"Self-evident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... object of giving him to understand that they were doing something for him. That had the end and object that the auditors know; and it is not unknown that the archbishop wrote in their favor to the royal Council. That was almost self-evident, for the explicit manner in which Licentiate Don Francisco de Rojas y Onate, visitor of these islands, enlightened him was not sufficient, when the visitor said that he had no right, and that neither the cabildo nor the bishop could do anything else. The same thing was declared by ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... fact so self-evident, Sully resolved no longer to breast the torrent of jealousy and hatred against which he found himself called upon to contend, but without further delay to resign at once the cares and dignities of office; a design which was vehemently opposed not only by his own family, but also ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... truths to be self-evident:—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... wasn't Watson's words that held the Bar's attention. Chick's straight, well-knit form, his quick-trained actions, overbalanced the question of the prophet in the mind of the man on the throne. His delight was self-evident. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... to glance at certain considerations which point to the by no means self-evident proposition, that this factor of irresponsible property is certain to be present in the social body a hundred years ahead. It has, no doubt, occurred to the reader that all the conditions of the shareholder's being unfit him for co-operative ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... in "Pictor Ignotus"—and, by the insertion of a word or sentence in the notice of each, expanded or emphasized the meaning of several of the minor poems. I should have stated in my first Preface, had not the fact appeared to me self-evident, that I owe to Mr. Browning's kindness all the additional matter which my own reading could not supply: such as the index to the Greek names in "Aristophanes' Apology," and the Persian in "Ferishtah's Fancies;" the notes to "Transcendentalism," and "Pietro ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... sole living contemporary witness of his mother's dishonor. Obed Chute himself was certainly the last man in the world, as Gualtier thought, who would have been capable of volunteering such information as that. These conclusions to which he came were natural, and were based on self-evident truths. Yet still the question remained: How was it that these two men, who more than all others were connected with those affairs which most deeply affected himself and Hilda, and from whom he had the chief if not the only reason to fear danger, could now be joined in such intimate friendship? ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... not by any means self-evident upon the face of it that an institution like the liberty of speech is right or just. It is not natural or obvious to let a man utter follies and abominations which you believe to be bad for mankind any more than it is natural or obvious to let a man dig up a part ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... of mankind, either for good or evil; incidentally he throws into marked contrast the despicable depreciation used by the Spanish writers in referring to the Filipinos, making clear the application of the self-evident proposition that no ordinary human being in the presence of superior force can very well conduct himself as a man unless he be ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... pulling it about to find what is inside or search out texts for homilies in defence of our own particular views of life. The world's literature stands unaffected, though Archdeacon Farrar use it for chapter-headings and Sir John Lubbock wield it as a mallet to drive home self-evident truths. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nations habitually assume, may perhaps be dismissed with a single citation from the Supreme Court. Said Mr. Justice Bradley, in the Legal Tender Cases: "As a government it [the United States] was invested with all the attributes of sovereignty.... It seems to be a self-evident proposition that it is invested with all those inherent and implied powers which, at the time of adopting the Constitution, were generally considered to belong to every government as such, and as being essential to the exercise of its ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... abruptly to the floor and began to go over the film pages again, comparing her portraits with the portraits of those higher-paid creatures. She hated vanity and could not endure it in other women; it was a mere observation of a self-evident fact that she was prettier than all the other film queens put together. She sat there sneering at the presumptuousness of screen idols whom she had almost literally worshiped a ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... had Turner pointed out to her that the fact was self-evident, that in view of that very fact she should have been less confident in the discussion and should be more guarded in the future: his efforts were crowned with small success. Mrs. Turner's beliefs were only too apt on all occasions to be heralded ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... carrying his breeches upon an enormous long pole, without being laughed at? Can a man of acknowledged ignorance and stupidity, write a tragedy superior to Hamlet? or a genteel comedy superior to the Careless Husband?[40] I need not wait for an answer. No word but no, will do: it is self-evident. No more, my friend, can he who is lost in dissipation, write a letter. I am at present so circumstanced; accept this short line in answer to your last, and write very ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... It is self-evident that "c" cannot be used as often as "b," so the Declarer who likes always to say something will prefer "b," but the bidder who wishes, when he calls, to have distinct value attached to his announcement, will elect in favor of "c" rather than "b," and for the ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... many sad things to consider, and among them the impending loss of this grand mane. After divers delays, and infinitude of forms, and much evidence of things self-evident—in the spirit which drove Sir Horatio Nelson to pin a certificate of amputation to the sleeve of his lost arm—this Twemlow had established that he was the Twemlow left behind upon the coast of Africa, and having been captured in the service of his country, was entitled at least to restoration. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... in the seat. We hold these truths to be self-evident—that the ratio of sports coats to tuxedos in a faculty member's closet shall determine whether Clearwater gets to do research in solid state physics, whether George Durrant gives his genius to the nation or whether it gets buried in Dr. William ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... sir, that the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence contains five affirmations, declared to be self-evident truths, which, if truths, do sustain you and all abolitionists in every thing you say as to the right of the negro to liberty; and not only to liberty,—to equality, political and social. But I disagree with you as to their truth, and I say that not one of said affirmations is a self-evident ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied and evaded with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them 'glittering generalities.' Another bluntly calls them 'self-evident lies.' And others insidiously argue that they apply to 'superior races.' These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect—the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... insures the Survival of Beneficial Processes Only.—It is self-evident that wherever there is a saving of labor needed to make a given amount and kind of product, there is an increase in the possible product that is created by the aid of a given amount of labor. If workers themselves get a share of the ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... it in habitual exercise within them; and those who would have the comforting evidence of their being in covenant with God, must feel themselves drawn by his example, frequently to acknowledge themselves as devoted to him. It is self-evident, that every time that the people of God take hold on his Covenant, he, after some manner, makes a covenant with them. Every act of Covenanting, therefore, on the part of the saints of God, and especially on ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... with a great deal of animation to a man who sat beside her. From his manner and appearance and also from his pronunciation it was self-evident that he was a Frenchman. Moreover, he revealed a certain intellectual distinction typically French. Monsieur Georges Duval was of middle age with clear-cut, aristocratic features, keen dark eyes and iron-gray hair. In comparison with him Mrs. Burton ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... supposed in the practice, even by those philosophers who would endeavour to shake it by their empty speculations. The intimate evidence of that truth is like that of the first principles, which want no proof, and which serve themselves as proofs to other truths that are not so clear and self-evident. But how could the First Being make a creature who is himself the umpire ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... therefore, to admit that opinions cannot be compared together. Some are much more certain than others, and, indeed, 'self-evident' and 'intuitive.' Let us therefore take these to be 'truer.' If so, the thinker who feels most certain he is right is most ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... sold as antifermentive is simply the well-known antiseptic, salicylate of soda. It should be self-evident to one at all acquainted with the philosophy of animal existence, that an agent which will prevent fermentation and decay must be sufficiently powerful in its influence to ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... I think, that there is a very good reason for this popular extension of the term. The errors just alluded to have this in common with illusions of sense, that they simulate the form of immediate or self-evident cognition. An idea held respecting ourselves or respecting our past history does not depend on any other piece of knowledge; in other words, is not adopted as the result of a process of reasoning. What I believe with reference to my past history, so far as I can myself recall it, I believe instantaneously ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... being checked and verified by ethical principles of approved validity. Slavery is an interest which is sure to break over all restraints and correctives. It therefore becomes mistress of folkways and dictates the life policy. It is a kind of pitfall for civilization. It seems to be self-evident and successful, but it contains a number of forms of evil which are sure to unfold. The Moslems have suffered from the curse of it, although in entirely other ways than the Christians. It intertwines with any other great social evil which may be present. There it has combined with polygamy. It ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... which the Elegy was composed were well adapted to soothe and cherish that contemplative sadness which, when the wounds of grief are healing, it is a luxury to indulge, and that the poet did indulge them is self-evident in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... draw this essay towards its conclusion better than with three memorable words of Milton; who has said, that poetry, in comparison with science, is 'simple, sensuous, and passionate'. By simple, he means unperplexed and self-evident; by sensuous, genial and full of imagery; by passionate, excited and enthusiastic. I am aware that different constructions have been put on some of these words; but the context seems to me to necessitate those before us. I quote, however, not from the original, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... say to you on a more serious subject. Pardon me if I tell you that I think you are a happy man, and excuse me if I add, that if you do not keep yourself so I shall not think you a wise one. A good wife is better than a good-for-nothing mistress.—A self-evident proposition!—A stupid truism! Yes; but if every man who knows a self-evident proposition when he sees it on paper, always acted as if he knew it, this would be a very wise and a very happy world; and I should not have occasion to write ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... she had not the attitude of waiting for some one to talk to her, which people outside considered trying. Martha did not expect her cousin to talk to her. She seldom asked a question. She almost never volunteered a perfectly useless observation. She made no remarks upon self-evident topics. If the sun shone, she never mentioned it. If there was a heavy rain, she never mentioned that. Miss Martha suited her cousin exactly, and for that reason, aside from the fact that he had been devoted to little Lucy's mother, it never occurred to him ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... same root as the word "sew," and means, indeed, a thread, suggesting, therefore, a close knit, consecutive chain of argument. Not only has each Sutra a definite place in the system, but further, taken out of this place, it will be almost meaningless, and will by no means be self-evident. So I have thought best to adhere to the original word. The Sutras of Patanjali are as closely knit together, as dependent on each other, as the propositions of Euclid, and can no more be taken out of ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... the "level waters" of friendship. He states his position lucidly, and with a rational understanding of all that it involves. His vision is wide enough to embrace its everlasting truth. Plato says the same thing in simpler language. He offers his truth as self-evident, and in no need of demonstration. When Lysis and Menexenus greet Socrates at the gymnasia, the philosopher asks which of the two youths is ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... a sentence with "Clearly..." or "Obviously..." or "It is self-evident that...", it is a good bet he is about to handwave (alternatively, use of these constructions in a sarcastic tone before a paraphrase of someone else's argument suggests that it is a handwave). The theory behind this term is that if you wave your hands at the right ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... only a few minutes for Kennedy, in his most engaging and plausible manner, to state the hypothetical reason of our call. Though it was perfectly self-evident from the start that Mrs. Martin would throw cold water on anything requiring an outlay of money Craig accomplished his full purpose of securing an interview with Mr. Haswell. The invalid lay propped up in bed, and as we ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... sounding simultaneously, as in such well-known works as Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor and Wagner's Prelude to the Mastersingers! As we face these questions squarely the need for the listener of special training in alertness and concentration is self-evident. A very small proportion of those who attend a symphony concert begin to get their money's worth—to put the matter on a perfectly practical plane—for at least 50% of the musical structure is presented to ears without capacity ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... all the other revisions, including Binet's own. Bobertag did not even regard the test as worthy of a trial. The universal criticism has been that it is a test of schooling rather than of intelligence. That the performance depends, in a certain sense, upon special instruction is self-evident. Without such instruction no child of 8 years, however intelligent, would be able to pass the test. Nature does not give us a conventionalized language, either written or spoken. It must be acquired. It is also true that a high-grade ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... think it's self-evident. She's exactly as much in love with Trent as she was a year ago, and she's fighting against it every hour of her life. And the strain's ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... our happiness, but that the enjoyment of pleasure, let us say, voluptuousness, to include everything in a word, is the veritable aim and end whither tend all human acts. This is very clear to me, in fact, self-evident, and I am fully persuaded of ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... published by the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, Moscow, 1920. Translated by Malcolm W. Davis for the New York Evening Post, January 15, 1921.] is an historical judgment, the truth of which is by no means self-evident to ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... distinguished benefactors of the human race, who offer shade, shelter, fuel, fertility and sustenance, to a thousand future generations! They shall be thrice blessed! Having arisen to the demands of a higher life of unselfishness, where the solidarity of all life is recognized as a self-evident truth; they have gathered a sufficient store of love and wisdom to admit them to the domain of causation. Classed as worthy workers in that domain, they are entrusted by nature, with the magical key which unlocks the climatic gate, to her pent up ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... left the stage, but bang in front of the reader nothing happens. The suppression or maintenance of story in a novel is a matter of personal taste; some prefer character-drawing to adventures, some adventures to character-drawing; that you cannot have both at once I take to be a self-evident proposition; so when Mr. Lang says, "I like adventures," I say, "Oh, do you?" as I might to a man who says "I like sherry," and no doubt when I say I like character-drawing, Mr. Lang says, "Oh, do you?" as he might to a man who says, "I like port." But Mr. James and I are agreed on essentials, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... publish the old family notes on the matter, if, for reasons you state, you do not wish to publish Jefferson's letters to your father which concern the subject, it will be sufficient just to say he acted by and under his advice and aid, and people will accept it, as it is self-evident, because it is preposterous to hold that Mr. Lemen could have accomplished such results without some great power behind him. In conclusion, it is my judgment that your father's anti-slavery labors were the chief factor leading up to the free ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... distribution of his time and work, to be economical without parsimony and liberal without prodigality, and generally to follow such rules of wisdom as tend to render life prosperous, and human conduct acceptable to society. All such rules are self-evident, and grow necessarily out of the general principle which demands of the functions of the body to subserve the attainment of self-sanctification. But we must now speak precisely of this sanctification, to point out briefly in what it consists. From ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... a writer as Macchiavelli was so decidedly imbued with the earlier or mediaeval conception of the position of a prince that he treats it as a matter which is self-evident: he never discusses it, but tacitly takes it as the presupposition and basis of his advice. It may be said generally that his book is merely the theoretical statement and consistent and systematic exposition of the practice prevailing in his time. It ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... concerned changed completely. It hardly needed the Collector's order, given with the utmost promptitude, to cause the Temple woman to give the children up. To the Indian mind, quick to see the finger of God in such an event, the thing was self-evident. An unseen Power was at work here. Who were they that they should withstand it? A telegram told us the children were safe, and next day we ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... family, was a thoughtful, devout woman, who brought up her son in a way which suggests the mother of Ruskin. Of his early training, his reading of doctrinal and argumentative works, and of his isolation from material things in the thought that there were "two and only two absolute and luminously self-evident beings in the world," himself and his Creator, it is better to read his own record in the Apologia, which is a kind of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... harmony is the truth of being, the Science of Mind-healing destroys the feasibility of disease; hence error of thought becomes fable instead of fact. Science demonstrates the reality of Truth and the unreality of the error. A self-evident proposition, in the Science of Mind-healing, is that disease is unreal; and the efficacy of my system, beyond other systems of medicine, vouches for the validity of that statement. Sin and disease are not scientific, because they embody not the idea of divine Principle, and are ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... too prolix in the most self-evident matters; for, as it has been concluded and established that there is no room anywhere for either virtues or friendships if everything is referred to pleasure, there is nothing more which it is of any great importance should be said. And yet, that I may not appear to have passed over any ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... their senses, and doubt of the existence of heaven and earth, of everything they see or feel, even of their own bodies. And, after all their labour and struggle of thought, they are forced to own we cannot attain to any self-evident or demonstrative knowledge of the existence of sensible things. But, all this doubtfulness, which so bewilders and confounds the mind and makes philosophy ridiculous in the eyes of the world, vanishes if we annex a meaning to our words, and not ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... know the effects of certain invariable remedies prepared without fraud. Of course it is self-evident that when old Pare eulogized 'sack medicine' and ordered his patients to carry pulverized medicaments in a little sack whose form varied according to the organ to be healed, assuming the form of a cap for the head, of a bagpipe for the stomach, of an ox ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... me, O auspicious King, that Kamar al Zamar said to his sire, "I will give thee a self-evident proof that this happened to me when on wake. Now let me ask thee, did it ever befal any man to dream that he was battling a sore battle and after to awake from sleep and find in his hand a sword-blade besmeared with blood? Answered the King, "No, by ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... unloaded. But, my dear friend, what is the use of prudence? We can never be on our guard against all possible dangers. However,"—now, you must know I can tolerate all men till they come to "however;"—for it is self-evident that every universal rule must have its exceptions. But he is so exceedingly accurate, that, if he only fancies he has said a word too precipitate, or too general, or only half true, he never ceases to qualify, to modify, and extenuate, till at last he appears ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... an excellent turn to your letter. In refusing such an offer you could not have better reasons than those you give, and it would be absurd to try and persuade him that we are not lovers, as the thing is self-evident. Nevertheless, my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... instructive manner in modern times. His view respecting the nature of scriptural doctrines,(352) that they can be reduced to the teaching of natural reason, is a corollary from his philosophy, which cannot admit that any religious truth is obligatory which is not self-evident, and is analogous to the doctrine which a short time previously had been stated ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... notes" was a debatable point, but that somebody was taking everything takable on the premises soon became a self-evident proposition; and this was uncomfortable for more reasons than one. Mr. Smith and I almost quarrelled about it. He would not believe it to be Chang-how, and I was determined it should not be Anarky. Said he, "Anarky is taking advantage of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... ill-will which would harm another man, or of selfishness that seeks my own private advantage. No, Gentlemen of the Jury, I am on trial for my love of Justice; for my respect to the natural Rights of Man; for speaking a word in behalf of what the Declaration of Independence calls the "self-evident" Truth,—that all men have a natural, equal, and unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. I am charged with words against what John Wesley named, the "Sum of all Villanies," against a national crime so great, that ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... popular expression esteemed figurative, but they affirm to be the simplest statement of fact. Then is their whole theory of social relations—both in and out of the body—most philosophical, and, though at variance with the popular theology, self-evident. It is only when they come to their descriptive theism, if I may say so, and then to their drollest heaven, and to some autocratic not moral decrees of God, that the mythus loses me. In general, too, they receive the fable instead ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... from our enemies, and, abstraction made from the monstrosities which are indelibly associated with the German name, there is much which the Teutons can still teach us. That the secret of success lies in a comprehensive system of organization is self-evident. But that organization must utilize all the resources of the Allies and include permanent arrangements, economic and other, for a future which shall not be a continuation of the past. Many of the advantages which the old ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... first greater importance was attached to Bulgarian co-operation than to Greek. Even the grant of {28} a loan to Sofia by the Central Powers appears to have produced little or no impression upon those concerned. Long afterwards it was admitted as a self-evident proposition that belligerents do not lend to neutrals without being satisfied that their money will not be used against themselves. But at the time, after a momentary shock, the Entente Governments were deluded, either by Bulgarian diplomacy or by their own wishes, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius quite another—nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom confound them. By and by, this proposition, with many which I have been just urging, will be received as self-evident. In the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities, they will not be essentially ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... all beings great and small came by the law of cause and effect, are we not bound to work by the laws of cause, if we wish an effect? If the heavens do move by cause when was its beings divorced from that great common law? Are we not bound to trust and work by the old and reliable self-evident laws, until something later has proven its superior ability to ward off ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... States." This suppressed the fact that by the "Memorandum" the arms were "to be reported to the chief of ordnance at Washington City subject to the future action of the Congress of the United States." The allowance of arms to local authorities to preserve order was a necessity so self-evident that, in the face of this objection by Mr. Stanton, General Schofield, in supplementary terms of the final surrender, allowed Johnston's troops to retain part of the arms in this way, and no whisper of further objection was ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... "It is so self-evident that it is the way all governments are carried on. Wherefore, my good Paul, we only do what all other legislators do. We are never rogues so long as we call ourselves honest fellows, and we never commit a crime ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mind in writing a collection letter is that it is a collection letter—that it is an effort to get money which is owed. It would not seem necessary to emphasize so entirely self-evident a point were it not unfortunately sometimes overlooked and the collection letter made an academic exercise. There is no excuse for a long series of collection letters—say eight or ten of them. After a man has received three or four letters you can take it for granted that he ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... only couple their nonsense with a few self-evident generalities which no one would really oppose. No, first of all they must be educated and that you women alone ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... obvious relation between Hahnemann's three cardinal doctrines appears to be self-evident upon inspection. But if, as is often true with his disciples, they prefer the authority of one of their own number, I will refer them to Dr. Trinks's paper on the present state of Homoeopathy in Europe, with which, of course, they are familiar, as his name ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... design everywhere; and that the vast majority of the human race in every age and clime has seen it. Analogy from experience, sound induction—as we hold—from the works not only of men but of animals, has made it an all but self-evident truth to us, that wherever there is arrangement, there must be an arranger; wherever there is adaptation of means to an end, there must be an adapter; wherever an organization, there must be an organizer. The existence of a designing God is no more ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... far this necessity constitutes a sufficient reason for accepting this hypothesis.... Those who hold that the edifice of physical science is really constructed of conclusions logically inferred from self-evident premises, may reasonably demand that any practical judgments claiming philosophic certainty should be based on an equally firm foundation. If, on the other hand, we find that in our supposed knowledge of the world of nature propositions are commonly taken ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... was—concerning the persons and influences that had worked upon Jacob Delafield since his college days, was felt in good earnest by not a few of Delafield's friends. For he was a person rich in friends, reserved as he generally was, and crotchety as most of them thought him. The mixture of self-evident strength and manliness in his physiognomy with something delicate and evasive, some hindering element of reflection or doubt, was repeated in his character. On the one side he was a robust, healthy Etonian, who could ride, shoot, and golf like the rest of his kind, who used the terse, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... manifest that there can be nothing like a wide comprehension of sociology, unless through a competent acquaintance with man in all his faculties, bodily, and mental. Consider the matter in the abstract, and this conclusion is self-evident. Thus:—Society is made up of individuals; all that is done in society is done by the combined actions of individuals; and therefore, in individual actions only can be found the solutions of social phenomena. But the actions of individuals depend on the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... my lords, that your regard to justice, to truth, and to your own safety, will influence you to confirm this great and self-evident principle by a standing resolution, that may not only restrain oppression in the present age, but direct the judiciary ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... prove the contrary, the frequently heard myth that the interests of Capital and Labor are identical, and the existence of pacificatory associations based upon that myth, there is no fact in the whole range of social phenomena more self-evident than the existence of an inherent, fundamental antagonism in the relationship of employer and employee. As individuals, in all other relations, they may have a commonality of interests, but as employer and employee they are fundamentally and necessarily opposed. They ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... which can be briefly resumed in scientific formulae."[14] And Henry Adams, in a letter to the American Historical Association already referred to, confesses that history has thus far been a fruitless quest for "the secret which would transform these odds and ends of philosophy into one self-evident, harmonious, and complete system." ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... "Female Suffrage" demonstrates that no social argument—however popular or politically correct today—can be considered as self-evident. Those who favor full legal and social equality of the sexes at the ballot box and elsewhere (as I believe I do), should be prepared to examine and answer Susan Fenimore Cooper's arguments to the contrary. Many of those arguments are still heard daily in the press and on TV talk shows—not ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... they ceased to persecute, and would gladly tempt you under the semblance of friendship and esteem to supplicate for some office, that they might indicate to the world your unworthiness by refusing you: a proof, as you know, quite sufficient and self-evident. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... a thing with which you were not thoroughly familiar. I will therefore explain some things in language, since you are not familiar with the mechanism of thought transference. The Five, a self-perpetuating body, do what governing is necessary for the entire planet. Their decrees are founded upon self-evident truth, and are therefore the law. Population is regulated according to the needs of the planet, and since much work is now in progress, an increase in population was recommended by the Five. My companion and I therefore ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... It is a self-evident fact that, according to the state of mind in which we are, things assume different proportions in the ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... even hazard a guess that the Andromeda's warm reception was arranged long before her masts and funnel rose over the horizon. That the islanders intended nothing less than her complete destruction was self-evident. Without the slightest warning they had tried to sink her; and now that she was escaping the further attentions of the field pieces, a number of troops stationed on South Point and the Isle des Fregates began to pelt ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... adequately rendered; that the measures, the dance of the revellers in their half-brutish disguises, the antimasque of country folk, and the final or main dance of the wanderers, were effective; that the whole was graceful, complete and polished, is either self-evident to-day, or may with reason be inferred. The scenery, too, must have been striking; the dreary forest, its darkness just relieved by the half-seen 'glistering' forms; the heavy drug-like splendour of the enchanted palace and the cold moonlight outside; the bright, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... feel so much—coming in. But there seems to be no limit to the joy we feel when Power goes out through us. It seems so self-evident, so needless, to say "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Why of course it is: any child ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... and had the hut cleared of an excited audience, and shut myself in with Hatton and Cookson's agent, and asked him seriously and anxiously if there was not a big factory of the firm's on the river, because it was self-evident he had not got anything like enough stuff to pay off my men with, and my agreement was to pay off on the Rembwe, hence my horror at the smallness of the firm's N'dorko store. "Besides," I said, "Mr. Glass ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... a truth in the physical, and therefore in the spiritual, world of so great importance that we shall not mis-spend time if we follow it, for further confirmation, into another department of nature. Its significance in Biology is self-evident; let us ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... railroad iron after our magnificent system of railroads, extending its benefits to every portion of the Union, had been brought to a dead pause. The same consequences have resulted from similar causes to many other branches of useful manufactures. It is self-evident that where there is no ability to purchase manufactured articles these can not be sold, and consequently ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... continued the Captain, with the air of a man who propounds a self-evident proposition; "is it not clear that if the warm waters of the south flow into the Polar basin as an under current, they must come up somewhere, to take the place of the cold waters that are for ever flowing away from ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... I rose and walked a few paces to knock out my post-breakfast pipe against an apple-tree. I was not so sure that he was right, self-evident as his statement appeared. Ideas moved confusedly in my mind, convictions somehow impressed when that golden-bronze spot of light so gently came to rest above my heart when I last stood at the Barrier; the light so like the bright imagined head of Desire. To fly from ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... and accurate a version as the materials would yield, the following text has been founded upon a careful collation of both MSS. A few alterations have been adopted, but only when the necessity for them appeared to be self-evident; and the orthography has been rendered tolerably uniform, for there is no good reason why we should have 'sewe,' 'scho,' and 'sike,' in some places, and the more modern forms of 'sow,' 'she,' and 'such,' in others. If the MSS. were correctly transcribed, ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... the general wrapper, formed of thick, compact white satin, difficult to break and impervious to moisture. Brown and even black silk, laid out in abroad ribbons, in spindle-shaped patterns, in fanciful meridian waves, adorns the upper portion of the exterior. The part played by this fabric is self-evident: it is a waterproof cover which neither ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... not a mere surface. A door so thin as to have only one side would be repudiated by every man of sense as a monstrosity. When the geometrician defines for us the point, the line, the surface, and the solid, and when he sets before us an array of axioms, or self-evident truths, we follow him with confidence because he seems to be telling us things that we can directly see to be reasonable; indeed, to be telling us things that ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... "Isn't it self-evident?" he demanded. "I've been giving astrogation lessons to these characters. I certainly didn't do it to help them dump germ-cultures on Weald! I brought them here! Don't you see the point? These are space ships. They're in orbit around Weald. They're not manned and they're ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... Cleo. It is self-evident, that they point at Self-liking and the Instinct of Sovereignty. But what is singular in these Laws is, that in their Operation they are the reverse ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... which can be raised. Any boy who has had experience in flying kites can testify to this, High winds, however, are almost invariably gusty and uncertain as to direction, and this makes them dangerous for aviators. It is also a self-evident fact that, beyond a certain stage, the harder the wind blows the more difficult it is to make ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... reading for an American, nor yet of interest to a military student; and its lessons have been taught so often by similar occurrences in other lands under like circumstances, and, moreover, teach such self-evident truths, that they scarcely need to be brought to the notice of an historian. But the crowning event of the war was the Battle of New Orleans; remarkable in its military aspect, and a source of pride to every American. It is well worth a more careful study, and to it I have devoted the last chapter ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... explain the causes of the "Origin of Species," with the statement that "no two individuals of the same species are exactly alike; each tends to vary." This is a self-evident fact, and is very properly used as a starting point for Variation. The next step is then stated as "variations are transmitted, and therefore tend to become permanent," which also is self-evident, and tends to prove the reasonableness ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the outer world merely represents a detour which has been forced upon the wish-fulfillment by experience.[2] Thinking is indeed nothing but the equivalent of the hallucinatory wish; and if the dream be called a wish-fulfillment this becomes self-evident, as nothing but a wish can impel our psychic apparatus to activity. The dream, which in fulfilling its wishes follows the short regressive path, thereby preserves for us only an example of the primary form ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... digestion and fixed thought cannot go on together; it is even unadvisable to read while eating. Thus in all the old magical operations, which were, in fact, self-hypnotism, a perfect fast is insisted on with reason. This is all so self-evident that I need not dwell on it. It will be needless for anyone to take up this subject as a trifling pastime, or attempt self-suggestion and development of will with as little earnestness as one would give ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... explain each bend by the fact that the previous bend was in the opposite direction. But that does not explain why the river flows down-hill, nor show which direction tends downwards. We may account for trifling oscillations, not for the main current. Nor does it seem at first a self-evident proposition that vice, for example, necessarily generates over-strictness. A man is not always a Pharisee because his father has been a sinner. In fact, the people who talk so fluently about reaction fall back whenever it suits them upon the inverse theory. If a process happens to be continuous, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... however, thousands, convinced of the value and benefit of the bathing, periodically attend these miserable substitutes for properly-planned, hygienically-heated, and effectively-ventilated Turkish baths. Viewing any self-evident shortcomings as irremediable evils, ignorant of the true principles of bath construction, and knowing little or nothing of the physiological action of the bath, they have neither the means of ascertaining, nor the power to detect, the genuine article ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... an insult to common sense for us to set forth, in full, the injustice of their sentence. Both were guiltless towards the crown; while the hands of one, on the contrary, were deeply dyed in the blood of the people. This truth was so self-evident, that even a member of the Blood-Council, Pierre Arsens, president of Artois, addressed an elaborate memoir to the Duke of Alva, criticising the case according to the rules of law, and maintaining that Egmont, instead of deserving punishment, was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... James Ritter," supplied the outlaw promptly. "I am not ashamed of my real name but my relatives had cause to be ashamed of its owner in his present condition. Their plans are almost self-evident, my lad. They will wait until dark and then slip over the wall, some will stop in that big building while the balance will make their way around to a building on the other side of you. They will then have you surrounded and have only to watch ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... superfluous to dwell at so much length on what is so nearly self-evident; but when a distinction, obvious as it may appear, has been confounded, and by powerful intellects, it is better to say too much than too little for the purpose of rendering such mistakes impossible in future. I will, therefore detain the reader while I point out one of the absurd ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... phenomenon of the saint, it is undoubtedly the appearance of the miraculous therein—namely, the immediate SUCCESSION OF OPPOSITES, of states of the soul regarded as morally antithetical: it was believed here to be self-evident that a "bad man" was all at once turned into a "saint," a good man. The hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at this point, is it not possible it may have happened principally because psychology had placed itself under the dominion of morals, because it BELIEVED ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... For self-evident reasons the title should be short. Aptness and specificness do not require an epitome of the story; and a title like "Why Tom Changed His Opinion of Me," or "What the Rabbit Drive Did for Me" is prosy as well as long. It used to be the custom to make the title of a writing a regular ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... into ordinary education do not discipline the mind in this way. Mathematical training is almost purely deductive. The mathematician starts with a few simple propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practised, is of the same general nature,—authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations of the ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... and unreservedly the product of the geographical Hellas, acting upon the given factor of the undifferentiated Aryan brain,... To me it seems a self-evident proposition that nothing whatsoever can differentiate one body of men from another, except the physical conditions in which they are set,—including, of course, under the term physical conditions the relations of place and time in which they stand with regard to other bodies of men. To suppose ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... materials which the work requires, and to feed and otherwise maintain the labourers during the process. Whatever things are destined for this use are capital. That industry is limited by capital is self-evident. There can be no more industry than is supplied with materials to work up and food to eat. Nevertheless, it is often forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have their wants supplied, not by the produce of present labour, but of past, and it long continued to be believed that ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... beyond all question, beyond all dispute; undoubted, uncontested, unquestioned, undisputed; questionless^, doubtless. authoritative, authentic, official. sure as fate, sure as death and taxes, sure as a gun. evident, self-evident, axiomatic; clear, clear as day, clear as the sun at noonday. Adv. certainly &c adj.; for certain, certes [Lat.], sure, no doubt, doubtless, and no mistake, flagrante delicto [Lat.], sure enough, to be sure, of course, as a matter of course, a coup sur, to a certainty; in truth &c (truly) 494; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Devices self-evident from the text. 1. Bombast and mock-heroics. 2. Horse-play and slap-sticks. 3. Burlesque, farce and extravagance of situation and dialogue. a. True burlesque. b. True farce. c. Extravagances obviously unnatural and merely for the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... color as such, so self-evident to one who possesses it, seems to be wanting, except in rudimentary fashion, in a great many people. They are probably few, however, who do not feel some stirrings when they look through the stained glass of a cathedral window or upon ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... spiritual sense, to assail iniquity in high places and in low places, to apply our principles to all existing evil, political, legal, and ecclesiastical institutions, and to hasten the time when the kingdoms of this world will have become the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. It appears to us a self-evident truth that whatever the Gospel is designed to destroy at any period of the world, being contrary to it, ought now to be abandoned. If, then, the time is predicted when swords shall be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, and men shall not learn ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... to a very marked degree upon the success with which they can be carried out where they are counted toward a higher degree (M.A. or Ph.D.) the difficulty is not so great, since their introductory nature is self-evident; but where they conclude, so to speak, the student's formal training the difficulty of making them "fit in" is often sadly apparent. At any rate, in this borderland between cultural and professional studies, where the college is merging with the ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... drew to a halt without any command, and directly beside the young man, who was working diligently over the overturned motorcycle. His repair kit was spread out at the roadside, and the cause of the trouble was self-evident, it would seem. But Walky was a true Yankee and had ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... burner, is projected into the air. Now, considering the deleterious nature of all illuminating gases, the reasons for perfect ventilation of rooms in which natural gas is used for heating and culinary purposes are self-evident, not alone as a protection against explosions, but for the health of the occupants of the house, remembering that a larger supply of oxygen is said to be necessary for the perfect combustion of natural than ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... we proceed, that the function of an argument in philosophy, as in logic, is to prove that a certain relation exists between two concepts or objects of thought, when that relation is not self-evident. In the Darwinian chain we have, as the first link, organic life springing from inorganic matter, without the slightest relation existing between the two, except what may be universally predicated of matter itself, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... inquiry of demonstrative science does not go on indefinitely, because one can come to principles that are self-evident, which are absolutely certain. But such like certainty is not to be had in contingent singulars, which are variable and uncertain. Therefore the inquiry of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... displacement of a second portion of the liquid, and a consequent rise of level. Again, this second rise of level causes a yet further immersion, and by consequence another displacement of liquid and another rise. It is self-evident that this process must continue till the entire solid is immersed, and that the liquid will then begin to immerse whatever holds the solid, which, being connected with it, must for the time be considered a part of it. If you hold a stick, six feet long, with its end in a tumbler of water, and wait ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... one thing—a thing scarce distinguishable from any other old woman. But this transformation of a black wand into a wide-spreading tent was so obviously the result of magic, that it was self-evident they had to do with a witch in full defensive and ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... the symbols of number or of quantity, and, by proceeding step by step from more simple to more complex operations, we are enabled to express the same thing in many different forms. The equivalence of these different forms, though a necessary consequence of self-evident axioms, is not always, to our minds, self-evident; but the mathematician, who by long practice has acquired a familiarity with many of these forms, and has become expert in the processes which lead from one to ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... Newton, when, at quite a mature period of his career, Euclid was first brought to his attention, laid the book down after a cursory glance with the remark that it was only fit for children, its propositions being self-evident. Yet to those truisms Newton added very little. His work lay in their development and application. Laplace and Biot belong to our own day; but their task, too, consisted in the employment of old rules. The most effective tools of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... the first kind of truths, or those received by intuition, we have examples in what are called 'self-evident axioms,' and 'fundamental laws' or 'conditions of thought,' which no wise man has ever attempted to prove. Of the second, we have examples in the whole fabric of mathematical science, reared from its basis of axioms and definitions, as well as ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... international relationship, why then public opinion would go on being as ignorant and mistaken as it had been hitherto. But sound opinion and instincts in that field depend upon nothing of the sort, but upon the emergence of a few quite simple facts, which are indisputable and self-evident, which stare us in the face, and which absolutely disprove all the elaborate theories of ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... concerned Dan broke all records and narrowly escaped arrest in getting her to the Rodriguez home, but nothing further could be elicited from its dismayed chatelaine. Her sincerity, however, was self-evident; she could have had no hand in the ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... personal coming of Christ, and not any providential interposition, is here symbolized, is self-evident. For, while no created object can adequately symbolize Him, it would derogate from the dignity of his character and position to be a symbol of some inferior object. In all mere providential interpositions, foreshown by ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... of the departure of Don Luis de Bracamonte, asking you to be pleased to send a governor for those places, for Don Luis said that he would remain there only until the arrival of your Majesty's appointee—a thing that was self-evident, even had he not said it. Had it not been for placing a captain before one whom your Majesty had honored with the title of master-of-camp, I would have given those forts in charge to Captain Don Andres Perez Franco, to whom your Majesty, while ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... standard. Perfect culture should supply a complete theory of life, based upon a clear knowledge alike of its possibilities and its limitations." Against the second proposition he urged in the first place that it was self-evident that after having learned all that Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity have thought and said, and all that modern literature has to tell us, it was still necessary to have a deeper foundation for criticism of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... silence for a brief space, after my somewhat elaborate exposition of these self-evident analogies. Presently a person turned towards me—I do not choose to designate the individual—and said that he rather expected my pieces had given pretty good "sahtisfahction."—I had, up to this moment, considered this complimentary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... strikes the stranger at Nice is its Italian population. These black-eyed, dark-complexioned, raven-haired, easy-going folks form as distinct a type as the fresh-complexioned, blue-eyed Alsatian. That the Niois are French at heart is self-evident, and no wonder, when we compare their present condition with that of the past. We see no beggars or ragged, wretched-looking people. If the municipal authorities have set themselves the task of putting down ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... blacks were wont to make to whites, a form of salutation born of generations of slave-blood, meanly humble and cringingly self-effacing, rebuking such an exhibition of sheer and shameless servility and lack of proper self-respect, he would thereupon declare to them the self-evident truth that all men were born free and equal, that the master, with his white skin, was in the sight of God no whit better than his black slaves, and that for himself he would not cringe ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... of knowledge asked the Querist Department to give a scripture to prove the last clause. He received this answer: "It seems to us that it is one of those self-evident views that needs no proof. If the Bible teaches otherwise let us have the chapter and verse. The Querist Department does not ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... at the speaker as if wroth with him for proposing so simple and self-evident a means of getting at the water at a time when they had only succeeded at the risk of losing ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... considers this to be so self-evident that he deems it unnecessary to advance any proof. He quotes the Chancellor's speech, and, moving for a quick verdict, declares his motion of guilty carried. The matter, however, is not quite so simple for the man who is seeking for the whole ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... of public indignation, which had for result that he was immediately set at liberty by the Chief of the State. The honourable character given the condemned man by all his fellow-citizens made the grossness of the blunder self-evident. The magistrates themselves admitted it, and yet out of caste considerations they did all they could to prevent the pardon being signed. In all similar affairs the jury, confronted with technical details ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... little tool (fig. 69), the invention of one of my youngest "hands" (and heads), and really a praiseworthy invention, though indeed a simple and self-evident matter enough. The usual tool for waxing-up is (1) a strip of glass, (2) a penknife, (3) a stick of wood. The thing most to be wished for in whatever is used being, of course, that it should retain the heat. This youth argued: "If they use copper for soldering-bits because ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... darken such a truth; no sophism can confute this clear principle. This is a certainty, if there be none other. This is the basis of all science. It is in vain to ask for a proof of that which is self-evident and irresistible. I exist. The consciousness of my existence is to me the assurance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... has not been exempt from the destructive influence of causes whose operation has been steady and invariable in all ages and in all countries. The inference that this difficulty has been a preventive to marriage, and to the consequent progress of population is self-evident: to be understood it only requires to be stated. But the numerical increase of the colony has been checked in a still greater degree, perhaps by the constant returns from its shores which are daily occasioned by the same causes. What inducement, in fact, exists for any person ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... friend, you cannot limit the labour of adults unless you fix wages. This proposition he lays down repeatedly, assures us that it is incontrovertible, and indeed seems to think it self-evident; for he has not taken the trouble to prove it. Sir, my answer shall be very short. We have, during many centuries, limited the labour of adults to six days in seven; and yet we have not fixed ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to despair of Cooper's ever accomplishing again anything worthy of his early renown. They were pure works of art. No moral was everlastingly perking itself in the reader's face, no labored lecture to prove what was self-evident interrupted the progress of the story. There is scarcely an allusion to any of the events which had checkered the novelist's career. References to contemporary occurrences are so slight that they ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... the whole point. There are circumstances—perhaps, on the whole, the most numerous of all the various circumstances in war—in which close formation, if it can be used, is obviously an advantage; but it is equally self-evident that the losses of troops in close formation will be heavier than their losses in extended order. A group is a better target than a number of dispersed, ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... a man like him, who lives at court, does not like to have a mad niece in his house. The thing is self-evident; if I'd continued to play my part of the man of the robe, I should have done the same in a similar case. But here, as you perceive, we don't care much for appearances; and I've taken her for a servant. She has shown more good sense than I expected, although she has ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... principle of equality, as well as their practise of it was their legacy to our people, and it remains now all that differences us from other nations. It was not Thomas Jefferson who first imagined the first of the self-evident truths of the Declaration, but ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... the British fleet!" The great men took alarm, and that admiral was not sent. But they misconstrued the meaning of his answer. He meant not to imply any considerable danger to the British fleet. He meant to prove that one hypothesis was impossible by the suggestion of a counter-impossibility more self-evident. "It is impossible but what I shall take Cronstadt!" "But if you don't take it!" "It is impossible but what I shall take it; for if I don't take it, there's an end of the British fleet; and as it is impossible that there ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
