"Disprove" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reconciled him at once to the Athenians. The previous suspicions of his fidelity to Greece do not seem to have been kept alive even by the virulence of party; and it is natural to suppose that it must have been some act of his own, real or imagined, which tended to disprove the plausible accusations against him, and revive the general enthusiasm in his favour. What could that act have been but the last of his life, which, in the lines of Aristophanes referred to above, is cited as the ideal of a glorious death! But if ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... visiting a certain noted institution at South Boston, ventured to express the sentiment, that man is a rational being. An old woman who was an attendant in the Idiot School contradicted the statement, and appealed to the facts before the speaker to disprove it. The rash man stuck to his hasty ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... this crime—unpardonable even in that corrupt society, when crimes of far deeper dye passed almost unreproved—Clodius was, after some delay, brought to public trial. The defence set up was an alibi, and Cicero came forward as a witness to disprove it: he had met and spoken with Clodius in Rome that very evening. The evidence was clear enough, but the jury had been tampered with by Clodius and his friends; liberal bribery, and other corrupting influences of even a more disgraceful kind, had been successfully brought ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... restitution of the unsold part of his estates. On the day fixed for settling the accounts and entering into his rights, Baron de Saurac was arrested as a conspirator and imprisoned in the Temple. He had been denounced as having served in the army of Conde, and as being a secret agent of Louis XVIII. To disprove the first part of the charge, he produced certificates from America, where he had passed the time of his emigration, and even upon the rack he denied the latter. During his arrest, the eldest son discovered that Louis had become the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was made up of a dozen or so hovels," continued the doctor, resuming his nervous walk. "There was no one there who could talk or understand their language but these two. The consequence—conditions were right. They would be constantly together. They would either prove or disprove my theory that men and women were but machines of passion. I knew that they would stay at this place during the three months I had allotted for my experiment, for I paid them a high price. The girl, when she found no American family, ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... United States, whose peace, welfare and happiness are all at stake, so long I will agree to leave them to themselves. But when a member from a free State brings forward certain resolutions, for which, instead of reasoning to disprove his positions, you vote a censure upon him, and that without hearing, it is quite another affair. At the time this was done, I said that, as far as I could understand the resolutions proposed by the gentleman from Ohio, (Mr. Giddings,) there were some of them ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... reading some miserable cant about Southern humanity, for there are people everywhere who take the wrong side of every subject, from sheer obstinacy. What can disprove the laws of human nature? They require that things should be at the South as our theories ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... again. "Does this do anything to your theory about duty?" asked Nolan. "Does it prove it, or disprove it, or what? I can not seem to get ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... archives of the Komorn Court, one of the most interesting trials is that of Athalie Brazovics. The woman's defense was masterly; she denied everything, knew how to disprove everything, and when they thought they had caught her, she managed to throw such mystery over it all, that her judges knew not where to have her. Why should she murder Timea? She was herself engaged, and had good ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... fabrications of De Foe; but in this case (if the fact indeed be so), as in that of his Cavalier, he no doubt had before him the rude journal of some officer.' Dr. Burton (Reign of Queen Anne ii. 173) says that MSS. in the British Museum disprove 'the possibility of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... only with the business of governing the muscles or receiving the bodily sensations of its corresponding side. If brain matter really itself thought, we should have two thinking and speaking hemispheres—and this the first case of loss of speech by an apoplectic clot would disprove. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... absences, and gather together accusations. At length the king was brought to see in him a source of perpetual disquiet, knowing that he should pay for the short-lived pleasure of his society by tedious homilies, and more painful narrations of excesses, the truth of which he could not disprove. The result was, that he would make one more attempt to reclaim him, and in case of ill success, cast ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... and a friend of Kendall, mind, is at the bottom of all this mischief. He wrote the Cologne letter himself. It was got up, and sent enclosed to the postmaster at Cologne, who of course forwarded it to Rotterdam. It is a trick to disprove ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... the methods of that science. Philosophy is not a short cut to the same kind of results as those of the other sciences: if it is to be a genuine study, it must have a province of its own, and aim at results which the other sciences can neither prove nor disprove. ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... attempt on Louis Napoleon and John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove the ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... to secure the eastern basin of the Mediterranean by the establishment of some strong frontier against Iran, out of which had come more than once forces threatening the destruction of Ottoman power. It does not, of course, in any respect disprove their purpose that, in the event, this object was never attained, and that an unsatisfactory Turco-Persian border still illustrates at this day the failures of Selim I ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... He could not. He only looked very sorrowfully into the worn face of the heart-wearied man, with a conviction which he was unable to repress, that the time of the call to come up higher was not far away. He would have been thankful to disprove his conclusion, but to stifle it ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... can't disprove it.—"'Coridon,' said he, surveying his attendant from head to foot, and ultimately assuming a severity of countenance, 'Coridon, you are becoming gross, if not positively what the people call fat.' The Swiss attendant fell back in graceful astonishment three steps, and arching his eyebrows, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... upon the quivering quarry with all the excitement and all the fury of Saint-Simon himself. Though it would, indeed, be a mistake to suppose that Saint-Simon was always furious—the wonderful portraits of the Duchesse de Bourgogne and the Prince de Conti are in themselves sufficient to disprove that—yet there can be no doubt that his hatreds exceeded his loves, and that, in his character-drawing, he was, as it were, more at home when he detested. Then the victim is indeed dissected with a loving hand; then the details of incrimination pour out in a multitudinous ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... already high in oath, fiercely enjoined his absence, and he retired; not, however, before he had distinctly heard from the stranger's lips a menace that "there was that within his pocket which could disprove the knight's right to issue that or any other command within the ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... above the rim of the distant mountains my father determined to disprove or verify the rumor. Neighbors sought to dissuade him, but mounting a swift horse he started for Brownsville on the Calapooya. Meantime everything was in readiness for forting up should it become necessary. The day wore on, still no news. In vain ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... and natural shrewdness, and a spirit free from vulgarity. The blunders of a fertile but hurried intellect, and the awkward display of the student assuming the man of fashion, fix on him a character for absurdity and vanity which, like the charge of lunacy, it is hard to disprove, however weak the grounds of the charge and strong the facts in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... often appealed strongly to my sense of humor. I frequently smiled inwardly at some remark not altogether complimentary to people of color; and more than once I felt like declaiming: "I am a colored man. Do I not disprove the theory that one drop of Negro blood renders a man unfit?" Many a night when I returned to my room after an enjoyable evening, I laughed heartily over what struck me as the capital ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... position for quite a number of weeks, will succeed Mr. FISHER. Some experts however hold that the PREMIER has a magnificent opportunity for displaying his imagination by the choice of Mr. WELLS, who is burning to disprove the recent astounding allegation of General WILSON that the War could not have been won without the Universities. The chief objection to Mr. WELLS, however, is that he cannot be transferred, because he is not already in office; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... table of the renowned conqueror, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary—nay, in the cabinet of the Emperor himself—to reiterate assurances of that which I have advanced as true. If you will not believe me, I can but refer to the course of events. A day or two days' patience will prove or disprove what I have averred concerning the young Scot, and I will be contented to die on the wheel, and have my limbs broken joint by joint, if your Majesty have not advantage, and that in a most important degree, from the dauntless conduct of that ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... originally undertaken in jest, in order to disprove the assertion made by an acquaintance that Falstaff was a coward; but, inspired by his subject, it was continued and finished in splendid earnest. As his analysis of the character of Falstaff becomes more intimate his ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... VAUGHAN-SAWYER, speaking before the Fabian Women's Group, in 1910, said: "Fortunately, after the first two or three months, most children will thrive equally well when artificially fed, so long as the milk is good and reliable, and is properly prepared." All of our facts go to disprove ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... a serious letter, if I do not mind, about nothing, and so doubly disprove all I have been saying. I trust C. is getting well, but I am always anxious about that fever. Pray write a word to relieve my [196] solicitude, which my wife shares with me, as in the affectionate regard with ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... had married the daughter of a great merchant, a delicate type of beauty; the last to fascinate a buccaneer, according to the gossips of the time. Rumor had it that he had taken her for the wherewithal to pay the enormous debts contracted in his latest exploit. To disprove this he went to sea in a temper with a frigate and came back laden with the treasure of half a dozen galleons, to find that his wife had died at the birth of a son. He promised himself to settle down for good; ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... uttering a sigh as he did so, that came from the heart, "I promised to send to Julia, only when death overpowered me. Will you take it to her, and say that the wearer has gone to another world, where treachery and crime do not exist, and where I hope to meet her and her father, and then disprove the unjust accusation that ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... "Wall them out first, and disprove them afterward; I shall be better able to believe they don't exist when they are ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... beauty are dead, that the spirit of heroic achievement and chivalry has been crushed by the juggernautic wheels of civilisation. Poor blind, sad-hearted fools—their dreary, unlovely minds have risen like gaunt weeds from the ashes of their wasted opportunities. Romance dead? Never! And in order to disprove their dismal forebodings, I have included in my portrait gallery studies of such national heroes as—Snurge, Spout, Puffwater and Plinge. Men selected purposely not merely for the glory of their achievements but ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... instead of employing this maxim in the sense in which it is used by Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and others, to prove there must be something self-existent and eternal, or in other words, "that nothing which once was not can ever of itself come into being," he uses it to disprove a divine creation, and even presents the maxim in an altered form—viz., "nothing is ever divinely generated from nothing;"[787] and he thence concludes that the world was by no means made for us by divine power.[788] Nature is eternal. "The universal ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... beliest, Antinous, Thine innocence: alas, my Lords, he's desperate, And talks he knows not what: you must not credit 290] His lunacy; I can my self disprove This accusation: Cassilane, be yet More mercifull; ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... and consequently, in the converse, whatever can be brought into the sphere of the understanding, as a dialectic subject, is not an Idea. It will be observed, however, that we do not say an idea may not be denied; but to deny is not to disprove. Many things are denied in direct contradiction to fact; for the mind can command, and in no measured degree, the power of self-blinding, so that it cannot see what is actually before it. This is a psychological fact, which may be attested by thousands, who can ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... "colonization," reform bills, final settlements, coercion acts, land acts, hangings, confiscations, corruptions, treachery and broken promises, a large part of the native Irish are living in the United States, where by their steadiness, industry, bright minds and success they contradict and disprove every charge and statement made against them by pottering English statesmen, England may undoubtedly be said to have successfully solved the problem of her "white man's burden" so far as concerns these ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... reasons, framed against y^t clause in y^e conditions, which as y^ey were delivered me open, so my answer is open to you all. And first, as they are no other but inconveniences, such as a man might frame 20. as great on y^e other side, and yet prove nor disprove nothing by them, so they misse & mistake both y^e very ground of y^e article and nature of y^e project. For, first, it is said, that if ther had been no divission of houses & lands, it had been better for y^e poore. True, and y^t showeth y^e inequalitie of y^e condition; we should more ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... spend the night. All of them, though they gave us a cursory glance, seemed disposed to mind their own business. It looked for a minute as if we were going to remain in there unquestioned. But the two spies who had come with us saw a chance to confirm or else disprove our bona fides, and while one of them stayed and watched us the other went to fetch the Sheikh ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... Robespierre became the head of the government on the very day when the bad news came from the fortresses, and he fell immediately after the occupation of Brussels, July 11, 1794, exposed the effects of Fleurus. We cannot dissociate these events, or disprove the contention that the Reign of Terror was the salvation of France. It is certain that the conscription of March 1793, under Girondin auspices, scarcely yielded half the required amount, whilst the ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... to England. Some yellow journals even went so far as to suggest that I had received payment from the Russian Government for "whitewashing" its penal system, but I fancy the following pages should conclusively disprove the existence of any monetary transactions, past or present, between the Tsar's officials and myself, to say nothing of the fact that my favourable account of the prisons of Western Siberia has been endorsed by such reliable and well-known ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... judge him culpable. In the end, when he was somewhat returned to his former subtility, he began to deny all that was said, and stoutly affirmed, that the Physitian did lye. But the Physitian perceiving that he was rayled at and his words denyed, did never cease to confirme his sayings, and to disprove the varlet, till such time as the Officers by the commandment of the Judges, bound his hands and brought out the seale, wherewith he had sealed the purse which augmented suspition which was conceived of him first. Howbeit, neither the feare of the wheele or any other ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... the Buddha's claims to respect. It is said that he is of a noble and wealthy family but not that he is the son of a king or heir to the throne, though the statement, if true, would be so obvious and appropriate that its omission is sufficient to disprove it. The point is of psychological importance, for the later literature in its desire to emphasize the sacrifice made by the Buddha exaggerates the splendour and luxury by which he was surrounded in youth and produces the impression that his temperament was something like that reflected ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... all who saw them will remember the extremely clever and effective pictures in crewels by an accomplished American lady, Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, exhibited in London a few years ago. These exceptional cases do not, however, disprove the objections against employing the most unfit and unmanageable materials for producing subjects alien to ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... position to disprove this pretty conceit. But I think of it every time I put my foot in a Badger hole. Such lovely holes, so plentiful, so worse than useless where the Badger has thoughtlessly located them. If only we could harness and ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... man of enterprise that I have read of in history. Critics ambitious to say something new may rake out slanders from the archives of enemies, and discover faults which derogate from the character we have been taught to admire and venerate; they may even point out spots, which we cannot disprove, in that sun of glorious brightness, which shed its beneficent rays over a century of darkness,—but this we know, that, whatever may be the force of detraction, his fame has been steadily increasing, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... looked at his principal with the air of a man profoundly puzzled, and Rawdon felt with a kind of rage that his prey was escaping him. He did not believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit or disprove it? ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was so overgrown with wood, and so traversed by mountains, that it appeared impracticable to penetrate to any distance, so that no account of the interior could be expected. They were, however, in a condition to disprove the relations given by Spanish writers, who have represented this coast as inhabited by a fierce and powerful people, as no such inhabitants were to be found, at least in the winter season; for, during the whole time of their continuance ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... 6th a new departure began: a Committee was appointed to collect "facts concerning the working of the Poor Law," with special reference to alleged official attempts to disprove "great distress amongst the workers." It does not appear that the ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... Man that passes for valiant in a Battel, were to give an account how he gained his Reputation, the World wou'd be but thinly stock'd with Heroes; I'll say he was a great War-Captain, and that I kill'd him hand to hand, and who can disprove me? ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... abated, and we employ the term lunatic as a familiar expression, to denote a person of insane mind, without any reference to its derivation, or supposed ascendency of the moon, which my own observations have tended to disprove:—but as the phrase lucid interval is, in its legal sense, connected with lunatic, some investigation of its ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... doors, and the outside world is what you will it to be," the Maluka theorised, and to disprove it Mac drew attention to the distant booming of the bells that swung from the neck of his ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... to be, "Unravel the superstition, disprove the possibility of miracle, and let the deluge come if ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... Catherine that if she were his sister she would disprove this axiom. "Is she—is she pleasant?" she asked ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... strata, volcanoes, and all their fossil remains—by the slow and natural action of natural causes now in operation. The mind that will ultimately reject Darwin must (to be consistent) reject Lyell also. The same arguments of apparent stability which are thought to disprove that organic species can change will also disprove any change in the inorganic world, and you must believe with your forefathers that each hill and each river, each inland lake and continent, were created ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... a doctrine that changes the words of the institution, wrests and twists them out of their natural sense, and does violence to all sound rules of interpretation that must bolster itself up by the very same methods of interpretation that are used to disprove the divinity of Christ, the resurrection of the body, and the eternity of future punishment, is not the ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... to prove or disprove Tom's theory that a fellow ought to feel most at home in his ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... But that, during this short period of action, he did not do well and wisely all that man could achieve in the time, and under the circumstances, is an assertion which the noble facts here recorded fully and triumphantly disprove. He knew that, placed as he was, his measures, to be wise, must be prospective, and from the nature of the seeds thus sown by him, the benefits that were to be expected must be judged. To reconcile the rude chiefs to the Government ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... was always received with a round of sympathetic applause, although I have never yet found two persons to agree in their explanation of what is meant by the word "Commune." At the Moderate clubs, the speeches generally consisted of ignorant abuse of Germany, attempts to disprove well-established facts, and extravagant self-laudation. I have attended many clubs—Ultra and Moderate—and I never heard a speaker at one of them who would have been tolerated for five minutes by an ordinary ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Which I have brought you hither, at my peril, Against their written warning, to disprove, By justice, mercy, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... and then die, but this does not disprove the truth they expressed, but failed, possibly, to fully live. The great man always thinks further than he can travel—even the rest of us can do that. We can think "Chicago" in a second, but to go there takes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... M. Croza politely, "was Mr. Beechtree's suggestion—only, of course, a suggestion, based on various facts which had come to his knowledge. You can, doubtless, disprove these facts, sir, or account for them in some other way. No one will be more delighted than the committee ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... any man's word for such a statement," answered the Captain. "If it were known, I should have all the pressed men coming to me with long yarns, which it might be difficult to disprove." ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... don't know what her conception of 'niceness' may be; it didn't fit mine. She had got it into her head that I 'pitied' her, which seemed to be a crime. I didn't see how to disprove it, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... non-perceived svastika-ornament is perceived the gold also is recognised, is due to the fact of the gold persisting as the substrate of the ornament, and hence such recognition of the causal substance does not disprove the reality of the effect.—And the attempts to prove the unreality of the world by means of scriptural texts we have already disposed of in a previous part ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... lazy men lack industry. There are various motives that force them to labor, often mere pride, and more often still, necessity. Marivaux was a great worker, as his works in ten large volumes (as edited by Duviquet) prove, but they do not in the least disprove his statement that he was not fond of work, and it is undoubtedly true that, had it not been for the spur of necessity, he would not have written "tant de neants plus ou moins spirituels," and the world would have been deprived of his best writings, for the poorest ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... call upon the law-makers and law-breakers of the nation, to defend themselves for violating the fundamental principles of the Republic, or disprove their validity. Yes! they stand arrayed before the bar, not only of injured womanhood, but before the bar of moral consistency; for this question is awakening an interest abroad, as well as at home. Whatever human rights are claimed for man, moral consistency ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... shall put. You will also write on such theme as they shall select. In their eyes, it appears, I hold the position of an unprincipled impostor. I write essays; and, with deliberate forgery, sign to them my pupils' names, and boast of them as their work. You will disprove this charge." ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Arcite with disdain In haughty language thus replied again: "Forsworn thyself: the traitor's odious name I first return, and then disprove thy claim. If love be passion, and that passion nurst With strong desires, I loved the lady first. Canst thou pretend desire, whom zeal inflamed To worship, and a power celestial named? Thine was devotion to the blest above, I saw the woman, and desired her love; First owned my passion, ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... sufficiently concentrated to cause the death of other animals which were present. They were removed in time, and he escaped because the concentration was not a mortal one for man. This was, in a sense, an experimentum crucis and, although it did not disprove the extreme danger of prussic acid, if employed in high concentrations, it showed, on the other hand, that it was difficult to gauge the military value by field experiments; battle results were necessary. The Germans' disappointment with the use of ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... not give himself the Trouble of verbally refuting the Calumnies, and Invectives, with which he was daily loaded, but took Care to disprove them by his Conduct. The publick Finances had been quite exhausted, during the last Years of the great Zokitarezoul, and he took upon himself to restore them. It is true, that his Scheme ruined some Families; ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... question and disprove the unqualified statement of the Appeal, that "the original settled policy of the United States was non-extension of slavery." Less convincing was Douglas's attempt to prove that the Missouri Compromise was expressly annulled in 1850, when portions of Texas and of the former Spanish ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... points of difference, and, if possible, to show that these do not go to disprove the doctrine of continuity which the points of resemblance ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... October 1496. The sky that morning was clear enough, and there was a pleasant autumnal breeze. But the Florentines just then thought very little about the land breezes: they were thinking of the gales at sea, which seemed to be uniting with all other powers to disprove the Frate's declaration that Heaven took special care ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... had made it. What was to be gained by assuming a false position for an evening, and trying to delude himself into the notion that he was the equal of his old comrade? Did not his clothes, his empty pockets, the smart of Durfy's tongue, and even the letter now on its way to Mr Medlock, all disprove it? And yet, three months ago, he was a better man all round than Blandford, who had been glad to claim his friendship and accept his father's hospitality. Reginald rebelled against the idea that they two could still be anything to one another than the friends ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... a moment, will you, Arthur?' said I, 'and listen to me—and don't think I'm in a jealous fury: I am perfectly calm. Feel my hand.' And I gravely extended it towards him—but closed it upon his with an energy that seemed to disprove the assertion, and made him smile. 'You needn't smile, sir,' said I, still tightening my grasp, and looking steadfastly on him till he almost quailed before me. 'You may think it all very fine, Mr. Huntingdon, to amuse yourself with rousing ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the medical theorist insists on being consulted, and we see fit to indulge him, he cannot be allowed to assume that the alleged laws of contagion, deduced from observation in other diseases, shall be cited to disprove the alleged laws deduced from observation in this. Science would never make progress under such conditions. Neither the long incubation of hydrophobia, nor the protecting power of vaccination, would ever have been admitted, if the results of observation in these affections had been rejected as ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... got a second volume of Bower'S(143) History of the Popes, but it is tiresome and pert, and running into a warmth and partiality that he had much avoided in his first volume. He has taken such pains to disprove the Pope's supremacy being acknowledged pretty early, that he has convinced me it was acknowledged. Not that you and I care whether it were or not. He is much admired here; but I am not good Christian enough to rejoice over him, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... eastward, as Eyre had described, but discovered that Eyre had made an error of thirty miles in longitude, placing it too far to the east. He got no further north. He thus confirmed the existence of a lake eastward of Lake Torrens (now Lake Frome), but achieved nothing to prove or disprove Eyre's theory of their continuity. Prior to this the pioneers had spread settlement both east and west of Eyre's track from Adelaide to the head of Spencer's Gulf. Amongst these early leaders of civilisation in the central state ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... differently in separated archipelagos, was the father of the Tahitian cosmogony. His wife was Hina, the earth, and his son, Oro, was ruler of the world. Tane, the Huahine god, was a brother of Oro, and his equal, but there were islands which disputed this equality, and shed blood to disprove it, as the sects of Christianity have since the peaceful Jesus died by the demands of the priests ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... noticed in passing that Dame Nelly's ordinary mode of consolation was to disprove the existence of any cause for distress; and she is said to have carried this so far as to comfort a neighbour, who had lost her husband, with the assurance that the dear defunct would be better to-morrow, which perhaps might not have proved an appropriate, even if it had been ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... for you to talk," growled Mr. Baggs. "But talk don't take the place of facts. I say a blackguard's always a blackguard and defy any man to disprove it." ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... which limited the general government to the expressed powers and prevented it from encroaching on the young states or on the free movement of personal property." Various phrases in the Constitution were quoted both to prove and disprove the power of Congress to prohibit slavery in a new State. "The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states," it was claimed, would permit the migration of slaveholders to Missouri with their ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... was to get a view of the Austrian trenches and barbed wire on the Tamburo, in order to observe from closer quarters than was possible from any of our O.P.'s the effects of our recent bombardments, and to verify or disprove a report that certain new defensive works were being constructed by the enemy at night. Our own trenches here were on a higher level than the enemy's, and the bottom of the valley between the Tamburo and this part of the ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... having established the Mosaic temple service again, and the Lost Tribes as Christians, then and there we may look for Anti-Christ—not before. Not for the sake of boasting, and yet without fear, we freely invite ministers or laymen anywhere to disprove these facts, and to such we will respond cheerfully if asked for farther proof. The Lost Tribes, we believe, are come to light, and may be found in the Saxon race chiefly as represented in this country and Great Britain. If this be so, then we may look for the preparatory ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... attention, as we have already stated, to the subject of the figure of the earth. In 1670 Picard measured an arc of the meridian in France; and in 1718, the whole area extending through France was measured by Cassini and other philosophers. The results of this measurement seemed to disprove Newton's theory, that the curvature of the earth diminished as we recede from the equator. To remove all doubts, an arc near the equator was measured in Peru, by some French and Spanish astronomers; and an arc near the arctic circle by some French and Swedish astronomers; the result was a ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... reasonable and acceptable theory as to the play of King Henry VIII. None such has ever yet been offered; and I certainly cannot pretend to supply one. Perhaps however it may be possible to do some service by an attempt to disprove what is untenable, even though it should not be possible to produce in its stead any positive proof of what we may receive as matter of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... EVIDENCE BEARING ON THE PROPOSITION? In the third place, a person who is trying to prove or disprove a proposition of fact must consider the direct evidence involved. Indirect evidence tends to establish the possibility or probability that a statement is true or false, while direct evidence asserts that it is true or false. Direct evidence on the question, "Country ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... worthiness in them, which they are grieved to find wanting in themselves? although they be not obstinate in this opinion? although they be willing, and would be glad to forsake it, if any one reason were brought sufficient to disprove it? although the only cause why they do not forsake it ere they die, be their ignorance of that means by which it might be disproved? although the cause why the ignorance in this point is not removed, be the want of knowledge in such as should be able, and are not, to remove it? Let me die," ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... had been in the manuscript elected to disprove the total depravity of inanimate things, and instead of falling face downward, fell face upward on the very top of the heap. Thus it was that Donald Morley, charging desperately about his limited quarters, suddenly spied a word ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... unquestionably the work of the builders, indicate an advancement in skill and knowledge entirely beyond that reached by the Indians previous to contact with Europeans. But all the genuine discoveries so far made in the explorations of the mounds tend to disprove this view. ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... No, oddly enough, it is often seen that those who all their lives have eaten their cake most eagerly have quite a little of it left at the end. There are no hard and fast rules for the eating of your cake. One can only find out by eating it; and, as I have said, it may be your luck to disprove the proverb and both eat your ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... the telegraph; but not being familiar with the history of the attempts made in regard to this invention, I called it "Barlow's project," while I ought to have stated that Mr. Barlow's investigation merely tended to disprove the possibility ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... means, Sir, you had much better Have them in your Posteriors: for then the Ladies Can never disprove you; they'll ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... senseless idiot, they spent hours in striving to prove themselves not idiots; in other words, in one breath they declare that his views were absolutely without point, and needed no explaining away; while in direct rebuttal of this declaration, they devoted time and labor in attempts to disprove the very things they called ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... from the untrue tales that were told about him, still he never troubled to disprove them. Some were circulated by a fellow officer of his—an unmitigated scoundrel whose life had been sullied by every species of vice; who not only invented calumniating stories but inserted particulars that gave them a verisimilitude. Two of this man's misdeeds ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... These facts disprove Mr Sadler's principle; and the fact on which he lays so much stress—that the fecundity is less in the great towns than in the small towns—does not tend in any degree to prove his principle. There is not the least reason to believe ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... conferring that jurisdiction was approved on the 5th day of February, 1867, with a full knowledge of the motives that prompted its passage, and because it was believed to be necessary and right. Nothing has since occurred to disprove the wisdom and justness of the measures, and to modify it as now proposed would be to lessen the protection of the citizen from the exercise of arbitrary power and to weaken the safeguards of life and liberty, which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... many years ago," returned the said Dick, hastening to disprove the slur of youthfulness. "It was just before I went to Sandhurst. But you haven't changed. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... against you. I'll pretend To be her father's friend, and bring the cause Before the judges. Who her father was, Her mother who, and how she's your relation, All this sham evidence I'll forge; by which The cause will turn entirely in my favor. You shall disprove no tittle of the charge; So I succeed.—Your father will return; Prosecute me;—what then?—The girl's ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... come under my own notice, and when Europeans have committed wanton aggressions on the Aborigines, and have then made up a plausible story to account for what had taken place, but where, from obvious circumstances, it was quite impossible to disprove or rebut their tale, however improbable it might be. In the Port Phillip District in 1841, Mr. Chief Protector thus writes ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... November, she is on the under or southern side, and the meteors are less frequent. With this general explanation we shall close. If what we have advanced be an approximation to the truth, the theory itself affords ample indications of what observations are requisite to prove or disprove it; and, on this account, a theory is of great benefit, as suggestive of many questions and combinations of facts which otherwise ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... elder woman's words had struck her own ear as in the tone, now mistimed, of their recent, but all too factitious understanding, arrived at in hours when, as there was nothing susceptible of proof, there was nothing definitely to disprove. The situation had changed by—well, by whatever there was, by the outbreak of the definite; and this could keep Maggie at least firm. She was firm enough as she pursued. "It was ON the whole thing ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... thrust the question from her with a sweeping gesture of both hands. "There has been nothing to prove—nothing to disprove. Absolutely. I look at that slim, small child sometimes and raise my hands ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... appreciations of Shakespeare and of Milton, the like of which were not often proclaimed in his generation. Here is ecstatic admiration of ballads and of the Ossian imitations, all so unfashionable in the literary culture of the day. While dates disprove Lowell's statement in his essay on Gray that "those anti-classical yearnings of Gray began after he had ceased producing," it is certain that very little of his poetic work expressed these yearnings. "Elegance, ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... from Dr. Salisbury's plan also help to disprove the much heralded theory of Dr. Haig, that uric acid from meat eating is the cause of rheumatism. Overeating of meat is often a contributory cause. We are told that the rheumatics who followed Dr. Salisbury's plan got well. They regained physical tone. ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... progress of opinion about him with farther experience. His co-pastor there. M. Jean Long, who had been his firm friend for a while, and had signed some of the testimonials, was now understood to speak of him with absolute detestation. Morus having produced some of these testimonials to disprove Milton's assertion that he had been ejected by the Middleburg church, Milton explains that he had not said ejected, but only turned adrift, and that this was substantially the fact. Now, however, if Durie's report is correct, not only would the single Middleburg church, but ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Hugh Mainwaring. That the proponent, Harold Scott Mainwaring, is the lawful and only son of the beneficiary named therein, and as such the sole rightful and lawful heir to and owner of the Mainwaring estate. More than this, we propose at the same time and by the same evidence to forever disprove, confute, and silence any and every aspersion and insinuation which has been brought against the character of the proponent, Harold Scott Mainwaring; and in doing this, we shall at last lift the veil which, for the past ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... write with no higher motive than to please the prevailing taste, must beware of touching upon topics which are likely to rouse the hostile feelings of self-importance, and to disgust would-be statesmen and intuitive divines. Ridicule will never disprove those opinions which were held by the wisest and most illustrious persons that England ever produced. Should I be so unfortunate as to provoke hostility where I look for co-operation; erroneous or undeserved censure shall not induce me to enter into a controversy with those whom ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... close rather than an intimate study of a figure that in life was already almost legendary. If any man of our time was fittingly named great this was he—alike in his single-minded patriotism, his success and that touch of austerity which no anecdotes of exceptions can wholly disprove. In surveying his career of merited triumphs one remarks how often it was given to him—as at Omdurman and Pretoria—to redeem early disaster, and one feels again the pity of it that he might not live to see his noblest task accomplished at Versailles. No doubt the last word upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... generally have judged our forefathers, and few years will show darker in the English annals than the year which we have just left behind us. Yet we know, in the honesty of our hearts, how unjust such a picture would be. Our future advocate, if we are so happy as to find one, may not be able to disprove a single article in the indictment; and yet we know that, as the world goes, he will be right if he marks the year with a white stroke—as one in which, on the whole, the moral harvest ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude |
