"Incontrovertible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... allusion to the times was instantly applied. In the prevailing listlessness, the mere fact of increased mental activity was of importance. A spark of genius does much to raise a nation. It is in itself the incontrovertible proof that the race lives: a dead people does not produce men of genius. Whatever awakes one part of the intelligence reacts on all its parts. You cannot lift, any more than you can degrade, the heart of man piecemeal. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... no need, however, to accept these principles as incontrovertible. Even if we take the great blockade of 1803-5, which has most firmly dominated thought on the subject ever since, it may be argued with some plausibility that the situation could have been solved more quickly and effectually by letting Ganteaume get out from ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... Ground-squirrel or Say's Ground-squirrel, called scientifically Citellus lateralis cinerascens. This, in spite of its livery, is not a Chipmunk at all but a Ground-squirrel that is trying hard to be a Chipmunk. And it makes a good showing so far as manners, coat and stripes are concerned, but the incontrovertible evidence of its inner life, as indicated by skull and makeup, tells us plainly that it is merely a Ground-squirrel, a first cousin to ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... has been violently opposed, despite its obvious justice, and a complaisant judiciary has ratified the Puritan position. In England and on the Continent that principle is safeguarded by the fundamental laws, and during the early days of the anti-slavery agitation in this country it was accepted as incontrovertible, but if any American statesman were to propose today that it be applied to the license-holder whose lawful franchise has been taken away from him arbitrarily, or to the brewer or distiller whose costly plant has ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... summon to my support a cloud of witnesses, a host of incontrovertible, damning facts, the legitimate results of a system whose tendency is to harden and deprave the heart. But I will not descend to particulars. I am willing to believe that the majority of the masters of your section of the country are disposed to treat their unfortunate slaves with kindness. But ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... American troops; things may be true that are not expedient to say. Sink everything into Dewey-Aguinaldo cooeperation, that was on both sides honest even if it did not imply any actual arrangement, which, of course, Dewey himself could not make. That here you have the facts,—undenied—incontrovertible." [38] ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... of the Nineteenth Century England became once more a 'nest of singing birds,' as was apparent from the stream of fresh and melodious strains issuing from, among other sources, 'The Bodley Head,'" was greeted with a ripple of girlish laughter from her hearers. It seemed that this incontrovertible statement of fact had somehow aroused reminiscences of another head which, if fresh, had not been precisely melodious on the luncheon board after ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... No writer of the present day, save perhaps Anatole France, is so accurately informed of every fact that bears upon literary history. Every argument he brings forward is supported by an array of incontrovertible facts that is simply appalling. No one can argue with him who does not first subject himself to the severest kind of training, go through a mass of tedious reading, become familiar with dates to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... country. Failing in his purpose, his means dwindling day by day, he was obliged to pledge a portion of his treasure that he might be able to live. It cut him to the heart to divide the collection: he had the history of the world in those incontrovertible records of brass and silver and gold, currency of the old Hindoo, of the Assyrian—medals where Alexander's superb profile shone crowned as Apollo—coins of the Ptolemies, of the Caesars, of almost every people and generation from the beginning of civilization till to-day. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... a Bishop do with a tea-cup in his hand? There she had got them, six or eight chosen Prelates, every one of them in a defenseless position; how could they argue an affair of State so? What could they do but assent to the incontrovertible statement that "nonsense" must and certainly should be put down—though knowing all the time that the particular "nonsense" in question, being a thing inbred in the minds of men, could not be put ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... have been yearly exposed; but how their condition is to be benefited by the repeal of the Corn-laws, is a matter which even Sir Robert Peel has not condescended to explain. For it is a notorious and incontrovertible fact, that if foreign corn were at this moment exposed at their doors duty free, they could not purchase it. We shall give full credit to the government for its intention to introduce the flour of Indian corn to meet, if possible, the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... incontrovertible fact, have you? Then I hope you will permit me to drive you home, especially since these packages are much too numerous and too weighty for you to carry in your arms. As a matter of fact, I have been hoping for an opportunity to meet our new ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... consultation was that very shortly afterwards queer reports began to fly about; it was whispered that the ghosts whom the pious director had expelled had again invaded the convent, under an invisible and impalpable form, and that several of the nuns had given, by their words and acts, incontrovertible ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... over the Sofala appeared to Sterne simply crammed full with proofs—with incontrovertible proofs. At night, when off duty, he would steal out of his cabin in pyjamas (for more proofs) and stand a full hour, perhaps, on his bare feet below the bridge, as absolutely motionless as the awning stanchion in its deck socket near by. On the stretches of easy ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... struggled against the temptation to look towards the window. He whirled the Dax woman till her twinkling feet cleared the floor. He sang to the accompaniment of Miguel's fiddle. He was outwitting the thing that dangled before his eyes, having the incontrovertible last word with a vengeance. And as he danced and swayed, all unwittingly his glance fell on the window opposite, and Jim Rodney's face looked in at him, beautiful in its ecstasy of hate—Rodney's face, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... out over him in a cold sweat—he sat there and shook, his eyes hidden in his icy hands. But gradually, as he began to rehearse his story for the thousandth time, he saw again how incontrovertible it was, and felt sure that any ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... rent. The labourer gets less than he would if the products of the soil were equally distributed. Both wages and profits must fall as more is left to rent, and that this actually happens, he says, with unusual positiveness, is an 'incontrovertible truth.'[285] The fall enables the less fertile land to be cultivated, and gives an excess of produce on the more fertile. 'This excess is rent.'[286] He proceeds to expound his doctrine by comparing land to a set of machines for making corn.[287] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... is an excellent reason—to you it is, I believe, the incontrovertible reason—why you should once more give up and lose, and not take. But, deeper than that, to me more insurmountable than that, is the true reason, which is simply that that very thing—to lose, to do without—is your business in life, as ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... days a magazine can afford to have its conclusions disputed, but its facts must be incontrovertible. Perhaps the trouble the big publications take to be right—and that means square and just, as well as accurate—explains such prestige and influence as they now enjoy ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... and, whilst the author avoids every thing that is ridiculous or contemptible, he, at the same time, never rises to any thing that we can commend or admire. He says what is incontrovertible, and what has already been said over and over, with much gravity, but says nothing new, sprightly, or entertaining; travelling on in a plain, level, flat road, with great composure, almost through the whole long, and rather tedious volume, which ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... assails Zionism with arguments that are incontrovertible, but totally irrelevant; it busies itself with destroying claims which the Zionists have never made. A trio may be taken as representative. It is pointed out with cogency that Palestine is not capable of supporting the twelve million of Jews who inhabit our world; ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... in which they speak highly of the industry and skill displayed by Dr. Gillkrest, and adopt the conclusion at which he arrives with regard to the non-contagiousness of this disease. "The author," say they, establishes by numerous well-selected and incontrovertible proofs that yellow fever is not contagious under any circumstances,—not even in the case of crowding in this disease, whether of the dead or of the living; that the removal of the individuals from the influence of the local causes which produce this affection ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Prince-Hyde valve, with best Para rubber facings. Five patents cover me—I mention this without pride—five separate and several patents, each one finer than the other. At present I am screwed fast. Should I open, you would immediately be swamped. This is incontrovertible!" ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... did not seem a mere will-o'-the-wisp of the mind. It took months and years to bring it into any accustomed relation to every-day matters of thought and act; and it is this habitual adjustment of our inward belief to our outward environment that makes any creed appear to be incontrovertible. ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... though. The incontrovertible part was that things came to a decisive pass on a July day in the late '80's when the two Tatums sent word to the two Stackpoles that at or about six o'clock of that evening they would come down the side road from their place a mile away to Stackpole Brothers' gristmill ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it was, in view of the events then transpiring, the best policy to turn back the southern army, after the great battle, and not insist too closely on following up the advantage gained, seems now incontrovertible.—R. G. T. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the full exercise of this noble function of the associative faculty is inconsistent with absolute and incontrovertible conclusions on subjects of theoretic preference. For it is quite impossible for any individual to distinguish in himself the unconscious underworking of indefinite association, peculiar to him individually, from those great laws of choice under which he is ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the prevailing opinion that consumption is incurable, there exists ample, incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. Its curability is established beyond the shadow of a doubt. Individuals have recovered in whom there was extensive destruction of pulmonary tissue, and, indeed, entire destruction of one lung. Numerous ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... proportional representation which should ensure that the electors of Birmingham and other large towns, and also of the various counties, should be truly represented within the House of Commons. Of this fact the recent history of electoral legislation on the Continent and in the Colonies furnishes incontrovertible proofs. Proportional representation has been embodied in the laws of several countries, and these laws work with ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... direct support to Longstreet, he could have had him there in under three hours. The staff officer was not sent, and the evidence is that General Lee believed Longstreet strong enough to defeat the Federals without direct aid from Jackson."* (* Letter to the author.) Such reasoning appears incontrovertible. Jackson, be it remembered, had been directed to guard the left flank of the army "until further orders." Had these words been omitted, and he had been left free to follow his own judgment, it is possible that he would have joined Huger on the Charles ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... our consideration, but we are immediately confronted by a difficulty which seems insurmountable when we attempt to formulate any definite estimate of the value and influence of Edison's pioneer work and inventions. There is one incontrovertible fact—namely, that he was the first man to devise, construct, and operate from a central station a practicable, life-size electric railroad, which was capable of transporting and did transport passengers ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... accustomed to consider themselves the rulers of the sea-borne trade of the world that it is with difficulty that they comprehend that their supremacy can be seriously threatened. To the American, on the other hand, British commercial supremacy has, at least since 1862, been an incontrovertible and disheartening fact. The huge bulk of British commerce and British wealth has loomed so large as to shut out his view of all the world; it has hemmed him in on all sides, obstructed him, towered over him. And all the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... the dead but of the living was an unanswerable denunciation of the Sadducean perversion of scripture; and with solemn finality the Lord added: "Ye therefore do greatly err." Certain of the scribes present were impressed by the incontrovertible demonstration of the truth, and exclaimed with approbation: "Master, thou hast well said." The proud Sadducees were confuted and silenced; "and after that they durst not ask him any question ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... interest, about $7,000,000. This great work which, if not "conceived in sin," was "brought forth in iniquity," thus became the object of great suspicion, and of a prejudice which has not been removed to this day. I know that to many I make a startling announcement, when I state the incontrovertible fact, that no money was ever stolen by the Ring from the funds of the Bridge; that the whole money raised has been honestly expended; that the estimates for construction have not been materially exceeded; and that the excess of cost over the ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... obtain it. It is a book which should be in the reading-room of every Loyal League throughout the country, and of every military hospital. Editors of the loyal press should be provided with it, as containing an arsenal of incontrovertible arguments with which to meet the false assertions by which the maligners of the negro race and the supporters of Slavery too often undertake to maintain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... or further complicates—and which, with minute additions, it bequeaths to future generations(1)." Thus we have solid physiological ground for the idea of pre-existence and the idea of a multiple Ego. It is incontrovertible that in every individual brain is looked up the inherited memory of the absolutely inconceivable multitude of experiences received by all the brains of which it is the descendant. But this scientific assurance of self in the past is uttered in no materialistic ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... vivant. Judge Branscombe, on the other hand, was a little man, with small, watchful eyes and sharp-pointed features. He was a lawyer to his very finger-tips, keen, penetrating, and a master of detail. He was a judge who did not deal with broad issues. He dealt with facts, hard, incontrovertible facts, rather than what might lie beyond them. What might be called "internal evidence" had little weight with him. What any prisoner might be likely to do under a given set of circumstances had little or no weight with ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... attempt to stab Jenny, but later relates the story of her ruin. This narrative is enough to disgust Lady Speck with her foppish admirer and to make her sensible of the merits of Mr. Lovegrove. In spite of Bellpine's industrious slander and in spite of seemingly incontrovertible proof of Jemmy's inconstancy, Jenny's faith in her lover remains unshaken. After tedious delays he finally rejoins her in London, but learning the full extent of Bellpine's treachery, he wounds him seriously in a duel and is obliged to seek safety in France. After causing ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... the "second man," the man of facts and method and management, soberly admitted. But how did Amoyah know that already they had trodden those significant circles, each with his shadow? He smiled triumphant in his incontrovertible logic. ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... were not supported by incontrovertible testimony, the admirers of the great Sir Edward Coke would reject as spurious many of the overbearing rejoinders which escaped his lips in courts of justice. His tone in his memorable altercation with Bacon at the bar of the Court of Exchequer speaks ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... here introduce a vast amount of incontrovertible evidence to show that, if the attendance of all the children in any commonwealth could be secured at such improved common schools as we have been contemplating for ten months during the year, from the age of four to that of sixteen years, they would prove competent to the removal of ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... us as liars and hypocrites. Thus we gradually paint portraits of each other. For the opponent presents himself as the man who says, evil be thou my good. He is an annoyance who does not fit into the scheme of things. Nevertheless he interferes. And since that scheme is based in our minds on incontrovertible fact fortified by irresistible logic, some place has to be found for him in the scheme. Rarely in politics or industrial disputes is a place made for him by the simple admission that he has looked upon the same reality and ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... major was fond of argument, but extremely tenacious of his own opinions. Ellis handled the foils of discussion with just the requisite skill to draw out the major, permitting himself to be vanquished, not too easily, but, as it were, inevitably, by the major's incontrovertible arguments. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... of the heathen nations around them, and will them and their increase as property to their children forever.—Levit. xxv: 44, 45, 46. All these nations were made of one blood. Yet God ordained that some should be "chattel" slaves to others, and gave his special aid to effect it. In view of this incontrovertible fact, how can I believe this passage disproves the lawfulness of slavery in the sight of God? How can any sane man believe it, who ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... cotton-pens with my brave soldiers, and then thrust into prison, while your officers were permitted to enjoy their parole, and live at the hotel in Cairo. Your men are given the same fare as my own, and your wounded receive our best attention. These are incontrovertible facts. I have simply taken the precaution to disarm your officers and men, because necessity compelled me to protect ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... heavily—sigh like Sophy's.) "'You will rejoice yet more to learn that it has pleased Heaven to allow me and another witness, who, some years ago, had been misled into condemning Waife, to be enabled to bear incontrovertible testimony to the complete innocence of my beloved friend; nay, more—I say to you most solemnly, that in all which appeared to attest guilt, there has been a virtue, which, if known to Mr. Darrell, would make him bow in reverence to that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the indifference with which one may refer to a regrettable but incontrovertible fact, and Mark seemed to feel it useless to deny ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... she, "we can't convert each other. We are both incontrovertible. Let us be friends. One needs more time than we have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... to the narrow limits of the title of the essay, I must urge the special injury done to mankind by disfranchising the whole clerical class; that is to say, by depriving their authority of its proper weight in matters of faith. It is an incontrovertible rule of evidence, that the authority of an interested party is devoid of worth. Reasons are good in themselves, whoever utters them; but in trusting to authority, apart from reason, we need a disinterested authority. This the clergy at present are not, except on the points left undecided by ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Throughout the war dwellers in London, Paris or Berlin affected by war conditions (and that meant practically everybody) were freed of paying rent by a moratorium. Residents of Moscow and Petrograd are still obliged to pay rent and at a higher figure than in pre-war days. These two incontrovertible facts are evidence that an all-powerful Bolshevik in the Communist Government has in two years installed a lesser measure of Communism in actual practice than existed in the belligerent European countries during the war years. To my mind ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Masters laughed. "Incontrovertible. Mind you practice your own philosophy when you need it. All reverses should be temporary if ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... he asked, with a rueful face,—"questions my word, which is incontrovertible?" Here he clapped his hand upon a couteau-de-chasse lying near, but, appearing to think better of it, drew himself up, and, with a shower of nods flung at me, added, "I deny your accusation!" I had ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... profit by my theological talents. How certainly and how soon could I bring these talents into notice! How easy the task! I need but mount the rostrum, I need but put pen to paper, and my adversaries would be brought to shame, and mankind taught to do me justice. Incontrovertible facts were in my favour; and to foster doubts and fears would be cowardice, self-desertion, and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... proximity. The consensus of opinion, or public opinion, is not essentially a composite opinion, but a corrected opinion in which such accidents of locality cancel one another. The following justification of democracy, formulated by Matthew Arnold, lays bare its insistent and wholly incontrovertible motive: ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Hebrews, prove that the single dominant power in the world is the being who revealed himself to our ancestors, and who, in particular, guided Joseph into Egypt, protected him there, and raised him to an eminence never before or since reached by a Jew. It can also be proved, by incontrovertible facts, that this being is a moral being, who can be placated by obedience and by attaining to a certain moral standard in life, and by no other means. That this standard has been disclosed to me, I can prove to you by sundry miraculous signs. Therefore, be obedient and obey the law ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... it starves in a garret along with the artist. If the demand for modern tapestries was large enough, the art would flourish—perhaps. But it is not a large demand, for many reasons, chief among which is the incontrovertible one that the modern work is seldom pleasing. The whole world is occupied with science and commerce, and art does not create under their influence as in more ideal times. What can the trained eye and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... building of a completely impenetrable defense against attack is still not possible, total defensive strength must include civil defense preparedness. Because we have incontrovertible evidence that Soviet Russia possesses atomic weapons, this kind ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... de echthros ho speiras auta estin ho diabolos.] The children of the wicked one, or of the devil, who are spoken of in this passage, are the seed of the serpent who is mentioned in Gen. iii. 15, and to whom allusion is made in the words [Greek: ho speiras auta] also. Less incontrovertible is the passage in St Matthew xxiii. 33, where the Lord addressed the Pharisees as [Greek: opheis, gennemata echidnon]. (Compare Matt. xii. 34, iii. 7.) Olshausen, in his commentary on Matt. iii. 7, gives it as his opinion that the serpent designates the diabolic nature. But, according to Matt. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... factory can make its own coin, money will be plenty, everybody will be happy, and there never will be any more war. It may be asked how this currency can be redeemed? I would have an incontrovertible bond, made of Limburger cheese, which is stronger and more durable. When this is done you can tell the rich from the poor man by the smell of his money. Now-a-days many of us do not even get a smell of money, but in the good days which are coming the gentle zephyr will waft to us the able-bodied ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... ignorant that majority may be. In some cases this leads to a slight alteration of the Latin axiom, Salus populi est suprema lex, which may be read, "the will of the people is the supreme law." The American constitution is admirable in theory; it enunciates the incontrovertible principle, "All men are free and equal." But unfortunately, a serious disturbing element, and one which by its indirect effects threatens to bring the machinery of the Republic to a "dead lock," appears not to have entered into the calculations of ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... subject, "progress is made by a careful tabulation of proved facts. The scientific method is the method of exact knowledge. Thus, in crime, those things are of value to us which by an infinite series of empiric observations have been established and have become incontrovertible. The familiar example, of course, is fingerprints. Nearly everyone knows that no two men have the same markings; that the same man displays a pattern which is unchanging from ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... incontrovertible, Mr. Howard reported accordingly on February 2, 1871. He recapitulates the letters and evidence received; gives Mr. Wade's testimony; states that a copy of Miss Carroll's paper was shown him immediately after the success ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... in medicine. He spoke of it as an art entirely conjectural, and his opinion on this subject was fired and incontrovertible. His vigorous mind ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... changes of the stars, not those produced by the parallaxes at which they are seen from the changing position of the spectator, but the true changes constantly going on in the regions of space, afford us incontrovertible evidence of the 'dominion of the laws of attraction' in the remotest regions of space, beyond the limits of our solar system. The existence of these laws is revealed to us by many phenomena, as, for instance, by the motion of double stars, and by the amount of ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Even when its most zealous professed advocates had abandoned the intention of maintaining this proposition, even at the risk of loosing the friendship of his dearest political connections, he stood firm upon the solid basis of that incontrovertible principle, "equal justice and freedom to all." No pretended expediency, no crafty policy, although urged with the greatest force and zeal, by the most experienced and acute reasoners, neither flattery, bribes, nor threats, could ever, for ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... or at a more central point some distance in the rear, and when his orders were not ill-timed or inapplicable to the case in hand, they were not infrequently deemed impracticable, or at cross purposes with the convictions of the generals whose duty it was to carry them into effect. The simple and incontrovertible fact is that General Butler's presence with that army was from the start embarrassing if not absolutely unnecessary. It interposed an intermediate commander between the generalissimo and two entire army corps, and however good the intentions of ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... and hopeless condition of the prisoner at this bar, appeals pathetically to that compassion which we are taught to believe coexists with justice, even in the omnipotent God we worship; yet in the face of incontrovertible facts elicited from reliable witnesses, of coincidences which no theory of accident can explain, can we stifle convictions, solely because she pleads 'not guilty'? Pertinent, indeed, was the ringing cry of that ancient ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... not ostracized her socially. If conjectures and comments were made, they were whispered, and not uttered aloud. But the marriage had to be recognized, and the fact that Mary was free to marry Godwin, though Imlay was alive, was an incontrovertible proof that her relation to the latter had been illegal. People who had been deaf to her statements could not ignore this formal demonstration of their truth. Hitherto, their friendliness to her could not be construed into approval of her unconventionality. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... issued from the postern a group of human beings—beings with immortal souls, and possibly some reasoning faculties; but to me the grand point was this, that they had real, substantial, and incontrovertible turbans. They made for the point towards which we were steering, and when at last I sprang upon the shore, I heard, and saw myself now first surrounded by men of Asiatic blood. I have since ridden through the land of the Osmanlees, from the Servian border to the Golden Horn—from ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... betters—that is, the people who do nothing—were unanimous in agreeing that he present system is a very good one and that it is impossible to alter or improve it. Therefore Crass and his mates, although they knew nothing whatever about it themselves, accepted it as an established, incontrovertible fact that the existing state of things is immutable. They believed it because someone else told them so. They would have believed anything: on one condition—namely, that they were told to believe it by their betters. They said it was surely not for the Like of Them to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... that he would resign soon, and that it was his purpose to ask the President to appoint me chief of the bureau in his place. I said I preferred a less conspicuous position—and less labor—but thanked him. He said he had no influence with the Secretary—an incontrovertible fact; and that he thought he should return to the University. While we were speaking, the President's messenger came in with a note to the colonel; I did not learn the purport of it, but it put the colonel in a good humor. He showed me the two first words: "Dear Bledsoe." ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... they can be so weakened as to do no harm. It is perfectly certain that all accidents are preventable; there is not one that does not arise from folly or negligence. All accidents are crimes. It is perfectly certain that all human beings are capable of physical happiness. It is absolutely incontrovertible that the ideal shape of the human being is attainable to the exclusion of deformities. It is incontrovertible that there is no necessity for any man to die but of old aoe, and that if death cannot ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... in this mood. "As a lawyer," he said, "I make a practice of never withdrawing a statement, unless I am convinced by incontrovertible evidence that I was wrong in the first place,—and you will have great difficulty ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... observing, in the first instance, that girls were girls, and bygones bygones, and that, so long as young people were young and thoughtless, they would probably conduct themselves like young and thoughtless persons: with two or three other positions of a no less sound and incontrovertible character. She then remarked, in a devout spirit, that she thanked Heaven she had always found in her daughter May a dutiful and obedient child: for which she took no credit to herself, though she had every reason ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... of Lord Beauvayse," says the Reverend Julius Fraithorn in the high-pitched voice that shakes with rage. "He is a married man, Saxham; I have incontrovertible testimony to prove it. He gave his name to the woman who was his mistress a week before he ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... said Catherine coldly. "I have evidence the most incontrovertible, that he has conspired against the life of the king, your brother, by the foulest acts of sorcery. A wax figure, fashioned as a king, pierced to the heart by his very hand, has been laid before me. Your brother's illness, his mortal pains, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... discredited by evolution, as Ralph Hambleton and other agnostics would have one believe, why should this remarkably sane and able-looking person be standing up for it as though it were still an established and incontrovertible fact? ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... can be greater than this, and at the same time more incontrovertible? But it has nothing to do with memory; on the contrary, it is just because the clerk has no memory that his action of the second day so exactly resembles that of the first. As long as he has no power of recollecting, he will day after day repeat the same ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... you know, I must on principle keep myself unconcerned as regards criticism, as I cannot allow it the first word in matters of Art, yet it has long been my wish to see the "systematic opposition" to the present incontrovertible tendency (or, better, "development") of music not exclusively represented in the Allgemeine Zeitung. Just because this paper is not a merely local, but an European and intellectually historical one, did the local aversions and the ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... he startled men by attacking not arguments, but assumptions. He simply brushed aside all the matters which the men of the nineteenth century held to be incontrovertible, and appealed directly to the very different class of matters which they knew to be true. He induced men to study less the truth of their reasoning, and more the truth of the assumptions upon which they ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... a more or less vague belief to the majority, becomes incontrovertible fact to the person who has entered cosmic consciousness. His view is reversed, and where he formerly looked from the sense-conscious plane forward into a possible spiritual plane, he now gazes back ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... reading a few years ago. It struck him as being truth itself—illuminating like the sun. He adopted it devoutly. He bored me with it sometimes. Once, just to shut him up, I asked quietly if this theory which he regarded as so incontrovertible did not cause him some uneasiness about his wife and the dear girls? He transfixed me with a pitying stare and requested me in his deep solemn voice to remember the "well-established fact" that genius ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... they are capable, whilst others contend that the fructification of the Ascomycetes is more perfect, and that some of the noblest species, such as the pileate forms, are entitled to the first rank. The morel is a familiar example. Whatever may be said on this point, it is incontrovertible that the noblest and most attractive, as well as the largest, forms are classed under ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... grief at parting and at giving him up to another. She struggled to regain her calmness; she felt the impossibility of contradicting the belief which she was sure existed in his mind; she was conscious that to say, "I do not love you," would appear to him proof incontrovertible that the reverse was true. Her throat contracted painfully and she cast down her eyes lest the tears in ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... with a painstaking thoroughness, and the committee's final report was very unpleasant reading. But the names signed to it were so unassailable, the facts so incontrovertible, that Dabney thought best to print it in full, and later to issue it in pamphlet form. It has become a classic for this sort of thing now, and it is always quoted when similar investigations are ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... may conceivably be good advice. But viewed in a common-sense way it is the duty of a woman to reflect on the consequences of conceiving children from such a man; and the researches of physicians will furnish her with incontrovertible facts regarding the impaired health of the offspring of such a union. A law which would permit of no divorce under such conditions, instead of benefiting the state, would injure it in its most vital asset—healthy children, ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... bases or thinks that he bases his conduct—his inward or his outward conduct, his feeling or his action—upon a dogma or theoretical principle which he deems incontrovertible, runs the risk of becoming a fanatic, and moreover, the moment that this dogma is weakened or shattered, the morality based upon it gives way. If, the earth that he thought firm begins to rock, he himself trembles at the earthquake, for we do not all come ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... I am given to understand. I presume, that, being necessarily absent in Mexico, he has left his journal in some less judicious hands. At any rate, the Post has been too swift on this occasion. It could hardly have cited a more incontrovertible line from any poem than that which it has ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... main land. Nantucket, the last of the three, is less than half the size of Martha's Vineyard, and is about thirty miles from Cape Cod, the nearest part of the continent. From neither of them is any harbor to be reached corresponding with that mentioned in the letter. It is incontrovertible, therefore, that there is neither island nor bay on this coast answering the description. It is not difficult to perceive that the island of Louise was a mere invention and artifice on the part of the writer to give consistency to the pretension that the voyage originated with Francis. ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... seemed so just to the men, and so full of incontrovertible wisdom, that it was received with something like ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... to your satisfaction that poetry is much superior to painting. You asserted the contrary in one of your letters, and brought an argument to prove it. I shall show the fallacy of that argument, and bring those to support my doctrine which are incontrovertible." ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... contrary, some definite good, as far as I can judge; and that I republish the whole now, letter for letter, as originally printed, believing it likely to be still serviceable, and, on the ground it takes for argument, (Scriptural authority,) incontrovertible as far as it reaches; though it amazes me to find on re-reading it, that, so late as 1851, I had only got the length of perceiving the schism between sects of Protestants to be criminal, and ridiculous, while I still supposed ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... did not lose sight of his sister's lover until the last farewell was said, and Frederic bestowed inside the vehicle. There was nothing offensively officious or malicious in all this. Having declared as an incontrovertible dogma, that a ward could form no engagement without the formal sanction of her legal guardian, he saw fit to put the seal upon the decision at this, their adieu, in a manner they were not likely to forget. An hour's harangue would not have imbued ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... which appeals to the minds of men, we must assume that every error contains a kernel of truth, however small it be. No one of opposing views is to be accepted as wholly true, and none rejected as entirely false. To discover the incontrovertible fact which lies at their basis, we must reject the various concrete elements in which they disagree, and find for the remainder the abstract expression which holds true throughout its divergent manifestations. No antagonism is older, wider, more profound, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... underlying knowledge of, and wide acquaintance with, {p.092} the profession in its general aspect. To this unimpeachable generalization the settled practice of the nation, whose experience in this matter transcends that of all others combined, gives incontrovertible support. ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... to be treated with too much respectful anxiety as if it were as real as ourselves. He who can give so perfectly the texture of common life, the solidities of common sense, likes to wave his wand over the domain of sturdy prose and incontrovertible custom, and to show how plastic it is, and how easily pierced, and how readily transformed. He has a malicious pleasure in confusing the boundaries of nature and fancy, and mocking the purblind understanding. In the "Midsummer Night's Dream" we have an ambiguous and ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... great men, lofty as were their inquiries, and blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories which were incontrovertible. They had simply speculated, and the world ridiculed their speculations. They were one-sided; and, when pushed out to their extreme logical sequence, were antagonistic to each other, which had a tendency to produce doubt and skepticism. Men ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... upon his first visit to town. He was clad in a coarse gray coat, well worn, but in excellent repair; his under garments were durably constructed of leather, and fitted tight to a pair of serviceable and well-shaped limbs; his stockings of blue yarn were the incontrovertible work of a mother or a sister; and on his head was a three-cornered hat, which in its better days had perhaps sheltered the graver brow of the lad's father. Under his left arm was a heavy cudgel formed of an oak ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who introduced those readings, or serve as any indication of the period at which he did his work. But it must be confessed that the points enumerated present a very strong, and, when regarded by themselves, an apparently incontrovertible case against Mr. Collier and the genuineness of the folios and the manuscripts which he has brought to light. Combined with the evidence of his untrustworthiness, they compel, even from us who examine the question ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... expenditure and her revenue, and for making her taxation suitable to her economic conditions. It will be to preserve the framework of a fiscal system which the highest financial authorities have pronounced to be unfair to Ireland, and which incontrovertible facts show to be uneconomical both for Ireland and ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... the famous astronomer: "The possibility that Saturn is inhabited is one that, in the absence of incontrovertible evidence either way, should not lightly be set aside. Assuming that it is inhabited, that its people are skilled in the use of wireless telephony and that it is possible to set up waves of sufficient intensity to travel all the way from Saturn to us, I see ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... Resolutions—amen to much, to very much in the Botetourt Resolutions! South Carolina! Let South Carolina go in peace! It is her right! Remembering old comradeship, old battlefields, old defeats, old victories, we shall still be friends. If the Gulf States go, still it is their right, immemorial, incontrovertible!—The right of self-government. We are of one blood and the country is wide. God-speed both to Lot and to Abraham! On some sunny future day may their children draw together and take hands again! So much for the seceding States. But ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... careful not to follow too implicitly all his conclusions. These were in his own mind controlled by the theory which he had adopted, and which he continuously maintained, that Freemasonry was a Christian institution, and that the connection between it and the Christian religion was absolute and incontrovertible. He followed in the footsteps of Hutchinson, but with a far more expanded ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... abominable fluid employed in the penmanship of a hundred years ago, I profoundly pity the generations that are to come after us. The registers of Spotswold might puzzle a Bunsen. However, bearing in mind the incontrovertible fact that three thousand pounds is a very agreeable sum of money, I stuck to my work for upwards of two hours, and obtained as ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... blazon amused them all very much, and David expressed his entire concurrence with it, declaring it to be incontrovertible. Margaret laughed heartily. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... moment that she comprehended the purport of Paul's argument, she had accepted its conclusion as an indubitable revelation, and only wondered that she had never thought of it herself, so natural, so inevitable, so incontrovertible did it seem. ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... no offensive sense—had asked, would he enter into a political discussion when we were called upon to extend relief? He begged to state this was not the true question: it was whether they would found all the future proceedings upon error and misstatement, or upon incontrovertible facts. Another question was, would they be satisfied to patch up the wounds of the country for a short period or seek to remedy the disease in its spring and in its sources before it became still more alarming and incurable? The Duke of Kent said he had offered ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... something of Lord Ascott's two-year-olds; but, in the smoking-room over their coffee, they returned to the more vital question—the sentimental affections. They were agreed that the pleasure of love is in loving, not in being loved, and their reasons were incontrovertible. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... It is an incontrovertible fact that to hasten sanitary reform it is only necessary to hold out the helping hand; to encourage the ignorant citizen to ask for instruction and direction, instead of placing upon him the task of making bricks without ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... Prophets had not a more consistent or decided notion concerning after life & the Judgements of God than the Greeks [—] Angels disappear at one time in the Bible & afterwards appear again. The revelation to the Greeks more complete than to the Jews—prophesies of Christ by the heathens more incontrovertible than those of the Jews. The coming of X. a confirmation of both religions. The cessation of oracles a proof of this. The Xtians better off than any but the Jews as blind as the Heathens—Much more conformable to an idea of [the] goodness of God ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... confident. I detailed the circumstances of the marriage of Violet Dalston, then only eighteen years of age, with a Mr. Grainger; the birth of a son; and subsequent disappearance of the husband; concluding by an assurance to the jury that I should prove, by incontrovertible evidence, that Grainger was no other person than the late Sir Harry Compton, baronet. This address by no means lessened the vague apprehensions of the other side. A counsel that, with such materials for eloquence, disdained having recourse to it, must needs have a formidable case. The smiling countenances ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... to find in the prophet some plain and incontrovertible proofs of the Messiahship of Christ, to use against Moslems and Jews. While thus searching, I found various passages that would bear an explanation according to my views, and read on till I came to the fifty-second chapter, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... guilty man. The facts speak for themselves, and facts are incontrovertible. As surely as the sun shines, Carpenter killed your daughter. Why, then, continue this gossip, slander which besmirches Withers and is bound to ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... you have said, but the case appears to me one of the simplest. If my uncle wished the bitterest revenge on you, what could be more terrible than cause you to be the executioner of your own son? The vengeance, however, to be complete, depends on his being able to place before you incontrovertible proof that you were the father of the victim. Send, therefore, a messenger to him, one from Gudenfels, who knows nothing of what has happened in this castle of Schonburg, and who is therefore unable to disclose, even if forced to confess, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... evidently more than ready to second any such attempt; the Sanhedrim and Jewish authorities must have trembled for the result. The hosannas, borne on the breeze from the slope of Olivet, could not fail to sound ominous of coming disaster. So incontrovertible indeed had been the proof of Lazarus' resurrection, that only the most blinded bigotry could refuse to own in that marvellous act the divinity of Jesus. In addition, too, to this last crowning demonstration of omnipotence, there were hundreds, we ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... our estimate of Tolstoy's sweeping condemnation of so much of what has come to be regarded as classic beauty, the point he makes about the commercialization of art is incontrovertible. If art is an industry, the good is determined, as it were, by popular vote. The many must be pleased rather than the discriminating. While, as has been noted, aesthetic appreciation is fairly general, appreciation of the subtler forms of art requires training. The glaring, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... court whose "findings" are incontrovertible, and whose sessions are held in the chambers of ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... the note of fatalism. Here he has not only the wisdom of the East but the logic of the West on his side. Necessity is as incontrovertible to thought as it is incredible to feeling. But in the potent illusion of free-will (if illusion it be) rests all morality and all the admiration that we feel for good and evil deeds. Not even at Alan Seeger's bidding can we quite persuade ourselves that, when he ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... "Reflect, sir, that all France takes sides with M. Corneille, and that there is not one, perhaps, of the judges with whom it is rumored that you have come to an agreement, who has not praised that which you desire him to condemn; so that, though your arguments were incontrovertible and your adversary should acquiesce therein, he would still have the wherewith to give himself glorious consolation for the loss of his case, and be able to tell you that it is something more to have delighted a whole kingdom than to have written a piece according to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... political bias; or should there be nothing uttered by any speaker that may suit his purpose, these ear-trumpets will change the sounds of words and the construction of sentences in such a way as to be incontrovertible, although every syllable should be diverted from its original meaning and intention. They have also the power of larding a speech with "loud cheers," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... communities have been heard to comment in resentful and carping tones. There has probably never existed, in any age or at any spot on the earth's surface, a group of people that did not take for granted its own preeminent excellence. Upon some such assumption, as upon an incontrovertible axiom, all historical narratives, from the chronicles of a parish to the annals of an empire, alike proceed. But in New England it assumed a form especially apt to provoke challenge. One of its unintentional effects was the setting up of an unreal and impossible standard ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... said Elisabeth. "I shall prize it as an incontrovertible testimony to the fact that neither my tongue nor your nose are as sharp as tradition ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... course affected very much the credit of that Company in this country. Sedative announcements were issued by the Directors in London; brilliant accounts of the Company's affairs abroad were published; proof incontrovertible was given that the B. B. C. was never in so flourishing a state as at that time when Hobson Brothers had refused its drafts; there could be no question that the Company had received a severe wound and was deeply if not vitally injured by the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not ready.' The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and regarded her daughter with playful challenge. 'Because,' she continued, 'I didn't known when you were coming.' She gave a jerk with her arm, like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. 'But,' she added, after a tedious dramatic pause, 'I can soon have it ready. What ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... public conscience of New York, of the extirpation of the Indians, and a dozen different things, not only taking no heed of any opinions that his audience of two might hold, but insisting on their accepting his opinions as the expression of absolute and incontrovertible truth. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... except in the fourth Gospel), because he felt that in giving the Apostolic version with absolute or substantial accuracy, he was so weakening the miraculous element in connection with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ himself, that it became necessary to introduce an incontrovertible account of the resurrection of some other person, which should do, as ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let time be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other institutor of human life be comparable to that of a poet. That he is the wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally incontrovertible: the greatest poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men: and the exceptions, as they regard those who possessed the poetic faculty in a high yet inferior degree, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... anticipated. No ground, however, inconsistent with this expectation has yet been taken, and I do not allow myself to doubt that justice will soon be done us. The amount of the claims, the length of time they have remained unsatisfied, and their incontrovertible justice make an earnest prosecution of them by this Government an urgent duty. The illegality of the seizures and confiscations out of which they have arisen is not disputed, and what ever distinctions may have heretofore been set up ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of Wilts, he discovered that a farmer near Calne had been infected with the smallpox after having had the cow-pox, and that the disease in each instance was so strongly characterized as to render the facts incontrovertible. The cow-pox, it seems, from the doctor's information, was communicated to the farmer from his cows at the time that they gave out an offensive stench from ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... and exhibit motion. We may be as well satisfied, for all practical purposes, of the nature of water and of the office of the nerves as of the nature of a triangle; but the character of the evidence, on which the convincement is based, is essentially different; being, in the one case, incontrovertible and infallible; and, in the other, indecisive and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... name is somewhat familiar to the champions of Homoeopathy, has said that "the new healing art is not to be judged by its success in isolated cases only, but according to its success in general, its innate truth, and the incontrovertible nature of its ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... report recommended that, since repeal of the national laws was improbable, nullification by the States impracticable, and action by the Supreme Court unlikely, therefore the States should bring in the Africans as apprentices, a system the legality of which "is incontrovertible." "The only difficult question," it was said, "is the future status of the apprentices after the expiration of their term of servitude."[9] Debate on these propositions began in the afternoon. A brilliant speech on the ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... employed, there is the greatest danger of crime and outrage. Ireland is idle, and therefore she starves; Ireland starves, and therefore she rebels. We must choose between industry and anarchy: we must have one or the other in Ireland. This proposition I believe to be incontrovertible, and I defy the House to give peace and prosperity to that country until they set in motion her industry, create and diffuse capital, and thus establish those gradations of rank and condition by which the whole social fabric ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... confident of success, and wrote out a memoir full of incontrovertible reasons in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... whether any people being free could have selected such men as Petion, Tallien, Robespierre, Brissot, Carrier, Taillefer, &c. &c. from the whole nation to be their Representatives.—There must, in all large associations, be a mixture of good and bad; but when it is incontrovertible that the principal members of the Convention are monsters, who, we hope, are not to be paralleled— that the rest are inferior rather in talents than wickedness, or cowards and ideots, who have supported and applauded ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... introducing fire and sword through the country—if this statement, I say, be true, and I defy any part of it to be disproved, their guilt and the emptiness of the pretences by which they have endeavoured to screen it, are incontrovertible: ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... Instead of proceeding quietly and happily with her charming Maine story, Mrs. Stowe found it necessary to take notice in some manner of the cruel and incessant attacks made upon her as the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and to fortify herself against them by a published statement of incontrovertible facts. It was claimed on all sides that she had in her famous book made such ignorant or malicious misrepresentations that it was nothing short of a tissue of falsehoods, and to refute this she ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Ygerne Bellaire had been born in the same generation. . . . Stern-minded men of science, whose creed is to doubt all things until they are proven in such wise as an objective brain can accept them as incontrovertible, see no miracle in the fact that a certain female moth, left alone upon a mountain top, will draw to herself a male mate from mountainous miles away. Even in the insect world there is a silent call which is a voice of destiny. Omnipotence ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... have the top crust. There will be four hundred and seventy-five men and women present who can draw upon their training and deliver incontrovertible judgments concerning cheese, and leather, and cattle, and hardware, and soap, and tar, and candles, and patent medicines, and dreams, and apparitions, and garden trucks, and cats, and baby food, and warts, and hymns, and time-tables, and freight-rates, and summer ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... attentively, took the mass of documents which she had brought with her—Benjamin F. Butler's minority report, Francis Minor's resolutions, Judge Riddle's speech made in Washington in a similar case the year previous, various Supreme Court decisions, an incontrovertible array of argument—and told her he would give her an answer on Monday. She called then and he said: "My brother Samuel and I have spent an entire day in examining these papers and we believe that your claim to a right to vote under the Fourteenth ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... moved her foot angrily upon the carpet. She had almost forgotten M. D., but now he had reminded her of the note. She assured herself that she had never believed anything against him except on evidence that was incontrovertible. But she was not going to speak to him on such a matter as that! It would not become her to accuse him. "Mrs Arabin tells me that you doubt whether I am in earnest," ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... hydrogen gas, or an explosive mixture with atmospheric air, that explosion takes place inside and outside of the lamp; whereas, when the lamp has burnt sufficiently long to heat the wire gauze, no explosion takes place on the outside of the lamp. These experiments appear incontrovertible in support of his theory, which is, "that the wire gauze is merely the rapid receiver and the retainer of heat, and that it is the caloric in its meshes which prevents the flame of the lamp from being fed by the oxygen of the atmosphere on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... incontrovertible, I let the argument lapse, and sat quiet, luxuriating in the warmth, in the fresh breeze, in the feeling of bodily well-being that came with my returning strength. I got up and stretched, and my eyes fell on the small window of ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... difficult to effectively resist their courageous onslaught. Limited are our warlike resources, but we will continue this unjust, bloody, and unequal struggle, not for the love of war—which we abhor—but to defend our incontrovertible rights of Liberty and Independence (so dearly won in war with Spain) and our territory which is threatened by the ambitions of a party that is ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy
... better days, seemed seconded by a phalanx of ghostly beings, who had untimely passed away by means of fearful treatment, and by the living miseries of multitudes of shapeless deformed ones, who ever stood unpleasant and incontrovertible witnesses of the cruelties and ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... readily when air is taken in through the nostrils than when inspiration takes place through the mouth. That breath should be taken in through the nostrils is, like all rules in the correct physiology of voice-production, deduced from incontrovertible physical facts. It is, moreover, preventive of many affections of the lungs, bronchial tubes ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller |
