"Certitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I read the letter, I just knew he would do it. Why, I could even see the sparkle of the ring on my finger. But in five minutes after the letter was folded and put away, I knew, with equal certitude—that he wouldn't. ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... their account with it, and must show cause why they should be judged competent to balk any attempted offensive. In an inarticulate or inchoate fashion, perhaps, but none the less with ever-increasing certitude and increasing apprehension, this state of the case is also coming to be an article of popular "knowledge and belief," wherever much or little thought is spent on the outlook for peace. It has already had a visible effect in diminishing ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... however, assumes the completeness of a record whose silence on this point cannot be pressed as conclusive. It is, indeed, unlikely that Jesus knew all that medical men now know. But awareness of any fact may be in varying degrees from serious suspicion up to positive certitude. While far from positiveness, awareness may exist in a degree that gives courage for resolute effort resulting in clear and full verification. Jesus may have been ignorant of the objective reality of Lazarus's condition, and yet have been very hopeful of being empowered by the divine ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... home,—to go through it all, just for the idea, and yet be alone here, just as I was before, without my husband after all,—with none of the good of him,"—and here Georgina looked at her hostess as if with the certitude that such an enumeration of inconveniences would touch her effectually,—"really, Mrs. Portico, I am bound to say I don't think that would be worth while; I haven't ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... flung this challenge forth to the whole group, then leaned back in his deck chair, sipping lemonade with an air commingled of certitude and watchful belligerence. Nobody made answer. They were used to the little man and his sudden passions and ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... or was to be, Save only death imperial. Thou and he Who has the heart of all men's hearts for lyre, Ye twain, being great of spirit as time is great, And sure of sight as truth's own heavenward eye, Beheld the forms of forces passing by And certitude of equal-balanced fate, Whose breath forefelt makes darkness palpitate, And knew that light should live and ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... come from abroad; the French passion for opposing, for struggling;—and beneath it all the large French indifference to the problem of evil (or whatever you like to call it), the changeless French content in certitude, upon which ease, indeed, as upon a rock, the Church of Gaul has permanently ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... that the doors of Paradise were open wide. Mr. Snyder, as Henry perceived, was apt unwittingly to give the impression that he, and not his clients, earned the wealth upon which he received ten per cent. commission. But Henry was not for a single instant blind to the certitude that, if his next book realized two thousand pounds, the credit would be due to himself, and to no other person whatever. Henry might be tongue-tied in front of Mark Snyder, but he was capable of estimating with some precision their relative ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... is a part of Nature, and Nature is governed by eternal and immutable laws. It must be just as possible, therefore, to apply the mathematical method to man, as it is to apply it to matter. It must be possible to determine, with the certitude obtainable in the exact sciences, what things are good for man and what means he has ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... Pitris. He also goeth to everlasting hell who though in possession of wealth, never giveth away nor enjoyeth himself from avarice, saying, he hath none.' The Yaksha asked,—'By what, O king, birth, behaviour, study, or learning doth a person become a Brahmana? Tell us with certitude!' Yudhishthira answered,—'Listen, O Yaksha! It is neither birth, nor study, nor learning, that is the cause of Brahmanahood, without doubt, it is behaviour that constitutes it. One's behaviour should always be well-guarded, especially by a Brahmana. He who maintaineth his conduct ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... would not send it; but at length Word being brought her that the child indeed No longer suffered, nor desired the breast, Her peace returned, and, giving thanks to God, All were united in new bonds of hope. Now being fixed in certitude of death, We stripped our souls of all their earthly gear, The useless raiment of this world; and thus, Striving together with a single will, In daily increment of faith and power, We were much comforted by heavenly dreams, And waking visitations of God's ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... rendre nulle une partie des forces de l'ennemi afin de reunir toutes les siennes contre celles qui l'on attaque, ou qui attaquent; et de vaincre ensuite le reste avec plus de facilite et de certitude. ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... before touching the sacred soil which I had taken so long to reach, and I longed to be able to drink its health; but though I had gone, I suppose, ten miles, and though the heat was increasing, I would not stop; for I remembered the two francs, and my former certitude of reaching Milan was shaking and crumbling. The great heat of midday would soon be on me, I had yet nearly thirty miles to go, and my bad ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... glancing along the lines before he removed the screen and called another eye to behold. He had drawn them up, with their banners, to fill Geoffrey, at once, with his own confidence and knowledge—for it was knowledge and certitude, not opinion ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the hitch of our adventure; for when the policeman, still closely following us, beheld my two boxes lying in the rain, he arose from mere suspicion to a kind of certitude of something evil. The light in the house had been extinguished; the whole frontage of the street was dark; there was nothing to explain the presence of these unguarded trunks; and no two innocent people were ever, I believe, detected in such ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heavier. On my long ride from Antwerp, with the buoyancy of youth, I had passed through all the phases from anguished fear to the almost certitude of hope, and I had entered Paris feeling sure that I would find my father well again when I should reach America. I had entered Paris also joyous with the thought of seeing mademoiselle once more, ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... such little dramas, which in no way affected the tenderness of their hearts, these two beings adored each other with the presentiment and, gradually, the cruel certitude of an approaching separation, when suddenly there occurred in Felicia's life a horrible event. One day, Jenkins had taken her to dine at his house, as often happened. Mme. Jenkins was away on a couple of days' visit, as also ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... brings night upon us may leave the stars with us. Cimourdain was full of virtues, full of truths, but they shone in the midst of darkness" (i. 123). If the aristocrat had rigidity, so had the Jacobin. "Cimourdain had the blind certitude of the arrow, which only sees the mark and makes for it. In revolution, nothing so formidable as the straight line. Cimourdain strode forward with fatality in his step. He believed that in social genesis the very extreme point must always be solid ground, an error peculiar to minds that for reason ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... with the now perfected compound has been put off one more day. F is completely calm and confident of the outcome. She is below now, making lastminute preparations. For the first time she has infected me with her certitude—although I never doubted ultimate success—and I feel tomorrow will actually see the beginning of the end for the Grass which started so long ago on Mrs Dinkman's lawn. How far I and the world have ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... on his neckerchief, questioned him closely. The coward fumbling at an answer, she was presently convinced of his guilt, and forthwith denounced him for a member of the gang to M. Pacome, an officer of the Guard. Straightly did M. Pacome summon Du Chtelet, and, assuming his guilt for certitude, bade him surrender his captain. 'My friend,' said he, 'I know you for an associate of Cartouche. Your hands are soiled with murder and rapine. Confess the hiding-place of Cartouche, or in twenty-four hours you are broken on the wheel.' ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... guns in concealed positions. In addition they perfected the mobility of even the heaviest of pieces, so that it became impossible for observation from the Franco-British ships or from aeroplanes to locate them with any certitude. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... bows to them with respect; those earnings that permit one to fall ill, to face old age and death without apprehension, the assurance the children shall want for nothing, shall have a proper education—the certitude that the two little rooms occupied can really be called home; that the furniture so carefully waxed and polished is one's own forever. Bah! what terrors can lack of work, food shortage, or war hold for such people? ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... kill me. The definition of the cause was vague, but the thought itself was no mere morbid artificiality of sentiment but a genuine conviction. "That sort of thing" was what I would have to die from. It wouldn't be from the innumerable doubts. Any sort of certitude would be also deadly. It wouldn't be from a stab—a kiss would kill me as surely. It would not be from a frown or from any particular word or any particular act—but from having to bear them all, together and in succession—from having to live with "that sort of thing." About the ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... devastation of death's inroads. As he brought the Christian faith to bear upon the problem, he imparted by clarity of thought and eloquence of words as well as by accent and genuineness of emotion that certitude which is possible only for one who himself possesses that which he proclaims. This sermon was a notable example of Phillips Brooks' definition of preaching, "Truth conveyed through personality." The few notes here included give only a glimmer of the range of his thought, and do not adequately ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... do not ridicule two children who love each other with a passion which is true and pure, because it is founded upon a knowledge of each other's character; on the certitude of their mutual ardor in conquering the difficulties of life; in a word, of two children who will also cherish ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... "experience" with him does not mean enthusiastic visions and raptures. He puts as little value on ecstasies and emotional vapourings as he does on dialectic. Ecstasies lead men as often on false trails as on right tracks. They supply no criterion of certitude; they furnish no concrete ideas or ideals to live by; but still further, they do not bring all the deep-lying powers of the soul into play as any true source of religion must do. He is striving to find a foundation-principle for the spiritual life which shall not be capricious ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... let us be true To one another! for the world which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... may be given to some of those unusuall Chances that sometimes produce the most surprizing effects. Besides altho the vivacity and force of imagination be easily admitted into the relations of the Languages, and leaves there forcible impressions, yet it neither warrants certitude, nor dislodgeth confusion; 'tis reason alone that establisheth the mind in its cognizances, and credits all its conceptions with order, tis that alone which perfects the combination of all their relations and agreements according to the naturall connexion which they have with the same principles ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... 'Tis to me A thunder storm in stone, with Sinai flare Across the Ages. 'Tis the Fiend's despair And the Arch-angel's Triumph. It sets free The mind and soul with certitude, Christ's key Which, like the Sun, opes Heaven—the Good and Fair. Still, oft, what darkness drowns the sun's noon glare Within the Temple! 'Tis ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... there raged in his mind the coil of this discovery; then cheerless certitude followed; and, with an incredible simplicity of submission to ascertained fact, he turned round and struck out for shore. There was a courage in this which he could not appreciate; the ignobility of his cowardice wholly occupying him. A strong current set against him like a wind ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... penitence; the righteous justified without love; all Christians without the grace of Jesus Christ; God without power over the will of men; a predestination without mystery; a redemption without certitude! ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... bride and groom with fairly fascinated eyes, but from a certain distance. They had been nice, they had thanked her handsomely for her handsome present, but nothing could modify her regretful certitude that Brenda did not care for her. And it might so easily have been she and not the good Aunt Brenda who secured for the sposo his career of silver lace and sabre.... And Brenda, innocently unknowing, would just the same not have liked her. But there! Beautiful Brenda didn't go about loving ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... aware, scarcely the word escaped my lips, that swift ensued in silence and by stealth, and yet with certitude, a formidable change of the amphitheatre which held the Carnival; although the human stir continued just the same amid that shift of ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... things my wish is to see her, so I may know an she be chaste or not. As for her beauty, I am assured of [122] your worship's sufficiency and am content to trust to your word concerning her loveliness, to wit, that she is surpassing; but, for her chastity, you cannot avail to testify with certitude of her case." "And how," asked the Imam, "can it be possible unto you, O my lord the Amir, to know from her face that she is pure? An this be so, your highness is skilled in physiognomy. However, an your highness will vouchsafe to accompany me, I will carry you to her father's palace and ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... the tide of caucuses swelled and reports of results flowed into State headquarters, Chairman Presson and his lieutenants found themselves unable to mark men with the old certitude of touch. There was a queer kind of slipperiness everywhere. It was evident that the Canibas result had stiffened backbones in many quarters, but more new men than usual were coming forward with nominations in their fists. Many of these men were not telling any one how they felt on the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... ordering the course of events that man should emerge one day from the savagedom and animalism of the past to enter upon the path of a progress which we believe to be endless. I say the reason which demonstrates this to us with a certitude which not the most intolerant bigotry dares to question to-day, tells us also that it is wholly preposterous that all that is left to man wherein to work out his own individual moral progress is the brief span of threescore years and ten, that after these ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... he had made known as much already— his visits had been a series of eloquent intimations of it. But now he had affirmed it in lover's vows, and, as a memorable sign of it, he had passed his arm round the girl's waist and taken a kiss. This happy certitude had come sooner than Catherine expected, and she had regarded it, very naturally, as a priceless treasure. It may even be doubted whether she had ever definitely expected to possess it; she had not been waiting for it, and she ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... to glory, not because we confess, but because He has promised pardon to those who do confess; that is, not because of the worthiness or sufficiency of our confession (for there is no such worthiness or sufficiency), but because of the truth and certitude of His promise, as says the xxiv. Psalm: "For Thy Name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity." [Ps. 25:35] It does not say, "for my sake," or "for my worthiness' sake," or "for my name's sake," but "for Thy Name's sake." So it is evident that ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... it may seem, is not a mere futile imagining. It is sustained and rendered plausible by a sound substratum of knowledge of the anatomical conditions under which the central nervous mechanism exists, and in default of which, as pathology demonstrates with no less certitude, its functionings are futile to produce the normal manifestations ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Russian Finns, and a slight sprinkling of Americans and English. It was noted that there was nothing mercurial and flyaway about them. They seemed weighty men, oppressed by a sad and stolid bovine-sort of integrity. A sober seriousness and enormous certitude characterized all of them. They appeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by some overwhelming power or carried in the hollow of some superhuman hand. The captain, a sad-eyed, strong-featured American, was cartooned ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... deepest need of your heart. Nothing but the King's own sign-manual on the pardon makes it valid; and unless you and I can, somehow or other, come to close grips with God, and get into actual contact with Him, and hear, somehow, with infallible certitude, as from His own lips, the assurance of forgiveness, there is not enough for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... almost beyond control by this speech. To have a ramshackle young woman from Hampstead patting her on the back as it were, in breezy certitude that quite soon she would improve, stirred her more deeply than anything had stirred her since her first discovery that Mr. Fisher was not what he seemed. Mrs. Wilkins must certainly be curbed. But how? There was a curious imperviousness about her. At ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... piano, with the first two ringing bars, masterfully, like a man; she seemed to lift it, and its sounding wires, with her two hands, with the strength and certitude of maleness. And then, as only he had heard men do it, she sank, or leaped—he could scarcely say which—to the sureness and pureness and ineffable ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... drove the dogs from the shelter of the rock into the teeth of the storm. Then, turning, they fled south before the gale with what certitude they might. They had nothing to guide them, neither stars nor brilliant aurora, and they struggled along the heavy trail only by their memories of it, and the exercise of every particle ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... tried to complete it by considerations of my own, which are implied in my University sermons, Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles, and Essay on Development of Doctrine. My argument is in outline as follows: that that absolute certitude which we were able to possess, whether as to the truths of natural theology, or as to the fact of a revelation, was the result of an assemblage of concurring and converging probabilities, and that, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... astonishment when I saw that toryism was as openly professed as whiggism itself: however, at that time I believed that all good Americans were united together; that the confidence of congress in you was unbounded. Then I entertained the certitude that America would be independent in case she should not lose you. Take away, for an instant, that modest diffidence of yourself, (which, pardon my freedom, my dear General, is sometimes too great, and I wish you could know, as well as myself, what difference ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... and some of the features of his tutelage. The basis of it all was that, harmless as he appeared, he was not to be trusted; I remember how portentous that truth soon looked, both in the light of his intense amiability and of sister Helen's absolute certitude. He wasn't to be trusted—it was the sole very definite fact about him except the fact that he had so kindly come down from the far-off Beaverkill to regale us with the perfect demonstration, dutifully, resignedly setting himself ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... us return to the stand-point taken up by the North-Netherlanders who first set sail for the Indies in 1595. They "knew in part" only: they were aware that they knew nothing with certitude. But their mercantile interests very soon induced them to try to increase and strengthen their information concerning the regions of the East. What sort of country after all was this much-discussed New-Guinea, they ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... calumny, capillary, captious, cardinal, carnal, carnivorous, castigate, cataclysm, catastrophe, category, causality, cavernous, celebrity, celibacy, censorious, ceramics, cerebration, certitude, cessation, charlatan, chimerical, chronology, circuitous, circumlocution, citation, clandestine, clarify, clemency, coadjutor, coagulate, coalesce, coercion, cogency, cognizant, cohesion, coincidence, collusion, colossal, comatose, combustible, commendatory, commensurate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Zwingli to meet death, and bear the harshest tortures for their faith. For they run to suffer punishments, no matter how horrible, as if to a banquet; so that if you take that as a test either of the truth of doctrine or of their certitude of grace, you would easily conclude that in no other sect is to be found a faith so true or grace so certain. But as Paul wrote: "Even if I give my body to to be burned and have not charity, it avails me naught. But he has not charity who divides the unity. . . . He cannot be a martyr ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... destruction appeared, the more intense grew the spiritual vision which opposed them. We learn from these records that the mystical consciousness has the power of lifting those who possess it to a plane of reality which no struggle, no cruelty, can disturb: of conferring a certitude which no catastrophe can wreck. Yet it does not wrap its initiates in a selfish and otherworldly calm, isolate them from the pain and effort of the common life. Rather, it gives them renewed vitality; administering to the human spirit not—as some suppose—a soothing draught, but the ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... practical importance; for otherwise we shall not know how to change it or indeed that it ought to be changed at all. Only by knowing other ways of life can we be certain of the relative worth of our own way; knowledge alone gives certitude. Without knowledge we run the risk of becoming ruthless destroyers of things which an intelligent sympathy might well preserve and find a place ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... is no less certain that the present actual world reposed potentially in the cosmic vapour, and that an intelligence, if great enough, could from his knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour have predicted the state of the fauna in Great Britain in 1888 with as much certitude as we say what will happen to the vapour of our breath on a ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... puisque des opinions formees d'apres l'experience ... sont la seule regle de la conduite des hommes les plus sages, pourquoi interdirait-on au philosophe d'appuyer ses conjectures sur cette meme base, pourvu qu'il ne leur attribue pas une certitude superieure a celle qui peut naitre du nombre, de la constance, de l'exactitude des observations?"—CONDORCET, Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... her house of its deckings, dismantling her habitation to the last and uttermost leaf; but she stripped, dismantled, extinguished, broke away, not in despair, defeat, but in ordered preparation and with exquisite certitude of glory anew. That, in October, was her voice to him, stirring tremendously that faculty of his of seeing more clearly, visioning life more poignantly, with his mind than with his eye. She spoke to him ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... exasperation, 'Oh, it's you! Why are you here? If I am so odious to you that you must write to my sister to say so, I give you back your word.' But then, don't you see, it could not have been that. I have the practical certitude that soon afterwards they went together in a hansom to see the ship—as agreed. That was my reason for saying that Flora de Barral ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the properties both of religion and of liberty, and one of its factors never became an object of disinterested observation among actual leaders of opinion. They preferred the argument of doubt to the argument of certitude, and sought to defeat intolerance by casting out revelation as they had defeated the persecution of witches by casting out the devil. There remained a flaw in their liberalism, for liberty apart from belief is ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... crude and immoral maxims mixed up with noble precepts in Revelation; to those who recognised the impossibility of accepting the varying voices of Intuition as a moral guide; to all those the theory that Morality was based on Utility, came as a welcome and rational relief. It promised a scientific certitude to moral precepts; it left the intellect free to inquire and to challenge; it threw man back on grounds which were found in this world alone, and could be tested by reason and experience; it derived no authority from antiquity, no sanction from religion; it ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... whom we have already introduced to our respectable readers, had evacuated the chapel, they determined to substantiate a certitude, as far as their observation could reach, as to the truth of what Kitty Carroll had hinted at, in reference to John O'Callaghan's attachment to Rose Galh O'Hallaghan, and her taciturn approval of it. For this purpose they kept their eye upon John, who certainly seemed in no especial ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... great thinkers of earlier times, to gain a general view of the universe of being; but had sought it by a different mode. Caring rather for certitude of method, reality in the highest principles, than for results attained, he had seen that a knowledge of being must rest on a knowledge of the consciousness which tells us of being. His principle, "Cogito, ergo sum," ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... in the saddle and Dillon confidently led the way. Coburn grimly walked beside her as she rode. He was convinced that he wouldn't leave her side while Dillon was around. But even as he knew that desperate certitude, he was filled with confusion and ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... mesure que je montais l'escalier, ma certitude devenait plus grande: secrtaire du sous-prfet; je ne me sentais ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... Major," said Jeekie sympathetically. "Perhaps manage hook it somehow, and meanwhile make best of bad business and have high old time. You see you want to come Asiki-land, though I tell you it rum place, and," he added with certitude and a circular sweep of his hand, "by Jingo! you here now and I daresay they give you all ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... heart wrung with the sorrow that beauty is less strong than time. Nor is the burden of these poems only that pleasant things decay; rather that in nothing good or bad, rich or mean, is there permanence or certitude, but everywhere and without selection Time feeds oblivion with decay of things. All things flow and nothing abides; shape and name, nature and fortune yield to the dissolving ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... L'Autre by George Sand, and in Jean-Marie, a little masterpiece by Andre Theuriet, which had the most brilliant success. Porel played the part of Jean-Marie. He was at that time slender, and full of hope. Since then his slenderness has developed into plumpness and his hope into certitude. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... around, and without comparative reference to this can not be represented: the same experience which gives us the definite object gives us also the infinite space; and both terms—the limited appearance and the unlimited ground—are apprehended with equal certitude and clearness, and furnished with names equally susceptible of distinct use in predication and reasoning. The transient successions, for instance, the strokes of a clock, which we count, present themselves to us as dotted out upon a line of permanent duration; of which, without them, we should ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... j'etais occupee pendant ces dernieres 3 semaines. La Crise est passee et j'ai tout lieu de croire que le Gouvernement de Sir R. Peel va s'affermir de plus en plus, ce que je ne puis que desirer pour le bien-etre du pays. Je dois cependant dire a votre Majeste que si le Ministere eut change, j'ai la certitude que le nouveau se serait empresse de maintenir, comme nous le desirons si vivement, cette entente cordiale si heureusement etablie ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... certitude Berrie unsaddled her horse, turned him loose, and lent a skilful hand at removing the panniers from the pack-animals, while Wayland, willing but a little uncertain, stood awkwardly about. Under her instruction he collected dead branches of a standing fir, and from ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... my books, are but the drama of my conscience exteriorized? Out of the reservoirs of my soul I draw my inspiration. I have an aesthetic horror of evidence; like Renan, I loathe the deadly heresy of affirmation; I have the certitude of doubt, for are we poets not the lovers of the truth decorated? When I built my lordly palace of art, it was not with the ugly durability of marble. No; like the Mohammedan who constructed his mosque and mingled with the cement sweet-smelling musk, so ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... show mercy to every generation, And to his kingdom of his great goodness call His elected spouse or faithful congregation, As here shall appear by open protestation, Which from Christ's birth shall to his death conclude: They come, that thereof will show the certitude. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... its light we carry on all our affairs, and the success of our action while we rely upon it is the best proof of its truth. The imaginative parsimony and discipline which such a theory involves are balanced by the immense extension and certitude it gives to knowledge. It is at once an act of allegiance to nature and a Magna Charta which mind imposes on the tyrannous world, which in turn pledges itself before the assembled faculties of man not to exceed its constitutional privilege and to harbour no magic ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... imaginative mind, thus concentrated upon them, could have divined all this; yet to O'Malley it seemed plain as the day. With the certitude, moreover, came the feeling, ever stronger, that the refuge they sought would prove to be also the refuge he himself sought, the difference being that whereas they ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... and ashamed of the part he was playing. He had loved her now for two years, with the tranquil tenderness that gathers depth and volume as it nears fulfilment; he knew that she would wait for him—but the certitude was an added pang. There are times when the constancy of the woman one cannot marry is almost as trying as that of the woman one does ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... artificial light flickering in the depths of its silent heart. So faint was it, at the distance, that, for a while, doubt prevailed. Then conviction supervened as each of the watchers recorded his observation and a sigh of certitude made itself heard. The point of light was held by all. It was dwelt upon. It was the verification needed to convey absolute faith ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... perpetuity; but only during one natural day; from one evening including the night, to the evening of the following day." At these words Francis humbly bowed down his head. As he went away, the Pope asked him: "Whither art thou going, simple man? What certitude hast thou of what thou hast just been granted?" "Holy Father," he replied, "your word is sufficient for me. If this indulgence is the work of God, He will make it manifest. Let Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother, and the ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... to say concerning many of the dicta of religiosity, that they cannot affirm their truth. They are prepared to say concerning the experience of God and the soul, that they know these with an indefeasible certitude. This just and wholesome attitude toward religious truth is only a corollary of the attitude which science has taught ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... a matter of certitude that within the memory of men now living, the Falls have receded 100 feet, and authorities in that science have stated the fact, that the retrocession—estimated from one inch to one foot per year—began near Lewiston. The whole waters of the lakes there foamed over this dam several ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. The modern Theosophist holds, with the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... by the kill, eating and sleeping, turn and turn about. Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his face toward camp and John Thornton. He broke into the long easy lope, and went on, hour after hour, never at loss for the tangled way, heading straight home through strange country with a certitude of direction that put man and his magnetic ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... in an entirely abnormal state, he had a curious certitude of the proper course to adopt. He went up to a policeman ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... the soldier's lips. The patroon!—his ill-disguised admiration for the actress!—his abrupt reappearance the night of the temperance drama! Any uncertainty Saint-Prosper might have felt regarding the identity of him he sought, or the reason for that day's work, now became compelling certitude. But for the tenants, he might have ridden by the old patroon house. As it was, congratulating himself upon this accidental meeting rather than his own shrewdness, he quickly dismounted. A moment's thought, and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... already, poor John Berridge, tasted in their fulness the sweets of success; but nothing yet had been more charming to him than when the young Lord, as he irresistibly and, for greater certitude, quite correctly figured him, fairly sought out, in Paris, the new literary star that had begun to hang, with a fresh red light, over the vast, even though rather confused, Anglo-Saxon horizon; positively approaching that celebrity with a shy and artless appeal. The young Lord invoked ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... like them, but, contrariwise, canst refresh and satiate the thirsty lips of them all? Who art Thou that dost proclaim Thyself as sufficient for the fruition of the mind that yearns for truth and thirsts for certitude, of the parched heart that wearies and cracks for want of love, of the will that longs to be rightly and lovingly commanded? Oh, dear brethren, not only the Titanic presumption of proposing oneself as enough for a single soul, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... which is born and ends {144} in the mind is termed scientific; that which issues from science and ends in manual work is termed semi-mechanical. But I consider vain and full of error that science which is not the offspring of experience, mother of all certitude, and which does not result in established experience, that is to say, whose origin, middle and end do not pass through any of the five senses. And if we doubt of everything we perceive by the senses, should we not doubt much more of what is contrary to the senses, such as ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... was that, once she got free of her husband, she would indeed be his. That he must hold to. It was Quisante, not she herself, who made her now feel strange to him; and Quisante's spell was not to last; her quiet certitude that her husband's days were numbered carried conviction to him also. "But I won't talk any more about it ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... therefore its mechanism is simple; its pieces all fit into each other with precision; they transmit throughout exactly the impulsion received and thus operate at one stroke, with uniformity, instantaneously, with certitude, oil all parts of the territory; the lever which starts the machine is central and, throughout its various services, the new rulers hold this lever in hand. Apropos of local administration, the Duc d'Angouleme said in 1815,[6304] "We prefer the departments to the provinces." In ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... seen, is a perfectly well-established site, and we owe our certitude upon the matter to the fact that the Romans had hardened and straightened what was probably an old British track. But with the crossing of the Icknield Way no such complete certitude exists, for the Icknield Way was but a vague barbarian track, often tortuous in outline, confused by branching ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... here with your lovely sister, and do you stay night and day till our sad separation? I rejoice me with that hope during this week do not deceive my heart. I hope that card very clear, mais, pour plus de certitude, je vous dis en franois que votre chambre, la maison, les habitants de juniper, tout est prt recevoir la premire ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... telles ou telles tendances ne serons nous pas en droit de conclure que ces tendances etaient en desacord flagrant avec les principes fondamentaux du christianisme? Cette presomption ne se transformerait-elle pas en certitude si nous reconnaissons dans la doctrine universellement repoussee par l'Eglise les traits caracteristiques de l'une des religions du passe? Pour dire que le gnosticisme ou l'ebionitisme sont les formes legitimes de la pensee chretienne il faut dire hardiment qu'il n'y a pas de pensee chretienne, ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... royal pathway and the divinely inspired authority of our holy Fathers and the traditions of the Catholic Church for, as we all know, the Holy Spirit dwells in her, define with all certitude and accuracy, that just as the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, so also the venerable and holy images, as well in painting and mosaic, as of other fit materials, should be set forth in the holy churches of God, and on the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... to think. It was twenty-four hours since that man left his room. Razumov had a distinct feeling that Haldin in the fortress was sleeping that night. It was a certitude which made him angry because he did not want to think of Haldin, but he justified it to himself by physiological and psychological reasons. The fellow had hardly slept for weeks on his own confession, and now every incertitude was at an end for him. No doubt ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... to seem to Winterbourne more and more a matter of fine-spun gallantry. As I have already had occasion to relate, he was angry at finding himself reduced to chopping logic about this young lady; he was vexed at his want of instinctive certitude as to how far her eccentricities were generic, national, and how far they were personal. From either view of them he had somehow missed her, and now it was too late. She was "carried ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... old butler. Well—her letter is still lying there. It has not been called for. Ergo, this town is not his usual abode. Personally, I never thought it was. But he cannot fail to turn up some time or other. Our main hope lies just in the certitude that he must come to town sooner or later. Remember he doesn't know that the butler is dead, and he will want to inquire for a letter. Well, he'll find a ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... beautiful secret is the most blest. Thus, for the week following this day of days, Theophil and Isabel went about their daily lives with all heaven in their hearts, and, divided though they were, possessed by a mystical certitude of inner union which they felt no extension of space or ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... wished to rent a bedroom. Thus by good fortune Sophia let all her rooms immediately, and was sure of over two hundred francs a month, apart from the profit on meals supplied. On this latter occasion Chirac (and his companion too) was quite optimistic, reiterating an absolute certitude that Paris could never be invested. Briefly, Sophia did not believe him. She believed the candidly despairing Chirac. She had no information, no wide theory, to justify her pessimism; nothing but ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the staircase struck not only the half hour, but the hour, and yet, though every room and corridor, the cellar and the garret, were searched, no token was found of the young wife's presence. Meanwhile the husband stood like a statue on the threshold, waiting with what seemed to me a strange certitude for the return of the father from his ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... bench at the beginning of the avenue sat a man with two women. As I advanced with my companions he rose, after a sudden stare, and approached me with a smile in which (to be Johnsonian for a moment) certitude was mitigated by modesty and eagerness was embellished with respect. He came toward me with a salutation that I had seen before, and I am happy to say that after an instant I ceased to be guilty of the brutality of not knowing ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... superior air of scientific wisdom, is often only the opposite pole of the dogmatic certitude of the churchman. Actual knowledge of the human soul is quite as far removed from the one as from the other. Credulity and Incredulity simply annul each other; often make faces at each other; while Progress stalks alone in the middle ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... these fragments of an immense plastic production is added the analysis furnished by the written records, we can define with some degree of certitude the place occupied by Wu Tao-tz[)u] in the history of Chinese painting. The books state that the lines from his brush fairly vibrated; all united in marvelling at the spirituality emanating from forms thus defined. ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... enfeebled powers, and a vague determination to universal distrust and suspicion. Suddenly he felt himself vibrating to loud tones, which seemed like the thundering echo of his own passion. A voice that penetrated his very marrow with its accent of triumphant certitude was saying—"The day of vengeance is ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... along he came into valleys or swales where game was more plentiful. A band of caribou passed by, twenty and odd animals, tantalizingly within rifle range. He felt a wild desire to run after them, a certitude that he could run them down. A black fox came toward him, carrying a ptarmigan in his mouth. The man shouted. It was a fearful cry, but the fox, leaping away in fright, did not ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... BETA}) the various metaphysical tests of truth or grounds of certitude employed. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... shadows I cast, one with a sort of feminine faintness with regard to the other and not quite so tall, may not have suggested the word or the thought of an assignation to my mind. All that I have clear is that with the certitude of intuition I knew what it was that had brought the youth in evening dress outside the shrubbery. Of course! He ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... Cfr. Ripalda, De Ente Supernaturali, disp. 30. Under these circumstances Suarez was justified in saying, in regard to the degree of certitude to be attributed to this teaching: "Si quis negaret gratiam sanctificantem esse habitum, licet esse temere dictum, non posset tamen ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... as fast as steam could carry them, were the bride and groom. The wondrousness of the first hour of their journey side by side had become a joyous certitude that always it was to be ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... cannot answer." He cannot answer a question on which the value of his whole system of physical philosophy depends; uncertain about his own identity, about the evidence of his senses, he would make the latter the sole rule and measure of certitude, and deny to man any higher faculty by which alone he can justify his trust in his cognitive faculties. Another instance of his absolute ignorance of common philosophic terminology is when he asserts that according to theology we know the dogmas of ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... doctrine of nature and of morals, while metaphysics treats of the highest presuppositions and the ultimate grounds,—the "pro-principles," Campanella starts, as Augustine before him and Descartes in later times, from the indisputable certitude of the spirit's own existence, from which he rises to the certitude of God's existence. On this first certain truth of my own existence there follow three others: my nature consists in the three functions of power, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... it," said Snarley, whose suspicions were now raised to certitude, "and, what's more, I won't hear it. What's the good? If anybody's been talkin' about nightingales, it's sure to be rubbish. Nightingales is things you can't talk about, but only listen to. No, thank you, my lady. When I wants nightingales, I'll go and hear 'em. I don't want to know what ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... virtue and the immutability of justice. He sought to delineate and enforce the practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock, he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was a reformer and a moralist. It was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and the least appreciated. He was a profoundly religious man, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... were an established ritual. Had she been using her son's sick-room, Phyllis wondered, as a regular weeping-place? She could feel in Mrs. Harrington, even in this mortal sickness, the tremendous driving influence which is often part of a passionately active and not very wise personality. That certitude and insistence of Mrs. Harrington's could hammer you finally into believing or doing almost anything. Phyllis wondered how much his mother's heartbroken adoration and pity might have had to do with making her son as ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... With equal certitude the court declared that it was the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is. "Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... fellow patients, and was the confidante of many tragic stories which made her own lot seem light in comparison. Altogether she was more cheerful and hopeful than for months back, but the nurses looked dubious, and could not be induced to speak of her recovery with any certitude. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... he had a various language, the inherited knowledge of his race, and the faculty of flight, by means of which he could shoot, meteor-like, across the sky, and pass swiftly from place to place, and with it such perfect control over all his organs, such marvellous certitude in all his motions, as to be able to drop himself plumb down from the tallest tree-top or out of the void air, on to a slender spray, and scarcely cause its leaves to tremble. Now, on this morning, he lies stiff and motionless; if you were to take him up and drop him from your hand, he would fall ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... to this world; and his utterances in his soliloquy are only an accentuate and outcome of this feeling of uncertainty. The very root of his desire for death is that he cannot discard with any feeling of certitude the Protestant doctrine that no traveller does after death return from the invisible world, and that the so-called ghosts are a ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... that absolute certitude as to the truths of natural theology was the result of an assemblage of concurring and converging probabilities ... that probabilities which did not reach to logical certainty might ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... fashion, accept Butler's famous saying that 'probability is the guide of life.' Newman, believing in the necessity of dogma, holds that we are justified in transmuting the belief corresponding to probability into such 'certitude' as corresponds to demonstration. He does so by the help of appeals to our conscience, which, for the reasons just given, fail to have any force for his opponent. Fitzjames adhered steadily to Butler's doctrine. There is, he says, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... it particularly struck him that they were to be marked altogether in Waymarsh's quarter. This added to his own sense of having gone far with her-gave him an early illustration of a much shorter course. There was a certitude he immediately grasped—a conviction that Waymarsh would quite fail, as it were, and on whatever degree of ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... indefiniteness with which the Supreme power has fashioned the natures of women." But as there is not "one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of woman cannot be treated with scientific certitude." It is treated with a dissective delineation in the women of George Eliot unequalled ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... after hope, effort, weariness, failure, painfully alternating and recurring, it is an immense relief to the exhausted mind to be able to say, "At length I know that I can know nothing about anything." ... Ignorance remains the evil which it ever was, but something of the peace of certitude is gained in knowing the worst, and in having reconciled the mind to the endurance of it.'[16] Precisely, and what one would say of our own age is that it will not deliberately face this knowledge ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... there were several of the bags, and each more or less broken, the powder was spread widely on the floor. Had any of us ever seen giant powder? No, nobody had; and instantly there grew up in my mind a shadowy belief, verging with every moment nearer to certitude, that I had somewhere heard somebody describe it as just such a powder as the one around us. I have learnt since that it is a substance not unlike tallow, and is made up in rolls for all the world like ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Some of the masters whose influence left a trace upon my character to this very day, combined a fierceness of conception with a certitude of execution upon the basis of just appreciation of means and ends which is the highest quality of the man of action. And an artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... an earnest seeker after truth. Reason, for him, is a serviceable weapon of attack or defence, but he is like a man fighting with magic impenetrable armour. He enjoys a bout of logical fence; but it will decide nothing for him: his 'certitude' is independent of it. It is easy to see that such an attitude must appear profoundly dishonest to any man who accepts Locke's maxim about truth-seeking. It is equally easy to see that Newman would spurn the charge of dishonesty as hotly as the charge of ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... I was not even sure whether he had given me the right bundle. I rather suspect he wanted me to take care of another batch of his papers which, after his death, I saw the manager examining under the lamp. And the girl talked, easing her pain in the certitude of my sympathy; she talked as thirsty men drink. I had heard that her engagement with Kurtz had been disapproved by her people. He wasn't rich enough or something. And indeed I don't know whether he had not ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... court par le vent emporte Avec la certitude et la rapidite Du javelot cherchant la cible; Rien n'en tombe, et pourtant il chemine en semant; Sa rondeur, qu'on distingue en haut confusement, Semble ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... of, and can find in it infinite treasures. We can lay our poor hands on His love as a child might lay its tiny palm upon the base of some great cliff, and hold that love in a real grasp of a real knowledge and certitude, but we cannot put our hands round it and feel that we comprehend as well as apprehend. Let us be thankful ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... great a siccity of devotion as we see in these days, we have a thousand and a thousand colleges that pass it over commodiously enough, expecting every day their dinner from the liberality of Heaven. Secondly, they do not take notice that this certitude upon which they so much rely is not much less uncertain and hazardous than hazard itself. I see misery as near beyond two thousand crowns a year as if it stood close by me; for besides that it is in the power of chance to make a hundred breaches to poverty ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... other texts I could put my finger on. No, there is no use in talking, the partisans of the glorious kingdom are supported with certitude by inspired passages, and can, under certain conditions and without fear of heresy, uphold this doctrine, which, Saint Jerome attests, was in the fourth century a dogma of faith recognized by all. But what ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... themselves heroes when playing a game of corks. The official placards, the trash in the journals, inspired him with immense disgust, for they had never lied so boldly or flattered the people with so much low meanness. It was with a despairing heart and the certitude of final disaster that Amedee, needing a little sleep after the fatigue, wandered through Paris's obscure streets, barely lighted here and there by petroleum lamps, under the dark, opaque winter sky, where the echoes of the distant ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... ex-seminarian, casuist, and marvellous prose writer of France? The large, loosely modelled head with its fleshy curves, its super-subtle mouth of orator, the gaze veiled, the bland, pontifical expression, the expression of the man who spoke of "the mania of certitude"—here is Ernest Renan, voluptuous disdainer of democracies, and planner of a phalanstery of superior men years before Nietzsche's superman appeared. Zorn in no unkindly spirit shows us the thinker; also the author of L'Abbesse de Jouarre. It is something, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Truth, I have dived, and dared to fetch ensnared this Fragment of tested Sooth; And one of the purblind Race of Men peered with a curious Eye Over the Curb as I fetched it forth, and besought me to drop that Lie: But all ye who long for Certitude, and who yearn for the Ultimate Fact, Who know the Truth and in spite of Ruth tear piecemeal the Inexact, Come list to my Lay that I sing to-day, and choose betwixt him and me, And choosing show that ye always know the Lie from the Veritee! —The ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... pain. He could not forget. But that was not the worst. Had he met Father Beron in the street after all these years Dr. Monygham was sure he would have quailed before him. This contingency was not to be feared now. Father Beron was dead; but the sickening certitude prevented Dr. Monygham from looking anybody ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... I was shivering—not so much with cold as with excitement. You will readily understand that all my faculties were now on the qui vive. Somehow or other during the wearisome drive by the side of my close-tongued companion my mind had fastened on the certitude that my adventure of this night bore a close connexion to the firm of Fournier Freres and to the English files which were causing so many sleepless nights to M. le ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... there was cheer in it. And presently a voice clear, whispering, low, With pitifulness that faltered, spoke to me. Was I, it asked, true son of Mother Church? Coldly I answer'd 'Ay;' then blessed words That danced into mine ears more excellent Music than wedding bells had been were said, With certitude that I might see my maid, My dear one. He would give a paper, he The man beside me. 'Do thy best endeavour, Dear youth. Thy maiden being a right sweet child Surely will hearken to thee; an she do, And will recant, fair faultless heretic, Whose knowledge is but scant of matters ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... pair of pagans of old alluding decently to the domesticated gods. They never knew— at least Stransom never knew—how they had learned to be sure about each other. If it had been with each a question of what the other was there for, the certitude had come in some fine way of its own. Any faith, after all, has the instinct of propagation, and it was as natural as it was beautiful that they should have taken pleasure on the spot in the imagination of a following. ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... are established. Yes, but is this non-ego really what it seems? It is; granted; but what is it and can we know what it is? Not without doubt, and here scepticism is unshakable; but in that there is certitude of the existence of the non-ego, the presumption is that we can know it, partially, relatively, very relatively, while we remain infinitely distant from an absolute knowledge, which would be divine. Therefore let us observe and experiment; let us make the "history" ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... curious private memoir of Talleyrand says: "J'ai la certitude que Berlin est le lieu, ou le traite du 26 Vendemiaire (the reconciliation of Austria with France at Campo Formio), aura jette le plus d'etonnement, d'embarras et de orainte." He then explains that, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... her as she thrilled, loved her more and more as she loved. Moore must have written words of enchantment. Wade's hungry heart suffered a pang of jealousy, but would not harbor it. He read in her perusal of that letter what no other dreamed of, not even the girl herself; and it was certitude of tragic and brief life for her if she could not live for Wilson Moore. Those moments of watching her were unutterably precious to Wade. He saw how some divine guidance had directed his footsteps to this home. ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... with a solicitude that seemed at once pained and tender. And there was something about Amanda, a kind of hard brightness, an impartiality and an air of something undefinably suspended, that gave Benham an intuitive certitude that that afternoon Sir Philip would be spoken to privately, and that then he would pack up and go away in a state of illumination from Chexington. But before he could be spoken to he contrived to speak ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... roots. Moral law dominates man, whether he respects or defies it. See how it is in every-day life: each one is ready to cast his stone at him who neglects a plain duty, even if he allege that he has not yet arrived at philosophic certitude. Everybody will say to him, and with excellent reason: "Sir, we are men before everything. First play your part, do your duty as citizen, father, son; after that you shall return to the course ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... he not by some magical metamorphosis turn these probabilities into a certainty? No; he simply claimed that they were sufficient to produce certitude, which is a different matter. Certitude, he held, was a quality or habit of mind; certainty, a quality of propositions; and probabilities that did not reach to logical certainty might suffice for a mental certitude. We are mentally sure almost every day of many things which ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... to the bedroom because she considered that her mother had been demanding handkerchiefs at a stage too early in the progress of the disease. Impossible that her mother should have come to the end of her own handkerchiefs! She knew with all the certitude of her omniscience that numerous clean handkerchiefs must be concealed somewhere in the untidiness of ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... in favour of the scheme; it required that she should say much, for the schoolmaster was not to be easily persuaded. She had, however, three strong arguments in its favour, which she reiterated again and again, with more and more assurance of certitude as she warmed to the subject. The first point was, that if he did not marry, he must either starve at home or go to the boarding-house, and at the latter place she assured him again, as she had done at first, he would probably soon die. Her second point was, that no one ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... little reproach disguises the certitude that Caroline wishes to enjoy respecting the serious matters which Adolphe wishes to conceal. Adolphe then undertakes to narrate how he has spent the day. Caroline affects a sort of distraction sufficiently well played to induce the belief that ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... impiety?" The monks then lived without the walls, and could not be included by him: nor probably the clergy, deaconesses, or others particularly consecrated to a devout life; as appears from his invective. Nor does he speak this with any certitude, but from his private apprehension by comparing the lives of the generality of the people with the severe maxims of the gospel. This is manifest from the proof he draws from the manners of the people, and from a like ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... behind who enter there: One certitude while sane they cannot leave, One anodyne for torture and despair; 80 The certitude of Death, which no reprieve Can put off long; and which, divinely tender, But waits the outstretched hand to promptly render That draught whose ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... primitive and confiding belief in the testimony of the senses, is beginning to be left out in the cold, when men like Sir W. R. Grove turn round on him and tell him that "the principle of all certitude" is not and cannot be the testimony of his own senses; that these senses, indeed, are no absolute tests of phenomena at all; that probably man is surrounded by beings he can neither see, feel, hear, nor smell; and that, notwithstanding ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... reduce to naught the interested doubts of La Rochefoucauld and the passionate denials of the chief of the Fronde, the very clever but very little truthful Cardinal de Retz, the most ardent and most obstinate of Mazarin's enemies? It would seem, indeed, either that there is no certitude whatever in history, or that it must be considered henceforth as a point absolutely demonstrated that there was a project determined upon to kill Mazarin; that that project had been conceived by Madame de Chevreuse, and in some sort imposed by her upon Beaufort with the aid of Madame de ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... countess, and before she addressed me I had beguiled our sorry interval by finding in her a vague recall of the opening of some novel of Madame Sand. It didn't make her more fathomable to pass in a few minutes from this to the certitude that she was American; it simply engendered depressing reflexions as to the possible check to contributions from Boston. She asked me if, as a person apparently more initiated, I would recommend further waiting, ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... end in view he went down to Little Deeping. His conviction that the Twins were responsible for the disappearance of the princess became certitude when he learned from Mrs. Dangerfield that they were encamped on Deeping Knoll, and had been there since the day before that disappearance. But he kept that certitude to himself, since it was his habit to do things in ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... their sphynx-like riddle, to establish some plausible relation between them, to erect a logical scheme of things. Primitive man, as Worringer demonstrates in his "Form Problems of the Gothic," strove to achieve something of certitude and fixity through the crude but definite lines and forms of neolithic art. Classical man brought into play the vigour and subtlety and ingenuity of intellect in its primal and most dynamic form, expressed ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... enlivened last night by a squabble on the Hill and Sheil business[9] (dragged on by O'Connell), and the ultimate arrest of Althorp and Sheil by the Serjeant-at-arms, a very foolish affair, which must end as it began, in much declaiming and swearing, and no positive conviction, though complete moral certitude. It afforded much amusement, as everything personal does. The present expectation is that the session will go ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... that actually I do live under the obedience and under the conditions which are evidences of adoption and spiritual filiation; then, so long as I see these marks and live so, I may safely comfort myself in a holy certitude and a modest infallibility of my adoption. Christ determines himself in that, the purpose of God was manifest to him; Saint Peter and Saint Paul determine themselves in those two ways of knowing the purpose of God, the word of God before the execution of the decree in the fulness of time. ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... Survey'd her part by part, and sought to find The ten-horn'd monster in the harmless Hind, Such as the Wolf and Panther had design'd. They thought at first they dream'd; for 'twas offence With them to question certitude of sense, 540 Their guide in faith: but nearer when they drew, And had the faultless object full in view, Lord, how they all admired her heavenly hue! Some, who before her fellowship disdain'd, Scarce, and but scarce, from in-born rage restrain'd, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... city and in his own prowess, which nothing can daunt. He is convinced, especially if he has never travelled beyond his own borders, that he engrosses the virtue and intelligence of the world The driver of a motor-car assured me, with a quiet certitude which brooked no contradiction, that England was cut up into sporting estates for the "lords," and that there the working man was doomed to an idle servility. "But," said he, "there is no room for ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... after a hasty toilet with a handful of snow, the party set off shortly before sunrise. Ralph by general consent assumed the leadership. Taking careful soundings with his ice-axe and using his crampons with almost uncanny certitude, he guided his companions through a moraine and debouched on to a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... rate of discount. What, therefore, was the ancient philosopher to do? His reflections concerning the past must of necessity be partial; how much more would his anticipations of the future fail of anything like demonstrative certitude! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... saw in the system of Christ, as popularised and interpreted, a whole host of insecure assumptions, unverified assertions, and even degrading traditions, yet he could not doubt of the Divine force of the central message. If he was not in a position to affirm with certitude the truth of the recorded events which attended the origin of the Christian revelation, he could yet affirm with confidence that in the teaching of Christ a higher range of emotion had been reached than had ever been approached ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man. What God reveals to us, he reveals within, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses. External teaching may be a training of those senses, but affords no foundation for certitude." ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman |
