"Self-evident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pages which is used in the largest universities as a groundwork of political economy. This remarkable sentence strikes the eye: "The motives to business activity are too familiar to require analysis." But some sense that perhaps the "economic man" is not a self-evident creature seems to have touched our author. So we are treated to these sapient remarks: "To avoid this criticism we will begin with a characterization of the typical business man to be found to-day ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... as such, so self-evident to one who possesses it, seems to be wanting, except in rudimentary fashion, in a great many people. They are probably few, however, who do not feel some stirrings when they look through the stained glass of a cathedral window or upon the red of Venetian glass, or who are entirely indifferent to ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... of pursuing it further. "Oh, it's self-evident," he said. "They are loyal to the Rajah, and the Rajah is well-known to be loyal to the Crown. It's only these duffers of administrators that make the mischief." He broke into an abrupt laugh, and changed the subject. "Let ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... general assumption that light as such is visible. In order to realize that light is itself an invisible agent, we need only consider a few self-evident facts - for instance, that for visibility to arise light must always encounter some material resistance in space. This is, in fact, an encounter between light, typifying levity, and the density of the material world, typifying gravity. Accordingly, wherever visible ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... only as exceptional cases, these modes of association are susceptible to analysis, and seem clear, almost self-evident, if we compare them with other, subtle, refined, barely perceptible cases, the origin of which is a subject for supposition, for guessing rather than for clear comprehension. It is, moreover, a sort of imagination belonging to very ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... woman, who brought up her son in a way which suggests the mother of Ruskin. Of his early training, his reading of doctrinal and argumentative works, and of his isolation from material things in the thought that there were "two and only two absolute and luminously self-evident beings in the world," himself and his Creator, it is better to read his own record in the Apologia, which is a kind ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... intelligent surmise upon the part of the professor bred a whole series of further theories upon Melek, each of which contradicted the last but one, and the latest of which was always of so limpid and so self-evident a truth as to be accepted by whatever was intelligent and energetic in the population, and especially by the young unmarried women of the wealthier classes. In this manner the epoch of Melek was reduced to five, to three, to ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... august Purpose which progressively realises itself in all the phases of the cosmic process. That the God revealed by the universe must transcend the universe in order to be in any real sense its Creator, is self-evident; but that it is His own Energy which pervades it, a present Power operating from within—in other words, that He is immanent in the world, as well as transcendent—is a thought from which we ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... had once more laughed heartily, he became meek again, and told me that the moment he began to realize Capital, it was his intention to marry this young lady. He added as a self-evident proposition, engendering low spirits, "But you can't marry, you know, while ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... mentioned, viz. in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me, in confirming me in my mistrust of the reality of material phenomena, and making me rest in the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator;—for while I considered myself predestined to salvation, my mind did not dwell upon others, as fancying them simply passed over, not predestined to eternal death. I only thought of the mercy ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the first kind of truths, or those received by intuition, we have examples in what are called 'self-evident axioms,' and 'fundamental laws' or 'conditions of thought,' which no wise man has ever attempted to prove. Of the second, we have examples in the whole fabric of mathematical science, reared from its basis of axioms and definitions, as ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... the eighteenth century to linger unhealthily upon the contemplation of mysteries. The predominant fault was one of a directly opposite nature. There was apt to be an impatience of all mystery, a contemptuous neglect of all that was not self-evident or easy to understand. 'The Gospel,' it was said, 'professes plainness and uses no hard words.'[236] Whatever was obscure was only the imperfection of the old dispensation, or the corruption of the new, and might be excluded from the consideration ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... letter through a second time, and then sat down on my bed to think it out. One thing was self-evident. I knew now how Nikola had become aware that I was going to sail in the mail boat on Friday; Baxter had seen my name in the passenger ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... this with so evident a sense of its obviousness as a self-evident truth that none of us had the courage to brave her surprise by asking an explanation. My mother's air of surprise when any of us went wrong in any way was very terrible to us. One day, when in a fit of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... taxed in aid of the British funds, and that she has no longer resources within herself? Is there anything to be expected from petitioning after this? Is not the attack upon the liberty and property of the people of Boston, before restitution of the loss to the India Company was demanded, a plain and self-evident proof of what they are aiming at? Do not the subsequent bills (now I dare say acts) for depriving the Massachusetts Bay of its charter, and for transporting offenders into other colonies, or to Great Britain for trial, where it is impossible from the nature of the thing that justice can ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... persuasion that the principle of causality is the most ultimate principle which our minds can reach. Most of us accept this persuasion as almost of the nature of an axiom, and hence the mere suggestion that our own volitions are really uncaused appears to us of the nature of a self-evident absurdity. A little thought, however, is enough to show that the only ground of reason which this strong prepossession can rest upon, is the assumption that the principle of causality is logically prior to that of mind. Therefore it is the validity of this assumption that ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... defence from rain; and this is curious enough, for we know that the theatres were protected by the velarium or awning, which was drawn across the arena whenever a sudden shower came on; strange that this self-evident application of the Umbrella should not have occurred to a nation generally so ingenious in the invention of every possible luxury. Possibly the expense bestowed in the decoration of the umbraculum was a reason for its not being applied to what we cannot but ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... never known misfortune; she knows nothing of annoyance; she is the idol of all who surround her, and she had the sensibility and goodness of an angel: in one word, she unites qualities which moralists consider incompatible; it is, however, only a self-evident fact to all who know her. She is evidently well informed, without pedantry; she has a delightful naivete; and though long since married, she has still the gaiety of a child, loving laughter like a little girl, which does not prevent her from possessing a religious ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... me Ritter, James Ritter," supplied the outlaw promptly. "I am not ashamed of my real name but my relatives had cause to be ashamed of its owner in his present condition. Their plans are almost self-evident, my lad. They will wait until dark and then slip over the wall, some will stop in that big building while the balance will make their way around to a building on the other side of you. They will then have you surrounded and have only to watch and wait to starve you out. They have plenty of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... For self-evident reasons the title should be short. Aptness and specificness do not require an epitome of the story; and a title like "Why Tom Changed His Opinion of Me," or "What the Rabbit Drive Did for Me" is prosy as well as long. It used to be the custom to make the title of a writing a regular ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... Will and me, his strong yellow teeth gleaming between a black beard and mustache. The Turk got up clumsily, and went out, muttering to himself. I glanced toward the corner where the self-evident gipsies sat, and observed that with perfect unanimity they ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... dangerous type. Doctors and nurses were busy at her bedside and little hope was held out of her being able to tell soon, if ever, what she knew of her sister's departure from the house on that fatal evening. That her testimony on this point would be invaluable was self-evident, for proofs were plenty of her having haunted her sister's rooms all the evening in a condition of more or less delirium. She was alone in the house and this may have added to her anxieties, all of the servants having gone to the policemen's ball. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... soldier. Why, then, did he not bring it away from the place where it could only excite disaffection, and might even mislead those who should see it into the belief that your noble person was that of a dwarf? The answer is self-evident. He left it to betray others into further mockery, to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... these only it recognises as kindred. (2.) Our second point is much more important. The exogamous prohibition must first have come into force when kinship was so little understood that it could best be denoted by the family name. This would be self-evident, if we could suppose the prohibition to be intended to prevent marriages of relations. Had the authors of the prohibition been acquainted with the nature of near kinships, they would simply (as we do) have forbidden marriage between persons in those degrees. The very nature of the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... retrocession of the Transvaal was a proper course, was it either wise or humane to prolong the war and crush the Boer resistance at the cost of much slaughter, merely in order to avenge defeats and vindicate a military superiority which the immensely greater forces of Britain made self-evident? A great country is strong enough to be magnanimous, and shows her greatness better by justice and lenity than by a sanguinary revenge. These moral arguments, which affect different minds differently, were reinforced by a strong ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... concerned, absolute. The other members of the group are relative and dependent, and only to be understood as in various degrees subordinate to the primitive conception. The characteristic by which we recognize the fundamental element in a series is its intuitive or self-evident character; it is given by "the evident conception of a healthy and attentive mind so clear and distinct that no doubt is left."[30] Having discovered this prime or absolute member of the group, we proceed to consider the degrees in which the other members enter into relation with it. Here ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... conclusion they signally erred. Mr. Adams, by birth, education, all the associations of his life, and the fixed principles of his moral and political character, was an opposer of slavery in every form. No man felt more keenly the wretched absurdity of professing to base our Government on the "self-evident truth, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—of proclaiming our Union the abode of liberty, the "home of the free," ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... and all the possibilities of mankind, either for good or evil; incidentally he throws into marked contrast the despicable depreciation used by the Spanish writers in referring to the Filipinos, making clear the application of the self-evident proposition that no ordinary human being in the presence of superior force can very well conduct himself as a man unless he ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... p. 405. and vol. iii., p. 52.) approve of, and confirm Mr. Knight's suggestion of a ring dial, as though it were so self-evident as to admit of no denial. Nevertheless, neither he nor they have shown any good reason for its adoption: even its superior antiquity over the portable time-piece is mere surmise on their parts, unaccompanied as yet by any direct proof. In point of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... progress. They are really clogs. My ancestors had more trouble to extirpate these superstitious ideas from the mind than they had in getting rid of disease and crime. There were several reasons for this difficulty. Disease and crime were self-evident evils, that the narrowest intelligence could perceive; but beliefs in creeds and superstitions were perversions of judgment, resulting from a lack of thorough mental training. As soon, however, as education of a high order became ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... first and fundamental interest of the laborer, that the farmer should have a full incoming profit on the product of his labor. The proposition is self-evident; and nothing but the malignity, perverseness, and ill-governed passions of mankind, and particularly the envy they bear to each other's prosperity, could prevent their seeing and acknowledging it, with thankfulness ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of the 18th. The seven German Corps facing them were exactly 178,818 strong. Thus the French had been driven out of a position of almost unrivalled natural advantages by a numerically inferior force. It is self-evident that the loss of the aggressors must have been much greater than that of the defence; it amounted to 20,584 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... they know the effects of certain invariable remedies prepared without fraud. Of course it is self-evident that when old Pare eulogized 'sack medicine' and ordered his patients to carry pulverized medicaments in a little sack whose form varied according to the organ to be healed, assuming the form of a ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... Davenant, "for instance, this book I am reading—(it was Dumont's 'Memoires de Mirabeau')—this book which I am reading, gives me infinitely increased pleasure, from my certain knowledge, my perfect conviction of the truth of the author. The self-evident nature of some of the facts would support themselves, you may say, in some instances; but my perceiving the scrupulous care he takes to say no more than what he knows to be true, my perfect reliance on the relater's private character for integrity, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... kind of history is the Philosophical. No explanation was needed of the two previous classes; their nature was self-evident. It is otherwise with the last, which certainly seems to require an exposition or justification. The most general definition that can be given is, that the philosophy of history means nothing but the thoughtful ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... as the addition, deduction, mutation, and transposition of letters, or even syllables. Thus Mr. Webbe thinks that the derivation of the Greek [Greek: gyn] a woman, from the Chinese na-gin, is self-evident. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... but of all the People in it, then I am sure Ireland, with her boasted Numbers, is in a bad way; as all her poor Popish Natives, or in other Words, three-fourths of her swarming Inhabitants, have neither Houses, Cloaths, Work, Food, or Fire. This is a dismal self-evident Truth, that demands the serious Consideration of every Irishman, that can think, or can learn to think. At the same Time, our Nobility and Gentry set their Lands excessively high, get their Rents paid to a Penny, have as little fear of Wars or Taxes as of Famines, and live as well (rambling, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... chair, with his hands in his pockets and his head wagging obstinately, he was plainly intoxicated, but as yet at a stage sufficiently mild to admit of his recognising the self-evident truth that ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... give an excellent turn to your letter. In refusing such an offer you could not have better reasons than those you give, and it would be absurd to try and persuade him that we are not lovers, as the thing is self-evident. Nevertheless, my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to all these Heads, except the first, concerning the Unity; for without that Quality, it's self-evident that 'tis no Fable. By Unity I mean the ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... convinced that nothing could have been more natural than Lucy's conduct, nor more self-evident than the motive ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... material containing the bacteria, and after being thoroughly mixed the fluid is poured on a glass plate and allowed to cool. The bacteria are in this way separated, and each by its growth forms a single colony which can be further tested. It is self-evident that all culture material must be sterilized by heat before using, and in the manipulations care must be exercised to avoid contamination from the air. The refraction index of the bacterial cell is so slight that the microscopic study is facilitated or made possible by ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... found necessary in effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius quite another—nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom confound them. By and by, this proposition, with many which I have been just urging, will be received as self-evident. In the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities, they will not be ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... give practical effect to an impracticable theory; pursuing a delusion, which this honored woman was the first to detect; and that less by force and subtlety of argument, than by the statement of self-evident truths, and by the enforcement of the simple and grand principle that Christianity admits of no compromise with sin. This was an easy lesson, yet it was one which our senators and statesmen, our distinguished ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... it is manifest that there can be nothing like a wide comprehension of sociology, unless through a competent acquaintance with man in all his faculties, bodily, and mental. Consider the matter in the abstract, and this conclusion is self-evident. Thus:—Society is made up of individuals; all that is done in society is done by the combined actions of individuals; and therefore, in individual actions only can be found the solutions of social phenomena. But the actions of individuals depend on the laws of their natures; ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... What is action? Most critics pass over this point, as if it were self-evident In the higher, proper signification, action is an activity dependent on the will of man. Its unity will consist in the direction towards a single end; and to its completeness belongs all that lies between the first determination and the execution ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of this last remark was so self-evident and incontrovertible that it elicited no reply, and the three friends rode on for a considerable ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... a halt without any command, and directly beside the young man, who was working diligently over the overturned motorcycle. His repair kit was spread out at the roadside, and the cause of the trouble was self-evident, it would seem. But Walky was a true Yankee and had ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... shall not seem to assume the dignity of an authority which no personal taste can claim, if I beg a hearing for the following elements of manner and voice, which appeal to me as essential. They will, probably, appear self-evident to my readers, yet they are often found wanting in the public school teacher; it is so much easier to say "what were good to do" ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... intricate a matter, and one of which a very slight thing can turn the scales, it is not easy to lay down rules by which good taste may be acquired. But there are instances of bad taste which can be avoided, and among them there is one which is self-evident, and does not relate either to harmony or to variety of colours. We allude to the good taste of dressing according to ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... Palestine about A.D. 70, or by a Catholic at Rome about A.D. 90, or that it represents a "Catholicized Paulinism" of A.D. 140, or that it is a patchwork of homilies written soon after A.D. 120, are guesses which have been made but not substantiated. The fact that it was written before A.D. 62 is {231} self-evident if we admit that it was written by St. James. But it is also corroborated by the fact that 1 Peter, written about A.D. 64, seems to show a knowledge of this Epistle. Far more complicated is the question as to whether St. James shows any knowledge of St. Paul's ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... we have ceased pulling it about to find what is inside or search out texts for homilies in defence of our own particular views of life. The world's literature stands unaffected, though Archdeacon Farrar use it for chapter-headings and Sir John Lubbock wield it as a mallet to drive home self-evident truths. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Mr. Geo. B. Lang" (on Fig. 1) with the name Mrs. James D. Singley (on Fig. 4) also shows clearly that one and the same person wrote them both. And to the accuracy of all these self-evident propositions a leading handwriting expert in New York ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... to whom they are applied. To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be modest is the next best thing. I am not so sure about being quiet. I am rather inclined to think that really modest people make a great deal of noise. It is quite self-evident that really simple people make a great deal of noise. But simplicity and modesty, at least, are very rare and royal human virtues, not to be lightly talked about. Few human beings, and at rare intervals, ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... This reasoning was self-evident, but in 1873 the press of Great Britain asked when and where this necessity would cease. Count Schouvalof was sent to London and in several interviews with Lord Granville, he stated distinctly and plainly ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... that a man like him, who lives at court, does not like to have a mad niece in his house. The thing is self-evident; if I'd continued to play my part of the man of the robe, I should have done the same in a similar case. But here, as you perceive, we don't care much for appearances; and I've taken her for a servant. She has shown ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... thought or feeling in the Reader. This is the only sensible manner of dealing with such verses. Why trouble yourself about the species till you have previously decided upon the genus? Why take pains to prove that an ape is not a Newton, when it is self-evident that he is not ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... home with me, and to keep him as a companion in my walks. But he had a collar with his own name, Bruno, upon it, and the name of his owner. The question of right occurred to me. I debated it. Applying some of the self-evident truths established by our own Independence, I almost persuaded myself that I might rightfully take the dog. I reasoned thus: 1. All dogs are born free and equal. 2. They have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 3. All governments ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... threatening for Judah, chap. iv. 3, to the end of chap. vi. It is only incidentally, in chap. iii. 18, that it is intimated that Judah also, after the threatening has been fulfilled upon them, shall partake in the salvation. It is self-evident that these two objects must not be considered as lying beside one another. According to the whole context, the announcement of salvation for Israel cannot have any other object than that of wounding Judah. This object even comes out distinctly in ver. 6-11, and the import of the discourse may, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... has not a system. The dearest defenders and disciples are at fault. He attempted a theory of the universe, and his theory is not complete or self-evident. One man thinks he means this, and another, that: he has said one thing in one place, and the reverse of it in another place. He is charged with having failed to make the transition from ideas to matter. Here ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... tool (fig. 69), the invention of one of my youngest "hands" (and heads), and really a praiseworthy invention, though indeed a simple and self-evident matter enough. The usual tool for waxing-up is (1) a strip of glass, (2) a penknife, (3) a stick of wood. The thing most to be wished for in whatever is used being, of course, that it should retain the heat. This ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... eternal principles of right and justice encourages the hope that the incident of color, race or previous condition can not always be a bar to preferment. An equal chance and fair play to all the citizens are absolute essentials to the continued life of a republic such as ours is to be. It is in this self-evident truth that is found a sure ground of confidence. Upon this bed-rock of America's boasted pride for interest in her humblest citizen may be built the superstructure of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... explain some things in language, since you are not familiar with the mechanism of thought transference. The Five, a self-perpetuating body, do what governing is necessary for the entire planet. Their decrees are founded upon self-evident truth, and are therefore the law. Population is regulated according to the needs of the planet, and since much work is now in progress, an increase in population was recommended by the Five. My companion and I therefore had three ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... his people. Regardless of the fact that we were the first possessors of the regions they now inhabit; regardless equally of the fact that we abandoned that region from the loftiest motives; regardless also of the self-evident fact that we excel them so far in mental ability as they excel us in stature, they look upon us as a degraded race and make a mockery of all our finer feelings. But, the time has almost arrived when—thanks ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... this force is self-evident and known to everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... regulations. Our political philosophy centers around that concept, and all our social discussions fall into the form of propositions and disputes about rights. The history of the dogma of rights has been such that rights have been believed to be self-evident and self-existent, and as having prevailed especially in primitive society. Rights are also regarded as the opposite of force. These notions only prove the antagonism between our mores and those of earlier generations. In fact, it is a characteristic ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... appalling situation immediately becomes a problem of civilization. No state can exist under these conditions. If these statistics are reliable—and we know they are true and capable of verification by any individual who will go to the trouble of [xxi] investigating them—it is self-evident that a radical change must immediately be instituted to obviate the logical consequences that must follow as a sequence. The eugenic demand, that "every child born shall be a worthy child," is, therefore, the solution of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... self-evident that "c" cannot be used as often as "b," so the Declarer who likes always to say something will prefer "b," but the bidder who wishes, when he calls, to have distinct value attached to his announcement, will elect in favor of "c" rather than "b," and for the ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... pointed out to her that the fact was self-evident, that in view of that very fact she should have been less confident in the discussion and should be more guarded in the future: his efforts were crowned with small success. Mrs. Turner's beliefs were only too apt on all occasions to be heralded ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... tabernacles of which they had unwarrantably taken possession; how could Christ have done this had He not first subdued the "strong man," the master of devils, Satan himself? And yet those ignorant scholars dared to say in the face of such self-evident refutation of their own premises, that the powers of Satan were subdued by Satanic agency. There could be no agreement, no truce nor armistice between the contending powers of Christ and Satan. Offering a suggestion of self-judgment to His accusers, that they ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of the past for all ordinary occasions. It's a pity, for they are better smoking than cigarettes, and certainly more picturesque.) Compliments were exchanged in bad French, and the ordinary topics discussed, but nothing was said as to the weather except that it was warm—a self-evident proposition. The weather is not a fruitful topic in Egypt. After a little time some officials came in with a whole pile of papers for signature, and we took the opportunity to terminate our mutual discomfort, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... simplest. The preamble is philosophical, dealing with "self-evident" truths. Today the men who dislike or doubt these truths dismiss the preamble as "theoretical," or, to use another term of derogation favored by reactionaries, "French." But if the preamble be French and philosophical, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... "takin' notes" was a debatable point, but that somebody was taking everything takable on the premises soon became a self-evident proposition; and this was uncomfortable for more reasons than one. Mr. Smith and I almost quarrelled about it. He would not believe it to be Chang-how, and I was determined it should not be Anarky. Said he, "Anarky ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... With these conditions self-evident, all that good breeding could do was to receive the statement with a vague smile that might pass for good-humored incredulity or courteous acceptation of a simple fact. Indeed, I think we all rather tried to convey the impression that our host, when he WAS a pirate,—if ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... self-evident for denial. The boys regretted the fact, since every hour of delay seemed to lessen the chances of saving Brick from the unknown ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... for the present from drawing his self-evident moral. He sat twirling his cap between his knees, and his shrewd eye travelled round the kitchen, coming back finally to Bessie, who was washing and drying diligently. As he watched her cool movements Saunders felt the ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... It is self-evident that the Maker of such an eye was acquainted with the properties of light, and the alternations of night and day, as well as with the mechanical contrivances for adjusting the eye to these variable circumstances. He has given us an eye capable of seeking ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... scheme included a State Church. This was not adopted. It distinguished the inequality of men from the equality of rights. This was deemed self-evident and superfluous. It derived the mutual rights of men from their mutual duties—and this terrestrial definition also disappeared, leaving the way open to a higher cause. The adopted code was meagre and ill-composed, and Bentham found a malignant pleasure in tearing it to pieces. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... truth. To the modern dogmatist, these positions seem sceptical and pernicious. But to the philosopher, who knows the laws of human nature, to every scholar who knows the actual history of the Bible, these positions seem only self-evident. That in the Scriptures there are innumerable errors in science, mistakes in history, prophecies that were never fulfilled, contradictions and inconsistencies between different books and chapters,—these are facts of observation ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... it's self-evident. She's exactly as much in love with Trent as she was a year ago, and she's fighting against it every hour of her life. And the strain's ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... self-evident than that one should choose a region, especially as regards soil and climate, which is adapted to the crop or crops to be raised, yet there are probably more failures due to a lack of crop adaptation than to any other cause that is not personal ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... henceforward no one religious party was to be permitted to dictate to the other by means of its invariable superiority. And in truth, if the evangelical religion was really to be represented in the Diet, it was self-evident that it must not be shut out from the possibility of making use of that privilege, merely from the constitution of the Diet itself. Complaints of the judicial usurpations of the Aulic Council, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... It is self-evident that an ideal kiln would be one that produced the maximum quantity of thoroughly clinkered material with a minimum amount of fuel, labor, and investment. When Edison was preparing to go into the cement business, he looked the ground over ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... certain attractive qualities in the nature of amiability and sincerity, for occasional exhibitions of what the English rated as social impropriety and bad taste. Often, at the English lofty derision of colonials, at the English air of self-evident superiority, the English pretence of politely concealed shock or pain or offence at some infringement of a purely superficial conduct-code of their own arbitrary fabrication, he ground his teeth in silence; for in one respect, he ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... that something fearful had occurred. I replied, very much agitated, that I was not aware of any error. 'I thought so! Do you know where you are? You are in London, not in Bath!' The fact was so self-evident that I did not attempt to disprove it. 'You will be delivered up to scorn and contempt; the critics will immolate you; the eyes of this great metropolis are fixed upon you. I thought you were a well-educated young man, but I have been deceived—grossly ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... recollect the figure of this extraordinary bird; although he may not be aware that it is considered to have become extinct towards the end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century. The conditions of this disappearance are self-evident.[15] Imagine a bird of the gallinaceous (gallus, cock, or pheasant) tribe, considerably larger than a turkey, and consequently adapted for food, totally incapable of flying, and so unwieldy as to be easily run down, and it must be quite obvious that such a bird could not long continue ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... that insures the Survival of Beneficial Processes Only.—It is self-evident that wherever there is a saving of labor needed to make a given amount and kind of product, there is an increase in the possible product that is created by the aid of a given amount of labor. If workers themselves get a share of the gains, this fact will ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... her duty to take the initiative, to cut away the very ground from beneath his feet? He took a seat, not far from where she was sitting, and made an effort to begin a little ordinary conversation, throwing frequent glances at Janey. He said it was a fine day, which was self-evident; that he almost feared they would be out; that he had come to—to tell her something he had forgotten last night, about—yes, about—Cassiopeia's chair, to correct what he said about Orion—yes, that was it; and again he looked at Janey, who saw his looks, and wondered ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... tools, and materials which the work requires, and to feed and otherwise maintain the labourers during the process. Whatever things are destined for this use are capital. That industry is limited by capital is self-evident. There can be no more industry than is supplied with materials to work up and food to eat. Nevertheless, it is often forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have their wants supplied, not by the produce of present labour, but of past, and it long continued to be believed that ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... should say that man is so constituted that he is capable of feeling weary, restless, despondent and anxious, and that he instinctively desires to be relieved of these unpleasant feelings, we should assert a self-evident fact. And we should thereby assert all the instincts or natural impulse there is in the matter. It is simply a desire to be relieved from unpleasant feelings, and does not, in the slightest degree, indicate ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... the nuptials—stained with murder, adultery, and crime of all sorts—of Frances Howard and Robert Carr. It is in Chapman's most allusive and thorniest style, but is less interesting intrinsically than as having given occasion to an indignant prose vindication by the poet, which, considering his self-evident honesty, is the most valuable document in existence for explaining the apparently grovelling panegyric of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. It makes clear (what indeed an intelligent reader might gather ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... money, as a representative of direct labor, forms but a very small portion of the money which is derived from every sort of violence,—to say nowadays that money represents the labor of the person who possesses it, is a self-evident error or ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... without question, beyond question; past dispute; clear as day; beyond all question, beyond all dispute; undoubted, uncontested, unquestioned, undisputed; questionless^, doubtless. authoritative, authentic, official. sure as fate, sure as death and taxes, sure as a gun. evident, self-evident, axiomatic; clear, clear as day, clear as the sun at noonday. Adv. certainly &c adj.; for certain, certes [Lat.], sure, no doubt, doubtless, and no mistake, flagrante delicto [Lat.], sure enough, to be sure, of course, as a matter of course, a coup sur, to a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... any other book this would be self-evident. For example, suppose that I have never read the play of Hamlet. I hear it universally spoken of as one of the greatest works of the human intellect. That naturally and properly creates in my mind the expectation of finding it so. It produces the general belief ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... a mistake, therefore, to admit that opinions cannot be compared together. Some are much more certain than others, and, indeed, 'self-evident' and 'intuitive.' Let us therefore take these to be 'truer.' If so, the thinker who feels most certain he is right is ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... and the corresponding punishment it entails," and that is the whole point. There are circumstances—perhaps, on the whole, the most numerous of all the various circumstances in war—in which close formation, if it can be used, is obviously an advantage; but it is equally self-evident that the losses of troops in close formation will be heavier than their losses in extended order. A group is a better target than a ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... battery street cars for city traffic are self-evident, so that I need not trouble you with further details in this respect, but I would beg those who take an interest in the progress of the electric locomotive to give this subject all the consideration it deserves, and I would assure them that the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... tracing from ideas clearly conceived the consequences which were formally involved in them. The question was, therefore, of these ideas, these verae ideae, as he calls them,—what were they, and how were they to be obtained: if they were to serve as the axioms of his system, they must, he felt, be self-evident truths, of which no proof was required; and the illustration which he gives of the character of such ideas is ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... clutches—declared, undisputed accomplices—and those accomplices had committed a murder. If the murder was premeditated, if the accusation of deliberate homicide could be supported by substantial proofs, it meant the scaffold. Now there was, at the very least, one self-evident proof, the cry for assistance which Leonard had sent over the telephone a few ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... ashamed, had found a home in Angela's grey eyes. There was a strange nobility about her. Whether it dwelt in the stately form, or on the broad brow, or in the large glance of the deep eyes, it is not possible to say; but it was certainly a part of herself as self-evident as her face or features. She might well have been the inspiration ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... speech. The sentiments were hackneyed, the observations self-evident, and the moral obvious. His phrases had the well-known ring which distinguishes the true orator. Mr. Jackson was recognised everywhere to be a fine platform speaker, but his varied excellence could not be appreciated in a summary, and he had a fine verbosity. It is sufficient to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... triumphant general of yore his spolia opima. Of metaphysics he knew enough to confound all hearers and himself into the bargain. In logic he knew the whole family of syllogisms and dilemmas, and was so proud of his skill that he never suffered even a self-evident fact to pass unargued. It was observed, however, that he seldom got into an argument without getting into a perplexity, and then into a passion with his adversary for not ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... Among self-evident truths not one is more indisputable than that which, in the immortal words of our Declaration of Independence, asserts the right of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; but the only happiness that can be recognised by a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... commanders suppose a mass attack is coming; and that the British Legation and the western Russo-American front, together with the American posts on the Tartar Wall, work together. It is, of course, self-evident from what I have written that the first, or Continental and Japanese lines, are having by far the worst time. For, apart from the American posts on the Tartar Wall, no outposts in the second section are as yet in direct touch with the enemy. The strain on those who are within a ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... hot-headedness, or that they seemed not to understand them to avoid the shame of being baffled, they yielded not, but cried out louder than before. As they disputed more for victory than truth, they denied all things, even to those principles which are self-evident; pretending thereby to encumber their opponent. Xavier knew what use to make of his advantages; he turned the confusion upon them, by reducing them to manifest contradictions, from whence they could never disengage themselves; so that, instead ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... moment's intuition. It was physically impossible that she should have disappeared into any one of the houses which had their entrances within the dark tunnel he had just traversed. Apart from the presumptive impossibility of her being lodged in such a quarter, there was the self-evident fact that he must have heard the door opened and closed. Secondly, she could not have turned to the right, for in that direction the street was straight and without any lateral exit, so that he must ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... is self-evident, that they point at Self-liking and the Instinct of Sovereignty. But what is singular in these Laws is, that in their Operation they are the reverse ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... a plain token that there is some real contrariety between human science and Revelation. To the multitude who draw this inference, it matters not whether the protesting parties avow their belief in this contrariety or not; it is borne in upon the many, as if it were self-evident, that religious men would not thus be jealous and alarmed about Science, did they not feel instinctively, though they may not recognize it, that knowledge is their born enemy, and that its progress, if it is not arrested, will be certain to destroy all that they hold venerable and dear. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... >>>>>Proof—This proposition is self-evident, for the definition of anything affirms the essence of that thing, but does not negative it; in other words, it postulates the essence of the thing, but does not take it away. So long therefore as we regard ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... It scarce weighs more than four hundredweight. The bear not long ago weighed five, and I had to beat it to death before I could take it home. Surely your ladyship knows that I am the strong Juon—Juon Tare?" And the goatherd said this with as much self-evident pride, as if everyone in the wide world had heard that strong Juon dwelt among these forests. Henrietta's look of surprise apprised him, however, that she, at least, had never heard ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... likewise proved the existence of a Deity. But this is just the point in dispute, and to set out with a bare affirmation of it is merely to beg the question and to abandon the discussion. Doubtless, by the mere act of consulting their own consciousness, the fact now in dispute appears to some persons self-evident. But in matters of such high abstraction as this, even the evidence of self-evidence must not be relied upon too implicitly. To the country boor it appears self-evident that wood is annihilated by ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... morgue, where it is prepared for burial. We wish to see the point from which life starts and the one where it loses itself, as a single wave, in the great sea of infinite, effect. That this effect is a twofold one, and that it can turn inward as well as outward, is of course self-evident. For the rest—be it said incidentally—here is the point from which a parallel can be drawn between the phenomena of real life and those of life embodied ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... 'Self-evident,' said Georgina; 'but if I had been among you, would not I have told Theodora the poor child was cowed by her dignities, and Mrs. Nesbit and all the rest? Oh, I would have made much of her, and brought her forward. She should have been my queen of ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... anything invidious or unkind. But isn't it self-evident, or nearly, that we're individuals, while you're parts of an intricate social system? The minute you fall out of your place in the system you come to grief; but vicissitudes don't affect us much more ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... of English, German, Danish, Scotch, or Irish parents. You will not attempt to prove that every native colored person you meet in the streets, has not the same right to remain in this his native land, that you and we have. Assuming this as an incontrovertable truth, we hold it self-evident that they have as good right to deport us to Europe, under the pretext that there we shall be prosperous and happy, as we have to deport them to ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... he shrinks back whenever it inspires him with a feeling of repulsion. He shrinks from it particularly when it inspires him with fright. This is a matter of course and self-evident. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... virture. For too constant insistence upon an evil thing is sure to breed doubt in the mind of one who is in the habit of thinking at all. It did in Cecille's. If it be so true, so inevitable, so frightful, surely it should be self-evident now and then, instead of a mere matter of report. And beautiful generalization, never anything but vague, becomes noticeable after a time, questionable. The things of glory in this world are not so tediously many that ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... the physical, and therefore in the spiritual, world of so great importance that we shall not mis-spend time if we follow it, for further confirmation, into another department of nature. Its significance in Biology is self-evident; let ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the Divine existence, or that the phenomena which supply that evidence may be as well, or more satisfactorily, explained in some other way. Assail, in like manner, the Skeptical Atheist with the self-evident truth that, even on his own principles, he is not entitled to assume or to act upon the assumption, that there is no God, since the result of his reasonings is doubt merely, and such doubt as implies ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... hindrances should arise to prevent the carrying out of this same, I have no inclination to substitute for the Orclaestral-concert one for Chamber-music. But the word "Evening entertainment" must, as is self-evident, be entirely dispensed with. Our business is to raise, to educate the audience, not to amuse them; and if indeed, as Goethe very pertinently says, "deep and earnest thinkers are in a bad position as regards the public," we will ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... Mr. Drury, in the last moment at the door, "Mr. Drury, if we could all get a conscience about the tithe, and pay attention to that conscience, half the Everyday Doctrines would not even need to be stated. They would be self-evident. And the other half could be put into practice with ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... of the saint, it is undoubtedly the appearance of the miraculous therein—namely, the immediate SUCCESSION OF OPPOSITES, of states of the soul regarded as morally antithetical: it was believed here to be self-evident that a "bad man" was all at once turned into a "saint," a good man. The hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at this point, is it not possible it may have happened principally because psychology had placed itself under the dominion of morals, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... cream it will be digested in a normal manner and will not cause gas in the stomach or intestines. The proper amount of food is absorbed and nourishes the man as it should. Now did not the thorough mastication of that food increase the value of the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates? The thing is a self-evident fact. In the first case a man takes food which quickly turns to a loathsome poison. In the second instance the same kind of food is so thoroughly mixed with the ptyalin in the saliva that whatever is eaten becomes of value as protein or fat or some ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... is not self-evident that the sole business of our mind with realities should be to copy them. Let my reader suppose himself to constitute for a time all the reality there is in the universe, and then to receive the announcement that another being is to ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... which arises out of thought, nor can excite thought or feeling in the Reader. This is the only sensible manner of dealing with such verses: Why trouble yourself about the species till you have previously decided upon the genus? Why take pains to prove that an Ape is not a Newton when it is self-evident that ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... story ran to Democrates's credit, but Hermippus knew the world, and could forgive a young man if he had occasionally spent a jolly night. Democrates seemed to have forsworn Ionian harp-girls now. His patriotism was self-evident. The Eleusinian saw in him a most desirable protector in the perils of war for Hermione and her child. Hermione's dislike for her husband's destroyer was natural,—nay, in bounds, laudable,—but one must ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... are, Mr. Eden, Aunt Davies and I—Oh!" The table being between the sofa and the door the poor gentleman's actual condition was not self-evident from the latter, but Susan was now in the middle of the room and her gayety gave way in a moment ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... height of efficiency is attained by Mervin L. Lane, Insurance Service, New York, who prints on his letterhead, "Unnecessary terms of politeness as well as assurances of self-evident esteem ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... self-evident that it is the way all governments are carried on. Wherefore, my good Paul, we only do what all other legislators do. We are never rogues so long as we call ourselves honest fellows, and we never commit a crime so long as we can term it a virtue. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... manner in modern times. His view respecting the nature of scriptural doctrines,(352) that they can be reduced to the teaching of natural reason, is a corollary from his philosophy, which cannot admit that any religious truth is obligatory which is not self-evident, and is analogous to the doctrine which a short time previously had been stated by Lord ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... grief was thus checked, and a train of serious reflection laid, which, like some of those self-evident convictions that fastened on the awakened conscience, the old man could ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... dogma is, in the main, as I said, the simple outcome of Jewish theism with its 'creation out of nothing,' and the really foolish and paradoxical denial of the doctrine of metempsychosis which is involved in that idea, a doctrine which is natural to a certain extent, self-evident, and, with the exception of the Jews, accepted by nearly the whole human race at all times.... Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... is self-evident; for no art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change. To require of an artist that he should always reproduce the same picture, would be not one whit more ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... triangle or a circle does not follow from the nature of those figures, but from the order of universal nature in extension. From the latter it must follow, either that a triangle necessarily exists, or that it is impossible that it should exist. So much is self-evident. It follows therefrom that a thing necessarily exists, if no cause or reason be ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... succeeded in stirring up a very sufficient number of protestations for having ventured to deduce, from a collection of self-evident facts, a judgment which I still maintain. It may well be believed, moreover, that I was not wrong, since the Government and the Municipal Council have, this year, taken the initiative of adding to the ceremonies and to the diversions usual on the 14th of July, the ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... our happiness, but that the enjoyment of pleasure, let us say, voluptuousness, to include everything in a word, is the veritable aim and end whither tend all human acts. This is very clear to me, in fact, self-evident, and I am fully persuaded ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... They belonged chiefly to that party in the State which had consistently assailed Mr. Gladstone's Egyptian policy. Here was an opportunity of repairing the damage done by their opponents. The comparisons that would follow such an accomplishment were self-evident and agreeable even to anticipate. The idea of re-conquering the Soudan presented itself indefinitely, but not unpleasingly, alike to the Government and the people of Great Britain. The unforeseen course of events crystallised the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... of me and such men as me. You business people are on the up grade just now, and you know it. Whoever goes under, you are safe to do yourselves most uncommonly well. I don't mean anything personal, of course. I am just stating a self-evident fact. Commerce is in the air—you all reek of success. And so even shopwalkers, like Worthington, and that thrice odious puppy Farge, grow sleek, and venture to spread themselves in the presence of their betters—in the presence of a scholar and a gentleman, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... suppression or maintenance of story in a novel is a matter of personal taste; some prefer character-drawing to adventures, some adventures to character-drawing; that you cannot have both at once I take to be a self-evident proposition; so when Mr. Lang says, "I like adventures," I say, "Oh, do you?" as I might to a man who says "I like sherry," and no doubt when I say I like character-drawing, Mr. Lang says, "Oh, do you?" as he ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... of a virtue, and to pass from conscientiousness to bigotry is not a long nor difficult journey. All views are not equally true. This every sane mind holds as self-evident. There is a liberalism at this point which would run, if let go its logical course, to the sophist fallacy that truth did not exist, and therefore one view was as just as another—an attitude repugnant to all fine ethical natures. Now, conceiving we have the truth, we must, in reason and in ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... most unsatisfactory to me to see form developed from a number of various ground-forms. The object which now lay before my efforts and my thought was to bring out the higher unity underlying external form in such a self-evident shape that it should serve as a type or principle whence all other forms might be derived. But as I held the laws of form to be fixed, not only for crystals, but also just as firmly for language, it was more particularly a deep philosophical view of language which eventually absorbed my thoughts. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel |
