quotations about arguments & arguing
If he take you in hand, sir, with an argument,
He'll bray you in a mortar.
BEN JONSON
The Alchemist
We may convince others by our arguments; but we can only persuade them by their own.
JOSEPH JOUBERT
Pensées
In argument
Similes are like songs in love:
They must describe; they nothing prove.
MATTHEW PRIOR
Alma
Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Life of Samuel Johnson
No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.
WILKIE COLLINS
The Woman in White
Much virtue in If.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It
In arguing, answer your opponent's earnest with jest and his jest with earnest.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.
C.S. FORESTER
The African Queen
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
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
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
You are fond of argument, and now you fancy that I am a bag full of arguments.
SOCRATES
Theaetetus
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
This is no time nor fitting place to mar
The mirthful meeting with a wordy war.
LORD BYRON
Lara
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
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
I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Life of Samuel Johnson
I am not arguing with you--I am telling you.
J. MCNEILL WHISTLER
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies
Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won't?
L.J. SMITH
Nightfall