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More "Disproof" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sub-kingdoms of Invertebrate animals were all represented in Cambrian times—and it might therefore be inferred that these had all come simultaneously into existence; but it is clear that this inference, though incapable of actual disproof, is in the last degree improbable. Anterior to the Cambrian is the great series of the Laurentian, which, owing to the metamorphism to which it has been subjected, has so far yielded but the singular Eozooen. We may be certain, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... Every proof or disproof of statements continually made with regard to the extravagant titles assumed, or complacently received, by the bishops of Rome being both interesting and important, the inquiry of J.B. (Vol. ii., p. 167.) is well ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... Troilus cannot, on any showing, be assigned to the period of the war between Jonson and Dekker, in 1601-2), and it seems confuted by the facts and arguments already adduced in the discussion of the theatrical conflict (see pp. 213-219). If more direct disproof be needed, it may be found in Shakespeare's prologue to Troilus, where there is a good-humoured and expressly pacific allusion to the polemical aims of Jonson's Poetaster. Jonson had introduced into his play 'an armed prologue' on account, he asserted, of his enemies' menaces. Shakespeare, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the theory of abiogenesis may be taken as disproved. It must be noted, however, that this disproof relates only to known existing organisms. All these are composed of a definite substance, known as protoplasm (q.v.), and the modern refutation of abiogenesis applies only to the organic forms in which protoplasm now exists. It may be that in the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... biblical whipping boy. Whatsoever scientific investigation, historical or physical, proves to be erroneous, the "human element" bears the blame; while the divine inspiration of such statements, as by their nature are out of reach of proof or disproof, is still asserted with all the vigour inspired by conscious safety from attack. Though the proposal to treat the Bible "like any other book" which caused so much scandal, forty years ago, may not yet be ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... fortune, to the knight Was welcome to have found the gentle maid, Who the whole story of Geneura bright, And her unblemished innocence displayed; And, if he hoped, although accused with right, To furnish the afflicted damsel aid, Persuaded of the calumny's disproof, He with more courage warred ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... stand before us to be explained either by natural selection or by supernatural intention, we may first consider a statement which is frequently met with—namely, that even if all such cases of adaptation were proved to be fully explicable by the theory of descent, this would constitute no disproof of the theory of design: all the cases of adaptation, it is argued, might still be due to design, even though they admit of being hypothetically accounted for by the theory of descent. I have heard ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... fewer inhabitants.' Many nations, as he points out in general terms, have been most prosperous when most populous.[226] They could export food when crowded, and have ceased to import it when thinned. This, indeed, expresses his permanent views, though the facts were often alleged by his critics as a disproof of them. Was not the disproof real? Does not a real evasion lurk under the phrase 'tendency'? You may say that the earth has a tendency to fall into the sun, and another 'tendency' to move away from the sun. But it would be absurd to argue that we were therefore in danger of being ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... innate ideas, that is to say, ideas that we are born with, having had them previously imparted to us. The doctrine of innate ideas is one of the most admirable faiths of philosophy, being itself an innate idea and therefore inaccessible to disproof, though Locke foolishly supposed himself to have given it "a black eye." Among innate ideas may be mentioned the belief in one's ability to conduct a newspaper, in the greatness of one's country, in the superiority of one's civilization, in the importance of one's personal affairs ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... are not home-keeping soldiers. Every one of them has served over-seas, and it was a pity that their names and the record of their services were not printed in the programme, for it is a fine and inspiriting list, and a striking disproof of the old tradition that musicians must needs be long-haired, sallow and unathletic. Alert and young and vigorous they appealed to the eye as well as to the ear, and they played, as they fought, gloriously, these minstrel boys who had all gone to the War. Strings and woodwind, brass and percussion, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... what then? Those who deny it must furnish the disproof. The argument is founded on a principle which is now acknowledged to be universal; and the onus of disproof must lie with those who may be bold enough to take up the position that a region exists where at last the Principle of Continuity fails. To do this one would first ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... all. Now he was in the intermediate state of trying to ascertain which. From that state there are two and two only final ones to emerge: "I shall among them believe this one only;" or, "I shall among them believe—none." The constant discussion of some dogma and disproof of some dogma inevitably begets in a certain order of mind the temper to discuss and ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... that, in Jamie Telfer, Scott transferred the glory from the Elliots to the Scotts, and the shame from Buccleuch to Elliot of Stobs. The discussion leads us into very curious matter. But here, with our present materials, neither absolute proof nor disproof is possible. ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... The hymn called 'breath,' or haha, a hymn to the mystic wind, is pronounced by Maori priests at the moment of the initiation of young men in the tribal mysteries. It is a mere conjecture, and possibly enough capable of disproof, but we have a suspicion that the use of the mystica vannus Iacchi was a mode of raising a sacred wind analogous to that employed by whirlers ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... absolutely and necessarily wanting in support of the creation doctrine, and the only argument its advocates can advance is one that deals in negatives, and demands its acceptance on the ground that the opposite doctrine has not been proved. Such an argument is valueless. Disproof of one statement is never proof of another. Its effect is simply to leave both unproved, and neither, therefore, in condition for acceptance. In the present case the weight of disproof is small. The facts in support of the evolution hypothesis are ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... overlooked that, putting aside altogether the question of Beecher's guilt or innocence, the "statements" furnish sociological revelations of a most singular and instructive kind. The witnesses, in telling their story, although their minds are wholly occupied with the proof or disproof of certain propositions, describe ways of living, standards of right and wrong, traits of manners, codes of propriety, religious and social ideas, which, taken together, form social pictures of great interest and value. ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... offer appropriate observations and consequently has supplied their place with distracting smoothings of the bed-linen, elaborate locomotion on tiptoe, vigilant peeping at her kinsman's eyes, and one exasperating whisper to herself of, "He is asleep." In disproof of which superfluous remark Sir Leicester has indignantly written on the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Edmunds, Admiral Usborne Moore, the late Archdeacon Wilberforce, and such a cloud of other witnesses, can be dismissed with the empty "All rot" or "Nauseating drivel" formulae. As Mr. Arthur Hill has well said, we have reached a point where further proof is superfluous, and where the weight of disproof lies upon those who deny. The very people who clamour for proofs have as a rule never taken the trouble to examine the copious proofs which already exist. Each seems to think that the whole subject should begin de novo because ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 'twould have been downright disproof of God's providence and the bond of matrimony," responded ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... find a creature exhibiting complex and variously co-ordinated movements, and yet having no nervous system; he would be less astonished at the breach of his empirical generalization that all such creatures have nervous systems, than at the disproof of his unconscious deduction that all creatures exhibiting complex and variously co-ordinated movements must have an "internuncial" apparatus by which the co-ordination may be effected. Or were he to find a creature having blood rapidly circulated and rapidly aerated, but yet ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... "talking-shop," not a mere buying and selling shop for financial tips and official places. And as with any other artist, the care the eighteenth-century man expended on oratory is a proof of his sincerity, not a disproof of it. An enthusiastic eulogium by Burke is as rich and elaborate as a lover's sonnet; but it is because Burke is really enthusiastic, like the lover. An angry sentence by Junius is as carefully compounded as a Renascence poison; but it is because ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... prospect of justice, since if the defence is first disclosed the accuser may adjust details in the charge so as, at the last moment, to deprive the defence of that fair-play which the first order of hearing is designed to secure. The only possible disproof which Sir Charles could offer was an alibi. It was of vital importance to him that the accusation should be fixed to dates, places, days, hours, even minutes, with the utmost possible precision. Then he might, even after the lapse of years, establish the falsity ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... away from the rocks, and what she most wants of me is to keep at a safe distance with her—as I, for my own skin, only ask not to come nearer." After which, invariably, she let him have it all. "So far from wanting proof—which she must get, in a manner, by my siding with her—she wants DISproof, as against herself, and has appealed to me, so extraordinarily, to side against her. It's really magnificent, when you come to think of it, the spirit of her appeal. If I'll but cover them up brazenly enough, the others, so as to show, round ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... the disproof of such theorems may not appear to be of great consequence, yet the interdependence of mathematical theorems is most marvelous, and the mathematical investigator is attracted by such difficulties of long standing. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... of it in the Poems of Dryden, as published by Mr. Tonson in 1701, is no disproof of the claim which I advocate. The volume contains only twenty prologues and epilogues—but Dryden wrote twice ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... have thought it well to bring them together in pamphlet form. Indeed, the Darwinian movement and its present status are eminently deserving of consideration, especially on the part of those before whom Darwinism has hitherto always been held up triumphantly as a scientific disproof of the very foundations of the ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... pupil's manner that after all her pains her pupil didn't even yet adequately understand. Never so much as when confronted had Maisie wanted to understand, and all her thought for a minute centred in the effort to come out with something which should be a disproof of her simplicity. "Just TRUST me, dear; that's all!"—she came out finally with that; and it was perhaps a good sign of her action that with a long, impartial moan Mrs. Wix floated her ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... in the first principle of the utilitarian scheme, of perfect impartiality between persons, is regarded by Mr. Herbert Spencer (in his Social Statics) as a disproof of the pretentions of utility to be a sufficient guide to right; since (he says) the principle of utility presupposes the anterior principle, that everybody has an equal right to happiness. It may be more correctly described ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... somewhere seen it stated that Rodolph Gualter (minister at Zurich, and well known as a correspondent of our divines in the age of the Reformation) was a Scotchman. Will any of your correspondents oblige me by supplying either a reference for this statement, or a disproof of it—or both? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... might be other children not known to me who would expect some share in the modest estate; finding the property willed to Emily upon so tenuous a provision, they might easily charge that that provision had been broken, when proof and disproof would be equally difficult, and Mrs. Drainger's wish that her companion (despite her singular testament) be her sole heir would then not be met. The will simply provided that, should Emily forfeit her right to the property the estate should ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a normal explanation by fraud, therefore, is of no weight. He has to exaggerate the value, as disproof, of such discrepancies as occur in all human evidence on all subjects. He has to lay stress on the interval of five weeks between the events and the collection of testimony by himself. But contemporary accounts appeared in the local newspapers, and he ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... time it had failed. Saxe, as Stephen had said, had proved too much. He must make Saxe the scapegoat. The obvious lie damned him. It was crass stupidity to put into Hugues' mouth a lie which carried its own disproof with it. To force an accusation based upon the remainder of the story would be unpolitic. His best course would be to relieve the King of all his fears at Amboise. There was no plot, the Dauphin was ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the gentle maid, Who the whole story of Geneura bright, And her unblemished innocence displayed; And, if he hoped, although accused with right, To furnish the afflicted damsel aid, Persuaded of the calumny's disproof, He with more courage warred in ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Mammals made their appearance before Fishes. The sub-kingdoms of Invertebrate animals were all represented in Cambrian times—and it might therefore be inferred that these had all come simultaneously into existence; but it is clear that this inference, though incapable of actual disproof, is in the last degree improbable. Anterior to the Cambrian is the great series of the Laurentian, which, owing to the metamorphism to which it has been subjected, has so far yielded but the singular Eozooen. We may be certain, however, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... though unfortunately not very uncommon, nonsense. And as for the former, which may be called 'Logica Praepostera', I have read in metaphysical essays of no small fame, arguments drawn 'ab extra' in proof and disproof of personal identity, which, ingenious as they may be, were clearly anticipated by the little old woman's appeal to her little dog, for the solution of the very same doubts, occasioned by her petticoats having been ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... consultation. Has not some injury befallen the person of Ne[e]san? The ravings of this man in his drunken sleep, the vision of the sister, the face and garments all dyed with blood, cannot these find confirmation or disproof? In the embrace of this ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... investigation, historical or physical, proves to be erroneous, the "human element" bears the blame; while the divine inspiration of such statements, as by their nature are out of reach of proof or disproof, is still asserted with all the vigour inspired by conscious safety from attack. Though the proposal to treat the Bible "like any other book" which caused so much scandal, forty years ago, may not yet be generally accepted, and though Bishop Colenso's criticisms may still lie, formally, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... danger of Sterne's literary influence entirely to the sentimental side, and saw no occasion to censure an importation of Sterne's whimsies. Pank's ode on the death of Riepel, written partly in dashes and partly in exclamation points, is not a disproof of this assertion. Timme is not satirizing Sterne's whimsical use of typographical signs, but rather the Germans who misunderstood Sterne and tried to read a very peculiar and precious meaning into ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... was still a thoroughgoing if open minded skeptic; and to Lurancy Vennum must accordingly be given the credit of having brought him, so to speak, to the turning of the ways. Oddly enough too, scarce an effort has been made to assemble evidence in disproof of his findings in that case and to develop a purely naturalistic explanation of a mystery which his verdict went far to establish in the minds of many as a classic illustration of supernatural action. Yet, while ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... passes south of Franz Josef Land and Spitzbergen is quite as unreasonable a theory as that the ice-floe with the relics from the Jeannette drifted by this route. In further disproof of this assumption it may be stated that Siberian driftwood is found north of Spitzbergen in the strong southerly current, against which Parry fought ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... as he points out in general terms, have been most prosperous when most populous.[226] They could export food when crowded, and have ceased to import it when thinned. This, indeed, expresses his permanent views, though the facts were often alleged by his critics as a disproof of them. Was not the disproof real? Does not a real evasion lurk under the phrase 'tendency'? You may say that the earth has a tendency to fall into the sun, and another 'tendency' to move away from the sun. But it would be absurd to argue that we were therefore in danger of being burnt or of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... any one asks what test there is that this kind of sudden conversion is not from God, as instability and frequent change are the test, on the other hand, in disproof of the divinity of the conversions just now mentioned, I answer,—its moroseness, inhumanity, and unfitness for this world. Men who change through strong passion and anguish become as hard and as rigid as stone or iron; they are not fit for life; ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... prohibition by the Governor of the sale of arms and ammunition throughout the Cape Colony. It was feared that the Africanders might buy the goods and throw them across the border; it had been done. But information in disproof of this was forthcoming when the story reached us that a number of the Cape Dutch had risen in rebellion and needed the weapons for themselves! Kimberley's voice at once favoured the extreme penalty—death for high treason! ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
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