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More "Self-evident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be so self-evident as to be axiomatic that there are two distinct realms in God's universe. One is the realm that contains the Creator, and the other that which contains His creation. Of course, if we are pantheists, we will not admit that classification; but those who believe and accept the ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... For self-evident reasons the title should be short. Aptness and specificness do not require an epitome of the story; and a title like "Why Tom Changed His Opinion of Me," or "What the Rabbit Drive Did for Me" is prosy as well as long. It used to be the custom to make the title of a writing ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... projected into the air. Now, considering the deleterious nature of all illuminating gases, the reasons for perfect ventilation of rooms in which natural gas is used for heating and culinary purposes are self-evident, not alone as a protection against explosions, but for the health of the occupants of the house, remembering that a larger supply of oxygen is said to be necessary for the perfect combustion of natural than of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... showed the utter fallacy of constituting men the governing and women the governed class and closed as follows: "Attempt to prove that woman's claim to the right of suffrage is as valid as any that man can make would be like trying to demonstrate the truth of a self-evident proposition.... We ask the ballot for woman not merely because she has a right to it but quite as much because it is her duty to exercise that right. The irresistible power of that all-embracing organization, the State, holds you and me and all that are dear to us as ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... but they affirm to be the simplest statement of fact. Then is their whole theory of social relations—both in and out of the body—most philosophical, and, though at variance with the popular theology, self-evident. It is only when they come to their descriptive theism, if I may say so, and then to their drollest heaven, and to some autocratic not moral decrees of God, that the mythus loses me. In general, too, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... have exalted themselves with the help of misguided people; and, usurping authority, have lorded it over God's heritage. How wide the difference between the simplicity of the primitive gospel and the pompous ecclesiastical organizations and titles of modern times! It is self-evident that Christian union cannot be restored until this ecclesiastical machinery be put aside and the administration of Christ's kingdom be again entrusted to the local churches and their officers ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... came the threats of the 31st of December last, and, with profound respect, she threatened the Pope to sacrifice the Romagna; and her prayers or her threats, as you like, where are they now?" Again, of his own accord, M asserts, as a self-evident fact, that "morality and justice have no better sanctuary and no purer inspirations than are to be found in the Court of the Vatican." What slight difficulties he still entertains are removed at once. He asks ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... an admirable speech. The sentiments were hackneyed, the observations self-evident, and the moral obvious. His phrases had the well-known ring which distinguishes the true orator. Mr. Jackson was recognised everywhere to be a fine platform speaker, but his varied excellence could not be appreciated in a summary, and he had a fine verbosity. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... about for a way to explain what seemed to her a self-evident truth. "I mean—privacy," she said. "For instance, if you were in love, you'd not want ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... amid which the Elegy was composed were well adapted to soothe and cherish that contemplative sadness which, when the wounds of grief are healing, it is a luxury to indulge, and that the poet did indulge them is self-evident in many ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... of the Lutherans towards their symbols, and such their evaluation of pure doctrine, it was self-evident that the public teachers of their churches should be pledged to the confessions. In December 1529, H. Winckel, of Goettingen, drew up a form in which the candidate for ordination declares: "I believe and hold also of the most sacred Sacrament ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... chemical combination of two or more substances with the self-evident disengagement of great heat, ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... State Church. This was not adopted. It distinguished the inequality of men from the equality of rights. This was deemed self-evident and superfluous. It derived the mutual rights of men from their mutual duties—and this terrestrial definition also disappeared, leaving the way open to a higher cause. The adopted code was meagre and ill-composed, and Bentham found a malignant pleasure in tearing it to pieces. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Survival of Beneficial Processes Only.—It is self-evident that wherever there is a saving of labor needed to make a given amount and kind of product, there is an increase in the possible product that is created by the aid of a given amount of labor. If workers themselves get a share of the gains, this fact ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... hydrostatic pressure, which form the basis of all static and hydrostatic science to this day. And yet on that very question of the lever the great mind of Aristotle babbles—neither sees the thing itself, nor the way towards seeing it. But since Archimedes spoke, the thing seems self-evident to every schoolboy. There is something to me very solemn in such a fact as this. It brings us down to some of the very deepest questions of metaphysic. This mental insight of which we boast so much, what ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... self-evident that in this process we have the most powerful lever ever discovered for uplifting the fallen, and doing more in an hour than can be done by the usual methods in many months. Why, then, have we not had ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... century, the justice of each of these principles is self-evident. But in the seventeenth century there was no country in the world where it was safe to declare them. For doing so in some parts of Europe, a man would most certainly have been burned at the stake. For doing so in England, he would have been put in the pillory, or had his ears ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... was a self-evident fact. Years of crafty plotting had seamed Burroughs' face with lines that come from secret connivings—an offer here, a lure there; a sword of Damocles held low; an iron hand and a velvet glove—all these things made for age in heavy retribution. He complained of ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... Algiers writes that such abuses have been discovered in the commissariate transactions of the province of Oran, that the Law is making inquiries. The peculation is self-evident, and the guilty persons are known. If severe measures are not taken, we shall continue to lose more men through the extortion that limits their rations than by Arab steel or the fierce heat of the climate. We await further information before enlarging on this deplorable ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."— (Declaration of Independence, from ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... The critics were always hard at work, proving that he was no poet, and demonstrating in the most logical manner that he was quite incapable of reasoning on the commonest topic. In addition to all this, his ignorance was self-evident; and though he was very fond of quoting Greek, they doubted whether he was capable of reading the original authors. The general impression of the English public, after the lapse of some years, was, that Herbert was an abandoned being, of profligate habits, opposed to all the institutions ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... us in dealing with those whom we call unbelievers, with heathen, and with all who do not accept our religious views. The Jews are with us as a perpetual lesson to teach us modesty and civility. The religion we profess is not self-evident. It did not convince the people to whom it was sent. We have no claim to take it for granted that we are all right, and they are all wrong. And, therefore, in the midst of all the triumphs of Christianity, it is ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... constitution and laws differing from it could have any authority, then that universal law could not be supreme. That supreme law is necessarily based on the equality of nations, of races, and of men. It is a simple, self-evident basis. One nation, race, or individual, may not oppress or injure another, because the safety and welfare of each is essential to the common safety and welfare of all. If all are not equal and free, then who is entitled to be free, and what evidence of his superiority ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... to hear the Scottish preacher. The very best judges were not prepared for the display that they heard. Canning and Wilberforce went together, and got into a pew near the door. The elder in attendance stood alone by the pew. Chalmers began in his usual unpromising way, by stating a few nearly self-evident propositions, neither in the choicest language, nor in the most impressive voice. "If this be all," said Canning to his companion, "it will never do." Chalmers went on—the shuffling of the conversation ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... that His death was the crowning revelation of the love of God for man. And it is well to remind ourselves of our need of such a revelation. We speak sometimes as though the love of God was a self-evident truth altogether independent of the facts of New Testament history. "God is love"—of course, we say; this at least we are sure of, whatever becomes of the history. But this jaunty assurance will not bear looking into. The truth is that, apart from Christ, we have no certainty of ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... humane to prolong the war and crush the Boer resistance at the cost of much slaughter, merely in order to avenge defeats and vindicate a military superiority which the immensely greater forces of Britain made self-evident? A great country is strong enough to be magnanimous, and shows her greatness better by justice and lenity than by a sanguinary revenge. These moral arguments, which affect different minds differently, were ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Revolution developed two striking pictures of the inconsistency of human nature. The author of the Declaration of Independence lays down at the very first this axiom: "We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And yet this man, with members of others who signed the famous document, was a slave-holder, and contributed to the maintenance of a system which was a reproach and a stain upon the ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... state of the country, a slight pause in the harvest before the Far Dips were cut, the stories about the new King and the numerous handbills on the walls, had seemed to warrant a little recklessness. It was a maxim about Middlemarch, and regarded as self-evident, that good meat should have good drink, which last Dagley interpreted as plenty of table ale well followed up by rum-and-water. These liquors have so far truth in them that they were not false enough ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... It is self-evident that peculiar feelings and convictions will prevent our regarding things as ludicrous, at which we should otherwise be highly amused. Religious veneration, or the want of it, often causes that to appear sacred to one person which seems absurd to another. Many Jewish stories ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... sufficient for the minimum demand, but at the same time that they reduced their own labour and consequently the supply of fish, they also took advantage of the new law of free trade, and advanced their prices in extortionate proportion. Instead of the self-evident prosperity that would benefit all classes, the sudden liberty to which the Cypriote was unaccustomed acted diametrically against all English expectations, and for the time ruined the market. This was told me by Colonel ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... of a virtue, and to pass from conscientiousness to bigotry is not a long nor difficult journey. All views are not equally true. This every sane mind holds as self-evident. There is a liberalism at this point which would run, if let go its logical course, to the sophist fallacy that truth did not exist, and therefore one view was as just as another—an attitude repugnant to all fine ethical natures. Now, conceiving we have the truth, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... distich is so self-evident that we might almost characterize it as trite. Yet the history of every science marks many eminent men, of superior intelligence, who have been arrested in the way of progress by a wholly contrary opinion, and have very innocently supposed that science had uttered to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... late article, distinctly repudiates Lady Byron's statements as sources of evidence, and throughout quotes statements of Lord Byron as if they had the force of self-evident propositions. We consider such a course contrary to common sense as well ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... atrocious murder, is of little comparative consequence, or whether it should attach it to both sides equally; but that the deliberate starving to death of twenty thousand helpless persons should be regarded as a crime in one or both of the parties concerned in it, seems to me self-evident. The simplest course would seem to be, that all non-combatants should be allowed to go out of a blockaded town, and that the general who should refuse to let them pass, should be regarded in the same light as one who were to murder his prisoners, or who were to be in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... with an air of painful reproach that nothing was counted a trouble in that establishment. He bowed his visitors out and informed them that it was a lovely afternoon, a self-evident axiom that the most ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... vainly endeavoured to answer the apparently unanswerable questions that had been asked by Zeno the Eleatic. At last Georg Cantor has found the answer, and has conquered for the intellect a new and vast province which had been given over to Chaos and old Night. It was assumed as self-evident, until Cantor and Dedekind established the opposite, that if, from any collection of things, some were taken away, the number of things left must always be less than the original number of things. This assumption, as a matter of fact, holds only of finite ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... which belong properly to my office I feel that my powers are very limited and not at all adequate to its demands. But I hope in the Lord that He will inspire in the heart of your Majesty a desire to introduce some effective remedy sufficient for these evils, since their character is self-evident. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... in a parabolic curve. I now ask: Do the "positions" traversed by the stone lie "in reality" on a straight line or on a parabola? Moreover, what is meant here by motion "in space" ? From the considerations of the previous section the answer is self-evident. In the first place we entirely shun the vague word "space," of which, we must honestly acknowledge, we cannot form the slightest conception, and we replace it by "motion relative to a practically rigid body of reference." The positions relative to the body of reference (railway carriage or embankment) ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... kinds of evidence and different degrees of consequent assent. He points out that neither Natural Religion nor Christianity can be proved true by demonstration like a conclusion in geometry, or in any kind of mathematical reasoning; that in default of this inference from self-evident premises to propositions of equal cogency, we must, in a matter of paramount practical importance, be content to judge, as fairly and soberly as we can, by that "probability" which Butler calls "the guide of life." Wilkins perceived, what few in his time perceived, ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... make it so to you, Lady Mabel," said Major Warren, who, impatient of his superior's monopoly, here tried to edge in a word. But the colonel cut him short with "That's a mere truism, Warren, a self-evident proposition. Let us have nothing more of that sort. One of the peculiarities of this climate, Lady Mabel, is that it has a double spring: one in February and another in April. Then we will see you take your appropriate place in the picture, representing the heyday of youth ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... criterion, whether in some quality of inherent rationality or in some utilitarian test of practicability, the truth itself has some attributes so far unquestioned and of which we may feel certain as being inherent, necessary, and self-evident. ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... the indulgence of frank speech Sell your manuscripts, but don't sell your soul Success is often a misfortune Summer days that come but to go There isn't much to feel here except what you see Things that are self-evident nobody seems to see Vanity at the bottom of even a reasonable ambition We confound events with ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... you accept it as self-evident? Is it as obvious, for instance, as that 'things that are greater than the same are greater than ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... inseparable." The Silver Republicans declared that they "recognized that the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence are fundamental and everlastingly true in their application to government among men." The Anti-Imperialists declared that the truths of the Declaration, not less self-evident to-day than when first announced by the Fathers, are of universal application, and cannot be abandoned while government by the people endures." In 1904, the Democratic party, while professing adherence to fundamental principles ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... being concerned with man's welfare on earth can ever make headway unless it recognises this. Physical well-being is a moral consideration that should and must have our attention before aught else, and that this is so needs no demonstrating; it is self-evident. ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... between human science and Revelation. To the multitude who draw this inference, it matters not whether the protesting parties avow their belief in this contrariety or not; it is borne in upon the many, as if it were self-evident, that religious men would not thus be jealous and alarmed about Science, did they not feel instinctively, though they may not recognize it, that knowledge is their born enemy, and that its progress, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... worshipped and believed in exist or have ever existed; we hold them to be productions of the human imagination to which nothing real corresponds. This view has nowadays become so ingrained in us and appears so self-evident, that we find it difficult to imagine that it has not been prevalent through long ages; nay, it is perhaps a widely diffused assumption that even in antiquity educated and unbiased persons held the same view of the religion ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... been on hand within the past twenty-four hours, and at least sixteen or seventeen were then in his presence. It is needless to say, that such a sight admitted of no contradiction—no argument—no doubt. The facts were too self-evident. The Colonel could say but little, so complete was his amazement; but he voluntarily attested the thoroughness of his conversion by pulling out of his pocket and handing to Mr. McK. a twenty dollar gold piece to aid the passengers ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... virtue, contribute to our happiness, but that the enjoyment of pleasure, let us say, voluptuousness, to include everything in a word, is the veritable aim and end whither tend all human acts. This is very clear to me, in fact, self-evident, and I am fully persuaded ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... surprised that you, who ought to see these things, have believed that I have taken any step which is out of harmony with our friendly relations, for beside these facts which I have mentioned, which are undisputed and self-evident facts, there are many more intimate ties of friendship which I can scarcely put in words. Everything about you charms me, but most of all, on the one hand, your perfect loyalty in matters of friendship, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... condescend to notice his maligners, and then only to expose their ignorance, at the same time pledging himself never again to refer to their attacks. A thinking man, he could not but be fully aware that their style, and self-evident malice, could only add ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and wield it for its own purposes.' (See 'The Civil War in France; Address of the General Council of the International Workingmen's Association,' London, Truelove, 1871, p. 15, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of Socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down only to 1847; also, that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... phenomenon perceived, the living subject with which this phenomenon is animated, and the vague yet real power involved in the life thus infused into it by the animal. Supposing any other animal to be the object perceived, these three elements are self-evident; since the phenomenon perceived in a given form causes the immediate assumption that it is a subject, actuated by a purpose of offence or defence, and hence follows the apprehension of a power capable of affecting him, which has in this case a real existence. Phenomenon, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... debating this question," continued Mr. Shellabarger, "I debate axioms, my apology is that there are not other questions to debate in Reconstruction. If," said he with well-timed sarcasm, "in the discussion, I make self-evident things obscure or incomprehensible, my defense shall be that I am conforming to the usages of Congress. I will not inquire whether any subject of this Government, by reason of the revolt, passed from under its sovereignty ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... so untrammelled by prejudice it was self-evident that helpless philanthropists like Orlando G. Spence were just as much the natural diet of the strong as the lamb is of the wolf. It was pleasanter to eat than to be eaten, in a world where, as yet, there seemed to be no third alternative; ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... pine-apples and oranges, and not one-hundredth part of the mangoes produced in North Queensland are consumed. That the quantity grown is trivial in comparison with what would be, were the demand regular and consistent, is self-evident. We want population to eat our produce, and then ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... prince of philosophers, but I do not always share his opinion. Aristotle and the other philosophers have planted the tree of science, but the latter has not by any means put forth all its branches or matured all its fruit." This thought, though it seems to us self-evident, was of great moment in the age of scholasticism. Bacon spent ten years in prison; but in spite of everything, he was so much under the influence of scholasticism that he considered it the task of philosophy to adduce evidence for the truth of the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... not by any means self-evident upon the face of it that an institution like the liberty of speech is right or just. It is not natural or obvious to let a man utter follies and abominations which you believe to be bad for mankind any more than it is natural or obvious to let a man dig up a part of the public road, or infect half ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... its supreme importance, it is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the self-evident fact that this foundation—Emission, or Placing of the voice—should be well laid under the guidance of a skilled and experienced singing-teacher. Nothing but disappointment can ensue if a task of such consequence be confided, as is too frequently the case, to one of the numerous charlatans ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... see Bond Street in every curve? I should have thought it was self-evident. Margot said I was shabby, and that a new hat would do me good, so we went out and bought it. Do you think I am extravagant? It's better to spend on this than on medicine, and three guineas isn't expensive for ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the founders of the American Republic undertook to supply a new and a secular foundation for this doctrine. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created free and equal." In other words, he put forth the astonishing proposition that human equality is self-evident. Many of us would incline to the opinion that the opposite is self-evident, that ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... is manifest that there can be nothing like a wide comprehension of sociology, unless through a competent acquaintance with man in all his faculties, bodily, and mental. Consider the matter in the abstract, and this conclusion is self-evident. Thus:—Society is made up of individuals; all that is done in society is done by the combined actions of individuals; and therefore, in individual actions only can be found the solutions of social phenomena. But the actions of individuals depend ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... The answer was self-evident. There was none. But there was no sting for him in what she asked. Rather her words came as a relief, for he could feel the strength behind them. He still ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... prove that no secrets incompatible with the common faith, or very important in themselves, could either have been propounded by the priests or received by the audience. And it may be further observed, in corroboration of so self-evident a truth, that it was held an impiety to the popular faith to reject the initiation of the mysteries—and that some of the very writers, most superstitious with respect to the one, attach the most solemnity to the ceremonies of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... solid to go upon in crying down the credit of the 54th beyond hearsay and the self-evident fact that they are half their nominal strength. To assume they won't put up a fight is a certain way of making the best troops gun-shy. We are standing up to our necks in a time problem, and the tide is on the rise. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... political state, for every practical purpose of a tea-party, he that abaseth himself must be exalted. At a tea-party it is equally obvious that he that exalteth himself must be abased, if possible without bodily violence. Now people talk of democracy as being coarse and turbulent: it is a self-evident error in mere history. Aristocracy is the thing that is always coarse and turbulent: for it means appealing to the self-confident people. Democracy means appealing to the different people. Democracy means getting those people to vote who would never have the cheek ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... of logical definition, it is well-nigh self-evident that the theory of natural selection is a theory of the origin, and cumulative development, of adaptations, whether these be distinctive of species, or of genera, orders, families, classes, and sub-kingdoms. It is only when the adaptations happen to be distinctive of the first (or lowest) of ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... bright and lustrous for ever. For Lucian, it was no defect in the woman that she was desirous and faithless; he had not conceived an affection for certain moral or intellectual accidents, but for the very woman. Guided by the self-evident axiom that humanity is to be judged by literature, and not literature by humanity, he detected the analogy between Lycidas and Annie. Only the dullard would object to the nauseous cant of the one, or to the indiscretions of the other. A sober critic might say that ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... trained at a known range. Indeed, he might even hazard a guess that the Andromeda's warm reception was arranged long before her masts and funnel rose over the horizon. That the islanders intended nothing less than her complete destruction was self-evident. Without the slightest warning they had tried to sink her; and now that she was escaping the further attentions of the field pieces, a number of troops stationed on South Point and the Isle des Fregates began ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... for a brief space, after my somewhat elaborate exposition of these self-evident analogies. Presently A PERSON turned towards me—I do not choose to designate the individual—and said that he rather expected my pieces had given pretty good "sahtisfahction."—I had, up to this moment, considered this complimentary phrase as sacred to the use of secretaries ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... all self-evident propositions, they produced a pause in the discourse; for men do not deal with new ideas as freely as ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... that the river had not flowed there a few years previously; in some parts, beds of sand and gravel were spread out; in others, the solid rock had been worn into a broad channel, which in one spot was about 40 yards in breadth and 8 feet deep. It is self-evident that a person following up the course of a stream will always ascend at a greater or less inclination: Mr. Gill, therefore, was much astonished, when walking up the bed of this ancient river, to find himself suddenly going down ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... ii., p. 405. and vol. iii., p. 52.) approve of, and confirm Mr. Knight's suggestion of a ring dial, as though it were so self-evident as to admit of no denial. Nevertheless, neither he nor they have shown any good reason for its adoption: even its superior antiquity over the portable time-piece is mere surmise on their parts, unaccompanied as yet by any direct proof. In point ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... requirements of military service, so that they often made better soldiers than the country recruits with their slower comprehension. Most of them were entirely unaware that they were socialistic agitators; they quite unconsciously imparted to their fellow-soldiers ideas that to them appeared self-evident, but that for the others meant an upheaval of their whole way ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... addition, deduction, mutation, and transposition of letters, or even syllables. Thus Mr. Webbe thinks that the derivation of the Greek [Greek: gyn] a woman, from the Chinese na-gin, is self-evident. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Reserve: When Limited.—Is the right which is reserved by a State to "amend" or "alter" a charter without restriction? When it is accompanied, as it generally is, by the right to "repeal," one would suppose that the answer to this question was self-evident. None the less, there are a number of judicial dicta to the effect that this power is not without limit, that it must be exercised reasonably and in good faith, and that the alterations made must be consistent with the scope and object of the grant, etc.[1651] ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... of equality, as well as their practise of it was their legacy to our people, and it remains now all that differences us from other nations. It was not Thomas Jefferson who first imagined the first of the self-evident truths of ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... grand words of the Jesuit, might be taken as a motto by the great in all countries. These social differences are patent in all ages; the fact is always accepted by the people; its "reasons of state" are self-evident; it is at once cause and effect, a principle and a law. The common sense of the masses never deserts them until demagogues stir them up to gain ends of their own; that common sense is based on the verities of social order; and the social order is the same ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... to surrender to such self-evident demonstrations, and continued to request, each time more violently and in a higher key, that her younger sister might have a little shame, and her senor father a little feeling. But as nobody appeared with these requisites in their hands, to comply with these requests, there was nothing ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... Having announced this self-evident fact, Catherine walked off and left him to quiet Esther's alarms as he could. As she went she heard him turn to Esther and repeat his prayer that she should be gentle with him and give his sermon a ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... or benefit of its toleration in new States and Territories. It was bad enough to tolerate this evil in the old slave States, but it would be infamous to hand down to posterity a Constitution denying the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. Toleration is not synonymous with approval, or existence with right. There is a most subtle error in the assumption of the indifference of the Constitution to freedom and slavery—that it advocated neither, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... reasonable man," Irene had always held a self-evident proposition. She had never, until a few days ago, conceived the possibility of a conflict between his ideas of right and her own. Domestic discord was to her mind a vulgar, no less than an unhappy, state of things. Yet, in the step she was now about to take, could she feel any assurance that Dr. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... by the blood-supply—has long been seen to be inadequate, since the restorative effect succeeds a short period of rest even in excised bloodless muscle. But that the phenomena of fatigue and recovery were not primarily dependent on dissimilation or assimilation becomes self-evident when we find exactly similar effects produced not only in plants, but also in metals (fig. 113). It has been shown, on the other hand, that these effects are primarily due to cumulative residual strains, and that a brief period of rest, by removing the overstrain, ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... consequently the particle at n is overborne by the pressure at m. Considering both in the same direction, yet the particle at n must give way, and move in the opposite direction. Just as the heaviest scale of the balance bears up the lightest, although both gravitate towards the same point. This is so self-evident that it would seem unnecessary to dwell upon it, had not the scientific world decided that the rotation of the earth can cause no currents either in the ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... questioning fit is coming on!" For Bjerregrav was an inquirer; he would ask questions about the wind and the weather, and even the food that he ate. He would ask questions about the most laughable subjects— things that were self-evident to any one else—why a stone was hard, or why water extinguished fire. People did not answer him, but shrugged their shoulders compassionately. "He is quite all there," they would say; "his head's all right. But he takes everything the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... know the effects of certain invariable remedies prepared without fraud. Of course it is self-evident that when old Pare eulogized 'sack medicine' and ordered his patients to carry pulverized medicaments in a little sack whose form varied according to the organ to be healed, assuming the form of a cap for the head, of a bagpipe for the stomach, of an ox tongue for the spleen, he probably ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... of contemporary socialism think it worth while to expose with so much minuteness a fallacy which intellectual socialists now all agree in repudiating, and to insist with such emphasis on facts which they profess to recognise as self-evident? To this question there ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... guardians against allowing such associations, for all that her standing in society is undeniable, and not a door is shut against her. We may have no absolutely tangible reason to give for our distaste beyond the self-evident facts that she paints her face and dyes her hair, dresses in a very decollete style, and affects a girlish manner that is out of harmony with her age and condition. But though we cannot formularize reasons, we have instincts; and sometimes instinct ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... humanity of the Child Jesus which we have been dwelling upon; there was also the preparation for the proper guardianship of both Mother and Child during the years of Jesus' immaturity. There are certain things which are self-evident when once we turn our minds to them; and it is thus self-evident that the care of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother would require the preparation of the man to whom they should be committed. In the state of society into which our Lord was born, He and His Mother would need active guardianship ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... receive her next directions. There were no further directions to give. The hideous dramatic representation of the woman's crime for which Geoffrey had asked was in no respect necessary: the means were all prepared, and the manner of using them was self-evident. Nothing but the opportunity, and the resolution to profit by it, were wanting to lead the way to the end. Geoffrey signed to Hester to ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... spiritual sense, to assail iniquity in high places and in low places, to apply our principles to all existing evil, political, legal, and ecclesiastical institutions, and to hasten the time when the kingdoms of this world will have become the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. It appears to us a self-evident truth that whatever the Gospel is designed to destroy at any period of the world, being contrary to it, ought now to be abandoned. If, then, the time is predicted when swords shall be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, and men shall not learn the art of war any more, it ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... be made with the beginning of the next preceding one, in that same proportion and measure the plants and animals had also changed, so that scarcely any more resemblance existed between these and those from which they originated. It is self-evident that amid such changes only those specimens continued to exist, which had adapted themselves in their progressive development in their organs and capacities in the best way to the new conditions of their existence. All those ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... twenty-one; but it had had some influence on my opinions, in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me, in confirming my mistrust of the reality of material phenomena, and in making me rest in the thought of two, and two only, absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator. At the age of fifteen also I was deeply impressed by the works of Thomas Scott, by Law's "Serious Call," by Joseph Milner's "Church History," and by Newton, "On the Prophecies." Newton's book stained ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... heard it. Was this to be believed? Did not this very denial prove that it was he and no other who had thus shocked the proprieties of this orderly household? It certainly seemed so; yet where all was strange, this strange and incomprehensible denial of a self-evident fact by the vindictive Nixon might have its source in some motive unsuggested by the circumstances. Certainly, Nixon's mistress appeared to have a great deal of ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... as though it were a self-evident truism, that we cannot know that anything exists which we do not know. It is inferred that whatever can in any way be relevant to our experience must be at least capable of being known by us; whence it follows ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... was regarded by logicians as the only perfect type of syllogism, because the validity of moods in this figure may be tested directly by their complying, or failing to comply, with a certain axiom, the truth of which is self-evident. This axiom is known as the Dictum de Omni et Nullo. It may ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... men, morally speaking, are equal in the eyes of their Maker, appears to me a self-evident fact, though some may be called by His providence to rule, and others to serve. That the welfare of the most humble should be as dear to the country to which he belongs as the best educated and the most wealthy, seems but reasonable to a reflective mind, who looks upon ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... must be self-evident to everyone present that it is the most important question that can possibly occupy the mind of man—how much like God we can be—how near to God we can come on earth preparatory to our being perfectly like Him, and living, as ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... minds can reach. Most of us accept this persuasion as almost of the nature of an axiom, and hence the mere suggestion that our own volitions are really uncaused appears to us of the nature of a self-evident absurdity. A little thought, however, is enough to show that the only ground of reason which this strong prepossession can rest upon, is the assumption that the principle of causality is logically prior to that of mind. ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... that the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence contains five affirmations, declared to be self-evident truths, which, if truths, do sustain you and all abolitionists in every thing you say as to the right of the negro to liberty; and not only to liberty,—to equality, political and social. But I disagree with you as to their truth, and I ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... another conservative estimate, and thought I could pull you through by a slight majority. Now, it's different. While you may lose some votes from the 'near-silk stocking' class, yet for every vote so lost hundreds will rally to you. That all men are created equal is still a truth held to be self-evident. The spark of the spirit that prompted the Declaration of Independence is always ready to be fanned to a flame, and the Democrats have furnished us the fans in ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... should appeal to the sons to fulfill what the fathers promised but failed to perform—should appeal to them as the constituted executors of the father's will, to give full practical effect to the self-evident truths, that "taxation without representation is tyranny"—that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed"? With an evident common interest in all the affairs of which government properly or improperly takes cognizance, we claim ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of the book will become self-evident as the reader labors through the medical part of the work. Our text-books are, as a class, even those on diseases of children as a specialty, singularly and unpardonably silent and deficient on the subject of either the prepuce and the diseases to which it ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... are we not bound to work by the laws of cause, if we wish an effect? If the heavens do move by cause when was its beings divorced from that great common law? Are we not bound to trust and work by the old and reliable self-evident laws, until something later has proven its superior ability to ward off ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... theory would be false, because it did not take into consideration the condition of the road and the fact that a horse cannot keep up the same speed for a long distance. Whatever impressions or conceptions of the mind may be self-evident or axiomatic truths, it is certain that our highest conception of truth must be taken as our only and necessary guide; but, knowing the variable part of our judgment, and knowing how very likely we are to be mistaken in our "think so's" and "feel so's," we ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... of a poetical sentiment expressed in "Pictor Ignotus"—and, by the insertion of a word or sentence in the notice of each, expanded or emphasized the meaning of several of the minor poems. I should have stated in my first Preface, had not the fact appeared to me self-evident, that I owe to Mr. Browning's kindness all the additional matter which my own reading could not supply: such as the index to the Greek names in "Aristophanes' Apology," and the Persian in "Ferishtah's Fancies;" the notes to "Transcendentalism," and "Pietro ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... community has borrowed one story does not prove borrowing in the case of any other story; and that a people has been a center of distribution of certain myths does not prove that it was the originator of all myths. These two propositions appear to be self-evident, but they have often been ignored in discussions of ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... a man like him, who lives at court, does not like to have a mad niece in his house. The thing is self-evident; if I'd continued to play my part of the man of the robe, I should have done the same in a similar case. But here, as you perceive, we don't care much for appearances; and I've taken her for a servant. She has shown more good sense than I expected, although she has rarely ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... to enlarge on so self-evident a consequence; yet, even in this case, we shall find something of that mixture of good, along with the bad, which is to be found in all ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... writer as Macchiavelli was so decidedly imbued with the earlier or mediaeval conception of the position of a prince that he treats it as a matter which is self-evident: he never discusses it, but tacitly takes it as the presupposition and basis of his advice. It may be said generally that his book is merely the theoretical statement and consistent and systematic exposition of the practice prevailing in his time. It is the novel statement of it in a complete ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... be split, and thus the greater evil befall him. But those that personify the evil may goad him once too often. Dumba the lesser criminal—as also the less dexterous—has betrayed himself and is expelled. When will Bernstorff's turn come? That it will come, indeed must come, is self-evident. The artist sees things too clearly as they are not to see also what they will be. He therefore skips the ignoble interlude of prevarication, quibble, and intrigue, and gives us Uncle Sam happy at last in his recovered simplicity. So we see him here, enjoying himself, as only a white ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... up, you know, because we're not properly dressed." The fact is self-evident. "Pa's always very tired in the morning," the voice continues; "of course, that's because he works hard all day. Are you ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... to be We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with endowed by their creator with inherent and inalienable certain inalienable rights; rights; that among these are that among these are ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... narrow cage on my melancholy journey home, and was touched to find that it quickly repaid my care and became very much attached to me. Minna greeted me with great joy when she saw this beautiful grey parrot, for she regarded it as a self-evident proof that I should do something in life. We already had a pretty little dog, born on the day of the first Rienzi rehearsal in Dresden, which, owing to its passionate devotion to myself, was much petted by all who knew me and visited my house during those years. This sociable bird, which ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... a being merits rather our derision than our pity; and it is only when it assumes to act its folly that it becomes capable of provoking republican indignation. In every other case it is too contemptible to excite anger. For my own part, when I contemplate the self-evident absurdity of the thing, I can scarcely permit myself to believe that there exists in the high-minded nation of France such a mean and silly ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... I shall ask for at first, and I shall test her, test her, my dear. I'll look at her through a magnifying glass. Of course, if they'd give me Jewel, it would be all I'd ask for; but they won't. That is self-evident." ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... citizens are those who are naturalized. That the rules should be uniform by which aliens become citizens, is self-evident. After a brief discussion, the Constitutional Convention provided in Section 8, Clause 4, that Congress shall have the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... work, taking care to expend a proper part of his spleen on Mr. Toast, who, quite as a matter of course, suffered in proportion as his superior was made to feel, in his own person, the weight of Captain Truck's authority. It is perhaps fortunate that nature points out this easy and self-evident mode of relief, else would the rude habits of a ship sometimes render the relations between him who orders and him whose duty it is to obey, too nearly approaching ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... manuscript typewritten. This suggestion has the force of law. While it would seem self-evident that a manuscript written out in long hand has a mussy appearance, however neat the writing may be, the many hand-written manuscripts I have tried to read suggest the necessity for pointing out this fact. You surely handicap your manuscript by offering ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... which, had it been less ingenious, I could hardly believe to have proceeded from so great a man. Indeed, I am lost in wonder, that a philosopher, who had stoutly asserted, that he would draw no conclusions which do not follow from self-evident premisses, and would affirm nothing which he did not clearly and distinctly perceive, and who had so often taken to task the scholastics for wishing to explain obscurities through occult qualities, could maintain a hypothesis, ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... disappeared into any one of the houses which had their entrances within the dark tunnel he had just traversed. Apart from the presumptive impossibility of her being lodged in such a quarter, there was the self-evident fact that he must have heard the door opened and closed. Secondly, she could not have turned to the right, for in that direction the street was straight and without any lateral exit, so that he must have seen her. Therefore she must ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... pages which is used in the largest universities as a groundwork of political economy. This remarkable sentence strikes the eye: "The motives to business activity are too familiar to require analysis." But some sense that perhaps the "economic man" is not a self-evident creature seems to have touched our author. So we are treated to these sapient remarks: "To avoid this criticism we will begin with a characterization of the typical business man to be found to-day ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... as such, so self-evident to one who possesses it, seems to be wanting, except in rudimentary fashion, in a great many people. They are probably few, however, who do not feel some stirrings when they look through the stained glass of a cathedral window or upon the red of Venetian glass, or who are entirely indifferent to ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... of pursuing it further. "Oh, it's self-evident," he said. "They are loyal to the Rajah, and the Rajah is well-known to be loyal to the Crown. It's only these duffers of administrators that make the mischief." He broke into an abrupt laugh, and changed the subject. "Let ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... general assumption that light as such is visible. In order to realize that light is itself an invisible agent, we need only consider a few self-evident facts - for instance, that for visibility to arise light must always encounter some material resistance in space. This is, in fact, an encounter between light, typifying levity, and the density of the material world, typifying gravity. Accordingly, wherever visible ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... only as exceptional cases, these modes of association are susceptible to analysis, and seem clear, almost self-evident, if we compare them with other, subtle, refined, barely perceptible cases, the origin of which is a subject for supposition, for guessing rather than for clear comprehension. It is, moreover, a sort of imagination belonging to very ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... woman, who brought up her son in a way which suggests the mother of Ruskin. Of his early training, his reading of doctrinal and argumentative works, and of his isolation from material things in the thought that there were "two and only two absolute and luminously self-evident beings in the world," himself and his Creator, it is better to read his own record in the Apologia, which is a kind ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... intelligent surmise upon the part of the professor bred a whole series of further theories upon Melek, each of which contradicted the last but one, and the latest of which was always of so limpid and so self-evident a truth as to be accepted by whatever was intelligent and energetic in the population, and especially by the young unmarried women of the wealthier classes. In this manner the epoch of Melek was reduced to five, to three, to ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... august Purpose which progressively realises itself in all the phases of the cosmic process. That the God revealed by the universe must transcend the universe in order to be in any real sense its Creator, is self-evident; but that it is His own Energy which pervades it, a present Power operating from within—in other words, that He is immanent in the world, as well as transcendent—is a thought from which we ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... had once more laughed heartily, he became meek again, and told me that the moment he began to realize Capital, it was his intention to marry this young lady. He added as a self-evident proposition, engendering low spirits, "But you can't marry, you know, while ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... mentioned, viz. in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me, in confirming me in my mistrust of the reality of material phenomena, and making me rest in the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator;—for while I considered myself predestined to salvation, my mind did not dwell upon others, as fancying them simply passed over, not predestined to eternal death. I only thought of the mercy ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the first kind of truths, or those received by intuition, we have examples in what are called 'self-evident axioms,' and 'fundamental laws' or 'conditions of thought,' which no wise man has ever attempted to prove. Of the second, we have examples in the whole fabric of mathematical science, reared from its basis of axioms and definitions, as ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... the eighteenth century to linger unhealthily upon the contemplation of mysteries. The predominant fault was one of a directly opposite nature. There was apt to be an impatience of all mystery, a contemptuous neglect of all that was not self-evident or easy to understand. 'The Gospel,' it was said, 'professes plainness and uses no hard words.'[236] Whatever was obscure was only the imperfection of the old dispensation, or the corruption of the new, and might be excluded from the consideration ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... letter through a second time, and then sat down on my bed to think it out. One thing was self-evident. I knew now how Nikola had become aware that I was going to sail in the mail boat on Friday; Baxter had seen my name in the passenger ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... this with so evident a sense of its obviousness as a self-evident truth that none of us had the courage to brave her surprise by asking an explanation. My mother's air of surprise when any of us went wrong in any way was very terrible to us. One day, when in a fit of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... taxed in aid of the British funds, and that she has no longer resources within herself? Is there anything to be expected from petitioning after this? Is not the attack upon the liberty and property of the people of Boston, before restitution of the loss to the India Company was demanded, a plain and self-evident proof of what they are aiming at? Do not the subsequent bills (now I dare say acts) for depriving the Massachusetts Bay of its charter, and for transporting offenders into other colonies, or to Great Britain for trial, where it is impossible from the nature of the thing that justice can ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... persuasion that the principle of causality is the most ultimate principle which our minds can reach. Most of us accept this persuasion as almost of the nature of an axiom, and hence the mere suggestion that our own volitions are really uncaused appears to us of the nature of a self-evident absurdity. A little thought, however, is enough to show that the only ground of reason which this strong prepossession can rest upon, is the assumption that the principle of causality is logically prior to that of mind. Therefore it is the validity of this assumption that ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... defence from rain; and this is curious enough, for we know that the theatres were protected by the velarium or awning, which was drawn across the arena whenever a sudden shower came on; strange that this self-evident application of the Umbrella should not have occurred to a nation generally so ingenious in the invention of every possible luxury. Possibly the expense bestowed in the decoration of the umbraculum was a reason for its not being applied to what we cannot but ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... never known misfortune; she knows nothing of annoyance; she is the idol of all who surround her, and she had the sensibility and goodness of an angel: in one word, she unites qualities which moralists consider incompatible; it is, however, only a self-evident fact to all who know her. She is evidently well informed, without pedantry; she has a delightful naivete; and though long since married, she has still the gaiety of a child, loving laughter like a little girl, which does not prevent her from possessing a religious ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... me Ritter, James Ritter," supplied the outlaw promptly. "I am not ashamed of my real name but my relatives had cause to be ashamed of its owner in his present condition. Their plans are almost self-evident, my lad. They will wait until dark and then slip over the wall, some will stop in that big building while the balance will make their way around to a building on the other side of you. They will then have you surrounded and have only to watch and wait to starve you out. They have plenty of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Will and me, his strong yellow teeth gleaming between a black beard and mustache. The Turk got up clumsily, and went out, muttering to himself. I glanced toward the corner where the self-evident gipsies sat, and observed that with perfect unanimity they ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... dangerous type. Doctors and nurses were busy at her bedside and little hope was held out of her being able to tell soon, if ever, what she knew of her sister's departure from the house on that fatal evening. That her testimony on this point would be invaluable was self-evident, for proofs were plenty of her having haunted her sister's rooms all the evening in a condition of more or less delirium. She was alone in the house and this may have added to her anxieties, all of the servants having gone to the policemen's ball. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... soldier. Why, then, did he not bring it away from the place where it could only excite disaffection, and might even mislead those who should see it into the belief that your noble person was that of a dwarf? The answer is self-evident. He left it to betray others into further mockery, to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... these only it recognises as kindred. (2.) Our second point is much more important. The exogamous prohibition must first have come into force when kinship was so little understood that it could best be denoted by the family name. This would be self-evident, if we could suppose the prohibition to be intended to prevent marriages of relations. Had the authors of the prohibition been acquainted with the nature of near kinships, they would simply (as we do) have forbidden marriage between persons in those degrees. The very nature of the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... retrocession of the Transvaal was a proper course, was it either wise or humane to prolong the war and crush the Boer resistance at the cost of much slaughter, merely in order to avenge defeats and vindicate a military superiority which the immensely greater forces of Britain made self-evident? A great country is strong enough to be magnanimous, and shows her greatness better by justice and lenity than by a sanguinary revenge. These moral arguments, which affect different minds differently, were reinforced by a strong ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... concerned, absolute. The other members of the group are relative and dependent, and only to be understood as in various degrees subordinate to the primitive conception. The characteristic by which we recognize the fundamental element in a series is its intuitive or self-evident character; it is given by "the evident conception of a healthy and attentive mind so clear and distinct that no doubt is left."[30] Having discovered this prime or absolute member of the group, we proceed to consider the degrees in which the other members enter into relation with it. Here ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... conclusion they signally erred. Mr. Adams, by birth, education, all the associations of his life, and the fixed principles of his moral and political character, was an opposer of slavery in every form. No man felt more keenly the wretched absurdity of professing to base our Government on the "self-evident truth, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—of proclaiming our Union the abode of liberty, the "home of the free," ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... and all the possibilities of mankind, either for good or evil; incidentally he throws into marked contrast the despicable depreciation used by the Spanish writers in referring to the Filipinos, making clear the application of the self-evident proposition that no ordinary human being in the presence of superior force can very well conduct himself as a man unless he ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... p. 405. and vol. iii., p. 52.) approve of, and confirm Mr. Knight's suggestion of a ring dial, as though it were so self-evident as to admit of no denial. Nevertheless, neither he nor they have shown any good reason for its adoption: even its superior antiquity over the portable time-piece is mere surmise on their parts, unaccompanied as yet by any direct proof. In point of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... progress. They are really clogs. My ancestors had more trouble to extirpate these superstitious ideas from the mind than they had in getting rid of disease and crime. There were several reasons for this difficulty. Disease and crime were self-evident evils, that the narrowest intelligence could perceive; but beliefs in creeds and superstitions were perversions of judgment, resulting from a lack of thorough mental training. As soon, however, as education of a high order became ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... first and fundamental interest of the laborer, that the farmer should have a full incoming profit on the product of his labor. The proposition is self-evident; and nothing but the malignity, perverseness, and ill-governed passions of mankind, and particularly the envy they bear to each other's prosperity, could prevent their seeing and acknowledging it, with thankfulness ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of the 18th. The seven German Corps facing them were exactly 178,818 strong. Thus the French had been driven out of a position of almost unrivalled natural advantages by a numerically inferior force. It is self-evident that the loss of the aggressors must have been much greater than that of the defence; it amounted to 20,584 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... they know the effects of certain invariable remedies prepared without fraud. Of course it is self-evident that when old Pare eulogized 'sack medicine' and ordered his patients to carry pulverized medicaments in a little sack whose form varied according to the organ to be healed, assuming the form of a ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... Davenant, "for instance, this book I am reading—(it was Dumont's 'Memoires de Mirabeau')—this book which I am reading, gives me infinitely increased pleasure, from my certain knowledge, my perfect conviction of the truth of the author. The self-evident nature of some of the facts would support themselves, you may say, in some instances; but my perceiving the scrupulous care he takes to say no more than what he knows to be true, my perfect reliance on the relater's private character for integrity, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... kind of history is the Philosophical. No explanation was needed of the two previous classes; their nature was self-evident. It is otherwise with the last, which certainly seems to require an exposition or justification. The most general definition that can be given is, that the philosophy of history means nothing but the thoughtful ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... as the addition, deduction, mutation, and transposition of letters, or even syllables. Thus Mr. Webbe thinks that the derivation of the Greek [Greek: gyn] a woman, from the Chinese na-gin, is self-evident. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... but of all the People in it, then I am sure Ireland, with her boasted Numbers, is in a bad way; as all her poor Popish Natives, or in other Words, three-fourths of her swarming Inhabitants, have neither Houses, Cloaths, Work, Food, or Fire. This is a dismal self-evident Truth, that demands the serious Consideration of every Irishman, that can think, or can learn to think. At the same Time, our Nobility and Gentry set their Lands excessively high, get their Rents paid to a Penny, have as little fear of Wars or Taxes as of Famines, and live as well (rambling, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... chair, with his hands in his pockets and his head wagging obstinately, he was plainly intoxicated, but as yet at a stage sufficiently mild to admit of his recognising the self-evident truth that ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... give an excellent turn to your letter. In refusing such an offer you could not have better reasons than those you give, and it would be absurd to try and persuade him that we are not lovers, as the thing is self-evident. Nevertheless, my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to all these Heads, except the first, concerning the Unity; for without that Quality, it's self-evident that 'tis no Fable. By Unity I mean the ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... convinced that nothing could have been more natural than Lucy's conduct, nor more self-evident than the motive ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... material containing the bacteria, and after being thoroughly mixed the fluid is poured on a glass plate and allowed to cool. The bacteria are in this way separated, and each by its growth forms a single colony which can be further tested. It is self-evident that all culture material must be sterilized by heat before using, and in the manipulations care must be exercised to avoid contamination from the air. The refraction index of the bacterial cell is so slight that the microscopic study is facilitated or made possible by ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... found necessary in effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius quite another—nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom confound them. By and by, this proposition, with many which I have been just urging, will be received as self-evident. In the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities, they will not be ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... give practical effect to an impracticable theory; pursuing a delusion, which this honored woman was the first to detect; and that less by force and subtlety of argument, than by the statement of self-evident truths, and by the enforcement of the simple and grand principle that Christianity admits of no compromise with sin. This was an easy lesson, yet it was one which our senators and statesmen, our distinguished ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... it is manifest that there can be nothing like a wide comprehension of sociology, unless through a competent acquaintance with man in all his faculties, bodily, and mental. Consider the matter in the abstract, and this conclusion is self-evident. Thus:—Society is made up of individuals; all that is done in society is done by the combined actions of individuals; and therefore, in individual actions only can be found the solutions of social phenomena. But the actions of individuals depend on the laws of their natures; ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... What is action? Most critics pass over this point, as if it were self-evident In the higher, proper signification, action is an activity dependent on the will of man. Its unity will consist in the direction towards a single end; and to its completeness belongs all that lies between the first determination and the execution ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of this last remark was so self-evident and incontrovertible that it elicited no reply, and the three friends rode on for a considerable ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... a halt without any command, and directly beside the young man, who was working diligently over the overturned motorcycle. His repair kit was spread out at the roadside, and the cause of the trouble was self-evident, it would seem. But Walky was a true Yankee and had ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... shall not seem to assume the dignity of an authority which no personal taste can claim, if I beg a hearing for the following elements of manner and voice, which appeal to me as essential. They will, probably, appear self-evident to my readers, yet they are often found wanting in the public school teacher; it is so much easier to say "what were good to do" ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... intricate a matter, and one of which a very slight thing can turn the scales, it is not easy to lay down rules by which good taste may be acquired. But there are instances of bad taste which can be avoided, and among them there is one which is self-evident, and does not relate either to harmony or to variety of colours. We allude to the good taste of dressing according to ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... Palestine about A.D. 70, or by a Catholic at Rome about A.D. 90, or that it represents a "Catholicized Paulinism" of A.D. 140, or that it is a patchwork of homilies written soon after A.D. 120, are guesses which have been made but not substantiated. The fact that it was written before A.D. 62 is {231} self-evident if we admit that it was written by St. James. But it is also corroborated by the fact that 1 Peter, written about A.D. 64, seems to show a knowledge of this Epistle. Far more complicated is the question as to whether St. James shows any knowledge of St. Paul's ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... we have ceased pulling it about to find what is inside or search out texts for homilies in defence of our own particular views of life. The world's literature stands unaffected, though Archdeacon Farrar use it for chapter-headings and Sir John Lubbock wield it as a mallet to drive home self-evident truths. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Mr. Geo. B. Lang" (on Fig. 1) with the name Mrs. James D. Singley (on Fig. 4) also shows clearly that one and the same person wrote them both. And to the accuracy of all these self-evident propositions a leading handwriting expert in New York ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... to whom they are applied. To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be modest is the next best thing. I am not so sure about being quiet. I am rather inclined to think that really modest people make a great deal of noise. It is quite self-evident that really simple people make a great deal of noise. But simplicity and modesty, at least, are very rare and royal human virtues, not to be lightly talked about. Few human beings, and at rare intervals, ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... This reasoning was self-evident, but in 1873 the press of Great Britain asked when and where this necessity would cease. Count Schouvalof was sent to London and in several interviews with Lord Granville, he stated distinctly and plainly ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... that a man like him, who lives at court, does not like to have a mad niece in his house. The thing is self-evident; if I'd continued to play my part of the man of the robe, I should have done the same in a similar case. But here, as you perceive, we don't care much for appearances; and I've taken her for a servant. She has shown ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... thought or feeling in the Reader. This is the only sensible manner of dealing with such verses. Why trouble yourself about the species till you have previously decided upon the genus? Why take pains to prove that an ape is not a Newton, when it is self-evident that he is not ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... home with me, and to keep him as a companion in my walks. But he had a collar with his own name, Bruno, upon it, and the name of his owner. The question of right occurred to me. I debated it. Applying some of the self-evident truths established by our own Independence, I almost persuaded myself that I might rightfully take the dog. I reasoned thus: 1. All dogs are born free and equal. 2. They have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 3. All governments ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... threatening for Judah, chap. iv. 3, to the end of chap. vi. It is only incidentally, in chap. iii. 18, that it is intimated that Judah also, after the threatening has been fulfilled upon them, shall partake in the salvation. It is self-evident that these two objects must not be considered as lying beside one another. According to the whole context, the announcement of salvation for Israel cannot have any other object than that of wounding Judah. This object even comes out distinctly in ver. 6-11, and the import of the discourse may, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... has not a system. The dearest defenders and disciples are at fault. He attempted a theory of the universe, and his theory is not complete or self-evident. One man thinks he means this, and another, that: he has said one thing in one place, and the reverse of it in another place. He is charged with having failed to make the transition from ideas to matter. Here ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... tool (fig. 69), the invention of one of my youngest "hands" (and heads), and really a praiseworthy invention, though indeed a simple and self-evident matter enough. The usual tool for waxing-up is (1) a strip of glass, (2) a penknife, (3) a stick of wood. The thing most to be wished for in whatever is used being, of course, that it should retain the heat. This ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... eternal principles of right and justice encourages the hope that the incident of color, race or previous condition can not always be a bar to preferment. An equal chance and fair play to all the citizens are absolute essentials to the continued life of a republic such as ours is to be. It is in this self-evident truth that is found a sure ground of confidence. Upon this bed-rock of America's boasted pride for interest in her humblest citizen may be built the superstructure of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... explain some things in language, since you are not familiar with the mechanism of thought transference. The Five, a self-perpetuating body, do what governing is necessary for the entire planet. Their decrees are founded upon self-evident truth, and are therefore the law. Population is regulated according to the needs of the planet, and since much work is now in progress, an increase in population was recommended by the Five. My companion and I therefore had three ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... his people. Regardless of the fact that we were the first possessors of the regions they now inhabit; regardless equally of the fact that we abandoned that region from the loftiest motives; regardless also of the self-evident fact that we excel them so far in mental ability as they excel us in stature, they look upon us as a degraded race and make a mockery of all our finer feelings. But, the time has almost arrived when—thanks ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... this force is self-evident and known to everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... regulations. Our political philosophy centers around that concept, and all our social discussions fall into the form of propositions and disputes about rights. The history of the dogma of rights has been such that rights have been believed to be self-evident and self-existent, and as having prevailed especially in primitive society. Rights are also regarded as the opposite of force. These notions only prove the antagonism between our mores and those of earlier generations. In fact, it is a characteristic ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... appalling situation immediately becomes a problem of civilization. No state can exist under these conditions. If these statistics are reliable—and we know they are true and capable of verification by any individual who will go to the trouble of [xxi] investigating them—it is self-evident that a radical change must immediately be instituted to obviate the logical consequences that must follow as a sequence. The eugenic demand, that "every child born shall be a worthy child," is, therefore, the solution of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... pointed out to her that the fact was self-evident, that in view of that very fact she should have been less confident in the discussion and should be more guarded in the future: his efforts were crowned with small success. Mrs. Turner's beliefs were only too apt on all occasions to be heralded ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... tabernacles of which they had unwarrantably taken possession; how could Christ have done this had He not first subdued the "strong man," the master of devils, Satan himself? And yet those ignorant scholars dared to say in the face of such self-evident refutation of their own premises, that the powers of Satan were subdued by Satanic agency. There could be no agreement, no truce nor armistice between the contending powers of Christ and Satan. Offering a suggestion of self-judgment to His accusers, that they ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of the past for all ordinary occasions. It's a pity, for they are better smoking than cigarettes, and certainly more picturesque.) Compliments were exchanged in bad French, and the ordinary topics discussed, but nothing was said as to the weather except that it was warm—a self-evident proposition. The weather is not a fruitful topic in Egypt. After a little time some officials came in with a whole pile of papers for signature, and we took the opportunity to terminate our mutual discomfort, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... simplest. The preamble is philosophical, dealing with "self-evident" truths. Today the men who dislike or doubt these truths dismiss the preamble as "theoretical," or, to use another term of derogation favored by reactionaries, "French." But if the preamble be French and philosophical, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... "takin' notes" was a debatable point, but that somebody was taking everything takable on the premises soon became a self-evident proposition; and this was uncomfortable for more reasons than one. Mr. Smith and I almost quarrelled about it. He would not believe it to be Chang-how, and I was determined it should not be Anarky. Said he, "Anarky ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... With these conditions self-evident, all that good breeding could do was to receive the statement with a vague smile that might pass for good-humored incredulity or courteous acceptation of a simple fact. Indeed, I think we all rather tried to convey the impression that our host, when he WAS a pirate,—if ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... for the present from drawing his self-evident moral. He sat twirling his cap between his knees, and his shrewd eye travelled round the kitchen, coming back finally to Bessie, who was washing and drying diligently. As he watched her cool movements Saunders felt the ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... scheme included a State Church. This was not adopted. It distinguished the inequality of men from the equality of rights. This was deemed self-evident and superfluous. It derived the mutual rights of men from their mutual duties—and this terrestrial definition also disappeared, leaving the way open to a higher cause. The adopted code was meagre and ill-composed, and Bentham found a malignant pleasure in tearing it to pieces. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... truth. To the modern dogmatist, these positions seem sceptical and pernicious. But to the philosopher, who knows the laws of human nature, to every scholar who knows the actual history of the Bible, these positions seem only self-evident. That in the Scriptures there are innumerable errors in science, mistakes in history, prophecies that were never fulfilled, contradictions and inconsistencies between different books and chapters,—these are facts of observation ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... it's self-evident. She's exactly as much in love with Trent as she was a year ago, and she's fighting against it every hour of her life. And the strain's ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... henceforward no one religious party was to be permitted to dictate to the other by means of its invariable superiority. And in truth, if the evangelical religion was really to be represented in the Diet, it was self-evident that it must not be shut out from the possibility of making use of that privilege, merely from the constitution of the Diet itself. Complaints of the judicial usurpations of the Aulic Council, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... certain attractive qualities in the nature of amiability and sincerity, for occasional exhibitions of what the English rated as social impropriety and bad taste. Often, at the English lofty derision of colonials, at the English air of self-evident superiority, the English pretence of politely concealed shock or pain or offence at some infringement of a purely superficial conduct-code of their own arbitrary fabrication, he ground his teeth in silence; for in one respect, he ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... that something fearful had occurred. I replied, very much agitated, that I was not aware of any error. 'I thought so! Do you know where you are? You are in London, not in Bath!' The fact was so self-evident that I did not attempt to disprove it. 'You will be delivered up to scorn and contempt; the critics will immolate you; the eyes of this great metropolis are fixed upon you. I thought you were a well-educated young man, but I have been deceived—grossly ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... recollect the figure of this extraordinary bird; although he may not be aware that it is considered to have become extinct towards the end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century. The conditions of this disappearance are self-evident.[15] Imagine a bird of the gallinaceous (gallus, cock, or pheasant) tribe, considerably larger than a turkey, and consequently adapted for food, totally incapable of flying, and so unwieldy as to be easily run down, and it must be quite obvious that such a bird could not long continue ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... that insures the Survival of Beneficial Processes Only.—It is self-evident that wherever there is a saving of labor needed to make a given amount and kind of product, there is an increase in the possible product that is created by the aid of a given amount of labor. If workers themselves get a share of the gains, this fact will ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... her duty to take the initiative, to cut away the very ground from beneath his feet? He took a seat, not far from where she was sitting, and made an effort to begin a little ordinary conversation, throwing frequent glances at Janey. He said it was a fine day, which was self-evident; that he almost feared they would be out; that he had come to—to tell her something he had forgotten last night, about—yes, about—Cassiopeia's chair, to correct what he said about Orion—yes, that was it; and again he looked at Janey, who saw his looks, and wondered ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... tools, and materials which the work requires, and to feed and otherwise maintain the labourers during the process. Whatever things are destined for this use are capital. That industry is limited by capital is self-evident. There can be no more industry than is supplied with materials to work up and food to eat. Nevertheless, it is often forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have their wants supplied, not by the produce of present labour, but of past, and it long continued to be believed that ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... should say that man is so constituted that he is capable of feeling weary, restless, despondent and anxious, and that he instinctively desires to be relieved of these unpleasant feelings, we should assert a self-evident fact. And we should thereby assert all the instincts or natural impulse there is in the matter. It is simply a desire to be relieved from unpleasant feelings, and does not, in the slightest degree, indicate ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... the nuptials—stained with murder, adultery, and crime of all sorts—of Frances Howard and Robert Carr. It is in Chapman's most allusive and thorniest style, but is less interesting intrinsically than as having given occasion to an indignant prose vindication by the poet, which, considering his self-evident honesty, is the most valuable document in existence for explaining the apparently grovelling panegyric of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. It makes clear (what indeed an intelligent reader might gather ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... money, as a representative of direct labor, forms but a very small portion of the money which is derived from every sort of violence,—to say nowadays that money represents the labor of the person who possesses it, is a self-evident error or ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... without question, beyond question; past dispute; clear as day; beyond all question, beyond all dispute; undoubted, uncontested, unquestioned, undisputed; questionless^, doubtless. authoritative, authentic, official. sure as fate, sure as death and taxes, sure as a gun. evident, self-evident, axiomatic; clear, clear as day, clear as the sun at noonday. Adv. certainly &c adj.; for certain, certes [Lat.], sure, no doubt, doubtless, and no mistake, flagrante delicto [Lat.], sure enough, to be sure, of course, as a matter of course, a coup sur, to a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... any other book this would be self-evident. For example, suppose that I have never read the play of Hamlet. I hear it universally spoken of as one of the greatest works of the human intellect. That naturally and properly creates in my mind the expectation of finding it so. It produces the general belief ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... a mistake, therefore, to admit that opinions cannot be compared together. Some are much more certain than others, and, indeed, 'self-evident' and 'intuitive.' Let us therefore take these to be 'truer.' If so, the thinker who feels most certain he is right is ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... and the corresponding punishment it entails," and that is the whole point. There are circumstances—perhaps, on the whole, the most numerous of all the various circumstances in war—in which close formation, if it can be used, is obviously an advantage; but it is equally self-evident that the losses of troops in close formation will be heavier than their losses in extended order. A group is a better target than a ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... battery street cars for city traffic are self-evident, so that I need not trouble you with further details in this respect, but I would beg those who take an interest in the progress of the electric locomotive to give this subject all the consideration it deserves, and I would assure them that the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... tracing from ideas clearly conceived the consequences which were formally involved in them. The question was, therefore, of these ideas, these verae ideae, as he calls them,—what were they, and how were they to be obtained: if they were to serve as the axioms of his system, they must, he felt, be self-evident truths, of which no proof was required; and the illustration which he gives of the character of such ideas is ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... clutches—declared, undisputed accomplices—and those accomplices had committed a murder. If the murder was premeditated, if the accusation of deliberate homicide could be supported by substantial proofs, it meant the scaffold. Now there was, at the very least, one self-evident proof, the cry for assistance which Leonard had sent over the telephone a few ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... ashamed, had found a home in Angela's grey eyes. There was a strange nobility about her. Whether it dwelt in the stately form, or on the broad brow, or in the large glance of the deep eyes, it is not possible to say; but it was certainly a part of herself as self-evident as her face or features. She might well have been the inspiration ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... speech. The sentiments were hackneyed, the observations self-evident, and the moral obvious. His phrases had the well-known ring which distinguishes the true orator. Mr. Jackson was recognised everywhere to be a fine platform speaker, but his varied excellence could not be appreciated in a summary, and he had a fine verbosity. It is sufficient to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... triumphant general of yore his spolia opima. Of metaphysics he knew enough to confound all hearers and himself into the bargain. In logic he knew the whole family of syllogisms and dilemmas, and was so proud of his skill that he never suffered even a self-evident fact to pass unargued. It was observed, however, that he seldom got into an argument without getting into a perplexity, and then into a passion with his adversary for not ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... Among self-evident truths not one is more indisputable than that which, in the immortal words of our Declaration of Independence, asserts the right of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; but the only happiness that can be recognised by a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... commanders suppose a mass attack is coming; and that the British Legation and the western Russo-American front, together with the American posts on the Tartar Wall, work together. It is, of course, self-evident from what I have written that the first, or Continental and Japanese lines, are having by far the worst time. For, apart from the American posts on the Tartar Wall, no outposts in the second section are as yet in direct touch with the enemy. The strain on those who are within a ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... hot-headedness, or that they seemed not to understand them to avoid the shame of being baffled, they yielded not, but cried out louder than before. As they disputed more for victory than truth, they denied all things, even to those principles which are self-evident; pretending thereby to encumber their opponent. Xavier knew what use to make of his advantages; he turned the confusion upon them, by reducing them to manifest contradictions, from whence they could never disengage themselves; so that, instead ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... moment's intuition. It was physically impossible that she should have disappeared into any one of the houses which had their entrances within the dark tunnel he had just traversed. Apart from the presumptive impossibility of her being lodged in such a quarter, there was the self-evident fact that he must have heard the door opened and closed. Secondly, she could not have turned to the right, for in that direction the street was straight and without any lateral exit, so that he must ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... is self-evident, that they point at Self-liking and the Instinct of Sovereignty. But what is singular in these Laws is, that in their Operation they are the reverse ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... a plain token that there is some real contrariety between human science and Revelation. To the multitude who draw this inference, it matters not whether the protesting parties avow their belief in this contrariety or not; it is borne in upon the many, as if it were self-evident, that religious men would not thus be jealous and alarmed about Science, did they not feel instinctively, though they may not recognize it, that knowledge is their born enemy, and that its progress, if it is not arrested, will be certain to destroy all that they hold venerable and dear. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... >>>>>Proof—This proposition is self-evident, for the definition of anything affirms the essence of that thing, but does not negative it; in other words, it postulates the essence of the thing, but does not take it away. So long therefore as we regard ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... It scarce weighs more than four hundredweight. The bear not long ago weighed five, and I had to beat it to death before I could take it home. Surely your ladyship knows that I am the strong Juon—Juon Tare?" And the goatherd said this with as much self-evident pride, as if everyone in the wide world had heard that strong Juon dwelt among these forests. Henrietta's look of surprise apprised him, however, that she, at least, had never heard ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... likewise proved the existence of a Deity. But this is just the point in dispute, and to set out with a bare affirmation of it is merely to beg the question and to abandon the discussion. Doubtless, by the mere act of consulting their own consciousness, the fact now in dispute appears to some persons self-evident. But in matters of such high abstraction as this, even the evidence of self-evidence must not be relied upon too implicitly. To the country boor it appears self-evident that wood is annihilated by ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... morgue, where it is prepared for burial. We wish to see the point from which life starts and the one where it loses itself, as a single wave, in the great sea of infinite, effect. That this effect is a twofold one, and that it can turn inward as well as outward, is of course self-evident. For the rest—be it said incidentally—here is the point from which a parallel can be drawn between the phenomena of real life and those of life embodied ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... 'Self-evident,' said Georgina; 'but if I had been among you, would not I have told Theodora the poor child was cowed by her dignities, and Mrs. Nesbit and all the rest? Oh, I would have made much of her, and brought her forward. She should have been my queen of ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... anything invidious or unkind. But isn't it self-evident, or nearly, that we're individuals, while you're parts of an intricate social system? The minute you fall out of your place in the system you come to grief; but vicissitudes don't affect us much more ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... of English, German, Danish, Scotch, or Irish parents. You will not attempt to prove that every native colored person you meet in the streets, has not the same right to remain in this his native land, that you and we have. Assuming this as an incontrovertable truth, we hold it self-evident that they have as good right to deport us to Europe, under the pretext that there we shall be prosperous and happy, as we have to deport them to ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... he shrinks back whenever it inspires him with a feeling of repulsion. He shrinks from it particularly when it inspires him with fright. This is a matter of course and self-evident. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... virture. For too constant insistence upon an evil thing is sure to breed doubt in the mind of one who is in the habit of thinking at all. It did in Cecille's. If it be so true, so inevitable, so frightful, surely it should be self-evident now and then, instead of a mere matter of report. And beautiful generalization, never anything but vague, becomes noticeable after a time, questionable. The things of glory in this world are not so tediously many that ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... the physical, and therefore in the spiritual, world of so great importance that we shall not mis-spend time if we follow it, for further confirmation, into another department of nature. Its significance in Biology is self-evident; let ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the Divine existence, or that the phenomena which supply that evidence may be as well, or more satisfactorily, explained in some other way. Assail, in like manner, the Skeptical Atheist with the self-evident truth that, even on his own principles, he is not entitled to assume or to act upon the assumption, that there is no God, since the result of his reasonings is doubt merely, and such doubt as implies ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... hindrances should arise to prevent the carrying out of this same, I have no inclination to substitute for the Orclaestral-concert one for Chamber-music. But the word "Evening entertainment" must, as is self-evident, be entirely dispensed with. Our business is to raise, to educate the audience, not to amuse them; and if indeed, as Goethe very pertinently says, "deep and earnest thinkers are in a bad position as regards the public," we will ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... Mr. Drury, in the last moment at the door, "Mr. Drury, if we could all get a conscience about the tithe, and pay attention to that conscience, half the Everyday Doctrines would not even need to be stated. They would be self-evident. And the other half could be put into practice with ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... of the saint, it is undoubtedly the appearance of the miraculous therein—namely, the immediate SUCCESSION OF OPPOSITES, of states of the soul regarded as morally antithetical: it was believed here to be self-evident that a "bad man" was all at once turned into a "saint," a good man. The hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at this point, is it not possible it may have happened principally because psychology had placed itself under the dominion of morals, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... cream it will be digested in a normal manner and will not cause gas in the stomach or intestines. The proper amount of food is absorbed and nourishes the man as it should. Now did not the thorough mastication of that food increase the value of the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates? The thing is a self-evident fact. In the first case a man takes food which quickly turns to a loathsome poison. In the second instance the same kind of food is so thoroughly mixed with the ptyalin in the saliva that whatever is eaten becomes of value as protein or fat or some ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... is not self-evident that the sole business of our mind with realities should be to copy them. Let my reader suppose himself to constitute for a time all the reality there is in the universe, and then to receive the announcement that another being is to ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... which arises out of thought, nor can excite thought or feeling in the Reader. This is the only sensible manner of dealing with such verses: Why trouble yourself about the species till you have previously decided upon the genus? Why take pains to prove that an Ape is not a Newton when it is self-evident that ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... story ran to Democrates's credit, but Hermippus knew the world, and could forgive a young man if he had occasionally spent a jolly night. Democrates seemed to have forsworn Ionian harp-girls now. His patriotism was self-evident. The Eleusinian saw in him a most desirable protector in the perils of war for Hermione and her child. Hermione's dislike for her husband's destroyer was natural,—nay, in bounds, laudable,—but one must ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... are, Mr. Eden, Aunt Davies and I—Oh!" The table being between the sofa and the door the poor gentleman's actual condition was not self-evident from the latter, but Susan was now in the middle of the room and her gayety gave way in a moment ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... height of efficiency is attained by Mervin L. Lane, Insurance Service, New York, who prints on his letterhead, "Unnecessary terms of politeness as well as assurances of self-evident esteem ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... manner in modern times. His view respecting the nature of scriptural doctrines,(352) that they can be reduced to the teaching of natural reason, is a corollary from his philosophy, which cannot admit that any religious truth is obligatory which is not self-evident, and is analogous to the doctrine which a short time previously had been stated by Lord ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... grief was thus checked, and a train of serious reflection laid, which, like some of those self-evident convictions that fastened on the awakened conscience, the old man could ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... dogma is, in the main, as I said, the simple outcome of Jewish theism with its 'creation out of nothing,' and the really foolish and paradoxical denial of the doctrine of metempsychosis which is involved in that idea, a doctrine which is natural to a certain extent, self-evident, and, with the exception of the Jews, accepted by nearly the whole human race at all times.... Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... triangle or a circle does not follow from the nature of those figures, but from the order of universal nature in extension. From the latter it must follow, either that a triangle necessarily exists, or that it is impossible that it should exist. So much is self-evident. It follows therefrom that a thing necessarily exists, if no cause or reason be ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... succeeded in stirring up a very sufficient number of protestations for having ventured to deduce, from a collection of self-evident facts, a judgment which I still maintain. It may well be believed, moreover, that I was not wrong, since the Government and the Municipal Council have, this year, taken the initiative of adding to the ceremonies and to the diversions usual on the 14th of July, the ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... our happiness, but that the enjoyment of pleasure, let us say, voluptuousness, to include everything in a word, is the veritable aim and end whither tend all human acts. This is very clear to me, in fact, self-evident, and I am fully persuaded ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... They belonged chiefly to that party in the State which had consistently assailed Mr. Gladstone's Egyptian policy. Here was an opportunity of repairing the damage done by their opponents. The comparisons that would follow such an accomplishment were self-evident and agreeable even to anticipate. The idea of re-conquering the Soudan presented itself indefinitely, but not unpleasingly, alike to the Government and the people of Great Britain. The unforeseen course of events crystallised the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... of me and such men as me. You business people are on the up grade just now, and you know it. Whoever goes under, you are safe to do yourselves most uncommonly well. I don't mean anything personal, of course. I am just stating a self-evident fact. Commerce is in the air—you all reek of success. And so even shopwalkers, like Worthington, and that thrice odious puppy Farge, grow sleek, and venture to spread themselves in the presence of their betters—in the presence of a scholar and a gentleman, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... suppression or maintenance of story in a novel is a matter of personal taste; some prefer character-drawing to adventures, some adventures to character-drawing; that you cannot have both at once I take to be a self-evident proposition; so when Mr. Lang says, "I like adventures," I say, "Oh, do you?" as I might to a man who says "I like sherry," and no doubt when I say I like character-drawing, Mr. Lang says, "Oh, do you?" as he ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... most unsatisfactory to me to see form developed from a number of various ground-forms. The object which now lay before my efforts and my thought was to bring out the higher unity underlying external form in such a self-evident shape that it should serve as a type or principle whence all other forms might be derived. But as I held the laws of form to be fixed, not only for crystals, but also just as firmly for language, it was more particularly a deep philosophical view of language which eventually absorbed my thoughts. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
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