"Irrefutable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great adventure never arrived, somehow; and the days were frittered away piecemeal, what with eating your dinner, and taking a wholesome walk, and checking up your bank account, and dovetailing scraps of parish registers and land-patents and county records into an irrefutable pedigree, and seeing that your clothes were pressed, and looking over the newspapers—and what with other infinitesimal avocations, each one innocent, none of any particular importance, and each consuming an irrevocable moment of the ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... ordered for the woman's trial. The word and the inscription upon it were irrefutable proofs of guilt, and she was sent to a prison for females in Massachusetts. The affair was inexcusably gross, considering the condition of war—so much, I think, will be generally conceded—still, seeking the moral ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... could not for long be a mere pupil. Wolff's argument a posteriori for the existence of God, in accordance with his philosophic hobby, the "principle of sufficient reason," displeased him wholly. A Hebrew letter to Mendelssohn, in which he shook the foundation of the Metaphysics by means of his irrefutable ontology, won him the admiration of the Berlin sage, who invited him to become his ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... are apt to be baffled, or indefinitely postponed, by the retorts that suggest themselves to the modern child, there remains the subtle and indisputable witness borne by art itself: the body of man composes with the mass and the detail of the world. The picture is irrefutable, and the picture arranges the figure amongst its natural accessories in the landscape, and would ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... artless, mouldering gods, who have given ease to so many troubled minds, who have gladdened so many simple hearts, who have heard so many innocent prayers—how gladly would I prolong their beneficent lives in spite of the so-called 'laws of progress' and the irrefutable philosophy of evolution! ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... simultaneously into the minds of thousands. The successful realization of this idea was a surprise to many, but as a surprise it was nothing to that received by the mildly protestant sociologists and biologists when irrefutable facts exploded the doctrine of Malthus. With leisure and joy in the world; with an immensely higher standard of living; and with the enormous spaciousness of opportunity for recreation, development, and pursuit of ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... should say if I belonged to that school. It all forms a chain of very logical deductions and proffers itself with a certain air of likelihood which we should be glad to find in a host of evolutionist arguments put forward as irrefutable. Well, I will make a present of my deductive views, without regret, to whoever cares to have them: I don't believe one word of them; and I confess my profound ignorance of the origin of the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... or ever would have, a just conception of the binding force of a contract, and that this system of free negro labor was bound to be a failure. If some negroes shirked, or did not perform their task with sufficient alacrity, it was produced as irrefutable evidence to show that physical compulsion was actually indispensable to make the negro work. If negroes, idlers or refugees crawling about the towns, applied to the authorities for subsistence, it was quoted as incontestably ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... regulations and vexatious restrictions, attending to things in general with a high hand, they calmly deposed him on the ground that he had no authority to act, since they were on the territory of Nicuesa. To this logic, which was irrefutable, poor Encisco could make no reply. Pending the arrival of Nicuesa they elected Balboa and one Zamudio, a Biscayan, to take charge ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the corners of Jimmie Dale's mouth grew a little more pronounced. Nor should the Pippin be long in returning! A man could not very well lose a cuff link and be unaware of that fact for any extended length of time. And that cuff link was damning, irrefutable, incontrovertible evidence, exactly the evidence the police required to convict the guilty man! Yes, undoubtedly, the Pippin would be back—and at any moment now. Figuring that the Pippin had left Bristol Bob's half an hour before he, Jimmie Dale, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... unreasonable, wholly inconsistent with facts and natural laws, as we know and are able to observe them. Even as a child I never had any use for fairy-tales, or wonder-stories. I always wanted facts, tangible, concrete, irrefutable facts, not hypotheses. The Protestant churches hand out a mess of incoherent guesswork, based on as many interpretations of the Bible as there are human minds sufficiently interested to interpret it, and then wax hot and angry when hard-headed business men like myself ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the question debatable, but his reasons for doing so are tolerably notorious. Besides, what does all his flimsy sophistry avail against Nicanor's fine chapter on this very subject? Crushing, I consider it. His logic is final and irrefutable. What can anyone say against Saevius ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... court, after all the witnesses have been heard. Arrange it with Monsieur Darzac's counsel. Monsieur Darzac is innocent. In this letter is written the name of the murderer; and—that is all I have to say. I am leaving to get my proofs—for the irrefutable evidence of the murderer's guilt.' Our reporter departed. For a long time we were without news from him; but, a week ago, a stranger called upon our manager and said: 'Act in accordance with the instructions of Joseph Rouletabille, if it becomes necessary to do so. The letter left by ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... knowledge and impart greater clearness and distinctness to my views by the argumentative power shown in his writings. But I am perfectly certain, even before I have opened the book, that he has not succeeded in a single point, not because I believe I am in possession of irrefutable demonstrations of these important propositions, but because this transcendental critique, which has disclosed to me the power and the limits of pure reason, has fully convinced me that, as it is insufficient to ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... By such logical, irrefutable, inductive steps have I proven not only the Status of Slang, but the literary importance of these Sonnets which it is at once my scientific duty and my esthetic ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... insisting from the start that there should be no intervention in the settlement of the dispute between Servia and her ally, Austria, made a European war inevitable. The sophistry, inaccuracies, and unwarranted conclusions of the German professors and editors have not helped their cause. The irrefutable facts remain, first, that Austria with the knowledge and approval of Germany presented to Servia an ultimatum so worded that she knew that the conditions imposed could not be complied with by any nation retaining a spark of self-respect; second, that after Servia ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... not enough for us to know them, doctor; we want evidence against them,—clear, positive, irrefutable evidence. This evidence we will get from Crochard. Oh, I know the ways of these rascals! As soon as they see they are overwhelmed by the evidence against them, and feel they are in real danger, they hasten to denounce their ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... the sublimated essence of Butt-in; the refined, intrinsic extract of Rubber; the concentrated, purified, irrefutable, unavoidable spirit of Curiosity and Inquisitiveness. A new sensation is the breath in his nostrils; when his experience is exhausted he explores new fields ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... tried to deny to our race the share that is ours in the glory of Matzeliger's achievements. These declare that he had no Negro blood in his veins; but the proof against this assertion is irrefutable. Through correspondence with the mayor of Lynn, a certified copy of the death certificate issued on the occasion of Matzeliger's death has been obtained, and this ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... "handmaid of religion." "She springs straight out of the rite, and her first outward leap is the image of the god." Miss Harrison gives two examples to substantiate her contention. In the first place, she states at some length arguments of irrefutable validity to show that the Panathenaic frieze, which originally surrounded the Parthenon, represents a great ritual procession, and she adds, "Practically the whole of the reliefs that remain to us from the archaic period, and a very ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... ride the pinto ever since the day it was brought home to her with irrefutable emphasis that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It was more of a parabola she described, when, bucked off, her head smashed the ground, but ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... arousing his suspicions in regard to the king," he said to himself. "As the king refuses to listen to my warnings and supplications, and does not believe it to be possible that France should dare seize him, it is time to give him some irrefutable proofs. Perhaps he may then make up his mind to leave Berlin. I may sign this longed-for betrothal at some other place, too, and then fasten on my breast the order for which I am longing. In truth," he added, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... another species of composition, in which the former excells so as to throw the ballance again upon the side of Dryden. This species is the Lyric, in which the warmest votaries of Pope must certainly acknowledge, that he is much inferior; as an irrefutable proof of this we need only compare Mr. Dryden's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, with Mr. Pope's; in which the disparity is so apparent, that we know not if the most finished of Pope's compositions has discovered such a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... the article would have been followed by my criticism, but if the arguments therein contained are irrefutable, why fear the proximity of my refutation? I beg you, therefore, to be kind enough to ask M. Brunetiere to give me permission to second the views of Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands by assisting to ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... recovered from the first shock of it. They had discussed it in the kitchen while preparing the teas; Constance's extraordinarily severe and dictatorial tone in condemning it had led to a certain heat. But the success of the impudent wrench justified it despite any irrefutable argument to the contrary. Mr. Povey was better already, and he evidently remained in ignorance ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... mutability to each other is unlimited, that the sum of mutability contained in the universe is infinite, that there is therefore no ground on which to seek its origin or to foresee its end. A hypothesis of this kind is as irrefutable as it is indemonstrable; but to speak of an infinite universe is to admit a perfect coincidence of matter with abstract space, and consequently an absolute externality of all the parts of matter in relation to one another. We have seen above what we must think ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... enjoyment than I had during my happy slumbers. I saw I had taken a very long stride forward, for twenty-four hours of abstinence gave me the right to speak to her openly of my love, and the gift of her hair was an irrefutable confession ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... seen the antique and had let themselves be seduced by it, despite their civilization and their religion. Let us only rejoice thereat. There are indeed some, and among them the great English critic who is irrefutable when he is a poet, and irrational when he becomes a philosopher;—there are some who tell us that in its union with antique art, the art of the followers of Giotto embraced death, and rotted away ever after. There are others, more moderate but less ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... it seemed to Dorn that he was even incapable of thinking, that he possessed a plastic vocabulary endowed with a life of its own. He often contemplated with astonishment his own verbal brilliancies, which his friends appeared to accept as irrefutable truths of the moment. Carried away in the heat of some intricate debate he would pause internally, as his voice continued without interruption, and exclaim to himself, "What in hell am I talking about?" And ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Part of Rights of Man, I have not repeated those arguments, because they are irrefutable; but have confined myself to shew the defects of what is called hereditary government, or hereditary succession, that it must, from the nature of it, throw government into the hands of men totally unworthy of it, from want of principle, or unfitted for it from want of capacity.—James the IId. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the sound-conducting properties of the rifle. Normally of good hearing he failed to detect what to Private Brass Pot was an accepted and irrefutable fact. ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... for having shaken the doctrine of the church, but simply because they branded with reprobation the scandals proceeding from the clergy,—their pomp, their pride, and all the vices of the prelates and priests. The things which they have affirmed, and which are irrefutable, I also think and ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... should be. A debater must also have some ability as a speaker. He need not be graceful or especially fluent, though these accomplishments are of service, but he must be forceful. Not only his words, but also his manner must reveal the earnestness and enthusiasm he feels. His argument, clear, irrefutable, and to the point, should go forth in simple, burning words that enter into the hearts ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... assured, confident, convinced, satisfied, undoubting; undeniable, irrefutable, indubitable, incontrovertible, incontestable, sure; inevitable, unavoidable; unfailing, infallible, inerrable; fixed, stated, specified. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... which serves him as a pulpit, snapping up a bug or a seed here and there. Yet his discourse goes steadily on, by the half hour, or hour, sometimes with a rising inflection, as after a question, sometimes the falling, as having given an irrefutable answer, himself. Once the idea that the bird is preaching has entered a listener's mind, he can never shake ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... magnificent; there were sturgeons, sterlets, bustards, asparagus, quail, partridges, mushrooms. The flavour of all these dishes supplied an irrefutable proof of the sobriety of the cook during the twenty-four hours preceding the dinner. Four soldiers, who had been given him as assistants, had not ceased working all night, knife in hand, at the composition ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a rod, one hundred feet high, became electrified during a storm did not necessarily prove that the storm-clouds were electrified. A rod of that length was not really projected into the cloud, for even a very low thunder-cloud was more than a hundred feet above the ground. Irrefutable proof could only be had, as he saw it, by "extracting" the lightning with something actually sent up into the storm-cloud; and to accomplish this Franklin made his silk kite, with which he finally demonstrated to his own and the world's satisfaction that his ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... up by screaming himself hoarse in trying to convince his audience that the abundant supply of wheat was an irrefutable proof that the problem of over-population did not exist; that the doctrine of Malthus was not only false, but criminal, socially ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Oh, if he could have denied Fran—if he could have joined Grace in declaring her an impostor! But she possessed proofs so irrefutable that safety lay in admitting her claim, lest she prove more than he had already admitted. "I know it, absolutely. She is the daughter of one who was my ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... begin to understand,' I cried out, 'the widespread growth of economic reaction against which we Western Liberals are waging a ridiculous Quixotic war with all our apparently irrefutable arguments. We present to the people as an argument against protection exactly that after which they are—unconsciously, it is true—eagerly longing. Protective tariffs, trade guilds, and whatever else the ingenious devices of the last decades may be called, I now understand and recognise ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... rests a two-fold blight, first that of slavery, now that of war. When one contrasts the face of this country with the smiling hillsides and vales of New England, he sees stamped upon it in characters so marked, none but a blind man can fail to read, the great irrefutable arguments against slavery and against war, too; and must be filled with loathing for these twin relics of barbarism, so awful in the potency of their consequences that they can change even ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... to the Bombos that my Aunt ever made in my hearing. Of course it is preposterous to suppose that she traces her descent from a king through a mere bowl of punch, and her being still the president of the Selected Salic Scions is proof irrefutable that her claim rests upon ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... sound, because this great battle for preservation and conservation cannot be won by gentle tones, nor by appeals to the aesthetic instincts of those who have no sense of beauty, or enjoyment of Nature. It is necessary to sound a loud alarm, to present the facts in very strong language, backed up by irrefutable statistics and by photographs which tell no lies, to establish the law and enforce it if needs be with ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... before he had planted his foot firmly in the one that went before; but once he knew where he stood, he did not hesitate to question any scientific dogma that opposed him, always in his own quiet way, backed by irrefutable facts. In a remarkable degree he had the faculty of getting down through the husk to the core of things, but he rejected nothing untried. The little thing in hand, he ever insisted, if faithfully done might hold the key to the whole ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... Notwithstanding that irrefutable answer to the charge, it has been reiterated, and, as before, located in the year 1852. It is known to you all that our discussions were in 1851. I then favored a convention of the Southern States, that we might take counsel together, as to the ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... seemed to Lansing as mad as it was enchanting: it had thoroughly frightened him. But Susy's arguments were irrefutable, her ingenuities inexhaustible. Had he ever thought it all out? She asked. No. Well, she had; and would he kindly not interrupt? In the first place, there would be all the wedding-presents. Jewels, and a motor, and a silver ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... to think intently whether she would agree. And it seemed to me she would. I heard myself speaking to her in a persuasive, irrefutable manner:— ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... side intellectual arguments of this kind started out, strong and irrefutable; her emotional drawings towards Catholicism for the present retired. Feelings might have been disregarded or discredited by a strong effort of the will; these apparently cold phenomena that presented themselves to her ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... ornament, and which subsist as nothing but a mournful heap of debris—of these we are not bound to keep silent. But not one exaggerated word shall be uttered by us. The account we shall give is established by high testimony and by irrefutable documents. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... most of the apostolic fathers practiced it. Among others, St. Jerome lived his whole life among women and never lost his purity. He answered his enemies who reproached him with his very great intimacy with the Saintly Sisters, that the irrefutable proof of his chastity was that he stank. That stinking of St. Jerome, which is not a veritable article of faith in the Church, is, however, an object of pious belief; and my readers will ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... natural selection and supernatural design resolves itself into this—Were all the species of plants and animals separately created, or were they slowly evolved? For if they were specially created, the evidence of supernatural design remains unrefuted and irrefutable; whereas if they were slowly evolved, that evidence has been utterly and for ever destroyed. The doctrine of natural selection therefore depends for its validity on the doctrine of organic evolution; for if once the fact of organic evolution were established, no one would dispute that much ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... and with vehemence so that the stars of Heaven might hear, for there was no human being at hand, these sentiments sounded satisfactorily irrefutable. Rodney quieted down, and walked on in silence, until he perceived some one approaching him, who had something, either in his walk or his dress, which proclaimed that he was one of William's acquaintances before it was possible to tell which of ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... after Christ which was natural before him, nor that sent down from heaven which was already on earth as the product of human reason. The Rev. Mr. Lake fairly says: "We have evidence—clear, conclusive, irrefutable evidence—as to what this doctrine really is. We can trace its birth-place in the philosophic speculations of the ancient world, we can note its gradual development and growth, we can see it in its early youth passing (through ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... learning, that the American Regular makes tactics as he needs them; that the rules of war established by pen soldiers do not form the basis of actual operations in the field; that theories must go to the wall before the stern logic of irrefutable facts; and that deductions based on the drill-made automatons of European armies are not applicable to an army composed of American Volunteer Regulars, led by our ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... merchant in the City, I fancy, full of crime and treason, and, moreover, very wealthy. His wealth was tempting to—let us say to those in high authority, and there was plenty of evidence against him, manufactured, perhaps, but still apparently irrefutable. At the crucial moment, however, there came forward a witness who, in the clearest manner, was able to prove that the evidence was false, and Popplewell got off. That is the case from the world's point of view. But there was another side to it. This witness was well paid, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... of the Geographical Society of the Pacific, has written an irrefutable pamphlet on why Kyak Island and Sitka Sound must be accepted as the landfalls ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... this world are thus written by his own finger in the fossils and coal, and engraved on the everlasting granite of the earth's foundation stones. Dumb beasts and dead reptiles start forward to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeated supernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made. Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinct supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of man is not the limit ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... I should say if I were a "transformist." All this is a chain of highly logical deductions, and it hangs together with a certain air of reality, such as we like to look for in a host of "transformist" arguments which are put forward as irrefutable. Well, I make a present of my deductive theory to whosoever desires it, and without the least regret; I do not believe a single word of it, and I confess my profound ignorance of the origin of the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... war in America. I assume there have been published in America the telegrams exchanged between the German Emperor, the Emperor of Russia, and the King of England, containing the history of the events that preceded the outbreak of the war, and which bears irrefutable testimony of how the Emperor, until the last moment, strove hard ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... demonstrate the higher possibilities and capabilities of his race. As long as there is a Charles W. Chestnut, or a Paul Lawrence Dunbar, a T. Thomas Fortune, and others, whose writings are read by the thousands of literary people of this country and England, so long will there be an irrefutable argument for the intellectual worth of the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... tempest of enthusiasm. It will be welcomed as the final settlement of the conflicting claims of mind and heart in man, the reconciliation of the feud too long existing between religion and science. Everything points to its immense future. Within the churches its principles are tacitly accepted as irrefutable. We claim such men as Stanley, Maurice and Jowett as preachers of the ethical Church, and their numbers are increasing every year among the cultured members of the Anglican clergy. Leading men of science ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... Gentlemen, I have listened attentively to the evidence, and have perceived that the weight of it, the overwhelming weight of it, is in favor of the plaintiff Hyde. I have listened also to the remarks of counsel, with high interest—and especially will I commend the masterly and irrefutable logic of the distinguished gentleman who represents the plaintiff. But gentlemen, let us beware how we allow mere human testimony, human ingenuity in argument and human ideas of equity, to influence us at a moment so solemn as this. Gentlemen, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and depending on this the D@r@s@tis@r@s@tivadins asserted that our experience was inexplicably produced under the influence of avidya and that beyond that no objective common ground could be admitted. But though this has the general assent of Vedanta and is irrefutable in itself, still for the sake of explaining our common sense view (pratikarmavyavasatha) we may think that we have an objective world before us as the common field of experience. We can also imagine a scheme of things and operations by which the phenomenon ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... slender legs that pirouetted so daintily over the ground, and her exquisite head, which she carried so proudly—how would she look and what kind of figure would she cut among the shaggy, stunted, sedate-looking nags of the Sognefiord district? But the captain, though what he said was irrefutable, had to suspend all argument when he saw how utterly wretched Erik became at the mere thought of losing Lady Clare. So he took his chances; and, after having ordered blankets of three different thicknesses for three ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... comets' tails he writes:[1] "Beyond a doubt, the widest and most interesting prospect of future discovery, which this study holds out to us, is, that distinction between gravitating and levitating matter, that positive and irrefutable demonstration in nature of a repulsive force, co-extensive with, but enormously more powerful than the attractive force we call gravity which the phenomena of their tails afford." I premise that this prophecy of Herschel's will be fully demonstrated and proved in the ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... that his existence without her must be barren and imperfect. She did not ask when and how, she only prayed that she might become his, expecting it as confidently as light in the morning, spring after winter. Nothing appeared so irrefutable as this faith; it was the belief of her loving soul. Then, when the inevitable had happened they would be one in their aspirations for virtue, and the son could no longer close his heart against the father, nor the father shut his against ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... who claimed to be the long-lost Sir Aubrey Tackbun who ran away to sea when a boy some thirty odd years ago and was lost track of entirely. Lost his case at that first trial, and got sent to prison for conspiracy Is out again now. Claims to have new and irrefutable refutable evidence, and is going to have a second try for the title and estates. A Colonel Goshen, of the Australian militia, was one of his strongest witnesses. Wonder if there is any connection ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... rings? Why could I not find the rings? If my present reasoning were correct, this woman should have those evidences of guilt about her. But had I not searched for them in every available place without success? Annoyed at my failure to fix this one irrefutable proof of guilt upon her, I took up the knitting-work I saw in Miss Oliver's basket, and began to ply the needles by way of relief to my thoughts. But I had no sooner got well under way than some movement on the part of ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... was well known. The details that I gather concerning that mysterious man, the irrefutable facts that I present, the new evidence that I produce, the interpretation that I place on certain acts of which the public has seen only the exterior manifestations without being able to discover the secret reasons or the ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... Street, the Law Courts clock, had just finished striking seven. It boomed out the hour, stroke by stroke, solemnly, inexorably, like a grim old judge summing up and driving home, point by point, an irrefutable charge. The heavy strokes broke in upon the fitful doze into which Robin Greve, stretched out in an armchair in his living-room, ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... be according to nature. And in speaking of the copy and the original we may assume that words are akin to the matter which they describe; when they relate to the lasting and permanent and intelligible, they ought to be lasting and unalterable, and, as far as their nature allows, irrefutable and immovable—nothing less. But when they express only the copy or likeness and not the eternal things themselves, they need only be likely and analogous to the real words. As being is to becoming, so is truth to belief. If then, Socrates, amid the many opinions about the gods ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... private as public capacity, with the warmest zeal for the government. The speeches which he made in the house upon many occasions, uttered with so much force of expression, and propriety of emphasis, were an irrefutable demonstration of his abilities, and drew upon him the admiration of both kingdoms. The marquis's arguments had very great influence on which side of the question soever he happened to be.—No nobleman, either in that or the English ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... reconstruction affected the hearts and heads of most of the Southern whites. To admit that they were honest in holding such views as they did is only to give them the benefit of a presumption which, when applied to the acts and motives of whole peoples, becomes irrefutable. A mob may be wrong-headed, but it is always right-hearted. What it does may be infamous, but underlying its acts is always the sting of a great evil or the hope ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Mental Healing, but naturally the scientist and physician, when dealing with such a question as this, has to put aside, not all enthusiasm, but certainly all emotionalism, and then, most carefully sift the evidence laid before him. The scientist here wants hard, dry, irrefutable facts; the responsible physician requires to know—by his own careful diagnosis or by an array of tabulated facts—the condition of the patient before and after treatment—that is, of the one who claims to have been cured ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... trial, the splendid assembly followed every phase with breathless attention, yet with conflicting emotions,—for the prisoner was one of their peers and all felt the case to be momentous; while, as the masterly arguments proceeded, and the evidence seemed irrefutable, perhaps few among them could have determined how it should be most wisely decided, in view of the waverings and discontent which had threatened ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... had been organized abroad to work for the restoration of Poland; and further, she visited the confessional of a celebrated Jesuit priest, who made an absolute fanatic of her. The supposed fortune of the count had dwindled to a mere nothing, although he had given almost irrefutable evidence of its existence to Lizabetha ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... no question in his mind; he would never betray her, lacking irrefutable conviction that she was an employee ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... offer explanations, and, if possible, to terminate the discussion. The newspapers were full of virulent articles, pamphlets appeared in great numbers, and the people in some cases seemed disposed to settle the question by the right of might, an irrefutable argument. ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... that the injurious delays of the past will find redress in the equity of the future. Our minister has been instructed to press these demands on the French Government with all the earnestness which is called for by their importance and irrefutable justice, and in a spirit that will evince the respect which is due to the feelings of those from ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... determines the decision of our will at any given moment. The idea of a free will, however, is a denial of the law of cause and effect, both in the field of philosophy and theology. Saint Augustine and Martin Luther furnish irrefutable theological arguments for the denial of a free will. The omnipotence of God is irreconcilable with the idea of free will. If everything that happens does so because a superhuman and omnipotent power wants it (Not a single leaf falls to the ground without the will of God), how can ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... This was irrefutable, but more so the changing viewpoint. Zenie had tasted emancipation. Miss Susie shrugged her shoulders and left the room ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... times the amount from the old Spaniards—who had offered a similar reward for the capture of any vessels of the Chilian squadron—and kept it. Fortunately, his own letters prove these matters, which otherwise I should have hesitated to mention, unsupported by testimony so irrefutable. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... to study rhetoric in his school. Among other controversial battles, I succeeded, by the most irrefutable argument, in making him change, or rather ruin his doctrine of universals. His doctrine consisted in affirming the perfect identity of the essence in every individual of the same species, so that according to him there was no difference in the essence but only in the infinite variety ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... side by side with the immediate opponents of Strauss and his disciples. We mean the Mediation or Evangelical School. They represent the advance of German theology from Rationalism to positive orthodoxy. Beginning with able and irrefutable arguments for the Evangelists, they have extended their discussions to other important branches of Scriptural defence. As a consequence, they have built up a valuable apologetic literature which will occupy a prominent place in ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Castrametation. A Three Rivers antiquarian had attempted to establish that it was Ives Cholette who had been the sculptor of the statue in question, but our old friend (through the church registers—and through ancient and irrefutable records) showed it could neither be Ives Cholette, aged, in 1771, 10 years, nor his younger brother Hyacinthe, aged then but 8 years, who had designed this great work of art, but Cholette of another ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... it important to confute the arguments they addressed to the public. Mr. Mather addressed a letter to the editor of the Shipping Almanack and Gazette, which produced a great impression where the arguments of the Lancashire leaders had been accepted as irrefutable. It is desirable to reproduce this document, as the controversy was one of the most important in its day, and the policy ultimately adopted remained longer open to question than any other of the anti-protectionist measures which were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Eglington believed that she loved him, that her interest in David was only part of her idealistic temperament—the admiration of a woman for a man of altruistic aims; but his hatred of David, of what David was, and of his irrefutable claims, reacted on her. Perverseness and his unhealthy belief that he would master her in the end, that she would one day break down and come to him, willing to take his view in all things, and to be his slave—all this drove him farther and farther ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sovereign international State, although it is bound to observe a condition of permanent neutrality. The South African Republic falls undoubtedly under this category of States, the sovereignty of which is limited in one or other defined direction. But the fact of its sovereignty is nevertheless irrefutable. It will be pointed out later how this position, which is undoubtedly the correct one, has been consistently upheld by the Government of the South African Republic, but it is necessary now to ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... relation to its centre of thought. Some people think with their heads—their subsequent actions are as logical and unpleasant as are those of the other sort who think only with their blood, and this latter has its irrefutable logic also. He thought in this subterranean fashion, and if he had thought in the other the issue would ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... the first place, of certain irrefutable proofs that Miss Bamberger had not died from shock, but had been killed by a thin and extremely sharp instrument with which she had been stabbed in the back. Isidore Bamberger's own doctor had satisfied himself of this, and had signed his statement under ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... each other, appalled. This last statement seemed to be irrefutable. They were captives on the island, which seemed itself to be in the throes ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... was only under reprieve until sufficient time to obviate suspicion should have elapsed after father's death. We had no proof that would stand in any court—even if we should have been given the chance to adopt that course. And without absolute, irrefutable proof, it was all so cleverly woven, stretched over so many years, that our charge must have been held to be too visionary and fantastic to ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that others less esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the 'Herculean' labours, as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. After the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be instantly detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... am not mistaken, there is no one to whom this proposition, at first sight and in its entirety, does not seem utterly irrefutable. Reader, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... irrefutable." With these words he rose, pushed aside his chair with a little temper, and, turning, met Jefferson face to face. The great man smiled, and put his hand affectionately on Hyde's shoulder. He had evidently heard the conversation, ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... Kloot to exclude authors, saved him from magnifying their importance by police squabbles. Besides, a clever lawyer might prove the exclusion illegal. What was done was done. The dignity of the hero of a hundred dramas was best served by private beefsteaks and a rumoured version, irrefutable save in a court of law. It was bad enough that the Heathen Journalist should supply so graphic a picture of the midnight melodrama, coloured even more highly than Goldwater's eyes. Kloot had been glad that the Journalist had left before the episode; but when ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... her ear. A dispute having afterwards arisen between the two queens, Chriemhild, carried away by pride and passion, produces the fatal girdle, a token which, if found in the possession of any save the husband, was regarded as an almost irrefutable proof of guilt among the nations of the North. At this Brunhild vows revenge, and is aided by the fierce Hagan, Guenther's most devoted follower, who, having induced Chriemhild to confide to him the secret of the spot where ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... this kind on a symbolic personality is rare enough to be clearly remarkable, and every author has a weakness for the striking and irrefutable example. The vivisection of war reveals such examples, but it does not make them out of nothing. In a more normal public life, symbolic pictures are no less governant of behavior, but each symbol is far less inclusive because there are so many competing ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Chancellor has declared that there was irrefutable proof that if Germany did not march through Belgium, her enemies would. This proof, as now being produced, is of the strongest character. So the Chancellor was right in appealing to the law of necessity, although he had no regret that it violated international law. This law of ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... far the most popular of the day. It furnishes the subject of discussions, in conversations, journals, books, courts of justice; and extraordinary as it may appear, it is certain that political economy will have fulfilled its task and its practical mission, when it shall have rendered common and irrefutable the simple proposition that "in abundance consist ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... old image of the Scriptures suddenly came back to my mind. It seemed to me that I had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, that all the mysteries were unveiled, so much did I find myself under the sway of a new, strange, and irrefutable logic. And arguments, reasonings, proofs, rose up in a heap before my brain only to be immediately displaced by some stronger proof, reasoning, argument. My head had in fact, become a battle-ground of ideas. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... the circumstances of the case, beginning with the death of Hugh Mainwaring, and laying special stress upon his irreproachable reputation. He stated that it would be shown to the jury that the life of Hugh Mainwaring had been above suspicion, an irrefutable argument against the charges of fraud and dishonesty which had been brought against him by those who sought to establish the will in contest. It would also be shown that the said document was a forgery, the result of a prearranged plan, devised by those who had been lifelong enemies ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... the earth.... Always he seemed to be on the verge of some illuminating and beautiful statement of his cause; always he was finding his writing inadequate, a thin treachery to the impulse of his heart." Have we not in such an experience an irrefutable proof of the inefficacy of Mr. Britling's God? Always the world has been all ears for a clear, convincing, compulsive message from God; always, or at any rate for many thousands of years, there have ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... ready to doubt every other testimony, the report of the child passed as irrefutable, and no one concerned himself as to how it had been concocted, how the ignorant young thing had been courted, bribed, how she had been intoxicated by fondling, applause, or, it may be, even by fear. She was dragged from her sleep at night, in order to take advantage ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... then. Bernadotte then almost bent down to the ear of the empress and said to her, whisperingly, the Directory of France were in possession of papers that would compromise Minister Thugut and furnish irrefutable proofs that Minister Thugut was by no means a reliable and honest adviser of his majesty, inasmuch as he was in the pay of foreign powers, England and Russia particularly, who paid him millions for always fanning anew the flames of Austria's hostility against France. Bernadotte added ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... matter?" "Rather a poseur, is he not?" "A question, that, of temperament," or "A matter of the definition of words"; and other charming generalities, which sound well, and seem to go far, and are pleasingly irrefutable. Sometimes the discussion turned on Art—on points of colour or technique; whether realism was quite justified; and should we be pre-Raphaelites? When these discussions started, Christian's eyes would grow bigger and clearer, with a sort of shining reasonableness; as though ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... all our knowledge of the external world—including the knowledge of our own brains—is merely a knowledge of our own mental states. Let it be observed that we do not even require to go so far as the irrefutable position of Berkeley, that the existence of an external world without the medium of mind, or of being without knowing, is inconceivable. It is enough to take our stand on a lower level of abstraction, ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... captivating, obvious simplicity of the doctrine; but now when the subject begins to be tedious and the discussion lags, the interest consequently abates and the Zeitgeist suddenly grasps the old objections, presented in a new garb, and what was hitherto truth, clear and irrefutable, now sinks into the dreary, gray mists of myth. ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... letters, as I have already told you, from M. de Mazarin; and the autographs will most assuredly not be regarded as too highly priced, if they establish, in an irrefutable manner, that M. Fouquet has embezzled large sums of money from the treasury and appropriated ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... anything beyond the necessaries of life; nay, that the labouring man when he lights his pipe or drinks his dram is as well as the rest consuming the substance of one poorer than himself. This argument appears to its framer irrefutable and a retort to which there can be no rejoinder. I confess my difficulty is not so much in refuting it as in seeing any point in it at all. What parallel can there be between an enormous and a very moderate expenditure or between prodigious ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith |
