"Irrefutable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the truth about every single thing I saw? Astronomy, Biology, Geology—in these things I discovered a new and marvellous interest: here at last I found my natural bent. History had small attraction for me: it spoke of the doings of people mostly vain or cruel, and untruthful. I wanted truth—irrefutable facts! No scientific work seemed too difficult for me; but I never, then or later, read anything upon the subject of religion, philosophy, or psychology. I had a healthy, wholesome young intelligence with a voracious appetite: it would carry ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... Dale's mouth grew a little more pronounced. Nor should the Pippin be long in returning! A man could not very well lose a cuff link and be unaware of that fact for any extended length of time. And that cuff link was damning, irrefutable, incontrovertible evidence, exactly the evidence the police required to convict the guilty man! Yes, undoubtedly, the Pippin would be back—and at any moment now. Figuring that the Pippin had left Bristol Bob's half an ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... reader to Herschel's view of this matter. In dealing with the phenomena of comets' tails he writes:[1] "Beyond a doubt, the widest and most interesting prospect of future discovery, which this study holds out to us, is, that distinction between gravitating and levitating matter, that positive and irrefutable demonstration in nature of a repulsive force, co-extensive with, but enormously more powerful than the attractive force we call gravity which the phenomena of their tails afford." I premise that this ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... at first, had seemed to Lansing as mad as it was enchanting: it had thoroughly frightened him. But Susy's arguments were irrefutable, her ingenuities inexhaustible. Had he ever thought it all out? She asked. No. Well, she had; and would he kindly not interrupt? In the first place, there would be all the wedding-presents. Jewels, and a motor, and a silver dinner service, did she mean? Not a bit ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... as on land it is the Germans who have the initiative and the Allies who are condemned to the defensive. Yet experts had pointed out over and over again what should be done and what avoided. Their advice was obviously sound and their criticism obviously irrefutable. But the men in power fumbled and floundered on until we had forfeited our mastery in the air to our enemies. And ever since then the nation has been paying the penalty. Yet it is to the men responsible for these ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Fleet Street, the Law Courts clock, had just finished striking seven. It boomed out the hour, stroke by stroke, solemnly, inexorably, like a grim old judge summing up and driving home, point by point, an irrefutable charge. The heavy strokes broke in upon the fitful doze into which Robin Greve, stretched out in an armchair in his living-room, ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... legs that pirouetted so daintily over the ground, and her exquisite head, which she carried so proudly—how would she look and what kind of figure would she cut among the shaggy, stunted, sedate-looking nags of the Sognefiord district? But the captain, though what he said was irrefutable, had to suspend all argument when he saw how utterly wretched Erik became at the mere thought of losing Lady Clare. So he took his chances; and, after having ordered blankets of three different thicknesses for three different kinds of weather, shipped the mare ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... scholarship? For some moments longer Jane sat there. She went over again the incident of Dozia's tack hammer. That she could depend absolutely on Dozia, and knew this strange girl had done more than sit in the path of the showering tack hammer was irrefutable. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... expression," exegetical methods". (Chambers defines an exegetist as one who interprets or expounds.) Taine refers to methods which should allow the Jacobins, socialists, communists, and other ideologists to, from an irrefutable idea or expression, to deduct, infer, conclude and draw firm and, to them, irrefutable ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... climb into the middle class and whose mind is not dominated by corporative prejudices. These men may be deceived about an infinite number of political, economical, or moral questions; but their testimony is decisive, sovereign, and irrefutable when it is a question of knowing what are the ideas which most powerfully move them and their comrades, which most appeal to them as being identical with their socialistic conceptions, and thanks to which their reason, their hopes, and their way of looking ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... interest, made it important to confute the arguments they addressed to the public. Mr. Mather addressed a letter to the editor of the Shipping Almanack and Gazette, which produced a great impression where the arguments of the Lancashire leaders had been accepted as irrefutable. It is desirable to reproduce this document, as the controversy was one of the most important in its day, and the policy ultimately adopted remained longer open to question than any other of the anti-protectionist measures which were adopted. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... contact with males, had on the eleventh day (after forming a new skin for the fourth time) a living daughter, and during the next twenty days ninety-four other daughters; and that all of them went on to reproduce in the same way without any contact with males. It seemed as if this furnished an irrefutable proof of the truth of the scatulation theory, as it was held by the Ovulists; it is not surprising to find that the ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... everything: but the great adventure never arrived, somehow; and the days were frittered away piecemeal, what with eating your dinner, and taking a wholesome walk, and checking up your bank account, and dovetailing scraps of parish registers and land-patents and county records into an irrefutable pedigree, and seeing that your clothes were pressed, and looking over the newspapers—and what with other infinitesimal avocations, each one innocent, none of any particular importance, and each consuming an irrevocable moment of the allotted time—until at last you found that living had not, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... "if it be well considered, the vaunted argument of Schopenhauer against the Creator, drawn from the misery and injustice of the world, is not irrefutable, for the world is not as God made it, but ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... the proof we look upon as irrefutable, as complete and perfect. The man who can thus travel freely in his finer body knows that the physical body is only a vehicle adapted to the physical world and necessary for life in this world; he knows ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... exclude authors, saved him from magnifying their importance by police squabbles. Besides, a clever lawyer might prove the exclusion illegal. What was done was done. The dignity of the hero of a hundred dramas was best served by private beefsteaks and a rumoured version, irrefutable save in a court of law. It was bad enough that the Heathen Journalist should supply so graphic a picture of the midnight melodrama, coloured even more highly than Goldwater's eyes. Kloot had been glad that the Journalist had left before the episode; but when he saw the account ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... supernatural after Christ which was natural before him, nor that sent down from heaven which was already on earth as the product of human reason. The Rev. Mr. Lake fairly says: "We have evidence—clear, conclusive, irrefutable evidence—as to what this doctrine really is. We can trace its birth-place in the philosophic speculations of the ancient world, we can note its gradual development and growth, we can see it in its early ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... work and concentrate my energies on the suffrage cause. For a long time I hesitated. I was very happy in my connection with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and I knew that Miss Willard was depending on me to continue it. But Miss Anthony's arguments were irrefutable, and she was ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... not this is an accurate estimate of the ratio of food increase is immaterial. Malthus's famous progressions, the geometrical ratio of increase in the case of animals, and the arithmetical ratio of increase in the case of food, contain the vital and irrefutable truth of the immense disproportion between the power of reproduction in man and the power ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... regulations and vexatious restrictions, attending to things in general with a high hand, they calmly deposed him on the ground that he had no authority to act, since they were on the territory of Nicuesa. To this logic, which was irrefutable, poor Encisco could make no reply. Pending the arrival of Nicuesa they elected Balboa and one Zamudio, a Biscayan, to take ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... consideration of Barton's proposal. He was forced to admit that the old lawyer had an irritating knack of ignoring all incidental issues and stripping a problem to a statement of irrefutable fact. It was undeniable, for example, that what Don might desire in the way of salary did not affect the truth of Barton's contention that twelve hundred dollars was a great deal more than nothing. With a roof over his head assured him, it was possible that he might, with economy, ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Lafelle—utterly unreasonable, wholly inconsistent with facts and natural laws, as we know and are able to observe them. Even as a child I never had any use for fairy-tales, or wonder-stories. I always wanted facts, tangible, concrete, irrefutable facts, not hypotheses. The Protestant churches hand out a mess of incoherent guesswork, based on as many interpretations of the Bible as there are human minds sufficiently interested to interpret it, and then wax hot and angry when hard-headed business men like myself refuse ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... as: "After all, it produces an illusion—does anything else matter?" "Rather a poseur, is he not?" "A question, that, of temperament," or "A matter of the definition of words"; and other charming generalities, which sound well, and seem to go far, and are pleasingly irrefutable. Sometimes the discussion turned on Art—on points of colour or technique; whether realism was quite justified; and should we be pre-Raphaelites? When these discussions started, Christian's eyes would grow bigger and clearer, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the justice of my opinion, and I will carry out my promise. I don't think it necessary to mention the thousand trifles, everyday incidents and events, which would, however, in the eyes of any thinking man, serve as irrefutable evidence in my support—I mean, in support of my contention. I had better begin straight away with one rather important incident, after which probably there will be no doubt left of the accuracy of ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... consisted, in the first place, of certain irrefutable proofs that Miss Bamberger had not died from shock, but had been killed by a thin and extremely sharp instrument with which she had been stabbed in the back. Isidore Bamberger's own doctor had satisfied himself ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... so that the stars of Heaven might hear, for there was no human being at hand, these sentiments sounded satisfactorily irrefutable. Rodney quieted down, and walked on in silence, until he perceived some one approaching him, who had something, either in his walk or his dress, which proclaimed that he was one of William's acquaintances before it was possible to tell which of them he was. It was Denham ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... say if I were a "transformist." All this is a chain of highly logical deductions, and it hangs together with a certain air of reality, such as we like to look for in a host of "transformist" arguments which are put forward as irrefutable. Well, I make a present of my deductive theory to whosoever desires it, and without the least regret; I do not believe a single word of it, and I confess my profound ignorance of the origin of the twofold system ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... her glance; her eyes gave irrefutable answer. Unresistingly, she abandoned herself to his arms, and he felt her bosom rise and fall with conflicting emotions. Closely he held her, in the surprise and surpassing pleasure of the moment; then, bending, he kissed her lips. A wave of color flooded her ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... into the minds of thousands. The successful realization of this idea was a surprise to many, but as a surprise it was nothing to that received by the mildly protestant sociologists and biologists when irrefutable facts exploded the doctrine of Malthus. With leisure and joy in the world; with an immensely higher standard of living; and with the enormous spaciousness of opportunity for recreation, development, and pursuit of beauty and nobility and all the higher attributes, the birth-rate fell, and fell ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... afternoon I received warning that the Babylonish carpet-vender had taken sudden flight, presumably toward Thebes. I have sent mounted constables after him. I trust they can seize him at the pass of Phyle. In the meantime, I may assure you I have irrefutable evidence—needless to present here—that the man was a Persian agent, and to more purpose hear this affidavit, sworn ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... logical enough, was based on the irrefutable truth that as air has some weight—to be exact 14.70 pounds for a column one inch square and the height of the earth's atmosphere—a vacuum must be lighter, as it contains nothing, not even air. Accordingly in the seventeenth century, one Francisco Lana, another priest, proposed to build ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... of the doctrine; but now when the subject begins to be tedious and the discussion lags, the interest consequently abates and the Zeitgeist suddenly grasps the old objections, presented in a new garb, and what was hitherto truth, clear and irrefutable, now sinks into the dreary, gray mists of myth. Sic ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... in the declared judgments in aesthetics has given rise to incessant controversies which began, perhaps, among the Greeks and are going on among us. Though no absolute decision has been reached, some excellent maxims have resulted. In default of an irrefutable definition of the Beautiful, there have been given us images, analogies and thoughts upon the subject which approach and prepare ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... its emissaries traveled "The Thoughts" confronted and confounded them. So that Mr. Garrison was warranted in saying that "all that sophistry or misrepresentation could effect to overthrow its integrity has been attempted in vain. The work, as a whole, stands irrefutable." The attempts made to maintain its hold upon the British public were characterized by duplicity and misrepresentation beyond anything practiced in America. The work of deceiving the philanthropy of Great Britain was conducted by the emissary of the society, Elliott Cresson, a man perfectly fitted ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... vicissitudes; the conqueror returns from foreign lands the lover still; and in the deep of flooded mines and on the icy slopes of arctic promontories dead men have been found holding in their rigid hands the pictured face of some fair girl. In the presence of such irrefutable testimony, who shall deny the persistence and ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... sexes, even when the human was reached, seems not to have carried with it a sense of the double obligation of parenthood. "Marriage was brittle in the early times," says Sir John Lubbock. The obvious relationship of mother and child, the lack of such irrefutable testimony to parenthood in the case of man, and other elements of primitive experience lending confusion to the situation, made it a process of time and a test of growing intelligence for men to learn that babies take two ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... you'll make of it if you go and label yourself damaged goods before you're fairly started. Why, it would be just giving Dale the whip-hand over you for the rest of your days." Looking back at it all, Mavis felt that this argument was irrefutable. ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... understand,' I cried out, 'the widespread growth of economic reaction against which we Western Liberals are waging a ridiculous Quixotic war with all our apparently irrefutable arguments. We present to the people as an argument against protection exactly that after which they are—unconsciously, it is true—eagerly longing. Protective tariffs, trade guilds, and whatever else the ingenious devices of the last decades ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... trifle; six letters, as I have already told you, from M. de Mazarin; and the autographs will most assuredly not be regarded as too highly priced, if they establish, in an irrefutable manner, that M. Fouquet has embezzled large sums of money from the treasury and appropriated them to his ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the injurious delays of the past will find redress in the equity of the future. Our minister has been instructed to press these demands on the French Government with all the earnestness which is called for by their importance and irrefutable justice, and in a spirit that will evince the respect which is due to the feelings of those from whom the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... comfort in the Vicar's society that, having once and for all stated the irrefutable proposition which I have recorded, he let the matter alone. Nothing was further from his thoughts than to argue on it, unless it might be to take any action in regard to it. To say the truth, and I mean no unkindness to him in ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... processes such as I have assumed are running their course within the germ-plasm, and we can do this with as much certainty as we were able to infer, from the phenomena of adaptation, the selection-value of their initial stages. The fact of the degeneration of disused parts seems to me to afford irrefutable proof that the fluctuations within the germ-plasm ARE THE REAL ROOT OF ALL HEREDITARY VARIATION, and the preliminary condition for the occurrence of the Darwin-Wallace factor of selection. Germinal selection supplies the stones out of which ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... presents the trophy to Chriemhild, and confides the tale to her ear. A dispute having afterwards arisen between the two queens, Chriemhild, carried away by pride and passion, produces the fatal girdle, a token which, if found in the possession of any save the husband, was regarded as an almost irrefutable proof of guilt among the nations of the North. At this Brunhild vows revenge, and is aided by the fierce Hagan, Guenther's most devoted follower, who, having induced Chriemhild to confide to him the secret of the spot where Siegfried is mortal, seizes the first occasion to ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... higher possibilities and capabilities of his race. As long as there is a Charles W. Chestnut, or a Paul Lawrence Dunbar, a T. Thomas Fortune, and others, whose writings are read by the thousands of literary people of this country and England, so long will there be an irrefutable argument for the intellectual worth ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the face, relieving the deep disquiet, but the laugh was an effort of one who was confronted by demolished fortunes. His whole look was that of a man who has been shown some structural smallness of his own, shown beyond doubt—his ranges of personal limitation, made clear and irrefutable. He recognized his master in the woman opposite.... Yet powerful natural elements within him were bearing upon the hateful revelation. They sought to cover the puny nakedness, and make an hallucination of it all. He was not evolved enough to accept ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... certain arbitrarily fixed periods of time, before certain brutal fights and festivals. Bigots insisted on their rising at unearthly hours and running violently around fields for no object. Many men ruined their health in these dens of superstition, many died there. All this is perfectly true and irrefutable. Athleticism in England is an asceticism, as much as the monastic rules. Men have over-strained themselves and killed themselves through English athleticism. There is one difference and one only: we do feel the ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... is the man with L3000 or L300 and everyone who allows himself anything beyond the necessaries of life; nay, that the labouring man when he lights his pipe or drinks his dram is as well as the rest consuming the substance of one poorer than himself. This argument appears to its framer irrefutable and a retort to which there can be no rejoinder. I confess my difficulty is not so much in refuting it as in seeing any point in it at all. What parallel can there be between an enormous and a very moderate expenditure or between prodigious ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... you probably share the idea that ever since the days of Daguerre photography has been regarded as the one infallible means of portraying faithfully any object, scene, or action. Indeed, a photograph is admitted in court as irrefutable evidence. For, when everything else fails, a picture made through the photographic lens almost invariably turns the tide. However, such a picture upon which the fate of an important case may rest should be subjected to critical examination, for it is an established fact that ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... not be graceful or especially fluent, though these accomplishments are of service, but he must be forceful. Not only his words, but also his manner must reveal the earnestness and enthusiasm he feels. His argument, clear, irrefutable, and to the point, should go forth in simple, burning words that enter into the hearts and understanding of ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... and most of the apostolic fathers practiced it. Among others, St. Jerome lived his whole life among women and never lost his purity. He answered his enemies who reproached him with his very great intimacy with the Saintly Sisters, that the irrefutable proof of his chastity was that he stank. That stinking of St. Jerome, which is not a veritable article of faith in the Church, is, however, an object of pious belief; and my readers will very ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... tried to deny to our race the share that is ours in the glory of Matzeliger's achievements. These declare that he had no Negro blood in his veins; but the proof against this assertion is irrefutable. Through correspondence with the mayor of Lynn, a certified copy of the death certificate issued on the occasion of Matzeliger's death has been obtained, and this document ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... its bearings than even Jonathan Oldbuck's great Essay on Castrametation. A Three Rivers antiquarian had attempted to establish that it was Ives Cholette who had been the sculptor of the statue in question, but our old friend (through the church registers—and through ancient and irrefutable records) showed it could neither be Ives Cholette, aged, in 1771, 10 years, nor his younger brother Hyacinthe, aged then but 8 years, who had designed this great work of art, but Cholette of ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... this personal lack in Erasmus which made him unable to understand the real grounds of the resistance of Catholic orthodoxy. How was it possible that so many, and among them men of high consideration, refused to accept what to him seemed so clear and irrefutable! He interpreted the fact in a highly personal way. He, the man who would so gladly have lived in peace with all the world, who so yearned for sympathy and recognition, and bore enmity with difficulty, saw the ranks of haters and opponents increase about him. He did ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... immediately ordered for the woman's trial. The word and the inscription upon it were irrefutable proofs of guilt, and she was sent to a prison for females in Massachusetts. The affair was inexcusably gross, considering the condition of war—so much, I think, will be generally conceded—still, seeking the moral effect of punishment ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... to the guilty party. Mr. Lawrence Bristow, of Cincinnati, now in town for his health, had worked with him all day in unearthing many circumstances "which, although each of them seemed trivial, led when summed up to the almost irrefutable conviction that the murder was done by a drunken negro, ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... roads. Here may be studied the germ of the primal path worn by the tread of the least reflective and least mobile of human beings, the causes of its erratic course, and the transitions by which, with amendments due to the irrefutable facts of topography, it becomes formal and authoritative—a highway ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... many times the amount from the old Spaniards—who had offered a similar reward for the capture of any vessels of the Chilian squadron—and kept it. Fortunately, his own letters prove these matters, which otherwise I should have hesitated to mention, unsupported by testimony so irrefutable. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... that the American Regular makes tactics as he needs them; that the rules of war established by pen soldiers do not form the basis of actual operations in the field; that theories must go to the wall before the stern logic of irrefutable facts; and that deductions based on the drill-made automatons of European armies are not applicable to an army composed of American Volunteer Regulars, led by our ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... mouldering gods, who have given ease to so many troubled minds, who have gladdened so many simple hearts, who have heard so many innocent prayers—how gladly would I prolong their beneficent lives in spite of the so-called 'laws of progress' and the irrefutable ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... credit. When you have then refuted their arguments, your own contentions seem of double strength. It is said that Lincoln used this method with splendid effect: He would often restate the argument of his opponent with great force and clearness; he would make it seem irrefutable. Then, when he began his attack and caused his opponent's argument to collapse, its fall seemed to be utter and complete, while his arguments, which had proved themselves capable of effecting this destruction, appeared all the ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... the reality itself would hardly have procured me greater enjoyment than I had during my happy slumbers. I saw I had taken a very long stride forward, for twenty-four hours of abstinence gave me the right to speak to her openly of my love, and the gift of her hair was an irrefutable confession ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... reality. Everything is true only in relation to its centre of thought. Some people think with their heads—their subsequent actions are as logical and unpleasant as are those of the other sort who think only with their blood, and this latter has its irrefutable logic also. He thought in this subterranean fashion, and if he had thought in the other the issue would not ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... banter with Mrs. Upton who called her to the platform, and to stop the applause with a smile and "There now, girls, that's enough."[443] Nothing could have been more appropriate for her birthday than the Colorado jubilee over which she presided and which gave irrefutable evidence of the success of woman suffrage in that state. There was rejoicing too over Australia, where women had been voting since 1902 and over the new hope in Europe, in Denmark, where women had chosen her birthday to stage a demonstration in ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... gave evidences of a lack of mental equipoise. We find scattered throughout his works the most brilliant, irrefutable, and logical truths side by side with the most inane, illogical, and stolid crudities. Among other men of genius who showed signs of degeneration we may include Alexander Stevens, Joel Hart, Adams, Train, Breckenridge, Webster, Blaine, Van Buren, Houston, Grant, Hawthorne, Bartholow, Walt Whitman. ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... total amount of injustice; the longer an innocent man is forcibly kept in slavery, the greater the reparation to which he is entitled for the oppressive immorality. This doctrine I now believe to be irrefutable truth, but I disbelieved it while I thought the Scripture authoritative; because I found a very different doctrine there—a doctrine which is the argumentative stronghold of the American slaveholder. Paul sent back the fugitive ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... indiscreet lengths to defeat Waring. Bribery and corruption, which for a long time had characterized the administration's political organization, had become more open and Rives' opponent quietly had gathered the irrefutable evidence which ended in the arrest of Rives and several of his henchmen on the eve of the election. The exposure had been so complete and far-reaching—actual misappropriation of public funds in Rives' case—that the reform forces had made a clean ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... cruel and irrefutable place where the throat will wattle, was almost interchangeable with eighteen's. Indeed, Bon Ton grandmothers with backs and French heels that were twenty years younger than their throats and bunions, vied ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... king heard these words, and saw the steadfastness, and unbuxomness of his son, who yielded neither to flattery, nor persuasion, nor threat, he marvelled indeed at the persuasiveness of his speech and his irrefutable answers, and was convicted by his own conscience secretly assuring him that Ioasaph spake truly and aright. But he was dragged back by his evil habit and passions, which, from long use, had taken firm grip on him, and held him in as with ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... men will there be who will dare, in face of the universal deluge which will be at the end as it was in the beginning, to get up and cry "No!" who will pronounce the terrible and irrefutable issue:— ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the sublimated essence of Butt-in; the refined, intrinsic extract of Rubber; the concentrated, purified, irrefutable, unavoidable spirit of Curiosity and Inquisitiveness. A new sensation is the breath in his nostrils; when his experience is exhausted he explores new fields with ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... had he lost his temper—particularly when Spinoza was the theme—and had all but accused Mendelssohn of dishonesty. Was not Truth the highest ideal? And was not Spinoza as irrefutable as Euclid. What! Could the emancipated intellect really deny that marvellous thinker, who, after a century of unexampled obloquy, was the acknowledged prophet of the God of the future, the inspirer of Goethe, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... affected the hearts and heads of most of the Southern whites. To admit that they were honest in holding such views as they did is only to give them the benefit of a presumption which, when applied to the acts and motives of whole peoples, becomes irrefutable. A mob may be wrong-headed, but it is always right-hearted. What it does may be infamous, but underlying its acts is always the sting of a great evil or the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... advantages of all his competitors, essayed, and has proved the thing perfectly practicable, and, moreover, of great public benefit. This paper, in addition to its power in holding up the hands of those to whom it is especially devoted, also affords irrefutable evidence of the justice, safety and practicability of Immediate Emancipation; it further proves the immense loss which slavery inflicts on the land while it dooms such energies as his to the hereditary ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... have all been condemned as culpable of aiding a state-criminal to escape, but not accused of any conspiracy against the French government. They Page 388 are therefore, sentenced merely to three months' imprisonment.(293) Certainly, if their logic were irrefutable, and if the treaty of Paris included the royal pardon with the amnesty accorded by the allied generals, then, to save those who ought not to have been tried would have been meritorious rather than illegal; but the king had no share in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... body. And yet this star is not visible to either the eye or the telescope! It is only by the power of calculation and induction that its existence and the place it occupies in the heavens have been proved in the most irrefutable manner: 'There must be there a hitherto unknown star; I cannot see it, but I am sure of it,'—that is what this man of science said to the Academy, whom he instantly convinced by his deductions. And do you know, messieurs, who is ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... of the Geographical Society of the Pacific, has written an irrefutable pamphlet on why Kyak Island and Sitka Sound must be accepted as the landfalls ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... an article in a reliable financial paper prophesying the failure of the Universal Credit Company, and basing its statements on irrefutable calculations. Serge took the paper and looked over it. He turned pale and crushed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... witnesses have been heard. Arrange it with Monsieur Darzac's counsel. Monsieur Darzac is innocent. In this letter is written the name of the murderer; and—that is all I have to say. I am leaving to get my proofs—for the irrefutable evidence of the murderer's guilt.' Our reporter departed. For a long time we were without news from him; but, a week ago, a stranger called upon our manager and said: 'Act in accordance with the instructions of Joseph Rouletabille, if it becomes necessary to do so. The letter left by him holds ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... and in ordinary course would have gone on working feverishly at double speed for another week. Now, suddenly, the thought was irksome. He did not analyze this; but, characteristically, discovered an irrefutable reason for not going on with it. They rescued Gringo from Sam's care, and drove up to the house. On the ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... intently whether she would agree. And it seemed to me she would. I heard myself speaking to her in a persuasive, irrefutable manner:— ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... it can be ascertained by a careful interpretation that they are even to be taken bisexually, inasmuch as they result in an irrefutable secondary interpretation in which they realize homosexual feelings—that is, feelings that are common to the normal sexual activity of the dreaming person. But that all dreams are to be interpreted bisexually, seems ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... honor, as I expect from such a convention results the most salutary, not only to the condition of woman, but also to the progress of our young and vigorous commonwealth. I have read carefully the circular enclosed in your letter, and consider the logic irrefutable, and its suggestions well worthy the attention of all who desire the complete enfranchisement of woman. I fear that I shall not be able to attend, but if I am, I shall be with you, should I do no more than say "Amen" ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... article I add a proof that that fanaticism which is branded by our immortal Butler can survive the castigation. Folly is sometimes immortal, as nonsense is sometimes irrefutable. Ancient follies revive, and men repeat the same unintelligible jargon: just as contagion keeps up the plague in Turkey by lying hid in some obscure corner, till it breaks out afresh. Recently we have seen a notable instance where one of the school to which we ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Notwithstanding that irrefutable answer to the charge, it has been reiterated, and, as before, located in the year 1852. It is known to you all that our discussions were in 1851. I then favored a convention of the Southern States, that ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... have been published in America the telegrams exchanged between the German Emperor, the Emperor of Russia, and the King of England, containing the history of the events that preceded the outbreak of the war, and which bears irrefutable testimony of how the Emperor, until the last moment, strove hard to preserve ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... was well known. The details that I gather concerning that mysterious man, the irrefutable facts that I present, the new evidence that I produce, the interpretation that I place on certain acts of which the public has seen only the exterior manifestations without being able to discover the secret reasons or the invisible ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... the article would have been followed by my criticism, but if the arguments therein contained are irrefutable, why fear the proximity of my refutation? I beg you, therefore, to be kind enough to ask M. Brunetiere to give me permission to second the views of Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands by assisting to circulate ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... the sound-conducting properties of the rifle. Normally of good hearing he failed to detect what to Private Brass Pot was an accepted and irrefutable fact. ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... adopt the view—which has on the whole been commonest among philosophers—that truth consists in some form of correspondence between belief and fact. It is, however, by no means an easy matter to discover a form of correspondence to which there are no irrefutable objections. By this partly—and partly by the feeling that, if truth consists in a correspondence of thought with something outside thought, thought can never know when truth has been attained—many philosophers have been led to try to find some definition ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... and irrefutable proofs, we have still the aid of a goodly number of observations, establishing the conclusion that we are compassed about by a set of phenomena, and by powers differing from the physical order commonly observed day by ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... of the theory is not confirmed by the intellectual history of the human race. As was said of the Patriarchal Age so we may say of Dante's times "there were giants in those days" which we presume to ignore. Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, indeed stand forth in irrefutable protest against the questionable assertion of evolution that the present is intellectually ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... either in peace or war, even if the evidence is absolutely true. "In the interests of military discipline" the truth must be suppressed. The same oath is, however, proof that the German soldier must be prepared to lay down either his life or his honour in defence of the army, and in a later chapter irrefutable evidence from German sources will be adduced to show that the White Book in question contains "sworn lies" emanating from members of the ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... appealing, it is irrefutable. But it is a law for this earth that the most profoundly just and true theories, those which have been most scientifically demonstrated, encounter, when put into practice, obstacles which have not been surmounted ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... documents, went to look for them in the office of the head cashier, who was then absent. A memorandum forgotten on the table excited his suspicions. Sending at once for a locksmith, he had all the drawers broken open, and soon acquired the irrefutable evidence that the Mutual Credit had been defrauded of sums, which, as far as now known, amount to ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... the standard works on hypnotism, mind-cure, faith-cure, new thought, etc. I was deeply imbued with the truths they contained. I became greatly opposed to the so-called "materialism" of medical science. The rationality and philosophical truth of the mind-cure systems appeared to me irrefutable. ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... belonged to the civilized world, of which they were a glory and an ornament, and which subsist as nothing but a mournful heap of debris—of these we are not bound to keep silent. But not one exaggerated word shall be uttered by us. The account we shall give is established by high testimony and by irrefutable documents. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... first year of their married life the "Frau Vice-Sergeant-Major," full of a sense of her new dignity, had painfully felt the lack of an "upright" or, better still, a "grand," inasmuch as she regarded such an instrument as an irrefutable evidence of belonging to the higher walks of life. She asserted, besides, that in her girlhood she had received instruction on the piano,—an assertion which nobody was able to dispute because that period lay about a generation back. She admitted that she had forgotten ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... "You usually damn the irrefutable thing. Why you wanted Brian to paint pictures," went on Whitaker, ignoring Kenny's outraged sputter, "when he couldn't, is and always has been a matter of considerable worry ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... battle for preservation and conservation cannot be won by gentle tones, nor by appeals to the aesthetic instincts of those who have no sense of beauty, or enjoyment of Nature. It is necessary to sound a loud alarm, to present the facts in very strong language, backed up by irrefutable statistics and by photographs which tell no lies, to establish the law and enforce it if needs be ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation. To refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is no devil, or another peasant would have to explain to him that it is not the devil but a German, who moves the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... quite succeeded in misleading St. Marsan and arousing his suspicions in regard to the king," he said to himself. "As the king refuses to listen to my warnings and supplications, and does not believe it to be possible that France should dare seize him, it is time to give him some irrefutable proofs. Perhaps he may then make up his mind to leave Berlin. I may sign this longed-for betrothal at some other place, too, and then fasten on my breast the order for which I am longing. In truth," he added, laughing, "it is no fault of mine that dear Count St. Marsan interprets ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... conclusive, and which is stubbornly upheld as irrefutable by the representatives of the status quo—to the effect that the existing family-form has existed since time immemorial, and, lest the whole social fabric be put in jeopardy, must continue to exist forever, turned out, accordingly, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... taken in any situation depends, properly, on the circumstances of the case, and that the relationship between cause and effect (page 22) is always the governing consideration. The principles deduced hereafter (Chapter III) have these irrefutable findings as ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... holds the question debatable, but his reasons for doing so are tolerably notorious. Besides, what does all his flimsy sophistry avail against Nicanor's fine chapter on this very subject? Crushing, I consider it. His logic is final and irrefutable. What can anyone say against Saevius Nicanor?—ah, what ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... you deny it in every line of the letter you wrote me. It is there—there in every word, in its very atmosphere. You are lying to yourself under the influence of this other—who lies to you. Prove what you say if you want me to believe. The scientific mind must have proof, undeniable, irrefutable proof. Statements, mere statements of unbelief are meaningless things which do not convince even their authors. If you need to convince yourself, and convince me, then engage yourself to some man, marry him, and I tell ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Irrefutable evidence on the subject can be found in the official report of the Senate Committee of Inquiry into the activities of German propaganda, which has already been mentioned more than once. After the depositions of Mr. Bruce Bielaski on this subject had gone on for two days, Senator ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... most foolish; and that others less esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the 'Herculean' labours, as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. After the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be instantly detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... but naturally the scientist and physician, when dealing with such a question as this, has to put aside, not all enthusiasm, but certainly all emotionalism, and then, most carefully sift the evidence laid before him. The scientist here wants hard, dry, irrefutable facts; the responsible physician requires to know—by his own careful diagnosis or by an array of tabulated facts—the condition of the patient before and after treatment—that is, of the one who claims to have been cured by mental means. Innumerable claims are ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... to deny it, equivocate, or seek subterfuges. The evidence was there, and it was irrefutable. While appearing to occupy himself solely with the objects lying upon his table, M. Daburon did not lose sight of the prisoner. Albert was terrified. A cold perspiration bathed his temples, and glided drop by drop down his cheeks. His hands trembled so much that they ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... affair? Why had he seen Alba's beautiful eyes veiled with a sadness inexplicable, as if he had just given her another blow? He did not know that since the day on which the word insanity had been uttered before her relative to Maud's husband, the Contessina was the victim of a reasoning as simple as irrefutable. ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... forget to declare the fundamental fact of his entire position in Romper. It is irrefutable that in all affairs outside of his business, in all matters that occur eternally and commonly between man and man, this thieving card-player was so generous, so just, so moral, that, in a contest, he could have put to flight the consciences of nine-tenths ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... snapping up a bug or a seed here and there. Yet his discourse goes steadily on, by the half hour, or hour, sometimes with a rising inflection, as after a question, sometimes the falling, as having given an irrefutable answer, himself. Once the idea that the bird is preaching has entered a listener's mind, he ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... proved unanswerably that no negro had, or ever would have, a just conception of the binding force of a contract, and that this system of free negro labor was bound to be a failure. If some negroes shirked, or did not perform their task with sufficient alacrity, it was produced as irrefutable evidence to show that physical compulsion was actually indispensable to make the negro work. If negroes, idlers or refugees crawling about the towns, applied to the authorities for subsistence, it was quoted as incontestably establishing the point that the negro was ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... a straw whether the economic system adopted by a society is feudal, capitalistic, or collectivist, provided it keeps the race afoot (the hive and the anthill being as acceptable to her as Utopia), the demonstrations of Socialists, though irrefutable, will never make any serious impression on property. The knell of that over-rated institution will not sound until it is felt to conflict with some more vital matter than mere personal inequities in industrial economy. No such conflict was perceived whilst ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... the subject of vivisection. It is charged that to-day, in American physiological laboratories and in medical schools as well, helpless animals are subjected to torture.... The testimony to this seems irrefutable; and one is more disposed to give it credence when he knows of the atrocities that have been perpetrated in other countries, and learns that the practice ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... feeling, but he was acute, disputatious, and firm even to obstinacy. Though his early education had been very imperfect, he had subsequently read a good deal, especially in French literature. He had formed his mind by Helvetius, whose system he deemed irrefutable, and in whom alone he had faith. Armed with the principles of his great master, he believed he could pass through existence in adamantine armour, and always gave you in the business of life the idea of a man ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... mislead me. My intuitions, which had their origin in a certain knowledge of human nature, were soon to be changed into certainty, based upon irrefutable proofs. ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... crown attorney on his statement of the case. He called it masterly; he said that in its presentations it was irrefutable; as a precis of evidence purely circumstantial it was— useful and interesting. But, speech-making aside, and ability—and rhetoric—aside, and even personal conviction aside, the case should stand or fall by its total, not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... perhaps an irrefutable condemnation of the modern wedding display that many a young girl has had to refuse the joy of being in the wedding party because a complete bridesmaid outfit costs a sum that parents of moderate means are quite unable to meet for popular ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... declared that there was irrefutable proof that if Germany did not march through Belgium, her enemies would. This proof, as now being produced, is of the strongest character. So the Chancellor was right in appealing to the law of necessity, although he had no regret that ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... avoidless^; ineluctable. unerring, infallible; unchangeable &c 150; to be depended on, trustworthy, reliable, bound. unimpeachable, undeniable, unquestionable; indisputable, incontestable, incontrovertible, indubitable; irrefutable &c (proven) 478; conclusive, without power of appeal. indubious^; without doubt, beyond a doubt, without a shade or shadow of doubt, without question, beyond question; past dispute; clear as day; beyond all question, beyond all dispute; undoubted, uncontested, unquestioned, undisputed; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... for the flight of birds, and for the movements of fishes; with instances of arrangements to suit particular conditions—the long neck of the swan, the minute eye of the mole, the beak of the parrot, the sting of the bee—all furnishing an ever accumulating body of irrefutable evidence to attest the existence and operation of an ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... withdrawing troops from his center and left, to resist Sherman, that Thomas met with but little resistance when he advanced to the attack about ten hours later, in obedience to Grant's personal order. But it has been shown by irrefutable testimony, and is now conceded, that there is not a word of truth in this supposition—"that nothing of the kind occurred," and that in face of all statements and suppositions to the contrary, however natural they may ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... committee that had been organized abroad to work for the restoration of Poland; and further, she visited the confessional of a celebrated Jesuit priest, who made an absolute fanatic of her. The supposed fortune of the count had dwindled to a mere nothing, although he had given almost irrefutable evidence of its existence to Lizabetha Prokofievna and ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the titles of four indicate that they were designed for very little children. In each community the pastor appointed the catechism to be taught in the school, and joined the teacher in drilling the children in its questions and answers. Indeed, the answers were regarded as irrefutable in those uncritical days, and hence a strong shield and buckler against manifold temptations provided by "yt ould deluder Satan." To offset the task of learning these doctrines of the church, it is probable that the mothers regaled the little ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... regretted that the phallus element should be so conspicuous in this play.... (This) coarseness, so repulsive to ourselves, was introduced, it is impossible to doubt, for the express purpose of counter-balancing the extreme earnestness and gravity of the play. It seems so logical, so irrefutable; and so completely misinterprets every creative force of Aristophanes' Psyche that it certainly deserves a little admiration. It is in the best academic tradition, and everyone respects a man for writing so mendaciously. The effort of these castrators is always to ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... the road white before him, leading away into the empty, half-translucent shadows of starlight. Father Delancey had said it was only the faery nonsense in his head that made him miserable, and had marshaled before him the irrefutable blessings of his life. Had he not been cared for from the first minute of his landing from Ireland, a penniless piper of nineteen, as though the holy saints themselves were about him? Had he not gone direct ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... something—he would bring proofs that even you would consider irrefutable," she answered in a low, hard whisper. "No, dear," and her grip upon my hands tightened. "In any case there only remains to me one course—to end it all, for in any case, I must lose you. Your confidence and love ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... to which you have lent the credit of your name, will bring us to the end of our food supplies in something considerably less than a month from now. I am far from wishing to be an alarmist, but it is as well that we should face the facts, especially when they are supported by statistics so irrefutable as those which I am willing to produce to you at any moment on receiving your request to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... prince and princess theory he had long ago consigned to the limbo of childish things; but the romance of his birth, the romance of his high destiny, remained a vital part of his spiritual equipment. His looks, his talents, his temperament, his instincts, his dreams had been irrefutable confirmations. His mere honesty, his mere integrity, had been based on this fervent and unshakable creed. And now it had gone. No more romance. No more glamour. No more Vision Splendid now faded into the light of common and sordid day. Outwardly listening, his ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... terminate the discussion. The newspapers were full of virulent articles, pamphlets appeared in great numbers, and the people in some cases seemed disposed to settle the question by the right of might, an irrefutable argument. ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... asserted that our experience was inexplicably produced under the influence of avidya and that beyond that no objective common ground could be admitted. But though this has the general assent of Vedanta and is irrefutable in itself, still for the sake of explaining our common sense view (pratikarmavyavasatha) we may think that we have an objective world before us as the common field of experience. We can also imagine a scheme of things and operations by which the phenomenon ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... entirely disproved by those fermentation experiments in which, after suppressing the presence of albuminous substances, the action, nevertheless, went on in a purely inorganic medium, out of contact with air, a fact, of which we shall give irrefutable proofs. [Footnote: Traube's conceptions are governed by a theory of fermentation entirely his own, a hypothetical one, as he admits, of which the following is a brief summary: "We have no reason to doubt," Traube says, "that ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... he failed to discover them. In spite of what philosophers tell us, most of us know ourselves pretty well. The conclusive and irrefutable proof of this is that we always know when we are not telling, or showing, the truth about ourselves, as, for instance, when we are boasting or attributing to ourselves some gift, some knowledge, or some power which we really do not possess. We also know perfectly well when our impulses are ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... you, for placing the thing in such a lucid and irrefutable light," answered Mr. Allgood, who seemed to be in mist all the time Mr. Goose was laying ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... disclaimed responsibility therefor. While possibly not an officially authorized spokesman, yet he is as truly a representative thinker in the German military system as Admiral Mahan was in the Navy of the United States. Of the acceptance by Prussia of Bernhardi's teachings there is one irrefutable proof. It is Belgium. The destruction of that unoffending country is the full harvest ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... [continued M. Sazanof] is sufficient for us to judge the value of German statements regarding the alleged envelopment of Germany by the Triple Entente. Equally worthless are the assertions that it was not Germany who began the war, for irrefutable documents exist to prove the contrary. Among the malevolent German inventions figure reports of Jewish pogroms which the Russian troops are alleged to have organized. I seize this opportunity of speaking in the parliamentary tribune to deny this calumny categorically, for, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and argues, but for the sake of Giovanna's salvation; one would think that even the hardened old Queen must have been touched with the intense and tender solicitude of the following letter, even if she were not convinced by its irrefutable reasoning. As a matter of fact, Giovanna, after having for a time sided with Clement, did temporarily change her base and espouse the cause of Urban. Soon, however, she reverted to her former position. It is probable that for her, as for many European sovereigns, the matter ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... according to nature. And in speaking of the copy and the original we may assume that words are akin to the matter which they describe; when they relate to the lasting and permanent and intelligible, they ought to be lasting and unalterable, and, as far as their nature allows, irrefutable and immovable—nothing less. But when they express only the copy or likeness and not the eternal things themselves, they need only be likely and analogous to the real words. As being is to becoming, so is truth to belief. If then, Socrates, ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... assembly followed every phase with breathless attention, yet with conflicting emotions,—for the prisoner was one of their peers and all felt the case to be momentous; while, as the masterly arguments proceeded, and the evidence seemed irrefutable, perhaps few among them could have determined how it should be most wisely decided, in view of the waverings and discontent which had threatened to ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Carse's story as he told it to me, and as I later reiterated it to the court, was fantastic and highly improbable. But there are certain irrefutable arguments in support of Carse's story which shed a terrible light, not alone upon the case, but on all criminal cases of similar nature. For one thing, a hypnotic examination by competent state alienists was ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... his magisterial pulpit, in the eyes of every man who is and wants to remain Catholic, is infallible; when he gives his decision on faith or on morals, Jesus Christ himself speaks by his mouth, and his definitions of doctrine are "irrefutable," "they are so of themselves, they alone, through their own virtue, and not by virtue of the Church's consent."[5218] For the same reason, his authority is absolute, not only in matters which concern faith and morals, but again in matters which concern the discipline and government ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... magnificent, but it was not political economy," we commented. "You should have held to your irrefutable argument that he could get along without his overcoat. You should have told him that he would not ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... reference to the Bombos that my Aunt ever made in my hearing. Of course it is preposterous to suppose that she traces her descent from a king through a mere bowl of punch, and her being still the president of the Selected Salic Scions is proof irrefutable that her claim rests upon a more ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... if he could have denied Fran—if he could have joined Grace in declaring her an impostor! But she possessed proofs so irrefutable that safety lay in admitting her claim, lest she prove more than he had already admitted. "I know it, absolutely. She is the daughter of one who was my most—my most ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... stage dancing, as taught in the Ned Wayburn courses, is a developer of health and vigor, a sure road to grace, poise and personal beauty of form and face—in a word, a maker of beautiful and attractive women—I am making a statement of fact that is irrefutable, based on actual and frequent occurrence. You never saw a properly trained dancer who was ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... to the Bilton house. Plenty of people over there to make merry. Five stockings to hang up. She wished she might have sent something in. To be sure, there was the dog, but that was some time ago. Very likely the dog would have been dead now, anyhow. She felt, herself, that this logic was not irrefutable, but she wished she could have sent some paper parcels just the same. So strong had this impulse been that she had said to her husband somewhat ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... slavery, now that of war. When one contrasts the face of this country with the smiling hillsides and vales of New England, he sees stamped upon it in characters so marked, none but a blind man can fail to read, the great irrefutable arguments against slavery and against war, too; and must be filled with loathing for these twin relics of barbarism, so awful in the potency of their consequences that they can change even the face ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... accumulated since she was newly married. In a second she would appear to leave them all, her mature children, the heavy, palpably aging presence of Gilbert Penny, the house and obligations that had grown about her, and be remotely young, a stranger to the irrefutable proof that her youth had gone. At such moments he was almost reluctant to claim her attention, to bring her again, as it were, into the present, with so much spent, lapsed: at times he almost ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... not agree with the opinions of either Lagrange-Chancel or Sainte-Foix, but seemed to incline towards the theory set forth in the 'Memoires de Perse', against which no irrefutable objections had been advanced. He concluded by saying that before arriving at any decision as to who the prisoner really was, it would be necessary to ascertain the exact date of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of truce were allowed to intervene between the next battle; when the irrefutable Hobbes, once more collecting his weak and his incoherent forces, arranged them, as well as he was able, into "Six Dialogues," 1661. The utter annihilation he intended for his antagonist fell on himself. Wallis borrowing the character of "The Self-tormentor" ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the need of a doctrine which would correct existing evils and disorders, was continually returning to the fountain-head. Anxious to instruct promising officers, to temper them by irrefutable lessons, to mature them more rapidly, to inspire them with his zeal for historical incidents, he resolved to carry on and add to his personal studies while aiding them. Daring to take a courageous offensive against the general inertia of the period, he translated ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... God's special interpositions in the affairs of this world are thus written by his own finger in the fossils and coal, and engraved on the everlasting granite of the earth's foundation stones. Dumb beasts and dead reptiles start forward to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeated supernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made. Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinct supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of man is not the limit of knowledge. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... overshadowed by the cases of disease which were reported in ever-increasing numbers, and even the best of my supporters had begun to speculate whether or no my anti-vaccination views were after all so absolutely irrefutable. ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... was the act of a man who has no hesitation in looking facts in the face and acknowledging them. Idepski's deductions were irrefutable, because the Swede was a shrewd business man with a full appreciation of the man who had lightened his finances by ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... say if I belonged to that school. It all forms a chain of very logical deductions and proffers itself with a certain air of likelihood which we should be glad to find in a host of evolutionist arguments put forward as irrefutable. Well, I will make a present of my deductive views, without regret, to whoever cares to have them: I don't believe one word of them; and I confess my profound ignorance of the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre |
