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Contrariety

noun
(pl. contrarieties)
1.
The relation between contraries.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Contrariety" Quotes from Famous Books



... contrast with Europe. If then the tribes which inhabit a cold country have, generally speaking, more energy than those which are relaxed by the heat, it follows that you will have in Asia two descriptions of people brought together in extreme, sometimes in sudden, contrariety with each other, the strong and the weak. Here then, as some philosophers have argued,[22] you have the secret of the despotisms and the vast empires of which Asia has been the seat; for it always possesses those who are naturally fitted ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... great genius; but it must be in a "tete-a-tete" with one whom he loves and esteems that his colloquial powers open:—and this arises not from reserve or want of simplicity, but from having been placed in situations, where for years together he met with no congenial minds, and where the contrariety of his thoughts and notions to the thoughts and notions of those around him induced the necessity of habitually suppressing his feelings. His joy and gratitude to Heaven for the circumstance of his domestication with me, I can scarcely describe to you; and ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... silver coloured, With little hands and fingers long and small To grace a lute, a viol, virginal. In length each finger doth his next excel, Each richly headed with a pearly shell. Thus every part in contrariety Meet in the whole and make a harmony, As divers strings do singly disagree, But form'd by number ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... where he was born, the character for honesty, independence, and industry, that his father had borne before him, to support in credit and comfort the sister whom he loved so well, and one whom he loved still better, formed the safe and humble boundary of his wishes. But with the contrariety with which fortune so often seems to pursue those who do not follow her, his success far outstripped his moderate desires. The neighbouring gentlemen soon discovered his talent. Employment poured in upon him. His taste proved to be equal to his skill; and from the ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... silence and recalled the dispute to its true object, said: "Chiefs and instructors of nations; you came together in search of truth. At first, every one of you, thinking he possessed it, demanded of the others an implicit faith; but perceiving the contrariety of your opinions, you found it necessary to submit them to a common rule of evidence, and to bring them to one general term of comparison; and you agreed that each should exhibit the proofs of his doctrine. You began by alleging facts; but each religion and every sect, being equally furnished with ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... of scandal. When Eustace Glazzard began to present himself at the house, Mr. Mumbray welcomed the significant calls. From his point of view, Serena could not do better than marry a man of honourable name, who would remove her to London. Out of mere contrariety, Mrs. Mumbray thereupon began to encourage the slow advances of her Rector, who thought of Serena's fortune as a means to the wider activity, the greater distinction, for ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... gravity of the proposition submitted by you to Representatives from the Slave States would naturally occasion diversity, if not contrariety, of opinion. You will not, therefore, be surprised that I have not been able to concur in view with ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... was raised from the dead, in which room, and at the time specified, we, being present and looking on, perceived no such event to have taken place. Here the assertion is contrary to experience properly so called; and this is a contrariety which no evidence can surmount. It matters nothing, whether the fact be of a miraculous nature, or not. But although this be the experience, and the contrariety, which Archbishop Tillotson alleged in the quotation with which Mr. Hume ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... side wall opposite to their beds. They suspected that this had been going on much longer than they were aware, for its presence was discovered by a sort of accident, its movements happening to take a direction in distinct contrariety to theirs. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... begin; for she has always been severe upon our bluff old man, and it is not the spirit of contrariety alone which makes me invariably take his part. Coarse he may be, and not one whom the owners would have chosen to command the Lady Jermyn; a good seaman none the less, who brought us round the Horn in foul weather without losing stitch or stick. I think ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... The same contrariety of impulse may be perhaps discovered in the motions of men: we are formed for society, not for combination; we are equally unqualified to live in a close connexion with our fellow-beings, and in total ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... that sedentary, and within-door arts, and delicate manufactures (that require rather the finger than the arm), have, in their nature, a contrariety to a military disposition. And generally, all warlike people are a little idle, and love danger better than travail. Neither must they be too much broken of it, if they shall be preserved in vigor. Therefore it was great advantage, in the ancient ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... signifies the Cubit measure, but that which expresseth Pugils; that is, Men fit for Combat and the Exercise of the Fist. Thus there can be no satisfying illation from this Text, the diversity, or rather contrariety of Expositions and Interpretations, distracting more than confirming the Truth of ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson

... significant meaning, is the great whole that results from the collection of matter, under its various combinations, with that contrariety of motion, which the universe presents to our view. Nature, in a less extended sense, or considered in each individual, is the whole that results from its essence; that is to say, the peculiar qualities, the combination, the impulse, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... woman's being almost generally as here sketched, she looks upon the world differently from man. Hence, again, a strong source of contrariety between ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... we find them: the Keltoi and the Sakai, always at contrariety, do not seem to have altered in character from the earliest prehistoric reports of old Herodotus even to our own times, more than three thousand years. Racial peculiarities are known to survive the actual transplantation to new lands; see in especial the Irish of ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... a country gentleman, appears to be a Tory, or, as it is gently expressed, an adherent to the landed interest) is opposed Sir Andrew Freeport, a new man, a wealthy merchant, zealous for the moneyed interest, and a Whig. Of this contrariety of opinions, it is probable more consequences were at first intended than could be produced when the resolution was taken to exclude party from the paper. Sir Andrew does but little, and that little seems not to have pleased Addison, who, when he dismissed him from ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... but a precursor, as he himself was, of the Messiah. Evidently he continues firm in the conviction of Christ's being sent from God, and is ready to accept His answer as conclusive; but, as evidently, he is puzzled by the contrariety between Jesus' deeds and his own expectations. He asks, 'Art Thou He that cometh'—a well-known name for Messiah—'or are we to expect another?' where it should be noted that the word for 'another' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... sacrifice of the loving soul—she has but the one to make—to leave the delights of God, and for the sake of being a useful servant to Jesus to pick up the daily life in the world; which sacrifice is in direct contrariety to the sacrifice of the creature, which counts its sacrifices as a giving up of the things of the world. So by opposites they may come to one similarity—perfection. How to conduct itself in all these difficult ways so foreign to its own earthly nature is a hard problem ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley

... within the country. The assumption not having been adopted until late in the session, the discussion on the revenue which would be required for this portion of the public debt did not commence until the House had become impatient for an adjournment. As much contrariety of opinion was disclosed, and the subject was not of immediate importance, it was deferred to the ensuing session, and an order was made requiring the Secretary of the Treasury to prepare and report such further provision as might, in his opinion, be necessary for establishing the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... of several of the magistrates, and consequently could not be at a loss for means of traversing the assistance desired by Mr Anson. And this opposition of the French was not merely the effect of national prejudice or contrariety of political interests, but was in good measure owing to their vanity, a motive of much more weight with the generality of mankind, than any attachment to the public service of their community: For, the French ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... admissible in a court of law when a thief is on trial, applied against the practice of "publicly hanging," there would be little difficulty in convicting it of inciting to crime. Not only does the problem of complex philosophy-the reader may make the philosophy to suit his taste-presented in the contrariety of scenes on and about the gallows offer something irreconcileable to ordinary minds, but gives to the humorous large means with which to feast their love of the ludicrous. On the scaffold of destruction, our good brothers of the clergy would, pointing to the "awful example," assure the motley assembly ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... damaskry; A quarter quintal eke of musk: * These of one night shall pay the fee. Pearls, unions and carnelian[FN341]-stones * The bestest best of jewelry!' Of fairest patience showed I show * In contrariety albe: At last she favoured me one night * When rose the moon a crescent wee; An stranger blame me for her sake * I say, 'O blamers listen ye! She showeth locks of goodly length * And black as blackest night its blee; While on her cheeks the roses glow * Like Laz-flame incendiary: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... Such people as you see may be old, or toil-worn, or sorry; but you see them framed in the forest, like figures on a painted canvas; and for you, they are not people in any living and kindly sense. You forget the grim contrariety of interests. You forget the narrow lane where all men jostle together in unchivalrous contention, and the kennel, deep and unclean, that gapes on either hand for the defeated. Life is simple enough, it seems, and the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Lybia contribute. Eudoxus relates that the Egyptian priests affirm that, when it is summer to us who dwell under the northern tropic, it is winter with them that inhabit under the southern tropic; by this means there is a various contrariety and opposition of the seasons in the year, which cause such showers to fall as make the water to overflow the banks of the Nile and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... I have mentioned that contrariety in my disposition, and, perhaps, in my brother's, which somehow placed us on wrong sides in the quarrel which ensued, and which from this time forth raged for five years, until the mother country was fain to acknowledge her ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... contrariety of opinion prevailing in the community, in regard to the pleasantness of the business of teaching. Some teachers go to their daily task, merely upon compulsion: they regard it as intolerable drudgery. Others love the work: they hover around the school-room as long as they ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... one of the necessary differences between a Modern Utopia and those finite compact settlements of the older school of dreamers? It is not to be a unanimous world any more, it is to have all and more of the mental contrariety we find in the world of the real; it is no longer to be perfectly explicable, it is just our own vast mysterious welter, with some of the blackest shadows gone, with a clearer illumination, and a more conscious and intelligent will. Irrelevance ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... spirit of intuition or contrariety, Justice Hare was spending this evening at home, a thing he did not do once in six months unless he had friends with him. Things in real life do mostly go by the rules of contrary, as children say in their play, holding the corners of the handkerchief, "Here we go round and round by the rules ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... hath been a malignant, and is now converted, am I bound to discover him? Ans. This his malignity, was either before the covenant, or since; if before, no. For then this league had no being, and a non-ens can have no contrariety. If since, the discovery must be at the first appearance of malignity, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... interest of sect or party. The various readings of copies, and different interpretations of a passage, seem to be questions that might exercise the wit, without engaging the passions. But whether it be that small things make mean men proud, and vanity catches small occasions; or that all contrariety of opinion, even in those that can defend it no longer, makes proud men angry; there is often found in commentaries a spontaneous strain of invective and contempt, more eager and venomous than is vented by the most furious ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... way:—In the sensible world some things are generant, others are generated, and others direct both these. Generant are the simple bodies; that is, the celestial bodies and the four elements. For out of the elements, through the power of light, reconciling the contrariety of elements in things mixed, are generated and produced whatever things are generated and produced by the operation of natural power. Generated are the bodies composed of the elements, as minerals, vegetables, sensible things, and human bodies. Directing both these and those are ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... universe has its opposite; and opposites, in regard to each other, are not relatives, but contraries. Relatives are what exist between the greatest and the least of the same thing; whereas contraries arise from an opposite in contrariety thereto; and the latter are relatives in regard to each other, as the former are in their regard one to another; wherefore also the relations themselves are opposites. That all things have their opposites, is evident from light, heat, the times of ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... because they are not mooued with like affections. For the remembrance of iniuries easily stirreth vp inconsiderate motions of anger. Also, such a kind of temperature or permixtion, as it were, by way of contrariety breedeth more bitternes then sweetnes, more hate then loue: whereupon more grieuous complaints aswel vnto your highnes as vnto our selues, might be occasioned. The lord knoweth, that euen now we are too much wearied and disquieted with the importunate and instant complaints of our subiects, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... Two expressed the contrary idea. There commenced the fatal knowledge of good and evil. Everything double, false, opposed to the single and sole reality, was expressed by the Binary number. It expressed also that state of contrariety in which nature exists, where everything is double; night and day, light and darkness, cold and heat, wet and dry, health and sickness, error and truth, one and the other sex, etc. Hence the Romans dedicated the second month in the year to Pluto, the God of Hell, and the second day of that month ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Good, inasmuch as it is delightful, moves the concupiscible power. But if it prove difficult to obtain, from this very fact it has a certain contrariety to the concupiscible power: and hence the need of another power tending to that good. The same applies to evil. And this power is the irascible faculty. Consequently the concupiscible passions are specifically different from ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... can put up with this moody contrariety of mine is Sylvestre Lampron. He is nearly twenty years older than I. That explains his forbearance. Besides, between an artist like him and a dreamer like myself there is only the difference of handiwork. He translates his dreams. I waste mine; but both dream. Dear old ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... in evidence in so early a work as Voltaire's Candide, for example, in which the desire for justice as well as happiness beats against human contrariety and takes refuge at last in a forced and inconclusive contentment with little things. Candide was but one of the pioneers of a literature of uneasy complaint that was presently an innumerable multitude of books. The novels more particularly of the nineteenth century, if one ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... not unnatural that the girl should wish to reflect in solitude upon the grave problem which had been given her for consideration. It would be wiser, too, not to disturb her, but to leave her to herself to reach her own conclusions. Matilde knew that Veronica had considerable gifts of contrariety, and that it would be a mistake to press her too closely for a definite answer. Besides, it was always a tradition in such cases that a young girl should have, in name at least, perfect independence of action, and the ultimate right to refuse ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... reparation, they lose the colour of alleging it both to God and man. Are they so impudent as to sue for remission without satisfaction and without penitence? I look upon these as in the same condition with the first: but the obstinacy is not there so easy to be overcome. This contrariety and volubility of opinion so sudden, so violent, that they feign, are a kind of miracle to me: they present us with the state of an indigestible ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... the third man took his station in front; and the three men were careful that the rope in the custody of each of them should be kept tight, since the peril of its being slack must be as obvious as its contrariety of tension; for whenever the animal made a plunge, as he sometimes did, towards the man on his right side, the Norwegian on the left could immediately check the career of the maddened deer by "holding on his end," as sailors say; the man in front at the same time ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... rolleth toward our Walter: yet this know I, that if you shall give an hint to a young man that he were best not to wed with a certain maid, mine head to a porridge-pot but he shall go and fall o' love with her, out of pure contrariety. Men be such dolts! And, worser yet, they will not be ruled by the women, that ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt

... cases of any given disease, irrespective of symptoms. Every case must be taken upon its individual merits, and differentiated upon symptomatology alone. And a drug must be prescribed that is indicated by the symptoms. Anything more or less than this is unscientific, and a contrariety to one of God's most beautiful and universal laws—'Similia similibus curanter,'—'Like cures like.' That is to say, arsenic is the remedy for your wife, because, when taken in material doses, it always produces ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... concerning Divorce, and the year following his Tetrachordon and Colasterion. Mr. Philips observes, and would have his readers believe, that the reason of his wife's aversion to return to him was the contrariety of their state principles. The lady being educated in loyal notions, possibly imagined, that if ever the regal power should flourish again, her being connected with a person so obnoxious to the King, would hurt her father's interest; this Mr. Philips alledges, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... interrupt the course of the magnetical powers, are least likely to be found in the great ocean, when the earth, with all its minerals, is secluded from the compass by the vast body of uniform water. So that this method of finding the longitude, with a happy contrariety to all others, is most easy ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... There was some contrariety of opinion among the judges on certain points ruled in Prigg's case, but there was none in regard to the great principle, that slavery is limited to the range of the laws ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... never deceived himself so far as to suppose that this would be the case with him. Indeed, he often wondered at the passion with which Ellen's simple loveliness of mind and person had inspired him, and which seemed to be founded on the principle of contrariety, rather than of sympathy. It was the yearning of a soul, formed by Nature in a peculiar mould, for communion with those to whom it bore a resemblance, yet of whom it was not. But there was no reason to suppose that Ellen, ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of all he flees the too common contrariety of amusing himself with his thought. Thought is a tool, with its own proper function: it isn't a toy. Let us take an example. Here is the studio of a painter. The implements are all in place: everything indicates ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... that moment, with the usual contrariety of fate, Erskine appeared! He came striding along the platform, a big, loosely-built man, with a clean-shaven face, glancing to right and left over the upstanding collar of a tweed coat. He looked at once plain and distinguished, and in the quizzical eyes and beetling ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... was blessed with such a sweet and benignant temper, gifted with so many resources, and adorned with so many accomplishments, that he appeared to be always employed, amused, and contented. And yet, by a strange contrariety of events, it appeared that this excellent person was now placed in a situation which is generally the consequence of impetuous passions not very scrupulous in obtaining their ends. That breast, which heretofore would have shrunk from being ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... thus make themselves appear angels of light; and these sometimes insinuate themselves into a society; but they cannot stay there long, for they begin to suffer inward pain and torture, to grow livid in the face, and to become as it were lifeless. These changes arise from the contrariety of the life that flows in and affects them. Therefore they quickly cast themselves down into hell where their like are, and no longer want to ascend. These are such as are meant by the man found among the invited guests at the feast not clothed ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr. Bounderby has said, to the service of your country. You have made up your mind,' said Louisa, still standing before him where she had first stopped - in all the singular contrariety of her self- possession, and her being obviously very ill at ease - 'to show the nation the way out ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... suspicious in the eyes of my country. How liable was a temper so ardent as mine, in the midst of difficulties, fatigues, and disappointments, hard to endure, to betray me into all those errors of which rash youth, unaccustomed to hardship, impatient of contrariety, are so often guilty! But I had taken my resolution, and my faithful Schell, to whom hunger or ease, contempt or fame, for my sake, were become indifferent, did whatever ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... ask what are its desires, it could not tell. It can choose for itself no longer: all desire is taken away, because, having found its centre, the heart loses all natural inclination, tendency, and activity, in the same way as it loses all repugnance and contrariety. The torrent has no longer either a declivity or a movement: it is in repose, and at ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... consult for a cure, Crowd on to his doore in their carts and their carriages, Showin' their tongues Or unlacin' their lungs, For divle one symptom the docther disparages. Troth, an' he'll tumble, For high or for humble, From his warm feather-bed wid no cross contrariety; Makin' as light Of nursin' all night The beggar in rags as ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... her lover through, and felt the deficiency or the contrariety in him, as surely as musical ears are pained by a discord that they require no touchstone to detect. Passion has the sensitiveness of fever, and is as cruelly chilled by a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... confronted me, and I rode at it confidently; but the filly, soured by our recent encounter, reared and would have none of it. I tried yet another way round, and put her at a moderate and seemingly innocuous bank, at which, with the contrariety of her sex, she rushed at a thousand miles an hour. It looked somehow as if there might be a bit of a drop, but the filly had got her beastly blood up, and I have been in ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... than explaining myself, and my opinions and actions. I wish, as far as I am able, simply to state facts, whether they are ultimately determined to be for me or against me. Of course there will be room enough for contrariety of judgment among my readers, as to the necessity, or appositeness, or value, or good taste, or religious prudence of the details which I shall introduce. I may be accused of laying stress on little things, of being beside the mark, of going into impertinent or ridiculous details, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... "Some think he is only a machine, and that the only difference between a man and a mill is, that one is carried by blood and the other by water." Says Pascal: "What a chimera is man! what a singular phenomenon! what a chaos! what a scene of contrariety! A judge of all things yet a feeble worm; the shrine of truth, yet a mass of doubt and uncertainty; at once the glory and the scorn of the universe. If he boasts, I lower him; if he lowers himself I raise him; either way I contradict ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... position as lower than that of those who remain free from responsibility in their communities. For the latter have no other obligation than to obey their superior or his two subordinates, so that there can never be any contrariety in the orders or any doubt for the religious of what he is to do; while the former, after all their anxiety, have to study very carefully over obeying their legitimate superiors and in keeping the bishops content (which, as will be said, would both ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... Virgin; in the early evening we had the Salve [i.e., "Hail, Mary"], with the public litany; and at night prayers for the souls in purgatory, usually relating some miracle, which was of great profit to many. Nor need your Reverence think that we lost any time because of the contrariety of the winds at Point Nasso that I mentioned; for orders were despatched to the Pintados Islands by the Indian volunteers, and sent to Othon with the falua [80] by Adjutant Don Francisco Olozaran—who returned in a champan with the father rector of Othon, Father Francisco Angel, [81] ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... their earnestness to help us, we can easily see that, being finite as they are, and unable to look into the future, they might involve us in serious mistakes, either by their ignorance, or by the contrariety of their information. Far better is it for man to look only to God, who sees the end from the beginning, with whom is no variableness, and who is able, as our anxious friends would not be, to conceal ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... into errors. In judging how far a testimony is to be depended upon, we must balance the opposite circumstances, which may create any doubt or uncertainty. The evidence from testimony may be destroyed either by the contrariety and opposition of the testimony, or by the consideration of the nature of the facts themselves. When the facts partake of the marvelous there are two opposite experiences with regard to them, and that ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... With the contrariety of human nature, some people would say of feminine nature, now that I felt I was not going to live much longer on the rive gauche I was getting quite fond of it. Life was so quiet and restful in those long, narrow streets, some even with ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... men understand, what is the fruit of penance; and after the word of Jesus Christ, it is the endless bliss of heaven, where joy hath no contrariety of woe nor of penance nor grievance; there all harms be passed of this present life; there as is the sickerness [security] from the pain of hell; there as is the blissful company, that rejoice them evermore each of the other's joy; there as the body of man, that whilom was foul and dark, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... Babylonians were now freed from Anileus's heavy incursions, which had been a great restraint to the effects of that hatred they bore to the Jews; for they were almost always at variance, by reason of the contrariety of their laws; and which party soever grew boldest before the other, they assaulted the other: and at this time in particular it was, that upon the ruin of Anileus's party, the Babylonians attacked the Jews, which made those Jews ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... attitudes; it had, for all its impulsive effect, a certain necessity. We might have escaped no doubt, as two men at a hundred yards may shoot at each other with pistols for a considerable time and escape. But it isn't particularly reasonable to talk of the contrariety of fate if they both ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... opposition of meanings is indispensable. "Humble or afflict," which are both on one side, cannot be right. "Approveth or maketh sick," are on opposite sides, but will hardly pick one another out for antagonists. "Laugheth or sigheth," has the vividness and simplicity of Chaucer, the most exact contrariety matches them—and the two phenomena cannot be left ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... how were those men received in the community? Why, they were generally received, on account of the import of what they said, still more than from their zealous manner of saying it, with as strong an impression of novelty, strangeness, and contrariety to everything hitherto heard of, as any of our voyagers and travellers of discovery have been by the barbarous tribes who had never before seen civilized man, or as the Spaniards on their arrival in Mexico or Peru. They might, as the voyagers ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster



Words linked to "Contrariety" :   oppositeness, opposition



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