conquered Alsace-Lorraine she ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... President of the Confederacy (2 vols., 1881), and "A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States," by Alexander H. Stephens (2 vols., 1870). Both works, though invaluable to the student, are tinged with controversy, each of the eminent authors aiming to refute ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... been meant for real service. Outcry has often been raised against it, but the thing is so sternly necessary that it has always forced itself into acceptance; and it would, therefore, be merely losing time to refute the arguments of those who have attempted its disparagement. Thus far, however, they have reason on their side, that if a building can be kept in one grand mass, without sacrificing either its visible or real adaptation to its objects, it is not well to divide it into stories until it has ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... apt to attribute to them religious ideas, which they never possessed in their original state. The notion of a spirit, however, exists on the continent: in this, the Tasmanian black participated. Their ideas were extremely indefinite, and will not refute, or much support the belief, that the recognition of a ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... most conclusively refute the statements too often made that "men won't work," and "there's work enough if men are only willing to do it." Such is not the truth. I can find you many instances where good, steady workmen have offered to the foremen of certain establishments $10, $25, and even the whole ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... position which no guilty person could occupy, and I am assured, beyond all doubt, that not only her hands, but her heart, are pure from this crime. She may have some knowledge of its secrets; that I do not presume to deny. The key seen in her possession would refute me if I did. But what if she has? You can never wish to see so lovely a being brought to shame for withholding information which she evidently considers it her duty to keep back, when by a little patient finesse we may succeed in our purposes ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... some have written by conjecture, that Socrates was indeed excellent in exciting men to virtue, but that he did not push them forward to make any great progress in it, let such reflect a little on what he said, not only when he endeavoured to refute those that boasted they knew all things, but likewise in his familiar conversations, and let them judge afterwards if he was incapable to advance his friends in ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... decisive moment in your career giving way to doubts which our whole conduct pursued to you through many years ought to refute, I should be almost in despair," replied Jacques Bricheteau, "if I had none but personal denials and asseverations to offer you. But, as you will remember, old Pigoult spoke of an aunt of mine, living ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... affair, but in vain. Mr. Smith, rising to his feet, denounced his ingratitude in language which was seldom allowed to pass unchallenged in the presence of his wife, while that lady contributed examples of deceitfulness in the past of Mr. Heard, which he strove in vain to refute, Meanwhile, her daughter patted ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... deliberate falsehood, for the purpose of exciting odium against the king; but I think it impossible to view their conduct in any other light. The popish plot and popish army were fictions of their own to madden the passions of their adherents. Charles, to refute the calumny, as he was about to receive the sacrament from the hands of Archbishop Ussher, suddenly rose and addressed him thus, in the hearing of the whole congregation: "My Lord, I have to the ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... much as he liked, till his throat was sore if he pleased. He had constituted himself the defender of a cause lost in advance. He was heard but not listened to, and he did not carry off a single admirer from the president of the Gun Club, who did not even take the trouble to refute ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... believes in the inductive method must needs draw the conclusion from these naive admissions, that, as Darwinism lacks the empiric prerequisites, it should be discarded. Moreover, the demand is made in all seriousness, that, in order to refute Darwinism which has not as yet been established empirically, ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... me. I argued that all this pain and waste was no more than the selvedge of a proportionately limitless fabric of sane, interested, impassioned and joyous living. These stiff still memories seemed to refute me. But why us? they seemed to insist. In some way it's essential,—this ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... their lordships had assigned him gratuitously such assistance as he might not otherwise have obtained at a high price—and allowed his young brother had put many things in such a new point of view, that, although he was quite certain of his ability to refute them, he was honestly desirous of having a few hours to arrange his answer, in order to be able to follow Mr. Fairford from point to point. He had further to observe, there was one point of the case ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... took shape in my mind and each was like a stab in the heart, for Blink Broosmore had answered them all, and Alexander Crawford, though he must know how anxious I was to have Blink denied, did not speak to refute him. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... through that religion I have no hopes of any other; yet I am not forced to be silly because I am pious; nor will I ever join in eulogiums on my faith which every man of common reading and common sense can so easily refute. ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... creation of animals and plants, therefore, it is clear that Suarez, so far from "distinctly asserting derivative creation," denies it as distinctly and positively as he can; that he is at much pains to refute St. Augustin's opinions; that he does not hesitate to regard the faint acquiescence of St. Thomas Aquinas in the views of his brother saint as a kindly subterfuge on the part of Divus Thomas; and that he affirms his ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the club, to the honorary membership of which he had been admitted. The committee, after inquiry, decided to request him to see them, inform him of the charge that had been made against him, ask him if he wished to refute it; if not, it was their intention to cancel his membership. His answer was reported to be as follows: "The charges made against me practically accuse me of behaving like a blackguard. Well, I can be a blackguard—probably a bigger one ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... way worthy of his premises. The flourish with which he concludes his pamphlet would be infinitely amusing had his language been just a little less solemn. "The writer of the above remarks has felt it his duty," we find him saying, "to publish them, not only to refute the arguments of the vain and puffed-lip geologist, who fancies himself wiser than God, but also to prevent, by God's blessing, the evil that must ensue from tampering with the sacred text. And now, what has Satan to say? ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... proportionally declined in the practice of virtue; and the same year of his reign in which he convened the council of Nice, was polluted by the execution, or rather murder, of his eldest son. This date is alone sufficient to refute the ignorant and malicious suggestions of Zosimus, who affirms, that, after the death of Crispus, the remorse of his father accepted from the ministers of Christianity the expiation which he had vainly solicited from the Pagan pontiffs. At the time of the death of Crispus, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... lieutenant-general and that garrison, or whether you deliver us up for punishment to incensed Hannibal and the Carthaginians. We do not request that you should at once believe us respecting one who is absent, and when the cause has not been heard. Let him come; let him hear our charges in person, and refute them himself. If there is any enormity one man can commit against another which he has not committed upon us we do not refuse to suffer all the same cruelties over again, if it is possible we can endure them, and let him be acquitted of all guilt ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... regular and individual immigration, mainly from the Western States, acquired a population of 8601 souls, as disclosed by the official census taken after the first summer's arrivals, and before those of the second had begun. It needs only this statement to refute the political slander so industriously repeated in high places against ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... of Peddlington was guilty of this traitorous effusion no one, not even the king, could ever really make up his mind. The charge was never fully proven, nor was De Herbert ever able to refute it successfully, although he made frantic efforts to do so. The king, eminently just in such matters, gave the baron the benefit of the doubt, and inflicted only half the penalty prescribed, confiscating his estates, and letting him keep his head and liberty. De Herbert's family begged ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... and, on the other hand, elevating to the ideal of a united Italy those who, like the Genoese Mazzini, were now no longer born to be the citizens of a free Republic. In sacrificing the ancient liberty of Genoa, the Congress itself unwittingly began the series of changes which was to refute the famous saying of Metternich, that Italy was ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... (1802); when hardly eight years old he had accompanied Mulla Kavas to Persia and had learned Persian and Arabic. In 1786 he wrote in Persian a curious recital of his voyage, Derich Kherde Manjumi. In 1830 he published the Avijeh Din to refute the arguments of Dastoor Edalji Dorabji Sanjana. The governor of Bombay, Mr. Jonathan Duncan, engaged him to teach Persian, and to translate the Desatir. Mr. Duncan having died, Mulla Firoz continued his work in concert ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... it. Therefore, as soon as an evil afterwards entered my will or a falsity into my thought, I investigated the source of it. I inquired from whom it came. This was disclosed to me, and I was also allowed to speak with those spirits, refute them, and compel them to withdraw, thus to take back their evil and falsity and keep it to themselves, and no longer infuse anything of the kind into my thought. This has occurred a thousand times. I have remained in this state for ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... relying on the help of the queen, seemed to think that any religious settlement made by Parliament was of no importance. Their refusal to discuss the confession of faith was taken, however, as a sign of their inability to refute it, and the confession was passed with but few dissentients. Later on (24th August) three other acts were formulated with the object of uprooting Catholicism in Scotland. The jurisdiction of the Pope was abolished, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... will place little reliance on any representations you may make, Madam," he said, giving particular significance to his words, "except so far as they concern herself, and then she will take care to refute them. As to the circumstance of Gillian Greenford visiting me, fainting in my arms (from excess of timidity, poor girl!) and being discovered by you and Lady Roos in that position, the Countess will laugh at ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... in the organic world the given product, its normal or abnormal characteristics, are determined, as people say, by the "environment." The business of the young scholar therefore, in reading Plato, is not to take his side in a controversy, to adopt or refute Plato's opinions, to modify, or make apology for, [11] what may seem erratic or impossible in him; still less, to furnish himself with arguments on behalf of some theory or conviction of his own. His duty is rather to follow ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 't is an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... miracle to refute atheism, because His ordinary works refute it. (a) A little philosophy inclines man's mind to atheism: depth in philosophy brings men's minds back to religion. (44) While the mind of man looks upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them; (44) ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... which I have heard, and have so often attempted to refute, are, that the generality of missionaries are a fanatical class of men, who are more anxious to inculcate the peculiar tenets of their own sects and denominations than the religion of our Saviour; that ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... marshal or commander of a guard shall refute to receive or keep any prisoner committed to his charge by an officer belonging to the forces of the United States, provided the officer committing shall, at the time, deliver an account in writing, signed by himself, of the crime or offense charged ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... the existence and providence of the gods have been set forth and denied, by Velleius the Epicurean, Cotta the academician, and Balbus the Stoic; in the third book, Cotta, the head of the priesthood, the Pontifex Maximus, proceeds to refute the stoical opinion that there are gods who govern the universe and provide for the welfare of mankind. To be sure, he says, as Pontifex, he of course believes in the gods, but he feels free as a philosopher to deny their existence. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... coolness of one who has braved death too often to shrink at its approach. His farewell to his faithful wife was manly, tender, and most affecting. The accounts of his deportment on the scaffold effectually refute the charges of irreligion and atheism, which some writers have brought against him, unless we make up our minds to believe him an accomplished hypocrite. He spoke at considerable length, and his dying words have been faithfully reported. They contain a denial of all the serious offences laid ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... man is in this state, and the questioning spirit asks what is fair or honourable, and he answers as the legislator has taught him, and then arguments many and diverse refute his words, until he is driven into believing that nothing is honourable any more than dishonourable, or just and good any more than the reverse, and so of all the notions which he most valued, do you think that he will still honour and ...
— The Republic • Plato
... are sufficient to refute some singular assertions, e. g., that all the newly-born must see objects reversed, as even a Buffon ("Oeuvres completes," iv, 136; Paris, 1844) thought to be the fact. My boy, when I had him write, in his fifth year, the ordinary figures ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... is in existence, you shall have it,' he said. 'You say that my actions have borne evidence against me. I shall trust to action and not to words to refute that evidence. But you must give ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... their age. "Hello, sweetheart!" It had stuck. Sweetheart. In the hard years that followed—years in which the blood-thirsty and piratical games of his boyhood paled to the mildest of imaginings—the nickname still clung, long after he had ceased to resent it; long after he had stripes and braid to refute it. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... prohibition issued, at first, against the sale, but soon tacitly withdrawn, the three volumes had sold, it was said, to the extent of eighty thousand copies. In 1787, the late director-general asked leave to appear before the Assembly of notables to refute the statements of M. de Calonne; permission was refused. "I am satisfied with your services," the king sent word to him, "and I command you to keep silence." A pamphlet, without any title, was however sent to the notables. "I served the king for five years," said M. Necker, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lastly, of the effect of our projected world upon physical evil? Will there be less illness than there is at present? Will the produce of a given amount of labor be greater? Or will population press upon the limits of subsistence, as Malthus taught in order to refute ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... and eye alone direct The boundless power to cherish or reject; If e'er frivolity has led to fame, And made us blush that you forbore to blame— If e'er the sinking stage could condescend To soothe the sickly taste it dare not mend— All past reproach may present scenes refute, 60 And censure, wisely loud, be justly mute![42] Oh! since your fiat stamps the Drama's laws, Forbear to mock us with misplaced applause; So Pride shall doubly nerve the actor's powers, And Reason's voice ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... propagandist and expounder of Marxian theories, also repeats this assertion that, from the psycho-physiological point of view, woman is the equal of man, and he attempts to refute, without success, the scientific objections that have ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... man and lead a new life, he changed his name of Samuel to that of Peter. Some time passed, during which he strengthened and instructed himself in his new religion. Very soon he arrived at the point of searching for objections to refute, and adversaries to overthrow. Bold and enterprising, he went at once to the strongest, and Bossuet was the first Catholic author that he set himself to read. He commenced with a kind of disdain; believing that the faith which he had just embraced ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conservative, even hinting—very remotely it is true—at his dubious position in society. Lavretsky did not lose his temper. He did not raise his voice (he recollected that Mihalevitch too had called him antiquated but an antiquated Voltairean), and calmly proceeded to refute Panshin at all points. He proved to him the impracticability of sudden leaps and reforms from above, founded neither on knowledge of the mother-country, nor on any genuine faith in any ideal, even a negative one. ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... that to Poole of 6th May 1796; it will be seen that Coleridge thus carried out his project of three years before. He had been able to convince the Wedgwoods of the desirability of introducing a knowledge of the German philosophy into England to refute the philosophy of Hume and expose the shallowness of the metaphysics of Locke and the Paley School of Theology. Tom Wedgwood was himself a philosopher, and saw in Coleridge the champion of a new basis of faith, and hence the friendship between them, and the support ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... course I did. What I can't get over is this: that much of this matter must have been reported through old Whaling here by Gleason, and it has all been done in the dark. The old rip never gave us a chance to refute any story that Gleason would tell. Did you hear ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... mitigation of his frightful conspicuousness. He had not the remotest idea of what he had said in setting forth his case for Germany, and he knew that it was his duty to listen closely to Dora, in order to be able to refute her argument when his two-minute closing speech fell due but he was conscious of little more than his own condition. His legs had now gone wild beyond all devilry, and he had to keep shifting his weight from ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... no hope of future reward. In his conception of things there was no future life. He, who fairly burnt with immortality, denied himself immortality—such was the paradox of him. He, so warm in spirit, was dominated by that cold and forbidding philosophy, materialistic monism. I used to refute him by telling him that I measured his immortality by the wings of his soul, and that I should have to live endless aeons in order to achieve the full measurement. Whereat he would laugh, and his arms would leap out to me, and he would call ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... better, and he entrusted to me the King's correspondence, which I told him I should not mention to Madame de Pompadour, according to her injunctions. He sent several memorials to M. de Choiseul, containing accusations of him, addressed to the King. This timely information enabled him to refute them triumphantly. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... not atop to refute all the infamous rumours which were circulated respecting Kleber's death. When the First Consul received the unexpected intelligence he could scarcely believe it. He was deeply affected; and on reading the particulars of the assassination he instantly ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... for some years past, to have much pleasure in sustaining. Heretofore my satisfaction has mainly lain in the fact that more of our prominent men of science have seemed anxious to claim the theory than to refute it; in the confidence thus engendered I leave it to any fuller consideration which the outline I have above given may incline the reader to bestow ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... in a manner the most authentic in which it was possible to come to Mr. Hastings, he was bound by every feeling of humanity, every principle of regard to his own honor and his employers', to see whether it was true or false; if false, to refute it; if true, to afford redress: he has done neither. Therefore we charge him with being the cause; we charge upon him the consequences, with all the aggravations attending them; and we call both upon justice and humanity ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... myself, but when I hear you say them they make me feel as if I could work twenty years at a sitting, on purpose to refute you!" ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... that such and such a source is the reliable one par excellence, and the principal basis upon which to establish conclusions. No source, however seemingly insignificant, should be neglected. A brief mention is sometimes very important, as it may be a clue to new data, or may confirm or refute accepted information and thus lead to further investigation. Some documents, of course, are much more explicit than others, but this is no reason why the latter should be neglected. The value of a source may be subject to investigation ...
— Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier
... meet me fairly," said Mr. Gresley to himself, with sudden anger at the meanness of such tactics. "They say she is so clever, and she can't refute a word I say. She appears to yield and then defies me. She always puts ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... individual immigration, mainly from the Western States, acquired a population of 8601 souls, as disclosed by the official census taken after the first summer's arrivals, and before those of the second had begun. It needs only this statement to refute the political slander so industriously repeated in high ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... more difficult still. "A Moslem's religion," she says, "is twined up with his political, social, domestic life so minutely, that the whole rope, as it were, has to untwisted before he can be free from error, and the very admixture of truth in their book makes it harder in some respects to refute than if, like the heathen doctrines, it was all wrong throughout. Perhaps the intense self-righteousness of Moslems is after all the hardest point about them; their notion that in the end all who are Islam are safe strengthens them in this belief." [2] Nevertheless, ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... was to ask him to be his second;—the young Earl started, and wished to consult his tutor, but that, his kinsman strictly forbade; and having urged his reasons with arguments, which at least he could not refute, he was at length prevailed upon to promise that he would accompany him to the field, which was at the distance only of a few miles, and the parties were to be there at ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... the Encyclical Letter on "The Condition of Labor," issued in 1891, and addressed "to our Venerable Brethren, all Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops and Bishops of the Catholic World in Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See." The purpose of the letter is "to refute false teaching," and the substance of its ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... the eighteenth century Dr. Nehemiah Grew, of the Royal Society, published his Cosmologia Sacra to refute anti-scriptural opinions by producing evidences of creative design. Discussing "the ends of Providence," he says, "A crane, which is scurvy meat, lays but two eggs in the year, but a pheasant and partridge, both excellent meat, lay and hatch fifteen or twenty." He points ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... to put the finishing touch of difficulty on our subject, or am I to let him first contend earnestly against these views?" Then said I, "Why should we bring up the third wave[814] and drown the argument, if he is not able to refute or evade the charges already brought? To begin then with the domestic hearth, as the saying is,[815] let us imitate that cautious manner of speaking about the deity in vogue among the Academic ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... visiting my great-uncle in Howard county that there took place at Liberty the first of a long string of bank and train robberies, all of which were usually attributed either to the Younger brothers, or to some of their friends, and which we were unable to come out and successfully refute for two reasons, first the bringing down of a storm about the heads of those who had sheltered us; and second, giving such pursuers as Judy and his posse fresh clues to ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... Apikuros, and Barton, Ecclesiastes, p. 41. This verse may also be rendered, "Study Torah, and also know ([v'da (vov-daled-ayin)]) how to answer an unbeliever," meaning that first one should study Torah and Talmud, and then give his time to learning other knowledge, so as to be able to refute those who stray from ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... goes without saying, as it was equally so as regarded this more presumptious of the crew "Conrad the Conqueror." There were many, in London especially, who wondered that Apleon did not appear and refute this man's claims, ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... hypothesis as accordant as possible with the whole of the data already possessed; and the science, being thus enabled to move forward freely, always ends by leading to new consequences capable of observation, which either confirm or refute, unequivocally, the first supposition." Neither induction nor deduction would enable us to understand even the simplest phenomena, "if we did not often commence by anticipating on the results; ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... instantly consumed by fire, so that instead of the infinite variety of the seasons all may be reduced to one uniform condition; let fire rage everywhere, followed by dull night, and let the bottomless abyss swallow up all the gods." Is it worth while to destroy all this merely in order to refute you? Even though you do not wish it, they do you good, and they wheel in their courses for your sake, though their motion may be due to some ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... Axel laid his hand, His good sword holding by the handle; By his side stood the knightly band, All eager to refute ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... then received with a blind credulity: they have been since rejected with as undistinguishing a disregard. But as it is not in my design nor inclination, nor indeed in my power, either to establish or refute these stories, it is sufficient to observe, that the reality or opinion of such miracles was the principal cause of the early acceptance and rapid progress of Christianity in this island. Other causes undoubtedly concurred; and it will be more to our purpose to consider some ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... found their way into the world by the freedom of publication? Even that great work, the treatise of Locke on Government, itself, which is justly regarded as the political Bible (I mean no irreverence) of Englishmen, would never have seen the light, but that it was written to refute the base and detestable tenets of Barclay and Filmer. Their political treatises were false and slavish, and even illegal; for they were the same for which Dr. Sacheverel was afterwards impeached by the Parliament; and which he would ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... publishing a deliberate falsehood, for the purpose of exciting odium against the king; but I think it impossible to view their conduct in any other light. The popish plot and popish army were fictions of their own to madden the passions of their adherents. Charles, to refute the calumny, as he was about to receive the sacrament from the hands of Archbishop Ussher, suddenly rose and addressed him thus, in the hearing of the whole congregation: "My Lord, I have to the utmost of my soul prepared to become ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... as a man was honorable or noble in this life, so his soule after death, entreth into the body of some excellent beast or other, but the soules of simple and rusticall people do possesse the bodies of more vile and brutish creatures. Then I began to refute that foule error: howbeit my speach did nothing at all preuaile with him: for he could not be perswaded that any soule might remaine without a body. [Sidenote: Chilenso.] From thence I departed vhto a certaine ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... the institutions in question with useful workers. Why should men be the only ones to perform obligatory social service? I expect," says Madame Schmid, "many adverse criticisms on this proposal, one of which I will refute at once. The ladies of the middle classes will strongly object because their daughters will see and hear so many things which ought to be hidden till they marry! But why should they be hidden? In order to prepare our daughters for marriage, is it not logical to begin by telling them what ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... mean and dastardly? Does it not look as if we were afraid that, with equal opportunities, they would rival us in intelligence, and examine and refute our ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... spirit strike, Uplift the black and white alike; Scatter before their swift advance The darkness and the ignorance, The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth, Made murder pastime, and the hell Of prison-torture possible; The cruel lie of caste refute, Old forms remould, and substitute For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, For blind routine, wise-handed skill; A school-house plant on every hill, Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence The quick wires of intelligence; Till North ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... undesirable member of the club, to the honorary membership of which he had been admitted. The committee, after inquiry, decided to request him to see them, inform him of the charge that had been made against him, ask him if he wished to refute it; if not, it was their intention to cancel his membership. His answer was reported to be as follows: "The charges made against me practically accuse me of behaving like a blackguard. Well, I ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... than workmen who are paid from thirty to forty shillings a week. Soldiers are generally supposed to be a particularly thoughtless class. Indeed, they are sometimes held up to odium as reckless and dissolute; but the Military Savings Bank Returns refute the vilification, and prove that the British soldier is as sober, well-disciplined, and frugal, as we already know him to be brave. Most people forget that the soldier must be obedient, sober, and honest. If he is a drunkard, he is punished; if he is dishonest, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Portuguese officers. King Emmanuel's prejudices soon changed to a real dislike. It showed itself by the outrageous imputation that Magellan was pretending to suffer from a wound which was really of no consequence and was completely cured, that he might escape from accusations which he could not refute. Such an assertion was a serious matter for the honour of Magellan, so susceptible and suspicious; he thereupon came to a desperate determination which corresponded moreover with the greatness of the insult which he had received. That no one might be ignorant of it, he caused it to be legally ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... reputation are the reverse of satisfactory. You feel constrained, you add, in view of the information thus obtained, to interdict my further intercourse with your sister or any other member of your family. Since I cannot battle with shadows, or refute insinuations the drift of which I do not in the least comprehend, may I trouble you to put the allegations to which you refer into a definite and tangible shape? Let me know who are my accusers, and what are ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... known to be more desirable, because more comfortable than liberty; and uniformity is impossible without compulsion. A man with a free and contentious mind is a danger to the community, for he destroys its ease. He compels his fellows to active thought, if only to refute him. This is a dissipation of energy, and a local weakening of the structure of the State. It is historically true that a few men with ranging and questioning minds have sometimes injected so strong an original virus of thought that the community ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... message, yet aware from experience that detached passages of an argumentative document, when disconnected from their context and considered without reference to previous limitations and the particular positions they were intended to refute or to establish, may be made to bear a construction varying altogether from the sentiments really entertained and intended to be expressed, and deeply solicitous that my views on this point should not, either ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... studied the perversions in pronounced cases and under peculiar conditions were naturally inclined to attribute to them the character of a morbid or degenerative sign similar to the inversions. This view, however, is easier to refute in this than in the former case. Everyday experience has shown that most of these transgressions, at least the milder ones, are seldom wanting as components in the sexual life of normals who look upon ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... commission was cancelled by a posterior one, without a direct recall; but Sir Edward, who was equalled by very few in his knowledge of naval law, found it easy to convince him to the contrary, or at least to refute his arguments. He told Sir Thomas that if he remained in India, it must be under his own orders, for his commission comprehended all the station, and it was impossible for a junior to command in the presence of his superior officer. When Sir Thomas, indignant at the ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... entertained in the schools on the functions of the heart and other viscera, and was destructive of many favorite theories. The new doctrine, therefore, as may well be supposed, was received by most of the anatomists of the period with distrust, and by all with surprise. Some of them undertook to refute it, but their objections turned principally on the silence of Galen, or consisted of the most frivolous cavils; the controversy, too, assumed the form of personal abuse even more speedily than is usually the case when authority is at issue with reason. To such opposition Harvey for some time ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... delicate point, which the Sicilian canon, Recupero, fancied that there was; [Footnote: Recupero. See Brydone's Travels, some sixty or seventy years ago. The canon, being a beneficed clergyman in the Papal church, was naturally an infidel. He wished exceedingly to refute Moses: and he fancied that he really had done so by means of some collusive assistance from the layers of lava on Mount Etna. But there survives, at this day, very little to remind us of the canon, except an unpleasant guffaw that rises, at times, in solitary ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... it is God who has commanded me to send you amongst the Saracens, to make known His faith, and refute the law of Mahomet. I shall go in a different direction to work for the conversion of the same infidels, and thus I shall send preachers over the whole earth. Prepare yourselves, therefore, to fulfil the will of the Lord. To render yourselves ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... candidate and failed to secure the endorsement. According to Senator Hoar, it was the opposition of Senator Depew, angered by the agrarian hostility toward himself, that prevented Senator Allison's nomination. I have no personal knowledge that might refute this statement, but I have been disposed to ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... all. A relation of them was published and dispersed everywhere; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the civil magistrate, and determined enemies to those opinions, in whose favour the miracles were said to have been wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect them. Where shall we find such a number of circumstances, agreeing to the corroboration of one fact? And what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute impossibility, or miraculous nature ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... gradually I was given to perceive and feel it. Therefore, as soon as an evil afterwards entered my will or a falsity into my thought, I investigated the source of it. I inquired from whom it came. This was disclosed to me, and I was also allowed to speak with those spirits, refute them, and compel them to withdraw, thus to take back their evil and falsity and keep it to themselves, and no longer infuse anything of the kind into my thought. This has occurred a thousand times. I have remained in this state for many years, and still ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... man and the mother explained in the same breath—that she might reveal the degree of intercourse which had taken place between them, and, if possible, account for the absence of her lover. That, in short, she might refute the malice of enemies and establish the falsehood ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... erroneous opinions have prevailed, with regard to the true character and condition of the free colored people of Pennsylvania. They have been represented as an idle and worthless class, furnishing inmates for our poor-houses and penitentiaries. A few plain facts are sufficient to refute these gratuitous allegations. In the city and suburbs of Philadelphia, by the census of 1830, they constituted about eleven per cent., or one ninth of the whole population. From the account of the guardians of the poor, printed by order of the ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... they, and not as a particular set of agitators, prefer. No district officer anxious to maintain the peace of his district can allow a recrudescence of these disturbances. I have seen it denied that there have been such cases, but the state calendar of crime is there to refute such an assertion; and you and I well know that the cases which have been brought to trial bear a very small proportion to the cases which have arisen but which the raiyats have been afraid to press home. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... Greeks, on whose culture our own civilization in part, rests." There are doubtless many other people who hold such uninformed and untrue beliefs, which only show their ignorance of Indian matters. It is not necessary to say anything in order to refute these views, for what follows will I hope show the falsity of their beliefs. If they are not satisfied, and want to know more definitely and elaborately about the contents of the different systems, I am afraid they will ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... came into existence; the whole vicious and monstrous edifice being crowned with the saving virtue of obedience, and the theory of ends justifying means. After the irony of Pascal, the condensed rage of La Chalotais, and the grave verdict of the Parlement of Paris (1762), it is not necessary now to refute the errors or to expose the abominations of this casuistry in detail.[174] Yet it cannot be wholly passed in silence here; for its application materially favored the influence of Jesuits in ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Lincoln as the Republican champion of Illinois, but also gradually to lift him into general recognition as a national leader. Throughout the year 1859 politicians and newspapers came to look upon Lincoln as the one antagonist who could at all times be relied on to answer and refute the Douglas arguments. His propositions were so forcible and direct, his phraseology so apt and fresh, that they held the attention and excited comment. A letter written by him in answer to an invitation to attend a celebration of Jefferson's birthday in Boston, contains some ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... that he might refute the charges against him. He flung down the gage to the proud cardinals who had excommunicated him. He besought ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... secession as lying wholly with the South. In case this section should decide upon disunion, there would be little reason, it was said, to fear any prolonged opposition on the part of the North—least of all a war. Nothing appeared on the part of the Federal Executive to refute these assertions. It was by a large class believed, therefore, that the leaders were right when they said that the secession would be a mere withdrawal of the Southern States, for the formation of a government perfectly friendly to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... him. . . . All this we women of a later day have "resigned"—and I know not if that word be the right one or the wrong; so many lessons have we conned since Gismond fought for a slandered maiden. We have learned that lies refute themselves, that "things come right in the end," that human life is sacred, that a woman's chastity may be sacred too, but is not her most inestimable possession—and, if it were, should be "able to take care of itself." Further doctrines, though not yet fully accepted, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... thorough investigator, characterized by great learning, by the gift of an acute faculty for philological and historical criticism, and by an earnest desire to spread the true philosophy of life, to refute false doctrines, especially those of the Christians, to ennoble man and draw him to that which is good. That a mind so free and noble surrendered itself entirely to the philosophy of Plotinus and ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... retire, if not with the shame of defeat, yet with but doubtful and imperfect success. Paley, with his intuitive sagacity, saw through the difficulty of answering Gibbon by the ordinary arts of controversy; his emphatic sentence, "Who can refute a sneer?" contains as much truth as point. But full and pregnant as this phrase is, it is not quite the whole truth; it is the tone in which the progress of Christianity is traced, in comparison with the rest of the splendid and prodigally ornamented ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Marcellus," said he, "after brief exercise in the war, has withdrawn as it might be from the wrestling ground to the warm baths to refresh himself." Marcellus, on hearing this, appointed lieutenants over his camp, and hasted to Rome to refute the charges against him: and there found ready drawn up an impeachment consisting of these calumnies. At the day prefixed, in the Flaminian circus, into which place the people had assembled themselves, Bibulus rose and accused him. Marcellus himself ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... at truth in the order of nature is an active search according to certain well-known methods. It farther involves the negative condition of perfect freedom to canvass, to controvert, or to refute, every received doctrine or opinion. There is no use in going after new facts, or in rising to new generalities, if we are not to be allowed to displace errors. This is now conceded, except at the points of contact of the natural and ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Christianity, and upon the writings and characters of its ancient patrons. The knowledge which this author possesses of the frame and conduct of the human mind must have led him to observe, that such attacks do their execution without inquiry. Who can refute a sneer? Who can compute the number, much less, one by one, scrutinize the justice of those disparaging insinuations which crowd the pages of this elaborate history? What reader suspends his curiosity, or calls off his attention ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... proceeded to relate some of the strange fables and fantasies which, as it was impossible to refute them by ocular demonstration, had grown to be articles of popular belief in reference to this old picture. One of the wildest, and at the same time the best-accredited, accounts stated it to be an original and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... matter than the fallacies lying behind gambling systems, which are bound up with the laws of chance and the law of averages and much else that philosophers will quarrel about till the end of time. It requires an exceptional mathematical brain really to refute those fallacies, whereas the one we are dealing with is due simply to the difficulty experienced by most of us in carrying in our heads two facts at the same time. It is so much easier to seize on one fact and forget the other. Thus we realize that when Germany ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... experiment. It was read at the Royal Society, Nov. 21, of that year, but not printed in the Transactions; perhaps because it was thought too strange to be true, and some ridicule might be apprehended if any member should attempt to repeat it in order to ascertain or refute it. The following is a copy of ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... Parliament,—these very trumpeters are now the men that represent the whole as a mere trifle, and choose to date all the disturbances from the repeal of the Stamp Act, which put an end to them. Hear your officers abroad, and let them refute this shameless falsehood, who, in all their correspondence, state the disturbances as owing to their true causes, the discontent of the people from the taxes. You have this evidence in your own archives; and it will give ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... picture, miss, for old age. Do not the gentler virtues of our nature ever ripen with time? Is it the alchemist who always turns the sweets of youth to the sours of age? There are many examples in every community to refute your position. I would instance the venerable negro we visited to-day. He wept as he placed his trembling hand upon your head. There was surely nothing ascetic or ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... and many others, which so fruitful a subject might easily suggest, it is not difficult to refute; and, if we were to judge by the impression made on the mind by tragedies and comedies of equal excellence, perhaps, when we examine those impressions, it will be found that a sally of pleasantry, which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... would indeed be highly probable for reasons to be developed in the next paragraph. But if social conditions were not the determining factor, we are left with the somewhat grotesque theory of innate ideas. It is hardly necessary to refute this origin of ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... qui doit etre "localisee" entre l'Autriche et la Serbie, c'est a dire de la punition de la politique precedente de la Serbie et des garanties pour l'avenir. De ceci l'Allemagne conclue qu'il faut exercer une action moderatrice a Petersbourg. Ce sophisme a ete refute a Paris comme a Londres. A Paris, le Baron de Schoen a en vain tache d'entrainer la France a une action solidaire avec l'Allemagne sur la Russie en faveur du maintien de la paix. Les memes tentatives ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... look down and see men toiling to build the railway, that already reached Nyanza after the unfinished fashion of work whose chief aim is making a showing. Profits, performances were secondary matters; that railway's one purpose was to establish occupation of the head waters of the Nile and refute the German claim to prior rights there. At irregular intervals trains already went down to the lake, and passengers might ride on suffrance; but we deluded ourselves with the belief that by marching we threw enemies off the scent. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... all the other sciences are of something else, and not of themselves; wisdom alone is a science of other sciences, and of itself. And of this, as I believe, you are very well aware: and that you are only doing what you denied that you were doing just now, trying to refute me, ...
— Charmides • Plato
... motive is so apparent, that they are seldom negligently or implicitly received: suspicion is always watchful over the practices of interest; and whatever the hope of gain, or desire of mischief, can prompt one man to assert, another is, by reasons equally cogent, incited to refute. But vanity pleases herself with such slight gratifications, and looks forward to pleasure so remotely consequential, that her practices raise no alarm, and her ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... he had not given Captain Kendall permission to go on deck; for it was impossible to refute the arguments of the principal; but at the same time he had not overstepped the duties of his office. He had been informed that all the students, even to the captain, were subject to his will and pleasure during school hours, and therefore he had ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... about to refute this argument, so far as it relates to slavery in that state, generally; on the contrary, I am willing to admit that, to this general point, the arguments is well grounded. Public opinion is, indeed, an unfailing restraint upon the cruelty and barbarity of masters, overseers, and slave-drivers, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... above Been swift to strike the lighter, gendering strokes Which cause those divers motions, by whose means Nature transacts her work. And so I say, The atoms must a little swerve at times— But only the least, lest we should seem to feign Motions oblique, and fact refute us there. For this we see forthwith is manifest: Whatever the weight, it can't obliquely go, Down on its headlong journey from above, At least so far as thou canst mark; but who Is there can mark by sense that naught can swerve At all aside from off ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... considerable skill in the politicks of literature, directs his pupil wholly to abandon his defence, and even when he can irrefragably refute all objections, to suffer tamely the exultations ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... teachers, felt called upon to refute the arguments of these men, he met them, so to speak, on their own ground, recognizing that the subjects of which they discoursed were, indeed, matter for scientific investigation. His attitude seemed to many conservative persons in his day a dangerous one; he was regarded as an innovator; ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... of the gloom of his late cogitations she had come, like hope hastening to refute the argument of the horse-thief. His case could not be so despairing with one like her believing in him. It was a matter beyond a person such as a horse-thief, of course. One of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... beauty of anarchy, expressing herself in broken English, spoken with a cockney accent, in broken French and liquid Russian. Enid Blunt, increasingly guttural, and mingling German words with her Bedford Park English, refuted, or strove to refute, Jennings's ecstatic praise of French verse, citing rapidly poems composed by members of the Sitwell group, songs of Siegfried Sassoon, and even lyrics by Lady Margaret Sackville and Miss Victoria Sackville ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... and finally on man, since he is the spectator of these objects. Further, to enable me to cast this variety of subjects somewhat into the shade, and to express my judgment regarding them with greater freedom, without being necessitated to adopt or refute the opinions of the learned, I resolved to leave all the people here to their disputes, and to speak only of what would happen in a new world, if God were now to create somewhere in the imaginary spaces matter sufficient ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... the Committee on the Budget, and he took it upon himself to refute certain strictures presented by the Opposition to the Government program on Pardon and Justice. One friend he could count on was the minister: a respectable, solemn marquis who had once been an Absolutist, and who, wearied of platonisms, as he put ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "To trace an error to its fountainhead is to refute it." Now, my young pupils, I take it for granted that you are interested in the preservation of error; you do not wish it, therefore, to be traced to its fountain head. Whenever, then, you see a sharp fellow tracking it up, you have two ways of settling the matter. You may say, with a smile, "Nay, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... protracted, had annoyed him. Mr. Tyrrwhit had made accusations against himself personally which he knew to be false, but which, having been covered up, and not expressed exactly, he had been unable to refute. A man shall tell you you are a thief and a scoundrel in such a manner as to make it impossible for you to take him by the throat. "You, of course, are not a thief and a scoundrel," he shall say to you, but shall say it in such ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... their conclusions were diametrically different. For Nietzsche the hope of humanity is found in the strong; for Dostoievsky it is found in the weak. Their only ground of agreement is that they both refute the insolent ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... occurrences deserve close scrutiny; for they suffice to refute some of the exorbitant claims made at a later time by General Augereau, that only his immovable firmness forced Bonaparte to fight and to change his dispositions of retreat into an attack which re-established everything. This extraordinary assertion, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of an hour,[8] no animalcules ever made their appearance within them. It must be admitted that the experiments and arguments of Spallanzani furnish a complete and a crushing reply to those of Needham. But we all too often forget that it is one thing to refute a proposition, and another to prove the truth of a doctrine which, implicitly or explicitly, contradicts that proposition; and the advance of science soon showed that though Needham might be quite wrong, it did not follow that Spallanzani ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the Continent, and rose to high office in the Universities of Louvain and Paris, where the one in not inelegant Latin, and the other in courtly Scotch, sought to vindicate their conduct, and to traduce and refute their former co-religionists. Some of the masters of the Old College also, as Bannatyne has recorded, hated the plain-speaking reformer, though "be outward gesture and befoir his face thei wald seime and apeir to favore and love him above the rest."[233] The Hamiltons especially seem to have given ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... Just to refute them again, here is a quotation from the report of a Protestant chaplain on active service with these same maligned troops from the "north-eastern States." Bear in mind, too, that this particular chaplain has been in the army but a short time, ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... normal or abnormal characteristics, are determined, as people say, by the "environment." The business of the young scholar therefore, in reading Plato, is not to take his side in a controversy, to adopt or refute Plato's opinions, to modify, or make apology for, [11] what may seem erratic or impossible in him; still less, to furnish himself with arguments on behalf of some theory or conviction of his own. His duty is rather to follow ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... that all this, to my mind, is only a train of sophistry and false reasoning, which—so I at least hold—has been answered and refuted again and again. And I trust in God and in Christ sufficiently to believe that He will raise up sound divines and true philosophers in His Church, who will refute it once more. But meanwhile I can only appeal to your common sense; to the true and higher reason, which lies in men's hearts, not in their heads; and ask—And is it come to this? Is this the last outcome of civilization, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... to refute formally the fond, feeble notion, that this parable proves the sinfulness of dissenting from the Church of England, established by the State and prelatic in its government. Even although we should concede that the visible ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... color; is it not the negative to the warmth, the balance to the scales, the one thing needed on which to rear the glorious fabric that Naychure reveals to the undimmed vision of man? I know your answer, and I refute it. I have studied Art from its roots, and now I'm in the branches, and I grasp the fruit. My manner is peculiar—I have no patent for it—I ask for none. The illimitable passes the legitimate, and the sw-word is carried by the hero—for me the bruzh, the paint-bruzh. You see that painting ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... place little reliance on any representations you may make, Madam," he said, giving particular significance to his words, "except so far as they concern herself, and then she will take care to refute them. As to the circumstance of Gillian Greenford visiting me, fainting in my arms (from excess of timidity, poor girl!) and being discovered by you and Lady Roos in that position, the Countess will laugh at it when it comes to her knowledge—as why should she do otherwise? ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... and common errors which Sir Thomas Browne set himself to refute, were such as these: That dolphins are crooked, that Jews stink, that a man hath one rib less than a woman, that Xerxes's army drank up rivers, that cicades are bred out of cuckoo-spittle, that Hannibal split Alps with vinegar, together with many similar fallacies touching Pope Joan, the Wandering ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... confession which astounds me. Ah! Mr. Royle," she added, her gloved hands tightly clenched in her despair. "You do not know in what deadly peril Sir Digby now is. Yes, I see it plainly. There is a charge against him—a grave and terrible charge—which he is unable to refute, and yet he is perfectly innocent. Oh, what can I do? How can I act to save him?" and her ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... looked into each other's kindly eyes. Industry triumphing in its logic, the minister hunting in his heart for the soft answer that would refute the logic without hurting its author. "Captain," he said, "there was once a wiser than we who went about preaching a new order, spreading discontent with injustice, whose very mother was ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Divinity, he naturally must disbelieve that of any beings in a sphere between the supersensual immortals and sentient human creatures. That a man, the weaker nature, could have any power over daimons, who, as having a nearer affinity to the gods, must, if they existed, be the stronger, he could refute with convincing arguments; and when he saw others nibbling whitethorn-leaves, or daubing their thresholds with pitch to preserve themselves and the house from evil spirits, he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, though his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... also is the kindred belief in a self-determining will. If men contend that these things are mere illusions and that their faculties are not to be trusted, it will no doubt be difficult or impossible to refute them; but a scepticism of this kind has no real influence on either ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... thinking man who reads this piece may wonder first, what conscience governs these men, who publish, to abuse the world, such stories, which they themselves know to be lies, as well as they whom they believe. Next, what wisdom is among them, who knew well enough there are thousands of honest people to refute their calumnies!" (p. 194)—Provoked by an insulting reference to the book under review, an able controversial writer of that period says "Thou hast, by the bye, mentioned the Presbyterian Eloquence. Every body knows that ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... his mind. Moreover, as the learning of the middle ages resided for the most part in the cloister, the member's of the junta were principally clerical, and combined to crush Columbus with theological objections. Texts of Scripture were adduced to refute his theory of the spherical shape of the earth, and the weighty authority of the Fathers of the Church was added to overthrow the "foolish idea of the existence of antipodes; of people who walk, ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... They think the Barbarina is so completely broken, crushed by the displeasure of the king, that she can no longer dance. They have deceived themselves—I will dance tonight. Perhaps I shall go mad; but I will first refute the slander, and bring to naught the report of my disgrace with ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... because he thought that State rights were invaded by hostile tariffs. But after the Mexican War slavery was to him a matter of life and death. He made many excellent and powerful speeches, which tasked the intellect of Webster to refute; but, whatever the subject, it was seen only through his Southern spectacles, and argued from partisan grounds and with partisan zeal. Everything he uttered was with a view of consolidating the South, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... the "wets" and the "antis," paid the salary of Edward J. Handley, an ex-newspaperman of Newark, and gave him a suite of offices in the Wise building with several clerks. His "publicity" kept the amendment on the front pages of the papers and the suffragists were always able to refute and disprove his statements. The intensive campaign carried on among the editors for the past two or three years bore fruit and 80 per cent. of the newspapers by actual canvass favored the amendment, and frequently when the front page carried a story against suffrage it was contradicted on the editorial ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Flying Post, as the original indignantly called it in an appeal to Hurt's sense of honour and justice against the piracy, that Defoe came into collision with the law. His new organ was warmly loyal. On the 14th of August it contained a highly-coloured panegyric of George I., which alone would refute Defoe's assertion that he knew nothing of the arts of the courtier. His Majesty was described as a combination of more graces, virtues, and capacities than the world had ever seen united in one individual, a man "born for council and fitted ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... creatures who write with a wink at you, which sets the wicked part of us on fire: I have known it myself, and I own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of Countess Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness. He has just the same benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are to make a choice, the beggar's breech for decency, I say: I like it vastly in preference to a Nymney, who leads you up to the curtain and agitates it, and bids you to retire ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... absolutely, and without fear of contradiction, sustain the contention that the Betsy Ross claim exists only because of a statement made by a relative who did not produce one scintilla of documentary or recorded evidence to sustain the claim. The records of the time refute it, and the dates are so at variance with facts that are known that it is a surprise that any credence whatever has been ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... raise hope. The ambition and emulation that he so vainly denied in himself, he found his most useful levers in the humble labourers whose characters he had studied, whose condition he sought to make themselves desire to elevate. Unconsciously his whole practice began to refute his theories. The abuses of the old Poor Laws were rife in his neighbourhood; his quick penetration, and perhaps his imperious habits of decision, suggested to him many of the best provisions of the law now called into operation; but he was too wise to be the Philosopher Square of a system. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... putting one poisoned pellet in a bottle of plain ones, and letting the result happen when it might. His argument was, that the murderer would be far from the scene at the time death took place. These statements I submit, and if Christopher Shelby can deny or refute them, none will be more ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... like Bleek, Ebrard, Olshausen, Guericke, Kirchhofer, Thiersch, or Tholuck, or impartial writers like Credner, De Wette, Gfroerer, Luecke, and others commit the mistake of even alluding to it, although many of them directly endeavour to refute the article of Zeller, in which it is cited and rejected, and all of them point out so indirect an argument for his knowledge of the Gospel as the statement of Eusebius that Papias made use of the first Epistle of John. Indeed, on neither side is the passage introduced ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... sweetheart!" It had stuck. Sweetheart. In the hard years that followed—years in which the blood-thirsty and piratical games of his boyhood paled to the mildest of imaginings—the nickname still clung, long after he had ceased to resent it; long after he had stripes and braid to refute it. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... she never had before. They were full of the dramatic struggle between Jeff Farnum and the forces which hitherto had controlled the city and state. To her the battle was personal. It centered on the attacks made upon the character of her friend and his pledge to refute them. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... influence of Carneades that a century later Cicero, a disciple of the Stoic school of philosophy, thought it necessary to refute him specifically as the chief heretic, and to uphold the orthodox theory against his arguments. Cicero denounced with eloquent warmth the doctrine that utility was the foundation of justice. He declared that, not utility, but nature, was the source of justice, ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... cannot be built without an architect," answered Contini, laughing, "and it has always been plain to me that there can be no architects without houses to build. But as for any especial credit to me, I refute the charge indignantly. I except the matter of the turret, which is evidently what has attracted the buyer. I always thought it would. You would never have thought of a turret, would you, ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... determined that the ease with which one memorizes one set of facts may be very greatly improved without a corresponding improvement in ability to memorize in some other field. How would you use this fact to refute the argument that we possess a ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... and fighting mettle of the enemy. It is to be observed also that they are different poems, and not merely versions of the same; and that The Battle of Otterburn and the other racy and vigorous ballads of its class dealt with in this chapter, are of themselves sufficient to refute the arrogant dictum of Mr. Carew Hazlitt, that Scotland has no original ballad-poetry to speak of, and that what she calls her own are 'chiefly English ballads, sprinkled ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... early age. This tree in the nursery of Mr. Jones of Lancaster, Pa., was grafted in May and photographed in September one year following. Of course early bearing is not wholly desirable but in a way it will refute the common belief that black walnuts are necessarily ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... reader. They led over many lands, but this book is only a narrative of my search after Livingstone, the great African traveller. It is an Icarian flight of journalism, I confess; some even have called it Quixotic; but this is a word I can now refute, as will be seen before the reader arrives ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... uniformly represents them as extravagant, selfish, ostentatious, luxurious, frivolous, Epicurean in opinions and in life, oppressive in all their social relations, haughty beyond endurance, and controlling the popular elections by means of bribery and corruption. It would be difficult to refute these charges. The Patricians probably gave themselves up to all the pleasures incident to power and unbounded wealth, in a corrupt and wicked age. They had their palaces in the city and their villas in the country, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... science seems rather favourable to the present doctrine; and if it be contrary in its DEMONSTRATIONS, it is perfectly conformable in its definitions. My present business then must be to defend the definitions, and refute the demonstrations. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... "a pore dumb brute," And yit, like Him who died fer you, I say, as I theyr charge refute, "'Fergive; they know not ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
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