"Irrefragable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Contrat Social in his pocket,—towards outer darkness, thankless intriguings, ignis-fatuus hoverings, and death by the stiletto! Abbe Sieyes has left Chartres Cathedral, and canonry and book-shelves there; has let his tonsure grow, and come to Paris with a secular head, of the most irrefragable sort, to ask three questions, and answer them: What is the Third Estate? All.—What has it hitherto been in our form of government? Nothing.—What does it want? ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... deepened in intensity, the change has been for some time in progress. I am enabled to state on irrefragable authority, that Lord Houghton's sudden departure from Dublin on Sunday week was entirely due to his alarm at the shifting aspect of affairs, which rendered instant conference with Mr. Gladstone a matter of urgent necessity. And it should ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... that I hardly ventured to formulate it, even in my own secret mind. But I was bound to see the thing through to the end. It occurred to me that I could prove the accuracy of my theory with the aid of a kite. You were kind enough to lend your assistance in that experiment, and it gave me irrefragable evidence of the existence of a shaft of flying atoms extending in a direct line between Dr. Syx's pretended mine and ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... irrefragable figures to prove how much poorer they would be in London than on their present income at Bexley, he would not go into details, saying that he wanted to hear no more about it, in a tone that a little hurt her. He was so uniformly gentle and gracious, that what ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should be kept a close secret. But hardly had the marriage ceremony been gone through (1540) than the story of the dispensation became public. Luther was at first inclined to deny it entirely as an invention of his enemies, but he changed his mind when he found that the proofs were irrefragable and determined to brazen out ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... Aristotle, who devoted himself to science, and lived many ages after Moses, does little else than err ingeniously, this fact, that the Jewish Lawgiver, though touching science at a thousand points, has written nothing that has not been "demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true," is an irrefragable proof of his having derived his knowledge from a supernatural source. How does it happen, then, that Dr. Cumming forsakes this strong position? How is it that we find him, some pages further on, engaged ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Spaniards the French behaved with moderation and even kindness. Paying for everything, obtaining their billets peaceably and quietly, marching with order and regularity, they advanced into the heart of the country, showing, by the most irrefragable proof, the astonishing evidences of a discipline which, by a word, could convert the lawless irregularities of a ruffian soldiery into the orderly habits and obedient conduct of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... close of his article, after triumphantly expressing his belief that his "main conclusions are irrefragable," he ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... benevolence, of Georgiana Carlton. With respect to her philosophy—it was of a noble cast. It was, that all men are by nature equal; that they are wisely and justly endowed by the Creator with certain rights, which are irrefragable; and that, however human pride and human avarice may depress and debase, still God is the author of good to man—and of evil, man is the artificer to himself and to his species. Unlike Plato and Socrates, her mind was free from the gloom that surrounded theirs; her philosophy ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... they are, in the good providence of God, infallible witnesses to tell to the world that auricular confession is nothing else than a snare to the confessor and his dupes. Yes, those Bulls of the popes are an irrefragable testimony that auricular confession is the most powerful invention of the devil to corrupt the heart, pollute the body, and damn the soul of the priest and his ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... Questions cannot fail to arise taxing prudence of the longest forecast and decision of the firmest quality. How far is General McClellan likely to fulfill these conditions? What are the qualities of mind of which both his career and his Report give the most irrefragable evidence? ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... required for the security of his army the fortified towns of Metz, Thionville, Mezieres, Maubeuge, Sarrelouis, and others. He sets out with the principle, that he ought to be secured against any attempts, which the party, that he supposes the Emperor to have, may make. We combated this argument by irrefragable reasons, without gaining any ground. You are sensible, sir, that it was impossible for us, to accede ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... is irrefragable," as the great Oxford Sanskritist says. To which he is answered—"provided it does not clash with historical facts and ethnology." It may be—no doubt it is, as far as his knowledge goes—"the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods;" but ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... questions with stern honesty, and remain satisfied with fanciful methods and vague results. The resurrection of Christ is generally regarded as a direct demonstration of the immortality of man, an argument of irrefragable validity. But this is an astonishing mistake. The argument was not so constructed by Paul. He did not seek directly to prove the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the dead. He took for ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the teachings of Abelard and Rosellinus had made philosophy the favorite pursuit of the scholars of Europe, England possessed many names which, in this field, stood higher than any others—among them Alexander de Hales, called "the Irrefragable Doctor," and Johannes Duns Scotus, one of the most acute of thinkers. In the same age, while Scotland sent Michael Scott into Germany, where he prosecuted his studies with a success that earned for him the fame of a sorcerer, a similar character was acquired by Roger Bacon (d. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... irons, imprison in the stocks, brand and maim them; hunt them when runaway with dogs and guns, and sunder by force and forever the nearest kindred—is shown, by almost every page of this work, to be an assumption, not only utterly groundless, but directly opposed to masses of irrefragable evidence. If the reader will be at the pains to review the testimony recorded on the foregoing pages he will find that a very large proportion of the atrocities detailed were committed, not by the most ignorant and lowest classes of society, but by persons 'of property ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... inconceivable is the power of a visible communion of numbers to give intensity to those feelings of the heart which usually retire into privacy, or only open themselves to the confidence of friendship. The faith in the validity of such emotions becomes irrefragable from its diffusion; we feel ourselves strong among so many associates, and all hearts and minds flow together in one great and irresistible stream. On this very account the privilege of influencing an assembled crowd is exposed ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... which of these is the fitter judge in this Controversy, to bring knowledge to the Understanding? That is to be observ'd well: But what's Learnt in Childhood is uncontroulable, as good as prescription of an hundred years, and a School-Dames authority is irrefragable, as the Proverb says, Early crookes the Tree, that will good Cambrill be: That to unlearn a Youthful Error, is more than to serve an Apprentiseship, or take the Degree of a Doctor or Serjeant. For these are deaf and ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... result of some of the grandest and most irrefragable truths of modern science, when newly discovered and dimly comprehended, has been to make it appear that Humanity must be rudely unseated from its throne in the world and made to occupy an utterly subordinate and trivial position; and it is because ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... arrangements) a government wholly by popular representation. It must be this or nothing. The French faction considers as an usurpation, as an atrocious violation of the indefensible rights of man, every other description of government. Take it, or leave it: there is no medium. Let the irrefragable doctors fight out their own controversy in their own way and with their own weapons; and when they are tired, let them commence a treaty of peace. Let the plenipotentiary sophisters of England settle with the diplomatic sophisters of France in what manner right is to be corrected ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... continue, until her guilt is satisfactorily proved. This is the legal right of the prisoner; contingent on no peculiar circumstances of any particular case, but is the common right of every person accused of a crime. The law surrounds the prisoner with a coat of mail, that only irrefragable proofs of guilt can pierce, and the law declares her innocent, unless the proof you have heard on her trial satisfies you, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she is guilty. What constitutes reasonable doubt, it becomes your duty to earnestly and carefully ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... doubts, by making it appear the more difficult to be sure, that that which they alwayes differ from is the true. And our Carneades by holding the Negative, he has this Advantage, that if among all the Instances he brings to invalidate all the Vulgar Doctrine of those he Disputes with, any one be Irrefragable, that alone is sufficient to overthrow a Doctrine which Universally asserts what he opposes. For, it cannot be true, that all Bodies whatsoever that are reckon'd among the Perfectly mixt Ones, are Compounded of such a Determinate Number of such or such Ingredients, in ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... justification to works, and ascribes to faith that it sets us free through the blood of Christ. Let all the Sententiarists, who are adorned with magnificent titles, be collected into one heap. For some are called angelic; others, subtile; and others irrefragable [that is, doctors who cannot err]. When all these have been read and reread, they will not be of as much aid for understanding Paul as is this one passage ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... earth were not the central and all-important body in the universe, if the sun and planets and stars were not attendant and subsidiary lights, but were other worlds larger and perhaps superior to ours, where was man's place in the universe? and where were the doctrines they had maintained as irrefragable? I by no means assert that the new doctrines were really utterly irreconcilable with the more essential parts of the old dogmas, if only theologians had had patience and genius enough to consider the matter calmly. I suppose that in that case they might have reached the amount of reconciliation ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... and meekness and righteousness" in the earth. Yet he is a "Lamb," but a Lamb that makes war; and "in righteousness he doth judge and make war." (ch. xix. 11.) In this last cited text we have an irrefragable proof of the correctness of our interpretation of the symbols under the first seal. The rider's name is, "The ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... more dissimilar, or more formed for furnishing specimens of the noblemen of la Vieille Cour and the present time, than the Duc de Talleyrand and the Marquis de Dreux-Breze. The Duc, well-dressed and well-bred, but offering in his toilette and in his manners irrefragable evidence that both have been studied, and his conversation bearing that high polish and urbanity which, if not always characteristics of talent, conceal the absence of it, represents l'ancien regime, when les grands seigneurs were ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... irrefragable opinion—I want your love, and I give you mine. In love I recognise solely the principle of reciprocation, as it obtains in Nature. The law that I acknowledge is to follow unfettered our strong impression, to exchange happiness for happiness. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... that the secret of this coast was of so important and delicate a nature that rather than attract attention to it at all, overt action against intruders would be taken only in the last resort, and on irrefragable proofs of guilty intention. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... hinder us from believing in the Divine Personality as a fact, yet hinder us from conceiving the manner of its existence, and prevent us from exhibiting our belief as a philosophical conclusion, proved by irrefragable reasoning and secured against all objections. These difficulties are occasioned, on the one hand, by the so-called Philosophy of the Unconditioned, which in all ages has shown a tendency towards Pantheism, and which, in one of its latest and most finished manifestations, announces itself as ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... reader as merely Pagan. Not at all. In England, at the close of the Parliamentary war, it was generally argued—that Providence had decided the question against the Royalists by the mere fact of the issue. Milton himself, with all his high-toned morality, uses this argument as irrefragable: which is odd, were it only on this account—that the issue ought necessarily to have been held for a time as merely hypothetic, and liable to be set aside by possible counter-issues through one generation at the least. But the capital argument against such doctrine is to be found ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Every day, every hour counted; for against the masses of Russia she had only her greater speed to match. She knew that England had gone over to Russia, although she was probably hoping that the alliance between the Saxon and the Slav was not yet irrefragable. Still, the prospects were dark. But in spite of this the efforts were renewed to see what could be done ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Michael's Mount, Cara clowse in cowse, which in Cornish is said to mean "the hoar rock in the wood." In his paper read before the British Association at Manchester, Mr. Pengelly adduced that very name as irrefragable evidence that Cornish, i.e. a Celtic language, an Aryan language, was spoken in the extreme west of Europe about 20,000 years ago. In his more recent paper Mr. Pengelly has given up this position, and he ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... than dogmatism. As an orator, he was accustomed to hear arguments put forward with equal persuasiveness on both sides of a case. It seemed to him arrogant to make any proposition with a conviction of its absolute, indestructible and irrefragable truth. One requisite of a philosophy with him was that it should avoid this arrogance[73]. Philosophers of the highest respectability had held the most opposite opinions on the same subjects. To withhold absolute assent from all doctrines, ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... his arguments would have gone away imbued with and persuaded of his doctrine, without hearing the answer that might be made." Letter of Cath. of Sept. 14th, ubi supra. Prof. Baum well remarks that "the last words furnish the most irrefragable proof of the great and convincing impression which the speech in general had made." Theod. Beza, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... with evils to society, has but little or no application to this case. Too uncertain and intangible for the practical consideration of juries, and unsafe in the hands of even the most learned and astute jurist, it should never be resorted to for exemption from responsibility save on the most irrefragable evidence, developing unquestionable testimony of that morbid or diseased condition of the affections or passions, so as to control and overpower or subordinate the will before the act complained ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... and other Latin dialects can be shown to have all radiated from Rome as their centre, the old traditions of the eastern origin of all the chief nations of Europe have been proved to be fundamentally true; for by evidence so "irrefragable" (to use the expression of the Taylorian professor of modern languages at Oxford), that "not an English jury could now-a-days reject it," Philological Archaeology has shown that of the three great families of mankind—the Semitic, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... possessed with the fixed idea that he was a military genius. His campaign against the Insubres of 531, which to unprejudiced judges only showed that good! soldiers often repair the errors of bad generals,(2) was regarded by him and by his adherents as an irrefragable proof that the Romans had only to put Gaius Flaminius at the head of the army in order to make a speedy end of Hannibal. Talk of this sort had procured for him his second consulship, and hopes of this sort had now brought to his ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... into the circumstances of his birth on shipboard, and had discovered that not himself alone, but another baby, had come into the world during the same voyage of the prolific vessel, and that there were almost irrefragable reasons for believing that these two children had been assigned to the wrong mothers. Many reminiscences of his early days confirmed him in the idea that his nominal parents were aware of the exchange. The family ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... time made a deep impression. In an anonymous treatise entitled "Franco-Gallia," the authorship of which was speedily traced to the eminent jurist Francis Hotman, attention was drawn to the original constitution of the kingdom; and the writer showed by irrefragable proofs that the regal dignity was not hereditary like a private possession, but was a gift of the people, which they could as lawfully transfer from one to another, as originally confer. The participation of women ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... a larger house, when the one stately mansion that I was familiar with appeared to me a desert, even with all its fairy-land splendors? Jack Holt's father was too rich a man not to allow his wife all the good things which she coveted, and her parlors, halls and bedrooms were irrefragable proof of the enormities which may be committed with an utter want of taste and tens of thousands of dollars. Both Harry and Jack hated the house, and spent every available moment out of school in our comfortable, well-worn nooks inside and out of doors. My mother used to play ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Tetrazzini was singing Mazzone's Sogni e Canti and Benedict's Carnevale di Venezia, the music was no more than a noise in the air to him. What should he do if Eleanor were married? Bad enough if she were engaged, but married!... An engagement was not an irrefragable affair, and he could woo her so ardently that his rival would swiftly vanish from her thoughts ... but a marriage!... He knew that marriages were not so irrefragable as they might be, and that a very desperate couple might go to the length of running away together even though one of them ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... law of our existence:—thus making it appear that these two wants or impulses are equal and coordinate principles of action. If this double statement had been true, the whole scope and structure of his reasoning (as hostile to human hopes and sanguine speculations) would have been irrefragable; but as it is not true, the whole (in that view) falls to the ground. According to Mr. Malthus's octavo edition, the sexual passion is as necessary to be gratified as the appetite of hunger, and a man can no more exist without ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... brother-in-law the emperor Leopold was about to march a body of troops on Longwi, in order to afford a pretext for the concentration of the French troops on that frontier, and thus favour his flight from Paris, are irrefragable proofs of the counter-revolutionary understanding existing between the king and the foreign powers, no less than between the king and the leaders of the emigres. The memoirs of the emigres are full of proofs ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... few moments there was quiet in the cabin, while those present digested Iff's conclusions and acknowledged their logic irrefragable. Staff caught Alison staring at the man as if fascinated, with a curious, intense look in her eyes the significance of which ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... did more than this, according to the belief of the times, as expressed by Jean de Serres; for, "having been present at the Bayonne affair," he brought him irrefragable proof of the "holy league entered into by the kings of France and Spain for the ruin of the religion." Comment. de statu. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... I acknowledge that for the most part it is, to speak disrespectfully of Works that have enjoyed for a length of time a widely-spread reputation, without at the same time producing irrefragable proofs of their unworthiness, let me be forgiven upon this occasion.—Having had the good fortune to be born and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood I have felt the falsehood that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under the name of Ossian. From what I saw with ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... by the way. Let them debate that will, for it leads nowhere unless indeed there be sharp revelation, positive declaration and very certain affirmation to go upon by way of Basis or First Principle whence to deduce some sure conclusion and irrefragable truth; for thus the intellect walks, as it were, along a high road, whereas by all other ways it is lurching and stumbling and boggling and tumbling in I know not what mists and brambles of the great bare, murky twilight and marshy hillside of philosophy, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... who is before us, has been convicted of folly and rashness in slandering our holy institution. But he spoke his folly to ears which had never heard our sacred laws—He has, therefore, been acquitted by irrefragable testimony, of combining for the impotent purpose of undermining our power, or stirring up princes against our holy association, for which death were too light a punishment—He hath been foolish, then, but not criminal; and as the holy laws of the Vehme bear no penalty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... tradition have been transmitted to us. By whom were these books written? Who are the men who have transmitted them? They are either the founders of religions themselves, or their adherents and assigns. Thus, in religion, the evidence of interested parties becomes irrefragable and incontestable. ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... remarkable Letter of Pope Stephen, adapted to the foregoing Fable; by which we may make a judgment of the Madness and folly of that old crafty Knave. This Letter is extant in Rhegino, a Benedictine Monk, and Abbot of Prunay, [Footnote: Abbot Pruniacensis] an irrefragable Testimony in an Affair of this Nature; 'tis in Chron. anni 753.—"Stephen the Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, &c. As no Man ought to boast of his Merits, so neither ought the wonderful Works of God ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... madam,' said I,—'Calista's letters to Eugenio. They may have been very innocent; but will the world believe it? You may have only intended to play with the heart of the poor artless Irish gentleman who adored and confided in you. But who will believe the stories of your innocence, against the irrefragable testimony of your own handwriting? Who will believe that you could write these letters in the mere wantonness of coquetry, and not under ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Authentic and irrefragable evidence of the magnitude of this danger exists in the statistical tables of committals which have now, for a very considerable time, been prepared in all parts of the British empire. Since the year 1805, when regular tables of commitments first began to be kept in England, commitments have increased ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... I can bring irrefragable proofs. Among the papers which your old servant Hib brought with him in a small box, there must be some letters from a certain Sonnophre, a celebrated accoucheur, your own father, which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... elapsed since that bright spring morning on which she had beheld the irrefragable proof of her lover's perfidy, when she received an offer of marriage from a gentleman, of good family and large property. He had been struck by her beauty at a party where he had seen her; and after a few meetings, made formal proposals to her father almost ere she was aware that he admired ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... they would, inflict; and worst of all, that out of the whole theory sprang up that system of persecution, in which the worst cruelties of heathen Rome were imitated by Christian priests, on the seemingly irrefragable ground that it was merciful to offenders to save them, or, if not, at least to save others through them, by making them feel for a few hours in this world what they would feel for ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... "I gladly take a joke this evening; for this morning I had irrefragable proofs of my wife's fidelity. I had risen very early to finish a piece of work for which I had been rushed, and in looking absently in my garden, I suddenly saw the valet de chambre of a general, whose house is next to mine, climbing over the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... slave being synonymous according to their estimation and usage with the term brute, they have fixed a stigma upon their Negroes, such as we, who live in Europe, could not have conceived, unless we had had irrefragable evidence upon the point. What evils has not this cruel association of terms produced? The West Indian master looks down upon his slave with disdain. He has besides a certain antipathy against him. He hates the sight of his features, and of his colour; nay, he marks with distinctive ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... advice, and in a short time he acquired a considerable fortune. Notwithstanding all these advantages he passed his life miserably, and ended it on the scaffold. The following story afterwards got into circulation, and has been often triumphantly cited by succeeding astrologers as an irrefragable proof of the truth of their science. It was said, that long before he died he uttered three remarkable prophecies; one relating to himself, another to his friend, and the third to his patron, Pandolfo ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the animal, the conscientious professor of knavery carries his goods to a more lucrative market. At the instance of Dashall, therefore, Sir Felix was determined to retain the animal until the claimant brought irrefragable proof of ownership. The fellow blustered,—the Baronet was immovable in his resolution;—when the other threw off all disguise, and exhibiting himself in pristine blackguardism, inundated Sir Felix with a torrent of abuse; who disdaining any minor notice of his scurrility, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... actual, superhuman, divine power moulding his nature, guiding, quickening, ennobling, lifting, confirming, and hallowing and shaping him into conformity with Jesus Christ. I would that we all believed not as a dogma, but realised as a personal experience, that irrefragable truth, 'Know ye not that the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in you, except ye be reprobate?' The life of self is evil; the life of Christ in self is good, and only good. And if you are Christian men, and in the proportion, as I ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... vessel of water put on the hearth of a smoky chimney is a remedy for the evil, and so on—not a single fact in all that he adduces. Yet these circumstances were regarded as real, and were spoken of at the times as irrefragable proofs of the truth of Sir ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... said above of the growth of the Elements, we can appreciate the remark of Proclus about Euclid, 'who put together the Elements, collecting many of Eudoxus's theorems, perfecting many of Theaetetus's and also bringing to irrefragable demonstration the things which were only somewhat loosely proved by his predecessors'. Though a large portion of the subject-matter had been investigated by those predecessors, everything goes to show that the whole ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... He then told me he had discovered a conspiracy to destroy me politically the particulars of which he felt it to be his duty to lay before [me]. I replied instantly, & somewhat sternly, Dr., I do not wish to hear them. I have irrefragable proof, he replied. I don't care, was the response. It is in writing, Sir, said he. I won't look at it, Sir. What, said he, don't you want to see it if it is in writing & genuine? An emphatic No, Sir, closed the conversation. The Dr. raised his eyes and hands as if he thought me ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... can "the two-and-twenty jarring sects confute," Nature sets at naught the most ancient of axioms. How obvious is it that the lesser cannot contain the greater! Yet that Nature under certain circumstances blandly puts her thumb unto her nose and spreads her fingers out even at that irrefragable postulate, let this plain statement ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... church-bells ceased—it was nine o'clock. She must rise, and appear below for the first time as mistress in her own house. Also, she remembered faintly something which Mrs. Dugdale had said about the custom at Kingcombe—an irrefragable law of country etiquette—-of a bride's going to church for the first time, ceremoniously, in bridal dress. And no sooner had she descended—wrapped in the first morning-frock she could lay her hands upon, than ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... moderation. But with the denouement of the scene he threw off all restraint, and laughed aloud. Everybody laughed as he did, and the two philosophers were saluted with unanimous felicitations. La Fontaine, however, was declared conqueror, on account of his profound erudition and his irrefragable logic. Conrart obtained the compensation due to an unsuccessful combatant; he was praised for the loyalty of his intentions, and ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Surely, I concluded, the translated inhabitants of the 'summer-land' cannot have doffed the homespun honesty of mortal life; all will either confess ignorance with regard to this skull, or display their truthfulness by a substantial harmony in their reports, and thereby furnish an indisputable, irrefragable proof of the truth ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... democracies, oligarchies, and petty princedoms (tyrannides) "oblique policies which drive the human race to slavery, as is patent in all of them to one who reasons."[221] He has nothing but pity for mankind when it has become a many-headed beast, "despising the higher intellect irrefragable in reason, the lower which hath the face of experience."[222] He had no faith in a turbulent equality asserting the divine right of I'm as good as you. He thought it fatal to all discipline: "The confounding of ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... stripping the temples and melting down the images;—in special connection with a visit paid by them that year to Britain[337] (our last Imperial visit), when they had actually been permitted to cross the Channel in winter-time; an irrefragable proof of Heaven's approval of their iconoclasm. It is highly probable that they pursued here also a course at once so pious and so profitable, and that the fanes of the ancient deities but lingered ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... importance as "records." The first and most commanding duty of those who set up and maintain a public museum is to preserve actual things as records—records of the existence in this or that locality of each kind of plant and animal, records of the former existence of extinct plants and animals, with irrefragable certainty as to the locality and the exact strata in which they were found—records of prehistoric man, his weapons and art, and of the animals found with them, records of modern times. Everyone is familiar with this duty of the State and of local public bodies, when it ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... that Charles III. was the illegitimate son of Ferdinand VI., and that, consequently, he ought to be considered as a usurper of the throne of his reputed father. The minister, Roda, intercepted a correspondence containing irrefragable proofs of that abominable intrigue; and this was sufficient to make the king resolve upon a course of action which he had refrained from for some time, at the instance of his ministers, through fear of offending ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... Old Jerry. He is the only one out of whom they can take it. They are to throw away their world and die, so they must take it out of somebody. Therefore Jerry "gets it in the neck." Men under the irrefragable compulsion of a common spell, who are selected for sacrifice in the fervour of a general obsession, but who are cooly awake to the unreason which locks the minds of their fellows, will burst into fury at the bond they feel. The obvious obstruction is the obstinate "blighter" ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... great business of the scientific teacher is, to imprint the fundamental, irrefragable facts of his science, not only by words upon the mind, but by sensible impressions upon the eye, and ear, and touch of the student, in so complete a manner, that every term used, or law enunciated, should afterwards call up vivid images of the particular structural, or other, facts ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... who preceded and followed them were apostles of virtue or painters of Golden-Age scenes. But, with some exceptions (chiefly Italian) among the latter, they did not, unless their aim were definitely tragical—an epithet which one could show, on irrefragable Aristotelian principles, to be rarely if ever applicable to Beyle and his school—they did not, as the common phrase goes, "take a gloomy view" only. There were cakes and ale; and the cakes did not always give internal pains, nor the ale a bad headache. As even Hazlitt ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... masterly production, the speech of Mr. Sherwood at Champlain was a renewed onslaught upon the anti-democratic coalition. In this speech the most irrefragable evidence, drawn from the recitals in the records of treason, is produced against the conspirators. The perusal of this speech leaves the mind in no doubt as to the purpose of the traitors to overthrow democratic government in the South, and to establish a new form ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to the same army often fire by mistake upon each other. That the German Army was no exception to this rule is proved not only by many Belgian witnesses, but by the most irrefragable kind of evidence—the admission of German soldiers themselves, recorded in their war diaries. Thus Otto Clepp, Second Company of the Reserve, says, under date of Aug. 22: "Three A.M. Two infantry regiments ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was capable of producing so full and lasting a conviction in the minds of the numerous hearers, as to remove for the future all doubt as to the divine origin of revelation. Through an immediate sensible perception—which by its nature carries the most irrefragable certainty—Israel, then, received from God Himself the first dictates of a religion, of which that people was to become the professor, conservator, and propagator, in perpetuity; and equally convinced of the true mission ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... we have elicited from him his principles and mode of action. I may perhaps have fallen into some errors of detail, though I have endeavoured to avoid them, but the main conclusions are, I believe, irrefragable. If they are not, I shall be obliged to any one who will point out the fallacy in my reasoning; and I pledge myself to make open retractation, when I resume these papers in a subsequent number. If they are, then the reader ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... habits of my life render it almost impossible that I should proceed to London with this object, and I therefore ask it of your Christian charity that you should visit me here at Loughlinter. You, as a Roman Catholic, cannot but hold the bond of matrimony to be irrefragable. You cannot, at least, think that it should be set aside at the caprice of an excitable woman who is not able and never has been able to assign any reason for leaving ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Revolution is fixed on the principles from which it originated: IT IS ENDED." And in effect, books being opened throughout France, the names of the citizens who inscribed their acceptance of this new constitution amounted to four millions, while but a few votes to the contrary were registered—an irrefragable proof that the national mind was disposed to think no sacrifice too dear, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... affected in consequence of the affections of the body and brain, so the body is liable to be reciprocally affected by the affections of the mind, as is evident in the visible effects of all-strong passions,—hope or fear, love or anger, joy or sorrow, exultation or despair. These are certainly irrefragable arguments that it is properly no other than one and the same thing that is subject to these affections."[155] Mr. Atkinson urges the same reason. "The proof that mind holds the same relation to the body that all other phenomena do to ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... she might know all the hardship and all the enjoyment of a soldier's life, riding forth "in jack and knapskull"—the woman who long afterward was to hold her own for two days together, without help of counsel, against all the array of English law and English statesmanship, armed with irrefragable evidence and supported by the resentment of a nation—showed herself devoid of moral and physical resolution; too senseless to realize the significance and too heartless to face the danger of a situation from which the simplest exercise of reason, principle, or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... possible storms of comedy. The recent compiler of a most admirably skilful and most delicately invaluable compendium of Pantagruel or manual by way of guidebook to Rabelais has but too justly taken note of the irrefragable evidence there given that the one prose humourist who is to Aristophanes as the human twin-star Castor to Pollux the divine can never have practically weathered an actual gale; but if I may speak from a single experience of one which a witness long inured to Indian storm as well ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to Lord Campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this being true. His answer was as follows: "You require us to believe implicitly a fact, of which, if true, positive and irrefragable evidence in his own handwriting might have been forthcoming to establish it. Not having been actually enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court at Stratford nor of the superior Courts at Westminster would present his name as being concerned in ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the Doctor of Music annihilating doctor-made laws. As such, his usefulness is by no means small. He speaks with an authority no less than that of his adversaries, the other and less radical professors. He, too, has invented a system and a method; his "Harmonielehre," for instance, is as irrefragable as theirs; he can quote scripture with the devil. He is at least demolishing the old constraining superstitions, and in so doing may exercise an incalculable influence on the course of music. It may be that many a musician of the future will find himself the better equipped because of Schoenberg's ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... and absurdity in the extreme to deny the existence of thy historian, or the events to which he refers; and yet a record which to thee is of the greatest moment, wherein thine own interests are for ever involved, and to the truth of which there is much more clear and irrefragable testimony, thou rejectest as a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... later he writes: "In short, our whole Magistery consists in the union of the male and female, or active and passive, elements through the mediation of our metallic water and a proper degree of heat. Now, the male and female are two metallic bodies, and this I will again prove by irrefragable quotations from the Sages." Some of the quotations will be given: "Avicenna: 'Purify husband and wife separately, in order that they may unite more intimately; for if you do not purify them, they cannot love each other. By conjunction of the two natures you get a clear ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... hundred letters, written by Madame Lebrun during that time, were in the hands of her husband—irrefragable proofs of their mutual affection; but she has found means to get away the greater part of them; enough, however, remain to make his justification complete. Never was a union more harmonious—a wife more petted and indulged. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... of those tragi-comic scenes, tragic enough in effect, between Father and Son; Son now about eighteen,—fit to be getting through Oxford, had he been an English gentleman of private station. It comes from the irrefragable Nicolai; who dates it about this time, uncertain ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... self-possession of the President were as marked as his logic was irrefragable; but my outbreak, however illogical, served its purpose. No one was disposed to give mortal offence to one who showed himself so ready to resent it, though probably the apprehension related less to my swordsmanship than the favour I was supposed ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... dogmas. The fundamental doctrines of materialism, like those of spiritualism, and most other "isms," lie outside "the limits of philosophical inquiry," and David Hume's great service to humanity is his irrefragable demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called himself a sceptic, and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the same title to him; but that does not alter the fact that the name, with its existing ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... justice, whether a man be dead or alive. You aver he is alive, and you bring fifty witnesses to swear it: I answer, "Why do you not produce the man "' This is an argument founded on one of the first principles of the LAW OF EVIDENCE, which Gilbert would have held to be irrefragable. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... I have read sets forth another view of God's purpose. God seeks our praise. The glory of God is the end of all the divine actions. Now, that is a statement which no doubt is irrefragable, and a plain deduction from the very conception of an infinite Being. But it may be held in such connections, and spoken with such erroneous application, and so divorced from other truths, that instead of being what it is in the Bible, good news, it shall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... superstitions, in defiance of the law." He further observed, that he had good reason to believe that some of these little enemies to the constitution had contrived and abetted Monsieur de Fleury's escape. Of their having rejoiced at it in a most indecent manner, he said he could produce irrefragable proof. The boy who saw Babet tear down the placard was produced and solemnly examined; and the thoughtless action of this poor little girl was construed into a state crime of the most horrible nature. In a declamatory tone, Tracassier reminded his fellow-citizens, that in the ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... necessary to speak. The preceding volumes of this work have been written in vain, if the reader has not obtained from irrefragable testimony—the monarch's own especially—a sufficient knowledge of that human fetish before which so ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one another just like living forms. They support one another as plants and animals do; they are based ultimately on credit, or faith, rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction. The whole universe is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... leaves. Lastly, let us suppose that though the boughs which seem wanted to connect all the living forms of leaves with the fossil leaves, and with countless forms of which all trace has disappeared, and also with a single root-have become invisible, yet that there is irrefragable evidence to show that they once actually existed, and indeed are existing at this moment, in a condition as real though as invisible to the eye as air or electricity. Should we, I ask, under these circumstances hesitate to call our imaginary plant or tree by ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... had so recently occurred, evidently astonished the auditors, and they retired without a word. During this time Valentine, at once terrified and happy, after having embraced and thanked the feeble old man for thus breaking with a single blow the chain which she had been accustomed to consider as irrefragable, asked leave to retire to her own room, in order to recover her composure. Noirtier looked the permission which she solicited. But instead of going to her own room, Valentine, having once gained her liberty, entered the gallery, and, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... direct, pungent, earnest appeal to the consciences of men-stealers." This was a damning bill, but it was true in every particular; and the evidence which Garrison adduced to establish his charges was overwhelming and irrefragable. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... respective hearts. Perhaps we did a foolish thing in thus abandoning saint and hungry convert to their sympathetic intercourse. The saint could hold her own; she had vowed herself to Adrian, and she belonged to the type for whom vows are irrefragable; but poor old Jaffery had made no vows, save of loyalty to his friends; which vows, provided they are kept, are perfectly consistent with a man's falling hopelessly, despairingly in love with his friend's affianced bride. And, as far as Barbara and myself have been able to make ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... sufficient to establish the fact, that the Pauline doctrine at large was common to all Christians at that early period, and therefore the faith delivered by Christ. And this is all I want; nor this for my own assurance, but as arming me with irrefragable arguments against those psilanthropists who as falsely, as arrogantly, call themselves Unitarians, on the one hand; and against the infidel fiction, that Christianity owes its present shape to the genius and rabbinical 'cabala' ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... man, after he had created him? Most certainly he did not. This fact relieves us of all doubt as to who was meant as the men of whose daughters the sons of God took their wives, independent of the preceding irrefragable proofs, that it was the negro; and the crime of amalgamation thus committed, brought the flood upon the earth. There is no possibility ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... of the press, and Censors for the public,-to which you are bound by the sacred ties of integrity to exert the most spirited impartiality, and to which your suffrages should carry the marks of pure, dauntless, irrefragable truth-to appeal to your MERCY, were to solicit your dishonour; and therefore,-though 'tis sweeter than frankincense,-more grateful to the senses than all the odorous ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... facts resting on irrefragable evidence; the apparent problem is, to {31} harmonise them with the affirmation of the divinity existing in man. If God be truly "in us all," then in what sense or to what purpose can we pray for a consummation ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... wife who, instead of indulging the caprice of indolence would have awakened him to energy, and have taught him to be just not captious, his desires would have been more rational: but, to a man who had formed a system of obedience to authority, and not to reason, the arguments he used were irrefragable. To a woman who imagined that obedience, in all cases, was the badge of abject slavery, they were absurd. Thus opposite in principle and in practice, their unhappy state of existence finally became so intolerable, to one of them at least, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... enthusiastic to send the fame of his talk all over the country. Is he the only man whose "Bon Mots," as they were called, have been published in his lifetime? "A mighty impudent thing," as he said of it, but also an irrefragable ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... about the work in the same masterly fashion that distinguished all his schemes of reform. His first act was to obtain a royal decree, limiting the admission of professors to those who had submitted themselves to a rigorous examination in religious doctrine, and had given irrefragable proofs of orthodoxy. The same conditions were in future to be exacted of all who presented themselves for degrees. The university teemed with Lutheran literature; it was swept away by the same inexorable root-and-branch measures that had been ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... few days, a still more awful prediction rose, cloud-like, on the spiritual sky. A placard was found affixed to the doors of every place of worship in the town, setting forth in large letters that, according to certain irrefragable calculations from "the number of a man" and other such of the more definite utterances of Daniel and St John, the day of judgment must without fail fall upon the next Sunday week. Whence this announcement came no one knew. But the truth is, every one ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... This consists of a varying number (usually four, more rarely three, or five or six) of small degenerated vertebrae, and is a useless rudimentary organ with no actual physiological significance. Morphologically, however, it is of great interest as an irrefragable proof of the descent of man and the anthropoids from long-tailed apes. On no other theory can we explain the existence of this rudimentary tail. In the earlier stages of development the tail of the human embryo protrudes considerably. It ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... property of the O'Briens to this day; and while the rest of the castle is little better than a heap of ruins, the fatal window still remains nearly as perfect as when the lady sprang through it, an irrefragable proof of the truth of the legend in the eyes ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub of a burdock; and that from something innate and independent of all associations of ideas;—these I had set down as irrefragable, orthodox truths, until perusing your book shook my faith.—In short, Sir, except Euclid's Elements of Geometry, which I made a shift to unravel by my father's fire-side, in the winter evening of the first season I held the plough, I never read a book which gave ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... they sought what the heart naturally seeks, and gave what it most gratefully receives; and I look to them as in all points of principle (not, observe, of knowledge or empirical attainment) as the most irrefragable authorities, precisely on account of the child-like innocence, which never deemed itself authoritative, but acted upon desire, and not upon dicta, and sought for ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... which it is surrounded, and lead it to the incorporeal perception of ideas. For if these sciences receive the soul replete with images, and knowing nothing subtile and unattended with material garrulity; and if they elucidate reasons possessing an irrefragable necessity of demonstration, and forms full of all certainty and immateriality, and which by no means call to their aid the inaccuracy of sensibles, do they not evidently purify our intellectual life from things which fill us with a privation of intellect, ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... for thousands of years supported society. According to his views, the practical wisdom of men could not have a higher object than the introduction into society of the greatest spontaneity and freedom, but precisely because of this one should safeguard as sacred and irrefragable the natural laws of society—one should respect the existing order of things and, continually verifying it, inculcate its rational sides, not overlooking nature for the sake of culture, or vice versa" (p. 566). Property, the family, the state, are sacred; but aspiration toward the recognition ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... very surface of the matter, the question presents itself to the biologist why it should not be so. The irrefragable philosophy of modern biology is that the most complex forms of living creatures have derived their splendid complexity and adaptations from the slow and majestically progressive variation and survival ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... maintain that true being must be one. There is absolutely nothing in the concept of being to forbid us to think the existent as many; while the world of phenomena, with its many things and their many properties, gives irrefragable grounds which compel us to this conclusion. Hence, according to Herbart, the true reality is a (very large, though not, it is true, an infinite[1]) plurality of supra-sensible (non-spatial and non-temporal) reals, or, according to the Leibnitzian ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... produced in verse. With the exception of Abelard, whose interest is rather biographical than strictly literary, and perhaps Anselm, the heroes of mediaeval dialectic, the Doctors Subtle and Invincible, Irrefragable and Angelic, have left nothing which even on the widest interpretation of pure literature can be included within it, or even any names that figure in any but the least select of literary histories. Yet they cannot but receive some notice here in a history, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... told him—"You give yourself out as demonstrator of the divine legation of Moses; it has been often demonstrated before; a young student in theology might undertake to give a better—that is, a more satisfactory and irrefragable demonstration of it in five pages than you have done in five volumes."—Lowth's "Letter to Warburton," ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... selected regions, as a basis for an equally thorough and exhaustive scrutiny by direct observation, would, it is believed, lead to a much more satisfactory and hopeful method for ultimately furnishing irrefragable testimony as to permanency or change than any that has ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... which the author has conducted the reader repeatedly up and down the dimensional ladder, it may be a surprise to learn that physical phenomena offer no irrefragable evidences of hyper-dimensionality. We could not think in higher space if consciousness were limited to three dimensions. The mathematical reality of higher space is never in question: the higher dimensions ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Miss McGinty's peachy and strawberry-legged corps de ballet, rewarded virtue and trampled meanness under their dainty, twinkling feet. Moreover, the story was to be paid for, a condition of the greater glory, an irrefragable proof of merit. Only as evidence of worth was money thought of, and though much needed, it alone was lightly regarded. The amount turned out to be very small. The editor handed it out of his trousers pocket—not the golden guinea looked for, but a few shillings. He must have detected a little ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... most amorous. At a more recent period Roubaud has said that pubic hair in its quantity, color and curliness is an index of genital energy. A poor pilous system, on the other hand, Roubaud regarded as a probable though not an irrefragable proof of sexual frigidity in women. "In the cold woman the pilous system is remarkable for the languor of its vitality; the hairs are fair, delicate, scarce and smooth, while in ardent natures there are little curly tufts about the temples." (Traite ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... an usurper of a title that does not belong to me, surprises me not. But grant me time to send home (as the English in the colonies affectionately call England to this day,) and I will prove my knighthood honorably won upon a stricken field, by irrefragable testimony. I will not deny that I have the honor of an acquaintance with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, but I am in no sense his agent, nor in any wise hold communication with him, save as a friend. For the note-book found at my lodgings, and deemed conclusive proof that I am ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... the Address of the supreme Junta of Seville to the Portugueze nation, dated May 30th, 1808. 'PORTUGUESE,—Your lot is, perhaps, the hardest ever endured by any people on the earth. Your princes were compelled to fly from you, and the events in Spain have furnished an irrefragable proof of the absolute necessity of that measure.—You were ordered not to defend yourselves, and you did not defend yourselves. Junot offered to make you happy, and your happiness has consisted in being treated with greater cruelty than the most ferocious conquerors inflict ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... argument, which he tried to thrust from him, and yet could not. Who has not known in the still, sleepless hours of night, how dark thoughts will possess the mind with terrors, which seem logical, irrefragable, inevitable? ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley |
