"Premise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... got Raby alone, and begged leave, in the first place, to premise that his (Raby's) nephew was a remarkable man. To prove it, he related Little's whole battle with the Hillsborough Trades; and then produced a report the young man had handed him that very day. It was actually in his ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... taught after middle life touching the theory of the religion in which he believed, Moses had from early childhood been nurtured in these Mesopotamian beliefs and traditions, and to them—or, at least, toward them—he always tended to revert in moments of stress. Without bearing this fundamental premise in mind, Moses in active life can hardly be understood, for it was on this foundation that his theories of cause and ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... proven by the wheezing effort with which he made his descent from the two-seated canvas-covered surrey in front of Bob Manning's store, and, with a deftness born of experience, converted the free ends of the lines into hitch straps. That the second premise held true was demonstrated ten seconds later in the unconscious grunt of soliloquy with which he greeted the sight of a wisp of black rag tacked above the knob ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... reader may understand fully the nature of the romantic enterprise in which, as we have already said, Prince Charles embarked when he was a little over twenty years of age, we must premise that Frederic, the German prince who married Charles's sister Elizabeth some years before, was the ruler of a country in Germany called the Palatinate. It was on the banks of the Rhine. Frederic's title, as ruler of this country, was Elector Palatine. ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... "I must premise, however, that I have read nothing of Adolph Muellner's (the author of 'Guilt'), and much less of Goethe, and Schiller, and Wieland, than I could wish. I only know them through the medium of English, French, and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... ourselves worthy of America's ideals, if we do not forget that our nation was founded on the premise that all men are creatures of God's making, the world will come to know that it is free men who carry forward the true promise ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... have I thought proper to premise. It is impossible to judge correctly of the men of any age, without taking into consideration the circumstances in which they were placed, and the opinions that prevailed in their time. To apply the standard of this year of grace, 1856, to the religious ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... contemplation of California scenery and her own soul. Being a man of imperfect logic, this caused him to beat her; and she, being equally faulty in deduction, was impelled to a certain degree of unfaithfulness on the same premise. Then Mr. Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs. Tretherick to contribute regularly to the columns of "The Avalanche." It was at this time that Col. Starbottle discovered a similarity in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the genius ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... to premise that our remarks will be based upon the conclusions of skilled and scientific observers only, whose position and experience no medical man will question. All the instances to be related are given upon unimpeachable authority. They are not the narrations of ignorant, credulous people; ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... narrative of the youthful adventures which laid the foundation of the writer's habit of opium-eating in after-life, it has been judged proper to premise, for three ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... will, differentiate it as you may, it is the same vital force which fills the cradle that sways the scepter. As she aspires to share with man the regency of this world, she will scarce thank Carpenter and Maxwell for a premise from which the conclusion must be inevitably drawn that, as a world-power, she must ever rank with eunuchs—that she is here solely by man's volition and despite her implied protest. We must understand woman before presuming to measure her passions or estimate ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the first, I may premise, that for the first four years the school at the location in Adelaide was conducted entirely in the native tongue. To this ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... voyages may be the better understood, I have thought proper to premise a brief description of Africa, on the west coast of which great division of the world, the coast of Guinea begins at Cape Verd in about lat. 12 deg. N. and about two degrees in longitude from the measuring line[189]; whence running from north to south, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... surpassing paint. He was as honest as the day—as honest as he was fearless and fussy. But he had no patience; he wanted things done and done at once, and his way was THE way to do them. People who did not think as he thought didn't THINK at all. On this drastic premise he went to work. There was of course continuous friction between him and the House of Burgesses. Dinwiddie had all a Scot's native talent for sarcasm. His letters, his addresses, perhaps in particular his addresses to the House, bristled with satirical thrusts at his opponents. ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... verification, we start with the major premise, M is P, and explore our memories for an S which, being M, should therefore be P according to our hypothesis. If we find an S which is not P, then our final conclusion is that ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... to explain many of the phenomena of certain lesions in the abdominal cavity. The nociceptors in the abdomen, like nociceptors elsewhere, have been established as a result of some kind of injury to which during vast periods of time this region has been frequently exposed. On this premise, we should at once conclude that there are no nociceptors for heat within the abdomen because, during countless years, the intra-abdominal region never came into contact with heat. That this inference is correct is shown by the fact that ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... we have now to recount had quite another and more special object consistently in view—that of scientific investigation; and we would here premise that the proper appreciation of these investigations will depend on a due understanding of the attendant circumstances, as also of the constant characteristic behaviour of balloons, whether despatched for ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... mode adopted when we wish to take one of the hippopotami from the herd, I should first premise that these beasts have the sense of hearing, acute to the highest degree, and could note even the fall of a pin. As, therefore, it is useless to try to approach them by stealth, the keepers ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... prove yourself to be a philosopher of a modern school, you draw your inductions so far and wide from your diminutive premise." ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... on the ever increasing forces of disregarded symbolisms. And this again proves the pantheistic power of doubt, considered for the moment and for the subtle purposes of our argument as faith. For, granting that two and two are six, the corollary reasoning must be that no premise is or may be capable of such conclusion as will render it sublunary to ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... upon which to base a pretty fair argument along this line. Admitting that Don Pendleton was what she had been crying about,—a purely hypothetical assumption for the sake of a beginning,—she was able to start with the premise that a woman was a fool for crying about any man. Coming down to concrete facts, she found herself supplied with even less comforting excuses. If she had been living of late in a little fool's paradise, why, she had made it for herself. She ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... how Rios would reason things out. And, oddly enough, it strikes me that though he began with a false premise he has come pretty close to reaching the right conclusion. You see, he knows that I came down here with Barlow looking for treasure. He knew Captain Escobar was ahead of him on the same trail and when he could get nothing further out of Escobar he killed him. But he did know ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... main fight of her opponents would no doubt be made on her definition of the word being. The assumption that either sex of a given species is a distinct "being" cannot probably be slid into the minor premise of the argument without some objection from the opposing counsel. However, this brings us at once to the main point, and the chapter called "The Organic Argument," which opens with this syllogism, is really the pith of the book, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... First let us premise with certain general laws, that intelligence, physical well-being and freedom have a decided affinity, and are most copiously unfolded in manufacturing countries. That as labor is developed and elaborated, it becomes allied to science and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... And here I would premise one great advantage, which, as historian, I possess over my reader; and this it is, that though I cannot save the life of my favorite hero, nor absolutely contradict the event of a battle (both which liberties, though often taken by the French writers of the present reign, I hold to ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... of the psychiatrists said with more than a trace of admiration in his voice. "Complete and thoroughly consistent. She's just traded identities—and everything else she does—everything else—stems logically out of her delusional premise. Beautiful." ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... prevailed the custom of throwing firebrands down the lofty precipice of Nuololo. This amusement made a fine display at night. As the fire-sticks fell they swayed and drifted in the breeze, making it difficult for one standing below to premise their course through the air and to catch one of them before it struck the ground or the water, that being one of the objects of the sport. When a visitor had accomplished this feat, he would sometimes mark his flesh with the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... We should premise that the Prussians are the least German of all the populations of what constitutes modern Germany. They are more than half Slavs. In the early Middle Ages the Mark of Brandenburg, the centre and chief province ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... to her own proper sphere," said I, waxing hot. "The fact is that science, armed with miserably imperfect tools, but unbounded assumption, has discovered a jelly-fish in a basin of water, and has deduced from that premise the tremendous conclusion ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... to stay, and it is spreading. The fear of most of its opponents is, therefore, not nearly so much that the human race will become extinct as that its best elements will gradually be replaced by the worst. At first this may seem plausible. Granting our opponents' premise temporarily, the conclusion is logically unavoidable that in order to restore a normal relation between the so-called more and less intelligent or desirable classes of society, we must put into the hands ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... must be crossed off the list of elements which are entitled to a reward. The Fourierists—as far as I have been able to learn from a few of their pamphlets—deny the right of occupancy, and recognize no basis of property save labor. Starting with a like premise, they would have seen—had they reasoned upon the matter—that capital is a source of production to its proprietor only by virtue of the right of occupancy, and that this production is therefore illegitimate. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... second glance on the man in question. He was wearing evening kit, and at first sight the brown-skinned face above the white of his collar, taken in conjunction with dark hair and very strongly-marked brows, seemed to premise the correctness of Tony's surmise. Suddenly the man lifted his bent head, and over the top of the newspaper Arm found herself looking into a pair of unmistakably grey eyes—grey as steel. They were very direct eyes, with ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... We must premise that Mr Bland takes three but little-known Oriental manuscripts as the groundwork of his observations; one of them, in the Persian character, is said to be 'probably unique,' though, unfortunately, very imperfect. It bears no date or author's name, these ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... Secretary of War was more detailed and more explicit. "It cannot," he said, "be necessary for me to premise to you or to others who know my sentiments; that to quit the tranquility of retirement, and enter the boundless field of responsibility, would be productive of sensations which a better pen than I possess would find it ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... "I must premise that the specimens were obtained along the Assamboo Range of hills, between the elevations of 1500 and 3000 feet above sea-level. This range of hills, running in a north-westerly and south-easterly direction from Cape Comorin to 8 deg.33' north latitude, forms the boundary line between Travancore ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... binding, (in blue morocco) as too many of Bozerian's performances usually are.[83] Close to this book is the Giunta reprint of 1515—ALSO UPON VELLUM: but of a foxy and unpleasing tint. Now for a few LARGE PAPER ALDUSES—of a variety of forms and of characters. But I must premise that the ensuing list of those upon vellum, is very far indeed from ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... which to generalize with effect. It is only a most extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without sufficient certainty of the major premise of his syllogisms. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... closing words are a compendium of his life and beliefs: "Countrymen: I have given proofs, as well as the best of you, of desiring liberty for our country, and I continue to desire it. But I place as a premise the education of the people, so that by means of instruction and work they may have a personality of their own and that they may make themselves worthy of that same liberty. In my writings I have recommended ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... but he could and would. He reasoned glibly that this was the only honest course, and his reasoning convinced him; then, all of a sudden, the pressure of her warm lips came upon him and the remembrance upset every premise and process of his logic. Nevertheless, he was honest in his stubborn determination to conclude the affair, and finally decided to let time show him ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... that premise of injustices to be righted, malcontents from the minorities of both factions were induced with fantastic ceremonials of initiation into the membership of the secret brotherhood. And though they were building an engine of menacing power and outlawry, it is probable that more than half ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... a Huron wizard or "medicine-man" before a council of the tribe. His judges told the father that nothing had gone right since he appeared among them. To this Brebeuf replied by "drawing the attention of the savages to the absurdity of their principles". He admitted(3) the premise that nothing had turned out well in the tribe since his arrival. "But the reason," said he, "plainly is that God is angry with your hardness of heart." No sooner had the good father thus demonstrated the absurdity of savage principles of reasoning, than the malignant Huron wizard fell down dead ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the premise of the Supreme-Court decision that "the Constitution of the United States does not confer suffrage on any one"; our national life does not date from that instrument. The constitution is not the original declaration of rights. It was not framed until ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of it upon him, and easily proves that any one who defends him must be the greatest fool on earth. As if any real believer ever thought in this preposterous way, or as if any defender of the legitimacy of men's concrete ways of concluding ever used the abstract and general premise, 'All desires must be fulfilled'! Nevertheless, Mr. McTaggart solemnly and laboriously refutes the syllogism in sections 47 to 57 of the above- cited book. He shows that there is no fixed link in the dictionary between the abstract concepts 'desire,' 'goodness' and 'reality'; and he ignores all ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... full explication of this point, and to show how far the hypothesis of the mind's judging by the various divergency of rays may be of use in determining the apparent place of an OBJECT, it will be necessary to premise some few things, which are already well known to those who have any skill ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... Some philosophers have contended that certain general ideas are innate, but few would be found nowadays to accept such a contention. At other times mere definitions of terms may serve as premises. One might state as a premise the definition "A straight line is the shortest distance between two points," and the further statement that "AB is a straight line between A and B," and conclude that the line AB represents the shortest distance between two points A and B. In a manner similar to this Euclid ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... the firm next door says that the man who lives here is an odd sort of person whom nobody knows; a bookworm, I think they call him. He has occupied the house six months, yet they have never seen any one about the premise but himself and a strange old servant as peculiar and uncommunicative as ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... endeavour to give the reader a short description of the county of Hastings, in which I have held the office of sheriff for the last twelve years, and which, I believe, possesses many advantages as a place of settlement, over all the other places I have seen in the Upper Province. I should premise, however, lest my partiality for this part of the colony should be supposed to incline me to overrate its comparative advantages to the settler, that my statements are principally intended to show the progress of Upper Province ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... but she did assert that her native-born subjects could never change their allegiance, that she had an inalienable right to their service, and to seize them wherever found, except within foreign territory. From an admitted premise, that the open sea is common to all nations, she deduced a common jurisdiction, in virtue of which she arrested her vagrant seamen. This argument of right was reinforced by a paramount necessity. In a life and death struggle with an implacable enemy, Great Britain ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... century—struggling painfully against difficulties, eager and hot after knowledge, wasting eyesight and stinting sleep, subtle, inquisitive, active-minded and sanguine, but omnivorous, overflowing with dialectical forms, loose in premise and ostentatiously rigid in syllogism, fettered by the refinements of half-awakened taste and the mannerisms of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... people as it was now producing them for the troops. But when he tried to give this programme the name of Socialism, then the trouble began. Weren't Socialists the lunatics who wanted to have America "lay down" like Russia? The premise from which all discussion started with these men was that America was going to win the war; if you tried to hint that this matter could so much as be hesitated over, you met, first sharp mockery, and then angry looks, and advice to go and take a pill and get ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... my father" is one of my greatest favourites. The evening before last I wandered out, and began a tender song, in what I think its native style. I must premise that the old way, and the way to give most effect, is to have no starting note, as the fiddlers call it, but to burst at once into the pathos. Every country girl sings-"Saw ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... easy for a foreigner. It is not easy even for ourselves. We have few abstract principles, and reliable induction from our past is not easy. We are often guided by what Mr. Justice Wendell Holmes has called "the intuition more subtle than any particular major premise." Nor is help to be derived from any study of our general outlook on life, for that outlook is hard to ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... so much mischief in life, that, though it may appear to lead to some degree of repetition, it would be highly improper to omit the mention of it in this place. That we may be the better understood, it may be proper to premise, that certain particular vices, and likewise that certain particular good and amiable qualities, seem naturally to belong to certain particular periods and conditions of life. Now, if we would reason fairly in estimating our moral character, we ought ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... in his Prince. In erecting a new science of statecraft, by which a people might {590} arrive at supreme dominion, Machiavelli's great merit is that he looked afresh at the facts and discarded the old, worn formulas of the schoolmen; his great defect is that he set before his mind as a premise an abstract "political man" as far divorced from living, breathing, complex reality as the "economic man" of Ricardo. Men, he thought, are always the same, governed by calculable motives of self-interest. In general, he thought, men are ungrateful, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the Copper-Mine River Mr. Wentzel had made great progress in the erection of our winter-house having nearly roofed it in. But before proceeding to give an account of a ten months' residence at this place, henceforth designated Fort Enterprise, I may premise that I shall omit many of the ordinary occurrences of a North American winter as they have been already detailed in so able and interesting a manner by Ellis* and confine myself principally to the circumstances which had an influence on our progress in the ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... of all intellection has been for something—a fact, a basis, a generalization, law, formula, a major premise that is positive: that the best that has ever been done has been to say that some things are self-evident—whereas, by evidence we mean the support ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... therefore, Thaddeus was grumpy. One premise only was necessary for the conclusion—in fact, it was the only premise upon which a conclusion involving Thaddeus's grumpiness could find a foothold. If Thaddeus felt rested, everything in the world could go wrong and he would smile as sweetly as ever; but with the slightest trace of weariness ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... therefore, is a matter of directing this suggestibility that we all possess into the channels that will finally produce the hypnotic state. It can be much more complicated than this explanation in many cases, but let us use this as a working premise. ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... of affairs the author of the present work comes to the rescue. He shall speak in his own words. But we must premise, that although we do not intend to stint him in our quotation—though we wish to give him all the sea-room possible; yet, for a full development of his views, we must refer the reader to his volumes themselves. There ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... which, according to my own experience, I have found most effectual. I will conclude the paper by the relation of a case, in which a strong predisposition to the disease was successfully counteracted. It will be proper, however, to premise, that the treatment of this case is by no means held out as an example to be generally followed with every infant, which may possibly become the subject of cholera. It is applicable in all its details only to those, in which, as in the present instance, there is every reason to ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... to make no distinction. And his rage was based upon the premise that Lawler was guilty. Warden's thoughts grew abysmal as he stood at the window; and considerations of business became unimportant in his mind as the Satanic impulse seized him. He stood for a long time at the window, and when he finally seized hat and coat and went down into ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... therefore to premise, that the future pages of this work will deal with the hypothesis of this aetherial medium, by which will be accounted for, and that on a satisfactory and physical basis, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... the people would have a great surprise on the Fourth of July, Colonel J. E. B. Stuart, Confederate cavalrist, took about two thousand picked riders and performed a dash within the hostile lines, which achieved a world-wide admiration. It is necessary to premise that the country was inimical to the defenders of Washington, and the farmers kept the secessionists clearly informed on the Federal movements. Besides, the first duty of keeping Washington engrossed all the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... and all for no good, since his fight is futile and ineffective. Surely any one could foresee that such action would make only for unhappiness, or for no happiness commensurable with the sacrifice. Yet if we agree with his premise, that the liquor trade is a curse to humanity, we deem his conduct not only conscientious but objectively noble and right. How ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... correspondence, which is so interesting that a brief epitome of it will not be out of place here. It not only throws light upon the historical events of the period, but also gives us a glimpse of the proceedings connected with the schism in the Catholic Church. It is only necessary to premise that in the separation between the Roman and Greek Catholics which took place in the latter half of the ninth century, the Danubian provinces followed the eastern section, that the union was complete ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... asham'd to expose to your perusal a thing so rudely pen'd; if I did not hope, you would consider, that 'twas hastily written onely for my own Remembrance. And that you may not stop at any thing in the immediately annext Note, or the two, that follow, it will be requisite to premise this Account of the seal'd Thermoscope; (which was a good one) wherewith these Observations were made; That the length of the Cylindrical pipe was 16. Inches; the Ball, about the bigness of a somewhat large Walnut, and the Cavity of the Pipe by guess about ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... "glass leg" delusion could not logically have availed him. If, however, he had struck and killed one who he believed was going to shatter his legs it might have been important. The illustration is clear enough, but its application probably involves a mistaken premise. If he thought he had glass legs his mind was undoubtedly deranged—whether enough or not enough to constitute him irresponsible or beyond the effect of penal discipline might be a difficult question. The generally accepted doctrine is, that if a man has a delusion concerning something, ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... the hope—founded more upon the nature of the subject, than on any presumptuous confidence in our own descriptive powers—that this paper may not be found wholly devoid of interest. We have only to premise, that we do not intend to fatigue the reader with any statistical accounts of the prison; they will be found at length in numerous reports of numerous committees, and a variety of authorities of equal weight. We took no notes, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... as the above is called a syllogism. It consists of a major premise (A), a minor premise ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... any farther,' she said, 'she must premise to his lordship, that she had been originally stinted in room for her improvements, so that she could not follow her genius liberally; she had been reduced to have some things on a confined scale, and occasionally to consult ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... suppose they mixed. The original Michael Joseph Farrel (I am the third of the name) was Tipperary Irish, and could trace his ancestry back to the fairies—to hear him tell it. But one can never be quite certain how much Spanish there is in an Irishman from the west, so I have always started with the premise that the result of that marriage—my father—was three-fifths Latin. Father married a Galvez, who was half Scotch; so ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... on which we are observing it—universal history—Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality. Notwithstanding this (or rather for the very purpose of comprehending the general principles which this, its form of concrete reality, embodies) we must premise some abstract characteristics of the nature ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Let me premise, before I go on with my own narrative, that Charles Grammont, with whose murder I lie charged, developed a remarkable and unexpected characteristic. A reckless spendthrift whilst penniless, he became a miser when he found himself possessor of five thousand pounds. He had returned ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... best unravell'd, When I premise that Tim has travell'd. In Lucas's by chance there lay The Fables writ by Mr. Gay. Tim set the volume on a table, Read over here and there a fable: And found, as he the pages twirl'd, The monkey who had seen the world; (For Tonson had, to help the sale, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... presence prevented his jesting. The most obvious laws of rectitude were but thistle-down before the whirlwind of his subversive theories; and Edith found argument impossible with one who denied her every premise. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... possible meanings of that phrase, or all the questions it involves. I propose to state briefly what I understand by 'Poetry for poetry's sake,' and then, after guarding against one or two misapprehensions of the formula, to consider more fully a single problem connected with it. And I must premise, without attempting to justify them, certain explanations. We are to consider poetry in its essence, and apart from the flaws which in most poems accompany their poetry. We are to include in the idea of poetry the metrical form, and not to regard this ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... Mrs. Cochran & Mrs. Livingston to dine with me to-morrow; but am I not in honor bound to apprize them of their fate? As I hate deception, even where the imagination only is concerned; I will. It is needless to premise, that my table is large enough to hold the ladies. Of this they had ocular proof yesterday. To say how it is usually covered, is rather more essential; and this shall be the purport of ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... We will premise that we think worse of King Charles the First than even Mr. Hallam appears to do. The fixed hatred of liberty which was the principle of the King's public conduct the unscrupulousness with which he adopted any means which might enable him to attain his ends, the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "Let me premise, Miriam," he began, "by congratulating you on your improved appearance"—another benign bow. "You were so burned and blackened by exposure, and so—in short, so very wild-looking when I last saw you, that I began to fear for the result; but perfect rest and retirement, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... are some of the most remarkable questions; but I must premise that K. means my Knave, namely, the rabbi, and C. the Candidates. [Footnote: Lest my reader might think that what follows is a malicious invention of my own to bring the Jews into disrepute, I shall add the precise page of the Talmud from which each question is taken (from Eisenmenger's "Judaism ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... remedies under State workmen's compensation laws.[388] In Knickerbocker Ice Co. v. Stewart[389] the same majority of judges, with Justice McReynolds again their spokesman, invalidated this statute as an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the States. The holding was based on the premise, stated as follows: "The Constitution itself adopted and established, as part of the laws of the United States, approved rules of the general maritime law and empowered Congress to legislate in respect of them and other matters within the admiralty ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the adventures which he met with, it is necessary to premise that no person can travel among the different states and kingdoms on the continent of Europe without what is called a passport. The idea which prevails among all the governments of the continent is, that the people of each country are the subjects of the sovereign ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... military and sportsman virtues. The code of masters exalts liberty—for the ruling class—and resents any restraint by inferiors or civilians, or by public opinion of any group but its own. It has a justice which takes for its premise a graded social order, and seeks to put and keep every man in his place. But its supreme value is power, likewise for the few, or for the state as consisting of society organized and directed by the ruling class. Such a group, according to Treitschke, will also need war, ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... revelation out, for the messages, he thinks, are not romantic enough for that; fraud exists anyhow; therefore the whole thing is nothing but imposture. The odd point is that so few of those who talk in this way realize that they and the spiritists are using the same major premise and differing only in the minor. The major premise is: "Any spirit-revelation must be romantic." The minor of the spiritist is: "This is romantic"; that of the Huxley an is: "this is ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... A fundamental premise in the fully developed exorcism was that, according to sacred Scripture, a main characteristic of Satan is pride. Pride led him to rebel; for pride he was cast down; therefore the first thing to do, in driving him out of a lunatic, was to strike ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... is usually made to begin with the story of AEneas. In order that the reader may understand in what light that romantic tale is to be regarded, it is necessary to premise some statements in respect to the general condition of society in ancient days, and to the nature of the strange narrations, circulated in those early periods among mankind, out of which in later ages, when the art of writing came to be introduced, learned men compiled ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... impose upon and dispossess the green woodpecker. In the process of nature in such cases the stronger of the two birds would retain the nest, and thus assume the duties of foster-parent. Starting from this reasonable premise concerning the prehistoric cuckoo, it is not difficult to see how natural selection, working through ages of evolution by heredity, might have developed the habitual resignation of the evicted bird, perhaps to the ultimate entire abandonment of the function of incubation. Inasmuch ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... day they began work on the well. The ultimate success of the plant rested on the premise that not too far below the surface of the valley there was water. Dick was pessimistic on the subject. He came down one evening to view progress when, after three days of toil, the boys had dug to the depth of about ten feet. The three men lighted ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... as if he were trying to make a companion out of his noise. Doctor Randall Byrne sat down to put his thoughts in order. He began at the following point: "The physical fact is not; only the immaterial is." But before he had carried very far his deductions from this premise, he caught the neighing of a horse near the house; so he went to the window and threw it open. At the same time he heard the rattle of galloping hoofs, and then he saw a horseman riding furiously into the heart of the wind. Almost at once the rider ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... his vivid sketch, "The Maker of Lenses," makes this single love-episode in the life of Spinoza the controlling impulse of his life, probably reasoning on the premise that men who mark epochs are ever and always, without exception, those with the love nature strongly implanted in their hearts. So thoroughly does Zangwill believe in the one passion of Spinoza's life, that a score of years after the chief incident of it had transpired, he pictures the philosopher ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... refused even to refer to the vital point of the case of Mr. H. G. Wells. On the other hand he wrote a very jolly article about beer and "tavern hospitality." The argument marked time for two weeks more, when Mr. Belloc once again entered the lists. The essence of his contribution is "I premise that man, in order to be normally happy, tolerably happy, must own." Collectivism will not let him own. The trouble about the present state of society is that people do not own enough. The remedy proposed will be worse than the disease. Then Mr. Bernard Shaw ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... convinced that they deserved to be free, were ever concerned with its moral justification. "To what purpose is it to ring everlasting changes ... on the cases of Manchester and ... Sheffield," cried James Otis. "If these places are not represented, they ought to be." This ought is the fundamental premise of the entire colonial argument. "Shall we Proteus-like perpetually change our ground, assume every moment some new strange shape, to defend, to evade?" asks a Virginian in 1774. This was precisely what could not be avoided. For the end determined the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... an instant, his brain cleared now, working with lightning speed, leaping from premise to conclusion. The crush in the theatre lobby—the pushing, the jostling, the close contact—the Wowzer, the slickest, cleverest pickpocket in the United States! For a moment he could have laughed aloud in a sort of ghastly, defiant mockery—he ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Portuguese were reduced to great straits. Though the Portuguese cannon slew a good many of the enemy, their numbers were so much superior that the Portuguese were obliged to retreat with some loss, and much grieved that the object of their expedition was frustrated. Thus far we have deemed necessary to premise, relative to the design and success of the expedition, from De Faria and other authors; because the journal of Don Juan de Castro is almost entirely confined to observations respecting the places visited in the voyage, and gives little ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... the premise. Has not the demagogue more power than his dupes, or the Member of Parliament more power than the elector? We have hardly yet reached, and are never likely to reach, that ideal of direct government. But what is this price which Mr. Lilly is railing ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... I will tell you, reader, what they are, and first, I must premise that they are nothing wonderful. The subjects had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with the spiritual eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand would not second my fancy, and, in each case, it had wrought out but a pale ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... the professor is correct, but not new. The second conclusion is new, but very doubtful as to its correctness, and certainly does not follow as a sequence from his premise. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... purposes, without giving one single reason for it; all the proof presented here is a night meeting. Please see the quotation from the British Quarterly Review. But let us look at it the way in which we compute time: I think it will be fair to premise, that about midnight was the middle of Paul's meeting; at any rate there is but one midnight to a twenty-four hour day. We say that Sunday, the first day of the week, does not commence until 12 o'clock Saturday night. Then it ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... nothing to apprehend in the way of aggression or oppressive measures from the side of their more peaceable neighbours; whereupon their warlike animus will give place to a reasonable and enlightened frame of mind. This argument runs tacitly or explicitly, on the premise that these peoples who have so enthusiastically lent themselves to the current warlike enterprise are fundamentally of the same racial complexion and endowed with the same human nature as their ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... which occurred on the 19th of February, 1852. It was exceedingly brilliant throughout the northern portion of our continent. I extract the following account of its effects upon the wires from my journal of that date. I should premise, that the system of telegraphing used upon the wires, during the observation of February, 1852, was Bain's chemical. No batteries were kept constantly upon the line, as in the Morse and other magnetic systems. The main wire was connected ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... "I'll guess that one of your later arguments will be that Judge Carter, having accepted this minor as qualified to deliver sworn testimony, has already granted the first premise of your argument." ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... depend on any other piece of knowledge; in other words, is not adopted as the result of a process of reasoning. What I believe with reference to my past history, so far as I can myself recall it, I believe instantaneously and immediately, without the intervention of any premise or reason. Similarly, our notions of ourselves are, for the most part, obtained apart from any process of inference. The view which a man takes of his own character or claims on society he is popularly supposed to receive ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... have before us, from the London press of TILT AND BOGUE, 'Sir WHYSTLETON MUGGES, a Metrical Romaunte, in three Fyttes,' with copious notes. A stanza or two will suffice as a specimen. The knightly hero, it needs only to premise, has been jilted by his fair 'ladye-love,' who retires to her boudoir, while the knight walks off ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... written, as he says, 'at hazard, for one does not know at the time what is important and what is not': the earlier addressed to Miss Austin, after the betrothal; the later to Mrs. Jenkin the young wife. I should premise that I have allowed myself certain editorial freedoms, leaving out and splicing together much as he himself did with the Bona cable: thus edited the letters speak for themselves, and will fail to interest none who ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon singular words, may amuse some of your readers. I should, however, premise that as regards myself, the greater part are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... a weapon of offence than as a tool for self-improvement. Hence the talk of some of the cleverest was unprofitable in result, because there was no give and take; they would grant you as little as possible for premise, and begin to dispute under an oath to conquer or ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... determined to achieve it and control it. Nowhere is this more evident than in our thought of the meaning of knowledge. In the medieval age knowledge was spun as a spider spins his web. Thinking simply made evident what already was involved in an accepted proposition. A premise was drawn out into its filaments and then woven into a fabric of new form but of the same old material. Knowledge did not start from actual things; it did not intend to change actual things; and the shelves of the libraries groan with the burden of ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... exhibit successfully what I have to offer on this subject, I find it necessary to begin (in the next chapter) at the very beginning. I think it right, however, in this place to premise a few plain considerations which will be of use to us throughout all our subsequent inquiry; and which indeed we shall never be able to afford to lose ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... the business of this communication to speak of the conduct of individuals; yet you will permit me to premise, although well known to yourself already, that the object of the left column was to penetrate by a circuitous route between the enemy's batteries, where one-third of his force was always kept on duty, and his main camp, and that it was sub-divided into three ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... and purpose, and that neither the honor, the credit, nor the interest of the Nation would be safe if they were re-admitted to a share in its counsels." Mr. Raymond maintained, even if the truth of this premise were granted, that it was sufficient to reply that "we have no right, for such reasons, to deny to any portion of the States or people rights expressly conferred upon them by the Constitution of the United States, and we have no right to distrust ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... to say somewhat of them, I shall be as good as my Word, (the Character of an Honest man) and present you with a couple of Examples, and then proceed to Peals upon Eight: But this I must crave leave to premise, That Variety of Changes may be prick'd upon Seven Bells, as Triples, and Doubles, Triples Doubles, and Single Doubles, &c. and the same Methods may be prick'd upon Seven, as may be upon Five, the true ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... assembled group could be viewed as a starting point, whose initial operating premise could be helping to move in this direction and defining how LC could do so, for example, in areas of standardization or ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... his office, he had reviewed the situation point by point, and then gone back and reviewed it again; the conclusion was inescapable. The Organization had ordered him to make an accusation which he himself knew to be false; that was the first premise. The conclusion was that he would be killed as soon as he had made it. That was the trouble with being mixed up with that kind of people—you were expendable, and sooner or later, they would decide that they would have to expend you. And ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... her. He could reason so far as that he and Mr. Keller must have taken the same poison, because he and Mr. Keller had been cured out of the same bottle. But to premise that he had been made ill by an overdose of medicine, and that Mr. Keller had been made ill in some other way, and then to ask, how two different illnesses could both have been cured by the same remedy—was an effort utterly beyond him. He hung his head sadly, ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... attacks Apollinaris, basing his argument on the notion of salvation by incarnation, which formed the foundation of the most characteristic piety of the East, had been used as a major premise by Athanasius in opposition to Arianism, and runs back to Irenaeus and the Asia Minor school; see above, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... briefly describe the Metamorphoses, as far as known, common to all Cirripedia, but more especially in relation to the present family. I may premise, that since Vaughan Thompson's capital discovery of the larvae in the last stage of development in Balanus, much has been done on this subject: this same author subsequently published[4] in the 'Philosophical Transactions,' an account of the larvae of Lepas and Conchoderma (Cineras) ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... I must premise that Mrs. —— had written the day before to know if the visit, which her husband's friend had so earnestly solicited, would be conveniently received at this time, and was answered by the arrival, the next morning, for the use of herself and husband, of two horses, one of which I myself ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... the reason which made her select it, and not Pride and Prejudice, for her debut; and they have, perhaps naturally, found in the fact a fresh confirmation of that traditional blindness of authors to their own best work, which is one of the commonplaces of literary history. But this is to premise that she did regard it as her masterpiece, a fact which, apart from this accident of priority of issue, is, as far as we are aware, nowhere asserted. A simpler solution is probably that, of the three novels she had ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... is logical enough, if you start with the premise that each individual is free to follow his inclinations and ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... which they rest their indictment. Their principle is impregnable. Forgiveness is a divine prerogative, to be shared by none, to be grasped by none, without, in the act, diminishing God's glory. But it is not enough to have one premise of your syllogism right. Only God forgives sins; and if this man says that He does, He, no doubt, claims to be, in some sense, God. But whether He 'blasphemeth' or no depends on what the scribes do not stay to ask; namely, whether He has the right so to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... which the work is performed for the railway companies, it may be well to premise that one great good which the Clearing-House system does to the public, is to enable them to travel everywhere with as much facility as if there were only one railway and ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... after this long digression, to the courts of the Quakers. And here I shall immediately premise, that I profess to do little more than to give a general outline of these. I do not intend to explain the proceedings, preparatory to the meetings there, or to state all the exceptions from general rules, or to trouble the memory of the reader with ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... The major premise of this syllogism is a fundamental principle of reason—a self-evident truth, an axiom of common sense, and as such has been recognized from the very dawn of philosophy. [Greek: Adounaton ginesthai ti ek medenos prouparxonios]—Ex nihilo nihil—Nothing which once was not, could ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... of milk-mirrors are represented by the shaded parts of cuts, lettered A, B, C, D; but it is necessary to premise that upon the cows themselves they are always partly concealed by the thighs, the udder, and the folds of the skin, which are not shown, and therefore they are not always so uniform in nature as they ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... to excuse myself for neglecting so long to write, I shall present you with some original conjectures of my own, upon the way and manner in which you have been affected upon this present occasion. And here I must premise, that in so doing I shall not follow the formal and orderly method of Bishop Latimer, in his sermons before King Edward the Sixth; but, on the contrary, shall adopt the easy, desultory style of one whom at present I shall not ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... strictest sense, as not merely distinguished, but as contra-distinguished, from a fanatic. While I in part translate the following observations from a contemporary writer of the Continent, let me be permitted to premise, that I might have transcribed the substance from memoranda of my own, which were written many years before his pamphlet was given to the world; and that I prefer another's words to my own, partly as a tribute due to priority ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... valuable form of reasoning, but a moment's reflection will show that something must precede the syllogism in our reasoning. The major premise must be accounted for. How are we able to say that all men are mortal, and that lightning in the west is a sure sign of rain? How was this general truth arrived at? There is only one way, namely, through the observation of a large number of ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... independent address made to the shah during his European tour was, we think, the speech of welcome delivered by the president of the Swiss Confederation. We may premise that the shah is the first sovereign who, as such, has become the guest of Switzerland since the meeting of the Council of Constance in the fifteenth century. Still, the Swiss people did not show themselves overcome, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... I think you, I promise that you shall not lack advancement. Plainly, I have a little matter of money put by, for sundry uses; and, if the day comes when something of capital would stead you (after due trial, as I premise), it shall ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... like Harold or like you or like me?" Edward clearly found himself able to accept only the premise. ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... organization of the whole people, that is, through the nation (I, 202). Adam Smith's theory of labor would be correct if it considered the entire national life of a people itself as one huge piece of labor. (II, 265). And so, Mueller directs his polemics against Adam Smith's premise of a merely mercantile world-market. (II, 290). Similarly, the protective tariff theoreticians, Ganieh, Theorie de l'Economie politique (1822), II, 198 ff. and Fr. List, Nationales System der ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... passages qu. Zeller 114). This bears a semblance of inference and is not so utterly tautological as Cic.'s translation, which merges [Greek: phos] and [Greek: hemera] into one word, or that of Zeller (114, note). These arguments are called [Greek: monolemmatoi] (involving only one premise) in Sext. P.H. I. 152, 159, II. 167. Si dicis te mentiri, etc.: it is absurd to assume, as this sophism does, that when a man truly states that he has told a lie, he establishes against himself not merely that he has told a lie, but also that he is telling a lie at the moment ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... number in defying authority would not hesitate to make that same companion's life a burden to him if he should set up his own opinion on abstract matters in contradiction to his teacher's. Except when a teacher signally proves his incapacity, American children are willing to grant the broad premise that he knows more than they do, and that, if he does not, he at least ought to know more. Filipino children reverse this attitude. They are quite docile, seldom think of disputing authority as applied to discipline, but they will naively ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... day, I must premise, was to settle the whole lawsuit: for while trial of the issue was being postponed and postponed, the legal question had been argued and disposed of. The very Queen's counsel, unfavourable to the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... another writer may prove that they must and do meet, and still avoid getting tangled amongst his own arguments. I even read a book once in which it was clearly shown that the earth was flat; and, granted a ludicrous premise, one could but admire the irrefragable logic with which the conclusion was reached. With regard to art, be your premises sound or grotesque, the result is the same—muddle. Logic, science, philosophy, applied to art, spell certain disaster. With mingled ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... I must premise that I am not an expert in tobacco, nor familiar with the methods pursued in the East. I have seen a tobacco-field and the inside of a Connecticut curing-house, and that is about all. I give, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff |
