"Incontrovertible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is avowedly based on the principle that in this degenerate age the Veda is difficult to understand,[440] and that therefore God in His mercy has revealed other texts containing a clear compendium of doctrine. Thus the great Vishnuite doctor Ramanuja states authoritatively "The incontrovertible fact then is as follows: The Lord who is known from the Vedanta texts ... recognising that the Vedas are difficult to fathom by all beings other than himself ... with a view to enable his devotees to grasp the true meaning of the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... 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 ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... sympathized most feelingly with the colonel; they were unceasing in their invitations to drink, and they even exhibited considerable Christian forbearance when the colonel savagely dissented with every one who advanced any proposition, no matter how incontrovertible. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... part 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' ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Democrat that Whitman must have in the hatter. If you may say Admiral, he reasons, why may you not say Hatter? One man is as good as another, and it is the business of the "great poet" to show poetry in the life of the one as well as the other. A most incontrovertible sentiment, surely, and one which nobody would think of controverting, where—and here is the point—where any beauty has been shown. But how, where that is not the case? where the hatter is simply introduced, as God made him and as his fellow-men have miscalled him, at the crisis ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has been lost by this action of Lady Burton's? After carefully weighing the pros and cons we have come to the conclusion that the loss could not possibly have been a serious one. That Burton placed a very high value on his work, that he considered it his masterpiece, is incontrovertible, but he had formed in earlier days just as high an opinion of his Camoens and his Kasidah; therefore what he himself said about it has not necessarily any great weight. We do not think the loss serious for four reasons: First, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... century is of no more durable nature than that 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 a result ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... 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 ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... not refrain from stating that the necessity of applying for further funds was unexpected by each of them individually, as it is painful to them collectively. There are, however, reasons that in their opinion are incontrovertible which have led to an expenditure thus exceeding their estimate submitted to the Secretary of State ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... too much; and recovering himself Dexter was about to dash at his assailant when he stopped short, for an idea that seemed incontrovertible struck him so sharply that it drove away all thought of the brutal blow ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... that the only rational procedure is to begin by determining in what relation the copies stand to each other. For this purpose we adopt as our starting-point the incontrovertible axiom that all the copies which contain the same mistakes in the same passages must have been either copied from each other or all derived from a copy containing those mistakes. It is inconceivable that ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... a temporary repository for the clothing sent for the poor, till the fine new storehouse shall have been built. This old Guest House has been selected by our local apparition as a place of visitation. It is affirmed, on the incontrovertible testimony of the Prophet and no inconsiderable following, that the spirit returns of an evening to the old house he built forty years ago, to wander through the familiar rooms. The villagers see lights there nightly; and though all our investigation ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... Mocenigo beside whose tomb you have been standing; at his instance, and in the beginning of the reign of his successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This is not disputed; it is only disputed that the sea faade is earlier; of which, however, the proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible: for not only the masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower shaft, and that in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and lower arcade: the costumes of the figures introduced in the sea faade being purely ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... up this statement, for its truth was incontrovertible, and showed that the father's ill-will was too tangible a thing to ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... sunshine," said Oliver Saffren hesitatingly, stating a disconcerting but incontrovertible truth; "it only seems to look like it because—isn't it because it's so much brighter than the rest of the picture? I doubt if paint CAN look like sunshine." He turned from the sketch, caught Keredec's gathering frown, and his face flushed ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... of the Paris Academie de Medecin,1864, 1865, and 1868; and Dr. H. Gaillard, in the last edition (1868) of the Dictionnaire de Medecine et de Chirurgie Pratique. All the statements in the text are supported with incontrovertible evidence by these writers. If we are asked how to meet the seemingly alarming array of allegations by Dr. Bemiss, the Kentucky physician referred to in the Transactions of the American Medical Association for 1859, we would refer to Dr. Behrend's articles, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... made explicit both about Christ's relation to us and about the relation of sin and death. But the important thing, to begin with, is not to define these relations, but to look through the words to the broad reality which is interpreted in them. What they tell us, and tell us on the basis of an incontrovertible experience, is that the forgiveness of sins is for the Christian mediated through the death of Christ. In one respect, therefore, there is nothing singular in the forgiveness of sins: it is in the same position as every other blessing ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... 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
... his panel at any moment, have been a matter of much credit to his young pupil. The first point of any real interest is Lord Lindsay's confirmation of Foerster's attribution of the Campo Santo Life of Job, till lately esteemed Giotto's, to Francesco da Volterra. Foerster's evidence appears incontrovertible; yet there is curious internal evidence, we think, in favor of the designs being Giotto's, if not the execution. The landscape is especially Giottesque, the trees being all boldly massed first with dark brown, within ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... not fallacious in your opinion. You acknowledge the minor to be Scripture. You have not found four terms in my premises, nor charged my major or minor with the least fault in matter or form, and yet, forsooth, you deny the conclusion, and do not admit that incontrovertible maxim in logic, Ex veris nil nisi verum; or, as Kekerman hath it, Ex veris praeemissis falsam conclusionem colligi est impossibile,(1357)—It is impossible that a false conclusion should be gathered from true premises. Now let us hear what he would say against my conclusion;—it is concerning ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... in abundance the matter of contagion which has given rise to it, so, therefore, must the breath of the affected have been poisonous in this plague, and on this account its power of contagion wonderfully increased; wherefore the opinion appears incontrovertible, that owing to the accumulated numbers of the diseased, not only individual chambers and houses, but whole cities were infected, which, moreover, in the Middle Ages, were, with few exceptions, narrowly built, kept in a ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... Mr. Forrest proved of infinitely more value than the accomplished tutor. The former, an officer reared with deep regard for established law and order, accepted the situation as a fact, the laws as incontrovertible, and considered himself and friends, although involuntarily, as the offenders. The German-American scholar, on the contrary, spent fruitless hours in striving to argue the officials out of their stand and in preaching a crusade against the laws they were sworn ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... scholar who may be here present to set me right, that is, to show me wrong: Napoleon the destroyer of cities, being a destroying lion! Now I should like to know a more sure word of prophecy than that! Would any one in the company oblige me? I take that now for an incontrovertible"—he stammered over this word—"proof of the truth of the Bible. But I am wandering from my subject, which error, I pray you, ladies and gentlemen, to excuse, for I am no longer what I was in the prime of youth's rosy morn—come, I must get on! Change ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... and one day found him sitting with a strange solemnity in the library with Marx and Henry George in front of him. Pelle knew something about this subject too, but this was nevertheless like drawing up a net from the deep; a brilliant world of wonders came up with it. There were incontrovertible logical proofs that he had a right apprehension, though it had been arrived at blindly. The land of fortune was big enough for all; the greater the number that entered it, the larger did it become. He felt a desire to hit out again and strike a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... been seen. Tempests happen sometimes there, as in other seas, but let them feel assured that there are in every month of the year many days in which the whale fishery may be safely carried on. The evidence of the abundance in which spermaceti whales are sometimes seen is incontrovertible: that which speaks to their being 'not fish of passage' is at least respectable and hitherto uncontradicted. The prospect merits attention—may it ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... This was incontrovertible logic, and the two outlaws drawing apart conferred with each other softly, while I debated what I should do. The casement was a double one, but I felt sure I could drive a bullet through one of them. Still, even in the circumstances it looked too much like murder, and to this day I have never ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... 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; and more conclusively, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... 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 actions ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... sky-blue crape, a gauze azure scarf twisted in her hair!!" No lady, we understand, when suddenly roused in the night, would think of hurrying on "a frock." They have garments more convenient for such occasions, and more becoming too. This evidence seems incontrovertible. Even granting that these incongruities were purposely assumed, for the sake of disguising the female pen, there is nothing gained; for if we ascribe the book to a woman at all, we have no alternative but to ascribe it to one who has, for some sufficient reason, long forfeited the society ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the South are of two kinds, viz., male and female. Much as has been said of the jackass pro and con, I do not remember ever to have seen the above statement in print before, and yet it is as trite as it is incontrovertible. In the Rocky mountains we call this animal the burro. There he packs bacon, flour and salt to the miners. The miners eat the bacon and flour, and with the salt they are enabled successfully ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... people don't love me," said Phoebe, as if it were a fact, sad, indeed, but incontrovertible. "Only ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... a young fellow of the huerta whom she had never seen again... an indiscretion committed one evening... she no longer remembered. No, she could not remember!... And she insisted upon this forgetfulness as if it were an incontrovertible excuse. ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... not discussing the value of shorter working hours, she was pointing out that "equal pay" cannot rule for an entire group of workers when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to the whole body. We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. Pay is not equal, and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal. Protection for the woman worker means exactly what it would mean for the alien man if by law he were forbidden to work Saturday ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... matter) he did not think at first that he should be called upon for the original: perhaps he was limited in a point of time, and could not fabricate it by the day that the new bridge was opened at Bristol. —But there is no end of such speculations. Facts are clear and incontrovertible. Whatever might have been the cause of his delay, it is not denied that he acknowledged this forgery to his friend Mr. Ruddall; conjuring him at the same time not to reveal the secret imparted to him. If this had been a mere ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... to ascertain the validity of these three propositions, let us examine the different states in which mankind have been known to exist. Even a cursory review will, I think, be sufficient to convince us that these propositions are incontrovertible truths. ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... say or do to get rid of it, there it is—staring them in the face! Whether they look amongst the most highly civilized peoples or amongst the lowest savages; whether they look into the past history of mankind or into its present condition, there is the stupendous fact of sin, and there is the incontrovertible fact that everywhere men are ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... by agreement with the United States representatives, announced that it ran where no one had ever suggested it could run, north of two and south of two, thus dividing the land in dispute. The islands were of little importance even strategically, but the incontrovertible evidence that instead of a judicial finding a political compromise had been effected was held of much importance. After a time the storm died down, but it revealed one unmistakable fact: Canadian nationalism was growing fully as fast ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... business-like, and 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 ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... dollars a year; and the manner of the demand, for the necessities of their daughter, showed his sharpened perceptions that she had never really experienced the blindness of a generous emotion. Eunice, the child, was incontrovertible proof of that—no more than an additional lever ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... shown a lack of respect for the Supreme Court, which had already decided the question at issue by a vote of eight to one. Mr. Justice White, then on the Court and now Chief Justice, set forth the position that the two cases were in principle identical with incontrovertible logic. In giving the views of the dissenting minority on the action I had ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... 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 instances are on record ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... 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 ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... were madmen. Dr. Farmer's essay upon the Learning of Shakespeare is, in respect to the materials, arguments, and conclusions—what the late Bishop of Salisbury's [Douglas] was upon Miracles—original, powerful, and incontrovertible. Never was there an octavo volume, like Farmer's upon Shakespeare—which embraced so many, and such curious, points, and which displayed such research, ingenuity, and acuteness—put forth with so little ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... as an incontrovertible principle, that in this country the people are the superintendants of the conduct and measures of those by whom government is administered; of the beneficial effect of which the present reign afforded an illustrious example, when addresses from all parts of the kingdom ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... up her eyes in wonder and indignation at a proof so incontrovertible of his falsehood, ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... incontrovertible. They are not sought to be controverted, except, indeed, by the invention and circulation of such wanton falsehoods as that France was contemplating, and even commencing, the violation of Belgian territory as a first step on her road to Germany. The result is that we are at ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... 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 by which to judge ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... 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 was compelled to write a "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," in which should appear the sources from ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... a better opinion concerning their moral obligations in the work of education. It must also be admitted that the changes in school government have been favorable to learning and virtue. For, while it is not assumed that all schools are, or can be, controlled by moral means only, it is incontrovertible that a government of mild measures is superior to one of force. This superiority is as apparent in morals as in scholarly acquisitions. It is rare that a teacher now boasts of his success over his pupils in physical contests; but such claims were ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... expended this rent in a manner contrary to, and utterly inconsistent with, all law and order and the constitution of the country." No member of either House denied the accuracy of this description of the Association's proceedings. And if it were correct, it was incontrovertible that the denunciation of it as an utterly unconstitutional body was not too strong. Indeed, the fact of its "levying a tax" upon a portion of the King's subjects (to say nothing of the intimidation, amounting to compulsion, by which, as was notorious, it was in many instances exacted) was ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... revelation and his reduction of Christianity to what he called its "natural" and hence incontrovertible basis carried with it a corollary, that of man's absolute right to religious enquiry and profession. Here he became specific, borrowing from Lockean empiricism his conditions of intellectual assent. "Evidence," he said, "ought to be the ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... perhaps strengthens 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 sense. Science is the destroyer ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... the diary of the Master of Ceremonies constitute an incontrovertible document, an irrefutable testimony against the charges of poisoning when taken in conjunction with the evidence of fact afforded by the length of ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... 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 ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... first and absolutely incontrovertible conclusion is that this theory of successive ages must be a gross blunder, in its baleful effects on every branch of modern thought deplorable beyond computation. But it is now perfectly obvious that the geological distinctions as to age between the fossils are ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... German investigators. Nothing has been added to our original findings; nothing has been contradicted of what we have reported, and to-day, after nearly thirteen years, the truths that we uncovered stand incontrovertible; besides, they have been the means of driving out yellow fever from Cuba, the United States (Laredo, Texas, 1903 and New Orleans, La., 1905), British Honduras ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... her enemy, who, moreover, had but recently been commissioned; but, as has justly been remarked of some of the victories of our own ships over those of the British in the War of 1812, although there was disparity of forces, the precision and rapidity with which the work was done bore incontrovertible testimony to the skill and training of the captain and crew. Single combats, such as this, were rare between vessels of the size of the Foudroyant and Pegase, built to sail and fight in fleets. That one occurred here was due ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... great hope. From the first 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
... and Mr. Sutherland, turning towards the English barrister, exclaimed, "This explains everything! This will make our case absolutely incontrovertible; but, first, we must secure that man at all hazards and at any cost just as quickly as possible; think what a ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... 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 be prevented life can be prolonged far beyond the farthest now known. It is incontrovertible ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... and there, with undaunted front, meet his accusers; while I was to proceed to Transit and Lionise, and having instructed them in the story we had planned, meet him at the place of skulls, fully prepared to establish, by the most incontrovertible and consistent evidence, that we were not the aggressors in the row. A little persuasion was necessary to convince both our friends that their presence would be essential to Echo's acquittal; they had too many just ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the six first centuries, the prodigies of the Lives of the Saints are noticed by numerous authors of all countries, whose talents, learning, probity, holiness, and dignity, render them respectable to the most searching critics. They are supported by incontrovertible evidence, by juridical depositions, by authentic acts, and by splendid monuments which have been erected to their memory by bishops, princes, magistrates, cities and kingdoms to perpetuate the recollections of these splendid achievements. We find that the saints ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... the slaves, and the barbarities inflicted upon them. Mr. Weld thought the state of the abolition cause demanded a work which would not only prove by argument that slavery and cruelty were inseparable, but which would contain a mass of incontrovertible facts, that would exhibit the horrid brutality of the system. Nearly all the papers, most of them of recent date, from which the extracts were taken, were deposited at the office of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, and all who thought the atrocities ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... be was the question for Hamlet to settle. It is no longer our question, at least, not in the same sense. When it is a question of death, the fashionable young suicide declares that his self-destruction is the final proof of his own incontrovertible being. And as for not-being in our public life, we have achieved it as much as ever we want to, as much as is necessary. Whilst in private life there is a swing back to paltry selfishness as a creed. And in the war there is the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... one day," he said, mournfully, as if quietly accepting the incontrovertible fact. "I told you once, and I yet trust, that the day may dawn wherein my Lady's heart shall come home to ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... "These are incontrovertible facts, and they find their application to the existing European situation in various ways, the most important of which will appear in the discovery that, valuable as conventions and covenants of nation with nation may be, and intolerable as any violation of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... now, and depressed with grave forebodings—frightened by terrors that are of the mind and that put at naught all that my mind has ever conceived. Form is mutable. This is the last word of positive science. The dead do not come back. This is incontrovertible. The dead are dead, and that is the end of it, and of them. And yet I have had experiences here—here, in this very room, at this very desk, that—But wait. Let me put it down in black and white, in words simple and unmistakable. Let me ask some questions. Who mislays ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... 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, and fourteenth verse, and onward to ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... particulars of these voyages, and of the countries he and his brother had visited, on a map, which he brought with him to Venice, and which he hung up in his house as a sure pledge and incontestible proofs of the truth of his relations, and which still remained as an incontrovertible evidence in the time of Marcolini. Many have been inclined to reject the whole of this narrative because the names which it assigns to several of the countries are nowhere else to be found. After having carefully examined, and made a translation of the whole, I am fully convinced that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... legislation is that which best harmonises with human nature. It may be, of course, that even when we have such a criterion we may, for want of "light" or of logic, fail to solve this problem of the best legislation. Errare humanum est, but it seems incontrovertible that this problem can be solved, that we can, by taking our stand upon an exact knowledge of human nature, find a perfect legislation, a ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... having drawn up, from the supposed evidence of Walpole's works alone, a character of their author so entirely and offensively unlike the original, has forced the pen into the feeble and failing hand of the writer of these pages,-has imposed the pious duty of attempting to rescue, by incontrovertible facts, acquired in long intimacy, the memory of an old and beloved friend, from the giant grasp of an author and a critic from whose judgment, when deliberately formed, few can hope to appeal with success. The candour, the good-nature ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... makers were actively working in the German cause. Nor can there be any doubt that the brilliant campaign in Palestine prevented British and French influence declining among the Mahomedan populations of those countries' respective spheres of control in Africa. Indeed I regard it as incontrovertible that the Palestine strategy of General Allenby, even apart from his stupendous rush through Syria in the autumn of the last year of war, did as much to end the war in 1918 as the great battles on the Western Front, for if there had been failure or check in Palestine ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... 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 diatribes of the island "Borneo" appear to me far more inadmissible ...
— 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
... 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 Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... town, the cathedral, the Roman wall fortunately escaped with only a few chance shell holes here and there. The black scar runs through the place from end to end, incontrovertible instance of the German thing, which has been visited by thousands of French and foreigners the past year. The wounds of Senlis are not deep: by comparison with much else done by the Germans they are almost trivial. The murder ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... observations and the arrangement of observations into the perilous regions of metaphysics. Most scientific men return quickly, repelled and perhaps a little scared by the baffling confusion of that windy region of thought where no rules of logic seem incontrovertible, no conclusions tenable, and no discussions profitable. Huxley, however, not only entered into metaphysical questions with enthusiasm, but gave a great deal of time to the study of some of the great metaphysical writers. His views are to be found scattered through very many of his ordinary scientific ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... and hid it in her bosom; sat for a few minutes in deep and placid thought, took the letter out of its receptacle, and read it over and over again. It was very bad Spanish, and very absurd, but she thought it delightful, poetical, classical, sentimental, argumentative, convincing, incontrovertible, imaginative and even grammatical; for if it was not good Spanish, there was no Spanish half so good. Alas! Agnes was indeed unsophisticated, to be in such ecstasies with a midshipman's love letter. Once more ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... epistle, although a most reasonable and manly statement of an incontrovertible fact, was nevertheless a document which it required much boldness to sign. The minister at that moment seemed omnipotent, and it was obvious that the King was determined upon a course of political and religious absolutism. It is, therefore, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... as if life had issued with the secret of his life. Wonderful varying expressions had marked his features and the tones of his voice, while he was uttering that sharp, succinct confession; so that, strange as it sounded, every sentence fixed itself on her with incontrovertible force, and the meaning of the whole flashed through her mind. It struck her too awfully for speech. She held fast to his nerveless hand, and kneeling before him, listened for his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... suffering are the mysterious sorrows that we must experience and pay to a tyrant God for the existence we bear. It is incontrovertible that no realization is given us by Nature of the fearful pains and tortures that we are capable of suffering and still sustain ourselves, only to repeat over and over again the unending torment in exchange for the consciousness ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... have adduced another incontrovertible argument in favour of this view by appealing to the statement, given in the above quotation, of the existence on Inchcolm, in Boece's time, of Danish sepulchral monuments, provided we felt assured that this statement was in itself perfectly correct. But before adopting it as such, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... Binks, that the proposition is incontrovertible; any thing that is worth doing is worth ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a great man," finished Suzanna, simply as always when stating this incontrovertible fact. "And his Machine's nearly ready now for the world to ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... expert at detecting inconsistency wherever it existed. He won many of his lawsuits by the straightforward method of showing that the one or two vital statements on which the whole case of the opposition rested were false, inasmuch as they were inconsistent with well-established and incontrovertible facts. An instance of ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... knowledge and sincerity. 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 the point of handling them as nimbly as a bank clerk handles the figures of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... 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 been rendered useless and valueless, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... exclusively to the States. Here again we are met with the theory that the Government of the United States does not rest upon the soil and territory of the country. We think that this theory is founded on an entire misconception of the nature and powers of that Government. We hold it to be an incontrovertible principle that the Government of the United States may, by means of physical force, exercised through its official agents, execute on every foot of American soil the powers and functions that belong to it. This necessarily involves the power to command obedience ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... artificial style," continued Ellison, "are less objectionable. A mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. This is just; as also is the reference to the sense of human interest. The principle expressed is incontrovertible—but there may be something beyond it. There may be an object in keeping with the principle—an object unattainable by the means ordinarily possessed by individuals, yet which, if attained, would lend a charm to the landscape-garden far surpassing that which a sense of merely ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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 ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... highest sense; that power of execution which creates, forms, and constitutes: not the profoundness of single thoughts, not the richness of imagery, not the abundance of illustration." Assuredly, no "new definition" can be an effective one which conflicts with Goethe's incontrovertible dictum. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... behold a thousand evidences of a Creator denied to a blind man; and in the same way the man who knows most of the material world should see the most conclusive evidences of design and a Designer. The humblest blade of grass preaches an incontrovertible sermon. What force is it that brings it up, green and beautiful, out of the black, dead earth? Who made it succulent and filled it full of the substances that will make flesh and blood and bone for millions of gentle, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... this picture, the ordinary man will say, "If such ugliness as that exists, I don't want to see it. Why paint such subjects?" And at least the first part of this criticism seems to me to be quite incontrovertible. I can imagine no valid reason for the portrayal of so much ugliness; and, what is more important, I can find among the unquestioned masters no slightest precedent for the blank realism of this picture. The ordinary man's aversion to such ugliness seems to me to be entirely right, and I only ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... will not do to treat it lightly. It is a statement of what international law is on this point from an authority; and the reasons for the doctrine are clear and incontrovertible. Neutrality depends on the fact of war; when, for any cause, that fact no longer exists, neutrality ceases likewise, of course. It is only the application of a well-known maxim of law, that when the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... labored strenuously to make the truth known, and to vindicate our cause. Amid a mob of ignorant and furious foes of freedom, France has seen a Gasparin rise calm and great in superior knowledge, declaring incontrovertible truths; and in like manner, the English press has given the views of Stewart Mill and Professor Cairnes to their public, at a time when it seemed as if falsehood had completely triumphed. In 'The Slave Power,' the latest work by this last-named writer, we have indeed such a searching analysis ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... contagious or not? have made a report 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... believe that none of them have fully developed the phenomena of human spontaneity. Even Edwards ridicules the idea of the faculty or power of will, or the soul in the use of that power determining its own volitions. Now, we hold it to be an incontrovertible fact, and one of great importance, that the true determining cause of every given volition is not any mere anterior incitement, but the very soul itself, by its inherent power of will."(38) Surely, the author of such a passage cannot be accused of being afraid ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... not solemn and terrible, Lelia? Within the dried-up entrails of a human corpse the inquisitive glance of our century discovered the papyrus, that mysterious and sacred monument of man's eternal power—the still dark but incontrovertible witness of the imposing duration of creation. Our eager hand unrolls those perfumed bandages, those frail and indissoluble shrouds at which destruction stopt short. These bandages that once enfolded a corpse, these manuscripts that have ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... have told you that I will appoint you as minister only when you give me incontrovertible proofs that your conspiracies are not the fabric ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Austin was having his revenge on Aunt Charlotte for the torrent of abuse she had poured upon him a few minutes previously. For a short time she sat quite still, the picture of perplexity and irritation. The facts as Austin stated them were incontrovertible, and yet—probably because she lacked the instinct of causality—she could not accept his explanation of them. There are some people in the world who are constituted like this. They create a mental ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... which were nearly all those of women and children, side by side with which lay others of ruminants belonging to species still extant. All these bones bad alike been subjected to great heat, and none but those which bad contained no marrow were left unbroken. This appears an incontrovertible proof of cannibalism, and Dr. Spring concludes that it was certainly practised by the earliest inhabitants of Belgium. We must add, however, that other excavations in the same cave at Chauvaux prove that it was used as a burial-place, some skeletons being ranged in regular order with weapons and ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... persons unfamiliar with the true facts of history have believed that Joseph was a purely apocryphal infant, or, as some have suggested, merely an adopted child; but that Napoleon did upon this occasion content himself with second place is an incontrovertible fact. Nor is it entirely unaccountable. It is hardly to be supposed that a true military genius, such as Napoleon is universally conceded to have been, would plunge into the midst of a great battle without first ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... Education League made definite inquiry, in 1915, of teachers and schools. They pronounced the results to be disappointing, though they comforted themselves with the incontrovertible dictum that "the people who are doing most have least time to talk about it." As the result of their inquiry, they drew up a statement of the aims of civics which in general and in detail differed little from the ideas accepted ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... something away from before her. He had become pale and there was a light in his eyes. He felt angry at this girl who had shown herself ready to argue with him,—in her girlish fashion, of course,—and who, after listening to his incontrovertible arguments, fell back resolutely upon a platitude, and considered that she had got ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... open to endless misconceptions, they will doubtless give rise to a number of crude criticisms: for in these things, every one thinks, when he takes up his pen, that whatever comes into his head is worth saying and printing, and quite as incontrovertible as that twice two make four. If such a one would take the pains, as I have done, to think over the subject, for years, and to compare his ideas with military history, he would certainly be a little more guarded in ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... was in a certain law school an aged and eccentric professor. "General information" was the old gentleman's hobby. He held it as incontrovertible that if a young lawyer possessed a large fund of miscellaneous knowledge, combined with an equal amount of common sense, he would be successful in life. So every year the professor put on his examination papers a question very far removed ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... have incontrovertible proof (of the external kind) that the one and only Mr. G. K. CHESTERTON is the author of The Flying Inn (METHUEN). Otherwise I should have judged, by internal evidence, that it was the work of an inferior writer of the same name as himself, and, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... 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 ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... remarkable that, if narrated in a history, they would put a severe strain on belief. But the evidence for them is incontrovertible; for no man, writing to people about their own condition, invents a mythical description of their circumstances; and besides, Paul was writing to restrain rather than encourage these manifestations. They show with what mighty force, at its first entrance into ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... 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
... mask of Protestant candour, he actually gained admission for his treatise into a London weekly paper, not particularly distinguished for its zeal towards either religion. But, admitting Catholic principles, his arguments are shrewd and incontrovertible. [Then follows a quotation from Hazlitt setting forth the Catholic standpoint.] It is impossible, upon Catholic principles, not to admit the force of this reasoning; we can only not help smiling (with the writer) at the simplicity of the gulled editor, swallowing ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... reading has introduced you to a hotch-potch of new ideas and opinions; you have made a certain acquaintance with researches that are going on in various directions—researches that seem to you to upset a good many ideas that people have hitherto considered incontrovertible and unassailable. But all this has never gone any further than knowledge in your case, Miss West—a mere matter of the intellect. It has not got ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen |
