"Incontestable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any subject of early American history, there is no authority more incontestable than Mr. Alexander Hynds, of Dandridge, Tennessee, whose acquaintance with singular and forgotten bits of early frontier history borders upon the unique in its way. Neither does better authority exist than Hon. N. P. Langford, of Minnesota, ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... considered, are a degeneracy from a higher knowledge of God. In other words, the application of the doctrine of evolution to the field of comparative religion is a mistake. "Any form of Animism known to me has no lines leading to perfection, but only incontestable marks of degeneration," says the author. "In heathenism the gold of ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... be the book's interpretation by mental indolence. The fact is incontestable; and this fact in itself may be taken as sufficient to establish the inexpediency of publishing The Certain Hour. For that "people will not buy a volume of short stories" is notorious to all publishers. To offset the axiom there are no doubt incongruous phenomena—ranging ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... to praise than to dispraise. Most Englishmen know negroes of pure blood as well as 'coloured persons' who, at Oxford and elsewhere, have shown themselves fully equal in intellect and capacity to the white races of Europe and America. These men afford incontestable proofs that the negro can be civilised, and a high responsibility rests upon them as the representatives of possible progress. But hitherto the African, as will presently appear, has not had fair play. The petting and pampering process, ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... It is incontestable that spirits are produced by the saccharine substance. Grains, however, supply it, although they are not sensibly sweet. This has made me suspect that the fermentation is at first saccharine, which produces the sweet substance that is necessary for the formation of ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie
... render impossible the rehearsal of another great poet. But a work of art is valuable, and pleasurable in proportion to its rarity; one beautiful book of verses is better than twenty books of beautiful verses. This is an absolute and incontestable truth; a child can burlesque this truth—one verse is better than the whole poem, a word is better than the line, a letter is better than the word, but the truth is not thereby affected. Hugo never had ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... feeling is entertained it may occasionally be a mistaken assumption; the good quality we think we see in our friend may have no existence save in our own partial imagination; but the existence of the counterfeit is an incontestable evidence of the true original. And the greatest attraction, and therefore the truest friendships, will always be of the ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... kind. They contain treasures of bitter observation, quaintness and knowledge. The soul of the lower classes is shown in them with intense truth, bitter revolt and comprehensive philosophy. Steinlen has also designed some beautiful posters, pleasing pastels, lithographs of incontestable technical merit, and beautifully eloquent political drawings. It cannot be said that he is an Impressionist in the strict sense of the word; he applied his colour in flat tints, more like an engraver than a painter; but in him too can be felt the stamp of Degas, and he is one of those who best ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... bit too far in his insistence upon the exclusive glories of French genius, let us remember that the modern Germans[285] have been just as one-sided from their point of view—and with even less tangible proof of attainment. For it seems incontestable that, since the era of Wagner and Brahms, the modern French and Russian Schools have contributed to the development of music more than all the other nations combined. It is for us in America who, free from national ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... hired on purpose for this young vagabond. This is all that I know as yet of this affair in general, for the Chancellor has not thought proper as yet to inform me of the particulars. However, this public, incontestable proof of the little friendship and regard the King of Prussia has for His Majesty and His Royal Family, and for the whole British nation, will, I hope, open the eyes of the people who are blind to ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... prendre les mots dans le sens ordinaire, il semble qu'il soit demontre qui la Creation est impossible, principe justement cher au Pantheisme; tandis qu'au fond, tout ce qui est demontre, c'est que l'Etre en soi est necessairement incree,—verite incontestable, dont le Pantheisme n'a rien a tirer."—PROF. SAISSET, Introduction, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... veneration for the august Father of the faithful, and offers itself, as a shield, to the Sovereign of Rome." He adds, that "his mind revolts from those fallacious maxims, which some persons try to insinuate into the feeble minds of the people, throwing doubts on the incontestable rights of the Church, and that he looks with contempt on such intrigues." As however both the Senator and his colleagues are nominees of the Pope, and as a brother of the Marquis is a Cardinal, I feel sceptical as to the value of their opinion. The next paragraph ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... every citizen, so that he might inhale it at will. Having illustrated his remarks by a series of diagrams, the lecturer concluded by saying that, although true science was invariably cautious and undogmatic, it was none the less an incontestable fact that so much light had been thrown upon old London, that every action of the citizens' daily life was known, from the taking of a tub in the morning, until after a draught of porter he painted himself blue before retiring ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... shelf against the wall between the stove and the window on which were ranged books of all sizes, "behold him! here are seventeen works from his pen, of which one, his 'Philosophical and Mineralogical Works,' published in 1734, is in three folio volumes. These productions, which prove the incontestable knowledge of Swedenborg, were given to me by Monsieur Seraphitus, his cousin ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... almost infinite power to do mischief associated with a disposition to do it. No human strength could strip the witch of these mighty energies while she lived; nothing but death could destroy them. There was, as our ancestors considered, incontestable evidence, that she had put them forth to the injury, loss, and perhaps death, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... course, if either of the girls was to go, Dahlia was the person. The farmer commenced his usual process of sitting upon the idea. That it would be policy to attach one of the family to this chirping old miser, he thought incontestable. On the other hand, he had a dread of London, and Dahlia was surpassingly fair. He put the case to Robert, in remembrance of what his wife had spoken, hoping that Robert would amorously stop his painful efforts to think fast enough for the occasion. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sentiment of bitter hostility toward all strangers, and whenever any stranger of note appeared in its august halls, they believed that he had come there to call in question the superiority of the land of the garlic, or to dispute with it, through envy, the incontestable advantages which nature ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... nature to become equal each to the other'—'wheat cannot rise unless silver rises.' " If W. J. Bryan said that, even in his salad days, he's a hopeless damphool, unfit to be pound-master, much less president; but I'll pay two-bits for incontestable evidence that he ever made such an idiotic remark. My private opinion is that the malice of Puck's mendacity is equalled only by its awkwardness. It is possible that its editor mistakes falsehood for fun. ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the world is, says Dr. Birch, and we entirely agree with him, so incontestable a proof of the superiority of our author's genius, as in a manner supersedes every thing that can be said upon that head. But her abilities as a writer, and the merit of her works, will not have full justice done them, without ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... consequence of doings with which I had no connexion, I can cite official correspondence. For the fact that my advertisement, in which I disowned in the name of the Society and in my own any sympathy with the scenes alluded to, was productive of infinite benefit to the Cause, I can at any time produce incontestable evidence. And lastly, for my zeal in the Bible Cause, whilst employed in the Peninsula, I can have the evidence not only of some of the most illustrious characters resident in Madrid, but likewise that of the greatest part ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... But what exquisite memories does my mind preserve! The very colouring of a round, how rich it is, yet how delicate, and how subtly varied! The odour is totally distinct from that of roast beef, and yet it is beef incontestable. Hot, of course with carrots, it is a dish for a king; but cold it is nobler. Oh, the thin broad slice, with just its fringe of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... symbols. The very titles of some of his stories indicate the abstract character of his work. Such are: "Silence," "The Thought," and "The Lie." In this respect he has carried on the work of Poe, whose influence on him is incontestable. These two writers have in common a refined and morbid sensibility, a predilection for the horrible and a passion for the study of the same kind of subjects,—solitude, silence, death. But the powerful fantasy of the American author, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... terminus, the farther we go from the commencement; and it is impossible to reach the terminus but by constantly going farther from the starting-point, being unable to go from one place to another without passing through all that comes between them: this is incontestable. ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... indispensable, just as we must accept also the incomparable position of the four leaders in the several arts whom Taine set apart in lonely elevation. But both Taine's list and Lowell's we feel to be too brief. The French critic had ranged thru every realm of art to discover finally that the incontestable masters were four and four only. The American critic, altho he limited himself to the single art of literature, dealt with it at large, not distinguishing between the poets ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... much truth in such considerations is incontestable, and it is only within a restricted sphere that the province of reasoning extends. Man comes into the world with mental and moral characteristics which he can only very imperfectly influence, and a large proportion of the external circumstances ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... been betrayed into error, while his critic recognizes "his manifest desire to be scrupulously impartial and truth-telling." And M. Fruin, another of his Dutch critics, says, "His sincerity, his perspicacity, the accuracy of his laborious researches, are incontestable." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... till he felt for his revolver and found it gone. Next he became aware of a sharp stinging of his thigh, and after investigating, he found his hand warm with blood. It was a superficial wound, but it was incontestable. He became wider awake, and kept up the lumbering run ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... temper or ill-will. The immortal clockmaker, when he was in a more quaintly sententious humor than common, once propounded the doctrine that the direct road to a mother's heart is through her child. He might have added the equally incontestable proposition that the most effectual method of torturing a mother's heart is through the same medium. The mother who has an only child, who is all the world to her, is actually susceptible to anything in the shape of interference with her maternal prerogatives. Such interference, ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... there was even jealousy that America should have been chosen as the field of such an experience. If these marvelous inventors were American, then their country, their army and navy, would have a great advantage over others. The United States might acquire an incontestable superiority. ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... of voting, which offers incontestable advantages on the score of accuracy and rapidity, has received an appropriation from the French Chambers. Each member is provided with a box containing ten ballots; five white (ayes), and five blue ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... vote became null and void. As time went on, they were allowed or allowed themselves to summon the senate, to punish whoever disobeyed them, to practice divination, and to hold court. And in case they were refused permission to do anything, they gained their point by their incontestable opposition to every project undertaken by others. For they introduced laws to the effect that whoever should obstruct them by deed or word, be he private citizen or magistrate, should be "hallowed" and incur pollution. This being "hallowed" meant destruction; ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... it is the duty of educated men actively to lead the progress of their time, is incontestable. The orator, indeed, virtually arraigned his alma mater for moral hesitation and timidity. But a university lives in its children, and is judged by them; and surely the history of civil and religious liberty ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... incontestable evidence, that first pointed to, and then proved up to the hilt, this answer to the question: What is Man? has been gathered in less than the last fifty years. Darwin and Huxley, and Spencer, who first opened men's eyes to their origins, were ignorant of the very existence ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... that of my own youth," she said gently, "as it is granted to few women, I imagine, to renew it. But I renew it with a reverence for them; since my own happiness was plain sailing enough, obvious, incontestable, whilst theirs is nobler, and rises to a higher plane. For its roots, after all, are planted in very mournful fact, to which it has risen superior, and over which it ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... spring only from a quiet conscience or from a heart perfectly attuned to villainy. So unconscious was his poise that one often doubted the evidence of memory, and found one's self going back over the record, only to fetch up point-blank against the incontestable fact that he had stolen his ship and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... managing men was very great; his capacity for affairs incontestable; but it must be always understood as the capacity for the affairs of absolutism. He was a clever, scheming politician, an adroit manager; it remained to be seen whether he had a claim to the character ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mistress betray me before my eyes before I would believe that she could deceive me. Desgenais himself, while preaching to me after his manner, joked me about the ease with which I could be duped. The story of my life was an incontestable proof that I was credulous rather than suspicious; and when the words in that book suddenly struck me, it seemed to me I felt a new being within me, a sort of unknown self; my reason revolted ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... been said which can be said, it remains incontestable that there exist uniformities of succession among states of mind, and that these can be ascertained by observation and experiment. Further, that every mental state has a nervous state for its immediate antecedent and proximate cause, though extremely probable, can ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... behalf of our mutual friend, the worthy and excellent Monsieur Thuillier, whose influence on the destiny of that beautiful Celeste Colleville must be well known to you. If, as I think, your son, whose merits are incontestable, and of whom both families may well be proud, if, I say, he is courting Celeste with a view to a marriage in which all expediencies may be combined, you cannot do more to promote that end than to obtain Thuillier's ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... sort of thing didn't appeal to many of the high-stomached children of fortune who ranged up and down the Territory—being nearly all Americans, born with the notion that it is a white man's incontestable right to drink whatever he pleases whenever it pleases him. Consequently, every mother's son of them who knew how rustled a "worm," took up his post in some well-hidden coulee close to the line, and inaugurated a small-sized distillery. Others, with less skill but just as much ambition, delivered ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... brought together in vols. X and XI of the Coleccion de Documentos ineditos para la Historia de Espana. Edited by Miguel Salva and Pedro Sainz de Baranda, these volumes appeared in 1847; their value is incontestable, but, though they give the evidence as it occurs in the register of the Inquisition, this evidence is not arranged in consistent chronological order, nor is it supplied with an index. The work, printed seventy-three years ago, is not within easy reach ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... more progressive, and more humane among employers, and the more intelligent among employees, to recognize the commercial value of health, and of sanitary surroundings, comfort, and healthy recreations, as a means of promoting this. The combined results of these forces are seen in the incontestable, living fact that the death-rate from tuberculosis among intelligent artisans and in well-regulated factory suburbs is already below that of many classes of outdoor and even farm laborers, whose day is from twelve to fourteen ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... "That's incontestable," replied Mr Meldrum with a laugh; and there the conversation ended, Kate and her father going below ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... which we might have named, and which would have manifested the same incontestable supremacy: there is the energy of meekness, that spirit of docility which communes with the Almighty in hallowed and receptive awe: there is the boundless vitality of love which lives on through midnight after midnight, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... drink! What if we turned Jews and brought the kingdom of Jerusalem again on the tapis? But tell me is it not a clever scheme? We send forth a manifesto to the four quarters of the world, and summon to Palestine all that do not eat Swineflesh. Then I prove by incontestable documents that Herod the Tetrarch was my direct ancestor, and so forth. There will be a victory, my fine fellow, when they return and are restored to their lands, and are able to rebuild Jerusalem. Then make a clean sweep of the Turks out of Asia while the iron is hot, hew cedars in Lebanon, build ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... imitated a virgin at bay, others when she was wife, still others when she expected to be a mother, and that woman, a senatorial patent of divinity aiding, was god—Apollo's peer, imperator, chief of the army, pontifix maximus, master of the world, with the incontestable right of life and death over ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... in a funny way with old copies of the Illustrated London News. A coloured American lithograph, representing the kiss of reconciliation between two offended lovers, hung against the wall on one side, and was evidently regarded with a good deal of pride by the proprietor, as affording incontestable evidence of culture and refined taste, and proving his familiar acquaintance with American art, and the manners and ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... supposed enormity perpetrated in its production, provided it had fallen within the sphere of ethics, would, at the least, have ranked, with its denunciators, as a brand-new exemplification of total depravity. But, after all, what incontestable defect in it has any one succeeded in demonstrating? Mr. White, in opposing to the expression objections based on an erroneous analysis, simply lays a phantom of his own evoking; and, so far as I am informed, other impugners ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... or some such nonsense, as we used to think. It was too ridiculous to us, and we boys used to walk heavily and stumble over chairs—"accidentally", of course—just to make her jump. Sometimes she would even start up and cry out. We had the incontestable proof that it was all "put on"; for if you began to talk to her, and got her interested, she would forget all about her ailments, and would run on and talk and laugh for an hour, until she suddenly remembered, and sank back again ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... instance, were the incontestable owners of the country between the Cuyahoga and the Au Glaize, in the present state of Ohio, their dominion extending as far south as the divide between the waters of the Sandusky river and the Scioto, and embracing the southern shore of ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... chose neutrality, and expected that it would be permitted her. She chose to overlook the interposition of Napoleon, and to regard the exclusion laws, forced by him upon other states, as instances of municipal regulation, incontestable when freely exercised. Not only would she not go behind the superficial form, but on technical grounds of international law she denied the right of another to do so. Great Britain had no choice. She was compelled to resistance; the question was as to methods. Direct ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... weapons, jewelry, and coins occupy considerable spaces in our museums; but numerous as are these relics of the Romans, they are far inferior in number to the objects dating from prehistoric times, and flints worked by the hand of man have been picked up by thousands in the last few years, forming incontestable witnesses of the rapid ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... perspective there is no ambition. The ignorant man is in useful darkness, which, suppressing sight, suppresses covetousness: whence innocence. He who reads, thinks; who thinks, reasons. But not to reason is duty; and happiness as well. These truths are incontestable; ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... pretence of bringing him to see a puppet-show. Now, Sir Thomas Gourlay," proceeded the stranger, "suppose that the friends of this child, kidnapped by you, shall succeed in proving this fact by incontestable evidence, in what position will you stand before ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the actual originals written by the great Affonso de Albuquerque in the midst of his adventures to the King, Dom Manoel, your great-grandfather.' The Commentaries have been for three centuries the one incontestable printed authority for Albuquerque's career. But in 1884 was published the first volume of the Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque, seguidas de Documentos que as elucidam, under the direction of the Academia ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... the Israelites, in spite of their incontestable wit and intelligence, seem to have only had regard for the present. Like all other Oriental peoples, they only in their misfortunes remembered the faults of their past, which they each time had to expiate ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... regardless of the "deficiency of the powers of the General Government, and of the acknowledged and incontestable ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... ready to help. It must have been a family de bien, in the simple phrase of the country, helpful, serviceable, with charity and aid for all. An honest labourer, who came to speak for Jeanne at the second trial, held long after her death, gave his incontestable evidence to this. "I was then a child," he said, "and it was she who nursed me in my illness." They were all more or less devout in those days, when faith was without question, and the routine of church ceremonial was followed as a matter of course; but ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... to him, as the model of moral perfection, not the religious and moral teachers of mankind, but first of all Shakespeare, concerning whom it has been decided and is handed down by learned men from generation to generation, as an incontestable truth, that he was the greatest poet, the greatest teacher of life, the young man can not remain free from this pernicious influence. When he is reading or listening to Shakespeare the question for him is no longer whether ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... young ladies," remarked dowager lady Chia, "it isn't that I have any wish to flatter your aunt Hsueeh in her presence, but it is a positive and incontestable fact that there isn't, beginning from the four girls in our household, a single one able to hold a candle to that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... but to insist on the necessity of these three conditions; if they only mean that no government can permanently exist which does not fulfill the first and second conditions, and, in some considerable measure, the third; their doctrine, thus limited, is incontestable. Whatever they mean more than this appears to me untenable. All that we are told about the necessity of an historical basis for institutions, of their being in harmony with the national usages and ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... the idea of the Family, because in the family the difference between the adults and the minors enters directly through the naturalness of spirit, and the right of the children to an education and the duty of parents towards them in this respect is incontestable. All other spheres of education, in order to succeed, must presuppose a true family life. They may extend and complement the business of teaching, but ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... It is incontestable that Amerigo Vespucci was well-born, and in his youth received the advantages of an education more thorough than was usually enjoyed by the sons of families which had "the respectability of wealth acquired in ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... experiments furnished a wide margin for the exercise of the personal faculties of the young women upon whom the experiments were made. These suspicions, however, did not prevent certain facts in regard to mental suggestion from being absolutely incontestable. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... in at a nominal figure. That very afternoon they all met in Neil's stuffy little back office. Keith had the deeds prepared. All that was necessary was to affix the signatures. The purchasers under both sales conveyed their rights to Neil and Keith. The latter now possessed uncontested and incontestable title. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... certifies that the negro called Laville, now prisoner in New York, is free born, having seen him and known him at St. Domingo where he was working at his trade as carpenter, and if the little negro captured with him is his nephew as he declares, it is incontestable that he also is free, the more so that the father and mother of the said negro Laville are also freed people. In testimony whereof I have signed the present certificate, which I attest as authentic. New York ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... intelligence should hesitate before no improbability, however improbable, provided that some explanation was humanly conceivable, and no definite material object rendered the improbability an impossibility. His whole statement would be based on the principle that the probable is incontestable and true, until proof of the contrary ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... pointed toward the conclusion that Browne himself was Hubert. If this was so, how could Browne be said to have forged the name of Hubert, when he had a perfect legal right to take the property under any name he chose to assume? This was incontestable. If your name be Richard Roe you may purchase land and receive title thereto under the name of John Doe, and convey it under that name without violating the law. This as a general proposition is true so long as the taking of a fictitious name ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... virtue unstained to the altar and a Duchess's coronet, and this seems to have been the main concern of the beautiful prude. That Charles was more infatuated even with the wife than with the maid-of-honour is incontestable. He not only made open love to her at Court, but, especially after he had packed off her husband, the Duke, as Ambassador to Denmark, his pursuit took a clandestine and more dangerous shape. Pepys throws a light on what looks like a secret amour, when ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... and forecastle where were the sailors' quarters and the galley,—the space respected by every one on the boat as the incontestable realm of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... party among the Repealers are anxious for a separation from England." This is his solitary proof, nor does it appear that he was not himself the informant of the minister. But the positive proofs at the other side are numerous and incontestable. I select a few. On the 13th of July Mr. O'Gorman, in presence of Mr. O'Connell, said: "In order that there shall be no misconception on the subject, as far as I am concerned, I say, at once, I am no advocate for physical ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... has already done sound work in dealing with German methods, and in The Mark of the Beast (MURRAY) he pursues his labours a step further. So careful is he to give incontestable proofs for the charges he brings against the Huns that even the most anaemic neutrals must find a difficulty in reading this volume without recognising the truth. Especially he emphasizes the dangers of peace-making with an enemy whose whole policy and programme have been ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... to those which we have noticed as worn by a number of the statues from Cyprus; but the cap of the right-hand personage terminates in a button, whereto is attached a long appendage, which looks like the tail of an ox." The Egyptian character of much of this design is incontestable. The ankh, the lotus blossom in the hand, the winged disk, are purely Egyptian forms; the Isis Athor with Horus in her lap speaks for itself; and the worshipper in front of Isis has an unmistakably Egyptian head dress. But the contest with the winged griffin ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... of mankind, that he who decks himself in adscititious qualities rather purposes to command applause than impart pleasure: and he is therefore treated as a man who, by an unreasonable ambition, usurps the place in society to which he has no right. Praise is seldom paid with willingness even to incontestable merit, and it can be no wonder that he who calls for it without desert is repulsed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... nation to change its form of government, and its magistrates or representatives, by whatever name called, is incontestable. Hence the French constitution of 1789, which involved that of 1793, was not illegal, for though accompanied by some irregularities, it was adopted by the manifest will of the nation, and consented to by all orders ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... Husband, near the Brook that runs on one side of her Meadow. She made the most solemn Vow, in the Height of her Affliction, never to stir from that Tomb, as long as ever that Rivulet took its usual Course.—Well! and wherein, pray, said Zadig, is the good Woman so much to blame? Is it not an incontestable Mark of her superior Merit and Conjugal-Affection? But, Zadig, said Azora, was you to know how her Thoughts were employ'd when I made my Visit, you'd never forget or forgive her. Pray, my dearest Azora, what then ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... given, as we have seen, incontestable proof of his courage and fidelity during the bombardment, was raised to a position of easy affluence, and for many years continued a respected and harmless inhabitant of the town. His kindly disposition induced him to forego his Mohammedan prejudices ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... artifices. Long practise had given him imperturbable coolness, a great confidence in himself, and a sort of coarse diplomacy that supplied the place of shrewdness. To his failings and his virtues he added incontestable courage, and he would lay his hand upon the collar of the most dangerous criminal as tranquilly as a devotee dips his fingers in ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... he thought the position incontestable. Tim regarded him with a prolonged stare, but for some time said nothing. At last he emitted several strong puffs ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... own person is concerned, I am not yet allowed to possess any other courage than that of resignation. I am not allowed to stake the existence of my monarchy and the welfare of my people to obtain personal satisfaction. Until I obtain the incontestable certainty that such a course would be brought to a successful issue, I must not throw down the gauntlet to France, for failure in this case would be not only my ruin, but that of my whole people. I shall wait, therefore, M. Chancellor, for an opportunity; ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... and a gilt ring, which he had found in front of the Bancal dwelling, separated from lawyer Fualdes' house by the Rue de l'Ambrague, a dark cross street. Fualdes' housekeeper, an old deaf woman, asserted positively that the cane was the property of her master; her assertion seemed incontestable. A long time after, it came to light that the cane belonged to a traveling tradesman who had spent the night carousing in the company of some wenches; but at the time, attention was at once turned to the Bancal house, a dilapidated, gloomy ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... is, not altogether inhuman, I think. I fought him about his drains and his cottages, however,'—and he smiled sadly—'before I began to read his books. But the man's genius is incontestable, his learning enormous. He found me in a susceptible state, and I recognise that his influence immensely accelerated a process ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Anton Ulrich, of Brunswick, as her successor? Or was it not also possible that she had declared the Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of Czar Peter the Great, as empress? The latter, indeed, had the greatest, the most incontestable right to the imperial throne of Russia; was she not the sole lawful heir of her father? How, if one therefore went to her and congratulated her as empress? But if one should make ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... lay it down as an incontestable axiom that, in all the operations of art and nature, nothing is created; an equal quantity of matter exists both before, and after the experiment: the quality and quantity of the elements remain precisely the same, and nothing takes place beyond changes ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... as clear of rubbish of any kind as a well-kept kitchen floor. The cleanliness is so noticeable that one looks searchingly for even a scrap of paper, for some trace of negligence, to modify this superiority over the streets of our American cities. But there is no consolation; the superiority is so incontestable that no comparison is possible. For the whole twelve or fifteen miles the streets are lined with trees, or shrubs, or flowers, with well-kept grass, and with separate roads on each side for horsemen or foot-passengers. In the spring and summer the streets ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... happy days, a well-regulated family always rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sundown. Dinner was invariably a private meal, and the fat old burghers showed incontestable symptoms of disapprobation and uneasiness on being surprised by a 5 visit from a neighbor on such occasions. But though our worthy ancestors were thus singularly averse to giving dinners, yet they kept up the social ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... by the length of the siege of Sebastopol, certain foreign officers have expressed the opinion that masonry-revetted scarps are not of incontestable utility in ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... species, and that of metals, are treated as complementary to one another. In modern times we again find it alluded to by some philosophers, and especially by Bacon, whose boldness is on this point extreme. Admitting it as 'incontestable that plants sometimes degenerate so far as to become plants of another species,' Bacon did not hesitate to try and put his theory into practice. He tried, in 1635, to give 'the rules' for the art of changing 'plants of one species into ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the result. The name was a suggestion of the oil merchant himself, and no bad name if Socialists at large could be supposed capable of understanding it; but the oil merchant was too important a man to be thwarted, and the argument by which he supported his choice was incontestable. 'Isn't it our aim to educate the people? Very well, then let them begin by knowing what Tocsin means. I shouldn't know myself if I hadn't come across it in the newspaper and looked it up in the dictionary; so there ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... that unreasoning spite which is felt for social outcasts. The girl, in particular, they treated in a foul manner; and the insulting gibe of "daughter of a galley-slave" constantly rose to their lips like an incontestable reason for condemning the poor, dear innocent creature to ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Christmas recess, he called in question that most undoubted prerogative of the crown to dissolve the Parliament, and, drawing a distinction which had certainly never been heard of before, declared that, though the King had an incontestable right to dissolve the Parliament after the close of a session, "many great lawyers" doubted whether he had such a right in the middle of a session, a dissolution at such a period being "a penal" one. Professing to believe that an immediate ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... he would not dream of mistrusting them. But the analogy breaks down at every point, because the essence of it is that every one who reached the hill-top would inevitably see the same scene. Yet in the case of religion, the hill-top is crowded by people, whose good faith is equally incontestable, but whose descriptions of what lies beyond are at hopeless variance. Moreover all alike confess that the impressions they derive are outside the possibility of scientific or intellectual tests, and that it is all a matter of inference depending upon a subjective consent in the mind of ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... person in a million has the least idea of the identity of the artists by which the end of the twentieth century will remember the beginning. The vital facts of to-day's literature always lie buried beneath chatter of large editions and immense popularities. I wouldn't mind so much, were it not incontestable that at the end of the century I shall ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... Rabia, has been given to fame by her wonderful sayings, translated into many modern tongues. In spite of these examples, however, the superiority of the condition of Western women over Eastern is not only incontestable, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... classes of life by emphasizing their incontestable, dimensional characteristics: plants are 'Chemistry-binding,' animals are 'Space-binding,' Humans ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... and punish the ringleaders. This was but wise; for there are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future. And great care is to be taken, by timely management, to avert an incontestable act of mutiny, and so prevent men from being roused, by their own consciousness of transgression, into all the fury of an unbounded insurrection. Then for the time, both soldiers and sailors are irresistible; as even ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... was an imitation of "Pagliacci." This assertion will suffice, coming from an honorable man, to prove my loyalty. If not, then I will place my undoubted rights under the protection of the law, and furnish incontestable proof of what I have stated here. I ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... aether!—I lay nothing upon testimony for my purpose now, knowing the things that can be said, and also not valuing the bare assent of the intellect. The sole assurance worth a man's having, even if the most incontestable evidence were open to him from a thousand other quarters, is that to be gained only from personal experience—that assurance in himself which he can least readily receive from another, and which is least capable of being transmuted into ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... merits incontestable, first and foremost may be mentioned the color and motion of Life which spread like an atmosphere over this fiction. By his inimitable idiom, his knowledge of the polite world, and his equal knowledge of the average human being irrespective of class or condition, Thackeray was able to make his ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... conversation by pointing out the incontestable advantages of the Transasiatic with regard to the trade between Grand Asia and Europe in the security and rapidity of its communications. The old hatreds will gradually disappear under European influence, and in that respect alone Russia deserves ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... peculiar expedients which were used in Tunis and other parts of North Africa appear in Lombard or Comacine work, while the influence of Alexandrian and Antiochene art on the styles which preceded and prepared the genesis of Romanesque ornament appears incontestable. The close relations between the two coasts at the period when they were governed from one centre, either Eastern or Western, make these influences probable. Ecclesiastical controversies at times affected portions of both, while their common Christianity necessarily produced ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... these movements it is enough, but it is also indispensable that those who form the "chain" should include a person endowed with mediumistic faculties. I repeat, the experiment is within the reach of any one who cares to try it under the requisite conditions; and it is as incontestable as the polarization of light or as crystallization by means ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... when it is full, or nearly so, and the appetite is appeased. Three approximately equal meals seems to be a convenient division. Dr. Dewey and his followers advise only two meals a day, and it seems incontestable that many persons find the plan advantageous. These are generally adults with weak digestions, or elderly persons who, on account of their age and the sluggish action of their assimilative functions, ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... comprehensible. The atmosphere of operose indolence, prolonged through centuries and centuries, stifles; nor can antiquity and influence impose upon a mind which resents monkery itself as an essential evil. That Monte Cassino supplied the Church with several potentates is incontestable. That mediaeval learning and morality would have suffered more without this brotherhood cannot be doubted. Yet it is difficult to name men of very eminent genius whom the Cassinesi claim as their alumni; nor, with Boccaccio's testimony ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... whole. The philosophy, the religion, which overlooks or condemns any of these elements, is never satisfactory, and fails to win sincere belief, because of its felt incompleteness. All men have an instinctive faith that in God's plan no incontestable facts are exceptional or needless facts. Science assumes this in regard to the phenomena of the natural world; and, in its progressive searches, expects to discover continual proof that all manifestations, however opposite and contradictory, are parts of one beneficent scheme. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... flesh, hazel eyes, vermillioned lips, and glossy hair had preferred incontestable claims to beauty; now, an artist would have curiously traced the fine lines and curves daintily drawn about eyes, brow and mouth, by the stylus of care, of hopelessness, of wild bursts of passion. Her figure retained its rounded symmetry, but the countenance ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... the wire we made an attempt to get up another rail; but the enemy, as usual, were too quick for us. We had no tool for this purpose except a wedge-pointed iron bar. Two or three bent iron claws for pulling out spikes would have given us such incontestable superiority that, down to almost the last of our run, we should have been able to escape and even to burn all the Chickamauga bridges. But it had not been our intention to rely on this mode of obstruction—an ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... on page 215 "Rip" has but very slightly exaggerated the effect of the sinuous curves into which Ranji's body resolves itself before he makes a stroke. That he can unbend faster than any other cricketer past or present is an incontestable fact. The yarn of how in a match at Cambridge he once brought off a catch with such amazing rapidity that the batsman, under the impression that the ball had travelled near the boundary, continued running till Ranji extracted the ball from ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... severity of law? My fellow-countrymen, as you yourselves may sometimes have to appeal at the bar of human judgment for justice and for right, give to my people to-night the fair and unanswerable conclusion of these incontestable facts. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the only hope of Italy, that Piedmont! God prosper the hope. Besides this diplomatical dignitary and his wife, we had two American gentlemen of more than average intelligence, who related wonderful things of the 'spiritual manifestations' (so called), incontestable things, inexplicable things. You will have seen Faraday's letter.[24] I wish to reverence men of science, but they often will not let me. If I know certain facts on this subject, Faraday ought ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... kings. Hands off! let there be no control and no interference in the administration of the affairs of this kingdom of me. Hence the growth of the doctrine and of the party of Free Trade, and the willingness to try that experiment, in the face of what appear incontestable facts. I confess, the motto of the Globe newspaper is so attractive to me that I can seldom find much appetite to read what is below it in its columns: "The world is governed too much." So the country is frequently affording solitary examples of resistance to the government, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... thought little of these marvels, was in a hurry to hasten onwards; this country, so fertile, displeased him by its very fertility; without being otherwise hydropical, he felt water under his feet, and sought in vain the signs of incontestable aridity. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... told La Testolina had been no more than the truth: Master Baldassare was good to her—better than you would have believed possible in such a crabbed old stub of a man. He was more of a father to her than ever Don Urbano had been to anything save his own belly; but it was incontestable that he was not father to anything else. That alone might have been a grievance for Vanna, but there is no evidence that it was. Baldassare was by nature gruff, by habit close-fisted: like all such men, the more he ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... order of their succession, and yet without sufficient cause in themselves for their appearance; an infinite diversity of species without any common material bond, so grouping themselves as to present the most admirable progressive development to which our own species is linked,—are these not incontestable proofs of the existence of a superior intelligence whose power alone could have established such an order of things?. ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... he protested his innocence. There were a few, even among his judges, who secretly believed him; but the proof was incontestable. Inch by inch he had been forced down from the heights that he had so gallantly scaled, and now he was on the brink of the precipice, no longer fighting, only waiting with the unflinching courage ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell |
