"Contradictory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... going on. They may be pardoned for their want of apprehension, when some of our public men, almost venerable, and reputed to be very wise and philosophical, are bewildered and grope blindly. They were somewhat perplexed by the contradictory statements of our soldiers, some of whom, according to their wishes, said the contest was for them, and others that it did not concern them at all and they would remain as before. If it was explained to them, that Lincoln was chosen by a party who were opposed to extending ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... this sort of imagination with that which one witnesses in fanatics of religious faith? With such a faculty Balzac could not be, like Edgar Poe, merely a narrator of nightmares. He was preserved from the fantastic by another gift which seems contradictory to the first. This visionary was in reality a philosopher, that is to say, an experimenter and a manipulator of general ideas. Proof of this may be found in his biography, which shows him to us, during ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... The sharp contradictory ending of his speech, the colour rising to the old man's cheek and forehead, whence it did not sink, but lay steadily, a heavy, purple blotch, attracted Agatha's notice—certainly ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... attentively, I was surprised to find it contain a singular mixture of contradictory principles, and in the same breath, the sentiments of a philosopher and of a colonist; of an advocate for the Negroes, and of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... "In my country" (England), said he, "the laws are numerous, but then one is always found to be a key to the other. In Ireland it is just the contrary; your laws so perpetually clash with one another, and are so very contradictory, that I protest I don't understand them."—"True, my lord," cried Harwood, "that ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... customs, beliefs, and psychological peculiarities of the people with whom we are in contact, for they will back out of every enquiry or investigation, will either refuse to respond or will tell you lies, and this accounts for the contradictory reports that different travellers give about the same tribe ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... has given the parallels in foreign countries. It must be remembered, however, that a great number of these plant-sayings originated very many years ago—long before the alteration in the style of the calendar—which in numerous instances will account for their apparent contradictory character. In noticing, too, these proverbs, account must be taken of the variation of climate in different countries, for what applies to one locality does not to another. Thus, for instance, according to a Basque proverb, "A wet May, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... everybody. Even the Bear King was now puzzled by the contradictory statements of ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... I thought him obstinate and contradictory. Halting, he planted his feet as though no power on earth could move him, and shot forward his long ears. Then it seemed to me that he was trying to show how futile my boast, and in my anger I dared to kick him. A fly would have moved him as well. His long ears trembled as he watched ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... compiler to the best of his ability, with the idea of presenting the song as nearly as possible as it was sung, rather than attempting to soften any roughness or irregularity of metre. Attempts to ascertain the names of the authors have produced contradictory statements, and no doubt some of the songs were begun by one man and finished or improved by another, or several others. Some few fairly recent ballads have been included, but for the most part no attempt has been made to include any of the more ambitious literary productions ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... far misled by its own inventions, tickled me much. Yet as the laugh died, a kind of wrath smote me, and then bitterness followed: it was the rock struck, and Meribah's waters gushing out. I never had felt so strange and contradictory an inward tumult as I felt for an hour that evening: soreness and laughter, and fire, and grief, shared my heart between them. I cried hot tears: not because Madame mistrusted me—I did not care twopence for her mistrust—but for other reasons. Complicated, disquieting thoughts broke up the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... lamp-signal, by wireless, by pigeon, by runners, and reports dropped from aeroplanes." The progress of the battle is marked on the maps spread out on a table in the dug-out, and the Brigadier has to decide when his reserve battalion must be sent forward to assist. Information is scanty and contradictory, but "at half-hourly intervals the situation, as we believed it to be, was telephoned to our Divisional Headquarters and to the brigades on either flank." Reports come in of success at certain places and a check at others; also of a German counter-attack. All reports ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gusto, Lebrun did so. He interested his contemporaries immensely; no painter ever ruled more unrivalled. He fails to interest us because we have another point of view. We believe in our point of view and disbelieve in his as a matter of course; and it would be self-contradictory to say, in the interests of critical catholicity, that in our opinion his may be as sound as our own. But to say that he has no point of view whatever—to say, in general, that modern classic art is perfunctory and mere formulary—is to be guilty of what ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... and, by bringing the war back into France and by holding the Duke of Burgundy to his faith, to distress and disturb Charles very much, Charles sometimes asked the Maid of Orleans what the Voices said about it? But, the Voices had become (very like ordinary voices in perplexed times) contradictory and confused, so that now they said one thing, and now said another, and the Maid lost credit every day. Charles marched on Paris, which was opposed to him, and attacked the suburb of Saint Honore. In this fight, being again struck down into the ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... had been an obstinate, dare-devil, heroic sort of fellow, who had lost his life in the Chudleigh salmon river trying to save a gillie who had missed his footing. A man much hated—and much beloved; capable of the most contradictory actions. He had married his wife for money, would often boast of it, and would, none the less, give away his last farthing recklessly, passionately, if he were asked for it, in some way that touched his feelings. Able, too; though not so able as the ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... contradictory opinions, our hero walked along until he found himself close to the alley which led into Cherub Court. A female yell issued from the alley as he came up, and Mrs Rampy suddenly appeared in a state of violent self-assertion. She was a strong, red-faced woman, who ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the East Mesa, other migratory bands of Hopituh had begun to arrive on the Middle Mesa. As already said, it is admitted that the Snake were the first occupants of this region, but beyond that fact the traditions are contradictory and confused. It is probable, however, that not long after the arrival of the Horn, the Squash people came from the south and built a village on the Middle Mesa, the ruin of which is called Chukubi. It is on the edge of the cliff on the east side ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... overlook this. It's mad to go on. It's mad anyway. If you knew how I've lied to myself, how I've struggled and fought and twisted to keep this back from you! And here it is, confused and grotesque and contradictory and wrong. If I could look at you and say it, I could get it right. If I could look at you—if I could see you. Give me a chance. Then I'll go away again—if you say so. I had to give you warning—it didn't seem square not. And I've bungled it like ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... advertised their side of the case all over the colonies and in any sympathetic quarter they could find in England. The seigneurs sent home a warm defence of Murray; and Murray himself sent Cramahe, a very able Swiss officer in the British Army. The home government thus had plenty of contradictory evidence before it in 1765. The result was that Murray was called home in 1766, rather in a spirit of open-minded and sympathetic inquiry into his conduct than with any idea of censuring him. He never returned to Canada. But as he held ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... thus destroy all free and reciprocal intercourse in religion? It is true, indeed, in contemplation, that everything which is separated into various parts and embraced in different divisions, must be opposed and contradictory to itself; but consider, I pray you, how Life is manifested in a great variety of forms, how the most hostile elements seek out one another here, and, for this very reason, what we separate in contemplation all ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... fear do more than this? Can it not only rob us of the power to will, not only force us to act without consent, but also force the will, force us to consent? Never; and the simple reason is that we cannot do two contradictory things at the same time—consent and not consent, for that is what it means to be forced to consent. Violence and fear may weaken the will so that it finally yield. The fault, if fault there be, may be less inexcusable by reason of the pressure under which ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... enervating stairways of stone, up and down which noisy wooden sandals clattered all the day long. Over the entrances to the shops the proprietors were dropping the white and brown awnings for the day. Very few people shopped after luncheon. There were pleasanter pastimes, even for the women, contradictory as this may seem. By eleven o'clock Courtlandt had finished the reading of his mail, and was now ready to hunt for the little lady of the Taverne Royale. It was necessary to find her. The whereabouts of Flora Desimone was of vital importance. If she had not yet arrived, the presence ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... following January on the slow feet of countless technicalities. Every legal subterfuge was exhausted by the quartet of talented and high-priced attorneys provided by Belle Cora's questionable fortune but unquestioned affection. The trial proved a feast of oratory, a mass of contradictory evidence. Before it began a juror named Jacob Mayer accused L. Sokalasky with offering him a bribe. Sokalasky, brought into court, denied the charge. And there it ended, save that thenceforth the "twelve good men and true" ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... system, we may discover reason to suspect that they acted under the direction of some acknowledged though invisible leader. The nobility and gentry, intimidated by the hostility of their tenants, and distressed by contradictory reports, sought security within the fortifications of their castles. The only man who behaved with promptitude and resolution was Henry Spenser, the young and warlike Bishop of Norwich. In the counties of Norfolk, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... something suitable to his digestive organs. It is certain that he committed an error of judgment, but that error may be traceable to the subtilty of his taste rather than to its obtuseness. We throw out this suggestion as a specimen, if nothing better, of what contradictory inferences may be drawn from a single fact, and as a hint of how much caution is necessary in arriving at absolute opinions, even when the evidence ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... the room was contradictory. But Jean herself was somewhat contradictory, and the place fitted her. Here was where she spent those hours when her absence from the Bar Nothing was left unexplained to any one save Lite. Here was where she drew into her shell, when her Uncle Carl made her feel more than usually ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... accepted by the modern reader as doing justice to both sides, or, indeed, as telling the whole story. Any one specially interested in the subject must read all; and then it will seem almost a hopeless task to reconcile the many and widely contradictory statements he will ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... her mother's party, with their sermons, their denunciations, their narrowness and that horrible Covenant, had been a passage from bondage to liberty, there were times, as she paced the terrace alone and looked out on the gray sea of the east coast, when the contradictory circumstances of her life beset her and she was troubled. When she was forced to listen to the interminable harangues of hill preachers, sheltering for a night in the castle, and day by day was resisting the domination of her mother, her mind rose in revolt ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... speak Latin fluently. I have been in a beer-shop kept by a man who was distinguished in the Frankfurt Parliament. I have found a graduate of the University of Munich in a negro minstrel troupe. And while mentioning these as proof that Breitmann, as I have depicted him, is not a contradictory character, I cannot refrain from a word of praise as to the energy and patience with which the German "under a cloud" in America bears his reverses, and works cheerfully and uncomplainingly, until, by sheer perseverance, he, in most cases, conquers fortune. In this respect the Germans, as a race, ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... a melting pot of investigations. They included some sharp controversies over nomenclature and many apparently contradictory conclusions based on what we now know to be insufficient data. The principal outcome was the identification of the yeast and rice polishing substance with the factor carried by protein-free milk. On the basis of these results Funk put forward the idea that McCollum's butter-fat and egg-yolk factor ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... process by which information is acquired, converted into intelligence, and made available to policymakers. Information is raw data from any source, data that may be fragmentary, contradictory, unreliable, ambiguous, deceptive, or wrong. Intelligence is information that has been collected, integrated, evaluated, analyzed, and interpreted. Finished intelligence is the final product of the Intelligence Cycle ready to be delivered ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... rather than by wise and disinterested educators studying the merits of the case. But in large part these differences are the expression of different purposes and practical needs in planning a college curriculum, and are neither quite indefensible nor necessarily contradictory in pedagogic theory. In the small college with a nearly uniform curriculum and with limited means, a general course is perhaps best planned for the senior year, or in the junior year if there is an opportunity given to the student to do some more advanced work the year following. At the other ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... would be restored to a lower and purely physical existence. In such case what would become of her memory and the experiences of her wide-wandering soul? The chiefest value of her resurrection would be lost to the world! This, however, does not alarm me. It is only guess-work after all, and is contradictory to the intellectual belief of the Egyptian theology, that the 'Ka' is an essential portion of humanity." He paused and we all waited. The silence was broken by ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... prophecy is being realized.'—MICHELET'S LUTHER."—Clark's Practical Gram., p. 133. It may require some study to learn from this which idiom it is. that these "many good writers reject:" but the grammarian who can talk of "a passive agent," without perceiving that the phrase is self-contradictory and absurd, may well be expected to entertain a "Philosophy" which is against "Authority," and likewise to prefer a ridiculous innovation to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... supper, there is really and substantially the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of Christ, and that the whole substance of the bread is turned into his body, and the whole substance of the wine into his blood; which conversion, so contradictory to our senses, they call transubstantiation, but at the same time they affirm, that, under either kind or species, only one whole entire Christ, and the true sacrament, is received. But why are those words, "This is my body," ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... to death and taking no risk himself! She saw that he winced; she realized that she had stayed words that were about to come in a flood. Then she seemed to see him through new lenses. He appeared drawn and pale and old, as if he, too, had become ashes; anything but the conqueror. Her feelings grew contradictory. Why all this fencing? How weak, how silly! She had much to say to him—a last appeal to make. Her throat held a dry lump. She was marshalling her thoughts to begin when the brittle silence was broken by a rumbling of voices, a stirring ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... reports to Albert that there were hardly any safety-lamps used in the great pit, and that the galleries were so insufficiently supported that there was great danger in continuing to work there. However, the reports were contradictory, and after trying in vain to settle what was to be done, Lord St. Erme rode this morning to the collieries, to make a personal inspection, and insist on the men using the Davy-lamp. After trying to dissuade him, Albert ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Unhappy is that man, of necessity, whose perceptions are keener than his faith is strong. Everywhere Nature herself is putting strange questions to him; the human world is full of dismay and confusion; his own conscience is bewildered by contradictory appearances; all which may well happen to the man whose eye is not yet single, whose heart is not yet pure. He is not at home; his soul is astray amid people of a strange speech and a stammering tongue. But the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... that first reached us through the newspapers was meagre and contradictory; many people discredited it; but a letter from my mother left us no room for doubt. The sickness was in the city. The hospitals were filling up, and hundreds of the citizens were flying from the stricken place by every steamboat. The unsettled ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... mind have been laid bare by their owner's words, recording the feelings of the fleeting hour with no view to future inspection. In these revelations of self, made without thought of the world outside, is to be found, if anywhere, the clue to that complex and often contradictory mingling of qualities which go to form the oneness of the man's personality. This discordance between essential unity and superficial diversities must be harmonized, if a true conception of his being is to be formed. We know the faces of our friends, but we see each as one. The features can, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... territory lying between New Spain and Newfoundland, which newly acquired territory was thenceforth designated Norumbega or New France. All such original annexations, whether pretended or real, were in the circumstances extremely ill-defined; and maps of the time were frequently vague, confusing, and contradictory. Cartier, on his way to sow the seeds of a French Empire in North America, sailed past the coast (1534), and on his second voyage (1535) foregathered with Roberval in the roadstead of St. John's. Still earlier, in ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... of this Comedy a disappointment? Is seriousness an ending artistically called for by this plot, or only morally called for? Compare with the serious strain in the "Comedie of Errors." What does the contradictory little final dialogue between Winter and Spring add to ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... govern the phenomena of the universe and influence all nature. The real God of India is by himself without power; real efficacious power is attributed only to three divinities who exist externally to him. Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, possessed of qualities in part contradictory and attributes that are mutually exclusive, have no other accord or harmony than that which results from the power of things itself, and which is found external to their own thoughts. Such is the Indian Trimurti. What an immense ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... oppressed, to assert his rights, and demand redress for his injuries? No! We trust that there is a redeeming virtue in our fellow citizens, which will urge them to unite with us in abolishing Domestic Slavery. We invite them, because we believe it to be contradictory to the Law of Nature—in violation of the commands of Christianity—hostile to our political union—dangerous to a portion of our white population—inconsistent with our professed love of liberty—degrading to our national character—and in opposition to the feelings of humanity. Then let not this ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... honor" of his acquaintance, but he will joyfully wait for the delight of her friendship. And to his fear that she may hate letter-writing she replies suggesting that nobody likes writing to everybody, but it would be strange and contradictory if she were not always delighted to hear from and to write to him; and she can read any manuscript except the writing on the pyramids, and if he will only treat her en bon camarade "without reference to the conventionalities of 'ladies and gentlemen'"; taking no thought for ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... had hitherto talked of a friend, I myself was the happy man. My first name was Francis as well as his; and I had found Clara so gentle, so confiding, so flatteringly cordial in her intercourse with me, that, once within my power, and prevented from receding by shame, and a thousand contradictory feelings, I had, with the vanity of an amoureux de seize ans, the confidence to believe I could reconcile the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... quavering first few bars. The vast resonant peroration only gathers into a single, furious, tragic pronouncement the material deployed in the body of the work. Scarcely ever has the binary form, the combat between two contradictory themes, been more essentialized. Scarcely ever has the prelude-form been reduced to simpler terms than in the preludes of Scriabine. These works are indeed radical. For they give us a fresh glimpse of ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the direction of the water tank, which is situated nearly a mile north of town. Meanwhile an unusually severe storm had been followed by a drenching rain, and the stranger's garments were wet, when, after a confused and contradictory account of her movements, she boarded the 3.05 ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Mr. Vivian, for securing for him such a treasure as Mr. Russell, he introduced Lord Lidhurst, a sickly, bashful boy of fourteen, to his new governor, with polite expressions of unbounded confidence, and a rapid enunciation of undefined and contradictory expectations. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... be your destruction," she wrote in August, 1710. "In my opinion, this is something contradictory to some other expressions. People talk of being in love just as widows do of affliction. Mr. Steele has observed, in one of his plays, the most passionate among them have always calmness enough to drive a hard bargain with the upholders. I never knew ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... a moment. "I think all sorts of things," he answered presently, with an amused laugh. "She is so contradictory she'll fit almost any opinion, and the worst I can say of her is that she'll never concern herself in the least to find out ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... balking the Bolshevist work of preparing another attack. As one of their French critics[148] remarked, they dealt exclusively in negatives—some of them pernicious enough, whereas a positive policy was imperatively called for. To reconstruct a nation, not to say a ruined world, a series of contradictory vetoes is hardly sufficient. But another explanation of their attitude was offered which gained widespread acceptance. It will ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... shy. It sounds contradictory to say so, but still there is truth in it. I had seen too few people in my life to know anything about shyness. And all I ever had had to do with were kind and friendly. And I remembered 'my manners,' ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... word formed of a singular double and almost contradictory sense: a troop on the march, that is to say, movement; a stand, that ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... out finally from the narratives of the two tramps, and when he had returned to the Shorter home and listened to the contradictory and whole-souled improvisations of Shorter pere and mere he ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... life they look like ordinary men; not that they are of the common mould, but seem so because their uncommon qualities are not then called forth. Superiority requires an occasion. The common man is helpless in an emergency: assailed by contradictory suggestions, or confused by his incapacity, he cannot see his way. The hour of emergency finds a hero calm and strong, and strong because calm and clear-sighted; he sees what can be done, and does it. This is often a thing ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... never false to his convictions, never a hypocrite nor a deceiver, and that he died with his harness on, having been occupied for the last five years of his life in digesting the treasury decisions, often contradictory, and always inaccessible, for there was no index, until he took them in hand, going back thirty years, I believe, and reducing the whole to a system which need be no longer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... eyes were opened to see things now as never before, for not as a skillful hunter, but as a seeker after peace, was he out in nature's solitudes. Everything around him seemed mysterious and contradictory. This teacher, nature, whose lessons he had come to learn, seemed to be in a very perverse mood, as if to impart just the reverse of what he would learn, and seemed herself to be destitute of the very things he had hoped she would ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... seemed to be considerable. To the south, large ranges of hills were visible, the first of which were close enough to admit of one's distinguishing them to be wooded to the top. The inner ranges were lofty. We had some difficulty in ascertaining where the tea was located, the accounts being rather contradictory. At length we proceeded up the bed of a small river, Maumoo, which runs into the Booree Dihing close to the village: after wading along in the waters for two hours we arrived at a khet where we encamped. The direction being from Negrigam N.W. along the banks of this ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... from which the distinctive Lutheran doctrines were eliminated. And in order to conciliate the protesting conservatives, the General Synod in the same year passed the resolution, adopted 1856 by the Pittsburgh Synod, which served the contradictory purposes of condemning Lutheran doctrines plainly taught in the Augustana, and, at the same time, acquitting the Confession of harboring these doctrines. Thus the General Synod, though unwilling to commit herself to the Platform as such, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... forth two distinct and contradictory theories of the functions of natural selection. According to the one theory natural selection is selective or preservative, and nothing more. According to the other theory natural selection creates the variations(!) ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... Spirit who will triumph when all this cruel universe goes to pieces, can wish for no material altars, and can have no use for churches. Or did not the idea of a dualism become confused into a vacillating, contradictory notion of a Power at once good and evil, something inscrutable, unthinkable, but inspiring ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... length, after many contradictory rumors and much false information which would have bewildered any commander, Cramahe learned from the intercepted letters of Arnold, and from the volunteer reconnoitering of such faithful men as Donald, that the Continental army was really approaching ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... words!" cried Amelia. "You first inspired me with the thought which led to my childish and contradictory behavior, and which for some days made me the jest of the court. You are a false friend, a faithless sister! I stood in your path, and you put me aside. I understand now your perfidious counsels, your smooth, deceitful encouragement to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... contradictory to our covenants, to receive indulgences, contrived and conferred, on purpose, to divide (by the terror of persecution on the one hand, and the persuasion of this pretended liberty, taking off the legal restraint on the other) ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Babylon nor to Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons; nor to Salome, the daughter of Herodias. But she offers in her person certain singularities that will appear beautiful or uncomely according to the contradictory opinions of men and the varying judgments of the world. She has on her forehead two small horns which she conceals in the abundant folds of her golden hair; one of her eyes is blue and one is black; her neck is bent towards the left side; and, like Alexander of Macedon, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... going about from place to place. His pseudo-theology or mythology ended in a theatrical comedy, and the comedy in a tragedy." "In 1839 this famous Dr. Strauss—who resolved the gospel history of salvation into an incoherent and self-contradictory mythological poem, and denied the existence of a personal God and the immortality of the soul—was duly elected professor of Christian dogmatics and ethics in the University of Zurich, by the ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... one of my pieces, the march from Tannhauser, being interrupted by storms of applause. The pleasure thus expressed was aroused, it seems, because the audience was surprised to find that my music, of which there had been so many contradictory reports, contained such long phrases of connected melody. Well satisfied as I was, both with the way in which the concert had been carried out and its enthusiastic reception, I had on the following ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... enough from the top of the house to admit of a twist in the flue, and revealing darkly a little more, if that social rule-of-three inverse, the higher in lodgings the lower in pocket, were applicable here. However, the aspect of the room, though homely, was cheerful, a somewhat contradictory group of furniture suggesting that the collection consisted of waifs and strays from a former home, the grimy faces of the old articles exercising a curious and subduing effect on the bright faces of the new. An oval mirror of rococo workmanship, and a heavy cabinet-piano with a ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... myself, accepting the sops of the public? Why have I worked like a machine for twelve years in succession in order to study? Why have I swallowed for twelve long years in the Gymnasium and the University the dry and tedious trash and the contradictory nonsense which is absolutely useless to me? In order to become feuilleton-writer, to play the clown from day to day, entertaining the public and convincing myself that that is necessary and useful to them. Where is the powder of my youth? I have fired off all the charge of my ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... characteristic which distinguishes the Pigtail from the Rococo. This leaning toward individual caricature nevertheless was maintained throughout the entire age of the Pigtail. Indeed the very figure in the escutcheon of this period, the pigtail of hair, grew out of the contradictory effort to restrain and render uniform the natural luxuriance of the hair, and yet at the same time to append to men's backs a pure freak, a little, absolutely ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... contradictory evidence had very sensibly affected her; and when, a moment later, the coroner, having dismissed the witness, turned towards her, and inquired if she had anything further to say in the way of explanation or otherwise, she threw her hands up almost spasmodically, slowly shook her head and, without ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... conception of it; for years that conception remains unmodified, and suddenly the strain of some emergency, of the incidental stimulus of new circumstances, reveals qualities not simply unexpected, but flatly contradictory of our previous conception. We judge of a man by the angle he subtends to our eye—only thus CAN we judge of him; and this angle depends on the relation his qualities and circumstances bear to our interests and sympathies. Bourgonef had charmed me intellectually; morally I had ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... words respecting the revolt of the Venetian States, which, in consequence of the difference of political opinions, has been viewed in very contradictory lights. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... even number, especially when the number is not great, whereby the contradictory voyces are oftentimes equall, is therefore oftentimes mute, and uncapable of Action. Yet in some cases contradictory voyces equall in number, may determine a question; as in condemning, or absolving, equality of votes, even in that they condemne not, do absolve; but not on the contrary ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... quite. For a sensation of being profoundly experienced serves as a sort of consolation to people who are conscious of having taken wrong turnings. Contradictory as it seems, there is nothing truer than that people who have always gone right don't know half as much about the nature and ways of going right as those do who have gone wrong. However, it is not desirable for me to chill your summer-time ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... not how to understand of one the various seemingly contradictory things, which were and are all ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... Mr. Wild's to Heartfree may seem one of those passages in history which writers, Drawcansir-like, introduce only BECAUSE THEY DARE; indeed, as it may seem somewhat contradictory to the greatness of our hero, and may tend to blemish his character with an imputation of that kind of friendship which savours too much of weakness and imprudence, it may be necessary to account for this visit, especially to ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... Romanists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Restorationists, Quakers, Arians, Unitarians, etc., etc. We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, but various opinions. All these persons, of so many and contradictory opinions, weekly meet around our Lord's table in hundreds of churches all over the land. Our bond of union is faith in the slain Messiah, in his death for our sins and his ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... falling into another like fault: that the Duke of Albemarle seems to be able to answer them; but he thinks that the Duke of Albemarle and the Prince are contented to let their Narratives sleep, they being not only contradictory in some things (as he observed about the business of the Duke of Albemarle's being to follow the Prince upon dividing the fleete, in case the enemy come out), but neither of them to be maintained in others. That the business the other night of my Lord Anglesey ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the ample opportunity he enjoyed for forming definite conclusions, Gerrard remained balanced between two contradictory opinions, and he was still much tumbled up and down in his mind when he landed and fell into the eminently bracing company of Charteris. British troops and siege-guns—not now to be spared from Granthistan—had ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... chance at any time to be without company they are like a becalmed ship; they never move but by the wind of other men's breath, and have no oars of their own to steer withal. It is very fantastical and contradictory in human nature, that men should love themselves above all the rest of the world, and yet never endure to be with themselves. When they are in love with a mistress, all other persons are importunate and burdensome to them. "Tecum vivere amem, tecum ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... essential portions of the duties of a leader, many of the calamities of the Expedition might have been averted, and little or no room would have been left for doubt in judging the conduct of those subordinates who pleaded unsatisfactory and contradictory verbal orders ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... of a contract on a large scale for shoes, the question mainly was, whether or not they were well and soundly made, and with the best materials. A number of witnesses were called, one of them, a first-rate character in the gentle craft, being closely questioned, returned contradictory answers, when the Chief Justice observed, pointing to his own shoes, which were regularly bestridden by the broad silver buckle of the day, 'Were the shoes anything like these?' 'No, my lord,' replied the evidence, 'they were a good deal better and more genteeler.'" Dr. Didbin is at needless ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... dinner was over the plot thickened; a letter was brought to the Marquis from my adopted father the Comte de Rouille stating that such contradictory reports had been received, that he could not ascertain the truth. From one he heard that his eldest son was alive, and at the chateau; from others that he had been murdered: others congratulated him in their ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... explanation of this passage. His interpretation, however, seems to me much too recondite. The meaning of the passage may be certain enough; but surely the expression is confused, and one part of it contradictory to the other. BOSWELL. This note is first ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... adult male is less shy, and not merely negatively contemptuous, but aggressive. It is difficult for him to endure hearing the home folk speak with the confidence of special revelation of the war they have not seen, when he, who has been in it, has contradictory minds about it. They are so assured that they think there can be no other view; and they bear out their mathematical arguments with maps and figures. It might be a chess tournament. He feels at last his anger beginning to smoulder. He feels a bleak and impalpable ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... fever at Nimeguen, Broussais was attended by two of his friends, who each prescribed opposite remedies. Embarrassed by such contradictory opinions, he resolved to follow neither. Believing himself to be seriously in danger, he jumped out of bed in the midst of this raging fever, and almost naked sat down to his escrutoire to arrange his papers. It was in the month of January; the streets were covered with snow. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... the sway of these contradictory sentiments when the surgeon amateur of the flute came to see him. More than three days had elapsed. Lieut. D'Hubert was no longer officier d'ordonnance to the general commanding the division. He had been sent back ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... mendicant piper in his go-cart,—making open proclamation everywhere, 'I am the man wot changed;' and the only uncomfortable feeling one has in contemplating them as curiosities, arises solely from the air of heavy sanctity that pervades equally all their diametrically opposed doctrines, contradictory assertions, and contending views, as if Deity could declare equally for truth and error, just as truth and error chanced to be held by Mr. Clark. Of so solemn a cast are the reverend gentleman's belligerent pamphlets, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... creature's letter is a collection of invectives not very new to me: though the occasion for them, no doubt is new to her. A little sprinkling of the romantic and contradictory runs through it. She loves, and she hates; she encourages me to pursue her, by telling me I safely may; and yet she begs I will not. She apprehends poverty and want, yet resolves to give away her estate; To gratify whom?—Why, in short, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... will abstain from any remarks upon these contradictory statements until Mr. Fox shall have had an opportunity to obtain the means of fully explaining them. How essential it is that this should be promptly done, and that the steps necessary to a faithful observance on the part of Her Majesty's colonial authorities ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... happiness is bound sooner or later to be destroyed by an increase of sensibility, by an enlightened awareness of the evil beyond. And to experience evil, to realize it, and yet to be content, lies not within {116} the power of any moral being; it is not merely difficult, it is self-contradictory. To any one who judges himself fairly, with a wide and vivid image of life as it is in all its ramifications and obscurities, the evil of the world is all one. It follows that, as there is no perfect happiness except in the ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Yes; they were talking in subdued but not unkindly tones. I heard him bid her be composed, and caught, as I thought, a light reply that ought to have satisfied me that Mrs. Urquhart had simply suffered from some nightmare horror at which she was as ready to laugh now as he. But my nature is a contradictory one, and I was not satisfied. The echo of her cry was still ringing in my ears, and I felt as if I would give the world for a momentary peep into their room. Influenced by this idea, I boldly knocked, and in an instant—too soon for him not to have been standing near the door—I heard his breath ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... individuals of the species, for such behaviour is apparently regarded as entitling him to exterminate with impunity all the rest of the species upon which he can lay hands. This principle perhaps explains the attitude, at first sight puzzling and contradictory, of the Aino towards the bear. The flesh and skin of the bear regularly afford them food and clothing; but since the bear is an intelligent and powerful animal, it is necessary to offer some satisfaction ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Alfred's seclusion on the island, as it might almost be called, of Ethelney, is told very differently by the different narrators of it. Some of these narrations are inconsistent and contradictory. They all combine, however, though they differ in respect to many other incidents and details, in relating the far-famed story of Alfred's leaving the cakes to burn. It seems that, though the cow-herd himself was allowed to regard Alfred as a man of rank in disguise—though ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... fluid from the eyeball might be due to a change of character in the fluid, is a conception that has been entertained as a working hypothesis, and much experimental and analytical work has been done to test its correctness. This work has been so slightly related to practical ophthalmology, and so contradictory in its results that alterations in the fluids can only be regarded as a possible etiologic factor. Glaucoma secondary to intra-ocular hemorrhage, operations on the lens or its capsule, or severe nutritional disturbance may be capable of ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... apply to one part of the coast as well as to another; as to the localities treated of, as well as of the companions of Vespucius, there are no indications given of a nature to aid the historian. Not a single name is given of any well-known person, and the dates are contradictory in those famous letters which have given endless work to commentators. Humboldt says of them "There is an element of discord in the most authentic documents relating to the Florentine navigator." We have given an account of Hojeda's first voyage, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... the example. We know from Xenophanes, Plato, and St. Augustine how men's consciences were tormented by this unceasing contradiction: this overgrowth of myth on the stock of an idea originally noble. It is thus that I would attempt to account for the contradictory conceptions of ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... in the actions of Caligula lies in a certain nervous haste, which led him spasmodically from one obsession to another, often of a self-contradictory nature; moreover, he had the dangerous habit of wanting to do everything himself. Caligula seems to have a great fondness of the sea. The strolling-player side of his character was by no means limited to his military performances. He was passionately devoted ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... discover, there is no single work devoted to the topic: all that is to be gleaned of it from books consists only in scraps of information, most of them very brief, some contradictory; as a rule almost casually introduced in works upon dancing, ancient games and ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... Never did M. le Marechel de Lorges forget these words; and he has always repeated them to me and others precisely as they are given here, so struck was he with them, and much more after all that he saw since, so astonishing and so contradictory. Madame de Montespan stopped short, very much troubled by having too ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... is better than to have knowledge. Precepts of virtue are useless unless they are built into life. At birth, or before, "the gate of gifts is closed." It is the art of life, out of variant and contradictory materials passed down to us from our ancestors, to build up a coherent and effective ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... their speaking out. But Dr. Mayhew did not conceal or disguise his sentiments on this point any more than on others, such as the peculiar tenets of Calvinism. He explicitly and boldly declared the doctrine irrational, unscriptural, and directly contradictory."[20] He taught the strict unity of God as early as 1753, "in the most unequivocal and plain manner, in his sermons of that year."[21] What most excited comment and objection was that, in a foot-note to the volume of his sermons published in 1755, Mayhew said that ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... not supplemented by personal anecdote and letters, and the reminiscences of contemporaries. Burns, for instance,—if limited to his works for our knowledge of him,—would be a puzzling phenomenon. He was in his poems quite as spoken as Dunbar, but then they describe so wide an area, they appear so contradictory, they seem often to lead in opposite directions. It is, to a large extent, through his letters that Burns is known, through his short, careless, pithy sayings, which imbedded themselves in the memories of his hearers, from the recollections of ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... to "sentences" on the other; this is plainly absurd, and contrary to facts. If they suppose it to join sentence to sentence, by merely connecting word to word, in a joint relation; this also is absurd, and self-contradictory. Again, if they mean, that the conjunction sometimes connects word with word, and sometimes, sentence with sentence; this sense they have not expressed, but have severally puzzled their readers by an ungrammatical use of the word "and." One of the best among them says, "In the sentence, 'He ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... half tempted, by the wild and excited eye of her companion, not withstanding all the contradictory evidence which surrounded him, to believe she was addressing one of the very rovers in question. "The book was lent me by a brave seaman, who holds himself in readiness to repress their depredations; and while reading of so much wickedness, I endeavor to recall the devotion of those who risk ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... text-book, called Yea and Nay, containing seemingly contradictory opinions of the church fathers upon particular questions. The student was left to reconcile the contradictions, if he could, by careful reasoning; for Abelard held that a constant questioning was ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... a book called The Tragedy of the Caesars, by the novelist Baring-Gould; and in it the life of a certain man presented in a sense flatly contradictory to the views of nineteen centuries anent that man; but it seemed to me at last an account that had the rhythm, the basic form, showing through. So in this lecture what I shall try to give you will be Mr. Baring-Gould's version ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... things, diverse and contradictory; but one thing was certain, that they talked of nothing else, and the report which had been circulated through the city that morning, that Mora was at death's door, had put the streets, the salons, the cafes, the studios in a ferment, revived ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... having you up here. I am very dependent upon others, and I soon begin to be downcast if I have not some one to help or to be helped by. But happily He who takes away is the same as He who gives, and His great heart of affection understands our manifold and seemingly contradictory needs. Life would be intolerable if we had no one who knew us perfectly, not simply the outside part of our life, but that inside and apparently incommunicable part. Those who are least able to express themselves in words, or who (if they did express themselves) ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... said Guerchard. "Her examination this afternoon was in the highest degree unsatisfactory. Her answers were embarrassed, contradictory, ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... character, a poor story-teller, and a worse advocate. His book, despite its spasmodic style, lacks vigor. It indicates a want of firmness and precision of thought. It leaves a mixed impression on the mind. We venture to say, that two thirds of its readers will close the volume with an indefinite contradictory opinion that Burr was a sort of villanous saint, and that the other third, by no means the most inattentive readers, will not be able to form any ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... nose as Martin had ever seen. There was nothing remarkable about the size of the eyes. They were neither large nor small, while their color was a nondescript brown; but in them smouldered a fire, or, rather, lurked an expression dual and strangely contradictory. Defiant, indomitable, even harsh to excess, they at the same time aroused pity. Martin found himself pitying him he knew not why, though he was soon ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... is its bearing upon the closing scenes of Christ's history. In its types as well as in its prophecies His death was foreshadowed, and the humiliating and ignominious treatment to which He was subjected minutely described. The predictions involved events that appeared contradictory and paradoxical until their fulfilment furnished the key. He Himself told the disciples again and again that He should be crucified. This form of execution was a Roman punishment reserved for slaves and the vilest criminals; and the fact that Jesus ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... that when he confessed it would be what she declared. I never dreamed that Clancy and his confederate were the thieves: I never believed the money was taken until after Hayne received it. I saw how Hayne's guilt was believed in even in the face of contradictory evidence before the court. What would be the tendency if three men together were to swear against me, now that everybody thought him wronged? I know very well what you will think of my cowardice. I know you and your officers will say ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... of her taking the dress; "its attractions have enough of illusion, its favors enough of inconstancy, its rebuffs enough of bitterness, there is enough of injustice and perfidy in the dealings of men, enough of unevenness and capriciousness in their intractable and contradictory humors—there is enough of it all, without doubt, to disgust us." "She was dead to me the day she entered the Carmelites," said the king, thirty-five years later, when the modest and fervent nun expired at last, in 1710, at her convent, without having ever relaxed the severities ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in the big dark eyes for an instant. Margaret felt sorry for the strange, contradictory creature, half child, half genius, ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... so senseless that throughout the whole of your speech you were at variance with yourself; so that you said things which had not only no coherence with each other but which were most inconsistent with and contradictory to one another; so that there was not so much opposition between you and me as there was between you and yourself. You confessed that your stepfather had been duplicated in that enormous wickedness, yet you complained ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... questions, and especially in matters Physiological, may admit of so many Differing Hypotheses, that 'twill be very inconsiderate and fallacious to conclude (except where the Opinions are precisely Contradictory) the Truth of one from the falsity of another. And in our particular case 'tis no way necessary, that the Properties of mixt Bodies must be explicable either by the Hermetical, or the Aristotelian Hypothesis, there being divers other ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... on to tell me something which might seem to a great many people to be quite contradictory of what she had just said—and she said it with the most profound conviction. She told me that your husband ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... a bank, thousands may at once detect the error, and by clear exposition compel its recognition. But in matters of opinion controlled by reason, there is no such ready detection and recognition of error, even by the best educated classes. The realm of opinion is ever in chaos. Contradictory opinions are ever clashing; no supreme arbiter is known; no law of reason, like the laws of mathematics, comes in to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... appetite; the poor must necessarily devour the food which pity throws them. So she ate, and drank a long draught of the cool water. The servant having gone, she resumed her contemplative attitude. Innumerable contradictory thoughts filled her mind: sometimes with maidenly shame she repented the step she had taken; at others, carried away by her passion, she exulted in her own audacity. Then she said to herself: "Here I am, it ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Contradictory as it may seem, there was nothing which entertained and edified him more than the little fellow's interest in his tenantry. He had never taken any interest in them himself, but it pleased him well enough ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... midst of these contradictory opinions, the shouts of the Indians, at the sight of Cuchillo, burst forth, compelling the chiefs to suspend their deliberations until the warriors who pursued him had returned. When they reappeared, they reported that they had discovered the trail of the whites. Then the second ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... that the unbiased opinion of most medical men of sound judgment, and long experience, is that the amount of death and disaster in the world would be less, if all diseases were left to themselves, than it now is under the multiform, reckless, and contradictory modes of practice, with which practitioners of diverse denominations carry on their differences, at the expense of ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... a cloud of witnesses, all contradictory. Josephus was barred. Philo Judaeus, who was living near the centre of things, an observer on the scent of the spiritual, a man acquainted with the writings of Rabbi Hillel, and the father of Neoplatonism—never ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... people recognised the grand head and commanding aspect of their own particular Apostle of Liberty. He,—stretching out his hands with a gesture of mingled authority and entreaty,—pacified the raging sea of contradictory and conflicting voices as if by magic,—and the horrid clamour died down into a dull roar, which in its turn ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... spite of your learning, your cultivation and your intelligence, under our enlightened and progressive civilization occupy the same political plane as insane persons, idiots, infants and others laboring under disabilities. To say I regret to be forced to address you thus is no mere lip service, contradictory of real sentiment and conviction, for I was one of the three Southern Senators who were sufficiently impressed with the absolute necessity of woman suffrage to step beyond the sacred portals of State rights and vote for the amendment ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... and Peace, the drama of that ancient alternation, is now the subject out of which the form of the book is to grow. Not seldom, and more frequently as the book advances, the story takes this new and contradictory alignment. The centre shifts from the general play of life, neither national nor historic, and plants itself in the field of racial conflict, typified by that "sheep-worry of Europe" which followed the French ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... There are many contradictory statements in popular natural history works with reference to the habits of this bird, and it may not be out of place to quote what one ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the vessel had proceeded as far as Barra, when the captain was so certainly informed that the lady had been removed to the mainland that he turned back; pleading, further, that there was such evident want of sense in Mrs Ruthven, and such contradictory testimony between her and her husband, that he doubted whether any portion of their story was true. It was next believed that a commission of enquiry would be soon sent to this and other islands: but this could not take place until the public tranquillity ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... genuine shrinking. His look changed. Drawing his chair close up to her he began a series of penitent and self-contradictory excuses which Marcella soon ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... such contradictory conduct appears to those who "sit at home at ease," and are involved in none of the terrible calamities which draw forth the latent marvels of the human heart, history in every age affords too many examples of its occurrence to permit us to doubt the truth of the narrative. It ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... and even mood of small children when alone, are fickle, fluctuating, contradictory. Our very presence imposes one general law on them, viz., that of keeping our good will and avoiding our displeasure. As the plant grows towards the light, so they unfold in the direction of our wishes, felt ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... possessing a revoltingly ugly face and the temper of a fiend. It was on their honeymoon that she became suddenly cross at breakfast and burnt all the unpublished MSS. that she could find in the back yard, thereby destroying heartlessly the luscious fruits of untold labour while abroad. Spout with the contradictory stubbornness characteristic of so many geniuses continued—though very hurt—to adore his vixenish wife with the blind concentrated passion which for so many years had impregnated his work and now, ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... much the same in our own country, is it not?" queried Harry. "It seems to me that I have read articles in the New York Tribune and the New York Evening Post that were flatly contradictory of each other on ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Some of the men were quietly walking away with their rifles slung behind them, in spite of a line of sentries placed across the road and the efforts of their officers. Cuthbert questioned some of the men, as they came along, as to what had happened, but the most contradictory answers were given. They had been fired upon from Fort Valerien; they had been attacked from Courbevoie; they had been betrayed; they had been sent out without any cannon: ammunition was short; they were not going ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... French soldiers, the size of tin toys, were scrambling up with bags and loads of faggots, their ant-like activity as orderly and untroubled as if the two armies had not lain trench to trench a few yards away. It was one of those strange and contradictory scenes of war that bring home to the bewildered looker-on the utter impossibility of picturing how the thing ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... Turkish character, as reported by travellers, have seemed to readers as inconsistencies in their reports; Thornton accepts the inconsistency. "The national character of the Turks," he says, "is a composition of contradictory qualities. We find them brave and pusillanimous; gentle and ferocious; resolute and inconstant; active and indolent; fastidiously abstemious, and indiscriminately indulgent. The great are alternately ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... irrational. It amounts, in effect, to saying that you must go some way to meet God before God can or will come to you. This seems a curious coyness; but as God is finite and conditioned, a bit of a character ("a strongly marked and knowable personality," p. 5), there is nothing contradictory in it. Even when we read that "the true God goes through the world like fifes and drums and flags, calling for recruits along the street" (p. 40), we must not seize upon the letter of a similitude, and talk about inconsistency. You must go out ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... rejoicings on my return to New Sestros. The coast was full of odd and contradictory stories about our capture. When the tale of my death at Sierra Leone by drowning, in a fit of drunkenness, was told to my patron Don Pedro, that intelligent gentleman denied it without hesitation, because, in the language of the law, "it proved too much." It was possible, he said, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... of honor, I thought of the sad past life of my child. Thus, far from encouraging the hopes of Henry, I gave him, in several conversations, advice absolutely contradictory from what he would have expected from me if I had thought of giving him your hand. In such a situation, one so delicate, as a father and a man of honor, it was incumbent on me to keep a rigorous neutrality, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... lately added socialism to the other contradictory theories he vehemently believed ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... such does not exist, seeing the extension of space or internal place is not different from that of body. For since from this alone, that a body has extension in length, breadth, and depth, we have reason to conclude that it is a substance, it being absolutely contradictory that nothing should possess extension, we ought to form a similar inference regarding the space which is supposed void, viz., that since there is extension in it ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... sets up to be a philosophy of the universe—all inclusive, therefore, and shutting out a number of truths otherwise perceived, or which appeal to other faculties, or which are equally true and are not really contradictory of legitimately materialistic statements—then it is that its insufficiency and narrowness ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... fundamentally different. There was no common basis on which to build. To attempt to bring the two theories into accord would have been futile. I, therefore, told Colonel House that it was useless to try to bring into accord the two plans, since they were founded on contradictory principles and that the only course of procedure open to me was to present my views to the President in written form, hoping that he would give them consideration, although fearing that his mind was made up, since he had ordered his plan ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... not act without adequate knowledge, and thus cause disaster, if a sincere effort is made to provide them with knowledge. The money question has first place in multitudes of minds of all degrees or power. But a glance at most of the cure-all systems shows how contradictory they are. The majority of them make the assumption of honesty among mankind, to begin with, and that, of course, is a prime defect. Even our present system would work splendidly if all men were honest. As a matter of fact, the whole money question is 95 per cent. human nature; and your successful ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... while poor Ralph was looking about the room for Bud. Bud's actions had of late been strangely contradictory. But had he turned coward and deserted his friend? Why else did he avoid the session of the court? After asking himself such questions as these, Ralph would wonder at his own folly. What could Bud do if he were there? There ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... And, so far, the difference is rather in the process than the conclusion. Newman believes in God on the testimony of an inner voice, so conclusive and imperative that he can dismiss all apparently contradictory facts, and even afford, for controversial purposes, to exaggerate them. Fitzjames, as a sound believer in Mill's logic, makes the facts the base of his whole argumentative structure, though he ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... wit, a quick perception of the ridiculous, and a thorough knowledge of the world and human nature, he united classical knowledge and a taste for the fine arts. To these qualities may be added others of a very contradictory nature. With a thorough enjoyment of the pleasures of society, an imperturbable good-humour, a kind heart, and a passionate fondness for children, he united a morbid interest in the details of human suffering, and, more especially, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... gifts, that their ideas sparkle and coruscate, they splinter every ray of light into a thousand colours, and produce all kinds of strange juxtapositions and combinations. (This exuberance has probably led to the seemingly contradictory saying that men of sentiment are generally men of humour.) No doubt their sallies would be poor and appreciated by themselves alone were they without a certain foundation, but a vast number of things are capable ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... alluded to purposely in Major Benjy's presence, how much more now after this critical morning would that subject be taboo? That certainly was a good thing, for the duellists if closely questioned might have a different explanation, and it would be highly inconvenient to have two contradictory stories going about. But, as it was, nothing could be nicer: the whole of the rest of Tilling, under promise of secrecy, would know, and even if under further promises of secrecy they communicated their secret to each other, there ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson |
