|
|
|
More "Disprove" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... facts he knew and came up with an answer. Then he phoned the New York Public Library, had his phone connected with the stacks, and spent an hour checking for data that would either prove or disprove his theory. He found plenty of the former and none of ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... own satisfaction, as well as that of her employer, and will not trust the key of this room to any one; she will also keep an account of every thing she takes from it, and manage with as much consideration and frugality as if it was her own property she was using, endeavouring to disprove the adage, that "PLENTY makes waste," and remembering that "wilful waste ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... circumstances of the case, which I do not and cannot deny. He will demand of me how Effie Deans's confession to her sister, previous to her delivery, is reconcilable with the mystery of the birth,—with the disappearance, perhaps the murder (for I will not deny a possibility which I cannot disprove) of the infant. My Lords, the explanation of this is to be found in the placability, perchance, I may say, in the facility and pliability, of the female sex. The dulcis Amaryllidis irae, as your Lordships well know, are easily appeased; nor is it possible to conceive ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... were not that, prophetically speaking, and not personally, he was set in the same category with Judas, the "one who was a devil." I know the glosses, and the contexts, and the whole amount of it. Folios have been written, and may be written again, to disprove the text; but the more words, the less sense: it stands, a record graven in the Rock; that same Petra, whereon, as firm and faithful found, our Lord Jesus built his early Church: it stands, a mark indelibly burnt into that hand, to whom were intrusted, not ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was adapted to the finest micrometrical work, and thus offered unprecedented facilities both for the examination of double stars (in which Struve chiefly employed it), and for such subtle measurements as might serve to reveal or disprove the existence of a sensible stellar parallax. Fraunhofer, moreover, constructed for the observatory at Koenigsberg the first really available heliometer. The principle of this instrument (termed with more propriety a "divided object-glass micrometer") is the separation, by a strictly measurable ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Black-balled of the United Service Club," i.e. Lord Cardigan, was his), all contributed to the first number. It is an axiom of newspaper conductors that "the first number is always the worst number," and Punch did nothing to disprove the rule. Nevertheless, it was a great success. The tone and quality were far higher in dignity and excellence than was common to an avowedly smart and comic paper—far different from what is suggested ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... 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 ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... in colleges. He did not agree with the witnesses who had said that during the first year or two years at college the instruction given was similar to that given in a school. It was very difficult to disprove or to prove such statements. There would be no advantage in keeping boys to a school course up the intermediate standard and making the colleges deal with only those students who had passed ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... will, {364} or of Thomas Lovett's wife. I cannot help fancying that Elizabeth Lovett was his only child by one of his wives, and was perhaps heir to her mother. Can one of your contributors bring forward any authority to confirm or disprove this conjecture? Whilst I am speaking of the Lovett pedigree, I would also advert to two other contradictions in the popular accounts of it. That most inaccurate of books, Betham's Baronetage, vol. v. p. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... ease, and in the first flush of confidence she had boldly printed on the sign: "Rhymed grinds for special persons furnished at reasonable rates." But later, when everybody seemed to want that kind, even the valuable aid of the rhyming dictionary did not disprove the adage that poets are ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... disprove that men were not intended to be equal; it only proves that they are not so. Neither does it disprove that everything was not made for the benefit of all; it only proves that the strong will take advantage of the weak, which ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... is inexplicable, except in the identity of electricity with solar effulgence, as the source of light, heat, and gravitation, as well as substituting repulsion for centrifugal force, and must forever disprove the theory of solar light being the result of mere metallic incandescence, or any other equally exhausting combustion. The latter theory, with such supposed expedients in nature, to carry out the mighty design of creation, belittles the subject by its ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ascertained, if at all, by 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
... point of view, not simply a uniform march along a dead level, but a progression, a change from the lower or generalized to the higher or specialized—an evolution or unfolding of organic life. In his effort to disprove catastrophism he failed to clearly see that species, as we style them, became extinct, though really the changes in the species practically amounted to extinctions of the earlier species as such. The little that was known to Lamarck at the time he wrote, prevented his knowing ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... tribes, jotting down in his note-books old forms of speech lingering amongst isolated communities, and legends and folk-lore stories still remembered by the aged but not much repeated nowadays; always keen to add to his store or to verify or disprove some etymological conjecture that has occurred to his fertile mind. His work is recognised by the ethnological societies of Europe, and much of his collected material has been printed in ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... and to excuse himself as one who had simply shown the proper spirit of revenge. But when he took her hand he said: "My grandfather carried me away from you and your mother in very ungallant fashion yesterday. And he tried to put ungallant words into my mouth. I trust you'll allow me to disprove them. I'd like the privilege of being your obedient ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... himself, he ungenerously places them, in common with others, under a degrading necessity which no able grammarian ever felt, and which every man of genius or learning must repudiate. If none of our older grammars disprove his assertion, it is time to have a new one that will; for, to expect the perfection of grammar from him who cannot treat the subject in a style at once original and pure, is absurd. He says, "The greater part of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Creator; but it is not the mathematical principles of nature which have revealed to him the Sovereign God. He perceives the rays of His glory because he believes in Him. In the same way, the atheist thinks that his researches disprove the existence of God, because God is veiled from his soul. In both cases it is a doctrine foreign to pure natural science which gives a color to its results. Self-deception is very common in this matter, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... called a 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... voyage the courageous spirit of the youth manifested itself in a determination to disprove the words of the ship's owner, made to him at the beginning of the voyage: "All boys on their first voyage eat ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... the highest forms of life, we still have reason to believe that these same conditions prevail on thousands of other worlds. The fact that we might find the conditions in millions of other worlds unfavorable to life would not disprove the existence of the latter ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... is a very able dissertation upon the subject, by the Abbe de Vertot[46], who endeavors to disprove the whole story: first by the silence of all contemporary authors; then by the fact, that Yvetot was not at that time under the dominion of Clothair; then by an anachronism, which the story involves as to Pope Agapetus; ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... which thus prove the reference of Balaam's prophecy to an Israelitish kingdom, disprove also, not only the exclusive reference to David, but also the exclusive reference to Christ; although they imply at the same time that the prophecy, in its final reference, has Christ for its subject. The Israelitish kingdom, indeed, attained to the full height of ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... lived an aged negro whose proud boast was that he had been the body servant of George Washington. As he was very old indeed, no one could disprove his claims, and he made the most of his historical pretentions. He was full of anecdotes concerning the Father of His Country, and exploited himself in every tale. His favorite narrative was of the capture of Lord Cornwallis by his ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... or less; and some people—a few men and not a few women, had either in friendship or in warmer fashion—deeply loved him. Society in general was quite aware of this; nor, it must be confessed, did Major Harper at all attempt to disprove or ignore the fact. He wore his honours—as he did a cross won, no one quite knew how, during a brief service in the Peninsula—neither pompously nor boastingly, but with the ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... that Helen could not hear him, and sometimes in the gloom she could not see him. Then the chill thrills ran over her. Bo kept holding on to Helen, which fact hampered Helen as well as worked somewhat to disprove Bo's boast. At last level ground was reached. Helen made out a light-gray background crossed by black bars. Another glance showed this to be the dark ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... could there be for keeping it a secret, or for denying themselves the closer relationship of marriage? The only possible benefit to Stella was that Swift would be prevented marrying anyone else. It is impossible, of course, to disprove a marriage which we are told was secretly performed, without banns or licence or witnesses; but we may reasonably require strong evidence for so startling a step. If we reject the tale, the story of Swift's connection with Stella is at least intelligible; while the acceptance ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... because I believe myself to be in a better position to disprove this old and forgotten charge than any man present. As I am a recognised opponent of Mr. Webb's political ambition my testimony to the integrity of his personal honour may ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... my judgment cannot disprove these conclusions, my heart cannot acquiesce in them—though I see that I am as certainly the subject of laws that exist and operate independent of my will, as the dead matter around me, I feel, with a certainty quite as great, that I am a free, accountable ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... for honesty; around his mouth for weakness; at his chin for strength; at his hands for temperament; at his nails for cleanliness. His tongue will tell you his experience, and under the questioning of a shrewd employer prove or disprove its statements as it runs along. Always remember, in the case of an applicant from another city, that when a man says he doesn't like the town in which he's been working it's usually because he didn't ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... the charge, but, nevertheless, he was obliged to send her away. He had his own reputation in the country to think of, and the charge of witchcraft was no light one in those days, and not so easy to disprove. He gave her a handsome pension, and a comfortable house and troubled himself ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... foresee not how you can disprove my argument on the immortality of the soul, which, being contained in the best of my dialogues, and being often asked for among my friends, I carry ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... aspects has considerably 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
... 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 ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... arising from the Aristotelian theory of mechanical causation, necessity of natural law and eternity of the world. And they are all removed at a stroke when we substitute intelligent cause working with purpose, will and design. To be sure, by finding difficulties attaching to a theory we do not disprove it, much less do we prove our own. But we should follow the view of Alexander, who says that where a theory is not proved one should adopt the view which has the least number of objections. This, we shall show, is the case in the doctrine ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... did see, that on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honorable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause; What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... tell us. Knowing all this, Socrates, how can a man who has any superiority of mind or person or rank or wealth, be willing to honour justice; or indeed to refrain from laughing when he hears justice praised? And even if there should be some one who is able to disprove the truth of my words, and who is satisfied that justice is best, still he is not angry with the unjust, but is very ready to forgive them, because he also knows that men are not just of their own free will; unless, peradventure, there be some one whom the divinity within him may have inspired ...
— The Republic • Plato
... rough way, the rapidity of that change will be measured by the demonstrable amount of modification. On the other hand, it must be recollected that the absence of any modification, while it may leave the doctrine of the existence of a law of change without positive support, cannot possibly disprove all forms of that doctrine, though it may afford a sufficient ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... imagine. There is indeed a dangerous type of survey which starting with a hypothesis proceeds to prove it by collecting any facts which seem to support it to the neglect of all other facts which might disprove it. The procedure advocated here is the adoption of a definite and acknowledged purpose for which the survey is to be made and the collection of all the facts which bear upon the subject in hand. ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... anomaly of my social position 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 ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... common friend, that's without faith or love, For such is a friend now; treacherous man! Thou hast beguiled my hopes; nought but mine eye Could have persuaded me: now I dare not say 65 I have one friend alive; thou wouldst disprove me. Who should be trusted now, when one's right hand Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus, I am sorry I must never trust thee more, But count the world a stranger for thy sake. 70 The private wound is deepest: O time most accurst, 'Mongst ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... to disprove his assertion, all the firing stopped suddenly, and for a long time the forest was silent. Fortunately they had water in their canteens, and they were able to soothe the thirst of the wounded men. ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... 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 to bear upon the ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... Athens, the fifteenth century in Italy, and the seventeenth in Holland, and humbly submitting that artists never appeared in numbers like swallows, but singly like aerolites. Now our task is not to disprove these statements, but to work out the relationship between the author of the "Butterfly Letters" and the painter of the portrait of "The Mother", "Lady Archibald Campbell", "Miss Alexander", and the other forty-one masterpieces ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... equally unfounded. Its uses are said to be threefold, to convince in affairs of the world, to serve as the basis of action for business men, and to prevent opportunity for false witness. Yet it is not admissible in a court of justice to prove or disprove either a cause or a defence. The rules of evidence have been worked out by centuries of experience of courts in jury trials, and are admirably adapted to avoid the danger of error as to fact. I fully agree that in American courts the trial judges have not been ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... establishment, he none the less sneered and jeered at it, exasperated as he was at having been in the wrong. He had, in fact, been beaten for the second time. Not only did the prodigious crops of Chantebled disprove his theory of the bankruptcy of the earth, that villainous earth in which, like an obstinate peasant weary of toil and eager for speedy fortune, he asserted nothing more would grow; but now that mill of his, which he had ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... cross-examination, in which case, if false, they will not be able to persevere in one regular, consistent story "; whereas, if no advantage be taken of such particularity in the charge to detect the falsehood thereof, and if no attempt to disprove it, and no defence whatever be made, a presumption justly and reasonably arises in favor of the truth of such charge. That the said Warren Hastings, instead of offering anything in his defence, declared that he would not ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the moon came down to visit the people of the earth in their own home, the writer did not have the advantage of the discoveries made by the doctor and myself, and it is well for me that the doctor's friend, Mona, is not here to disprove any of my statements. ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... unique opportunity and obligation—to prove the success of our system; to disprove those cynics and critics at home and abroad who question our ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 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 ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... nourishment of the heart as food is of the body; to love is to fulfill the desire of nature, to satisfy a need. But if possible, manage it so that it will not become a passion. To protect you from this misfortune, I could almost be tempted to disprove the counsel given you, to prefer, to the company of women capable of inspiring esteem rather than love, the intercourse of those who pride themselves on being amusing rather than sedate and prim. At ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... it attempts to make out its case against Mr. Motley. I will not parade the two old women, whose untimely and unseemly introduction into the dress-circle of diplomacy was hardly to have been expected of the high official whose name is at the bottom of this paper. They prove nothing, they disprove nothing, they illustrate nothing—except that a statesman may forget himself. Neither will I do more than barely allude to the unfortunate reference to the death of Lord Clarendon as connected with Mr. Motley's removal, so placidly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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
... Disprove it you couldn't, for it was part of one's senses—the very evidence on which the materialists rely to prove that beyond this world there is nothing. Yet what a flagrant contradiction her conduct was to the murmur of spiritual existence. And that was why ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... of Christ; miracles which they had investigated and could not disprove; a life which was its own witness; prophecies fulfilled; His own presence before their bar; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... was guiding the unfortunates on the road, knew his position, and rode for a while as though he were a chief of men. He was the chief of men there. He was doing what he knew how to do, and was not failing. He had made no boasts which stern facts would afterwards disprove. And when he rode up slowly to the wood-side, having from a distance heard the huntsman's whoop that told him of the fox's fate, he found that he had been right in every particular. No one at that moment knows the line they have all ridden as well as he knows it. But now, among ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... a dream, when one awaketh," he came back suddenly to a recollection of how he was situated. He was going to be put, as it were, on trial, and the charge against him was a difficult one to disprove. ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... walked indignantly away; most certainly the girl was either mad or drunk. "Happen he'll ne'er coom back," indeed! Such impudence! Jinny did not quite like being left alone with her in that solitary place, and partly on this account, partly to disprove her ridiculous assertion, bent her steps towards the shore, calling loudly to her husband ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... Panchu's sham aunt. It will be difficult to disprove her, for though witnesses of a real event may be few or even wanting, innumerable proofs of a thing that has not happened can always be marshalled. The object of this move is, evidently, to get the sale of Panchu's holding to me set aside. Being unable to find ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... the Park refused to admit all this. Pete was forced indeed to admit it in theory, but he was resolved to prove it or disprove it on his own account. He had studied Thunder Mountain from the ridge above the ranch house all that day of Sunnysides' escape, and the next. And he remembered now that a period of calm had followed the storm on that second day. If Haig or Marion, or both of them, had by chance ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... "I intend to disprove the assertion of Alice, that there is only one Sir Philip Sydney. Who was that other equally valiant knight, and much sweeter poet, who used to sing his own verses, accompanying himself upon the harp; and could thereby soothe the most troubled spirit? On one ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none: he who has something to assert will go as far in power of style as its momentousness and his conviction will carry him. Disprove his assertion after it is made, yet its style remains. Darwin has no more destroyed the style of Job nor of Handel than Martin Luther destroyed the style of Giotto. All the assertions get disproved sooner or later; ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... before the Farmers of the Revenue could get their hands upon it. It was this gave rise to the slander that M. de Radisson ran off with half La Chesnaye's furs—which the records de la marine will disprove, if you ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... that there are not other soulless factors, unnoticed or undiscovered, which only require imagination enough to fit them to the evolution of an automatic Jesus or Shakespear? When a man tells you that you are a product of Circumstantial Selection solely, you cannot finally disprove it. You can only tell him out of the depths of your inner conviction that he is a fool and a liar. But as this, though British, is uncivil, it is wiser to offer him the counter-assurance that you are the product of Lamarckian evolution, formerly called Functional Adaptation and ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... which Romanists are accustomed to speak of the plot. In short, the writer has written as a Romanist, and appears to have followed Lingard in every particular. Is such a man qualified to write a history for popular use? But to disprove all his assertions on this point, I simply quote a passage from the Trial, which will prove that no cruel means were resorted to in the case of Garnet. In addressing Garnet, the earl of Salisbury said: "You do best ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... of lies which that jailbird had concocted for my undoing, knowing well that I could not disprove them because it had been my task on that eventful morning to keep an eye on M. le Marquis whilst he went to the Mont de Piete first, and then to MM. Raynal Freres, the bankers where he deposited the money. For this purpose I had been ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of Plymouth Sound at noon-day. One little incident, however, which caused much amusement in the ship, will help to show the degree of regard in which Sir Samuel was held by those immediately about him; and to disprove the proverb of no man being ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... exclaimed Hope, quite as excited as he. "I couldn't believe it. That's why I came back to get you to explain. I wanted you to disprove ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... men were not intended to be equal; it only proves that they are not so. Neither does it disprove that everything was not made for the benefit of all; it only proves that the strong will take advantage of the weak, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... determined by the crystalline character of the mass. This net-work of lines constitutes what are called the Widmannstattian figures, from the name of their discoverer. When these figures are strongly developed the meteoric origin of the iron cannot be questioned, but their absence does not necessarily disprove such an origin. Native iron of terrestrial origin ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... 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 nearly the whole ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... good reason that the editor was solicitous to disprove Chatterton's frank confession, respecting this poem; for he perceived clearly that the style, the colouring, and images, are nearly the same in this, and the second poem with the same title, and that every reader of any discernment must ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... Thought. As for the Thought, we may assume what is said of it in our Art of Rhetoric, as it belongs more properly to that department of inquiry. The Thought of the personages is shown in everything to be effected by their language—in every effort to prove or disprove, to arouse emotion (pity, fear, anger, and the like), or to maximize or minimize things. It is clear, also, that their mental procedure must be on the same lines in their actions likewise, whenever they wish them to arouse pity or horror, ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... might say many worse things of me, and few better. But telling me what I am does not disprove ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... object of nearly every previous discussion of the intermarriage of kindred, has been either to prove or to disprove some alleged injurious effect upon the offspring. The writers who have treated the subject may be divided into three groups. First, those who have maintained in accordance with popular opinion that consanguinity per ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... realities it would prove, as its votaries probably understand, a too-painful mockery. Intelligently analyzed, therefore, this new revelation amounts to nothing more than a quite striking proof of the remarkable influence of the mind over the nervous system. Beyond this, the craze, in attempting to disprove the existence of disease, and to show that poisons do not kill, is simply running against the plain and inevitable facts of life, and can safely be left to perish ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... disputation, and will have to be discussed by surveyors on both sides, and supported and disputed by witnesses innumerable on both sides: old men coming up with ancient memories, hedgers and ditchers, farmers and bailiffs and people of all sorts and conditions, to prove and disprove where the boundary line really divides Neighbour Naboth's ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... We have thus far treated Plurality of Causes only as a possible supposition, which, until removed, renders our inductions uncertain; and have only considered by what means, where the plurality does not really exist, we may be enabled to disprove it. But we must also consider it as a case actually occurring in nature, and which, as often as it does occur, our methods of induction ought to be capable of ascertaining and establishing. For this, however, there is required no peculiar method. When an effect is really producible ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... of endeavoring to disprove and discredit these stories that the emperor caused a telegram, to be sent to the czar from Hubertusstock, not written, as usual, in cipher, but in ordinary language. There is an old French proverb according to which "he who seeks to prove too much, proves nothing," and thus it happened ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... 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 this statement. ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... poltroon, and a liar. The Frenchman had boasted in a publication that he had put the British fleet to flight. The British Admiral took the charge so seriously to heart that he sent a copy of the Victory's log to the Admiralty to disprove the statement of the lying Admiral la Touche, and in a letter to his brother Nelson says, "You will have seen La Touche's letter of how he chased me, and how I ran. I keep it; and by God if I take him, he shall eat it." La Touche cheated Nelson of a sweet ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... dates are enough to disprove the common belief that the heroic drama, rhymed couplet and all, was imported from France. Albovine, as we have seen, has every mark of the heroic drama, except the couplet; and Albovine was written seven years before the first masterpiece of Corneille, one year ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... case, as in Pauli's, this subconscious defense actually made itself felt in the form of broken equipment. Dr. Theodore Nordred was totally unconscious of the fact that he detested and feared the idea of anyone experimenting to prove or disprove his theory. He had no idea that he, himself, was re-channeling the energy in those machines to ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Belfaster of fatiguing vitality told me this little story which my friends the Catholic clergy may disprove if they can. He said:—"Mr. McMaster, of the firm of Dunbar, McMaster and Co., of Gilford, County Down, conceived the idea of aiding his fellow-countrymen and women who were starving in the congested districts. This was some time ago, but it is a good illustration of the difficulty you have in ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... true. Then—an acquaintance came out here hunting. He returned with a strange story. He declared that he had seen Mr. FitzHugh alive. Now you know why I am here. I had not meant to tell you. It places me in a light which I do not think that I can explain away—just now. I have come to prove or disprove his death. If ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... reddish-purple ones. Bees and butterflies, with delicate appreciation of color and fragrance, let the blossom alone, since it secretes no nectar; and one would naturally infer either that it can fertilize itself without insect aid - a theory which closer study of its organs goes far to disprove - or that the carrion-scent, so repellent to us, is in itself an attraction to certain insects needful for cross-pollination. Which are they? Beetles have been observed crawling over the flower, but without effecting any methodical result. One inclines to accept Mr. Clarence M. Weed's theory of ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... said that the anomalies above mentioned are so great as to disprove the existence of any scale which should indicate descent; but the nearer we approach species, the smaller we see differences become, till with species itself we find ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... myself no gentleman, you would infer. I make no such confession. I would disprove Byron's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... he saw that, all along, he had thought she would be able to disprove it! A smothering blackness closed in on him, and he had a physical struggle for breath. Then he forced himself to his feet and said: "He was ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... in my nurse's dress. Inquiries have been made about me on the Continent—and (I happen to know from the person who made them) with no result. I am safe in your place; I am known by your name. I am Grace Roseberry; and you are Mercy Merrick. Disprove it, ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... thing in the world is the vast number of people who are content to believe important things on hearsay, because, on the whole, they love or trust the people who teach them. The word 'believing,' when I use it, doesn't mean that a good man says it, and that I can't disprove it, but a sort of vital assent, so that I can act upon the belief almost as if I knew it. It means for me some sort of personal experience, I could not love or hate a man on hearsay, just because people whom I loved or trusted said that they either loved or hated him. I might ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 owner of their possessions, by means of the will ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... we had proved, to ourselves at least, the agency of the mosquito in yellow fever, it became our duty to disprove the theory, until then held as a certainty by many authorities, to the effect that the soiled bedding and clothing, the secretions and excreta of patients, were infectious and in some way carried the germ ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... time a feud broke out between Ashikaga Taka-uji and Nitta. The former had accused Nitta of unfaithfulness to his emperor and Nitta was able to disprove the charge. He received the imperial commission to punish Ashikaga and marched with his army upon him in the province of Totomi. In the battles (A.D. 1336) which ensued, the forces of Ashikaga were completely victorious. The emperor and his court were obliged to flee from Kyoto and took up ...
— Japan • David Murray
... self-defence, for a prisoner of war to effect his escape by slaying his guard. All this, I know, will horrify a certain class of our divines and politicians. But let them be patient. I am not laying down a doctrine, but stating facts, which they may disprove if they can. Let them remember, that all the slavery which they delight to find in the Bible was the slavery of white men, and that the Roman slaves in the time of Christ, whose bondage, we are told, he and his Apostles approved, were held by the right of war. White Americans ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... angry, that—as like as not—Maurice would make a scene. She knew that Maurice—to whom she had plighted her troth—had branded this man as a liar and a traitor: her father believed him to be a traitor, and she . . . Well! what had he done to disprove Maurice's accusations? A few words of passionate protestations! . . . Did they count? . . . He wore his King's uniform—many careless adventurers did that these strenuous ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... needed, in order to show satisfactorily that there is a divine revelation in the record, to prove that the record is itself divine. To disprove that revelation, a man must do something more than point out marks of imperfection in the Book containing it, such marks as would not be expected in a book written directly by the hand of God. If ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... suffer 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 ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... answered, "This much at least I can disprove, for I swear"—and on my sword-hilt I swore it in that place—"I swear I will never set foot in the Great Hall till the Lady AElueva herself ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... the family furniture, the bed upon which Mr. Davis died, and the suit of clothes he wore when captured by General Wilson, in Georgia, at the close of hostilities between the North and the South; the object of the exhibit being to disprove the report that Mr. Davis wore a woman's dress when arrested. A statement of Capt. J.H. Parker, of General Wilson's staff was attached, contradicting the falsehood. The building cost $15,000 without furnishings or pictures. It was built entirely of Mississippi lumber, the contractor ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... Gardens. They are supposed to have been also for the Tomb of Julius. Heath Wilson suggests that they may have been intended for the facade of San Lorenzo. The difficulty as to scale that caused a doubt as to their being intended for the Tomb does not really disprove it; for Michael Angelo was never very particular as to the comparative size of the figures in his monuments, and the many alterations of his schemes for the Tomb make it possible for them to have been worked in somehow. It is very probable that when he was ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... of Tunis and Algeria, the streets, so far as they have yet been uncovered, diverge widely from the chess-board pattern.[90] One French archaeologist has even declared that most of the towns in Roman Africa lacked this pattern.[91] Our evidence is perhaps still too slight to prove or disprove that conclusion. Few African towns have been sufficiently uncovered to show the street-plan.[92] But town-life was well developed in Roman Africa. It is hardly credible that the Africans learnt all the rest ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... had become the source of many weird stories, and while the ice- fields could be seen from the Kyak coal-fields, and on still days their cannonading could be heard far out at sea, there were few who had ventured to cross the forty-mile morass which lay below them and thus attempt to verify or to disprove the rumors, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... it is well enough here to say that the daughter of Coleridge was a woman of remarkable excellence, and if you wish to disprove the adage that genius does not transmit itself she is a good example to bring up—even though there is a difference between fact and truth. James Coleridge was also the father of Mr. Justice Coleridge, himself the father of Lord Chief ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... cannot take 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
... thing he did after the sun appeared was to examine minutely the arrow prepared by Choflo. Certain words whispered into his ear by old Yaro had had the effect of making him cautious. Besides, there were his own suspicions to verify or to disprove. ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... had put his hand to the plow and would not look back. He had appealed to the law—"the Bureau" and only "the Bureau" should decide it. So Colonel Desmit and his lawyer asked a few hours' delay and prepared themselves to resist and disprove the charge of assault upon Nimbus. The lawyer once proposed to examine the papers in the case, but Desmit said that was useless—the boy was no liar, though they must make him out one if they could. So, at the time appointed, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... to consider the points of difference, and, if possible, to show that these do not go to disprove the doctrine of continuity which the points ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... earned their coat-of-arms of fifteen gold coins upon a sable ground, as well as their proud motto "One and All." It had been said (I forget if in my hearing), that the days of chivalry were past. Here was an opportunity to disprove it and declare that the spirit of their ancestors survived and animated the Cornishmen of to-day. (A Voice—"How about the Millennium?") He would pass over that interruption with the contempt it deserved. They were not met to bandy personalities, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Canaan's Calamity" is one of the worst metrical samples extant of religious rubbish. As far as such inferential evidence can be allowed to attest anything, the fact of Dekker's having written one of the most beautiful and simple of religious books in prose tends surely rather to disprove than to prove his authorship of one of the feeblest and most pretentious of semi-sacred ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... lady; but how can that be done? He thinks her remains were lost in the conflagration of Ellerslie; and for fear of precipitating him into the new dangers which might have menaced him had he sought to bring away her body, I did not disprove his mistake." ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... made by Galileo, and holds that the passage was a forgery devised later by the Church rulers to justify the proceedings of 1632 and 1644. This would make the conduct of the Church worse, but authorities as eminent consider the charge not proved. A careful examination of the documents seems to disprove it. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... but, as the principal calumny employed by their adversaries was that all the provinces and leading personages intended to change both sovereign and religion, at the instigation of his Excellency, it was desirable to disprove such fictions. They therefore very earnestly requested the Prince to make some contrary demonstration, by which it might be manifest to all that his Excellency, together with the estates of Holland and Zealand, intended faithfully to keep what ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... laid The corner-stone of earth, who caused the grass Spring forth upon the wilderness, and made The darkness scatter and the night to pass— That He should clothe Himself with flesh, and move Midst worms a worm—this, sun, moon, stars disprove. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... but your readers 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 ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... only in your own business?-Yes. Then, in answer to question 44,386, Mr. Walker says the cost of rearing a lb. of Shetland wool was something like 8s. to 10s. He must have been taking leave of his senses when he stated that. In order to disprove his statement, I say that Mr. Leask's tenants in Yell pay 6d. a head for sheep for grazing over a whole twelve months, and a Shetland sheep carries from 2 to 3 lbs. of wool on an average, so that the cost of rearing it is ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... may spring to life.[136] He then passes by an insensible—because to him very natural—transition from the realities of feeling to those of thought, and to the underlying truth from which both series derive: and combats the idea that in thought, any more than in feeling, the present can disprove the past, the once true reveal itself as delusion. Time—otherwise growth—widens the range as it complicates the necessities of musical, i.e. emotional expression. It destroys the enfolding fictions which shield without concealing the earlier stages of intellectual truth. But ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... 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 ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to worship the product of my own imagination! Oh, Leonie, beware of these modern thinkers, who assail the creed that has been the stronghold and comfort of humanity for sixteen hundred years, and who employ the reason which God has given them to disprove the existence of their Maker. Fareham insists that Spinoza is a religious man—and has beautiful ideas about God; but I found only doubt and despair in his pages; and I ascribe my poor brother's melancholic disposition in some part to his study ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... of the whole mass who are so powerful or delightful in society. And there is still more to be said in favour of authors. I know many whose conversation is superior to their writings; I will not name them as they, perhaps, would not consider this to be a compliment but it fully tends to disprove the remarks of the "Desennuyee" as to authors of talent reserving their thoughts for their hooks, for, on the contrary, when in company, they generally take the lead. Still, there is a difference arising from the variety of temperament: some, accustomed to mix ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... protest against the artificial disabilities by which their freedom is limited and their development arrested? That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real, only proves their apathy and deeper degradation. That a majority of the women of the United States accept, without protest, the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... perfectly clear, however, and he had already perfected a plan by which Mabel would be spared the worst of that which threatened her. It was simple, and, as far as he could see, quite impossible to disprove—he would let it be understood that Mark and he had written the book in collaboration, and that he had desired his own share of the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... the compasse of one quadrangle walke most judiciously and punctually discovered. But long he must not walke, lest hee make his newes-presse stand. Thanks to his good invention, he can collect much out of a very little: no matter though more experienced judgements disprove him; hee is anonymos, and that wil secure him. To make his reports more credible or, (which he and his stationer onely aymes at,) more vendible, in the relation of every occurrent he renders you the day of the moneth; and to approve ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... naturally enough, as to one important point—his real parentage. The character of his mother was by no means such as to disprove an assertion which gained general belief: this was, that Horace was the offspring, not of Sir Robert Walpole, but of Carr, Lord Hervey, the eldest son of the Earl of Bristol, and the elder brother of Lord Hervey, whose 'Memoirs of the Court ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... goes on in the world, or he would not speak so. How many myriads of men are there who have been bewitched by foxes? Why, there have been at least twenty or thirty men tricked by the brutes on the Maki Moor alone. It's hard to disprove facts that have ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... week ago. I made a statement to M. Hamard of the Surete in Paris, and they have already made a discovery which you will find of interest and somewhat difficult to disprove." ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Hardy in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries are said to indicate that three-score-and-ten was considered old age; yet many old tombstones and monuments contain inscriptions recording age far beyond this, and even the pages of ordinary biographies disprove the alleged ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... became half serious and his changed manner hushed the laughter of the others. "I have always ridiculed the idea of hypnotism and in every experiment where I have been present I have set myself to disprove its effects. But candidly, folks, I was hypnotized. Unconsciously I followed that parade a whole dozen blocks myself, and when I finally came out of the trance, or whatever it was, and started back to the hotel, ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... 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 ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... them, which were 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
... 1869. What I asserted and now repeat is that he was a Republican when he was made a Justice of the State Supreme Court in 1870. Even if he, like thousands of others, rejoined the Democratic party, that would not disprove my assertion that he was a Republican while he was on the bench. But it appears that he was not one of those that rejoined the Democrats, but remained a Republican to the day of his death. In 1884, nine years after the Redemption, he canvassed ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... bounds, and do not put the question to the people of the 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,) ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... nothing. Numerous witnesses testified before the special commission appointed later by President Cleveland, that at times their bi-weekly checks ran variously from four cents to one dollar. The company could not produce evidence to disprove this. These sums represented the company's indebtedness to them for their labor, after the company had deducted rent and other charges. Such manifold robberies aroused the bitterest resentment among the company's employees, since especially it ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... himself to the reason, to the prejudices, to the sympathies, nay, even to the worst passions of the twelve men whose opinions he seeks to influence in favour of his client. He may proceed to call witnesses to disprove the facts adduced on the other side, or to show that the character of the accused stands too high for even a suspicion of the alleged clime; he has the utmost liberty of speech and action He may indefinitely protract ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... thee stay, and answer here To one, who, wert thou noble, were thy peer, 450 But as thou wast and art—nay, frown not, Lord, If false, 'tis easy to disprove the word— But as thou wast and art, on thee looks down, Distrusts thy smiles, but shakes not at thy frown. Art thou not he? whose deeds——"[jx] "Whate'er I be, Words wild as these, accusers like to thee, I list no further; those with whom they weigh May hear the rest, nor venture ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... now, that in all the ten terrible years of shooting, hanging and burning of men, women and children in America, the Women's Christian Temperance Union never suggested one plan or made one move to prevent those awful crimes. If this statement is untrue the records of that organization would disprove it before the ink is dry. It is clearly an issue of fact and in all fairness this charge of misrepresentation should either be ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... these parchments. They are those that my father took with him when he rode for London to disprove the Abbot's claim, and with them the evidence of the traitorous words he spoke last year at Shefton. Yes, this inner wrapping is my own; I took it from the store of worn linen in the passage-cupboard. But ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... addresses himself to the work is sure to make him enemies, enemies perhaps among powerful persons, who next year may be his superiors in office, and thus subjects him to all sorts of accusations which he may find it very hard to disprove. In short, if we may say it without offence to the higher dignitaries, it is far easier to discharge without censure the functions of a Judge than those of the humble officer who ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... others, are now experts, but there was a time, and it was not long ago, when they were unskilled. That they, with numerous others less widely known, should have come safely through their many experiments would seem to disprove the prevailing idea that aviation ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... are undesirable citizens in general. The criminal lawyer learns in his cradle never to admit anything. By getting constant adjournments he wears out the People's witnesses, induces others to stay away, and when the case finally comes to trial has only the naked accusation of the complainant to disprove. Or, to put it in more technically correct fashion, the complainant has only his own word wherewith to establish his case beyond a reasonable doubt. A bold contradiction is often so startling that it throws confusion into ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... That many men of great intellectual activity, and many men pre-eminent for their moral qualities have harboured a great brain or a noble character in a weakly or deformed body, forms no argument to disprove the general rule that a healthy, vigorous physique is the only sure foundation upon which to build a highly developed intellect and a stable temperament. In childhood the intimate connection between vigour of mind and vigour of body is almost always clearly shown. A child with rickets, unable ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... came over Fleda that she was in imminent danger of losing Mrs. Thorn altogether. She managed, however, by some sort of instinct, to disprove the assertion that the mind cannot attend to two things at once, and carried on a double conversation with herself and with Mrs. Thorn for some time ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... be our course: Even as the ocean drinks a thousand streams, And never cries "enough!"—the human mind Would drain all sources of intelligence, Yet ne'er is filled, and never satisfied. And theory succeeds to theory As regular as tides that ebb and flow. This treatise will disprove the last I read. Shade of Hippocrates! what creeds are formed, What antics practiced with your "Healing Art!" I will not sport with fate, nor tamper thus With man's credulity and nature's strength. No: I will gently coincide with nature, And give her time and scope to work the ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... There has been some question whether this attachment was an innocent or a guilty one. A painting, still hanging in the private rooms which belonged to Mary in the palace at Holyrood, represents Rizzio as young and very handsome; on the other hand, some of the historians of the day, to disprove the possibility of any guilty attachment, say that he was rather old and ugly. We may ourselves, perhaps, safely infer, that unless there were something specially repulsive in his appearance and manner, such a heart as Mary's, ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... old maid or senseless chit. Selfish? Of course! I hold all love is so: And I shall love my wife right well, I know. Now there's a point regarding selfish love, You thirst to argue with me, and disprove. But since these cosy hours will soon be gone, And all our meetings broken in upon, No more of these rare moments must be spent In vain discussions, or in argument. I wish Miss Trevor was in—Jericho! (You see ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to hinder the actual settler from locating on the claim, or will sell out to him at a good profit. A good deal of money is made by these fictitious claimants. It is rather hard to prevent it, too, inasmuch as it is difficult to disprove that a man intends some time to have a permanent home, or, in fact, that his claim is not his legal residence, though his usual abiding place is somewhere else. Nothing could be more delightful than for a party ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... your friend's name should have been added to the bond you placed with us. Business men's pertinacity is a little wearisome, no doubt, to officers and members of the aristocracy like yourself; but all the same I must persist—how can you disprove ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... any one chooses to say that the creative work took place in the Cambrian or Laurentian epoch, in exactly that manner which Mr. Gladstone does, and natural science does not, affirm, natural science is not in a position to disprove the accuracy of the statement. Only one cannot have one's cake and eat it too, and such safety from the contradiction of science means the ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... however, it must be remembered that, if this kind of war is not suitable to all capacities, regions, or circumstances, its chances of success are still very great, and it is based upon principle. Napoleon abused the system; but this does not disprove its real advantages when a proper limit is assigned to its enterprises and they are made in harmony with the respective conditions of the armies ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... comparatively easy to 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 ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... factor of safety of 1-15/100 makes a bridge perfectly safe, or, in other words, that a bridge can safely bear the load that will break it down, for he very wisely made not the slightest attempt to disprove any of the conclusions of the commission; and this company has built hundreds of highway bridges all over the United States, and is building them to-day wherever it can find town or county officers ignorant enough to ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... man who has any superiority of mind or person or rank or wealth, be willing to honour justice; or indeed to refrain from laughing when he hears justice praised? And even if there should be some one who is able to disprove the truth of my words, and who is satisfied that justice is best, still he is not angry with the unjust, but is very ready to forgive them, because he also knows that men are not just of their own free will; unless, peradventure, there ...
— The Republic • Plato
... dealing with a race which made enormous journeys, and thus became contaminated by the various other races with which it came in contact. It may even have been a mixed race to start with. Thus even if we found skulls of very different types in the dolmens this would not in the least disprove the idea that dolmen building was introduced into various countries by one and the same race. It would be simply a case of the common anthropological fact that a race immigrating into an already inhabited ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... confine himself to defining atheism and laying down the penalty for it; he at the same time, in accordance with a principle which he generally follows in the Laws, discusses it and tries to disprove it. In this way he happens to give us information—which is of special interest to us—of the proofs which ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... Galileo, and holds that the passage was a forgery devised later by the Church rulers to justify the proceedings of 1632 and 1644. This would make the conduct of the Church worse, but authorities as eminent consider the charge not proved. A careful examination of the documents seems to disprove it. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... meditating on your powerful objection to the mundane cold period (334/1. See Letter 49.), viz. that MANY-fold more of the warm-temperate species ought to have crossed the Tropics than of the sub-arctic forms. I really think that to those who deny the modification of species this would absolutely disprove my theory. But according to the notions which I am testing—viz. that species do become changed, and that time is a most important element (which I think I shall be able to show very clearly in this case)—in such change, I think, the result would be as follows. Some of the warm-temperate ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... same spirit Stewart Edward White faces the deeper problems and speculations of life. He wants to know about things here and hereafter. With the same zest and simplicity of motive he faces the secret doors of existence; not to prove or disprove, but to see and find out. And when he comes to the Last Door he will go through without fear, with eyes open to see in the next undiscovered country what there is to be seen and to show that the heart of a brave and unshrinking man, truthful and open-handed and friendly, is at home there, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... companion here. As the story was written long before the moon came down to visit the people of the earth in their own home, the writer did not have the advantage of the discoveries made by the doctor and myself, and it is well for me that the doctor's friend, Mona, is not here to disprove any of ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... did after the sun appeared was to examine minutely the arrow prepared by Choflo. Certain words whispered into his ear by old Yaro had had the effect of making him cautious. Besides, there were his own suspicions to verify or to disprove. ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... some honourable persons, I told them it had been reported that some of Mr. C.'s MSS. were fallen into the hands of strangers, and that I should be glad to receive from you such information as might enable me to disprove that report. What occasioned this surmise, or what particular MSS. were meant, I was not able to discover; so I was left to my own conjectures, which, upon a serious consideration, induced me to believe that it might relate to the MSS. in eight volumes in 8vo, of which there is a transcript. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... vigorous, enthusiastic young person, burning his big hands with experiments in physics and chemistry, reading the Scientific American late into the night, until his broad shoulders were threatened with a permanent stoop, and his eager eyes blinked wearily at breakfast, anxious to disprove certain accepted theories, and as eager to introduce others, unaffected, irreverent, and irresistibly buoyant. William could not hear an opera praised without dragging Susan off to gallery seats, which the lady frankly characterized ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... History of Scotland,[59] supposes the Extracta to have been written posterior to the time of Fordun, and prior to the date of Bower's Continuation of the Scotichronicon,—a conjecture which one or more passages in the work entirely disprove.[60] If the opinion of Mr. Tytler had been correct, it would have been important as a proof that the story of the royal adventure of Alexander upon Inchcolm was written by Fordun, and not by Bower, inasmuch ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... had simply shown the proper spirit of revenge. But when he took her hand he said: "My grandfather carried me away from you and your mother in very ungallant fashion yesterday. And he tried to put ungallant words into my mouth. I trust you'll allow me to disprove them. I'd like the privilege of being your obedient squire on ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... gases fly forth from an exhaust vent to expand instantly, frictionlessly and impotently to the ends of the universe? In my story, "The World Behind the Moon," I assumed that would occur. And no man living is in a position positively to disprove it. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... 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 to the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... man's eyes for honesty; around his mouth for weakness; at his chin for strength; at his hands for temperament; at his nails for cleanliness. His tongue will tell you his experience, and under the questioning of a shrewd employer prove or disprove its statements as it runs along. Always remember, in the case of an applicant from another city, that when a man says he doesn't like the town in which he's been working it's usually because he didn't ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... right; it is not his hand, nor do I know the writing, now that you direct my attention to it. But what can that mean? You, surely, do not suppose that I have mistaken any one for him; for, independent of all else, his knowledge of my family, and my uncle's affairs, would quite disprove that." ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... of the world, Miss Tulliver, prevents you from anticipating fully the very unjust conceptions that will probably be formed concerning your conduct,—conceptions which will have a baneful effect, even in spite of known evidence to disprove them." ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... made may be cried down as rank heresy, first by the book readers and then by the general public; but I doubt if anyone among that public would or could actually turn to the music itself and analyze it intelligently, from both an aesthetic and technical standpoint, in order to verify or disprove ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... are content to believe important things on hearsay, because, on the whole, they love or trust the people who teach them. The word 'believing,' when I use it, doesn't mean that a good man says it, and that I can't disprove it, but a sort of vital assent, so that I can act upon the belief almost as if I knew it. It means for me some sort of personal experience, I could not love or hate a man on hearsay, just because people whom I loved or trusted said that they either loved or ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... feeble race what ills await, Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain, Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train, And Death, sad refuge from the storms of fate! The fond complaint, my song, disprove, And justify the laws of Jove. Say, has he giv'n in vain the heav'nly Muse? Night, and all her sickly dews, Her sceptres wan, and birds of boding cry, He gives to range the dreary sky: Till down the eastern cliffs afar Hyperion's march they spy, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... I," Palliser answered, with amiable tolerance. "The American gentleman had better come back himself and disprove it. When you used to talk about the Klondike, he never said anything to make you feel as if he doubted that the other ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... identity (Orton among others), and yet Sydenham saw no reason for suspecting a communicable property. It might have been more to the point had Dr. Macmichael, instead of quoting old authorities on small-pox, measles, &c. quoted some authorities to disprove that Orton and others are wrong when they state it as their belief that some of those old epidemics in Europe, about which so much obscurity hangs, were nothing more or less than the cholera spasmodica. Mead's short sketch of the "sweating sickness" does not seem very inapplicable:—"Excessive ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... the doctrine of total abstinence. The first speaker, a planter, concluded by saying, that it was commonly believed that wine and malt were rendered absolutely indispensable in the West Indies, by the exhausting nature of the climate. But facts disprove the truth of this notion. "I am happy to say that I can now present this large assembly with ocular demonstration of the fallacy of the popular opinion. I need only point you to the worthy occupants of this platform. Who are the healthiest among them? The cold ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... now been stated to show that the convention movement was now deeply rooted in the thought of the disfranchised American. The fact that there was a lull does not at all disprove this contention. The conventions were great educators, alike of the Negro and the American whites. They taught the former parliamentary usages and how to conduct deliberative bodies. They brought to light facts ...
— The Early Negro Convention Movement - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 9 • John W. Cromwell
... honest American or Canadian sportsman lullaby himself into the belief that the woodcock is safe from extermination. As sure as the world, it is going! The fact that a little pocket here or there contains a few birds does not in the slightest degree disprove the main fact. If the sportsmen of this country desire to save the seed stock of woodcock, they must give it everywhere five or ten-year close ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago. Hence the occurrences which are CALLED knowledge of the past are logically independent of the past; they are wholly analysable into present contents, which might, theoretically, be just what ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... this Act as printed by Archbishop King has been questioned, especially by William Todd Jones in 1793. But we believe its authenticity cannot be successfully contested. Lesley, in his "Reply" to King, makes no attempt to disprove its existence, but, on the contrary, alludes to it and applauds James for having opposed it. King, however, asserts that the Act was kept a secret; and that the persons attainted, or their friends, could not obtain a copy of ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Paamways not so voraciously as the others, because they cultivate a large breed of dogs for their eating." Mr. W. Winwood Reade suspects them to be an offshoot of the great Fulah race, and there is nothing in point of dialect to disprove what we must at present consider a pure conjecture. "The Fulah pronouns have striking analogies with those of the Yoruba, Accra, Ashantee, and Timmanee, and even of the great Kaffir class of dialects, which reaches from the equator to the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... second, that those men and women who specialize in some vocation in such extreme degree that they cannot marry and have children are thereby, by reason of that celibate concentration, better able to function socially in their chosen work. It is the object of this book to disprove both these assumptions. ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... akin to intemperance. That scheme of head, heart, and habitual demeanour, which in his early manhood, and first controversial writings, Milton, claiming the privilege of self- defence, asserts of himself, and challenges his calumniators to disprove; this will his school-mates, his fellow-collegians, and his maturer friends, with a confidence proportioned to the intimacy of their knowledge, bear witness to, as again realized in the life of Robert Southey. But still more striking ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... then surrounded the old priest, with the strongest assertions that such was the fact, and that nobody would ever have thought of his purchasing it unless he had expressly engaged to take it. The poor old man was entirely put down. He was certain of the truth: but what could he do: resist or disprove a direct falsehood pronounced by the Superior of a Convent, and sworn to by all her holy nuns? He finally expressed his conviction that we were right: he was ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... 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 ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... as she rode. The news had stunned her. She had only one thought—to see Hagar Catherson, to confirm or disprove Uncle Jepson's story. She could not have told whether the sun was shining, or whether it was afternoon or morning. But she must see Hagar Catherson at once, no matter what the time or the difficulties. She came to the break in the canyon after ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... 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 him off ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... every solid,—an unconscious handling of an idea as if it had length, breadth, and thickness. It is a great deal easier to say this than to prove it, and a great deal easier to dispute it than to disprove it. But mind this: the more we observe and study, the wider we find the range of the automatic and instinctive principles in body, mind, and morals, and the narrower the limits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... is no doubt true," our antagonist will urge, "but you have still to show that your Church has any right or title to interfere in these matters. And even if you can make some sort of case for her interference, you have still to disprove what so many people believe, namely, that the right, real or assumed, has not been arbitrarily used to the damage, or at least to the delay of scientific progress. Chemistry," we may suppose our antagonist continuing, "no doubt has a legitimate ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... excitement and unremitting exertions of the tour. He thought that perhaps it would be well for Miss Lind to try giving a few concerts on her own account, or under some other manager, in order to disprove what her friends had told her, namely, that Mr. Barnum had not managed the enterprise as successfully as ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... 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, so ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thing for a man to project his personality across the grave. In making their wills and providing for the carrying on of their pet enterprises a number of our richest men have endeavored from time to time to disprove this; but, to date, the percentage of successes has not been large. So far as most of us are concerned the burden of proof shows that in this regard we are one with the famous little dog whose name was Rover—when we die, we die all over. Every big success represents the personality ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... obtain higher wages? This is the question, and no other: and it is idle to divert attention from it, by attacking any incidental position of Malthus or some other writer, and pretending that to refute that is to disprove the principle of population. Some, for instance, have achieved an easy victory over a passing remark of Mr. Malthus, hazarded chiefly by way of illustration, that the increase of food may perhaps be assumed ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... law-makers and the law-breakers to carry that declaration to its logical consistency by giving woman the right of representation in the government which she helps to maintain; a voice in the laws by which she is governed, and all the rights and privileges society can bestow, the same as to man, or disprove its validity. We need no other declaration. All we ask is to have the laws based on the same foundation upon which that declaration rests, viz.: upon equal justice, and not upon sex. Whenever the rights of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... system, we find that it is impossible to disprove this theory of dreams. If we demonstrate that a dream has no sexual connection whatever, they have only to say that it is the censor that blinds, and, by resorting to symbolism and other such very present helps in time of trouble, they show plainly that we were mistaken. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... necessary to the highest forms of life, we still have reason to believe that these same conditions prevail on thousands of other worlds. The fact that we might find the conditions in millions of other worlds unfavorable to life would not disprove the existence of the latter on countless worlds ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... fired that shot—in fact, all those shots that day—was Pig Head, the back-to-the-lander from the South. Pig Head argued that deer forests are farms lying idle. And the laird had offered to rent him a farm at one-and-nothing-three the acre to disprove it. Pig Head had taken the offer. He disapproved of lairds as unrevolutionaries. He hated red deer because they were too smart for him to kill wholesale, and he loathed golden eagles because they were the pride of the "hills." But he kept his ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... armaments and enlistments. To these principles of the law of nations Mr. Genet answers, by calling them 'diplomatic subtleties,' and 'aphorisms of Vattel and others.' But something more than this is necessary to disprove them; and till they are disproved, we hold it certain that the law of nations and the rules of neutrality forbid our permitting either party to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... stated they were, or there has been great fraud committed since. As we are dealing with the greatest national bank in the country, it will be simple for the Government and banking officials at Washington instantly to disprove my statements if they are false; otherwise they must take action, civil and criminal, against the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... 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 my jealousy; ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe. On the other hand, if the teleologist assert that this, that, or the other result of the working of any part of the mechanism of the universe is ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... casual reader of this story conclude that Benezet was a mere theorist or pamphleteer. He ever translated into action what he professed to believe. Knowing that the enlightenment of the blacks would not only benefit them directly but would also disprove the mad theories as to the impossibility of their mental improvement, Benezet became one of the most aggressive and successful workers who ever toiled among these unfortunates. As early as 1750 he established for the Negroes in Philadelphia an evening school in which they ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... have spread far and wide, and whose fame most certainly must so have spread had he really performed all the wonderful works attributed to him. But no necessity lies upon the Freethinker, when he rejects Christianity, to disprove the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth, although we point to the inadequacy of the evidence even of his existence. The strength of the Freethought position is in no-wise injured by the admission that a young Jew named Joshua (i.e. Jesus) may have ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... 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 over ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... 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 here, they never saw any more than one small Indian family, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... positively commended to the whole of a Christian church[68]; or wherein the want of it[69], or wherein its not being the chief and ruling affection, is charged on persons professing themselves Christians, as being sufficient to disprove their claim to that appellation, or as being equivalent to denying it[70]. Let not therefore any deceive themselves by imagining, that only an absolute unqualified renunciation of the desire of the favour of God is here condemned. ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... prefer to accuse another? {214} And consider also this further point, gentlemen of the jury. If I were on my trial, with the defendant Aeschines for accuser and Philip for judge; and if, being unable to disprove my guilt, I abused Aeschines and tried to sully his character, do you not think that Philip would be indignant at the very fact of a man abusing his benefactors in his own presence? Do not you then prove worse than Philip; but ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... for various bets, loans, and even mortgages, of which Howel kept quite as usurious an account as his father would have done before him, and at which the lawyers of those gentlemen shook their heads, although they could not disprove any item of it. Howel had learnt enough of law to serve his purposes, and to teach him how far he might venture to go, in the matter of interest and ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... Therefore, to relieve this silence which had ceased to be agreeable, I talked about Daddy Ben and his grandsons, and negro voting, and the huge lie of "equality" which our lips vociferate and our lives daily disprove. This took us comfortably away from weddings and cakes into the subject of lynching, my violent condemnation of which surprised him; for our discussion had led us over a wide field, and one fertile in well-known disputes of the evergreen sort, conducted by the North mostly with more ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... little to prove, and nothing that he could disprove. They had to speak merely to certain banking transactions, to say that certain moneys had been so paid in and so drawn out, in stating which they had their office books to depend on. But not the less on ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... cry of the primal man beneath all the culture of the schools that disprove Hell; the cry of human red-blooded manhood against all the white-corpuscled sickly sentimentality that ever sacrifices innocence ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... is an amateur as an artist, but whether he is an amateur as a critic; and that can be decided only by his criticism. The greatest artist might prove that he was an amateur in criticism; and he could not disprove it by appealing to his art. Sir Joshua Reynolds, for instance, thinks like an amateur in some of his discourses; and it is amateur thinking to defend him by saying that he does not paint ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... would go on being as ignorant and mistaken as it had been hitherto. But sound opinion and instincts in that field depend upon nothing of the sort, but upon the emergence of a few quite simple facts, which are indisputable and self-evident, which stare us in the face, and which absolutely disprove all the elaborate theories of the ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... them concerning the necessities of the land; but, as the principal calumny employed by their adversaries was that all the provinces and leading personages intended to change both sovereign and religion, at the instigation of his Excellency, it was desirable to disprove such fictions. They therefore very earnestly requested the Prince to make some contrary demonstration, by which it might be manifest to all that his Excellency, together with the estates of Holland and Zealand, intended ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... It was not surprising, then, that Gorley, on hearing of Drake's intended march to Boruwimi, should wish to take service under his command. He called upon Drake with that request, was confronted with the current story, and invited to disprove it. Gorley read his man shrewdly, and confessed the truth of the charge without an attempt at mitigation. He asked frankly for a place in the troop, the lowest, as his chance of redemption, or rather demanded it as a grace due from man to man. Drake was taken by his manner, noticed ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... "First we must disprove its impassability," I replied. "Nor shall I admit that it is impassable before I have followed its entire circle and stand again upon this spot, defeated. The sooner we start, the better, for I see no other way, and it ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on and on must be our course: Even as the ocean drinks a thousand streams, And never cries "enough!"—the human mind Would drain all sources of intelligence, Yet ne'er is filled, and never satisfied. And theory succeeds to theory As regular as tides that ebb and flow. This treatise will disprove the last I read. Shade of Hippocrates! what creeds are formed, What antics practiced with your "Healing Art!" I will not sport with fate, nor tamper thus With man's credulity and nature's strength. No: I will gently coincide with nature, And give ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... sufficient demonstration. I believe that inability to imagine a thing is not a reason for its non-existence. If the infinite is a conclusion which is forced upon me, the fact that I cannot picture it does not disprove it. I believe, also, in thought and the soul, and it is nothing to me that I cannot explain them by attributes belonging to body. That being so, the difficulties which arise from the perpetual and unconscious confusion of the qualities of thought and soul ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... Arbroath and the Abbey of Lindores were also plundered. Clearly it was believed that Beaton was down, and that church-pillage was authorised by Arran. Yet on September 3 Arran joined hands with Beaton! The Cardinal, by threatening to disprove Arran's legitimacy and ruin his hopes of the crown, or in some other way, had dominated the waverer, while Henry (August 29) was mobilising an army of 20,000 men for the invasion of Scotland. On September 9 Mary was ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... material part of him, he instinctively felt existent in his own being. I repeat, poet as your WERE, and poet as you will be again when the clouds on your mind are cleared,— you present the strange, but not uncommon spectacle of an Immortal Spirit fighting to disprove its own Immortality. In a word, you will not believe ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... that the customary tenants of the manor of Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, had been reputed capable of voting, and even voted at elections for that county. In a word, they continued to examine evidences, argue and refute, prove and disprove, until the twenty-third day of April, when, after some warm debates and divisions in the house, lord Parker and sir Edward Turner were declared duly elected; and the clerk of the crown was ordered to amend ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 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 five months, has hung over the Fair ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Paulhan and others, are now experts, but there was a time, and it was not long ago, when they were unskilled. That they, with numerous others less widely known, should have come safely through their many experiments would seem to disprove the prevailing idea that aviation is ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... scientific discovery, so far from tending to verify and confirm, has served rather to disprove and invalidate the fundamental assumption ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... the Major, "I can disprove it by many happy instances, and yet, to say the truth, it is fearfully true in as many more. There is no social influence in the settled districts; there are too many men without masters. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... brutal remark there was a general expression of indignation among the hearers; but Pennroyal, in no way abashed, added, "Let him disprove it if he can. Since he provokes me to it, I affirm it—his father had no right to the title. Let him prove the contrary if he can. I didn't force on the discussion, but I will tell young Sir Edward Malmaison, as he calls himself, ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 Report was ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... the numerous charges brought against you, and which you do not attempt to disprove, you will, if you do not alter your conduct, be a disgrace to any community in which you may be found. You have been constantly guilty of drunkenness and tyranny, blasphemy and swearing, idleness, and utter negligence of all religious and moral principle. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Pennsylvania referred yesterday, whose arguments he said were worthy of consideration even in this Chamber. I think they are, and I think it would be very difficult for any one in this Chamber to disprove them. Nor is it a fair statement of the case to say that the man represents the woman in the exercise of suffrage, because it is an assumption on the part of the man; it is an involuntary representation so far as the woman is concerned. Representation implies a certain delegated power, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... DIRECT 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 roads in New England are ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... effluvia, and exhalations emitted from plants, earths, and ponds, are what give the initiative to such things. That when they have come forth, they are afterwards propagated either by eggs or offshoots, does not disprove their immediate generation; since every living creature, along with its minute viscera, receives organs of generation and means of propagation (see below, n. 347). In agreement with these phenomena is the fact heretofore unknown that there are like ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... quickly established the belief among my neighbours, that the woman who married the father had been prostituted to the son. Though I never admitted the truth of this aspersion, I believed it useless to deny, because no one would credit my denial, and because I had no power to disprove it. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... that someone spoke up to tell him that "they had already redressed their grievances." To contend that Bacon was not interested in laws which he himself had so passionately urged and which had obviously been passed to conciliate him and his followers is merely to attempt to disprove the obvious. ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... began to concentrate on his books—he felt sure that he had a mission. He became a waiter at a coffeehouse, then a clerk, next a salesman; but the reputation of being an infidel follow him, and he could not disprove the charge. In fact, I do not think he tried to, for on Sundays he was at Hyde Park lecturing on temperance and saying unsavory things about the clergy on account of their indifference concerning the real needs of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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, because turned Protestant; nor honour ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Clint, who is a worthless bully, but we must face the fact that young Excell bears a bad name. He has been in trouble a great many times, and the prosecution will make much of that. Our business is to show the extent of the provocation, and secondly, to disprove, so far as we can, the popular conception of the youth. I can get nothing out of him which will aid in his defense. He refuses to talk. Unless we can wring the truth out of Slocum on the stand it will go hard with the boy. I wish you'd see ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... every-where, that at least one of the children of Edward the Fourth was living. Such whispers prove two things; one, that the murder was very uncertain: the second, that it would have been very dangerous to disprove the murder; Henry being at least as much interested as Richard had been to have the children dead. Richard had set them aside as bastards, and thence had a title to the crown; but Henry was himself the issue of a bastard line, and had no title at all. Faction had ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... old Earl as to the charge of bigamy. The English Countess being firm, so far as that ground would make her firm, it would in reality be for the other side—for the young Earl—to prove a former marriage. The burden of the proof would be with him, and not with the English Countess to disprove it. Disingenuous lawyers—Mr. Flick, who though fairly honest could be disingenuous, among the number—had declared the contrary. But such was the case; and, as money was scarce with the Countess and her ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... that Life has no place at all upon this airless and waterless globe, since we know not under what strange conditions it may manifest its presence; and our most powerful telescopes, besides, do not bring the lunar surface sufficiently near to us to disprove the existence there of even such large creatures as disport themselves upon our planet. Still, we find it hard to rid ourselves of the feeling that we are in the presence of a dead world. On she swings around the ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... sermons; and yet it will be admitted that there are few remarkable events in man's history, which, if inquired into, will not be found to embrace the elements of very impressive pulpit discourses. Even in cases which seem to disprove a special, if not a general Providence, there will always be found in the account between earth and heaven some "desperate debt," mayhap an "accommodation bill," which justifies the ways of God to man. It may even be said that the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... which, if we could ascertain or touch it, would greatly enlighten us. It is, whether gravitation requires time. If it did, it would shew undeniably that a physical agency existed in the course of the line of force. It seems equally impossible to prove or disprove this point; since there is no capability of suspending, changing, or annihilating the power (gravity), or annihilating the matter in which the power resides.' The lines of magnetic force may have 'a separate existence,' but as yet ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... first-hand evidence; their only weapon was an appeal to common sense and sentiment combined; their only method was a flat denial of every statement which appeared to point to supernatural powers. They could not disprove the statements; they could not explain them without opposing the accepted religious beliefs of their time, and so weakening their cause by exposing themselves to the serious charge of atheism; therefore they denied ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... in your own business?-Yes. Then, in answer to question 44,386, Mr. Walker says the cost of rearing a lb. of Shetland wool was something like 8s. to 10s. He must have been taking leave of his senses when he stated that. In order to disprove his statement, I say that Mr. Leask's tenants in Yell pay 6d. a head for sheep for grazing over a whole twelve months, and a Shetland sheep carries from 2 to 3 lbs. of wool on an average, so that the cost of rearing it is something like 21/2d. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... right effort of the teacher is to give the positive—to present, as he may, the vision of reality, for the perception of which, and not for the discovery of falsehood, is man created. This will not only cast out the demon, but so people the house that he will not dare return. If a man might disprove all the untruths in creation, he would hardly be a hair's breadth nearer the end of his own making. It is better to hold honestly one fragment of truth in the midst of immeasurable error, than to sit alone, if that were possible, in the midst ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... by truth or precedent. Blake, who was the duke's secretary in '84, told me at the club one night, that on one occasion his grace had needed some statistics to clinch an argument. After investigation the statistics were found to disprove his point. Upon this being presented to him, he remarked ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... If it weren't true, I could go to the telephone and disprove your falsehood inside ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... simply a contemptuous facial contortion, or it may be some brief satirical utterance that throws a contemptuous side-light on what it attacks without attempting to prove or disprove; a depreciatory implication may be given in a sneer such as could only be answered by elaborate argument or proof, which would seem to give the attack ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... 482. Brown thinks that we can logically disprove the existence of motion by the hare and tortoise argument, and should ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... working out of Plymouth Sound at noon-day. One little incident, however, which caused much amusement in the ship, will help to show the degree of regard in which Sir Samuel was held by those immediately about him; and to disprove the proverb of no man being a ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... cannot properly be used. The word mine is here evidently employed as a substitute for the two words, my and book."—Wells, ibid. This note appears to me to be, in many respects, faulty. In the first place, its whole design was, to disprove what is true. For, bating the mere difference of person, the author's example above is equal to this: "Your pleasures are past, W. H. Wells's are to come." The ellipsis of "pleasures", is evident in both. But ellipsis is ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... however, has never completely vanished from the world. A miracle is an intervention by the deity whereby a natural law is set aside. No a priori reasoning can ever prove or disprove the possibility of miracles—such proof or disproof would involve complete knowledge of the universe or of the divine power in the universe, and this is impossible for man. The indisposition to accept a miracle has arisen ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... their alleged opinions may be, matters not a straw. They must and will vote as the priest tells them. So that the last franchise Act endows every priest with a thousand votes or so. Will anybody attempt to disprove this? Will any living Irishman venture to contradict this statement? The fact being admitted, Englishmen may be trusted to see its effect. Is there any class or trading interest which would be by working men entrusted with such enormous power? And these thousand-vote priests are unfriendly to ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... he threatens you with divorce on such a ground he himself is likely to be adjudged mentally unsound. It was a brutal, stupid threat, nothing more; and his insult to your father's memory was more brutal still. Don't be stampeded by such threats. Disprove them by your calm self-control under provocation; disprove them by your discretion and self-confidence. Give nobody a single possible reason for gossip. And above all, Alixe, don't become worried and morbid over anything you might dread as inheritance, for ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... to listen to sneering things Burleigh was telling the aide-de-camp about young linesmen in general and Dean in particular, stocking the staff officer with opinions which he hoped and intended should reach the department commander's ears. The engineer disbelieved, but was in no position to disprove. His station was at Omaha, far from the scene of cavalry exploits in fort or field. Burleigh's office and depot were in this new, crowded, bustling frontier town, filled with temptation to men so far removed from the influences of home and civilization, and ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... music, and held, with her mother, that it was "for a rebuke and an occasion of lightenesse that great Ladyes shuld be lernyd or have enye knowledge of musike." And in the next place even a superficial knowledge of Holbein would disprove any tradition of "flattery" from his unflinching, almost brutally truthful brush. It was hardly likely that the painter who would not stoop to flatter Bishop Stokesley, or Henry VIII. himself, would be swerved from his good faith ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... satisfaction, as well as that of her employer, and will not trust the key of this room to any one; she will also keep an account of every thing she takes from it, and manage with as much consideration and frugality as if it was her own property she was using, endeavouring to disprove the adage, that "PLENTY makes waste," and remembering that ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... Xenophon P. Wilfley, were pledged to the amendment, and Senator Selden P. Spencer, who later was elected, could positively be depended upon. All possible efforts were concentrated upon Senator James A. Reed but to no avail. To disprove his statements that his constituents were not in favor of woman suffrage, the Jackson county campaign committee, with Mrs. J. B. White of Kansas City chairman, sent him the signatures of 47,382 women and 12,583 men from his district, asking for it. When the amendment ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... that he may have found and followed down some branch of the Madison river and reached Virginia City, or down Snake river and reached some settlement in that valley; and but for our anxiety to reach home and prove or disprove our expectations, we might have devoted much more time to visiting the objects of interest we have seen, and which we have been obliged to ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... privacy, was to be told that he was charged with embezzlement; and then, having been frightened by the arrest, he would be compelled to undergo the cross-examination of Braceway and Bristow, who wanted to prove or disprove his connection with the ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... to find an answer to things that I saw and felt to be antiscriptural and destructive; but this "End" was the beginning of my controversy, for I was wholly new to it, and ignorant of the historical and other facts necessary to disprove the reverend author's bold assumptions. At last I burst into tears, and kneeling down, exclaimed, "O Lord, I cannot unravel this web of iniquity: enable me to cut it in twain." I was answered; for ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... days, he was allowed to go out and become familiar with his surroundings—not without fear and trepidation on the part of his doting mistress that he might make a bold strike for his former home. But Thomas Erastus felt he had a mission to perform for his race. He would disprove that mistaken theory that a cat, no matter how kindly he is treated, cares more for places than for people. Consequently he would not dream of going back to ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... has considerably 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 meaning ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... her old age, because evil tongues had denounced her as a witch. The Baron did not believe in the charge, but, nevertheless, he was obliged to send her away. He had his own reputation in the country to think of, and the charge of witchcraft was no light one in those days, and not so easy to disprove. He gave her a handsome pension, and a comfortable house and troubled himself no more ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... 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, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... discover things concerning those objects—to seize upon things, opportunities, persons, ideas, and facts tending to promote the objects thought of. The man who is looking for facts to prove certain theories, invariably finds them, and is also quite likely to overlook facts tending to disprove his theory. The Optimist and the Pessimist passing along the same streets, each sees thousands of examples tending to fit in with his idea. As Kay says: "When one is engaged in seeking for a thing, if he keep the image of it clearly before the mind, he will be very likely to find it, and that too, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... The tact of style is more ambiguous than that of double-edged instruments. If the Juggler were told that by flinging himself under the wheels of the Juggernaut, when the idol issues forth on a gaudy day, he would immediately be transported into Paradise, he might believe it, and nobody could disprove it. So the Brahmins may say what they please on that subject, may build up dogmas and mysteries without end, and not be detected; but their ingenious countryman cannot persuade the frequenters of the Olympic Theatre that he performs a number of astonishing feats without actually ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... 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 ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... long-lived. The admixture of races in the United States has never taken place under conditions likely to produce the best results but there have nevertheless been enough conspicuous instances to the contrary in this country, to say nothing of a long and honorable list in other lands, to disprove the theory that people of mixed blood, other things being equal, are less virile, prolific or able than those of purer strains. But whether this be true or not is apart from this argument. Admitting ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Lord's day. Is it credible that an impostor would direct his forgery to be publicly read? If the epistle was publicly read during Paul's lifetime, that public reading in the hearing of the men who could so easily disprove its genuineness, was conclusive proof to all who heard it, that they knew it to be the genuine writing of the Apostle. The primitive churches then had conclusive proof of the genuineness of the Apostolic Epistles ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... evidence against him was vague and intangible, it was very hard to disprove. But, in his anxiety, the criminal has drawn the net so closely that one cut will ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... He then passes by an insensible—because to him very natural—transition from the realities of feeling to those of thought, and to the underlying truth from which both series derive: and combats the idea that in thought, any more than in feeling, the present can disprove the past, the once true reveal itself as delusion. Time—otherwise growth—widens the range as it complicates the necessities of musical, i.e. emotional expression. It destroys the enfolding fictions which shield without concealing the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... 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; but the fog of London choked ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... 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. I ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... directly the complaints made against them, and of justifying their acts and laws. He therefore, in the Royal letter given above, dated April 6, 1666, required them within six months to send five of their number to England to answer and to disprove if they could complaints made against them, and to furnish proof of the professions and statements they had made in their address and petition. They could no longer evade or delay; they were brought face to ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... and is to be ascertained, if at all, by 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
... those who are deem'd to be Men of Honour, are far from being all really virtuous, yet I can't disprove, that the Principle of Honour, such as it is, does not fully as much Good to Society as Christianity, as it is practised; I say, to Society, and only in respect to Temporals; but it is altogether destructive as to another ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... Thad. "I'd hate to learn that Owen had any hand in taking those spoons. The sooner we find out the truth, the better for all concerned. It'll not only relieve our minds, as well as that of the old lady; but either prove or disprove the suspicions we're right now entertaining toward that ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... happily, no engagement, I cannot see how you can, with propriety, assume that it is one, by speaking of breaking it off. Besides, give him no ground for complaint, or he will take refuge in believing himself ill-used. Ask him if he can disprove it, and when he cannot, it will be time enough to act further. But wait—wait, sir,' as the pen was moving over the paper, impatient to dash forward. 'You have not told him yet of what ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the witnesses; he may address himself to the reason, to the prejudices, to the sympathies, nay, even to the worst passions of the twelve men whose opinions he seeks to influence in favour of his client. He may proceed to call witnesses to disprove the facts adduced on the other side, or to show that the character of the accused stands too high for even a suspicion of the alleged clime; he has the utmost liberty of speech and action He may indefinitely protract the proceedings, and there seems to be scarcely any limit, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... that testimony cannot establish a fact which contradicts a law of nature; the narrower induction cannot disprove the wider. The reasoning has been used in subsequent controversy(482) with only a slight increase of force, or alteration of statement. The great and undeniable discoveries of astronomy had convinced men in the age of Hume of the existence ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... discovered. Be this as it may, a post-mortem examination of the body would clear up all doubts, and should take place as speedily as possible. Captain Everett at once acceded to Dr. Archer's proposal, at the same time observing that he was quite sure the result would entirely disprove that gentleman's assumption. Mr. Hardyman also fully concurred in the necessity of a rigid investigation; and the post-mortem examination should, it was arranged, take place ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
