ARGUMENT QUOTES III

quotations about arguments & arguing

Let thy tongue tang with arguments of state.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Twelfth Night


In argument
Similes are like songs in love:
They must describe; they nothing prove.

MATTHEW PRIOR

Alma


Much virtue in If.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

As You Like It


It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.

MILAN KUNDERA

Encounter


No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.

WILKIE COLLINS

The Woman in White


Never maintain an argument with heat and clamour, though you think or know yourself to be in the right.

LORD CHESTERFIELD

letter, October 16, 1747


If ifs and ands were pots and pans
There'd be no work for the tinkers.

ROBERT BLACKHOUSE PEACOCK

A glossary of the dialect of the hundred of Lonsdale


Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

Life of Samuel Johnson


In arguing, answer your opponent's earnest with jest and his jest with earnest.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric


Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be
Others will go on speaking and you will not be able to argue back

RAM MOHAN ROY

attributed, Africa Quarterly, 2006


Argument is a gift of Nature.

CHARLES DICKENS

Barnaby Rudge


There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.

J.R. LOWELL

Democracy and Other Addresses


Debate destroys despatch.

JOHN DENHAM

Of Prudence


And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Romeo and Juliet


The kind of truth that can be asserted by argument had lost all glamour, all lustre, for him, seeming no more now than another aspect of that ancient urge -- much older than the desire for truth -- to command attention.

BARRY UNSWORTH

Sacred Hunger


You may say, I am hot; I say I am not,
Only warm, as the subject on which I am got.

JONATHAN SWIFT

The Famous Speechmaker


You are fond of argument, and now you fancy that I am a bag full of arguments.

SOCRATES

Theaetetus


I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

Life of Samuel Johnson


In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose.

THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici


Testimony is like the shot of a long-bow, which owes its efficacy to the force of the shooter; argument is like the shot of the cross-bow, equally forcible whether discharged by a giant or a dwarf.

ROBERT BOYLE

attributed, A Treatise on Facts as Subjects of Inquiry by a Jury