"Foregone conclusion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... times in which the events took place, for their special reading. Who is there can read them now so as accurately to decipher every intended detail? Then comes some critic who will not even attempt to read them—who rushes through them by the light of some foregone conclusion, and missing the point at which the writer subtly aims, tells us of some purpose of which he was altogether innocent! Because he jokes about the augurship, we are told how miserably base he was, and how ready ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... went on in France during the middle of the eighteenth century, which have been comparatively little dwelt upon by historians; their main anxiety has been to justify the foregone conclusion, so gratifying alike to the partisans of the social reaction and to the disciples of modern transcendentalism in its many disguises, that the eighteenth century was almost exclusively negative, critical, and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... in the election of 1637. The victory was a crucial one. The erratic Vane went off to England; Cotton returned to his first allegiance; and when the cause of all the trouble was cited to appear before the court in the fall of the same year, the decree of banishment was a foregone conclusion. Like Luther before the diet, Anne Hutchinson pressed for reasons—"I desire to know wherefore I am banished." It was in the spirit of the Roman Church that Governor Winthrop replied—"say no more; the Court knows wherefore, and ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... first. It must be kept constantly in mind that we had no militia organization that bore any appreciable proportion to the greatness of the country's need, and that at any rate the policy of relying upon volunteering at the beginning was adopted by the government. It was a foregone conclusion that popular leaders of all grades must largely officer the new troops. Such men might be national leaders or leaders of country neighborhoods; but big or little, they were the necessity of the time. It was the application of the old Yankee story, "If the Lord will have a church in Paxton, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... because Eve was to come, and it was a foregone conclusion even in that early age that when she did appear she would want some one to hold her bouquet, open the door for her, button her gloves, tell her she was pretty and sweet and "I never saw a woman like ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... succeeded. How, indeed, could they possibly fail? I might by skill or luck get one jury to disagree, but acquittal was hopeless; and the prosecution could go on trying me until they found a jury sufficiently orthodox to ensure a verdict of guilty. It was a foregone conclusion. The prosecution played, "Heads ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... foregone conclusion that the finding at the coroner's inquest, to be held the next day, would absolve him; foregone, also, that no prosecutor would press for his arraignment on charges and that no grand jury would indict. So, soon all the evidence in hand was conclusively on his side. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Devil and the kingdom of God. As soon as the new religion came into contact with paganism, the latter was necessarily regarded as belonging to the kingdom of the Devil; thus the conception of the gods as demons was a foregone conclusion. In the minds of the later apologists, who became acquainted with Greek philosophy, this conception received additional confirmation; did it not indeed agree in the main with Platonic and Stoic theory? Details were added: the Christians could not deny the pagan miracles without ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... that the present time is essentially different in this respect from any other. Much, therefore, which is now very commonly considered to be the result of experience, will be recognized in the next, or in some succeeding generation, as no such result at all, but as a foregone conclusion, based on some prevalent belief ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was lately dead, she regarded the game as won. Now they were in Memphis, Orion was sitting before her, and the young man had invited her and her following of above twenty persons to stay in his house. It was a foregone conclusion that the travellers were to accept this bidding as prescribed by the laws of hospitality, and preparations for the move were immediately set ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... have gone to all this trouble," spoke up the fair and spirited Mollie, "only for that silly letter my friend in Harmony wrote me, saying that it was a foregone conclusion Harmony would sweep the earth this year because their team had been terribly strengthened. In fact she gave me to understand that everything, even to the crepe, had been ordered for poor little new beginner Chester. It kept ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... number of years editor of the Atlantic Monthly; an excellent journalist, poet, and critic, it is yet as a novelist—witty, graceful, and acute—that he is best known; "A Chance Acquaintance," "A Foregone Conclusion," "A Modern Instance," "An Indian Summer" are among his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... hate a soulless creature he accepted as a foregone conclusion. He desired her respect, and that fact helped him to his final decision, but the thing that decided him was born of the truly chivalrous nature he possessed—he wanted Virginia Maxon to be happy; it mattered not ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... foregone conclusion," agreed Nort. "But what do you think of him, anyhow?" he asked Bud in a whisper, ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... shake Rolfe's previous assurance of the legal conviction of Birchill for the crime. The way in which Crewe had pulled the police case to pieces had shown Rolfe that the conviction of Birchill was by no means a foregone conclusion, and had left him a prey to doubts and anxiety which Inspector Chippenfield's subsequent depreciation of the detective's views had ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... thousand years after, we discern in these achievements two goals toward which we have been making, and at which we should arrive some day. We marvel that we had no prescience of these, and that we did not attain to them sooner. Why has it taken so many generations to reach a foregone conclusion? Alas! they neither knew the conclusion nor the means of attaining to it. Man works from ignorance towards greater knowledge with very limited powers. His little circle of light is surrounded by a wall of darkness, which he strives to penetrate and lighten, now groping blindly ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Nature teaches to her elect—the lesson of a great, a true, human and passionate love. To him, at present, Juliette represented the perfect embodiment of his most idealistic dreams. She stood in his mind so far above him that if she proved unattainable, he would scarce have suffered. It was such a foregone conclusion. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... merchant shipping will be absolutely at their mercy, and they will simply have to take them over to France and Germany and load them up with men and horses, and bring them over as if they were coming to a picnic. But, of course, with the airships to help them the thing's a foregone conclusion, and to a great extent it is our own fault. I thoroughly agree with what Lady Margaret says about conscription. If we had had it only five years ago, we should now have three million men, instead of three hundred ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... be led to expect if it did not exist; as is fully proved by Paine's saying about its being written on the sun. How convincingly, then, is the truth forced home on us, when we do learn that there is an institution that exactly fulfils our foregone conclusion! ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... Janco, took the opportunity to denounce his own wife, who was on the point of becoming a mother, as guilty of adultery, and handed her also over to the pacha. These unfortunate women were brought before Ali to undergo a trial of which a sentence of death was the foregone conclusion. They were then confined in a dungeon, where they spent two days of misery. The third night, the executioners appeared to conduct them to the lake where they were to perish. Euphrosyne, too exhausted to endure to the end, expired by the way, and when she was flung with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the Judiciary Committee wore fresh waistcoats, pinks in their buttonholes, and a genial air—and had not the least idea of granting the suffragists anything except a benignant hearing. The report of "ought not to pass" was a foregone conclusion. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... into the world he had sought to leave. The Doctor's co-workers had shaken their heads when the case was brought in. Impossible, they said. Throat, windpipe, jugular, all but actually severed, and the loss of blood frightful. As it was such a foregone conclusion, Doctor Bicknell had employed methods and done things which made them, even in their professional capacities, shudder. And ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... was put forth in 1680. Vigorous action against recalcitrants followed, and with such pliant tools as those perjured wretches, Scroggs and Jeffreys, for judge and prosecutor, convictions and the 'extremest punishment of the law' became a foregone conclusion. Doubtless there were many vile scribblers who deserved to have the severest penalties inflicted upon them, but no discrimination was used, and good and bad alike experienced the vengeance of 'divine right.' The aim of the abandoned monarch and his advisers was manifestly total ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... the said collection and enforcement of the said two per cent were to be insisted upon, it would be a foregone conclusion that the inhabitants would abandon the said trade and commerce, and would not make the said investments, for the reasons stated above. That has proved to be so on the occasions on which the said collection has been discussed with some warmth—and especially ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... extreme form the contest would be hopeless, I for one am unwilling to admit. If Great Britain were organised for war and able to throw her whole energies into it, she might be so strong that her overthrow even by united Europe would by no means be a foregone conclusion. But the determined preparation which would make her ready for the extreme contingency is the best and perhaps the only ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... remarking that the suit was a mistake in the first place, and that it was a foregone conclusion the government would be defeated. Also, he offered $5,000 to any one who ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... little to excite the Stock Exchange for some weeks: nothing was active and the slightest flurry was hailed as an event. Every one knew that the calm would be disturbed at some near day, but nobody looked for a sensation in Lumber and Fuel. It was a foregone conclusion that a slump was coming, and there was scarcely any trading in the stock. When Elon Gardner, acting for Montgomery Brewster; took ten thousand shares at 108 3/4 there was a mighty gasp on the Exchange, then a rubbing of eyes, then commotion. Astonishment was ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... days, mainly Sundays, when he did not work at all; peaceful days of lying fallow, dreaming in shady places, drowsily watching little Susy, or reading with Mrs. Clemens. Howells's "Foregone Conclusion" was running in the Atlantic that year, and they delighted in it. Clemens ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Hortense loved her poet more than ever; she dreamed of a sublime statue of Marshal Montcornet. Montcornet would be the embodied ideal of bravery, the type of the cavalry officer, of courage a la Murat. Yes, yes; at the mere sight of that statue all the Emperor's victories were to seem a foregone conclusion. And then such workmanship! The pencil was accommodating and answered to ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... distinctly felt in the dockyard. But the remarkable thing was that the hulk did not appear to jump in the least, though there was not more than six feet of water under her keel. That she would not be seriously crippled by the discharge seems to have been accepted as a foregone conclusion by Captain Long and the other torpedoists, as the day for the third experiment had been fixed in advance; but that the steel booms with their double flange running ways, stays, travelers, and hinges should have resisted the tremendous jar and upheaval was a genuine surprise for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... interviewed a mechanically courteous attendant, who, as the result of profound deliberation, advised him to try his luck at the lost-luggage room, across the station. He accepted the advice; it was a foregone conclusion that his effects had not been conveyed to the Tilbury dock; they could not have been loaded into the luggage van without his personal supervision. Still, anything was liable to happen when his unlucky ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... indelicate. With nothing of the Puritan in his manner or conversation, he seemed to be as strange to the vices of civilization as he was to its virtues. That such a man should offer little to and receive little from the companionship of women of any kind was a foregone conclusion. Without the dignity of solitude, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... commercial supremacy decaying or not? Have we begun to reach the period of inevitable decline? Or is decline indeed inevitable at all? Might a nation go on being great for ever? If so, are we that nation? If not, have we yet arrived at the moment when retrogression becomes a foregone conclusion? These are momentous questions. Dare I try, under the mimosas on the terrace, ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... Shenandoah was sent to reinforce Grant, while the remnant of Early's forces also went to Petersburg. Sheridan's campaign was a famous episode of the war. It was conducted with skill, though, with twice the numbers of the enemy at his command, Sheridan's victory was a foregone conclusion. But he had at least shown that he possessed to an unusual degree the real attribute of a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... should be dissatisfied with my hero matters nothing. What matters is the fact that, under different circumstances, their approval could have been taken as a foregone conclusion. That is to say, had not the author pried over-deeply into Chichikov's soul, nor stirred up in its depths what shunned and lay hidden from the light, nor disclosed those of his hero's thoughts which that hero would have not have disclosed even to his most intimate ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Asquith government found itself still in power, but absolutely dependent upon the co-operation of the Labor and Nationalist groups. Upon the great issues involved there was no very clear pronouncement, but it was a foregone conclusion that the tax proposals would be enacted, that some reconstitution of the House of Lords would be undertaken, and that free trade would not yet be in any ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... taken was a foregone conclusion, but how to keep the engines running at that high speed without attention—for it was evident that no man could live for many minutes in the poisonous fumes—was a more difficult problem. This was solved, however, ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... Southerner the struggle did not interest him. It was a foregone conclusion that the country would be settled by Northern immigrants. They were pouring into the Territory in endless streams. A colony from New Haven, Connecticut, one hundred strong, had just settled sixty miles above Lawrence on ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... their own, they should have begun to import Greek art just when they did, after the successful issue of the Second Punic War. Up to that time the great struggle had lasted. When it was over, the rest was almost a foregone conclusion. Rome and Carthage had made a great part of the known world their fighting ground in the duel that lasted a hundred and eighteen years; and the known world was the portion of the victor. Spoil first, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... verdict was a foregone conclusion; and though the learned lawyer duly prepared a very fine speech and pocketed some monstrous fees with a great deal of complaisance, he was honest enough not to hold out the smallest hope of being able ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... grew a little intoxicated, what the wonder? Furtively as she glanced at the manly countenance of Pierre, she saw in it the reflection of his noble mind and independent spirit; and remembering the injunction of Le Gardeur,—for, woman-like, she sought a support out of herself to justify a foregone conclusion,—she thought that if Pierre asked her she could be content to share his lot, and her greatest happiness would be to live in the possession ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... have hired a cheap parlor organ for her, but for the apparently unexpected revelation that she couldn't play. He had received the news of a clue to his long-lost son without emotion, but lately he seemed to look upon it as a foregone conclusion, and one that necessarily solved the question of companionship for Flip. "In course, when you've got your own flesh and blood with ye, ye can't go foolin' around with strangers." These autumnal blossoms of affection, I fear, came too late ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... independence was from the first a foregone conclusion to all who impartially studied the geography of this country and the social progress of its inhabitants. The West, with its growing millions vigorously working out the problem of free labor, and of Republicanism, will inevitably control ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... of getting up stairs," said Jack, as they continued the study of the one-story plan, "is at least an interesting one. It seems to be accepted as a foregone conclusion that modern dwelling houses, even in the country, where the cost of the land actually covered by the house is of no consequence, must be two stories at least above the basement; but I doubt whether this principle in the ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... a foregone conclusion that if the suicide theory was exploded, these men would be charged ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... ever locked out of were the jails. It is quite true that our Republic is the heir of the English Commonwealth; but as we trace events backward to their causes, we shall find it true also, that what made our Revolution a foregone conclusion was that act of the General Court, passed in May, 1647, which established the system of common schools. "To the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers in Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors, it is therefore ordered by this Court and authority ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... earnestly, discussed the case tried that very day, of the poor man who in vain sought redress from the rapacity of his wealthy neighbour. He had knelt, and laying his forehead to the ground at the feet of the Mandarin pleaded for justice, but only to find that his condemnation was a foregone conclusion. All these groups were scattered by the yells of our outrider and the cracks of our carter's whip, and the sellers of cooked food gathered their piles of little bowls and swiftly set them out of harm's way, for the habits of Yamen retainers are well known to the ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... anyway? The belief was growing that Seward, Garrison, Sumner and Phillips were something more than self-seeking agitators, and many declared them true patriots. In every town and city, in every Northern State, political clubs sprang into being and their battle-cry was "Seward!" It seemed to be a foregone conclusion that Seward would be the next President. When the convention met, the first ballot showed one hundred seventy-three votes for Seward and one hundred two for Lincoln, the rest, scattering. But Seward's friends had marshaled their entire strength—all ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... secret was almost too good to keep, and he laughed softly to himself as he mused upon it. It was truly an inspiration; just the sort of thing to hand out to one of Newport's smart-set. Although he had not yet proposed to her, he regarded their marriage as a foregone conclusion; an event of the near future. She certainly had led him to infer as much, and the plan he had conceived regarding it was highly ingenious—one worthy of his fertile imagination. Directly they were married, they would spend the first fortnight of their honeymoon camping in the mountains ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... trouble himself much in regard to Lincoln's second election, for he saw that it was a foregone conclusion; but after Andrew Johnson's treachery in 1866, he felt there was a need of unusual exertion. When the November elections arrived, he told his classes: "Next Tuesday I shall have to serve my country and there will be no recitations." When ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... contested games would result was a foregone conclusion; and it is to be hoped that we shall have the privilege of meeting the readers of this volume in the pages of subsequent books, where some of those exciting happenings may be set down in ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... returned in kind, that the stoppage of the pack-train from Blue Lick on the way to Charlestown was inevitable, and that the redcoats, invoked by both parties, would doubtless become embroiled with one or the other,—in short, bloodshed was a foregone conclusion. ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... inheritance. The achievements of the past, the privileges of the present, and the victories of the future—all, all are hers, if she be faithful. The Old Blue Banner leads to the world-wide triumph of the principles it represents. This is no presumption; it is a foregone conclusion, the very language of logic. The certainty is based on God's revealed purpose, and glows in the richest hues of prophecy. Humility forbids boasting; we have not said that the Covenanted Church shall ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... much delay he entered the senate house; but a stubborn silence was his only answer to the admonitions and entreaties of the fathers that he would desist from his purpose.[483] Flaccus knew the futility of arguing with people who had adopted a foregone conclusion; he would not even deign to accept a graceful retreat from an impossible position. The matter must be dropped; but to withdraw it at the exhortation of the senate, although complimentary to his peers and perhaps not unpleasing even to the people in ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... a certain swing of the pendulum afterward, in favor of any candidate to whom a special injustice has been done, and in the case of a popular favorite like Jackson, this might have been foreseen to be irresistible. His election four years later was almost a foregone conclusion, but, as if to make it wholly sure, there came up the rumor of a "corrupt bargain" between the successful candidate and Mr. Clay, whose forces had indeed joined with those of Mr. Adams to make a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... dismally at each other, and Rilla, who was feeding Jims a Morganized diet from a carefully sterilized spoon, laid the said spoon down on his tray, utterly regardless of germs, and said, "Oh, dear me," in as tragic a tone as if the news had come as a thunderbolt instead of being a foregone conclusion from the preceding week's dispatches. They had thought they were quite resigned to Warsaw's fall but now they knew they had, ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for," Tallente went on. "That, of course, is a foregone conclusion. Nora, I wish you'd make him see that it's his duty to form a Government. There isn't any reason why he should pass it on to me. I can lead in the Commons if he wants me to, so far as the debates are concerned. We are altering the procedure, as ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the autumn of 1860, had been carried by the Republicans, the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, in November, became a foregone conclusion. On the 5th day of October,—the initial day of the American Rebellion,—Governor Gist, of South Carolina, wrote a confidential circular-letter, which he despatched by special messenger to the governors of the so-called Cotton States. In this letter he requested ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... noticed that the examination was conducted in the form of questions put by the magistrate, Hathorne, based upon a foregone conclusion of the prisoner's guilt, and expressive of a conviction, all along on his part, that the evidence of "the afflicted" against her amounted to, and was, absolute demonstration. It will also be noticed, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... been carefully cultivated to every perfection of art save one—the concealment of it. She has grace, but it is studied, not negligent grace; her action is always picturesque and obviously premeditated; everything she says and does is impressive, but it speaks a foregone conclusion. Her acting is polished and in correct taste. What it wants is freshness, spontaneity, abandon. Among English artists of a bygone age her style might probably find a parallel in the stately elegance ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... the standards differed, so that she herself scarcely knew why such and such a one had been chosen—men, for instance, like Cecil Reeve and Arthur Ensart—perhaps even such a man as James Allys, 3rd. Captain Dane, of course, had been a foregone conclusion, and John Lyndhurst was logical enough; also W. Grismer, and the jaunty, obese Mr. Welter, known in sporting circles as Helter Skelter Welter, and more briefly and profanely as Hel. His running mate, Harry Ferris had been included. And there was a number of others ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... appearance of matters, this seemed not very difficult of accomplishment, as it was a foregone conclusion upon the part of the hunters that the savages would endeavor to ford the river at the point where they lay in ambush for them. It only remained for the Riflemen to bide their time, and, at the proper moment, rush upon and scatter them, and ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... shackled by even the half-broken ties of a professed allegiance to Britain. Therefore, when the Congress, on the 6th of April, opened the ports of the colonies to the world, the Declaration of Independence was a foregone conclusion. ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... if only to get a little experience before your own time comes, you know. Yes, you really ought to have been there. It was quite a foregone conclusion that you would be best man. It was so funny to see Colonel Lightmark in that role, with that young Mr. Sylvester giving away the bride. It would have been so much better if they could have ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... our final destiny was decided before time was. Surely, if this life have any bearing on another, we are running a race, the issue of which is undecided until death; and ours is a real struggle, not merely the acting out of a foregone conclusion, not the dramatic representation of a past event. What would you think of a modern Greek praying zealously that Mohamed II. should not have taken Constantinople? Or of a Roman of to-day besieging heaven ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... tragic farce was over, the foregone conclusion arrived at and the sentence of fine and imprisonment pronounced, I found Zola alone at home in a state of profound dejection. "I don't pity myself," he said. "I am not to be pitied but this poor France, ce pauvre France." He returned ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... out thither with a somewhat foregone conclusion in that direction. But it was at least founded on what I believed to be facts. And it was, certainly, verified by the fresh facts which I saw there. I returned with a belief stronger than ever, that exclusive sugar cultivation had put a premium on unskilled slave- labour, to the disadvantage ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... women at his command. My dear fellow, in Paris everything is known, and a man cannot be a fop there gratis. You, who have only one woman, and who, perhaps, are right to have but one, try to act the fop!... You will not even become ridiculous, you will be dead. You will become a foregone conclusion, one of those men condemned inevitably to do one and the same thing. You will come to signify folly as inseparably as M. de La Fayette signifies America; M. de Talleyrand, diplomacy; Desaugiers, song; M. de Segur, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... smashing of their fists. But the end of the fight was a foregone conclusion. Jeter had a bruised jaw. Eyer's nose was bleeding and one eye was closed when the reception committee finally came to close quarters, smothered them by sheer weight of numbers, and made them prisoners. Jeter's right wrist was manacled to Eyer's left with a pair of ordinary ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... rake, whose gout and infirmities have got the better even of his buffoonery" (Letter to Balguy, dated "Inner Temple, 19th March, 1751.") That Fielding had not long before been dangerously ill, and that he was a martyr to gout, is fact: the rest is probably no more than the echo of a foregone conclusion, based upon report, or dislike to his works. Hurd praised Richardson and proscribed Sterne. He must have been wholly out of sympathy with the author of ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... July, and the Crusaders were absolutely without water; the Saracens, with Lake Tiberias at their back, had abundance. The Crusaders, suffering terribly from thirst, nevertheless attacked. The result of the battle was a foregone conclusion. Here, at the Horns of Hattin, the Mount of Beatitudes, was the Crusaders' army destroyed and the power of the Christian completely crushed. Jerusalem itself, after a short, fierce struggle, fell ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... an odd dream, and not so easily to be accounted for as that you had formerly of my marriage; for, as Shakespear says, dreams denote a foregone conclusion. Now it is impossible you should ever have thought of any such ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... secession movement would begin somewhere in the South before the end of 1860 was a foregone conclusion. South Carolina was the logical place, and in South Carolina the inevitable occurred. The presidential election was quickly followed by an election of delegates, on the 6th of December, to consider in convention the relations of the State with the Union. The arguments ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... Majestu's Cabinet were masterpieces of political trickery, and their adoption was a foregone conclusion in spite of the Ministers who raised objections. The party had to win back favour somehow, and at any rate his were the best ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... but he gave no sign that he so much as remembered that there had been a battle. Obviously then her defeat had been a foregone conclusion from the outset. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... for opinion. If in such cases a legend has been formed and recorded, the student will advance further toward comprehending the spirit of his subject by patiently considering what he knows to be in part perhaps a mythus, than by starting with the foregone conclusion that the legend must of necessity be worthless, and that his cunning will suffice to supply the ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... grades, fought with credit, and even, at times, commanded his regiment, during the war; but war records could not save him when he wouldn't save himself, and he had to go. The court was ordered, and the result was a foregone conclusion. The colonel, his adjutant, and Major Stannard were to drive to town during the afternoon and take the east-bound train, leaving Major Waldron in command of the post; but before guard-mounting a telegram was received which was sent from department head-quarters ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... before, so that they might have a good night's rest before the most important game of the season. The game was to be played at the Polo Grounds and public interest was so great that all the seats had been sold out long in advance. It was a foregone conclusion that the vast amphitheater would be crowded to capacity when the teams should come trotting out ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... who were said to have been wounded by Smith's pistol shots, but the sheriff did not succeed in making any arrests. In the May following some of the accused appeared for trial. A struck jury was obtained, but, in the existing state of public feeling, an acquittal was a foregone conclusion. The guards at the jail would identify no one, and Daniels, the pamphlet writer, and another leading witness for the prosecution ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... hearts, are prepared to look upon a life of self-sacrificing effort for the benefit of the vilest and roughest as the highest of privileges. With such a force at command, we dare to say that the accomplishment of this stupendous undertaking is a foregone conclusion, if the material assistance which the Army does not possess ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... large had become tired of the griefs of Jamaica, and reconciled itself to her wretchedness as a foregone conclusion, when the events of last October lent a fresh and terrible interest to her history. An insurrection, including in its purpose the murder of every white man on the island, has been quenched in the blood ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... and Ewell had had their bout the day before, it was a foregone conclusion that Longstreet's time to measure strength was near at hand, and the men braced ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... drawing to a close in the Lakoumistan division. The candidate of the Young Turkish Party was known to be three or four hundred votes ahead, and he was already drafting his address, returning thanks to the electors. His victory had been almost a foregone conclusion, for he had set in motion all the approved electioneering machinery of the West. He had even employed motorcars. Few of his supporters had gone to the poll in these vehicles, but, thanks to the intelligent driving of his chauffeurs, many of his opponents ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... a foregone conclusion in her mind that Mercy Curtis was to bear off the highest honor. Nor had she forgotten that she must invent (if nobody else could) a way for Mercy to speak the ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... really so devoted to you and your household, he has now the best opportunity to show it. It is a foregone conclusion that ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... for 1869, he was unanimously re-elected president, a fact as complimentary as it is rare, it being the almost invariable custom for each party to vote for its own candidate, even where the result of the election is a foregone conclusion. He was in the same year suggested as the Republican candidate for Mayor, and would undoubtedly have been chosen to that office had he not considered it incompatible with proper attention to the large and rapidly increasing business of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... didn't mean much, Mary allowed, but when a man and a woman who were going to be left alone together a lot, started off that way, they were likely to—get somewhere. And where the man was the composer of that love song and the woman the singer of it, it was almost a foregone conclusion that they would. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of fact they gave him a somewhat grotesque appearance, remotely suggestive of a Hindoo idol; but Miss Quincey had not noticed that); his bumpy forehead was terrible with intelligence; his eyes were cold and comprehensive; the smile of a foregone conclusion flickered on his lips. ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... absurd. But that her eyes were bright,—nay, that they were particularly lively and vivacious, even as they are in the sanguine sketches of Antoine Watteau a hundred years afterwards, I am "confidous"—as Mrs. Slipslop would say. For my theory (in reality a foregone conclusion which I shrink from dispersing by any practical resolvent) is, that Mile. de Mons was some delightful seventeenth—century French child, to whom the big volume had been presented as a picture-book. I can imagine the alert, strait-corseted little figure, with ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... knew Jackson and his political managers expected them to accept the anomalous electoral results of 1825 as expressing the real will of the nation, and it was a foregone conclusion not only that the General would again be a candidate, but that the campaign of 1828 would at once begin. The defeated Senator remained in Washington long enough to present himself at the White House on Inauguration Day ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... explained them that others might have traversed the verdict he intended to be established. He heard, indeed, and he determined to hear, only one side of the case: indeed, at the time he wrote, there was not much to be heard on the other; and on the evidence he accepted the verdict was a foregone conclusion. It is impossible altogether to acquit Claverhouse of the charges laid to his account, nor will any attempt here be made to do so; but even the worst that can be proved against him, when considered impartially with the circumstances of his position ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... in our temperate climate and highly organized society, than in the American tropics and sub-tropics, where it is already well under way, if not a fait accompli. That it must come in the United States, sooner or later, seems to be a foregone conclusion, as the result of natural law—lex dura, sed tamen lex—a hard pill, but one which must be swallowed. There can manifestly be no such thing as a peaceful and progressive civilization in a nation divided by two warring races, and homogeneity of type, at least ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... foregone conclusion that the consulship will be offered him," said Mary. Her eyes were now on the path leading through the garden and over the wall to the ...
— Different Girls • Various
... be those in Germany as in England, who saw in Sterne's works only a mine of vulgar suggestion, arelation sometimes delicate and clever, sometimes bald and ugly, of the indelicate and sensual, is a foregone conclusion. Undoubtedly some found in the general approbation which was accorded Sterne's books a sanction for forcing upon the public the products ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... to cultivate her refractory memory. She listened with pleasure to social conversation, but she could contribute nothing brilliant. Her religious notions and home-grown prejudices were antagonistic to the complete emancipation of her intelligence. Finally, a foregone conclusion against her had stolen into Theodore's mind, and this she could not conquer. The artist would laugh, at those who flattered him about his wife, and his irony had some foundation; he so overawed the pathetic young creature that, in his presence, or alone with him, she trembled. Hampered by her ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... SENATOR,—I am delighted at the receipt of your long letter, for I have been very anxious to know how you felt about your own State. Of course it has been a foregone conclusion for some time that Wilson would carry the United States, but I was desirous that you should carry Nevada for your ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... of the starship Pleiades had been difficult in the extreme; its construction almost impossible. While it was practically a foregone conclusion that any man of the requisite caliber would already be a member of the Galaxian Society, the three planets and eight satellites were screened, psionicist by psionicist, to select the two strongest and ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... outside the window, drifted doubtfully into the room, and made a parody of that fleecy veil which erewhile had floated about the lissome form of the lovely Capulet. That he loved her, and must tell her that he loved her, was a foregone conclusion; but how should he contrive to see Juliet again? No one knew him in Verona; he had carefully preserved his incognito; even Mercutio regarded him as simply a young gentleman from Denmark, taking his ease ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... enthusiasm for his own doctrines presented therein, and not by the blind force of love,—which conclusion was directly at variance with the theory of Mrs. Marsh on the subject, who was perpetually referring to the match between them as a foregone conclusion. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... next to be asked, what these conditions are to be. And that is not to be answered in a breath. That they can have but one result, emancipation, is a foregone conclusion; but the mode of reaching it is not so easily determined. A cotton-loaded ship took fire at sea. It would have been easy to pump in water enough to drown the fire. But the captain said, "No," for that would swell the bales to such an extent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Compton, with a wave of his hand, which left it in some doubt whether he was simply throwing off the suggestion, or treating it as a foregone conclusion of which there could be no doubt. "Nell," he went on, "gets on with the Jew like a house on fire—you see they don't clash. Nell ain't one of the mannish sort, and she doesn't flirt—at least not ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the government long in taking a position. That it should be hostile was a foregone conclusion. Francis hated Lutheranism because he believed that it tended more to the overthrow of kingdoms and monarchies than to the edification of souls. He told Aleander, the papal nuncio, that he thought ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith |
