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Infallible   Listen
adjective
Infallible  adj.  
1.
Not fallible; not capable of erring; entirely exempt from liability to mistake; unerring; inerrable.
2.
Not liable to fail, deceive, or disappoint; indubitable; sure; certain; as, infallible evidence; infallible success; an infallible remedy. "To whom also he showed himself alive, after his passion, by many infallible proofs."
3.
(R. C. Ch.) Incapable of error in defining doctrines touching faith or morals. See Papal infallibility, under Infallibility.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Infallible" Quotes from Famous Books



... over his long roaring, yellow trail of souls. He laughs bitterly at sleep, at the men with tickets, at the way the men with tickets believe in him. He knows (he grips his hand on the lever) he is not infallible. Once ... twice ... he might have ... he almost.... Then suddenly there is a flash ahead ... he sets his teeth, he reaches out with his soul ... masters it, he strains himself up to his infallibility again ... all ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee

... think, still more than this. It is not merely a monument of intellect but of poetic imagination, and I am much inclined to believe that the Paradiso of Dante and the Second Part of Goethe's Faust are perhaps two of the best, the most infallible, touchstones for discovering whether we really possess what Tennyson calls the 'poetic heart'—not a trumpery aesthetic imitation but ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... perhaps the best and most infallible evidence we can have of the truth of our religion in this life is in the steady increase of our secret sinfulness. Christiana had no trouble with her own wicked heart so long as she was a woman of a wicked life. But directly she became a new creature, her heart began to swarm, such ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... persecutions, and knew no difference between catholic and cannibal. Her running calendar of living saints were born "to inherit the earth," and heaven, too: they possessed a monopoly of all truth, an unlimited "indulgence" to enforce conformity, and, in their zeal, an infallible safeguard against the commission of error. She had no patience with those who could not "see the truth;" and he who reviled the puritan mode of worship, was "worse than the infidel." The only argument she ever used with such, was the argumentum ad ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... of godliness was manifest in the earlier days by many infallible signs, not excluding those "times of refreshing" in which the simultaneous earnestness of many souls compels the general attention. Even in Northampton, where the doctrine of the venerable Stoddard as to ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... Martian faith. There seemed little to understand about it. It was one national expression of the love of goodness and of beauty, but it was all directed to a source of infallible wisdom, power ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... belonged to the Austrian Government he was the first who received the first two volumes of my works. But he was formerly Professor of Dogmatics and as such also my professor, and was so fixed in the Dogmas of his infallible Church, that he could not study my books, to learn what all dogmatists of the so called christian denominations require, to with signs according to prophecies by which an "extraordinary ambassador" to the churches ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar

... ordinarily observant. I've known you some time, and the symptoms are infallible. When you get that absent, beyond-earth look in your eyes, and sit twisting around and around that mammoth diamond ring your uncle gave you on your sixteenth birthday—Come, I'm impatient from the toes up. Who is ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... whit, Martin! She is swift as God's lightning and as infallible. Roger Tressady was an evil man and the evil within him she used to destroy him and all very right and proper! And now she lieth sick in the cave yonder and ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... Dutch Scoot or a Boatswain's Cabbin. The Walls being hung with Gilt Frames, as a Farriers shop with Horse shoes; which contain'd abundance of Rarities viz. Nectar and Ambrosia, May Dew, Golden Elixirs, Popular Pills, Liquid Snuff, Beautifying Waters, Dentifrisis Drops, Lozenges, all as infallible as ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... but that tail was of forty feet. He was followed by numerous devotees, who threw their worldly goods at his feet, and in return he presented them with writings and harangues, which he declared were infallible in all diseases. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... prophet was simply the mouth by which the Holy Spirit spoke. As a man, that is except as the Spirit taught him and used him, the prophet might be as fallible as other men are but when the Spirit was upon him and he was taken up and borne along by the Holy Spirit, he was infallible in his teachings; for his teachings in that case were not his own, but the teachings of the Holy Spirit. When thus borne along by the Holy Spirit it was God who was speaking and not the prophet. For example, there can be little ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey

... phrase is, we may well pass by many minor arguments, and emphasize the one great reason for holding this view, viz.: If it is God the Holy Ghost who speaks in Scripture, then the Bible is the word of God, and like God, infallible. A recent brilliant writer has challenged us to show where the Bible anywhere calls itself "The word of God."[9] The most elementary student of the subject can, with the aid of a concordance, easily point out the passages which so describe it. But we dwell on the fact that is not only called ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... you've got a wife an' a large family o' young firemen to keep, so I'll let it go cheap. P'raps it's too small for you; but that's easy put right. You've only got to slit it up behind to the neck, which is a' infallible cure for a tight fit, an' you can let down the cuffs, which is double, an' if it's short you can cut off the collar, an' sew it on to the skirts. It's water-proof, too, and fire-proof, patent asbestos. W'en it's dirty you've got nothin' to do but walk into ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... spring. Three of that party were wanting. Dr. Morbific, by inoculating himself once too often with non- contagious matter, had explained himself out of the world. Mr. Henbane had also departed, on the wings of an infallible antidote. Mr. Eavesdrop, having printed in a magazine some of the after- dinner conversations of the castle, had had sentence of exclusion passed upon him, on the motion of the Reverend Doctor Folliott, as a flagitious violator of the ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... claim of charity, or to consent to the performance of a little evil for the accomplishment of a great good. But in all such cases Christianity interposes its peremptory precepts, assuring us on authority which the Christian regards as supreme and infallible, that there are no exceptions or qualifications to any rule of right; that the moral law, in all its parts, is of inalienable obligation, and that the greatest good cannot but be the ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... to influence other minds to any action not first made known to them or sought by them. Corporeal and selfish influence is human, fallible, and temporary; but incorporeal impulsion is divine, infallible, and eternal. The student should be most careful not to thrust aside Science, and shade God's window which lets in light, or seek to ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy

... suppose, because you found nothing to complain of as to them. I answered accordingly. In doing so I laid down the principle to which I purpose adhering, which is to proceed with the draft, at the same time employing infallible means to avoid any great wrong. With the communication received to-day you send figures for twenty-eight districts, including the twelve sent before, and still omitting three, for which I suppose the enrolments are not yet received. In looking over the fuller list of twenty-eight districts, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... higher wages than any other store could dream of paying. As a result, he got more efficient men, and they rendered him and his patrons a more satisfying service. In short, to deal at Childs' Cash Store became almost the infallible index ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... left flank of the position. It was much later, when reports on the battle of Borodino were written at leisure, that the incorrect and extraordinary statement was invented (probably to justify the mistakes of a commander in chief who had to be represented as infallible) that the Shevardino Redoubt was an advanced post—whereas in reality it was simply a fortified point on the left flank—and that the battle of Borodino was fought by us on an entrenched position previously selected, where as it was fought on a quite unexpected ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... an OLD OX-CART, drawn by ROPE HARNESS! The thing itself was a miracle. He made no parade about what he could do, but only fixed up a plain pasteboard notice, informing the public that he possessed an infallible remedy for the cholera, and would engage to cure all who ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... spectroscope test. This test will reveal the presence of the minutest trace of blood, and it is practically infallible. It depends on the curious property, possessed by nearly all bodies, of absorbing certain parts of the light that passes through them. Sunlight passing through a prism is split up into the familiar seven colours of the rainbow. But if a little blood dissolved in water is ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... ugly Face is an infallible Sign; your Dysurie, as the Arabicks call it, and your ill-favour'd Countenance, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... lifted her veil," said Pentaur, "but my soul is the offspring of the soul-filled body of the All; a portion of the infallible spirit of the Divinity stirs in my breast, and if it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... that he "scrawled at full gallop" A Fable for Critics, which is a humorous poem of about two thousand long lines, presenting an unusually excellent criticism of his contemporary authors. In this most difficult type of criticism, Lowell was not infallible; but a comparison of his criticisms with the verdicts generally accepted to-day will show his unusual ability in this field. Not a few of these criticisms remain the best of their kind, and they serve to focus many of the characteristics of the authors of the first half of the nineteenth century. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... government, will save us from such extreme manifestations of democratic tyranny as those to which allusion has been made above. The special danger in England would appear rather to arise from the probability of gradual dry rot, due to prolonged offence against the infallible and relentless laws of economic science. Both British employers of labour and British workmen are insular in their habits of thought, and insular in the range of their acquired knowledge. They do not appear as yet to be ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... language we might suppose that he is thought to be purely benevolent. Yet from their dogmas it would seem that he is a capricious tyrant. How are we to explain the discrepancy? The discrepancy is the infallible result of the circumstances already stated.[614] The Deity has limitless power, and therefore is the natural object of our instinctive fears. The character of the Deity is absolutely incomprehensible, and incomprehensibility in human affairs is identical with caprice and insanity.[615] The ends ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... must determine His action. What gave Him the signal that the hour was struck is not told us, nor how soon after that moment it came. But the saying gently but decisively declares His freedom, His infallible accuracy, and certain intervention at the right time. We may think that He delays, but He always ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... directed by a physiological or a spiritual necessity, a necessity on which instinct is based, I am forced to admit, here, a reason that is not my reason; a superior, infallible reason in the disposition of things; a reason that laughs at my reason, which, in spite of itself, must submit under pain of falling into absurdity. I feel that it is only by this absolute submission of my reason that it can rise to the ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... the habits of women appeared to him to interfere most unwarrantably with the Creator's original plan. For the rest he had the heart of a child, would strip the clothes from his back to give to a friend, or even to an enemy, and possessed an infallible gift ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... differences of opinion among biologists, which must be noted. As Sir E. Ray Lankester recently said, it is not at all true that Darwinism is questioned in zoology to-day. It is true only that Darwin was not omniscient or infallible, and some of ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... behind the curtain and returned thence with a roll from which he read: "The heavens have declared by their signs infallible that before the next new moon, the Khan Rassen will lie dead at the hands of the stranger lord who came to this country from ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... inclosed. After a rational system had been formulated and declared to be the Whole, his first instinct was to get away from it. He was sure that there must be more outside than there was inside. "The 'through-and-through' universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible, impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity with no possibilities, its relations with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... recognise an agreeable acquaintance, formed two years ago, in the Neapolis Japonicus; it bears a delicate fruit, of the size of a plum, whose yellow, freckled skin contains such a nectar-like juice that the pine-apple itself scarcely excels it. Our fellow-passenger, the infallible voice of a new-made cardinal of the warlike name of Schwarzenburg, who tasted it here, as he told us, for the first time, has already pronounced a similar opinion, and no dissentients being heard, the Japan medlar passed with acclamation. The Buggibellia spectabilis ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... for the fulfilment of the Promises; but if the Word which we speak is that of the Creating Spirit, we may reckon it as being just as certain in its operation as the Law, and the two together form an infallible Power. ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... then if his work comes to rehearsal he has to accept corrections and make alterations at the instance of those who have been through the proper early training. No one had anything to teach Richard in these respects: he knew by what seems an infallible instinct, but which was mainly the result of all he had seen since his babyhood, precisely what was effective and what ineffective on the stage, what was possible and what impossible. He made no mistakes; even the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... only try a man's virtue when you offer him something that he covets. The earldom and the garter were to Lord Lilburne no more tempting inducements than a doll or a skipping-rope; had you offered him an infallible cure for the gout, or an antidote against old age, you might have hired him as your lackey on your own terms. Lord Lilburne's next heir was the son of his only brother, a person entirely dependent on his uncle. Lord Lilburne ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... growing class, the pied-a-terre hunters, not as a potential neighbour, but as a mere counsellor and very platonic friend, I would say that I have recently discovered two ways of acquiring country places, both of which, although no doubt neither is infallible, have ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... nothing in common with the devices of demagogues who teach the doctrine, that the voice of (p. 084) the people is the voice of God; that the aggregation of fallible parts, acting, too, with diminished responsibilities, forms an infallible whole. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... himself paid no attention to them, but went his own way. Presently he was a king's son in disguise, and was betrothed to the eldest daughter of the King—and the new time was coming. Or when his mood was quieter, he would sit and work at an infallible clock which would not show the time; it would be ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... much-needed warning against the confusion between consciousness as an infallible authority, and belief upon experience, of which we are conscious as a belief—Mr Mill proceeds to sift the alleged self-evident connection between Free-will and Accountability. He shows, not merely that there is no connection, but that there is a positive ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote

... Fourths of July since American Independence. But we are not acquainted with any English writer or politician of the very slightest consideration or responsibility who has committed himself to the astounding proposition, that popularly elected legislatures are infallible. Who has ever advanced such a doctrine? Further, "It requires some attention to facts to see how widely spread is the misgiving as to the absolute wisdom of popularly elected chambers." We are not surprised at the misgiving. But after reasonable ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... world has never seen a more terrible, desperate, solemn struggle than the one which is going on in the soul of the poor trembling young woman, who, at the feet of that man, has to decide whether or not she will open her lips on those things which the infallible voice of God, united to the no less infallible voice of her womanly honour and self-respect, tell her never to reveal ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... Grant and Lincoln. Divine emotion is not aroused alone by words from the pulpit or the silent walls of a house. Seeing is as great a means of God as hearing, but seeing receives its sermons from the infallible; hearing listens to that which may ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... man may not be infallible in depending upon his imagination or principle-gathering organ for acquiring knowledge, and in the nature of things it is subject to correction and verification, but as a positive, practical, economical working organ in a world as large as this, an imagination ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... Fellahin believe that it sucks out children's eyes, and hence their name, "Masssah." Here, as in the Sinaitic Peninsula, "the owl and the hyena are used as charms; and the burnt feathers of the former, and the boiled flesh of the latter (superior filth!), are considered as infallible specifics for numerous disorders." In other parts of Arabia the hooting of the owl portends death; and the cry, Ft—ft, is interpreted, "He is ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... in the case of the Church of Rome, there is not only a process of development, but an infallible developing power, and that this affords a guaranty, strong as the Divine promise itself, against that risk of error which is attendant on the ordinary methods of human teaching,—we answer, that this is a mere assumption, which requires to be proved, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... own selfhood, is nature's highest teacher, and infallible; and tells all, by her "still, small voice within," whether and just wherein they are making love right or wrong. Every false step forewarns all against itself; and great is their fall who stumble. Courtship has its own inherent ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... boyish delight at the prospect of visiting a place, the infallible clew to all whose intricacies I held in ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... apostolicae potestatis plenitudine." ... "auctoritate omnipotentis Dei nobis in beato Petro concessa, ac vicariatus Jesu Christi qua fungimur in terris." The same language is used in the second bull. Mr. Prescott (Ferdinand and Isabella, part i. chap, vii.) translates certa scientia "infallible knowledge," but in order to avoid any complications with modern theories concerning papal infallibility, I prefer to use a ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... court addressed this pair, "is there any infallible method by which your science is able to distinguish between a nigger ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... have heard Just now described in such a horrid form, Is the most gentle and most pious queen; So fearful of the gods, that she believes Whate'er their priests affirm. And by the Sun, Faith is no faith if it falls short of that. I'd be infallible; and that, I know, Will ne'er be granted me by Common Sense: Wherefore I do disclaim her, and will join The cause of Ignorance. And now, my lords, Each to his post. The rostrum I ascend; My lord of Law, you to your courts repair; And you, my good lord Physick, to the queen; ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... cupboard, my dear," said the Duke, the proud blood of his race coming to his aid in a perfect and commanding coolness in the face of the terrible danger that faced him, "you will find three cans of JOBSON's Patent Fire Annihilating Essence. It is advertised as infallible. Give one to the butler, take one yourself, and give the third to me. This appears to be a good opportunity for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various

... but he is not infallible. We should never get on in life if we gave way to groundless fears, dear wife. Besides, have we not the promise, 'Lo, I am ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... offering to decide for you all the difficult questions of heart and life with authority—offering you the romantic fancy of a semi-goddess in its worship of the Virgin, in whose gentle bosom you may repose every trouble, and an infallible Church which can set everything right for you. Now just notice how far God's religion is from both. It does not say, 'Ye shall be as gods;' but, 'This Man receiveth sinners': not, 'Hath God said?' but, 'Thus saith the Lord.' Turn ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... the Serbian fighting units. They had just emerged through two victorious wars; they had triumphed so completely that there was small wonder if the Serbian farmers had come to believe themselves invincible and their leaders infallible. Practically every man in the Serbian army was a seasoned veteran; he had had not only his baptism of fire, but he had been through some of the bloodiest battles of modern times. He had got over his first fright; he was in that state of mind where ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... contrary, it should not seem worth while to erect a mart of literature in this kingdom, under wiser regulations and better discipline than in any other part of Europe? And whether this would not be an infallible means of drawing men and money into ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... Mr. Luther Barr, the famous ivory importer," he said, with far more respect in his tones than he had used to the boys; whom indeed, he looked upon as talented chaps, but still boys—which to men of his caliber is an infallible sign that anything such youthful persons may attempt is extremely likely to go wrong. How erroneous such an opinion is, those of our readers who have followed the adventures ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... represented. But to return to the Roman Catholics, how can we be secure from the practice of Jesuited Papists in that religion? For not two or three of that order, as some of them would impose upon us, but almost the whole body of them are of opinion, that their infallible master has a right over kings, not only in spirituals but temporals. Not to name Mariana, Bellarmine, Emanuel Sa, Molina, Santare, Simancha,[85] and at least twenty others of foreign countries; we can produce of our own nation, Campian, and Doleman ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... conclusion which does not follow, of necessity, from its premisses; and which is subject to be false: hence such like faith is not a virtue. On the other hand, the faith of which we are speaking is based on the Divine Truth, which is infallible, and consequently its object cannot be anything false; so that faith of this ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... and that if you made it your business to search, you would not find such another. You only sent for a barber; but here, in my person, you have the best barber in Bagdad, an experienced physician, a profound chemist, an infallible astrologer, a finished grammarian, a complete orator, a subtle logician, a mathematician perfectly well versed in geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and all the refinements of algebra; an historian fully master ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... this invention, which is the novelty of it, was going to be a dangerous thing to society, or, indeed, that they were not the most harmless things in the world. It is the true cause of HEAT, and the infallible means of producing that under the greatest variety of conditions, which he appears to be trying to arrive at there. But what harm can there be in that, or in any other discovery of that kind. And there is no real impression made on any one's mind by that book, that there is any ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... notice in the Church of England Journal gratified me much, and chiefly because it was the Church of England Journal. Whatever such critics as he of the Mirror may say, I love the Church of England. Her ministers, indeed, I do not regard as infallible personages, I have seen too much of them for that, but to the Establishment, with all her faults—the profane Athanasian creed excluded—I am ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... heel-mark. I removed my business from his charge next morning. He has not yet run off with any trust-funds, but there is a nasty gleam in his eye, and I am convinced that it is only a question of time. Golf, my dear fellow, is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well. The man who can smile bravely when his putt is diverted ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... talk of the jeers of cabmen at each other, and how sharp some of them were. Then again they began to talk about other common sayings—the very origin of which had been forgotten; and Frank King spoke of a taunt which was an infallible recipe for driving a bargee mad—'Who choked the boy with duff?'—though nobody, not the bargees themselves, now knew anything whatever about the tragic incident that must have happened sometime ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... about the navel. The nipples grow red, the heart beats unusually strongly, the natural appetite abates, and the woman has a craving after strange food. The neck of the womb is contracted, so that it can scarcely be felt when the finger is put in. And the following is an infallible sign; she is alternately in high spirits and melancholy; the monthly courses cease without any apparent cause, the evacuations from the bowels are retained unusually long, by the womb pressing on the large gut, and her desire for sexual intercourse is diminished. ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... distance by appearing before him at one time and disappearing from his view at another. And when Rama at last knew who and what that deer was, viz., that he was a Rakshasa, that illustrious descendant of Raghu's race took out an infallible arrow and slew that Rakshasa, in the disguise of a deer. And struck with Rama's arrow, the Rakshasa, imitating Rama's voice, cried out in great distress, calling upon Sita and Lakshmana. And when the princess of Videha ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... was exercised for the National good; and on the whole exercised wisely. He went on with his schemings for many years, from day to day making the best use of the material at hand; with well-nigh infallible instinct seizing on the very forces that were essential in years to come to the realization ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... are, and I give you fair warning that I am going to try on you my own secret and special thrust Captain Fracasse—the crowning glory of my art, the 'ne plus ultra' of my science—the elixir of my life. It is known only to myself, and up to this time has been infallible. I have never failed to kill my man with it. If you can parry it I will teach it to you. It is my only possession, and I will leave it to you if you survive it; otherwise I will take my secret to the grave with me. I have never yet found any one capable of executing it, unless indeed it be ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... out of the darkened room and lured him on, a thing of flaming brightness. His mirror of vision was silver-clear, a flashing, dazzling palimpsest of imagery. Wonder and beauty walked with him, hand in hand, and all power was his. He tried to tell it to Joe, but Joe had visions of his own, infallible schemes whereby he would escape the slavery of laundry-work and become himself the owner of a great ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... in the Crucifixion of Jesus than the ethics of the Gospels. It was mystic in its emphasis upon an inner testimony to the realities it offered. For the Protestant it locked up unexpectedly upon the infallible authority of the Bible and for the Catholic upon the inerrancy of the Church. It was out of the current of the modern temper in science and philosophy generally. Its conceptions of the probable fate of ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... dinner last night, nothing again this morning, yet no one would go in to report this fact, as rain was falling, and the king was shut up with his women. Presently the thought struck me that the rifle, which was always infallible in gaining me admittance at the palace, might be of the same service now. I therefore shot a dove close to the royal abode, and, as I expected, roused the king at once, who sent his pages to know what the firing was about. When told the truth—that I had been ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Safety, which stated that the Army of the Alps had been kept inactive by the intrigues of the younger Robespierre and of Ricord. Many a head had fallen for reasons less serious than these. But Buonaparte had one infallible safeguard: he could not well be spared. After a careful examination of his papers, the Commissioners, Salicetti and Albitte, provisionally restored him to liberty, but not, for some weeks, to his rank of general (August 20th, 1794). The chief reason assigned for his liberation was ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... without amusing him with superfluous Observations for his Instruction: I shall therefore observe throughout this Treatise this Method: 1. The several Chases or Games which fall under the first Denomination, Hunting. 2. The genuine or infallible Rules whereby we are to direct our selves, for the obtaining the true Pleasure in prosecuting the same, and the desired ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett

... he nodded, and said: "I will reach him and discover myself to him, and bring him, if he stray, most undoubted and infallible lady," and with an air of mystery he made ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... fact that laxity in dress and negligence in military courtesy run hand in hand with laxity and negligence in almost everything else, and that is why we can always look for certain infallible symptoms in the individual dress, carriage and courtesies ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... enter into this disputation it wold not draw me quite off the ground of our discours; besides the mis-spending of the whole daie thereupon: One word onely I will answet to them, & that in the Scriptures (which must be an infallible ground to all true Christians) That in the Prophet Ieremie (M12) it is plainelie forbidden, to beleeue or hearken vnto them that Prophecies & fore-speakes by the course of ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I

... we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Paul clearly believed in his own infallibility as a teacher of religious truth, and the church of Christ has ever since regarded his epistles as part of an infallible literature. But it is equally clear that Paul believed his knowledge of truth to be limited. Infallibility does not imply omniscience, any more than limited knowledge implies error. If a human teacher were ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... I am not a worshiper of ancientism. I think I can give to present-day men credit where credit is due. But when you are old and experience has taught you that no one is infallible and that every one at times is weak and therefore you should judge your neighbor compassionately, it has also given you the power to discriminate between the false and the true and to see through the shams of ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... the hold munched their hay and oats as peaceably as though at home in their own stables. Jackson Hines had helped select them from the stock of firms changing locality or going out of business. His judgment in such matters was infallible, but he had resolutely refused to take the position of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... moral grandeur, spiritual authority, and faith-sufficiency of the heavenly oracles. They, it is true, deny what has been known as the verbal theory—a theory which owes more to the post-reformers' fear of an infallible pope, than to any real, intelligent cause—but by no recognized council or decree, acknowledged by Protestants, has that mechanical conception ever been made binding on the conscience. Modern scholarship is simply leading us to recognize a more rational criticism than was possible to our fathers; ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... they narrate, give sufficient proof of the divinity of Christ to satisfy every reasonable demand of the intellect. This is especially true concerning the resurrection of Christ, on which the proof of Christianity hinges. "He showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs." And if he arose from the dead, he was demonstrated by it to be the Son of God. And if he is the Son of God, then the Bible is the Word of God, for he has endorsed it all. Thus there were restored to me Christ, God and his Word ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... book or one epoch in the history of the world, though we do not deny the revelation contained in them. We believe that all truth, through whatever medium it comes to the world, is in so far a revelation of our Father; and it is infallible revelation when it is demonstrably true, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... lectured her: "Invisible perspiration is a process of nature necessary to health and to life. The skin is made porous for that purpose. You can kill anybody in an hour or two by closing the pores. A certain infallible ass, called Pope Leo XII., killed a little boy in two hours, by gilding him to adorn the pageant of his first procession as Pope. But what is death to the whole body must be injurious to a part. What madness, then, to clog the pores of so large and important a surface as the face, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... dear reader, say this work was too sudden, and that these baptisms were too soon. Nothing of the kind. It was only another chapter in the Acts of the Apostles, and in perfect harmony with what is stated by infallible Wisdom. There it is recorded of the multitudes, after one sermon by Peter, "Then they that gladly received his word were baptised: and the same day there were added unto ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... prerogative that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices, had moulded in its original stamina irresistible principles of decay and dissolution. The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a temporary system; the interest of active men in the State is a foundation perpetual and infallible. However, some circumstances, arising, it must be confessed, in a great degree from accident, prevented the effects of this influence for a long time from breaking out in a manner capable of exciting any serious apprehensions. ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... Country; that the Reichs Army and he are diligently climbing the Metal Mountains; and that there is not in Saxony, more than in Silesia, an enemy left. What a Sequel to Hochkirch! "Neisse and Dresden both!" we had hoped as sequel, if lucky: "Neisse OR Dresden" seemed infallible. And we are climbing the Metal Mountains, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... Without it there is neither temptation nor glory. When Jesus turned and said, "Who hath touched me?" he must have felt the influence of the woman's thought; for it is written that he felt that "virtue had gone out of him." His pure consciousness was discriminating, and rendered this infallible verdict; but he neither held her error by affinity nor by infirmity, for ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy

... had continued for some time, Neptune offered me a box of infallible ointment, to cure all the diseases of life. It was a lump of grease; and his valet, seizing it, rubbed my face all over with it. He then scrubbed me with a handful of oakum, which effectually took off the tar. Being now pronounced ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... contrary, he had a way of speaking out his own honest thoughts, and would have despised himself, as much as would Greeley, if it had been necessary to enjoy any one's friendship on terms of humiliation. It was his nature, as well as his wish, to share with Weed the benefit of the latter's almost infallible judgment in political matters. In this way, Weed, more than either realised, had great influence with Seward. But Weed was no more the directing mind of the administration of Seward than was Hamilton of Washington's, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... letters of blood,—that where truth, temperance, and equity have been preserved, all strength, and peace, and joy have been preserved also;—that where lying, lasciviousness, and covetousness have been practised, there has followed an infallible, and, for centuries, irrecoverable ruin. And you know, lastly, that the observance of this common law of righteousness, commending itself to all the pure instincts of men, and fruitful in their temporal good, is by the religious writers of every nation, and chiefly ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... remonstrated Breckenridge. The older man was plainly ill at ease at this open defiance of the supposedly infallible check-stations. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... possess Perfection—a perfect infallible book of revelations in her King James Version of the Scriptures, and she claimed to have lived by it, too, for eighty years. I was fresh from the theological school, and this was my first "charge." This was my first meal, too, in this new charge, at the ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... fairly, what might have been your opinion, had you all the biases of education and interest your adversary may possibly have? But if you contend for the honour of victory alone, you may lay down this as an infallible maxim, That you cannot make a more false step, or give your antagonists a greater advantage over you, than ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... girl was born. Just at that time the wife of a man who combined the occupations of bonze and umbrella-maker, bore a son, and the two children were surreptitiously exchanged. This story does not rest upon infallible testimony. Nor does another narrative, with regard to the motives which induced Kiyomori's widow to drown the young Emperor. Those motives are said to have been two. One was to fix upon the Minamoto the heinous crime of having done a sovereign to death, so that some avenger might ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... it out of his way as you'd like to do, but he doesn't do it. And of course we do not shatter our ideals ourselves—always: a thousand things outside ourselves do that for us. And what reason had you to say that you would have what you wanted? Your wishes are not infallible. Suppose you craved ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... conscience, the judge, has praised a David when sinning against what he believed to be the law of right; never once has it condemned a Daniel in doing what he believed to be right. In this sense conscience is, indeed, infallible and is the very voice ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... plant the Persian walnut where peaches and sweet cherries do well is a good one; but not infallible and certainly can't be too closely relied upon here in southwestern Michigan. Since 1933, I have placed several hundred grafts of the Persian walnut upon black stocks. Many of these are top worked trees, but there were 68 grafted seedlings ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... even to himself. But what it was he confessed afterwards to Abigail, that he purposed utterly to kill Nabal and all his people. David was wrong of course. But the Bible makes no secret of the wrong-doings of its heroes. It does not tell us that they were infallible and perfect. It tells us that they were men of like passions with ourselves, in order that by seeing how they conquered their passions we may ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... But this expectation ended in disappointment, the infatuation being too wide-spread and corrupting, to be stopped by even this check, and the rebuke was reserved for a form that seems to depend on a law of nature, that of causing a vice to bring with it its own infallible punishment. ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... sudden storm of rain and violent thunder added to Katchiba's renown, and after the shower, horns were blowing and nogaras were beating in honour of their chief. Entre nous, my whistle was considered infallible. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... always an infallible guide, supplied many plausible arguments to those who sought to forecast the immediate future. In the War of Independence, not only had the impracticable nature of the country, especially of the South, baffled the armies ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... deposition of Eugenius was either a rightful and valid exercise of conciliar authority or it was not. If it was not—if the council had wrongfully or uncanonically condemned the successor of Peter—how could it be infallible? and when should its legislation in any other particulars be indisputable? On the other hand, if the deposition was a valid one, with what consistency could the French continue to regard Eugenius as their legitimate pastor? It was a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... notice of Gutmann in Fetis' Biographie Universelle des Musiciens, and those of the followers of this by no means infallible authority, are very incorrect. Adolfo Gutmann, Riccordi Biografici, by Giulio Piccini (Firenze: Guiseppe Polverini, 1881), reproduces to a great extent the information contained in Der Lieblingsschuler Chopin's in Bernhard Stavenow's Schone Geister (Bremen: ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... Handbook." He has gathered together, indeed, a store of information, and must, to make his single volume, have gutted many hundreds of guide-books. How the Continental ciceroni must hate him, whoever he is! Every English party I saw had this infallible red book in their hands, and gained a vast deal of historical and general information from it. Thus I heard, in confidence, many remarkable anecdotes of Charles V., the Duke of Alva, Count Egmont, all of which I had before ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray

... becoming Lord Chancellor. I also found enclosed a very characteristic note from Lawless, wherein he stated, that if I really was likely to be obliged to earn my own living, he could put me up to a dodge, by which all the disagreeables of having so to do might be avoided. This infallible recipe proved to be a scheme for my turning stage-coachman! After citing numerous examples of gentlemen who had done so (amongst whom the name of a certain baronet stood forth in high pre-eminence), he wound up by desiring ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... the argument is to prove that 'the idea', according to the principle of the 'philosophy of nature', is an infallible index of the actual condition of the world without us. Here Coleridge introduces ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... shall send a troop to await me a mile or so from the town on the road to Weston Zoyland. We shall join them with our captive, and thus convey him to the Royalist General. Could aught be simpler or more infallible?" ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... having used flint arrow-heads in their pretended witchcraft; in Sweden, a polished hatchet yeas placed in the bed of women in the pangs of labor; in Burmah, thunder-stones reduced to powder were looked upon as an infallible cure for ophthalmia; and the Canaches have a collection of stones with a special superstition connected with each. But why seek examples so far away and in a past so remote? In our own day anti in our own land we find men who think themselves invulnerable and their cattle safe if they are fortunate ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... parents to some rule of conduct and behaviour. But this must be admitted, that, if such a state of mutual war and violence was ever real, the suspension of all laws of justice, from their absolute inutility, is a necessary and infallible consequence. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... honoured by a visit from Togo himself, with whom I believed myself to be something of a favourite, although Togo's favouritism never took the form of sparing the favoured one, or giving him easy work to execute; on the contrary, the most infallible sign that a man was in the Admiral's favour was the assignment to him of some exceptionally difficult, arduous, or dangerous task. He had, of course, already heard of my adventure from Kamimura, but he wanted to hear the story from my own lips, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... singing its accumulating harmonies, poor Beckmesser on his blackboard jotted down the rules which were being broken. Beckmesser represents a static conception of life which endeavours to freeze progress at a given point and call it infallible. But Beckmesser is wrong. You cannot take things like music and religion and set them down in final rules and regulations. They are life, and you have to let them grow and flower and expand and reveal evermore the latent splendour at ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... stands on the same ground as his predecessors, by holding that the moral truth of things is the criterion of the divinity of a doctrine, that the Christian religion is merely a restoration of natural religion, and that the apostles were not infallible. Peculiar to him are the application of the first of these principles to the Mosaic law, with the conclusion that this was not a revelation; the complete separation of the New Testament from the Old ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... obligatory. The word rendered 'statutes' means something engraved, or written, and recalls the tables inscribed by God's finger. 'Judgments' are the divine decisions or sentences as to what is right, and therefore the infallible clue to the else bewildering labyrinth. To obey these commandments, to read that solemn writing, and to accept these decisions as our guides, is man's perfection and blessedness; and for that God's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Presbyterian true blue; For he was of that stubborn crew Of errant saints, whom all men grant To be the true church militant; Such as do build their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun; Decide all controversies by Infallible artillery; And prove their doctrine orthodox, By apostolic blows and knocks; Call fire, and sword, and desolation, A godly, thorough reformation, Which always must be carried on, And still be doing, never done; As if religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended: A sect whose chief devotion ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... the reign of a just king "fine weather, calm seas, crops abundant, and trees laden with fruit." On the other hand, dearth, dryness of cows, blight of fruit, and scarcity of corn were regarded as infallible proofs that ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... door opened. A man carrying a lantern entered, followed by two others, and as the light fell upon his face, I uttered a cry of astonishment, for he was none other than my old friend Leglosse, while behind him was the infallible Lepallard. ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby

... sale to the highest bidder the fee simple of the Borough of Gatton with the power of nominating two members for ever. That auctioneer is worth quoting: "Need I tell you, gentlemen, that this elegant contingency is the only infallible source of fortune, titles, and honours in this happy country? That it leads to the highest situations in the State? And that, meandering through the tempting sinuosities of ambition, the purchaser will find the margin ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... to property, 'tis a tragic farce; 'tis his sovereign pleasure to eat nectarines, grow them who will. Another Alexander, he; the world is all his own! Ay, and he will govern it as he best knows how! He will legislate, dictate, dogmatize; for who so infallible? What! Cannot Goliah ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... criticize you must be conceded. The prejudices of honesty are entitled to consideration and the judgment of genius to respect bordering on reverence; but in this age of almost universal inquiry we cannot accept any man, however wise, as infallible pope in the realm of intellect and declare that from his ipse dixit there shall be no appeal. That were intellectual slavery, the most degrading species of bondage, and it is your greatest glory that you have ever been the apostle of liberty—liberty ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... an honest Bowyer who dwelt in the ward of Cheype, and was rumoured to possess great wealth. Rumour was quite as infallible in those days as at the present time, but it happened then as now to be sometimes right by accident. It stumbled upon the truth when it gave the old Bowyer a mint of money. His trade had been a profitable one in the time of King Henry the Eighth, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... doubt, and what remained to be done presented no difficulty. Nevertheless, it was essential that he should perform these final actions with promptness, decision and infallible perspicacity. The smallest blunder was irretrievable. Lupin knew this; but his strangely lucid brain had allowed for every contingency. And the movements and words which he was now about to make and utter were all fully ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... so well? I have not given you my word to reveal nothing. You confided in my rare quality of silence; you confided in me because you had proved me. Man is not infallible, even when he is named Karloff." She lifted from a vase her flowers, from which she shook the water. "Laws have been passed or annulled; laws have died at the executive desk. Who told you that this was to be, or that, long before it came to pass? In all the successful intrigues of Russia ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... her arrival, saved the Sultan the trouble to tell her of the success of Prince Ahmed's journey, which she had heard of before she came, and therefore was prepared with an infallible means, as she pretended. This means she communicated to the Sultan who declared it the next day to the Prince, in the midst of all his courtiers, in these words: "Son," said he, "I have one thing more to ask of you, after which I shall expect nothing more from your obedience, nor your interest ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... range of existing samples. It is true that here and there a painter will arise who has by nature that kind of instinct or memory, or whatever it is, that seems to feel harmonies beforehand, note by note, and add them to one another with infallible accuracy; but very few possess this, and for those who lack I am urging this training. For it is ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... freely told the sultan his thoughts, and said to him, "In my opinion, sir, there is an infallible way for your majesty to avoid a match so disproportionable, without giving Alla ad Deen, were he known to your majesty, any cause of complaint; which is, to set so high a price upon the princess, that, however rich he may be, he ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... they are all deceived. The weak prince—the diplomatic baron—the silly marshal—each and all of these are firmly convinced that this marriage is a most infallible means of preserving me to the prince, and of uniting us still more firmly! But this will prove the very means of separating us forever, and bursting asunder these execrable bonds. The cheater cheated—outwitted by a weak ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... think so. Kondaro's a god, remember? And gods are infallible. Sira Nal can explain a few disappearances by accusations of irreverence, but he'll know better than to try explaining too many that way. I should imagine that the normal losses due to unexpected storms just about use up ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... several times upon Malcolm Sage, whom he had come to regard as infallible, only to be told that there was no news. He made no comment; but it was obvious that he ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... no questions. St. Paul to you may be infallible, But Science is so unaccommodating, If not irreverent, she'll not accept His ipse dixit as an axiom. Here, in our civilized society, Is an increasing host of single women Who do not find the means of livelihood In the employments you call feminine. What ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... Greeks were tolerant because they were friends of reason and did not set up any authority to overrule reason. Opinions were not imposed except by argument; you were not expected to receive some "kingdom of heaven" like a little child, or to prostrate your intellect before an authority claiming to be infallible. ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury

... Wallie Ascher was working with Hahn. No one knew his official title or place. But "Ask Wallie. He'll know," had become a sort of slogan in the office. He did know. At twenty-one his knowledge of the theatre was infallible (this does not include plays unproduced; in this no one is infallible) and his feeling for it amounted to a sixth sense. There was something uncanny about the way he could talk about Lottie, for example, as if he had seen her; or Mrs. Siddons; or Mrs. Fiske when she ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... greatest of all the editors of big London newspapers will fail entirely to appreciate a careful and logical statement of a situation when it is subjected to him. But place before him the raw material and the implements of his own profession, and his infallible instinct for news will enable him to produce a newspaper far transcending that which his more logical critic ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook

... allowed by him to do whatever they like with facts, to draw their own conclusions, according to their own liking, and does he not stone every one who would dare to rise against the decisions of these quasi-infallible specialists, and brand ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... in their coverts; a broad mouth made for broad, natural laughter, hearty without lewdness. "There are nice Rabelaisians, and there are nasty; but the latter are not Rabelaisians. I have an idea," he claimed, "that my judgment within this area is infallible." And it was. All honest laughter he ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... life we generally spent a part of each evening in going round to inform our next neighbours that we had just discovered the solution of the problem of the universe. True, we had been round at the same friend's the week before with two equally infallible discoveries. Most unfortunately, however, on Sunday we had gone to hear the Great Grim Man of St. Christopher's preach in his own church, and he had pitilessly knocked the bottom out of both of these. Sometimes our friends called with their own latest solutions; ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... had not suggested a course of action, George was always ready enough to be taught; indeed his respect for an expert was truly deferential. But when his instinct had begun to operate he would consult nobody and consider nobody, being deeply sure that infallible wisdom had been granted to him. (Nor did experience seem to teach him.) Thus, in the affair of a London lodging, though he was still two years from his majority and had no resources save the purse of his stepfather, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... only to the Bible. A rational interpretation of the Bible, in his opinion, meant its interpretation from an Aristotelian point of view. Still, he does not consider Aristotle other than a thinker like himself, not by any means the infallible "organ of reason." The moment he discovers that a peripatetic principle is in direct and irreconcilable conflict with his religious convictions, he parts company with it, let the effort cost what it may. For, above all, Maimonides was a faithful Jew, striving ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... my impression was that you did so, when you admitted that the ruler was not infallible but might be ...
— The Republic • Plato

... wakes her to. Alone, not confused, but seeking something to lean on, she grasps the Church, which proves a broken reed. No whit disheartened, she turns from one sect to another, trying each by the infallible touchstone of that clear, child-like conscience. The two old, lonely Quakers rest her foot awhile. But the eager soul must work, not rest in testimony. Coming North at last, she makes her own religion one of sacrifice and toil. Breaking away from, rising above, all forms, the dove floats at last ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various

... a while (for I was beginning to melt), and said how much I longed to be a soldier; on which Nora recurred to her infallible 'Ah! now, would you leave me, then? But, sure, you're not big enough for anything more than a little drummer.' To which I replied, by swearing that a soldier I would be, and a ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that the position a man occupies at the close of his life is not an infallible criterion of whether he has got on in the world. There are some places in the world's history so illustrious that to occupy them it would be worth dying in poverty and misery. Ambition might well choose to be remembered with gratitude by succeeding generations ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... my experiments (which were made with every requisite caution) has fully convinced me that the TRUE COW-POX is a safe and infallible preventive from the smallpox; that in no case which has fallen under my observation has it been in any considerable degree troublesome, much less have I seen any thing like danger; for in no instance were the patients prevented from following ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... of the Apostles, and the privilege of being eye and ear witnesses to Christ, were abilities which they had for the infallible discharge of their function, but they were not the ground of their power and authority to govern the Church. * * * 'Potestas clavium' was committed to them only, not to ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... division to vex us, but there is an entire separation and divorce of one part of the Christian church (so called) from the main mother institution. The abode of peace has become the camp of war and the arena of battles; that dogmatical theology of the Christian church, which, if it be not the infallible pure mathematics of the moral world, has been deceiving men for 1800 years, and is a liar—that theology is now publicly discussed and denied, scorned and scouted by men who do not blush to call themselves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... elder, boiled until they are soft, with a little linseed oil added thereto," laid upon a scarlet cloth and applied, as hot as it can be borne, to piles, has been said to be an infallible remedy. Each time this poultice gets cold it must be renewed for "the space of an hour." At the end of this time the final dressing is to be "bound on," and the patient "put warm to bed." If necessary the whole operation is ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel

... severely felt in the country. The weather continued sultry and fine. I have heard that Shelley all this time was in brilliant spirits. Not long before, talking of presentiment, he had said the only one that he ever found infallible was the certain advent of some evil fortune when he felt peculiarly joyous. Yet, if ever fate whispered of coming disaster, such inaudible but not unfelt prognostics hovered around us. The beauty of ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley

... had charge of the postgraduate work in atavism and superior sneering. "No, my test is not quite that, and if you venture to disagree with me about this or anything else you are a ruthless Hun and an impudent Jew. No, the garbage-man may very well be an excellent judge: for by my quite infallible test the one thing requisite for a critic of our great Philistine literature is an ability to induce within himself such an internal disturbance as resembles a ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell

... is too hot for my diet. But what, if I be not myself, but only this be my spirit that wanders up and down, and Appetitus be killed in the camp? the devil he is as soon. How's that possible? tut, tut, I know I am. I am Appetitus, and alive, too—by this infallible token, that ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... instant, but directing his passion into keen argument, desperate sarcasm, instead of allowing it to excite his imagination. Even Dr. Mather felt himself on the point of being worsted in the very presence of this congregation, who, but a short half-hour ago, looked upon him as all but infallible. Keep a good heart, Cotton Mather! your opponent's eye begins to glare and flicker with a terrible yet uncertain light—his speech grows less coherent, and his arguments are mixed up with wild glimpses at wilder revelations made to himself alone. He has touched ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... success for fifty years," said Romaine, with a chuckle. "A black suit and a clean shirt is my infallible recipe." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... arm up, and jingling the bell to his ear, first on one side and then on the other, till the track of a hyaena gave him a clue, and in two or three more steps he found it. A hyaena had carried it into the grass and dropped it. Bravo for the infallible horn, and well done the king for his honesty in sending it. Speke gave the king the bottle and gauge, which delighted him amazingly, and the old doctor, who begged for pomba, got a ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... note of a bird of good omen on the left—according to the system of our augural college—nor from the normal and audible pattering of the corn of the sacred chickens. I have other signs to note; and if they are not more infallible than those, yet after all they are less obscure or misleading. Now omens as to the future are observed by me in what I may call a twofold method: the one I deduce from Caesar himself, the other from the nature and complexion of the political situation. Caesar's characteristics are these: ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... the word empiric dates from the ages in which scholastic philosophy deduced physical consequences a priori;—the ages in which, because a lion is strong, rubbing with lion's fat would have been held an infallible tonic. In those happy days, if a physician had given decoction of a certain bark, only because in numberless instances that decoction had been found to strengthen the patient, he would have been a miserable empiric. Not that the colleges would have passed over his returns because they were empirical: ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... many who haunted the old French mansion among its oaks and maples had to meet the scrutiny of those sharp, tack-like eyes. The least slip that one made was enough to prove his downfall. The old woman sifted them as surely as she sifted her meal, and branded them with an infallible instinct akin to that of a keen watchdog. Many a young man who passed that silent figure without a greeting, or spoke lightly of some one, unheeding her presence, wondered at his want of success and felt without knowing why that he was pulling ...
— Mam' Lyddy's Recognition - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... far to explain the atrocities committed with the consent of German public opinion. William the Damned and his bureaucracy were believed to be above all moral or human law, and from the earthly standpoint were infallible and irresponsible. Their orders must ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers

... fasting till the sixth day. Having devastated the board, we must needs betray our folly by comparing the several timepieces. Alf stood at five minutes to eleven; Bartholomew some minutes behind him; Croesus, with his infallible repeater, was but 10:45; as for me, I had discreetly run down. The secret was out. The clock had been tampered with, and the trusting maids betrayed. At first they laughed with us; then they sneered, and then they grew ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... and neither attended to, nor acknowledged, the precedence which our forms assign to nobility. Seeing the young peer still unconvinced by these representations, Mr. Adair was, at length, obliged to refer him to an authority, considered infallible on such points of etiquette, the old Austrian Internuncio;—on consulting whom, and finding his opinions agree fully with those of the English minister, Lord ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... state of things, we are called on to add ninety millions more to the circulation. Proceeding in this career, it is infallible, that we must end where the revolutionary paper ended. Two hundred millions was the whole amount of all the emissions of the old Congress, at which point their bills ceased to circulate. We are now at that sum; but with treble the population, and of course a longer tether. Our depreciation ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... for. He didn't seem to be in the chastened mood of one who is about to die. He seemed vexed about something, probably the two cordite shells he was carrying. I at last came up within a hundred yards of him. He had got my wind and was facing me with tail nervously erect. The tail of a rhino is an infallible barometer of his state of mind. With his short sight, I knew that he could not see me at that distance, but I knew that he had detected the direction in which the danger lay. By slowly moving ahead, the distance was cut to about seventy yards, which was not ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... [D—H resembling] that all tempting Minerall newly digged up, the Actors being onely the labouring Miners, but you the skilfull Triers and Refiners: Now considering [D—H consider] how currant this hath passed, under the infallible stampe of your judicious censure, and applause, and (like a gainefull Office in this Age) eagerly sought for, not onely by those that have heard & seene it, [F—H omit heard and] but by others that have meerely heard thereof: here you behold me ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... principle is there; that in whose light the pure hearts of all time have rejoiced. It is 'the great light of ages' of which Pythagoras speaks, the 'good spirit' of Socrates; the 'divine mind' of Anaxagoras; the 'perfect principle' of Plato; the 'infallible and immortal law, and divine power of reason' of Philo. It is the 'unbegotten principle and source of all light,' whereof Timmus testifieth; the 'interior guide of the soul and everlasting foundation of virtue,' spoken of by Plutarch. Yea, it was the hope and guide of those ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the bugle sounded "lights out,"—bugle answering bugle in far-off camps. When our not elaborate night-toilets were complete, Strong threw somebody else's old boot at the candle with infallible aim, and darkness took possession of the tent. Ned, who lay on my left, presently reached over to me, and whispered, "I say, our friend 'quite so' is a garrulous old boy! He'll talk himself to death some of these odd times, if he is n't careful. ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... value with either of the two former, will add a third part to his revenues, after he shall have paid the great incumbrances upon it; so that he may now be said to possess of Church preferments in scattered tithes, three hundred pounds a year, instead of the like sum of infallible rents from a senior fellowship with the offices annexed; beside the advantage of a free ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... exercise of reason or intelligence, it proceeds according to a rule which the understanding has itself devised for the purpose of carrying out a preconceived aim. Hence it is that action according to rule may miss its aim, while instinct is infallible. ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... interesting an epitome of all the moods, tenses, and conjugations of every regular and irregular form of "to do, to be, and to suffer;" and when you have been sufficiently smoked, fogged, astonished, and edified, you shall return home with one infallible result of your stay with us—increased value for a peaceful life, quiet companions, a wide sea-view, and potatoes roasted in their skins; not but what you shall have the last-mentioned luxury here, if you ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble



Words linked to "Infallible" :   infallibility, foolproof, unerring, unfailing, inerrant, inerrable



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