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Controversial   Listen
adjective
Controversial  adj.  Relating to, or consisting of, controversy; disputatious; polemical; as, controversial divinity. "Whole libraries of controversial books."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Controversial" Quotes from Famous Books



... The controversial character of Dante's genius, and the discordant estimate formed of it in so many respects by different writers, have already carried the author of this book so far beyond his intended limits, that he is obliged to refer for evidence in the cases of Ugolino and Francesca ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... religion, Clarinda, shall be welcome. You may perhaps distrust me, when I say 'tis also my favourite topic; but mine is the religion of the bosom. I hate the very idea of a controversial divinity; as I firmly believe, that every honest upright man, of whatever sect, will be accepted of the Deity. If your verses, as you seem to hint, contain censure, except you want an occasion to break with me, don't send them. I have a little infirmity in my disposition, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... book, too controversial for extensive quotation in our pages, as the enumeration of its contents will prove. They are half-a-dozen gracefully written sketches, viz. the Gipsy Girl, Religious Offices, Enthusiasm, Romanism, Rashness, and De Lawrence. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various

... die Tugend am Ende gluecklich sein laesst."[22] It is on the basis of this premise that he awards the comic crown to the Cap.[23] His extravagant encomium called forth from a contemporary a long controversial letter which Lessing published in the second edition with a reply so feeble that he distinctly leaves his adversary the honors of the field. How much better the diagnosis of Madame Dacier, who is quoted by Lessing! In the introduction to her translations of the Amphitruo, ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... have provided for amendments by such difficult processes that they either have never been amended or have not been amended when the subject is in the least controversial. Their provisions not infrequently are utilized by opponents of a cause to delay action for years. A present case illustrates. Newspapers in Kentucky which have opposed woman suffrage, and still do so, have started a campaign (December, 1916) to submit a woman suffrage amendment to voters ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various

... his great capacity for labor, his intelligence, and his long experience, he constitutes the most effective support of all Austria's efforts in the federal assembly. He is particularly adroit in formulating reports and propositions in awkward controversial questions; he knows how to give his draught a color of compromise without the least sacrifice of any Austrian interest, as soon as the correct interpretation comes to the aid of the apparently indeterminate expression. When his draughts become ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... "Works" (London, 1649) are in the Library, was born at Cambridge, became rector of St. Peter Hungate, Norwich, in 1636, and afterwards settled at Yarmouth. John Collinges, a Presbyterian, who came to Norwich in 1646, published controversial and devotional tracts and sermons. He is only represented by "A Short Discourse against Transubstantiation" (London, 1675), and "On the Intercourse of Divine Love" (1676), but the Local Collection of the Public Library contains ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen

... that a great number of inadequate, infertile little text-books are being dictated, one by each of these lecturers. Not the course of lectures, but the sound, full text-book should be the basis of College instruction, and this should be supplemented by a greater or lesser number of more or less controversial pamphlets or books, criticising, expanding or correcting its matter or putting things in a different and profitable way. This text-book should be paralleled in the case of experimental science by a hand-book of illustrative and explanatory ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... soul and strength, Marnix passed the fifteen years yet remaining to him. Death surprised him at last, at Leyden, in the year 1598, while steadily laboring upon his Flemish translation of the Old Testament, and upon the great political, theological, controversial, and satirical work on the differences of religion, which remains the most stately, though unfinished, monument of his literary genius. At the age of sixty he went at last to the repose which he had denied to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... one philosophical treatise; but no man lays down abstract principles more soundly, or better traces their application. All his works, indeed, even his controversial, are so infused with general reflection, so variegated with speculative discussion, that they wear the air of the Lyceum, as ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... education that are now held by some of our ablest thinkers. If in the morning of our religious system, St. Peter deemed it obligatory on us to be able and 'ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you,' how doubly imperative is that duty in this controversial age, when the popular formula has been adopted, 'to doubt, to inquire, to discover;' when the hammer of the geologist pounds into dust the idols of tradition, and the lenses of astronomy pierce the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... capacities and tastes of common readers, and it is not wonderful that it should have exerted considerable influence on the public mind. The character of that influence, and its tendency to induce a religious or irreligious frame of spirit, has been made a matter of controversial discussion. On the one hand, Mr. Combe tells us that "'The Constitution of Man' not only admits the existence of God, but is throughout devoted to the object of expounding and proving that He exercises ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... them, in their grammatical remarks, in their survey of previous attempts at an English translation of the Bible, and in their attitude to such a translation, have never been pointed out. Without wishing to intrude myself into controversial matters on which no one is entitled to speak who has not made a special study of the subject, I would fain again draw attention to the fact that whereas we have a definite statement by Caxton[7] that the Polychronicon 'was englisshed by one Trevisa, vicarye of barkley, which atte ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... in the West, I paid the usual visit to the place, and requested a free expression of views as to the suitability of the books that had been given. One venerable old native, with eyes of fire, called out: "This Paisley Library has one fatal lack: it contains no works on controversial divinity." I ventured to hint that perhaps the omission was intentional, but that he ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... the admiration of some of their most pronounced opponents. The party was small in number, but its membership was distinguished for intellectual ability, for high character, for pure philanthropy, for unquailing courage both moral and physical, and for a controversial talent which has never been excelled in the history of moral reforms. It would not be practicable to give the names of all who were conspicuous in this great struggle, but the mention of James G. Birney, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... from the first. It would be a mere paradox to say that this question, which sunders parties the world over as with a sword, will leave opinion in Ireland inviolately unanimous. But our march to the field of controversy will be over a non-controversial road. Union policy has left us a rich inheritance of obvious evils. The position of the primary teachers is unsatisfactory, that of the secondary teachers is impossible. When we attempt improvement of both will "Ulster" fight? And there is something even more ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... the same with the New Testament. Some portions of Paul's writings are as plain as they well can be; others are very obscure, perhaps quite unintelligible. Some passages in the controversial portions of his Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, and considerable parts of the Epistle to the Hebrews, are dark as night to many; and I fear that those who think they understand them, are under a delusion. And as portions of these Epistles were ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... croaked forth responses that might have come from the choral frogs in Aristophanes. And there was a long sermon apropos to nothing which could possibly interest the congregation, being, in fact, some controversial homily, which Mr. Dumdrum had composed and preached years before. And when this discourse was over, there was a loud universal grunt, as if of release and thanksgiving, and a great clatter of shoes—and the old hobbled, and the young scrambled to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... reply to attacks upon doctrines which I hold to be well founded; or in refutation of allegations respecting matters lying within the province of natural knowledge, which I believe to be erroneous; and they bear the mark of their origin in the controversial ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... own very high authority we know that the insect supply is not diminishing, that the injurious kinds alone are able to inflict an annual loss equal to 10,000,000 on the British farmer. To put aside this controversial matter, the sparrow with all his faults is a pleasant merry little fellow; in many towns he is the sole representative of wild bird life, and is therefore a great deal to us—especially in the metropolis, in which he most abounds, and where at every quiet ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... simple outline we have not touched on some of the more debatable questions that engage the attention of modern astronomers. Many of these questions have not yet passed the controversial stage; out of these will emerge the astronomy of the future. But we have seen enough to convince us that, whatever advances the future holds in store, the science of the heavens constitutes one of the most important stones in the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... controversial harangues of the zealot Auguste, my religious teaching was neglected on week days. On Sundays, if fine, I was taken to a Protestant church in Paris; not infrequently to the Embassy. I did not enjoy this at all. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... resolved into shining points, "like spangles of diamond dust." It is in this way several nebulae have yielded to the gigantic reflector of Lord ROSSE, and others with still greater optical resources may follow. This brings us to the first questionable and controversial ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... has its compensations, especially for those who unite restless vanity and ambition to a feminine desire for sympathy. It has been much the habit of Mr. Stephens to date controversial epistles from "a sick chamber," as do ladies in a delicate situation. A diplomatist of the last century, the Chevalier D'Eon, by usurping the privileges of the opposite sex, inspired ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... author's controversial methods, take his observations on my alleged attempt to account for the metamorphosis of Daphne into a laurel tree. When I read these remarks (i. p. 4) I said, 'Mr. Max Muller vanquishes me there,' for ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... epigraph to their long intimacy, given to the world by him in an appendix to his latest publication. I have said in a former paper that Knox was not shy of personal revelations in his published works. And the trick seems to have grown on him. To this last tract, a controversial onslaught on a Scottish Jesuit, he prefixed a prayer, not very pertinent to the matter in hand, and containing references to his family which were the occasion of some wit in his adversary's answer; and appended what seems equally irrelevant, one of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Sanskrit which must entirely depend for their support on readers who prefer that classical language to the vulgar dialects. There is The Pandit, published at Benares, containing not only editions of ancient texts, but treatises on modern subjects, reviews of books published in England, and controversial ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... had to stop to cough, I pulled my induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead myself: always getting eight feet, eight and a half, often nine, sometimes even quarter-less-twain—as I believed; but always ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... confine myself in this letter to the decency, the utility, and the necessity of scrupulously preserving the appearances of both. When I say the appearances of religion, I do not mean that you should talk or act like a missionary or an enthusiast, nor that you should take up a controversial cudgel against whoever attacks the sect you are of; this would be both useless and unbecoming your age; but I mean that you should by no means seem to approve, encourage, or applaud, those libertine notions, which strike at religions equally, and which are the poor threadbare ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... other's company of late, was a silent one. Now that the full bearings of the disaster had been discussed in all its aspects there was nothing more to be said. Any attempt at ignoring the situation, and passing on to less controversial topics would have been a mockery and pretence which neither of them would have troubled to sustain. So the meal went forward with its dragged-out dreary intimacy of two people who were separated by a gulf of bitterness, and whose hearts were hard with ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... The compulsory resignation on marriage is a definite wrong both to the women concerned and to the community at large, for women of selected health and intellect are discouraged from marriage by this regulation. Pending the final settlement of this question which is likely to be a very controversial one, the difficulty might be met by a modification of the existing rule allowing married women who have been Civil Servants to return to their employment should they again desire to earn their own living by means of the only profession ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... terrestrial currents. Well-built rhetorical climaxes, sharp and sudden contrasts, Poor Richard's common-sense, a page boiled down to a sentence, a fresh simile from Nature, a subtle mood projected upon Nature, a swift controversial retort, all these things are called thoughts. The pleasure in them is so great, that one fancies they leave him in their debt. That depends upon one's standard of indebtedness. Now a penny-a-liner is indebted to a single phrase which furnishes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... indeed to commit himself to a method, which may be not only foreign to his habits, but repugnant to his whole view of life and history. And if able advocacy of this determinist view of society for at least the past five generations has not carried general conviction, why raise so controversial a suggestion, in the guise too of a method professing to harmonise all comers? Yet this is advisedly done; and as no one will deny some civil importance to geographical factors, let patience be granted to examine this aspect of the city's map and shield, and to get from it what ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... answer offhand, but are less likely to give a reply so. We may give any kind of answer to a question, but if we give a reply, the implication is that we have answered it definitely, perhaps satisfactorily. On the other hand, in controversial matters we may, though we by no means always do, imply a more conclusive meeting of objections through answer than through reply. A response is an expected answer, one in harmony with the question ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... mention of the Nineteenth Amendment seems necessary, however, in any discussion of federal encroachment on state power, and it may be possible to approach the suffrage movement from the standpoint of constitutional law without getting upon controversial ground. ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... four years, and to regain it more than once afterwards. Until 1873 he and his rival, Mr. Fox, were considered inevitable members of almost any combination. Native affairs were in the forefront during that period. Mr. Fox, the most impulsive, pugnacious, and controversial of politicians, usually headed the peace party; Sir Edward Stafford, much more easy going in ordinary politics, was usually identified with those who held that peace could only be secured ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... valuable of the conquests it has retained were already made; and the period of its reverses had not begun. The great division which aided Catholicism afterwards to recover so much lost ground was not openly confessed; and the effectual unity of the Reformed Churches was not yet dissolved. In controversial theology the defence was weaker than the attack. The works to which the Reformation owed its popularity and system were in the hands of thousands, while the best authors of the Catholic restoration had not begun to write. The press continued to serve the new opinions better than the old; and ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... keep the Calvinists in check, who, from their numbers and insolence, were most to be feared. With this view, he had tacitly taken into his protection the Lutherans, as the weaker and more peaceable party, having moreover invited for them, from Germany, spiritual teachers, who, by controversial sermons, might keep up the mutual hatred of the two bodies. He encouraged the Lutherans in the vain idea that the king thought more favorably of their religious creed than that of the Calvinists, and exhorted them to be careful how they damaged their ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... than, his Sterling in the way of biography pure and simple. It is perhaps, though less delectable, not less admirable in its style than the other in its own. But it has, of course, the drawback of carrying with it a distinctly controversial character and, indeed, intention. We have more recently had at least two examples of the fullest possible comment with the least possible controversy in Mr. Tovey's "Gray," and of less voluminous but excellently adequate ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... much controversial matter by this arbitrary definition of our field. But, still, a chance of controversy comes up over the word "divine," if we take the definition in too narrow a sense. There are systems of thought which the world usually calls religious, and yet ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... it. Indeed all conversations with us had a tendency to become controversial. Over and above which there was truth in Keziah's saying, "The young gentlemen argle-bargles fit to deave a body's head; and dear ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Although strikes had ended in 1994, political unrest and lack of funds prevented the government from taking advantage of the 50% currency devaluation of January 1994. Resumption of World Bank and IMF flows will depend on implementation of several controversial moves toward privatization and on downsizing the military, on which the regime depends to ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... of Roman historians and of the sacred writings of the Jews is wholly uncritical. The heathen mythology, the Sybilline oracles, the myths of Plato, the dreams of Neo-Platonists are equally regarded by him as matter of fact. He must be acknowledged to be a strictly polemical or controversial writer who makes the best of everything on one side and the worst of everything on the other. He has no sympathy with the old Roman life as Plato has with Greek life, nor has he any idea of the ecclesiastical kingdom which was to arise out of the ruins of the Roman ...
— The Republic • Plato

... suffering, and I have ever thought that by these Christian self-denying labors, she did much towards gaining the confidence of the people. And who shall say that while good Father Bird was in his study library among the 'Popes and Fathers,' preparing his controversial work 'The Thirteen Letters,' this dear sister, by her efforts, was not making a way to the hearts of these people for the reception of gospel truth, which has since been preached so successfully in the neighboring ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... much activity is called for on a fast is controversial. Natural Hygienists in the Herbert Shelton tradition insist that all fasters absolutely must have complete bed rest, with no books, no TV, no visitors, no enemas, no exercise, no music, and of course no food, not even a cup of herb tea. In my many years of conducting people through fasts, I have ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... the fatiguing artificial animation which is sometimes assumed professionally by teachers, but the keenness which shows forth a settled conviction that life is worth living. The expression of this is not self asserting or controversial, for it is not like a garment put on, but a living grace of soul, coming from within, born of straight thinking and resolution, and so strongly confirmed by faith and hope that nothing can discourage it or make ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... of the renal organ and duct has very considerable controversial interest.* In Figure 13, Sheet 22, a diagrammatic cross-section, of an embryo is shown. I. is the intestine, coe. the coelom, s.c. the spinal cord; n.c. the notochord, surrounded by n.s., the notochordal sheath, ao. is the dorsal aorta. In the masses of somatic mesoblast ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... shelves with the current literature of the day, without much scrutiny or nicety of discrimination. Throughout this ample realm Edward was permitted to roam at large. His tutor had his own studies; and church politics and controversial divinity, together with a love of learned ease, though they did not withdraw his attention at stated times from the progress of his patron's presumptive heir, induced him readily to grasp at any ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... would be in so respectable a position, and in so happy circumstances, that British seamen, manufacturers, and merchants too, would hurry over to them."[70] These statements, drawn from Adams's association with many men, reflect so exactly the line of argument in the best known of the many controversial pamphlets published about that time,—Lord Sheffield's "Observations on the Commerce of the American States,"—as to prove that it represented correctly a preponderant popular feeling, not only adverse to the restoration of the colonial ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... advertisements, they are seen to be an entirely acceptable and appropriate presentation of coffee merit and thoroughly in accord with the principles of good advertising, as exemplified in all other lines of trade. The wonder grows why so many coffee advertisers have been content to remain in the defensive, controversial position into which the alarmist coffee-substitute advertising ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... 25th. 1909, and, much more fully than elsewhere in John M. Synge, by M. Maurice Bourgeois, the French authority on Synge, whose book is the best extant record of the man's career. A good many critical and controversial books and articles of varying power and bitterness have appeared about him. A short Life of him by myself, was published in a supplementary volume of the Dictionary of National Biography in 1912. The people who knew him in Ireland, ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield

... officials, who can be at once identified. Although the book is not without interest as a true account of hazardous and stirring frontier duties, we are bound to repeat our warning that this abuse of the novel for controversial purposes is not only unfair, but profoundly inartistic. No literary success, but failure and the confusion of styles, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... of your readers oblige me with the name of the author of a controversial sermon, entitled Whigs no Christians, preached at London, on the anniversary of the martyrdom of King Charles, in 1712-13, and published ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various

... "A Debtor to Mercy Alone," and "Inspirer and Hearer of Prayer," both now little used,—stirs no controversial feeling by a single line of his aggressive Calvinism. It is simply a song of Christian ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... canvas was a magnificent work of art. It was a temple—a fane of devotion or of science, which, when consecrated to the Creator, is devotion of the loftiest order, for it exhibits His attributes purely, free from the masquerade attire and blasphemous caricature of controversial creeds, and has the seal and signature of His own hand to sanction its aspirations. It was an equi-angular temple, built of polished sapphire, or of some resplendent blue stone, which, like it, displayed a myriad ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... is this controversial mood that free-thinkers are often tempted to be unfair to the Reformation. This is a fault; for after all it is something, even for ingrained sceptics prepared to offer incense at any official altar, to be saved from the persecuting alliance of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... MORE AND HIS 'UTOPIA.' Out of the confused and bitter strife of churches and parties, while the outcome was still uncertain, issued a great mass of controversial writing which does not belong to literature. A few works, however, more or less directly connected with the religious agitation, cannot be ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... troubled his head about problems of political philosophy, should declare, under the sanction of an oath, a decided opinion on a point about which the most learned Doctors of the age had written whole libraries of controversial books, and to send him to rot in a gaol if he could not bring himself to swear, would surely have been the height of tyranny. The clause which required public functionaries to abjure the deposed King was not open to the same ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... kingdoms of the Balkans. In May 1912 agreements for the eventual delimitation of the provinces to be conquered from Turkey in the event of war were signed between Bulgaria and Serbia, and Bulgaria and Greece. The most controversial district was, of course, Macedonia. Bulgaria claimed central Macedonia, with Monastir and Okhrida, which was the lion's share, on ethnical grounds which have been already discussed, and it was expected that Greece and Serbia, by obtaining ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... calling into this wilderness, it is not strange that their chief literary staples were sermons and tracts in controversial theology. Multitudes of these were written and published by the divines of the first generation, such as John Cotton, Thomas Shepard, John Norton, Peter Bulkley, and Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... article, "The Conclusion of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel" in the Huntington Library Quarterly, X (1946-7), 69-82.) In addition to its historical interest Dryden's tract is a fine specimen of his masculine, vigorous style so well suited to controversial writing. ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden

... cursory notice, that Johnson's theological knowledge was scanty, or unworthy of his general fame. We have acted under a very different impression; for though Johnson was not, nor pretended to be, a polemical or controversial divine, he well knew how to apply to the right regulation of our moral conduct the lessons of that Christianity which was not promulged for a sect, but for mankind; which sought not a distinctive garb in the philosopher's grove, nor secluded itself in the hermit's cell, but entered without ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... The controversial part covered two points—the military value of the raid, and the manner in which the raiders had been treated by ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger

... Poles. The president was Prince Alfred Windisch-Graetz, grandson of the celebrated general, one of Hohenwart's ablest lieutenants; Hohenwart himself did not take office. Of course an administration of this kind could not take a definite line on any controversial question, but during 1894 they carried through the commercial treaty with Russia and the laws for the continuance of the currency reform. The differences of the clubs appeared, however, in the discussions on franchise ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... this controversial gathering of young people at the home of Flora Kemble that Lilly met, for the first time, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... authorities of Gibbon, for whom he had a deep and growing admiration. An excellent edition of Gibbon was one of the first results. Milman's notes have been included in Smith's later edition, and, though a large proportion of them were naturally somewhat controversial, being devoted to refuting some of the conclusions of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, it is impossible to read them without recognising the candour as well as the learning and the acumen of the critic. Few things that Milman has written are finer than the preface in which, in ten or twelve ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... literature. The victim was Cleon who had succeeded Pericles as popular leader. He was at the height of his glory, having captured the Spartan contingent at Pylos, prisoners who were of great importance for diplomatic purposes. The comedy is a scathing criticism of democracy; the subject is so controversial that it will be best to give some ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... beginning to take an interest in subjects of the day—ministries, flat paintings, controversial novels, Cromwell's spotless integrity, etc.—why ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade

... Aunt Martha, who had not gone through fifty or a hundred such conflicts without deriving some controversial profit from them—"I do not choose to be sworn at, in your house or the house of any other man. If you were a gentleman, you would not ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... that I intend to avoid as far as possible matters which concern living men, unless these are non-contentious. Horas non numero nisi serenas. Again, and even if it were desirable to add fresh fuel to the controversial fire, I could not, speaking generally, add to knowledge without ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... to give any critical appraisement of these pamphlets. They were all controversial and all dealt with the case of Richard Dugdale. Zachary Taylor had the best of it. The Puritan clergymen who backed up Thomas Jollie in his claims seem gradually to ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... Esseintes to revery and, facing the bottle, he was inclined to think at great length of the monks who sold it, the Benedictines of the Abbey of Fecamp who, belonging to the brotherhood of Saint-Maur which had been celebrated for its controversial works under the rule of Saint Benoit, followed neither the observances of the white monks of Citeaux nor of the black monks of Cluny. He could not but think of them as being like their brethren of the Middle Ages, cultivating simples, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... itself except through a ponderous circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd sequestration stands the term polemic. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of all knowledge; so there is of every science. The radical and characteristic idea concerned ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... to offer anything in extenuation of the style in which I have examined the statements of these Essayists and Reviewers. Perfectly sensible as I am of the gracefulness of highly courteous language in controversial writing, I will not so far violate my own conviction of what is right as to bandy compliments on such an occasion as this. This is no literary misunderstanding, or I could have been amicable enough: no private or personal matter, or I could have flung it from me with unconcern. ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... was quickly dried up. Conversation soon found other springs. I never knew the talk to get heated or noisy. Religion and politics rarely came up, and never in any controversial way. The bitterest politician I met at table was a quadruped,—a lady's dog,—who refused a desirable morsel offered him in the name of Mr. Gladstone, but snapped up another instantly on being told that it came from Queen Victoria. I recall many pleasant and some delightful talks at the ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... that my supposed "unjaded appetite" for the sort of controversy in which it needed not Mr. Gladstone's express declaration to tell us he is far better practised than I am (though probably, without another express declaration, no one would have suspected that his controversial fires are burning low) is ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... for France, leaving the wretched colony to its fate. He presently entered the lists against Calvin, and engaged him in a hot controversial war, in which, according to some of his contemporaries, the knight often worsted the theologian at his own weapons. Before the year 1558 was closed, Ganabara fell a prey to the Portuguese. They set upon it in force, battered down the fort, and slew the feeble garrison, or drove them to a miserable ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... began by re-reading the Works; thence she passed to the writers of the same school, those whose rhetoric bloomed perennial in First Readers from which her grandfather's prose had long since faded. Amid that clamor of far-off enthusiasms she detected no controversial note. The little knot of Olympians held their views in common with an early-Christian promiscuity. They were continually proclaiming their admiration for each other, the public joining as chorus in this guileless antiphon of praise; ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... other purposes. Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and even Poland, lent their presses to the British author; the scarce tracts by James Crichton (the Admirable) proceeded from Milan or Venice. We know what important centres for English controversial divinity and political pamphleteering were Geneva, Basle, and Zuerich, and the last-named place is particularly associated with the name of Christopher Froeschover, printer of the Bible of 1550. A distinct feature in this vast body of Continental typography ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... exhortations to the folk from the professorial chair. Now there used to visit her house a number of students of divinity and persons of learning and polite letters, who would discuss with her questions of theology and dispute with her on controversial points. I went to her one day, with a friend of mine, a man of years and education; and when we had taken our seats, she set before us a dish of fruit and seated herself behind a curtain. Now she had ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... chapters of this book deal mainly with Pali Buddhism[293]—a convenient and non-controversial term—and not with the Mahayana, though they note the tendencies which found expression in it. In the first chapter I treat of the Buddha's life: in the second I venture to compare him with other great religious teachers: in the third I consider his doctrine as ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... survey of this book by mentioning the literary controversial part chiefly to be found in Chapter IV, but cropping up elsewhere. It refers to interpolations made in the authorised translation of Krause's "Life of Erasmus Darwin." Only one side is presented; and we are not called upon, here or elsewhere, to discuss ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... qualifications of the author. General von Bernhardi's new book possesses other qualities which entitle him to a respectful hearing. He writes with absolute candour and sincerity; his tone is unexceptionable; he is earnest and dignified; he is moderate and temperate; he is judicial rather than controversial. Although the author believes, of course, that Germany stands in the forefront of civilization and has a monopoly of the highest culture, yet his book is singularly free from the one great blemish which defaces most German ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... to retire eighty per cent. of that amount of United States notes. In other words, it proposes to redeem the United States notes to the extent of eighty per cent. of the amount of bank notes that may be issued; and here is the first controversial question that arises on this bill and the first ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... of a sect of Christians who keep the Jewish Sabbath, having a chapel at Mill Yard, Goodman's Fields. They wrote controversial works, and perhaps do so still; but I never chanced ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... expanded his verses into a prose commentary, but meanwhile his views had undergone a change and when he disapproved of any Vaibhashika doctrine, he criticized it. This enlarged edition by no means pleased the brethren of Kashmir and called forth polemics. He also wrote a controversial work against the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... visibly brooding. Others again I have watched, when my thoughts should have been better engaged, in which I could possibly detect nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was in all, and the disposition to unanimity, and the absence of the fierce controversial workings.—If the spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have abated, at least they make few pretences. Hypocrites they certainly are not, in their preaching. It is seldom indeed that you shall see one get up amongst them to hold forth. Only now and then a trembling, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... with the inconsistencies and difficulties of ecclesiastical institutions revealed their origin. The fact was that at this time Hugh was accustomed to assert with much emphasis some extremely provocative and controversial position. He was markedly scornful of Anglican faults and mannerisms, and behaved both then and later as if no Anglicans could have any real and vital belief in their principles, but must be secretly ashamed of them. Yet he was acutely sensitive himself, and resented similar comments; he used ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... who was the author of a considerable number of controversial tracts, was a man of great learning, and is said to have possessed the finest library in the country. In an account of his life and death first published in 1665, which was professedly written by Thomas Baily, a royalist divine, but is said to have been really the work of Dr. Richard Hall of ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... typical New Texas politician. He had always worn at least two faces, and had always managed to place himself on every side of every issue at once. Nothing he ever said could possibly be construed as controversial. Naturally, the cause of New Texan annexation to the Solar League had made no ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... imagination, the ideal conceiver and creator of Natura Naturata, then his scheme would have been complete—probably too complete. On the latter subject, however, he threw out hints which were broad enough, and did not wholly shun the controversial sphere of metaphysics. The critic who would avoid the heights and depths of mysticism would do well to imitate his reserve, and exceed ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... no doubt he thought the formation of an Academy a matter of great importance. Why then did he deliberately introduce controversial elements and thus make impossible a discussion of his proposal wholly on its merits? I suggest as a possible answer that he wished the Whigs to dissociate themselves from the project and that he used the tactics expected to achieve this end, in the desire that entire ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon

... his lectures in Edinburgh prevented him from attending till the end of July no difficulty was made over this, as the first meetings of the Commission, which began on June 30, were to be devoted to taking the less controversial evidence. In accepting his nomination he wrote to Mr. Cross (afterwards Lord Cross), at that ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... of mine, I do not hear the sounds I used to hear formerly. That great bowman, viz., the son of Drona, who was the refuge of my sons, upon him Brahmanas and Kshatriyas and Vaisyas, and a large number of disciples used to wait, who took pleasure day and night in controversial disputations, in talk, in conversation, in the stirring music of diverse instruments, and in various kinds of delightful songs, who was worshipped by many persons among the Kurus, the Pandavas, and the Satwatas, alas, O Suta, in the abode of that son of Drona no ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... to have been partially insane. His political zeal was a frenzy; and his religion was deeply tinged with puritanic gloom. His 'Collection of Emblems' never became so popular as those of Quarles, and are now nearly as much forgotten as his satires, his psalms, and his controversial treatises. But his early poems are delightful—full of elegant and playful fancy, ease of language, and delicacy of sentiment. Some passages in 'The Shepherd's Hunting,' and in the 'Address to Poetry,' resemble the style of Milton ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... whole Royal Family, have been lately bitterly and publicly inveighed against in the most enormous and treasonable manner. Now, being a man, as you well know, altogether out of business, I do sometimes lose an hour in reading a few of those controversial papers upon politics, which have succeeded for some years past to the polemical tracts between Whig and Tory: and in this kind of reading (if it may deserve to be so called) although I have been often but ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... so cast into the shade burst upon the conscience of the Parson. The first idea that then occurred to him was the proper and professional one—viz., the conversion of Dr. Riccabocca. He hastened to his study, took down from his shelves long neglected volumes of controversial divinity, armed himself with an arsenal of authorities, arguments, and texts; then, seizing the shovel-hat, posted off ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... unbounded liberty of conscience which you Dissenters (I think unwisely, as well, as erroneously) claim, have made every extraordinary pretension to piety suspicious. The nation has been whirled in the vortex of enthusiasm, perplexed with the discordant pretensions and controversial clamour of various sects, till it has begun to consider indifference to religion as a philosophical repose; and its contempt for hypocrites is increased till it has generated a toleration, if not a partiality of licentiousness ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... efforts to take an inventory of the slaves so that the claims might be adjusted, they encountered the opposition of Clavelle and Cockburn. It was clearly evident that the efforts of the commissioners would be of no avail. More coercive means were necessary to settle such an extended and controversial question. In a convention of commerce between Great Britain and the United States October 20, 1818, representatives realized that an agreement in regard to the Negroes was hardly possible. The representatives from ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... observing, that James, from his great desire to promote controversial divinity, erected a college at Chelsea for the entertainment of twenty persons, who should be entirely employed in refuting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... silken wings, decked out bravely in scales of many hues, not toned down to too sober and quaker-like a suit of drab and dove-colour. You were meant by nature for the sunshine and the summer; you shall not be worried and chilled and killed with doses of heterodox political economy and controversial ethics. Better even a country rectory (though with a bad Late Perpendicular church), and flowers, and picnics, and lawn-tennis, and village small-talk, and the squire's dinner-parties, than bread and cheese and virtuous poverty in a London lodging with Ernest ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... the controversial papers between Messrs. Stephenson and Fairbairn in regard to the Britannia Bridge, it became apparent that neither of these gentlemen, with all their calculations and expenditures in experiments, had determined the proper distribution of the strains, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... of what small atoms we are made. The opponents of Ibsen largely exhibited the permanent qualities of the populace; that is, their instincts were right and their reasons wrong. They made the complete controversial mistake of calling Ibsen a pessimist; whereas, indeed, his chief weakness is a rather childish confidence in mere nature and freedom, and a blindness (either of experience or of culture) in the matter of original sin. In this sense Ibsen ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... had literally eaten himself to death, and his body was so distended from gorging that it was as round as a ball. Colonel Roosevelt also photographed it, so that there will be no lack of evidence if the incident ever reaches the controversial stage. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... no other object in view than to edify his congregation and to lead it to Christ when, in 1517, he published his first independent work, the Explanation of the Seven Penitential Psalms. On Oct 31 of the same year he published his 95 Theses against Indulgences. These were indeed intended as controversial theses for theologians, but at the same time it is well known that Luther was moved by his duty toward his congregation to declare his position in this matter and to put in issue the whole question ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... excellencies of the Son of God! "Sir," said she, "I perceive that thou art a prophet;" and availing herself of the present favourable opportunity, she proposes a question much and violently agitated between the Jews and Samaritans. When the passions are inflamed by controversial discussion, how apt are we to be mislead by the opinions of men rather than guided by the oppointments of God; and how frequently convenience, instead of conscience, dictates the conduct of religious professors! ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... of James I. was a controversial age, of unsettled opinions and contested principles; an age, in which authority was considered as stronger than opinion; but the vigour of that age of genius was infused into their writings, and those citers, who thus perpetually crowded ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... Shakspere's position. It only defines our position towards Shakspere. It is he who is fixed; it is we who are unstable. The nearest approach to an English parallel to the Zola case would be furnished if it were proposed to put some savagely controversial and largely repulsive author among the ashes of the greatest English poets. Suppose, for instance, it were proposed to bury Mr. Rudyard Kipling in Westminster Abbey. I should be against burying him in Westminster Abbey; first, because he is still alive (and here I think even he himself ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... his readers to accompany him to that town to see what they can discover, and he retails a good deal of lively scandal about the rope-maker's sons. "Have with you" is perhaps the smartest and is certainly the most readable of Nash's controversial volumes. It gives us, too, some interesting fragments of autobiography. Harvey had accused him of "prostituting his pen like a courtisan," and Nash makes this curious and not ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash

... here to observe, that of all the names connected with the Reformation, that of Luther is the only one known in Spain; and let me add, that no controversial writings but his are likely to be esteemed as possessing the slightest weight or authority, however great their intrinsic merit may be. The common description of tracts, written with the view of exposing the errors of popery, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... Templar succession in Freemasonry forms perhaps the most controversial point in the whole history of the Roman Collegia theory, Continental Masons more generally accepting it, and even glorying in it.[313] Mackey, in his Lexicon of Freemasonry, thus sums ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... whose central theme was a subject of distaste at best—more likely revulsion—to the vast majority of the reading public? Perhaps the nature of the novel itself led him to consider publishing it anonymously, although we know he was not averse to controversial subjects. In his first book, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, which he thought had the best plot of all his novels, the principal female character is seduced by a scoundrel and dies giving birth ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... invented that terrible nuisance of a catch-phrase, "Three Acres and a Cow!" Strange and morbid perversion of ambition! As well fight for the deep discredit of having been the first to hit upon such kindred controversial horrors as the boring and question-begging "gags" of "Law and Order," "Patriot first, and Party-man afterwards," "Hand over to the tender mercies, &c.," "Disintegration of the Empire," or even that most hackneyed of political ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various

... rations in the trenches consists of quite a variety of commodities. First thing in the winter morning we have that controversial blind, rum. We get a "tot" which is about equal to a tablespoonful. It is not compulsory, and no man need take it unless he wishes. This is not the time or place to discuss the temperance question, but our commanders and the army surgeons believe that rum as a ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... College, Cambridge, and a clergyman in the Church of England until 1846, when he entered the Church of Rome. He taught in various Jesuit colleges until 1862, when his eccentricity was too marked to warrant the Church in allowing him to continue. He published various controversial writings during his later years. Of course if he had known the works of Wessel, Gaus, Buee, Argand, and others, he would not have made such a sorry exhibition of his ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... of the great wits and satirists of his age. His style was rough and reckless. A vehement and fierce upholder of the doctrines of arbitrary government, he was knighted by James the Second. His controversial writings, having all the attractions of unscrupulous invective and homely but cutting sarcasm, were much patronized by the great, and extensively read by the people. All Nonconformists and Dissenters were the objects of his coarse abuse. He issued an ingenious pamphlet ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... and controversial, will not explain the immense and dominating effect Newman produced upon his contemporaries. That effect was due to the irresistible magic of his personality. He was manifestly one of the Saints of God, and his presence brought with it into any company ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge

... innocent English people for their religion pass unregarded by the Eternal God? Dost thou think to escape his fierce wrath and dreadful vengeance for thy ungodly and illegal persecution of his poor children? I tell thee, no. Better were it for thee thou hadst never been born." And so on, in the controversial dialect of the time, calling the vice-chancellor a "poor mushroom," and abusing him generally. Elsewhere, in a retrospect which I shall presently quote at length, he refers to his university experiences: "Of my persecution at Oxford, and how the Lord sustained me in the midst of that ...
— William Penn • George Hodges

... Aberdeen and Primus, on the positions and functions of the laity in the Church. This letter is remarkable, because, as Dr. Charles Wordsworth, Bishop of St. Andrew's, said at the time, "it contained the germ of liberation and the political equality of all religions." The Bishop published a controversial rejoinder, which drew from Dr. Gaisford, Dean of Christ Church, these emphatic words: "You have proved to my satisfaction that this gentleman is unfit to represent the University," meaning the representation ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... even in this milder age, when the stake and the rack have ceased to form part of her ritual. Some cruelties still pass for service done in her honour: no thumb-screw is used, no iron boot, no scorching of flesh; but plenty of controversial bruising, laceration, and even lifelong maiming. Less than formerly; but so long as this sort of truth-worship has the sanction of a public that can often understand nothing in a controversy except personal sarcasm or slanderous ridicule, it is likely to continue. The sufferings ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... with the greatest energy, and perhaps somewhat less judgment than if Mr. Dutton had been at hand. Being without natural taste for intellectual pursuits, unless drawn into them by his surroundings, he had dropped them entirely, and read nothing but the ephemeral controversial literature of his party, and not much of that, for he was teaching, preaching, exhorting, throughout his spare time; while the vicar was in too great need of help to insist on deepening the source from which his ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Lycidas we are made to realise that this human nature is Milton's own, and to understand how it was that his Puritanism which, three years before, had permitted him to write a cavalier mask, should, three years after, lead him from the fresh fields of poetry into the barren plains of controversial prose. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... posters, pictures, window-cards, etc.; but as her talent was superlative, he must now endeavor to keep up with it by invention in his line—the puff circumstantial, the puff poetic, the puff anecdotal, the puff controversial, all tending to blow the fame of the Klosking in every eye, and ring it in every ear. "You take my advice," said he, "and devote this money, every penny of it, to Publicity. Don't you touch a single shiner for anything that does not ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... in a tent which was pitched in a field the property of Mr. James A. Hamilton, J.P. For about a week beforehand handbills announcing the services for July 21 had been distributed in the town and suburbs, but no controversial topic was mentioned, nor was it intended that the services should be other than strictly evangelical. The tent was erected solely to accommodate the great influx of visitors, after the manner so familiar in England. Here was a test of ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... malpractice; discipline will be interfered with. Finally, let us not forget that we are dealing with buildings, teachers, and school institutions as they exist. Where education is made compulsory, the unpleasant and the controversial should be kept out of school. Because a democratic institution, the American school should represent at all times ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... discussion of the controversial evidence which may be used to bridge this gap between the first use of gears and the fully-developed mechanical clock we must examine the other side of this gap. Recent research on the history of early mechanical clocks has demonstrated ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price

... took some effort to remove it. The more he studied the structure, the more his admiration grew, and his appreciation of the reasoning intelligence of its builders; and he smiled to himself a little controversial smile, as he thought how inadequate what men call instinct would be to such a piece of ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... the man, and to discover the sort of ability on which the success of his closetings depended. We find Baillie holding, in his simplicity, that in order to draw the heart of the King from Episcopacy, nothing more could be necessary than just fairly to submit to him some sound controversial work, arranged on the plan of the good man's own Ladensium; and urging on Sharpe, that a few able divines should be employed in getting up a compilation for the express purpose. Sharpe writes in return, in a style sufficiently quiet, that ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... of an old book of controversial divinity, I stumbled upon the following illustrations of folk lore; which, as well from their antiquity as from their intrinsic curiosity, seem worthy of a place in your columns. They make us acquainted with some of the usages of our ancestors, who lived ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various

... worried. He was being intolerably worried, and he was ill and unable to sustain his positions. This doubt, this sudden discovery of controversial unsoundness, was only one aspect of his general neurasthenia. It had been creeping into his mind since the "Light Unden the Altar" controversy. Now suddenly it had leapt upon him ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... apply for a year's relief from his official duties. The last months of his life he spent mostly lying upon a sofa in his library, surrounded by great piles of books containing a most miscellaneous assortment of classics, from Homer to Goethe, intersprinkled with controversial pamphlets and recent novels. He was gentle and affectionate in his demeanor; and his beautiful face lighted up with a smile whenever any of his children or grandchildren approached him. Once or twice a day he drove out in his carriage, and he was even able to visit his eldest son, who ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... preserve the purity of the Pierian Springs, those guardians of this noble art, who arbitrate in the "standard magazines," condemn and exclude what they define as "controversial literature." ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... utmost deftness to remove all ground for my embarrassment regarding my position. She talked for a while of South Africa, and the life she had lived there prior to her father's death; but she touched no topic which contained any controversial element. It seemed her aunt, a sister of her father's, had accompanied her ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... respondent in the approaching argument—one had had a long walk, the other had had two full services, a baptism, and a funeral. The armistice continued a good quarter of an hour, which Charles and Willis spent in easy conversation; till Bateman, who had been priming himself the while with his controversial points, found himself ready for the assault, and ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... to see those two men seated together, with their elbows on the table, arguing solemnly and dispassionately, as though they were trying to solve a steep problem or to come to an agreement on some controversial point. And this was coupled with a very delicate irony, which both of them, as experts and artists, thoroughly enjoyed. As for Wilson, he was in the ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc

... lecture is to establish a theory of congruence. You must understand at once that congruence is a controversial question. It is the theory of measurement in space and in time. The question seems simple. In fact it is simple enough for a standard procedure to have been settled by act of parliament; and devotion to metaphysical subtleties is almost the only ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... from which "Capital" in particular suffers, at the door of this training. His painful elaboration of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, his insistence upon the dialectic, and his continual use of the Hegelian philosophical expressions are due to his earlier controversial experiences. Still, on the other hand, his patient investigation of actual facts, his insistence on the value of positive knowledge as compared with abstract theory, and his diligent and persistent use of blue-books ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels

... Bull's contemporary at St. Asaph. The two prelates were men of much the same stamp. Both were divines of great theological learning; but while Bull's great talents were chiefly conspicuous in his controversial and argumentative works, Beveridge was chiefly eminent as a student and devotional writer. His 'Private Thoughts on Religion and Christian Life,' and his papers on 'Public Prayer' and 'Frequent Communions,' have always maintained a high reputation. Like Bull, he was profoundly read in the history ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... before the prevalence of this verbal decorum. This hysterical horror of poor Pope's not very well ascertained, and never fully proved amours (for even Cibber owns that he prevented the somewhat perilous adventure in which Pope was embarking) sounds very virtuous in a controversial pamphlet; but all men of the world who know what life is, or at least what it was to them in their youth, must laugh at such a ludicrous foundation of the charge of "a libertine sort of love;" while the more serious will look upon those who bring forward such ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... verse, the reading requires first to be established. Instead of the reading [Hebrew: iqrav] which is found in the text, and which is the third pers. Sing. with the Suffix, several MSS. (compare De Rossi), have the third pers. Plur. [Hebrew: iqrav]. Several controversial writers, such as Raim. Martini, Pug. Fid. p. 517, and Galatinus, iii. 9, p. 126, (The Jews of our time assert that here Jeremiah did not say "they shall call," [Hebrew: iqrav], as we read it, but "he shall ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... itself. I say that this thing exists. I define it as closely as matters involving moral evidence can be defined; I call it Eugenics. If after that anyone chooses to say that Eugenics is not the Greek for this—I am content to answer that "chivalrous" is not the French for "horsy"; and that such controversial games are ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... letters has, from the nature of the case, never been discussed exclusively on its own merits. The pure light of criticism has been crossed by the shadows of controversial prepossession on both sides. From the era of the Reformation onward, the dispute between Episcopacy and Presbyterianism has darkened the investigation; in our own age the controversies respecting the Canon of Scripture and the early history of Christianity have interfered ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... destitution, those tickets might be regarded as a small but well-chosen scientific library. Should my railway journey continue (which seemed likely at the time) for a few months longer, I could imagine myself throwing myself into the controversial aspects of the pill, composing replies and rejoinders pro and con upon the data furnished to me. But after all it was the symbolic quality of the tickets that moved me most. For as certainly as the cross of St. George means ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... it's in German East!" urged Will. "Offer to lead them to it on certain conditions. Think up controversial ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... has passed since the catastrophe to France, the cause of it is still controversial. It is certain that the conduct of Marshal Soult, who was second in command, gave reason for suspicion. An old corporal told the Emperor that he was to "be assured that Soult was betraying him." General Vandamme ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... Spain under Raleigh, and went on the 'Islands Voyage'; later on, at different periods, he travelled over many parts of the Continent, with rich patrons or on diplomatic offices. Born a Catholic, he became a Protestant, deliberately enough; wrote books on controversial subjects, against his old party, before he had taken orders in the Church of England; besides a strange, morbid speculation on the innocence of suicide. He used his lawyer's training for dubious enough purposes, advising the Earl ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... conversation, I suggested that it would be a splendid thing if we could construct a vessel which would enable us to visit Mars and see it for ourselves, and thus settle all our doubts and speculations on the various controversial points which were ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... the acrimony which the most eminent scholars have infused frequently in their controversial writings. The politeness of the present times has in some degree softened the malignity of the man, in the dignity of the author; but this is by no means an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... understanding between the two nations, By which to adjust their unhappy relations. With this object in view, it occurred to Buccleuch That a great deal of mutual good would accrue If they settled that he and Lord Scroop's nominee Should meet once a year, and between them agree To arbitrate all controversial cases And grant an award on an equable basis. A brilliant idea that promised to be a Corrective, if not a complete panacea— For it really appears that for several years, These fines of 'poll'd Angus' and Galloway steers Did greatly conduce, during seasons of truce, To abating traditional ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton



Words linked to "Controversial" :   contentious, arguable, moot, controversy, uncontroversial, polemical, disputed



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