C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Dispute

Could we forbear dispute, and practice love,
We should agree, as angels do above.

Waller.

The pain of dispute exceeds by much its utility. All disputation makes the mind deaf; and when people are deaf I am dumb.

Joubert.

’Tis strange how some men’s tempers suit,
Like bawd and brandy, with dispute,
That for their own opinions stand fast,
Only to have them claw’d and canvass’d.

Butler.

The more discussion the better, if passion and personality be eschewed; and discussion, even if stormy, often winnows truth from error—a good never to be expected in an uninquiring age.

Channing.

Some say, compared to Bononcini,
That Mynheer Handel’s but a ninny;
Others aver that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a candle.
Strange that all this diff’rence should be
’Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

J. Byrom.

It is true there is nothing displays a genius, I mean a quickness of genius, more than a dispute; as two diamonds, encountering, contribute to each other’s luster. But perhaps the odds is much against the man of taste in this particular.

Shenstone.

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