"Certitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Petrarca to Sadolet and Pole, we can trace every idea and mark every throb. It was the first time that the characters of men were exposed with analytic distinctness; the first time indeed that character could be examined with accuracy and certitude. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... hand, which are the result of experience or of honest reasoning do not have this quality of "primary certitude". I remember when as a youth I heard a group of business men discussing the question of the immortality of the soul, I was outraged by the sentiment of doubt expressed by one of the party. As I look back now I see that I had at the time no interest in the matter, and ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... own prowess, which nothing can daunt. He is convinced, especially if he has never travelled beyond his own borders, that he engrosses the virtue and intelligence of the world The driver of a motor-car assured me, with a quiet certitude which brooked no contradiction, that England was cut up into sporting estates for the "lords," and that there the working man was doomed to an idle servility. "But," said he, "there is no room for bums here." This ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... Such 'making to grow' must needs be undertaken, since the purport of the entire Veda with all its Sakhas cannot be fathomed by one who has studied a small part only, and since without knowing that purport we cannot arrive at any certitude. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... for I was still too timid, in my ignorance of Bertha's actual feeling, to venture on any step that would urge from her an avowal of it. I thought I should gain confidence even for this, if my vision of Prague proved to have been veracious; and yet, the horror of that certitude! Behind the slim girl Bertha, whose words and looks I watched for, whose touch was bliss, there stood continually that Bertha with the fuller form, the harder eyes, the more rigid mouth—with the barren, selfish soul laid bare; no ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... such little dramas, which in no way affected the tenderness of their hearts, these two beings adored each other with the presentiment and, gradually, the cruel certitude of an approaching separation, when suddenly there occurred in Felicia's life a horrible event. One day, Jenkins had taken her to dine at his house, as often happened. Mme. Jenkins was away on a couple of days' visit, as also her son; but the doctor's age, his semi-paternal intimacy, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... it; but at length Word being brought her that the child indeed No longer suffered, nor desired the breast, Her peace returned, and, giving thanks to God, All were united in new bonds of hope. Now being fixed in certitude of death, We stripped our souls of all their earthly gear, The useless raiment of this world; and thus, Striving together with a single will, In daily increment of faith and power, We were much comforted by heavenly ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... at her in the first moment of humiliation, of exasperation, 'Oh, it's you! Why are you here? If I am so odious to you that you must write to my sister to say so, I give you back your word.' But then, don't you see, it could not have been that. I have the practical certitude that soon afterwards they went together in a hansom to see the ship—as agreed. That was my reason for saying that Flora de Barral did ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... more as she loved. Moore must have written words of enchantment. Wade's hungry heart suffered a pang of jealousy, but would not harbor it. He read in her perusal of that letter what no other dreamed of, not even the girl herself; and it was certitude of tragic and brief life for her if she could not live for Wilson Moore. Those moments of watching her were unutterably precious to Wade. He saw how some divine guidance had directed his footsteps to this home. How many years had it taken ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... him to lack euphony still went on seeking another, with invincible patience, certain that he had not yet got hold of the unique word.... A thousand preoccupations would beset him at the same moment, always with this desperate certitude fixed in his spirit: Among all the expressions in the world, all forms and turns of expression, there is but one—one form, one mode—to express what ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... at all, and began to finger my buttonholes as shamefaced as a pauper before a Board. The certitude dawned upon me suddenly that Carlos, even if he would consent to swear to me, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... straining eyes beheld the faintest glimmer of artificial light flickering in the depths of its silent heart. So faint was it, at the distance, that, for a while, doubt prevailed. Then conviction supervened as each of the watchers recorded his observation and a sigh of certitude made itself heard. The point of light was held by all. It was dwelt upon. It was the verification needed to convey absolute faith in ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... because He has promised pardon to those who do confess; that is, not because of the worthiness or sufficiency of our confession (for there is no such worthiness or sufficiency), but because of the truth and certitude of His promise, as says the xxiv. Psalm: "For Thy Name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity." [Ps. 25:35] It does not say, "for my sake," or "for my worthiness' sake," or "for my name's sake," but "for Thy Name's sake." ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... him to the very depths. To Saint Bernard the world was as wild and confused as it was to Byron; but then he had gods many and saints many, and a holy church in this world, and a kingdom of heaven awaiting resplendent in the world to come. All this filled his soul with a settled certitude, too absorbing to leave any space for other than religious emotion. The seven centuries that flowed between the spiritual mind of Europe when Saint Bernard was its spokesman, and the spiritual mind of which Byron was the interpreter, had gradually dissolved these certitudes, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... would know the grounds of my certitude: God grant that hearing them ye may understand and steadfastly believe the same. My assurances are not the marvels of Merlin, nor yet the dark sentences of profane prophesies; but, 1. the plain truth of God's word, 2. the invincible justice of the everlasting God, and 3. the ordinary course ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... Nothing but the King's own sign-manual on the pardon makes it valid; and unless you and I can, somehow or other, come to close grips with God, and get into actual contact with Him, and hear, somehow, with infallible certitude, as from His own lips, the assurance of forgiveness, there is not enough for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... ... that absolute certitude as to the truths of natural theology was the result of an assemblage of concurring and converging probabilities ... that probabilities which did not reach to logical certainty might create a ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... given their entire confidence to the Sanitary Commission—they have decided that it shall not die for lack of material aid, estimating beyond all money and all price the lives and health of the brave men now in the field for the defence of the country, and grateful that they may repose in the certitude that every cent contributed will be used in the surest manner to effect the results required. To aid in sustaining this beneficent institution, New York is about to inaugurate a great Metropolitan Fair. She asks in the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... rumours it was stated with every accent of certitude that Madame Markievicz had been captured in George's Street, and taken to the Castle. It was also current that Sir Roger Casement had been captured at sea and had already been shot in the Tower of London. The names of several Volunteer Leaders ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... accepted as a matter of certitude that within the memory of men now living, the Falls have receded 100 feet, and authorities in that science have stated the fact, that the retrocession—estimated from one inch to one foot per year—began near Lewiston. The ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... Mark had pointed out to him that the doors of Paradise were open wide. Mr. Snyder, as Henry perceived, was apt unwittingly to give the impression that he, and not his clients, earned the wealth upon which he received ten per cent. commission. But Henry was not for a single instant blind to the certitude that, if his next book realized two thousand pounds, the credit would be due to himself, and to no other person whatever. Henry might be tongue-tied in front of Mark Snyder, but he was capable of estimating with some precision their relative fundamental ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... by George Sand, and in Jean-Marie, a little masterpiece by Andre Theuriet, which had the most brilliant success. Porel played the part of Jean-Marie. He was at that time slender, and full of hope. Since then his slenderness has developed into plumpness and his hope into certitude. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... said Jeekie sympathetically. "Perhaps manage hook it somehow, and meanwhile make best of bad business and have high old time. You see you want to come Asiki-land, though I tell you it rum place, and," he added with certitude and a circular sweep of his hand, "by Jingo! you here now and I daresay they give you all the ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... is my system false, but all philosophy is impossible; since the only ground of certitude—our consciousness—is pronounced unstable, our only means of knowing the truth ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... here rather with ways which all Christian people have open before them? And I am bold to say that the way to be sure of 'the power of God unto salvation' is to submit ourselves continually to its cleansing and renewing influence. This certitude, brethren, may be contributed to by books of apologetics, and by other sources of investigation and study which I should be sorry indeed to be supposed in any degree to depreciate. But the true way to get it is, by deep communion with the living God, to realise the personality of Jesus ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... thus concentrated upon them, could have divined all this; yet to O'Malley it seemed plain as the day. With the certitude, moreover, came the feeling, ever stronger, that the refuge they sought would prove to be also the refuge he himself sought, the difference being that whereas they ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... came the hitch of our adventure; for when the policeman, still closely following us, beheld my two boxes lying in the rain, he arose from mere suspicion to a kind of certitude of something evil. The light in the house had been extinguished; the whole frontage of the street was dark; there was nothing to explain the presence of these unguarded trunks; and no two innocent people were ever, I believe, detected in such ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... soldier's lips. The patroon!—his ill-disguised admiration for the actress!—his abrupt reappearance the night of the temperance drama! Any uncertainty Saint-Prosper might have felt regarding the identity of him he sought, or the reason for that day's work, now became compelling certitude. But for the tenants, he might have ridden by the old patroon house. As it was, congratulating himself upon this accidental meeting rather than his own shrewdness, he quickly dismounted. A moment's thought, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... to certify them of their prophetic imaginings; and for this reason Moses bids the Jews (Deut. xviii.) ask of the prophets a sign, namely, the prediction of some coming event. (16) In this respect, prophetic knowledge is inferior to natural knowledge, which needs no sign, and in itself implies certitude. (17) Moreover, Scripture warrants the statement that the certitude of the prophets was not mathematical, but moral. (18) Moses lays down the punishment of death for the prophet who preaches new gods, even though he confirm his doctrine by signs and wonders (Deut. xiii.); "For," ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... mathematics and logic, and in its real part, the doctrine of nature and of morals, while metaphysics treats of the highest presuppositions and the ultimate grounds,—the "pro-principles," Campanella starts, as Augustine before him and Descartes in later times, from the indisputable certitude of the spirit's own existence, from which he rises to the certitude of God's existence. On this first certain truth of my own existence there follow three others: my nature consists in the three functions of power, knowledge, and volition; I am finite and limited, might, wisdom, and ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... disguises the certitude that Caroline wishes to enjoy respecting the serious matters which Adolphe wishes to conceal. Adolphe then undertakes to narrate how he has spent the day. Caroline affects a sort of distraction sufficiently well played to induce the belief ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... before she addressed me I had beguiled our sorry interval by finding in her a vague recall of the opening of some novel of Madame Sand. It didn't make her more fathomable to pass in a few minutes from this to the certitude that she was American; it simply engendered depressing reflexions as to the possible check to contributions from Boston. She asked me if, as a person apparently more initiated, I would recommend further waiting, and I answered that if she considered I was on my honour I would privately deprecate ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... makes any place in the neighbourhood of present-day students so disagreeable to me. Yes, my good friends, you are perfect, you are mature; nature has cast you and broken up the moulds, and your teachers must surely gloat over you. What liberty, certitude, and independence of judgment; what novelty and freshness of insight! You sit in judgment—and the cultures of all ages run away. The scientific sense is kindled, and rises out of you like a flame—let people ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... analytical economist, delving in the dynamics of society, is more the prophet than you. The carpenter at his bench, the blacksmith by his forge, the boiler-maker clanging and clattering, are all warbling more sweetly than you. The sledge-wielder pours out more strength and certitude and joy in every blow than do you in your whole sheaf of songs. Why, the very socialist agitator, hustled by the police on a street corner amid the jeers of the mob, has caught the romance of to-day as you have not caught ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... Catherine's boudoir, a room of which we are about to speak, is the last remaining relic of the rich decorations accumulated by five artistic kings. Making our way through the labyrinth of chambers, halls, stairways, towers, we may say to ourselves with solemn certitude: "Here Mary Stuart cajoled her husband on behalf of the Guises." "There, the Guises insulted Catherine." "Later, at that very spot the second Balafre fell beneath the daggers of the avengers of the Crown." "A century earlier, from this very window, Louis ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... the loss that the loss of faith is to them; and more or less coherently they long for its recovery. Outwardly, indeed, they may often sneer at it; but outward signs in such matters are very deceiving. Much of the bitter and arrogant certitude to be found about us in the expression of unbelief, is really like the bitterness of a woman against her lover, which has not been the cause of her resolving to leave him, but which has been caused by his having left her. In estimating what is really ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... a lie." Willa's tones rang out without passion but clarion clear in her absolute certitude. "Anyone who knew Dad ever so slightly would testify to its falseness. Why did he not keep himself informed of my grandfather's changing attitude and come forward and claim the inheritance when the search for me began? Whether I am Willa Murdaugh or not, there can be at least ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... time so ordering the course of events that man should emerge one day from the savagedom and animalism of the past to enter upon the path of a progress which we believe to be endless. I say the reason which demonstrates this to us with a certitude which not the most intolerant bigotry dares to question to-day, tells us also that it is wholly preposterous that all that is left to man wherein to work out his own individual moral progress is the brief span of threescore years and ten, that after these ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... who has been a priest is one still. What brings night upon us may leave the stars with us. Cimourdain was full of virtues, full of truths, but they shone in the midst of darkness" (i. 123). If the aristocrat had rigidity, so had the Jacobin. "Cimourdain had the blind certitude of the arrow, which only sees the mark and makes for it. In revolution, nothing so formidable as the straight line. Cimourdain strode forward with fatality in his step. He believed that in social genesis the very extreme point ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... was prodigious. The slightest doubt, and he delayed everything until the doubtful part could be replaced. Wilkinson, his senior assistant, fumed at some of these delays, which, he insisted, were for the most part unnecessary. Banghurst magnified the patient certitude of Filmer in the New Paper, and reviled it bitterly to his wife, and MacAndrew, the second assistant, approved Filmer's wisdom. "We're not wanting a fiasco, man," said ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... que pour les autres operations de la nature? Enfin, puisque des opinions formees d'apres l'experience ... sont la seule regle de la conduite des hommes les plus sages, pourquoi interdirait-on au philosophe d'appuyer ses conjectures sur cette meme base, pourvu qu'il ne leur attribue pas une certitude superieure a celle qui peut naitre du nombre, de la constance, de l'exactitude des observations?"—CONDORCET, Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the sacred soil which I had taken so long to reach, and I longed to be able to drink its health; but though I had gone, I suppose, ten miles, and though the heat was increasing, I would not stop; for I remembered the two francs, and my former certitude of reaching Milan was shaking and crumbling. The great heat of midday would soon be on me, I had yet nearly thirty miles to go, and my bad night began to ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... consignees and their willingness to pay even more than the stipulated price—its weight in silver per rifle. But food is made for men as well as slaves, and if you, in your noble trustfulness, resolutely decline to reduce your daily rations, there must, with mathematical certitude of date, arrive the final period to any given and limited supply. Though banking wholly with Heaven in the matter of their own salvation from hunger, the Argonauts displayed mere worldly wisdom in the case of Moussa Isa and gave him the ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... the hope, belief, and certitude My wife to me was faithful evermore, Should with contempt the beauty have eschewed Of that famed daughter which fair Leda bore; And all the wit and wealth wherewith was wooed The illustrious shepherd upon Ida hoar. But no repulse withal with her avails, Who me, for ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... bench at the beginning of the avenue sat a man with two women. As I advanced with my companions he rose, after a sudden stare, and approached me with a smile in which (to be Johnsonian for a moment) certitude was mitigated by modesty and eagerness was embellished with respect. He came toward me with a salutation that I had seen before, and I am happy to say that after an instant I ceased to be guilty of the brutality of not knowing where. There was only one place in the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... whom we have already introduced to our respectable readers, had evacuated the chapel, they determined to substantiate a certitude, as far as their observation could reach, as to the truth of what Kitty Carroll had hinted at, in reference to John O'Callaghan's attachment to Rose Galh O'Hallaghan, and her taciturn approval of it. For this purpose they kept their eye upon John, who certainly ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... eyes and looked into the gambler's smiling face. He realized the futility of his act, since it had placed him irrevocably in Gilmore's power. He had endured unspeakable anguish all to no purpose, since Gilmore knew; knew with the certitude of an eye-witness. And there the gambler sat smiling and at ease, torturing ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... him closely. The coward fumbling at an answer, she was presently convinced of his guilt, and forthwith denounced him for a member of the gang to M. Pacome, an officer of the Guard. Straightly did M. Pacome summon Du Chtelet, and, assuming his guilt for certitude, bade him surrender his captain. 'My friend,' said he, 'I know you for an associate of Cartouche. Your hands are soiled with murder and rapine. Confess the hiding-place of Cartouche, or in twenty-four hours you are ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... could not contradict, yet neither could it adequately prove the mysteries of faith, except on premisses visible only to him who receives Revelation as a fact; that it is the moral state, rather than the intellectual, to which the Spirit of God speaks with the greater certitude. That which he had both learned and taught he now knew, that Faith, having, like man himself, a body and a spirit—an historical expression and an inner verity—speaks now by one, now by another. This man believes ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... Mrs. Levitt's feelings had been roused; he acknowledged, handsomely, as male to male, the fascination that had roused them. He, Corbett, knew what he was talking about. He saw the whole possibility of romantic adventure with such flattering certitude that it was ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... face with an absolutely new idea. I wonder sometimes if the two shadows I cast, one with a sort of feminine faintness with regard to the other and not quite so tall, may not have suggested the word or the thought of an assignation to my mind. All that I have clear is that with the certitude of intuition I knew what it was that had brought the youth in evening dress outside the shrubbery. Of course! He had come ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... of a few seconds he remained rooted to the spot. It almost seemed to him as if with the knowledge that the wallet and the discarded clothes of the smith had been found, with the certitude that this discovery meant his own undoing probably, and in any case the final loss of the fortune for which he had plotted and planned, lied and masqueraded, killed a man and cheated a girl, that with the knowledge of all this, ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... the book, gentleman. I have undertaken and carried out a journey of forty-two days in my room. The interesting observations I have made, and the continual pleasure I have felt during this long expedition, excited in me the wish to publish it; the certitude of the usefulness of my work decided me. My heart is filled with an inexpressible satisfaction when I think of the infinite number of unhappy persons to whom I am now able to offer an assured resource against the tediousness and vexations of life. The delight one finds in travelling in one's ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... for pollution, what infinite effect might it not be expected to have had upon HIM? It was very simple; he despised her; she had no traditions and the moral horizon of a Unitarian minister. Poor Isabel, who had never been able to understand Unitarianism! This was the certitude she had been living with now for a time that she had ceased to measure. What was coming—what was before them? That was her constant question. What would he do—what ought SHE to do? When a man hated his wife what did it lead to? She didn't ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... secret must be the most terrible of all human relationships, the sharing of a beautiful secret is the most blest. Thus, for the week following this day of days, Theophil and Isabel went about their daily lives with all heaven in their hearts, and, divided though they were, possessed by a mystical certitude of inner union which they felt no extension of space or ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... sought to delineate and enforce the practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock, he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was a reformer and a moralist. It was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and the least appreciated. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Roman authority and infallibility on one side, and Protestant freedom of private judgment on the other, the question would at once arise as to the grounds of belief. What, if any, are the foundations of conviction and certitude, apart from personal inquiry, and examination of opposing arguments on different sides of the case, and satisfactory logical conclusions? The old antithesis between Faith and Reason, and the various problems ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... hear Ulysses telling of his meeting with Agamemnon in Hades, and those terrible ghosts drinking from the blood-filled trench, and I shuddered in spite of myself; for it is almost impossible entirely to refuse credence to beliefs held with such certitude of terror across so many centuries and ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... there was an understanding between herself and Mr. Upsmith. Her humming took on a loud, defiant quality, as of triumph; she pursued her pince-nez with a certain eagerness, as of confidence of balance and certitude of capture. Her note and her air seemed to say that she was Boo's and Boo hers and she gloried in it with that exalted and yet something fearful glory that is to be seen, pathetically, on the faces of very plain young women, or of distinctly ageing young ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... knows all about me, and if she did not, she would set spies to discover all; for suspicion with such women as that is certitude! Listen, Pauline, moments now are precious. It was Madame de Grandchamp who brought ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... sleeping, turn and turn about. Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his face toward camp and John Thornton. He broke into the long easy lope, and went on, hour after hour, never at loss for the tangled way, heading straight home through strange country with a certitude of direction that put man and his magnetic ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... placing of heavy guns in concealed positions. In addition they perfected the mobility of even the heaviest of pieces, so that it became impossible for observation from the Franco-British ships or from aeroplanes to locate them with any certitude. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... so that coincidently the ego and the non-ego are established. Yes, but is this non-ego really what it seems? It is; granted; but what is it and can we know what it is? Not without doubt, and here scepticism is unshakable; but in that there is certitude of the existence of the non-ego, the presumption is that we can know it, partially, relatively, very relatively, while we remain infinitely distant from an absolute knowledge, which would be divine. Therefore let us observe and ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... he had already, poor John Berridge, tasted in their fulness the sweets of success; but nothing yet had been more charming to him than when the young Lord, as he irresistibly and, for greater certitude, quite correctly figured him, fairly sought out, in Paris, the new literary star that had begun to hang, with a fresh red light, over the vast, even though rather confused, Anglo-Saxon horizon; positively ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... the shapes into which the Christian theologians had fashioned a number of moral truths when they annexed the house of human morality. But what is the basis of certitude on which these interpretations rest? If Adam was not an historical character, if the story of the Fall be whittled down into a "type" which is typical of no underlying reality, the basis of Pauline theology is shaken, and practical deductions ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... to a belief in Daisy's "innocence" came to seem to Winterbourne more and more a matter of fine-spun gallantry. As I have already had occasion to relate, he was angry at finding himself reduced to chopping logic about this young lady; he was vexed at his want of instinctive certitude as to how far her eccentricities were generic, national, and how far they were personal. From either view of them he had somehow missed her, and now it was too late. She was ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... Man, Spinoza held, is a part of Nature, and Nature is governed by eternal and immutable laws. It must be just as possible, therefore, to apply the mathematical method to man, as it is to apply it to matter. It must be possible to determine, with the certitude obtainable in the exact sciences, what things are good for man and what means he ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... having put our finger on its deep-hidden roots. Moral law dominates man, whether he respects or defies it. See how it is in every-day life: each one is ready to cast his stone at him who neglects a plain duty, even if he allege that he has not yet arrived at philosophic certitude. Everybody will say to him, and with excellent reason: "Sir, we are men before everything. First play your part, do your duty as citizen, father, son; after that you shall return to the course of ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... on this point cannot be pressed as conclusive. It is, indeed, unlikely that Jesus knew all that medical men now know. But awareness of any fact may be in varying degrees from serious suspicion up to positive certitude. While far from positiveness, awareness may exist in a degree that gives courage for resolute effort resulting in clear and full verification. Jesus may have been ignorant of the objective reality of Lazarus's condition, and yet have been very hopeful of ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... the dogs from the shelter of the rock into the teeth of the storm. Then, turning, they fled south before the gale with what certitude they might. They had nothing to guide them, neither stars nor brilliant aurora, and they struggled along the heavy trail only by their memories of it, and the exercise of every particle of ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... logical; and accordingly I tried to complete it by considerations of my own, which are implied in my University sermons, Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles, and Essay on Development of Doctrine. My argument is in outline as follows: that that absolute certitude which we were able to possess, whether as to the truths of natural theology, or as to the fact of a revelation, was the result of an assemblage of concurring and converging probabilities, and that, both according to the constitution of the human mind and the will of its Maker; that certitude ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... unanimite qui se revele dans les croyances essentielles, se retrouve pour repousser telles ou telles tendances ne serons nous pas en droit de conclure que ces tendances etaient en desacord flagrant avec les principes fondamentaux du christianisme? Cette presomption ne se transformerait-elle pas en certitude si nous reconnaissons dans la doctrine universellement repoussee par l'Eglise les traits caracteristiques de l'une des religions du passe? Pour dire que le gnosticisme ou l'ebionitisme sont les formes legitimes de ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... 'reason' himself, but not in the manner of an earnest seeker after truth. Reason, for him, is a serviceable weapon of attack or defence, but he is like a man fighting with magic impenetrable armour. He enjoys a bout of logical fence; but it will decide nothing for him: his 'certitude' is independent of it. It is easy to see that such an attitude must appear profoundly dishonest to any man who accepts Locke's maxim about truth-seeking. It is equally easy to see that Newman would spurn the charge of dishonesty as hotly as the charge of scepticism. His principles ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... though every room and corridor, the cellar and the garret, were searched, no token was found of the young wife's presence. Meanwhile the husband stood like a statue on the threshold, waiting with what seemed to me a strange certitude for the return of the ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... come fully prepared by the telegram, and under an inexplicable certitude which made it needless to speak the word to her. She was thankful that Marmaduke had been spared the protracted weeks of struggle in which his elder brothers' lives had closed, and ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... la sainte Eglise se croit investie du droit absolu d'enseigner les hommes; elle se croit depositaire de la verite, non pas de la verite fragmentaire, incomplete, melee de certitude et d'hesitation, mais de la verite totale, complete, au point de vue religieux. Bien plus, elle est si sure de l'infaillibilite que son Fondateur divin lui a communiquee, comme la dot magnifique de leur ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... in Jesus, conspicuous was the prophetic feeling and tone. He was possessed with an absolute fullness of conviction, and spoke in a tone of blended ardor and certitude. "He taught as one having authority." He rarely gave reasons. If in his words we find appeal to precedent or argument, it is really as little more than illustration or picture to clothe his own intuition. His followers believed ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... potentially in the cosmic vapour, and that an intelligence, if great enough, could from his knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour have predicted the state of the fauna in Great Britain in 1888 with as much certitude as we say what will happen to the vapour of our breath on a cold day ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... though in possession of wealth, never giveth away nor enjoyeth himself from avarice, saying, he hath none.' The Yaksha asked,—'By what, O king, birth, behaviour, study, or learning doth a person become a Brahmana? Tell us with certitude!' Yudhishthira answered,—'Listen, O Yaksha! It is neither birth, nor study, nor learning, that is the cause of Brahmanahood, without doubt, it is behaviour that constitutes it. One's behaviour should always be well-guarded, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... available by thee? How can he, O son of Kunti, wait whose life is shortened every moment, even like a quantity of collyrium that is lessened each time a grain is taken up by the needle? He only whose life is unlimited or who knoweth with certitude what the period of his life is, and who knoweth the future as if it were before his eyes, can indeed wait for the arrival of (an expected) time. If we wait, O king, for thirteen years, that period, shortening our ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... there is a definable difference between the novel of the past and what I may call the modern novel. It is a difference that is reflected upon the novel from a difference in the general way of thinking. It lies in the fact that formerly there was a feeling of certitude about moral values and standards of conduct that is altogether absent to-day. It wasn't so much that men were agreed upon these things—about these things there have always been enormous divergences of opinion—as that men were emphatic, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... had given me the right bundle. I rather suspect he wanted me to take care of another batch of his papers which, after his death, I saw the manager examining under the lamp. And the girl talked, easing her pain in the certitude of my sympathy; she talked as thirsty men drink. I had heard that her engagement with Kurtz had been disapproved by her people. He wasn't rich enough or something. And indeed I don't know whether ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... day; from one evening including the night, to the evening of the following day." At these words Francis humbly bowed down his head. As he went away, the Pope asked him: "Whither art thou going, simple man? What certitude hast thou of what thou hast just been granted?" "Holy Father," he replied, "your word is sufficient for me. If this indulgence is the work of God, He will make it manifest. Let Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... progressively more and more conscious of those bleibende Verhaeltnisse, more and more capable of living in the whole; also that, in proportion as we gain a firmer hold upon our own place in the world, we shall come to comprehend with more instinctive certitude what is simple, natural, and honest, welcoming with gladness all artistic products that exhibit these qualities. The perception of the enlightened man will then be the taste of a healthy person who has made himself acquainted with the laws of evolution in art and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... with noble precepts in Revelation; to those who recognised the impossibility of accepting the varying voices of Intuition as a moral guide; to all those the theory that Morality was based on Utility, came as a welcome and rational relief. It promised a scientific certitude to moral precepts; it left the intellect free to inquire and to challenge; it threw man back on grounds which were found in this world alone, and could be tested by reason and experience; it derived no authority from antiquity, no sanction from religion; it stood entirely on its own feet, ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... delighted with the mathematics, on account of the certitude and evidence of their reasonings; but I had not as yet a precise knowledge of their true use; and thinking that they but contributed to the advancement of the mechanical arts, I was astonished that foundations, so strong and solid, should have had no loftier superstructure ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... unluckily, it is far from certain that absolute beauty exists, and most unlikely, if it does, that any human being can distinguish it from what is relative. The wiser course, therefore, is to ask of critics no more than sincerity, and to leave divine certitude to superior beings—magistrates, for instance, and curates, and fathers of large families, and Mr. Bernard Shaw. At any rate, it is imprudent, I am sure, in us critics to maintain so stoutly as we are apt to do, that ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... who, being introduced, actually set-to in his drawing-room for the amusement of his friends. Nor is it less true, that this sporting Nobleman gloriously took up the conqueror, (as the saying is) and evinced his patronage and his power at once, by actually subduing his antagonist, proving to certitude, that if his Lordship would but practise this sublime art, he 403 could hardly fail of adding to his present title that of the Champion of England! It is the theme of constant conversation, and in many cases there is more anxiety about contests of this sort than there is about ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... requisitions upon the soul which he has so been taught to trust. Thus, though we tell each nothing new, though we merely demonstrate our unity of consciousness, yet is the force of each many times multiplied,—dimless certitude and dauntless courage being bred in hearts where before, perhaps, were timorous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... l'ont vu luy trouve beaucoup d'esprit et un tres grand sens; il ne parle gueres que des choses sur lesquelles on l'interroge; il les dit en tres-peu de mots et tres-bien circonstancies; il distingue parfaitement ce qu'il scait avec certitude, de ce qu'il scait avec quelque melange de doute. Il avoue sans aucune facon ne pas savoir ce qu'il ne scait pas, et quoyque je lui aye ouy dire plus de cinq ou six fois les mesme choses a l'occasion de quelques ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... eluded the flood of temptation many times in this way he grew troubled and wondered whether the grace which he had refused to lose was not being filched from him little by little. The clear certitude of his own immunity grew dim and to it succeeded a vague fear that his soul had really fallen unawares. It was with difficulty that he won back his old consciousness of his state of grace by telling himself that he had prayed to God at every temptation and that ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... impiety?" The monks then lived without the walls, and could not be included by him: nor probably the clergy, deaconesses, or others particularly consecrated to a devout life; as appears from his invective. Nor does he speak this with any certitude, but from his private apprehension by comparing the lives of the generality of the people with the severe maxims of the gospel. This is manifest from the proof he draws from the manners of the people, and from a like invective in Hom. 61, olim 62, on St. Matthew, (t. 7, p. 612,) spoken at Antioch ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... futile imagining. It is sustained and rendered plausible by a sound substratum of knowledge of the anatomical conditions under which the central nervous mechanism exists, and in default of which, as pathology demonstrates with no less certitude, its functionings are futile to produce the normal ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... greater number of fleet members. While the Indian, then, can scarcely be said to yield to the white in this respect, he lacks obviously that mental quick-sightedness which, with the latter, defines, as it were, intuitively, the exact location on the field, of a friend, and, with unerring certitude, calculates the degree of force that shall be needed to propel the ball, and the precise direction its flight shall take, in order to insure its reposing on the net of that friend. In the frequently recurring mlees, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... is constructed "by reason," "according to principles," and therefore its mechanism is simple; its pieces all fit into each other with precision; they transmit throughout exactly the impulsion received and thus operate at one stroke, with uniformity, instantaneously, with certitude, oil all parts of the territory; the lever which starts the machine is central and, throughout its various services, the new rulers hold this lever in hand. Apropos of local administration, the Duc d'Angouleme said in 1815,[6304] "We prefer the departments to the provinces." In like manner, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... which have been acquired, admitted, and continued without formal proof and without discussion. To act, we must believe; to believe, we must make up our minds, affirm, decide, and in reality prejudge the question. He who will only act upon a full scientific certitude is unfit for practical life. But we are made for action, and we cannot escape from duty. Let us not, then, condemn prejudice so long as we have nothing but doubt to put in its place, or laugh at those whom we should be incapable of consoling! This, at least, is my point ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... capillary, captious, cardinal, carnal, carnivorous, castigate, cataclysm, catastrophe, category, causality, cavernous, celebrity, celibacy, censorious, ceramics, cerebration, certitude, cessation, charlatan, chimerical, chronology, circuitous, circumlocution, citation, clandestine, clarify, clemency, coadjutor, coagulate, coalesce, coercion, cogency, cognizant, cohesion, coincidence, collusion, colossal, comatose, combustible, commendatory, commensurate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... photograph quickened Glennard's exasperation. He was sick and ashamed of the part he was playing. He had loved her now for two years, with the tranquil tenderness that gathers depth and volume as it nears fulfilment; he knew that she would wait for him—but the certitude was an added pang. There are times when the constancy of the woman one cannot marry is almost as trying as that of the woman one ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... inquired in general into what is essential to the truth and certainty of a proposition; for since I had discovered one which I knew to be true, I thought that I must likewise be able to discover the ground of this certitude. And as I observed that in the words "I think, hence I am," there is nothing at all which gives me assurance of their truth beyond this, that I see very clearly that in order to think it is necessary to exist,—I concluded that I might take, as a general rule, the principle that all ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... a slight sprinkling of Americans and English. It was noted that there was nothing mercurial and flyaway about them. They seemed weighty men, oppressed by a sad and stolid bovine-sort of integrity. A sober seriousness and enormous certitude characterized all of them. They appeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by some overwhelming power or carried in the hollow of some superhuman hand. The captain, a sad-eyed, strong-featured American, was cartooned in the papers ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... two children who love each other with a passion which is true and pure, because it is founded upon a knowledge of each other's character; on the certitude of their mutual ardor in conquering the difficulties of life; in a word, of two children who will also cherish ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... join the world, and we depart Even as lonely, having lived alone, The breast that feeds us, the beloved one's heart, The lips we kiss,—or curse—alike unknown. Ay, even these lips of thine, so often kissed, What certitude have I that they exist? Alas, it is the truth, though harsh it seems, I have been loved ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... par le vent emporte Avec la certitude et la rapidite Du javelot cherchant la cible; Rien n'en tombe, et pourtant il chemine en semant; Sa rondeur, qu'on distingue en haut confusement, ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... were for him; most other things against him. He drilled his troops seven hours a day. His discipline was of the sternest, his censure a thing to make the boldest officer blench. A blunder, a slight negligence, any disobedience of orders—down came reprimand, suspension, arrest, with an iron certitude, a relentlessness quite like Nature's. Apparently he was without imagination. He had but little sense of humour, and no understanding of a joke. He drank water and sucked lemons for dyspepsia, and ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... of moment. It is truth and sincerity that are called for to-day for the facing of all things—how much more when mystery confronts us! In the past, the prostration of man, his bending the knee, seemed beautiful because of what, in the past, seemed to be true. We have acquired no fresh certitude, perhaps; but for us, none the less, the truth of the past has ceased to be true. We have not bridged the unknown; but still, though we know not what it is, we do partially know what it is not; and it is before this we should bow, were the attitude of our fathers to be once more assumed by ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... superior air of scientific wisdom, is often only the opposite pole of the dogmatic certitude of the churchman. Actual knowledge of the human soul is quite as far removed from the one as from the other. Credulity and Incredulity simply annul each other; often make faces at each other; while Progress stalks alone in the middle of the road, a "tramp" or a "vagabond," ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... directly appeals to consciousness (as all that is eternal must appeal), and to that alone, like beauty and justice and love,—ultimate ideas to which reasoning and definitions add nothing,—is to be received as a final certitude. Hence, absolute certainty of the existence of God, as it appeals to consciousness,—like the "Cogito, ergo sum." In this argument he anticipated Descartes, and proved himself the profoundest thinker of his century, perhaps of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... Certainty. — N. certainty; necessity &c. 601; certitude, surety, assurance; dead certainty, moral certainty; infallibleness &c. adj.; infallibility, reliability; indubitableness, inevitableness, unquestionableness[obs3]. gospel, scripture, church, pope, court of final appeal; res judicata[Lat], ultimatum positiveness; dogmatism, dogmatist, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of devotion as we see in these days, we have a thousand and a thousand colleges that pass it over commodiously enough, expecting every day their dinner from the liberality of Heaven. Secondly, they do not take notice that this certitude upon which they so much rely is not much less uncertain and hazardous than hazard itself. I see misery as near beyond two thousand crowns a year as if it stood close by me; for besides that it is in the power of chance to make ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... not herself, but who seemed inseparable from her, and over whom she had no slightest control, seemed to breathe throughout her entire being an affirmation of her celestial dependency. She could catch no words, merely a vague, immaterial destiny like distant music; and her ears filled with a wailing certitude of an inseverable affinity with the stars, and she longed to put off this shameful garb of flesh and rise to her spiritual destiny of which the stars are our watchful guardians. It was like deep music; words could not contain it, it was a deep ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... those unusuall Chances that sometimes produce the most surprizing effects. Besides altho the vivacity and force of imagination be easily admitted into the relations of the Languages, and leaves there forcible impressions, yet it neither warrants certitude, nor dislodgeth confusion; 'tis reason alone that establisheth the mind in its cognizances, and credits all its conceptions with order, tis that alone which perfects the combination of all their relations ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... life?—do you come to dine here with your lovely sister, and do you stay night and day till our sad separation? I rejoice me with that hope during this week do not deceive my heart. I hope that card very clear, mais, pour plus de certitude, je vous dis en franois que votre chambre, la maison, les habitants de juniper, tout est prt recevoir ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... began to think. It was twenty-four hours since that man left his room. Razumov had a distinct feeling that Haldin in the fortress was sleeping that night. It was a certitude which made him angry because he did not want to think of Haldin, but he justified it to himself by physiological and psychological reasons. The fellow had hardly slept for weeks on his own confession, and now every incertitude was at an end for him. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... very much worn and used looking in her decline. Not even the faded remnants of an earlier grace or gentility helped to redeem the weak points of nature about her. She was a stranger to me, and yet I could have declared with the most perfect sanction of my moral certitude that she was the direct descendant of a plebeian stock. Not but that she had counterfeited patrician attributes according to her own interpretation of them as earnestly as she knew how; but such, empty pretensions as ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... out to happy accidents what encouragement he might. All day he roamed the park, and, as the day dragged on, became a deeply dejected man. Even the certitude of seeing her to-morrow was ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... concerning the ex-seminarian, casuist, and marvellous prose writer of France? The large, loosely modelled head with its fleshy curves, its super-subtle mouth of orator, the gaze veiled, the bland, pontifical expression, the expression of the man who spoke of "the mania of certitude"—here is Ernest Renan, voluptuous disdainer of democracies, and planner of a phalanstery of superior men years before Nietzsche's superman appeared. Zorn in no unkindly spirit shows us the thinker; also the author of L'Abbesse de Jouarre. It is something, is it not, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... letter is still lying there. It has not been called for. Ergo, this town is not his usual abode. Personally, I never thought it was. But he cannot fail to turn up some time or other. Our main hope lies just in the certitude that he must come to town sooner or later. Remember he doesn't know that the butler is dead, and he will want to inquire for a letter. Well, he'll find a note ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... alluding decently to the domesticated gods. They never knew— at least Stransom never knew—how they had learned to be sure about each other. If it had been with each a question of what the other was there for, the certitude had come in some fine way of its own. Any faith, after all, has the instinct of propagation, and it was as natural as it was beautiful that they should have taken pleasure on the spot in the imagination ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... nulle une partie des forces de l'ennemi afin de reunir toutes les siennes contre celles qui l'on attaque, ou qui attaquent; et de vaincre ensuite le reste avec plus de facilite et de certitude. ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... sweet as a woman's, shoreward, and both captain and mate followed his gaze around from the lonely rock of Pitcairn to the crew clustering forward and waiting anxiously for the announcement of a decision. McCoy did not hurry. He thought smoothly and slowly, step by step, with the certitude of a mind that was never ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London |
