"Disputant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... present moral theories of whatever kind in so thinking about our ancestors. The intuitive theory of morality, which would be that naturally most opposed to it, has lately taken a new development. It is not now maintained that all men have the same amount of conscience. Indeed, only a most shallow disputant who did not understand even the plainest facts of human nature could ever have maintained it; if men differ in anything they differ in the fineness and the delicacy of their moral intuitions, however we may suppose those feelings to have been acquired. We need not go as far as savages to learn that ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... to me, and I shall cast out that devil which causeth those fits." The Quakers could hardly have been as angry as they were, nor their books have been so many and their writers so voluble during twenty years and longer, if Muggleton had not been a disputant to be dreaded, and a prophet with the faculty ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... That type of disputant is still with us, and is still supporting his beliefs with the same tactics. And it is successful with some. There is a certain snobbishness in human nature that makes it seek the association of well-known names and shun ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... my affair,' I answered. He threw up his hands in despair; but in a moment his place was taken by an unexpected disputant. ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... the debatable questions included in the two preceding exercises or suggested by them. That is, find the issues in each question, and show what each disputant must prove and what ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... some extravagant remark of the young Catholic, and Robert's effort to edge away from the conversation, caught his attention at the same moment. His face hardened, and in his nasal voice he dealt a swift epigram at Mr. Wishart, which for the moment left the young disputant floundering. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Intolerance was then a thing to be proud of, but in Lessing's time some progress had been achieved, and men began to think it a good thing to seem tolerant. The succeeding Fragments were to test this liberality and reveal the flimsiness of the stuff of which it was made. When the unknown disputant began to declare "the impossibility of a revelation upon which all men can rest a solid faith," and when he began to criticize the evidences of Christ's resurrection, such a storm burst out in the theological world of Germany as had not been witnessed since the time of Luther. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... our understandings with theirs. The study of books is a languishing and feeble motion that heats not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises at once. If I converse with a strong mind and a rough disputant, he presses upon my flanks, and pricks me right and left; his imaginations stir up mine; jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up to something above myself; and acquiescence is a quality altogether tedious in discourse. But, as our mind fortifies itself by the communication ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... rock will I build my church," &c. Luther took higher and bolder ground, denied the infallibility of councils, and appealed to Scripture as the ultimate authority. Eck had probably the advantage over his antagonist, so far as dialectics were concerned, being a more able disputant; but Luther set at defiance mere scholastic logic, and appealed to an authority which dialectics could not reach. The victory was claimed by both parties; but the result was, that Luther no longer acknowledged the authority of the Roman church, and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... bless! Deign to befriend me in my dying hour! Thou clear Vicegerent of thy Father's power! And, while, within a grateful heart, I own My hopes to view Thee on thy heavenly throne. With all thy merits on my soul imprest, May faith's firm wings convey me to thy breast! Such, friendly disputant of studious mind! Ever to good, in active life, inclind! Such are my thoughts, my views, my hopes, my creed, Adverse, I own, to those, for which you plead! And which, to speak without reserve, I deem A rash surmise, a dark Socinian dream! Tho' tenets ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... are taken is a real or imaginary disputation with Trypho, a learned Jew at Ephesus, respecting the principles of Christianity, and contains an elaborate demonstration that Christ is the Messiah of the Old Testament. The controversy is carried on with courtesy on both sides, and each disputant is equally earnest in his attempt to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... passing years in one place, transferring himself to another, and sometimes to a third and a fourth. Some masters were, perhaps, more distinguished in human Science; others in Divinity. Columbkill studied in two or three different schools, and visited others, perhaps as disputant or lecturer—a common custom in later years. Nor should we associate the idea of under-age with the students of whom we speak. Many of them, whether as teachers or learners, or combining both characters together, reached middle life before they ventured as instructors ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... well-known personages, it was inferred that Simplicio must also have a representative. The enemies of Galileo are said to have convinced his Holiness that Simplicio was intended as a portraiture of himself; and this opinion received some probability from the fact, that the peripatetic disputant had employed many of the arguments which Urban had himself used in his discussions with Galileo. The latest biographer of Galileo[33] regards this motive as necessary to account for "the otherwise inexplicable change which took place in the conduct ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... as far as that goes," commented Mr. Kirk, fortified by the entry of a new disputant into the argument, "that even Nero had his ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... college floor at Hiram Institute. Here, besides gaining a considerable step in his education, Garfield began to exercise his gifts as a speaker. The debating society of his college found in him its most fluent disputant, and the college became immensely proud of the promising youth, whose reputation as a ready and effective speaker was ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... if I were a more accomplished disputant, or a more learned person, perhaps I should feel its truth, its usefulness for those who are happy enough to perceive it; but if I find evidence for it which I cannot combat, I also find objections ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... lamentation, which one or two of the assistants chorussed with a deep groan, our hero thought it unnecessary to make any reply. Whereupon Mr. Gilfillan, resolving that he should be a hearer at least, if not a disputant, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... coarse, as in his childhood, when Jesus could still send him into the herd of swine. Or else they make him subtle as a logician of the schools, or a fault-finding lawyer. If he had been no better than this compound of beast and disputant,—if he had only lived in the mire or on fine-drawn quibbles about nothing, he would very soon have ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... work was first published very shortly after the departure of our forefathers from Leyden. It is well known that in the course of the contest Mr. Robinson more than once appeared, with credit to himself, as a public disputant against Episcopius; and from the manner in which the fact is related by Governor Bradford, it is apparent that the whole English Church at Leyden took a zealous interest in the religious part of the controversy. As strangers in the ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... that he battled with a disputant who imbibed his faith from the lights of nature, eschewing all subtleties of doctrine, he willingly abandoned a controversy from which he believed neither profit nor credit was to be derived. While the scout was speaking, he had also seated himself, and producing the ready little volume ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... discriminating view of Quisante ought to be attainable, not an oscillation from disgust to admiration, but a well-balanced stable judgment which should allow full value to merits and to defects, and sum up the man as a whole. Something of the sort she tried to suggest; neither disputant would hear of it, and Marchmont went off with an unyielding assertion that the man was a cad, no more and no less than a cad. Dick looked after him with a well-satisfied air; May fancied that opposition and the failure of others to understand intensified his satisfaction in his ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... deadly missile burst Right on the rover, checked his speed, And made him rock like one whose thirst Has frankly caused him to exceed, You must have felt as feels a god To whom whole nations bend the knee— Whichever of the dozen odd Disputant gunners you may be. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... professor having once exasperated a disputant by the dryness of his sarcasm, the petulant opponent thus addressed him:—"Mr. Porson, I beg leave to tell you, sir, that my opinion of you is perfectly contemptible." Person replied, "I never knew an opinion of yours, sir, which was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... differed at any time in opinion with a disputant, the suavity of his manners was so conciliatory that opposition, from him, was sometimes better received than agreement, and coincidence, from other people. This suavity, by the by, is a delightful art. Would it were better understood, and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... nothing improbable in the meeting, and Cromwell's pun quite accords with other anecdotes of his conversation."(5) The part which Mr. Binning is reported to have acted on this occasion, was no less characteristical of him. He was a very able disputant. But when giving utterance to his feelings, or expressing his sentiments, he was sometimes ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... had furnished a remedy against poison, and it was also an arbiter of disputes.[858] Artemidorus describes how, at a certain place, there were two crows. Persons having a dispute set out two heaps of sweetmeats, one for each disputant. The birds swooped down upon them, eating one and dispersing the other. He whose heap had been scattered won the case.[859] Birds were believed to have guided the migrating Celts, and their flight furnished auguries, because, as Deiotaurus gravely said, birds never lie. Divination ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... from the habits and influences of a classical education and academic pursuits, scarcely had a year elapsed from the commencement of my literary and political adventures before my mind sank into a state of thorough disgust and despondency, both with regard to the disputes and the parties disputant. With more than poetic feeling ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the duplicity and insidious falsehood which this implies; farther, the Society and its branches are composed, in by far the larger part, of citizens of slaveholding States, who cannot gravely be charged with a design so perilous to themselves. To the uncandid disputant, I say, let him put his finger on one single sentiment, declaration or act of the Society, or of any person, with its sanction, which shows such to be their object: there is in fact no pretext for the charge.' ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Ditton. They reached the fountain. Damaris stayed her measured walk, and stood gazing at the jet of water in its uprush and myriad sparkling fall. Ellice answered chaffingly yet with an underlying growl; and the dispute threatened to wax warm. But the girl heeded neither disputant, her attention rapt in watching the play of the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the disputant who had stirred up the monster, his situation was as unenviable as it was comic to the bystanders. He had never before dropped a stone into the great geyser. He was therefore unprepared for the result. One likened him to an unprotected traveler in a heavy ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... that God has made no written revelation of his will, than that he has revealed such a doctrine as this. Let the opinion become prevalent that it is a doctrine of the Bible, and, as the consequence, the Bible will be rejected by thousands, yea, hundreds of thousands. It is impossible for the ablest disputant to maintain a respectable argument against infidelity while standing upon this ground. He must assume the opposite ground, as the basis of his argument, or he will fail signally. The infidel objects to the Bible that ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... extraordinary. The ingenuity of his successive pleas for pressing such a request pertinaciously upon Mr. Peterborough in particular, his fixed eye, yet cordial deferential manner, and the stretch of his forefinger, and argumentative turn of the head—indicative of an armed disputant fully on the alert, and as if it were of profound and momentous importance that he should thoroughly defeat and convince his man—overwhelmed us. Mr. Peterborough, not being supple in French, fell back upon his English with a flickering smile of protestation; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... remark, that we recently listened to a very interesting discussion, at the 'Union' club, between an English traveler of high repute, and a warm Unionist, upon the attitude of England. The former seemed as ardent as was the latter disputant in his abhorrence of the Southern traitors; but he constructed a very fair argument for the consistency of England. Taking for his first position, that foreign nations viewed the Jeff Davis movement as a revolution, self-sustained ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rise so high as to overcome and bear away the artificial barriers opposed to it, and rush down upon the adversary with accumulating wrath. It thus frequently happened, that, like a wily old general, he retreated in the face of his disputant in good order and by degrees, with so moderate a degree of resistance, as to draw on his antagonist's pursuit to the spot, where, at length, making a sudden and unexpected attack, with horse, foot, and artillery at once, he seldom ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... is the same as the Socrates of the earlier dialogues. He is the invincible disputant, now advanced in years, of the Protagoras and Symposium; he is still pursuing his divine mission, his 'Herculean labours,' of which he has described the origin in the Apology; and he still hears the voice of his oracle, bidding him receive or not receive ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... from information accidentally supplied by Mr. Lindsay himself, as the next heir to a property to which claim was laid by the head of a county family of wealth. Probabilities were altogether in his favour, when he gave up the contest upon the offer of a comfortable annuity from the disputant. To leave his schooling and his possible estate together, and sit down comfortably by his own fireside, with the means of buying books, and within reach of a good old library—that of King's College by preference—was to him the sum of all that was desirable. The income offered him was such ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... marked his social manner, but he could be moved to a towering rage by an act of meanness, treachery or oppression; and in his public correspondence he was sometimes downright vitriolic. Hardly anything could have excused the retort he flung at some unhappy disputant who had called one of his facts in question. "You have dared," he wrote, "to contradict me on a subject in which I am profoundly learned, while you are ignorant as dirt." It was true enough, but perhaps it was hardly worth while to say it in that fashion. ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... rithmical rise and fall to it, as in parts of the English Book of Common Prayer. But in {155} general his sentences are long and involved, full of inventions and latinized constructions. Controversy at that day was conducted on scholastic lines. Each disputant, instead of appealing at once to the arguments of expediency and common sense, began with a formidable display of learning, ransacking Greek and Latin authors and the fathers of the Church for opinions in support of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Pennypacker, in his Life of General Meade, speaks of Halleck and other prominent officials in Washington in these terms: "Possessing much of the skill of the lawyer and disputant, Halleck was without military ability. The Secretary of War, like many other men who exercise vast power, was not great enough to refrain from the use of his authority in matters where his knowledge and experience did not qualify him to form the soundest views. Acting with these ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in inforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... of war may be applied to disputing,—it should be always so managed as to remember that the only true end of it is peace: but generally true disputants are like true sportsmen,—their whole delight is in the pursuit; and a disputant no more cares for the truth than the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... voice was interjected, another disputant stepped quickly forward, and Toomey checked himself in the first breath of an impassioned outburst; his black hand suddenly shot half-way up to the cap-visor, then came down with a jerk; his heels had clicked together and his knees straightened out, then as suddenly went limp. The new-comer had sprung ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... and were both left under the table.[143] The house was thus a small centre of intellectual life, though the symposia were not altogether such as became philosophers. Horne Tooke was a keen and shrewd disputant, well able to impress weaker natures. His neighbour, Sir Francis Burdett, became his political disciple, and in later years was accepted as the radical leader. Tooke died at Wimbledon 18th ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... friendly interview then took place, in which each communed with each, and by words of faith or affection helped to supply the strength which all needed for the approaching conflict. One saw no longer and heard no longer the enthusiastic disputant more bent upon victory than truth, and heedless of the wounds he gave to the heart, provided he convinced the head or silenced the tongue, but instead, those who now appeared no other than a company of ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... of meeting with something portentous or dangerous. Nor can he defend a dogma better than he communes with men; for he knows not that which attacks it. He supposes it to be a set of book arguments, whereas it is something lying very deep in the heart of the disputant, into which he ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... otherwise inclin'd Then to a worldly Crown, addicted more To contemplation and profound dispute, As by that early action may be judg'd, When slipping from thy Mothers eye thou went'st Alone into the Temple; there was found Among the gravest Rabbies disputant On points and questions fitting Moses Chair, Teaching not taught; the childhood shews the man, 220 As morning shews the day. Be famous then By wisdom; as thy Empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o're all the world, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... You disputant! You should not have called yourself unhappy at all then. You should have told the whole, or kept quiet. Reason and necessity commanded you to forget me? I am a great stickler for reason; I have a great respect for necessity. But let me hear how reasonable ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... in I company street, loud language. One disputant: "I keep my feet as clean as yours!" The other. "You do? I have washed mine twice since the beginning of the hike." The first: "So have I, Monday and yesterday. You take care of your person and I'll look ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... the bush, he could not collect himself. By degrees he did so, and replied to me in a manner that he doubtless thought would convince me at once. "If the case you suggest were to happen," he said, "and the Pope declaring for one disputant were to excommunicate the other and all his followers, such excommunication would not merely be unjust, it would be false; and it has never been decided that a false excommunication should hinder us from doing ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... disputant prevailed, and, in 1760, he was sent to William and Mary College. He remained there two years. His acquirements, during this time, though probably not so great as Mr. Randall would have us believe, must have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... a lofty sense of duty, a strong conviction of the essential truths of revealed Christianity; sincere believers in the gospel, of enduring principle, of pure, consistent, blameless life and conduct. Speculative theology he cared little or nothing about. He was no disputant, no doubter, no casuist; of the heights of mysticism, of the depths of infidelity, he knew nothing. He was conservative, of course, from temperament rather than from inquiry. He took the literal, prose view of Calvinism, and rejected doctrines which ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... his spiritual mission would have been forcibly swallowed up in the mission of natural philosopher; but, on the other hand, to pause resolutely at any one stage of this public examination, and to refuse all further advance, would be, in the popular opinion, to retreat as a baffled disputant from insane paradoxes which he had not been able to support. One step taken in that direction was fatal, whether the great envoy retreated from his own words to leave behind the impression that he was defeated as a rash speculator, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... maiden's gentle hand. I did not notice her movement to her father's side. She was there when I first observed her, with one hand laid upon his temple, and lightly smoothing the hair with a caressing motion. Gradually the high tone of then disputant subsided, and his words had in them less of personal rancour. Still, the discussion went on; and I noticed that the maiden's hand, which rested on the temple when unimpassioned words were spoken, resumed its caressing motion the instant there ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... lapse into fatalism, he gained with increasing years an increasing trust in the overruling providence of God. Adhering to none of all the religions in the colonies, he yet devoutly, though without form, adhered to religion. But though famous as a disputant, and having a natural aptitude for metaphysics, he obeyed the tendency of his age, and sought by observation to win an insight into the mysteries of being. The best observers praise his method most. He so sincerely loved truth, that in his pursuit ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Germany and under the auspices of its emperor. He now admitted that even a general council could err, and was soon convinced "that we are all Hussites, without knowing it; yes, Paul and St. Augustine were good Hussites." Luther's public encounter with a disputant of European reputation, and the startling admissions which he was compelled to make, first made him realize that he might become the leader in an attack on the Church. He began to see that a great change and ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... above. Nor does he ever go out of his natural character. He is, indeed, the lover from infancy of Beatrice, the aristocratic magistrate of a fierce democracy, the valiant soldier in the field of Campaldino, the fervent patriot in the feuds of Guelphs and Ghibellines, the eloquent and subtle disputant in the school of theology, the melancholy exile wandering from court to court, depending for bread and shelter on petty princes who knew not his worth, except as a splendid captive in their train; and above all, he is the poet anticipating his own assured renown (though not obtrusively ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... sanctified by an earnest desire for the salvation of his opponents. An extraordinary man, younger than himself, full of energy and enthusiasm, entered the lists with him; and in Edward Burrough, very properly called a son of thunder and of consolation, Bunyan found an able disputant. He was talented, pious, and fearless in his Master's work, and became eminently useful in laying the foundation of the Society of Friends. Soon after this he was numbered with the noble army of martyrs at the age of twenty-eight, being sacrificed in Newgate, at the shrine ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... moreover, that I have "the effrontery to imply that the horrible massacres of the Revolution ... were 'a very mild story compared with the atrocities of the Jews or the crimes of Catholicism.'" No really honest and competent disputant would have hit on "effrontery" as the note of the passage referred to, if he had had its whole spirit and drift before him. The reader shall, if he pleases, judge for himself. After the words just quoted, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... confessedly true—each is triumphant so long as he is not obliged to take into consideration any other maxims of justice than those he has selected, but that as soon as their several maxims are brought face to face, each disputant seems to have as much to say for himself as the others. No one can carry out his own notion of justice without trampling upon another equally binding.'[16] This view of the matter, however, can scarcely be regarded as satisfactory. If utilitarian ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... when the lust of sway Had lost its quickening spell,[252] Cast crowns for rosaries away, An empire for a cell; A strict accountant of his beads, A subtle disputant on creeds, His dotage trifled well:[253] Yet better had he neither known A bigot's shrine, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... spatting thus in lowered voices on the sofa, and as Tibbie ended, her disputant's arm was about her waist, and she was squeezed ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... a small but highly efficient striking force ready for instant action. And now the time for action had come. The force was ready. From the harbors the troopships steamed away, their decks crowded with cheery soldiers, their flags waving a proud challenge to any disputant of Britain's command of ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... discussion of the so-called "Negro Problem," there is, as a rule, a great deal of the sentimental and still more of the sensational. By a series of non sequitur arguments the average disputant succeeds admirably in proving what is foreign to the subject. This is true of writers of both sections of our country—North as well as South—but especially true ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... cousins; and the tutor selected was Edward Weston, the son of Stephen, Bishop of Exeter; this preceptor was afterwards engaged in a controversy with Dr. Warburton, concerning the 'Naturalization of the Jews.' By that learned, haughty disputant, he is termed 'a gazetteer by profession—by inclination a Methodist.' Such was the man who guided the dawning intellect of Horace Walpole. Under his care he remained until he went, in 1727, to Eton. But Walpole's was not merely a scholastic ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... factum atque in eo disputant contaminari non decere fabulas ... qui quom hunc accusant, ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... of the logs, and while this was being done by the silent Indian, Rivenoak stalked over the hemlock boughs that lay between the logs in sullen ferocity, eyeing keenly the while the hut, the platform and the person of his late disputant. Once he spoke in low, quick tones to his companion, and he stirred the boughs with his feet like an animal that is restive. At that moment the watchfulness of Deerslayer had a little abated, for he sat musing on the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... deduce any positive conclusions from a negative idea, we are involved in darkness, perplexity, and inevitable contradiction. As these difficulties arise from the nature of the subject, they oppress, with the same insuperable weight, the philosophic and the theological disputant; but we may observe two essential and peculiar circumstances, which discriminated the doctrines of the Catholic church from the opinions of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... did!' sang Linton, sinking into the recess of his chair, and leaning back his head to enjoy the agitation of the other disputant, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... the eastern—the theory prevails that "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do" and manual labour is a recognized part of the monastic life. But in India conditions and ideals were different. The resident monk grew out of the wandering teacher or disputant, who was not likely to practise any trade; it was a maxim that religious persons lived on alms, and occupations which we consider harmless, such as agriculture, were held to be unsuitable because such acts as ploughing may destroy animal life. Probably the Buddha would ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... See Mr. Long's introduction to these orations. "All this I admit," says Mr. Long, speaking of some possible disputant; "but he will never convince any man of sense that the first of Roman writers, a man of good understanding, and a master of eloquence, put together such tasteless, feeble, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... call, and presently the Treasurer, Mr Willett—a pursey little man with enormous side-whiskers,—came hurrying forward from the after-companion, where he had been engaged in hearing a protest from an excited disputant—a competitor in the 16-foot class— who had in fact come in last, even on his handicap, but with a clear notion in his own mind, and an array of arguments to convince others, that he was entitled to the prize. Such misunderstandings were frequent ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... or contrariety of opinions upon this subject, nature has taken sufficient care that theory shall have little influence on practice. The most diligent inquirer is not able long to keep his eyes open; the most eager disputant will begin about midnight to desert his argument; and, once in four-and-twenty hours, the gay and the gloomy, the witty and the dull, the clamorous and the silent, the busy and the idle, are all overpowered by the gentle tyrant, and all lie down ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... slightly to the angry disputant who was about to reply; and, turning his horse down Rue Saint Honore, called on his friends to follow him. He rode slowly, to give time to all to join him at the Barrier, and then issued his orders that those who yielded obedience to him, should rendezvous ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... undertaking. Most people however reproach him with wanting moderation in polemics, and with being more cutting than befits a theologian and one who propounds something new in sacred matters.' His ability as a disputant was afterwards acknowledged by Eck, who in referring to this tourney, quoted Aristotle's remark that when two men dispute together, each of whom has learned the art, there is sure to be ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... complete grasp of both sides. Few men go into the troubled region of pamphleteering, article-writing, public controversy, and incessant dialectics, without suffering a deterioration of character in consequence. Mr. Greg must be set down as one of these few. He never fell into the habitual disputant's vice of trying to elude the force of a fair argument; he did not mix up his own personality in the defence of his thesis; differences in argument and opinion produced not only no ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... elastic bow. He takes any shape in sentiment or opinion you please to give him, with most obliging disposition. As you think, so he thinks; as you say, so he says. If you deny, he denies; if you affirm, he affirms. He is no wrangler or disputant, no dogmatist or snubber. You may always rely upon having a hearing from him, whatever you say. And observe this, what he is to you, so he is to others, however averse they may be in sentiment to yourself. He is very much of a weathercock-make ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... or "The Relation of Will to Thought," than upon those of more vivid moral or religious interest, such as "What is Death?" "The Theory of a Soul," "The Ethics of Belief," or "Is God Unknowable," in which wide scope was given to the emotions as well as the intellect of each disputant. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... large eyes glittering blackly in the paleness of his face. Gnulemah, with the serenity of a victorious disputant willing ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... blind girl, whose face was ever turned up towards the unseen speaker, and whose mind opened to every passing remark, could avoid becoming a thinker, a reasoner, a tory, and a patriot. Sometimes a tough disputant crossed our threshold; one of these was Dr. Parr, and brilliant were the flashes resulting from such occasional collision with antagonists of that calibre. I am often charged with the offence of being too political in my writings: the fact ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... nomination day. As a man in the field of statesmanship and in intensity of devotion, he was more idolized than any since his prototype, Henry Clay. With political erudition was blended an eloquence inspiring and fascinating; a nobility of character often displayed as the champion of the weak; a disputant adept in all the mazes of analysis, denunciation, or sarcasm, he had created antipathy as bitter as his affections were unyielding. While Speaker of the House, with his counterpart in eloquence, Roscoe Conkling, he had many tilts. One of the most noted and probably far-reaching ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... often been equalled." Even the grave and reverend Westminster Review found "after reading what the Lord Chief Justice himself characterises as Mr. Foote's very striking and able speech, that the editor of the Freethinker is very far from being the vulgar and uneducated disputant which the Spectator appears to have supposed him." Other Liberal papers, like the Pall Mall Gazette and the Referee, that had at first joined in the chorus of execration over the fallen "blasphemer," now found that my ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... contested were trivial enough. Colman, Aidan's successor at Holy Island, pleaded for the Irish fashion of the tonsure, and for the Irish time of keeping Easter: Wilfrid pleaded for the Roman. The one disputant appealed to the authority of Columba, the other to that of St. Peter. "You own," cried the king at last to Colman, "that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven—has He given such power to Columba?" The bishop could but ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... Oxford," wherein "All the ridiculous and false Assertions" contained in Miss Blandy's Own Account "are exploded, and the Whole of that Mysterious Affair set in a True Light." But by this time the fair disputant was beyond the reach of controversy, and the Oxford gentleman had it all his own way; though the pamphleteers kept the discussion alive a ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... proved too true: "We have seen already how religion has been put in peril by the irruption of barbarism, and I am very much afraid that this will happen again." At a Disputation in the University of Wittenberg, the Chancellor addressed a disputant with such epithets as "Hear, thou hog! thou hound! thou fool! or whatever thou art, thou stolid ass!" Another prominent personage of Wittenberg, in a Disputation, became so enraged at hearing Melanchthon ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... to be bound with the first. It is in a juvenile and dry style of quotation and academic reasoning, modelled after Schaller's older Dissertation, and not worth an abstract. More interesting than itself are eleven pieces of congratulatory Latin verse prefixed to it by college friends of the disputant. In more than one of these Milton is mentioned; but the liveliest mention of him is in a set of Phalaecians signed "Christianus Keck." Phalaecians are not to be attempted in English; but, as the semi-absurd relish of the thing would be lost in prose, the first few lines ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... were told this was no ordinary disputation, no common controversy, where all were alike entitled to license of ingress; that the disputant was no undistinguished scholar, whose renown did not extend beyond his own trifling sphere, and whose opinions, therefore, few would care to hear and still fewer to oppugn, but a foreigner of high rank, in high favor and fashion, and not more remarkable for his extraordinary intellectual ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... disputation this! while the Jewish disputant, knowing that he could not properly prove out of the Pentateuch, that "the place which the Lord their God shall choose to place his name there," so often referred to in the Book of Deuteronomy, was Jerusalem any more than Gerizzim, that being not determined ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... form. "Your Lordship believes in the Trinity." "Who told you so?" said Middleton. "Not believe in the Trinity!" cried the priest in amazement. "Nay," said Middleton; "prove your religion to be true if you can; but do not catechize me about mine." As it was plain that the Secretary was not a disputant whom it was easy to take at an advantage, the controversy ended almost as soon as it began. [429] When fortune changed, Middleton adhered to the cause of hereditary monarchy with a stedfastness which was the more respectable because he would have had no difficulty ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Philip Henry Gosse, than of religious believers as such.[226] The study of theologians more considerable and even more typically conservative than Liddon does not confirm the description of religious intolerance given in good faith, but in serious ignorance, by a disputant so acute, so observant and so candid as Huxley. Something hid from each other's knowledge the devoted pilgrims in two great ways of thought. The truth may be, that naturalists took their view of what creation was from Christian ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... with so pertinacious a disputant we were compelled humbly to submit. The horse had one stall—we took possession of the other. To make ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would allow, we collected all the hay and straw and ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... professor in the college of San Juan de Letran, [16] where he enjoyed the reputation of being a consummate dialectician, so much so that in the days when the sons of Guzman [17] still dared to match themselves in subtleties with laymen, the able disputant B. de Luna had never been able either to catch or to confuse him, the distinctions made by Fray Sibyla leaving his opponent in the situation of a fisherman who tries to catch eels with a lasso. The Dominican says little, appearing ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and a warm opposer of Gracchus, as appears from an Oration of Gracchus against him: we have likewise some of Tubero's speeches against Gracchus. He was not indeed a shining Orator: but he was a learned, and a very skilfull disputant. ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Wesley was certainly irritating. But the details of the unfortunate quarrel may be found in any history of Wesley or Whitefield. It is a far pleasanter task to record that in course of time the breach was entirely healed, though neither disputant receded one jot from his opinions. No man was ever more ready to confess his faults, no man ever had a larger heart or was actuated by a truer spirit of Christian charity than George Whitefield. Never was there a man of a more forgiving temper than John Wesley. 'Ten thousand times would I rather ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... either into the tribrach. Yet it is evident to us that these, and even minuter points of accentual scansion, have been regarded by Mr. Coleridge as worthy of study and observation. We do not, of course, mean that rules of this kind were always in his mind while composing, any more than that an expert disputant is always thinking of the distinctions of mood and figure, whilst arguing; but we certainly believe that Mr. Coleridge has almost from the commencement of his poetic life looked upon versification as constituting in and by itself a much more important branch of the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... compelled to become dishonest; or, at any rate, the temptation to do so is very great. Thus it is that the weakness of our intellect and the perversity of our will lend each other mutual support; and that, generally, a disputant fights not for truth, but for his proposition, as though it were a battle pro aris et focis. He sets to work per fas et nefas; nay, as we have seen, he cannot easily do otherwise. As a rule, then, every man ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... this, and a great deal more, and will point it better than I can. Let me as an old friend entreat you not to pass this over, but to allow me to continue to think of you as I always have thought of you hitherto, namely, as the most impartial disputant in ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... treat to hear Mr. Naseby defending the Church of England in a volley of oaths, or supporting ascetic morals with an enthusiasm not entirely innocent of port wine. Dick used to wax indignant, and none the less so because, as his father was a skilful disputant, he found himself not seldom in the wrong. On these occasions, he would redouble in energy, and declare that black was white, and blue yellow, with much conviction and heat of manner; but in the morning such a licence of debate weighed upon him like a crime, ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... They quarreled, then fought. Two of the yellow partners killed the third! And now, a serious problem confronted the two survivors of that misunderstanding. What was to be done with the remains of the unsuccessful disputant?" ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... reason are not left without advocates. Some years ago, at Trinity College, Cambridge, Mr. G.E. Moore began to produce a very deep impression amongst the younger spirits by his powerful and luminous dialectic. Like Socrates, he used all the sharp arts of a disputant in the interests of common sense and of an almost archaic dogmatism. Those who heard him felt how superior his position was, both in rigour and in force, to the prevailing inversions and idealisms. The abuse of psychology, rampant for two hundred years, seemed at last to ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... a part of the history of Little Rivers!" he said, airily. "You have brought us something which we lacked in our singularly peaceful beginning. Without romance, sir, no community is complete. I have found you a felicitous disputant whom I shall miss; for you leave me to provide the arguments on both sides of a subject on the same evening. Our people have found you a neighbor of infinite resources of humor and cheer. We wish you a pleasant trail. We wish you warm sunshine when the weather ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... his method of reply where the disputant had no clear statement to make, but without attempt at proof chose to contend that such or such a person named by himself was wiser, or more of a statesman, or more courageous, and so forth, than some other person. (39) Socrates had a way of bringing the whole ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... them. Unlike some of his comrades of the Royal Society, he was of opinion that man does not live by science alone, and nothing came amiss to him.... Even in private the alarm of war is sometimes heard, and Mr. Huxley is not a whit less formidable as a disputant across the table than with pen in hand. Yet an angry man must be very angry indeed before he could be angry with this adversary. He disarmed his enemies with an amiable grace that made defeat ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... foregoing a letter from Dr. Whewell[395] to Mr. James Smith. The Master of Trinity was conspicuous as a rough customer, an intellectual bully, an overbearing disputant: the character was as well established as that of Sam Johnson. But there was a marked difference. It was said of Johnson that if his pistol missed fire, he would knock you down with the butt end of it: but Whewell, in like case, always acknowledged the miss, and loaded again or not, as the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... became the stronghold, is said to have been first introduced by a young girl of humble station, Maria Belandelle, into this part of the country. Strong in her conviction, and anxious to spread the truth, this person, more zealous than prudent, ventured to come forward, in 1534, as antagonist to, and disputant against, a Franciscan friar. However good her arguments might be, the result of the controversy had of course been previously decided on by the strongest party. She was convicted of heresy and impiety, and condemned to the stake; which ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... port, were placed on the table by way of dessert. At the close of the second day the trio dined at the baronet's table, when it appeared that, struck by the simplicity of the previous day's dinner, and rightly attributing the absence of luxuries to the narrowness of the host's purse, the wealthy disputant had resolved not to attempt to influence the umpire by giving him a superior repast. Sitting at another table the trio dined on exactly the same fare,—three fried soles, a roast leg of mutton, and vegetables; three ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... poor person.' As to wine, or any other liquor, he never drank any but at meal-time. I remember to have heard an instance of Mr. Alban's meekness, for I am not a witness of it. When he was presiding over one of his students in divinity in the public hall of Douay college, a disputant, who was probably much offended at some proposition in the thesis, as being opposite to some favorite opinion of his school or religious family, said to him with intolerable rudeness, habes mel in ore, sed fel in corde: to ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Grand Prince; making sure at the same time that this Prince belonged to the Muscovite line. This was not entirely accomplished until 1431, when Vasili carried his dispute to the Horde for the Khan's decision. The other disputant, who was making a desperate stand for his rights under the old system of seniority, was the "presumptuous uncle" already mentioned, who was, it will be remembered, commanded to lead by the bridle the horse of his triumphant Muscovite nephew. The sons ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... there was no good feeling existing between us. In reply to their communication I said: "You have a number of brethren in Kentucky of equal or superior ability to Mr. Miller, whom I can meet as Christian gentlemen, and when I have the promise of such a disputant, I shall be ready to arrange propositions." They then applied to Mr. Fitch, and a correspondence between us was opened. My purpose then, and ever since in debating with Methodists, was to discuss the system of Methodism, instead ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... you please, an effusion of sentiment, a chant of faith. In a world more and more given to judging trees by their fruits, we should err if we dismissed this sentiment, this faith, too lightly. Flaubert may have been a better disputant; he had a talent for writing. George Sand may have chosen her side with a truer instinct; she had a genius for living. This faith of hers sustained well the shocks of many long years, and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... perpetual atmosphere of smoke and sound. It is pleasant to look back on difficulties, when overcome—the best illustration of which is Columbus's egg; for, after convincing the sceptic, there can be no manner of doubt that he swallowed the yelk and white, leaving the shell to the pugnacious disputant. In the same way we look with a pleasing kind of pity on the quandaries of those whom we shall call—with no belief whatever in the pre-Adamite ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... look at the general tenor of the arguments addressed by believers to sceptics and opponents. Foremost of all, emblazoned at the head of every column, loudest shouted by every triumphant disputant, held up as paramount to all other considerations, stretched like an impenetrable shield to protect the weakest advocate of the great cause against the weapons of the adversary, was that omnipotent monosyllable which has been the patrimony ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... had before criticized upon in a masterly manner, and like a good Englishwoman, from the authority of her godfather Deane, concluded, that our Milton has excelled him in the sublimity of his images, this, is a controversy which I shall not enter into, with so lovely a disputant, whose eyes, whatever her lips may be, are always in the right. We are asked, would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer, of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the Epic poets been the occasion, by propagating false honour, ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... with an opportunity where he could at once exert his supremacy and display his learning, accepted the appeal; and resolved to mix, in a very unfair manner, the magistrate with the disputant. Public notice was given that he intended to enter the lists with the schoolmaster: scaffolds were erected in Westminster Hall, for the accommodation of the audience: Henry appeared on his throne accompanied with all the ensigns of majesty: the prelates were placed on his right hand: ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume |
