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More "Self-evident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Teachers come into this world out of the Unknown, bringing the essence of their Truth with them. We know well what they will teach: in some form or another it will be Theosophy; it will be the old self-evident truths about Karma and the two natures of man. But how they will teach it: what kind of sugar-coating or bitter aloes they will prescribe along with it: —that, I think, depends on reactions from the age they come in and the people ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... identical, for such, as has been said already, afford no room for discrimination; but neither on the other side are they words only remotely similar to one another; for the differences between these last will be self-evident, will so lie on the surface and proclaim themselves to all, that it would be as superfluous an office as holding a candle to the sun to attempt to make this clearer than it already is. It may be desirable to trace and fix the difference between scarlet and crimson, for ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... 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
... 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 consideration of it. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • 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 Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... sermon, in the hope of finding some portions of it which I could either mimic or parody. I remember one sermon in particular, which the preacher devoted to a proof of God's existence. My own mental comment was, "If anything could make me such a fool as to doubt this self-evident truth, your arguments and the inflections of your voice would certainly make me do so." I heard another preacher indulge in a long half-hour of sarcasm at the expense of "the shallow infidel, who pointed ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... very different character from those which are connected with an investigation of the science of number, or any other abstract science. Mathematical and numerical investigations advance from principles which are clearly defined, and almost universally acknowledged to be self-evident; the reasoning also is of such a kind as to preclude the admission of error. In theology the case is different. There, it is difficult to define with accuracy the points from which the reasoning commences, and also to exclude, ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... 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 ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... referred to, but the suggestions made regarding Third and Fourth Hand bidding can be readily adapted to comply with its self-evident requirements. ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... mystic himself is characterized by a personal experience through which the ordinary limitations of life and the passionate pursuits of the soul are transcended, and a self-evident conviction is attained that he is in communion, or even in union, with some self-transcending Reality that absolutely satisfies and is what he has always sought. "This is He, this is He," the mystic exclaims: "There ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... brethren, the disenslaved Brazilians, frame their declaration of independence I hope they will insert this missing link: "We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all monarchs are usurpers and descendants of usurpers, for the reason that no throne was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised, of the only body possessing the legitimate right to set it up—the numerical mass ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... are so many and so self-evident that they scarcely need a eulogist. Even the newspapers recognize and admit them. If you had asked a New York journalist to sing the praises of his craft, his native and professional modesty would have embarrassed his voice. If you had ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Such a phantasy did not need proof of its own existence, or of that of its object. It possessed self-evidence. Its occurrence was attended with yielding and assent on the part of the soul. For it is as natural for the soul to assent to the self-evident as it is for it to pursue its proper good. The assent to a griping phantasy was called "comprehension," as indicating the firm hold that the soul thus took of reality. A gripping phantasy was defined as one ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... to glance at certain considerations which point to the by no means self-evident proposition, that this factor of irresponsible property is certain to be present in the social body a hundred years ahead. It has, no doubt, occurred to the reader that all the conditions of the shareholder's being unfit him for co-operative action in defence of the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... attention of young Mr. Benjamin Disraeli in Montague Place. Neither of these distinguished men can honestly be said ever to have acquired what is called the legal mind, a mental equipment which the younger of them had once the effrontery to define as a talent for explaining the self-evident, illustrating the obvious and expatiating on the commonplace. 'By adopting the law,' says Borrow, 'I had not ceased to be Lavengro.' He learnt Welsh when he should have been reading Blackstone. He studied German under the direction of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... brief sketch of the campaigns of the war. It is not cheerful reading for an American, nor yet of interest to a military student; and its lessons have been taught so often by similar occurrences in other lands under like circumstances, and, moreover, teach such self-evident truths, that they scarcely need to be brought to the notice of an historian. But the crowning event of the war was the Battle of New Orleans; remarkable in its military aspect, and a source of pride to every American. It is well ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... resulting from this requisition of unanimous concurrence in alterations of the confederation, must be known to every member in this convention; it is therefore needless to remind them of them. Is it not self-evident, that a trifling minority ought not to bind the majority? Would not foreign influence be exerted with facility over a small minority? Would the honorable gentleman agree to continue the most radical defects in the old system, because the petty State of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... 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 love of ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... 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, ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... maid poisoned her employer's family we should hang her. Then again, the English reader would say, how do we know that the man is a clubman? Have we ascertained this fact definitely, and if so, of what club or clubs is he a member? Well, we don't know, except in so far as the thing is self-evident. Any man who has romance enough in his life to be poisoned by a pretty housemaid ought to be in a club. That's the place for him. In fact, with us the word club man doesn't necessarily mean a man who belongs to a club: it is defined as a man who is arrested in a gambling den; or fined ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... minutes for Kennedy, in his most engaging and plausible manner, to state the hypothetical reason of our call. Though it was perfectly self-evident from the start that Mrs. Martin would throw cold water on anything requiring an outlay of money Craig accomplished his full purpose of securing an interview with Mr. Haswell. The invalid lay propped up in bed, and as we entered he heard us and turned his sightless eyes ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... indispensable condition. The food of laborers and the materials of production have no productive power; but labor can not exert its productive power unless provided with them. There can be no more industry than is supplied with materials to work up and food to eat. Self-evident as the thing is, it is often forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have their wants supplied, not by the produce of present labor, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... so self-evident that the doctor checked Dan'l as he was about to make another skull-fracturing dash with the rake; and the next minute Dexter's hand clutched the grass on the bank, and he crawled out, with the water streaming down out of his clothes, and his ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... nothing 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. There is not a moment to spare. The Turks have reinforced and they have ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... a youthful ebullition, and we might be tempted at first to look upon it as something venial and pass it by in silence. Reflection, however, should lead us to the opposite conclusion. There is nothing that a college faculty cannot afford to pardon sooner than disorder. The reason is almost self-evident. There is nothing that ruins so effectually the general tone of the college and demoralizes all the students, good and bad. Vice moves in rather narrow circles—much more narrow than those in authority are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... 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
... three thousand miles away into the seclusion of the wilderness, of their indefeasible moral right to pick their own company. There was abundant opportunity for mistake and temptation to wrong-doing in the exercise of this right, but the right itself is so nearly self-evident as to need ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... persons and influences that had worked upon Jacob Delafield since his college days, was felt in good earnest by not a few of Delafield's friends. For he was a person rich in friends, reserved as he generally was, and crotchety as most of them thought him. The mixture of self-evident strength and manliness in his physiognomy with something delicate and evasive, some hindering element of reflection or doubt, was repeated in his character. On the one side he was a robust, healthy Etonian, who could ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... me in its 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. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... "You ask what is self-evident," answered Pyrrhus. "If we can conquer the Romans, there is no city, Greek or barbarian, that can resist us, and we shall gain possession of the whole of Italy, a country whose size, richness, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... clothing modern sea-commanders and naval courts-martial with powers which exceed the due limits of reason and necessity. Nor is this the only instance where right and salutary principles, in themselves almost self-evident and infallible, have been advanced in justification of things, which in themselves are just as ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... at present want is a man sedulous in visiting; for preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister's duty.' Nay, ministers, especially ministers of but a few twelvemonths' standing, have themselves in some cases caught up the remark, as if it embodied a self-evident truth; and while they dare tell, not without self-complacency, that their discourses—things written at a short sitting, if written at all—cost them but little trouble, they add further, as if by way of apology, that they are, however, 'much occupied otherwise, and that preaching is in reality ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... was so entirely self-evident there was no need for her to make formal expression of it to Dorothy, yet, as she had promised herself to be "just like other girls" Tavia felt the obligation ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... the 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 Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... a truth evident to all men has no need of proof. That is an assumption of this sort:—"If it be desirable to be wise, it is proper to pay attention to philosophy." This proposition requires proof. For it is not self-evident. Nor is it notorious to all men, because many think that philosophy is of no service at all, and some think that it is even a disservice. A self-evident assumption is such as this:—"But it is desirable to be wise." And because this is of itself evident from the simple fact, and is at once ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... the point, that I have been 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
... method; by tracing from ideas clearly conceived the consequences which were formally involved in them. What, then, were these ideas—these verae ideae, as he calls them—and how were they to be obtained? If they were to serve as the axioms of his system, they must be self-evident truths, of which no proof was required; and the illustration which he gives of the character of such ideas is ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... 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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... a self-evident fact. I know that, and she is your ladylove. But I want to know all about her, and, first ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... must live in it and feel with it. He must so familiarize himself with all the details, as in a manner to become a child of that epoch; for he can present a really living image of only that which is living in himself. That this requires a deep and earnest study of history is self-evident. Historical Romance demands the study of the historian, together with the creative imagination of the poet. For the free embodiment of the poet can blossom only from out the studio of the historian, as the flower from the seed; as, by a reciprocal organic action, the hyacinth is derived ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... asked here. It is supported by reasons as broad as the nature of man, and as numerous as the wants of society. Man is the only government-making animal in the world. His right to a participation in the production and operation of government is an inference from his nature, as direct and self-evident as is his right to acquire property or education. It is no less a crime against the manhood of a man, to declare that he shall not share in the making and directing of the government under which ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... economical without parsimony and liberal without prodigality, and generally to follow such rules of wisdom as tend to render life prosperous, and human conduct acceptable to society. All such rules are self-evident, and grow necessarily out of the general principle which demands of the functions of the body to subserve the attainment of self-sanctification. But we must now speak precisely of this sanctification, to point out briefly ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... quite as final as might appear to somebodies perhaps. At least it does not prevent my going on to agree with the saying of Spiridion, ... do you remember?... 'Tout ce que l'homme appelle inspiration, je l'appelle aussi revelation,' ... if there is not something too self-evident in it after all—my sole objection! And is it not true that your inability to analyse the mental process in question, is one of the proofs of the fact of inspiration?—as the gods were known of old by not being ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the appearance of the water-course to indicate 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 downhill. He imagined that the downward slope had a fall ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... 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 is taking advantage ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... not forget it, but I did not mention it, for I know how closely measured out are the moments of a king; and besides, it seems to me as self-evident that we think of our personal advantage as that when we buy a horse we ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... were published in England, were little read, and universally decried. 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 of ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... seem to be so self-evident that maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with maximum prosperity for the employee, ought to be the two leading objects of management, that even to state this fact should be unnecessary. And yet there is no question that, throughout ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... 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
... branch—Literature—is not so easily disposed of. In fact, the separating of the literature from the language, you will say, is a self-evident absurdity. That, however, only shows that you have not looked carefully into examination papers. I am not concerned with what the a priori imagination may suppose to be Literature, but with the actual questions put by examiners under that name. I find ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... perhaps be dismissed with a single citation from the Supreme Court. Said Mr. Justice Bradley, in the Legal Tender Cases: "As a government it [the United States] was invested with all the attributes of sovereignty.... It seems to be a self-evident proposition that it is invested with all those inherent and implied powers which, at the time of adopting the Constitution, were generally considered to belong to every government as such, and as being essential to the exercise of ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... (Vol. 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 of fact, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... describes his natural rights,—defines society as a compact,—declares that no generation has a right to bind its successors, (a doctrine which Mr. Jefferson, and some foolish people after him, thought a self-evident truth,)—hence, no family has a right to take possession of a throne. An hereditary rule is as great an absurdity as an hereditary professorship of mathematics,—a place supposed by Dr. Franklin to exist in some German university. Paine grew bolder as he advanced: "If ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... a purer air. Driven by storms beyond sight of land, the sailor steers by the stars; and our fathers, compelled to explore the whole subject of social rights and duties, derived their government from what they called self-evident truths. Despite the brilliant and vehement eloquence of Mr. Choate, they did not deal in glittering generalities, and the Declaration of Independence was not the passionate manifesto of a revolutionary war, but the calm and simple statement of a new ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fact that, from his point of view, chipmunks must live, and why should they not have eggs for breakfast? Doubtless, in squirrel philosophy, it is a self-evident truth that birds were created to supply the tables of their betters in fur, and the pursuit of eggs and nestlings adds the true sportsman's zest to the enjoyment of them. So long, therefore, as the law that "might makes right" prevails in higher quarters, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... such professional courses depends to a very marked degree upon the success with which they can be carried out where they are counted toward a higher degree (M.A. or Ph.D.) the difficulty is not so great, since their introductory nature is self-evident; but where they conclude, so to speak, the student's formal training the difficulty of making them "fit in" is often sadly apparent. At any rate, in this borderland between cultural and professional studies, where the college ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... 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 and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... 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
... open). During the last five years furs have been increasingly fashionable, and to this end no one cause has contributed so strongly as the automobile. The exhilarating motion makes necessary clothing of compact texture. This truth is self-evident and does not require the involved chain of reasoning by which a friend over our milkless teacups last night strove to prove that by all laws of the game the auto ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... not peevishly but as one who indorses, unnecessarily, a self-evident fact. "They've lived here on Angel Island as long as we have. But they haven't made good yet, and we have. Why, just imagine them working on ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... which had for result that he was immediately set at liberty by the Chief of the State. The honourable character given the condemned man by all his fellow-citizens made the grossness of the blunder self-evident. The magistrates themselves admitted it, and yet out of caste considerations they did all they could to prevent the pardon being signed. In all similar affairs the jury, confronted with technical details it is unable to understand, naturally hearkens to the public ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... evil spirits from the human 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 ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... dark picture drawn of the continued and brutal violence, as well as the flagrant unfaithfulness, of the tenants. Matthew's version gives emphasis to the increasing harshness of treatment of the owner's messengers, as does Mark's. First comes beating, then wounding, then murder. The interpretation is self-evident. The 'servants' are the prophets, mostly men inferior in rank to the hierarchy, shepherds, fig-gatherers, and the like. They came to rouse Israel to a sense of the purpose for which they had received their distinguishing prerogatives, and their reward had been contempt and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... That we demand of the captain of the steamer 'City of Memphis,' that we be allowed the same privileges on this boat that others enjoy. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident,' that one man is just as good as another, no matter what his rank. We demand that we be allowed to eat at the table in the cabin, to sleep in the state-rooms, to drink at the bar if we so elect, and to go to any place ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... departure of Don Luis de Bracamonte, asking you to be pleased to send a governor for those places, for Don Luis said that he would remain there only until the arrival of your Majesty's appointee—a thing that was self-evident, even had he not said it. Had it not been for placing a captain before one whom your Majesty had honored with the title of master-of-camp, I would have given those forts in charge to Captain Don Andres Perez Franco, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... annihilate itself, because the result would be that there would be no deposits. A practical law which I recognise as such must be qualified for universal legislation; this is an identical proposition and, therefore, self-evident. Now, if I say that my will is subject to a practical law, I cannot adduce my inclination (e.g., in the present case my avarice) as a principle of determination fitted to be a universal practical law; for this is so far from being fitted for a universal legislation that, if put in the ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... It is self-evident that a narrow pallet requires a wide tooth, and a wide pallet a narrow or thin tooth wheel; in the ratchet wheel we have a metal point passing over a jeweled plane. The friction is at its minimum, because there is less adhesion than with the club tooth, but we must emphasize ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner
... will fight among themselves is self-evident; that Christian nations shall defend themselves from the assaults of savages is also obvious; but that two Christian nations should go to war for anything, on any ground whatever, is to my mind inexplicable ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... along their lines and the flitting movements of the enemy make post 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 ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... agree. Take up the points on which there can be little chance for differences of opinion. You will find the other man will get in the habit of agreeing with your propositions and that his antagonism weakens. State facts that are right and truthful, and are so plain that the truth will be self-evident. ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... have not yet forgotten the rule which was given to them arbitrarily without proof by their masters; others construct a universal axiom from their experience with simple numbers, where the fourth number is self-evident, as in the case of 2, 4, 3, 6; here it is evident that if the second number be multiplied by the third, and the product divided by the first, the quotient is 6; when they see that by this process the number is produced which they ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... 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 of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... which you have to earn a living, or snatch your baby from your breast—to say nothing of a thousand ingenious forms of torture inflicted just because "He sees that it is best for you," after having led you to see otherwise—that you cannot trust a God like that must be more or less self-evident. If you are part of His Self-Expression He cannot practise futilities through your experience and personality. He must be kind with a common-sense kindness, loving with a common-sense love. Whatever explanation of our sufferings and failures there may be we must not shuffle them ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... comparative parsimony of description and narration, to be her true method as she grew as a fiction-maker: the early unpublished story "Susan," and the first draught of "Sense and Sensibility," had the epistolary form of Richardson, the more undramatic nature of which is self-evident. As for characterization itself, she is with the few: she has added famous specimens—men and women both—to the natural history of fiction. To think of but one book, "Pride and Prejudice," what an inimitable study of a foolish woman is Mrs. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... clothes. But if he should ever marry it was clear to him that he must have a house like other people, and that he must give dinner parties. He did not reason this out in his mind—he never reasoned anything out in his mind—it was all clear and self-evident to him. Therefore, after a while, the question began to arise—why should he not marry Helena Langley? He knew perfectly well that if she wished to be married to him Sir Rupert would not offer the slightest objection. Any man whom his daughter ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... as compensating, by 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; ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... institutions and antagonistic laws. There being such a universal law, if any human 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 ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... her genius remains as individual here as the genius of Blanche of Castile and Pierre de Dreux in the transepts. That the three lancets were her own taste, as distinctly as the Trianon was the taste of Louis XIV, is self-evident. They represent all that was dearest to her; her Son's glory on her right; her own beautiful life in the middle; her royal ancestry on her left: the story of her divine right, thrice-told. The pictures are all personal, like ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... philanthropists, and more than a century had to elapse before the mass of the people grasped and applied them. That freedom was a right, that the very first of the natural rights of man was to be free and to belong only to himself, would seem to be self-evident, and yet thousands of years had to pass before the glorious thought was generally accepted, and the nations of the earth had ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... thousands, of cords of wood, all of which had to be carried in from the hilltop or slopes and passed through the constricted doorway. This labor would be a sufficient guarantee of economical use; we may be sure that no fuel was wasted. If proof were needed of such a self-evident proposition, it would be found in the almost complete absence of charcoal; here and there, but seldom, a small mass of it showed that a burning chunk, covered up, had smoldered until the inflammable portion was consumed. Bunches or handfuls of coarse grass or small ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... VALUE.—Marx claimed that practically all wealth has been created by the laborers alone, and that all persons other than laborers are parasites. To those who have carefully studied Chapter VIII the error of this claim must appear self-evident, nevertheless, this concept of value is the basis of all socialist attacks upon government and industry. Marx developed ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... with her stronger neighbour on the East, unless she adds to her forces and is helped by her allies. Thus the hostility to Germany, from this aspect also, is based on England's most important interests, and we must treat it as axiomatic and self-evident. ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... The work involved in this eliminating process is exceedingly detrimental to the various organs and to the individual. To overeat is to overwork, and to overwork a machine or an animal is not only poor economy but bad judgment. If the digestive apparatus is required to work overtime, it is a self-evident assumption that the various organs will not digest efficiently the food necessary for ordinary existence. If the necessary nourishment is not adequately digested, the general health will suffer as a consequence. If the general health is below standard the individual will not be competent ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... whether God exists; (2) what is, or rather what is not, the manner of His existence; (3) how He acts through His knowledge, will, and power. Under the first heading we shall ask whether God's existence is self-evident, whether it can be demonstrated, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... danger of over-growth is, therefore, small. Besides, where change of one sort is going on very rapidly; where the limbs are growing and the bones knitting more firmly, where the strength of bodily endurance, as well as of bodily activity, is daily becoming greater; it is self-evident that, if the inward changes which ought to accompany these outward ones are making no progress, there cannot but be derangement and deformity in the system. And, therefore, when I look around, I cannot but wish generally that the change from childhood to manhood in ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... east, or even south-east by east of the French Capital. Our base, Havre, lay to the north-west, with the enemy in between. It was unnecessary to say anything further. The facts spoke for themselves. The British Army was up against it, none could tell what would happen next. One duty, however, was self-evident, and that was to watch ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... tall, particularly thin, and exceedingly skinny personages: very upright, and very yellow. Miss Amelia Crumpton owned to thirty-eight, and Miss Maria Crumpton admitted she was forty; an admission which was rendered perfectly unnecessary by the self-evident fact of her being at least fifty. They dressed in the most interesting manner—like twins! and looked as happy and comfortable as a couple of marigolds run to seed. They were very precise, had the strictest possible ideas of propriety, wore ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a considerable amount of plant-food. We have taken far more nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash, etc., out of the soil, than we have returned to it in the shape of manure. Consequently, the soil must contain less and less of plant-food every year. And yet, while this is a self-evident fact, it is, nevertheless, true that many of these self-same farms are more productive now than when first cleared, or at any rate more productive than they were twenty-five or thirty ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... founded the school of pleasure, and maintained that the sole search worthy of man was that of happiness, and that it was his duty to make himself happy; that in consequence, it having been sufficiently proved and being even self-evident, that happiness cannot come to us from without, but must be sought within ourselves, it is necessary to study to know ourselves thoroughly (and this was from Socrates) in order to decide what are the states ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... 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; and any ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... marks the progress of public opinion that, whereas the Indian Government only ventured to take power to prevent inopportune publication with many apologies, and as a temporary measure, the Parliament assumed it as self-evident that "forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous, and unlicensed papers, pamphlets, and books" had no right to exist, and should be nipped in the bud by the appointment of licensers. Twelve London ministers, therefore, were nominated to license books in divinity, which was equivalent to enacting ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... had belonged to the Force exactly as long as had the First Sergeant himself, which was from the dawn of the Force's existence. And John G. is a gentleman and a soldier, every inch of him. Horse-show judges have affixed their seal to the self-evident fact by the sign of the blue ribbon,[70-1] but the best proof lies in the personal knowledge of "A" Troop, soundly built on twelve years' brotherhood. John G., on that diluvian night, was twenty-two years old, and still every whit as clean-limbed, alert, and plucky ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... 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
... correspondence. This is mentioned with a view to direct your mind to the consideration of that course of causes and effects by which we are enabled to reason on what wo call moral and physical principles. And a hope is entertained that due regard will be paid to this self-evident fact, that nothing ever took place without an ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... logic, as defined in the Introductory Chapter, is to ascertain how we come by that portion of our knowledge (much the greatest portion) which is not intuitive: and by what criterion we can, in matters not self-evident, distinguish between things proved and things not proved, between what is worthy and what is unworthy of belief. Of the various questions which present themselves to our inquiring faculties, some receive an answer from direct consciousness, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... rule should govern 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, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... remained in the park of Buzanval with the National Guards under the galling fire from the Prussian intrenchments, and later, when he got back to the city, he spoke of their courage in the highest terms. It was undisputed that the Guards fought bravely on that occasion; after that was it not self-evident that all the disasters of the army were to be attributed solely to the imbecility and treason of its leaders? In the Rue de Rivoli he encountered bands of men shouting: "Hurrah for the Commune! down with Trochu!" It was the leaven of revolution beginning to work again ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... over-estimate the evidence in its favour. We do not know the truth of these doctrines; we only know that they are probably true, and that probability is and must be enough for us; we must not torture our guesses into a sham appearance of infallible reasoning, nor call them self-evident because we cannot prove them, nor try to transfer the case from the court of reason to the court of ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... cannot be avoided by excuses, nor can it be delegated. It is not enough for woman to point to the self-evident domination of man. Nor does it avail to plead the guilt of rulers and the exploiters of labor. It makes no difference that she does not formulate industrial systems nor that she is an instinctive believer in social justice. In her submission lies her ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... between the Schuylkill and Delaware, were formed somewhat earlier than the Lutheran congregations in their vicinity. As the members of the two religious bodies were closely intermarried and often worshipped in the same buildings, it is self-evident that the earlier organizations must have had an important influence on the later. Beside this, in Europe, especially in Holland, but also in Germany, there was a fuller self-government in the Reformed congregations than prevailed in the Lutheran in Germany. Their system was, therefore, better adapted ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker
... all the frailties of human nature 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 be treated ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... possible that some of the most common, and if I dared I should say the most narrow, the most self-evident of these prejudices may sway and terrify you from the plain path of equity? Dare you look the world's unjust contumelies stedfastly in the face? Dare you answer for yourself that you will not shudder at the performance of what you cannot ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... are self-evident to those who are versed in Speculations of Morality. For which Reason I shall not enlarge upon them, but proceed to a Point of the same Nature, which may open to us a more ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... glory of Bernard of Cluny's Celestial City, is more beautiful than true—probably. Orderly reason does not always have to be a visible part of all great things. Logic may possibly require that unity means something ascending in self-evident relation to the parts and to the whole, with no ellipsis in the ascent. But reason may permit, even demand an ellipsis, and genius may not need the self-evident part. In fact, these parts may be the "blind-spots" in the progress of unity. They may be filled with little but repetition. "Nature ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... "the kingdoms" in plural number; but there will be one kingdom, that is, one government of our Lord, and his Christ. And this will be a true Republican government—to give explanations about which there is no room here, but we remark, that this great truth will become self-evident to those who comprehend this book. And we expect, that you, respected President Buchanan, will comprehend it and then you will take the spiritual weapons, which are comprehended in our message, for the conversion of monarchs into true ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... at Toender had formed the peculiar custom of singing in German—even at the Danish service. It is self-evident, however, that such a custom could not be satisfactory to Brorson. He was a Pietist with the fervent longing of that movement for a real spiritual communion with his fellow Christians. But a custom that ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity, which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... opinion of a great class. Probably their draftsman was Sebastian Lotzer, the tanner who for years past had preached apostolic communism. It is not impossible that the Anabaptist Balthasar Huebmaier had a hand in them. Their demands are moderate and would be considered matters of self-evident justice to-day. The first article is for the right of each community to choose its own pastor. The second protests against the minor tithes on vegetables paid to the clergy, though expressly admitting the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... likely still to flow from this large and growing accession to our marine strength, need scarcely be commented on. They are self-evident, and recommend themselves alike to the merchant, the trader, and the mere man of pastime, all of whom are in some degree participators. Besides the regularity and security attendant on the transmission of all sorts of merchandise, there is an immense ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... explosion of public indignation, which had for result that he was immediately set at liberty by the Chief of the State. The honourable character given the condemned man by all his fellow-citizens made the grossness of the blunder self-evident. The magistrates themselves admitted it, and yet out of caste considerations they did all they could to prevent the pardon being signed. In all similar affairs the jury, confronted with technical details it is unable to understand, naturally hearkens to the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... "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 ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... of all concerned changed completely. It hardly needed the Collector's order, given with the utmost promptitude, to cause the Temple woman to give the children up. To the Indian mind, quick to see the finger of God in such an event, the thing was self-evident. An unseen Power was at work here. Who were they that they should withstand it? A telegram told us the children were safe, and next day we ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... and scarce a popular expression esteemed figurative, 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
... 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 ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... to assume that 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 quite ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is probably," says Mr. Russell, "the greatest achievement of which our own age has to boast.... 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, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... 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
... there was no wall but one. Simson placed himself on the side next the ruins, so as to intercept any communication with the old house, which was what his mind was fixed upon. I was posted on the other side. To say that nothing could come near without being seen was self-evident. It had been so also on the previous night. Now, with our three lights in the midst of the darkness, the whole place seemed illuminated. Dr. Moncrieff's lantern, which was a large one, without any means of shutting up,—an old-fashioned ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... made 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. It is sufficient ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... point of fact, it's quite a self-evident sort of thing. I am extremely anxious, Major, that my friend Dombey should hear me express my very great astonishment and regret, that my lovely and accomplished relative, who was possessed of every qualification to make a man happy, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Dillwyn, it is self-evident. You would not respect me if I allowed you to do it; and I should not respect myself. We New England folks, if we are nothing else, we ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... child; but we might break off one of those branches," opined Raymonde. "No, I know we can't reach it from below, that's self-evident. Your humble servant's going to climb. Here, Ave, you bluebottle, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... probably reflected accurately the intentions of his chief, as conceived in his tent on Saturday night. It was self-evident that Anderson and McLaws could be readily held in check, so long as Jackson's corps was kept sundered from them. Indeed, they would have necessarily remained on the defensive so long as isolated. Instead, then, of leaving the Third Corps, and one division of the Twelfth, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... feeling 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 ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... without alloy, 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 man who could ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... local religions, the development of the individual in that which is most peculiar and individual in him. Its claim is in its grace, its freedom and happiness, its lively interest, the variety of its gifts to civilisation; its weakness is self-evident, and was what made the unity of Greece impossible. [253] It is this centrifugal tendency which Plato is desirous to cure, by maintaining, over against it, the Dorian influence of a severe simplification everywhere, in society, in culture, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... says the other, whose physical structure somewhat resembled a fat lath, and whose general contour made it self-evident that he was not given much to frivolity, jauntily-fitting coats and breeches, or perfumed ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... 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 ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... department of our thought, it remains to ask how far this necessity constitutes a sufficient reason for accepting this hypothesis.... Those who hold that the edifice of physical science is really constructed of conclusions logically inferred from self-evident premises, may reasonably demand that any practical judgments claiming philosophic certainty should be based on an equally firm foundation. If, on the other hand, we find that in our supposed knowledge of the world of nature propositions are commonly taken to be ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... voucher for the work, which is meant for all comers—for the passer-by, for the indifferent, and even for my country's foes. My wish is that the veriest looker-on, idly turning these pages, may be confronted only with documents whose authenticity will be self-evident, if he is willing to see, and whose ignominious tale will reach his heart, if ye ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... these truths 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 life, life, liberty, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... checked, and a train of serious reflection laid, which, like some of those self-evident convictions that fastened on the awakened conscience, the old ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... hearts, must have it in habitual exercise within them; and those who would have the comforting evidence of their being in covenant with God, must feel themselves drawn by his example, frequently to acknowledge themselves as devoted to him. It is self-evident, that every time that the people of God take hold on his Covenant, he, after some manner, makes a covenant with them. Every act of Covenanting, therefore, on the part of the saints of God, and especially ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... schoolroom, and intelligent effort to understand and improve one's own voice. I hope I 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 ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... of woman, we hold it as a self-evident truth, that she should be educated deeply, thoroughly, solidly; that the first work of every reformer, every philanthropist, every statesman, every Christian, is to help and urge onward ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... employed at twenty shillings a week. He has his orders, and would be marked for discouragement if he overstepped them. That the system is bad, there needs no lengthened argument to prove, because the fact is self-evident. If it were anything else, the results that have attended it could not possibly have come to pass. Who will say that under a good system, our streets could have ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... necessary in the first place to inquire in what respects electric baths differ from other methods of electrization—especially those recently introduced as "general"—that their physiological effects should merit individual consideration. They differ in two ways. One of these is self-evident. To the effects of electricity are superadded those of the warm bath. The effects of the warm bath per se are too familiar to every physician to require comment. Its effects in combination with electricity, ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... de la Billardiere, a man of sheer incapacity. This plan, so vast apparently yet so simple in point of fact, which did away with so many large staffs and so many little offices all equally useless, required for its presentation to the public mind close calculations, precise statistics, and self-evident proof. Rabourdin had long studied the budget under its double-aspect of ways and means and of expenditure. Many a night he had lain awake unknown to his wife. But so far he had only dared to conceive the plan and fit it prospectively to the administrative skeleton; all of which counted for nothing,—he ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... of giving him to understand that they were doing something for him. That had the end and object that the auditors know; and it is not unknown that the archbishop wrote in their favor to the royal Council. That was almost self-evident, for the explicit manner in which Licentiate Don Francisco de Rojas y Onate, visitor of these islands, enlightened him was not sufficient, when the visitor said that he had no right, and that neither ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... truths to be self-evident, that all men are created sober, and are endowed with certain inalienable rights, such as Life, Grievances, and the Pursuit of Other People's Happiness. Whenever any form of amusement becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the Pan-Antis to abolish it. Prudence, indeed, will dictate ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... effort" which had been 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
... Christian perfection is the guidance of the soul by the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is attained, ordinarily, first by bringing whatever is inordinate in our animal propensities under the control of the dictates of reason by the practice of mortification and self-denial; for it is a self-evident principle that a rational being ought to be master of his animal appetites. And second, by bringing the dictates of reason under the control and inspiration of the Holy Spirit by recollection, and by fidelity ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... well as the merits of the new science, I tested its accuracy by the careful examination of living heads and skulls in comparison with ascertained character, and with the anatomy of the brain, not forgetting the self-evident principles of mental philosophy. Many thousand critical examinations were made between the years 1834 and 1841, leading to many positive conclusions. The first year's observations made me distinctly aware and certain of several defects in the doctrines, as to the functions ascribed to certain ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... work, will not hesitate to adopt it. It is evidently also necessary not to personify "nature" too much, though I am very apt to do it myself, since people will not understand that all such phrases are metaphors. Natural Selection is, when understood, so necessary and self-evident a principle that it is a pity it should be in any way obscured; and it therefore occurs to me that the free use of "survival of the fittest", which is a compact and accurate definition of it, would tend much to its being more widely accepted and prevent its ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Certain self-evident duties are imposed upon every rational being. One of the first of these is the duty of being usefully employed a large portion of our time. It is probable that nearly all young people have a certain dislike for ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... in their favor and prevented from seeing the truth. The second is the love of the evil which the truth condemns, which closes the mind against the truth, and, as it were, binds and imprisons the individual (see A. C. 5096). It must be self-evident to every intelligent Christian that if it is wrong to deliberately appropriate falses and evils "temperately" or moderately to the building up of our spiritual organizations, it is equally wrong to appropriate temperately those natural substances which correspond to falses and evils in ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... 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 ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... the guilt of most 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 habit of butchering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... this larva becomes self-evident. The young Meloe leaves the down of the Bee at the moment when the egg is laid; and, since contact with the honey would be fatal to the grub, it must, in order to save itself, adopt the tactics followed by ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... by proceeding step by step from more simple to more complex operations, we are enabled to express the same thing in many different forms. The equivalence of these different forms, though a necessary consequence of self-evident axioms, is not always, to our minds, self-evident; but the mathematician, who by long practice has acquired a familiarity with many of these forms, and has become expert in the processes which lead from one to another, can often transform a perplexing expression into another which ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... cords of wood, all of which had to be carried in from the hilltop or slopes and passed through the constricted doorway. This labor would be a sufficient guarantee of economical use; we may be sure that no fuel was wasted. If proof were needed of such a self-evident proposition, it would be found in the almost complete absence of charcoal; here and there, but seldom, a small mass of it showed that a burning chunk, covered up, had smoldered until the inflammable portion was consumed. Bunches or handfuls of coarse grass or small weeds had ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... of 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 were ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... value of such professional courses depends to a very marked degree upon the success with which they can be carried out where they are counted toward a higher degree (M.A. or Ph.D.) the difficulty is not so great, since their introductory nature is self-evident; but where they conclude, so to speak, the student's formal training the difficulty of making them "fit in" is often sadly apparent. At any rate, in this borderland between cultural and professional studies, where the college is merging with the university or professional ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... method a clear and simple rule which dispensed with the need for vain and subtle arguments, I returned with the help of this rule to the examination of such knowledge as concerned myself; I was resolved to admit as self-evident all that I could not honestly refuse to believe, and to admit as true all that seemed to follow directly from this; all the rest I determined to leave undecided, neither accepting nor rejecting it, nor yet troubling myself to clear up difficulties which did not lead ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... 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 ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the immigrants brought their peculiarities with them, which were fixed already when they came, we must also accept as self-evident that the Negritos of the Philippines do not belong to the same stock as the more powerful, bright-colored Indios. As long as these islands have been known, more than three centuries, the skin of the Negritos has been dark brown, almost black, their hair short ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... 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 my imagination, till ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... suddenly self-evident. Logan had said he'd figured a table of overdrive fields for the Isis which would work for anything between one point five light-speeds to maximum. One point ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... as Hammond and myself held the creature suspended over the bed, "I can give you self-evident proof that here is a solid, ponderable body, which, nevertheless, you cannot see. Be good enough to watch the surface ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... it best to make no rejoinder. Instead, he took the little Tommy in his arms and began to stroke the cheeks of the nestling child. The diversion had the proper effect. Uncle Martin, perceiving that the results of his exhaustive meditations in medicine and theology, which were as plain as the most self-evident nose on a man's face, were not estimated at their par value, got up and explained that he must go to Greenpoint and call on a man who had lately lost a child; and then, fearing he wouldn't get back to supper, he said good-by, and come again, and always glad to see you, Charley, and good ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... These facts are so self-evident that it seems useless to state them. One has but to hold his hands before his eyes to convince himself that the mind sees by means of eyes, which are physical sense organs. One has but to hold his hands tight over his ears to find ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... practised. Whereas in the adult masturbation ordinarily culminates in ejaculation, in the child this is not usually the case; at any rate, as regards many children the occurrence of ejaculation is not demonstrable. I refer in this connexion to what I have already stated on page 54 et seq. It is self-evident from what has been previously said that during the second period of childhood masturbation is more likely than during the first period ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... 1861, with the assumption that the Confederacy was established; every step he had taken proved his persistence in the same idea; he never would consent to put obstacles in the way of recognition; and he was waiting only for the proper moment to interpose. All these points seemed so fixed — so self-evident — that no one in the Legation would have doubted or even discussed them except that Lord Russell obstinately denied the whole ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... 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 ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... war, which make it an immediate practical issue, involving not merely the welfare of the colored man, but the safety of society itself. If civil government is to be revived at all in the South, it is perfectly self-evident that the loyal men there must vote; but the loyal men are the negroes and the disloyal are the whites. To put back the governing power into the hands of the very men who brought on the war, and exclude those ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... an allusion to an eclipse of the Sun which possesses a two-fold interest—intrinsic and extrinsic. The former feature will be self-evident when the passage is read. The poet, in describing[166] the faded splendour of the fallen archangel, compares him to the Sun seen under circumstances which have temporarily deprived it of ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... groaned. What could he do but groan? The thing was self-evident, and if ever a man felt ashamed of himself that man was John Niel. He was a strictly honourable individual, and it cut him to the heart to think that he had entered on a course which, considering his engagement to Bessie, was not honourable. When a few minutes before he had told ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... increasing in this way, has any tendency to better the condition of the labouring poor. It is a self-evident proposition that any general rise in the price of labour, the stock of provisions remaining the same, can only be a nominal rise, as it must very shortly be followed by a proportional rise in the ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... design everywhere; and that the vast majority of the human race in every age and clime has seen it. Analogy from experience, sound induction—as we hold—from the works not only of men but of animals, has made it an all but self-evident truth to us, that wherever there is arrangement, there must be an arranger; wherever there is adaptation of means to an end, there must be an adapter; wherever an organization, there must be an organizer. The ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... sufficient for refraining from punishing Turkey. It is beside the point to quote what Turkey did during the war. It has suffered for it. The Times inquires wherein Turkey has been treated worse than the other Powers. I thought that the fact was self-evident. Neither Germany nor Austria and Hungary has been treated in the same way that Turkey has been. The whole of the Empire has been reduced to the retention of a portion of its capital, as it were, to mock the Sultan and that too has been done ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... it is one 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
... 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 peevish temper, I had taken the liberty to cut off the baby's ear, her simple words, "John, you ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... that lameness excluded from the supreme magistracy. That Roman citizenship was a condition for the regal office as well as for the consulate, is so very self-evident as to make it scarcely worth while to repudiate expressly the fictions respecting the burgess ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... And Henry Adams, in a letter to the American Historical Association already referred to, confesses that history has thus far been a fruitless quest for "the secret which would transform these odds and ends of philosophy into one self-evident, harmonious, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... good a proof that they were innate, as to say they are innate because men assent to them when they come to the use of reason. I agree then with these men of innate principles, that there is no knowledge of these general and self-evident maxims in the mind, till it comes to the exercise of reason: but I deny that the coming to the use of reason is the precise time when they are first taken notice of; and if that were the precise time, I deny that it would prove them ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... application of this method would raise the position of the novel to the level of a science, and that it would become a medium for the expression of established truths. The fallacy of the argument has been exposed by more than one critic. It is self-evident that the "experiments" by the novelist cannot be made on subjects apart from himself, but are made by him and in him; so that they prove more regarding his own temperament than about what he professes to regard as the ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... as the themes which they treat suggest that the Gospels were the first to be written. It is, however, a self-evident fact that a book was not written—at least not in antiquity, when the making of books was both laborious and expensive—unless a real need for it was felt. If we go back, and live for a moment in imagination among ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... new train of thought. Certainly, infinity, omnipresence, could neither be limited nor outlined; those were self-evident facts. ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Most High—a common mistake among reformers! He did not feel the sovereignty of man with regard to his fellow man, his positive inalienable right to deal with his God alone in matters of faith and religious conviction. The golden rule of our Master, 'Do as you would be done by,' seems simple and self-evident, and yet it is a late fruit in the garden of human culture. Mr. Roscoe says: 'When Luther was engaged in his opposition to the Church of Rome, he asserted the right of private judgment with the confidence and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The resemblance between parents and children is very commonly remarkable. Family physiognomical resemblance is as undeniable as national physiognomical resemblance. To doubt this is to doubt what is self-evident. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • 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," the asylum of the oppressed—while holding in our midst millions of fellow-beings ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... correspondents (Vol. 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 of fact, the sole argument advanced ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... when at war with you in old days, dominated your territory, but they made no progress towards destroying you. At last God granted them one day to push forward their dominion on the sea, and then in an instant you completely succumbed to them. (5) Is it not self-evident that your safety altogether depends upon the sea? The sea is your natural element—your birthright; it would be base indeed to entrust the hegemony of it to the Lacedaemonians, and the more so, since, as they themselves admit, they are far less acquainted with this business than yourselves; ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... any doubt on the matter. Alas, that I should have to say so, it is too self-evident. You persuade this poor creature to go out alone with you into the Pineta at an extraordinary hour of the morning, knowing then,—or according to your own showing, becoming aware soon after you started—that it was your uncle's intention by a marriage with this woman to destroy utterly every ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... rose and walked a few paces to knock out my post-breakfast pipe against an apple-tree. I was not so sure that he was right, self-evident as his statement appeared. Ideas moved confusedly in my mind, convictions somehow impressed when that golden-bronze spot of light so gently came to rest above my heart when I last stood at the Barrier; ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... reason, that all beings great and small came by the law of cause and effect, 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 disease and ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... natural course of reasoning, that there has never been an effected without a cause, and we infer from this, that there can be no action, either in animate or inanimate matter, without there first being some cause to produce it. And from this self-evident fact we know that there is some cause for every impulse or movement of either mind or matter, and that this law governs every action or movement of the animal kingdom. Then, according to this theory, there must be some cause ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... required. 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 ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... conform to it. The non-resident owners would then express themselves in the terms of Sir Philip Gibbs, "that he should consider it as the fault of his manager, if he were not to keep up the number of his slaves." This reasoning concerning the different tendencies of the two systems was self-evident; but facts were not wanting to confirm it. Mr. Long had remarked, that all the insurrections and suicides in Jamaica had been found among the imported slaves, who, not having lost the consciousness of civil rights, which they had enjoyed in their own country, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... present. The result, then, is that the coronet bone forces the navicular hard against the flexor tendon, which, in turn, presses firmly against the navicular as the force of the contracting muscles lifts the tendon into place. It is self-evident, then, that the more rapid the pace and the greater the load, the greater must these contending forces be, and the greater the liability to injury. For the same reason horses with excessive knee action are more liable to suffer from this disease than others, concussion of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... in 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 us ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... rules; it enjoined the utmost possible cleanliness, and formulated a principle so self-evident that it seems astounding people should not have recognized it for themselves: that the smallest infant, like ourselves, should have regular meals, and should only take fresh nourishment when it has digested what has been ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... to 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
... Stuart and the Rue Montorgueil. Sint ut sunt, aut non sint, the 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 everywhere, in Moscow as ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... survivor of the original firm of Chapman & Hall) has set down in writing, for similar preservation, his personal knowledge of the origin and progress of this book, of the monstrosity of the baseless assertions in question, and (tested by details) even of the self-evident impossibility of there being any truth in them." The "written testimony" alluded to is also in my possession, having been inclosed to me by Dickens, in 1867, with Mr. Chapman's letter ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and act under given circumstances; then 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 ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... "It is so self-evident that it is the way all governments are carried on. Wherefore, my good Paul, we only do what all other legislators do. We are never rogues so long as we call ourselves honest fellows, and we never commit a crime so long as we can term it a virtue. What ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 or ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... as a self-evident fact that men can know God with at least the same degree of immediacy as they know any other person or thing that comes within the field of their experience. The same terms are used to express the knowledge of God as are used to express knowledge of physical things. "O ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... believe in Him who stood by the lake-side in Galilee, and told men that not a sparrow fell to the ground without their Father's knowledge—and that they were of more value than many sparrows. Do those words now seem to some so self-evident as to be needless? They will never seem so to the Sanitary Reformer, who has called on the "British Public" to exert themselves in saving the lives of thousands yearly; and has received practical answers ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... of the text, when sense can by any rational supposition be made of it, as my opponent, or any true lover of the poet and the integrity of his language, can possibly be; but I see nothing rational in refusing to correct an almost self-evident misprint, which would redeem a fine passage that otherwise must always remain a stumbling-block to the most intelligent reader. We have all I trust but one object, i. e. to free the text of our great poet from obvious errors occasioned by extremely ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... intensity which give an awful life and power to all he said about religion. He realised with singular and pervading keenness that which a greater man than he speaks of as the first and the great discovery of the awakened soul—" the thought of two, and two only, supreme and luminously self-evident beings, himself and the Creator." "Alone with God," expresses the feeling which calmed his own anxieties and animated his religious appeals to others. And he realised with equal earnestness the great truth which is spoken of by Mr. Brooke, though in language which ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... defiance, and gave them to understand, with a repelling dignity of manner that bordered hard on haughtiness, that what she and her son might or might not do was no one's concern but their own. This self-evident truth, when it struck home to her well-wishers, made her no friends. Nor did she regret this. She had dwelt, as it were, apart, since her marriage and early widowhood—her husband had died seven months ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... were self-evident; while the Count read himself a thousand lessons upon the errors vanity is apt to lead one into. Yet his ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... we read, "We hold 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." Glorious words! But they were ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... matter 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 ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... that led him nowhere. That today still leads untold millions nowhere. For the penalty of a wrong answer is failure to solve the problem. That non-science had failed to provide any answer beyond the primitive one was self-evident. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... to see once a week, "THUS SAITH THE LORD, Thou shalt not steal," and the rest: the lack of which reminder sometimes causes in Nonconformist circles, it is whispered, a deplorable separation of faith and works. The third maxim, axiom, or self-evident proposition is, that when people can steal without fear of consequences they will steal. All through the last century, and indeed far into this, the only influence brought to bear upon the common people was that of authority. The master ruled his servants; he watched over them; when ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... repeated, relaxing into the blandest of smiles. "Yes, thanks—I see I was right. It was unnecessary to name names.—Oh! undoubtedly, innumerable excuses, and of the most valid description, were they needed—were they not swallowed up in the single, self-evident excuse that the lady you mention is a ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... may be thought by some to be exceedingly commonplace and self-evident.—It may be so. If they be admitted, we ask no more.—Our purpose at present is answered, if we have detected a principle in education, by the operation of which the powers of the mind are invariably expanded and strengthened;—an effect which, so far as we yet know, in ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... then, from argument to constructive discussion, and many topics were gone over. Certain matters were, however, so self-evident that they ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... 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 ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... ungracious dilemma, instead of justifying himself by reason or argument, had recourse to recrimination. In the paper which he sent me next day, he insisted in general that he had carefully perused the case (which you will perceive was a self-evident untruth); he said the theory it contained was idle; that he was sure it could not be written by a physician; that, with respect to the disorder, he was still of the same opinion; and adhered to his former prescription; but if I had any doubts I might come to his house, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... hold 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; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... affection sunders the dominant ties of earth and points to heaven. Nothing can compete with Christian Science, and its demonstration, in showing this solemn certainty in growing freedom and vindicating "the ways of God" to man. The absolute proof and self-evident propositions of Truth are immeasurably paramount to rubric and dogma in proving ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... standard of government and of public men would be greatly exalted, and the highest civilization of the whole country be advanced. But I will not pursue this topic any further. The truths I state are self-evident. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... would avoid him after such an act was self-evident—they had already refused to eat with him. On the other hand, it had brought nearer to him the favorites whom he had attracted to his person. Theocritus and Pandion, Antigonus and Epagathos, the priest of Alexander, who at Rome was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... friendship. He states his position lucidly, and with a rational understanding of all that it involves. His vision is wide enough to embrace its everlasting truth. Plato says the same thing in simpler language. He offers his truth as self-evident, and in no need of demonstration. When Lysis and Menexenus greet Socrates at the gymnasia, the philosopher asks which of the two ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the sole living contemporary witness of his mother's dishonor. Obed Chute himself was certainly the last man in the world, as Gualtier thought, who would have been capable of volunteering such information as that. These conclusions to which he came were natural, and were based on self-evident truths. Yet still the question remained: How was it that these two men, who more than all others were connected with those affairs which most deeply affected himself and Hilda, and from whom he had the chief if not the only reason to ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... 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, your wisdom, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the wreck of time; but [1] whatever is of God, hath life abiding in it, and ulti- mately will be known as self-evident truth, as demonstra- ble as mathematics. Each successive period of progress is a period more humane and spiritual. The only logical [5] conclusion is that all is Mind and its manifestation, from the rolling of worlds, in the most subtle ether, to a ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... this proposition is self-evident; for no art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change. To require of an artist that he should always reproduce the same picture, would ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... adversaries, however, did not remove the inherent weakness of the position of the Protestants. The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the Pope. If the former is held by "faith," then the latter may be. If the latter is to be accepted, or rejected, by private judgment, why not the former? Even if the Bible could be proved anywhere to assert its own infallibility, the value of that ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Edmund's question, therefore, than mine. However, we need say no more about that. That is self-evident on the face of it. Well, my dearest Amy! The point arising, is he to go by himself, or is he not to go by himself, this other point arises, are we to be married here and shortly, or are we to be married at home ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... celebrates 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 ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... love, everybody who owes anything to anybody should always pay it. That is so self-evident that one would almost suppose that it might be understood without being enunciated. But the virtue of paying your debts is incompatible with an absence of money. Now, if you please, we will not say anything more about Mrs. Parker. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... broken through the rule which, in compliance with her mother's advice, she had at first laid down for herself, to abstain from recommending persons for preferment; and had pressed many a petition on the minister's notice as to which it was self-evident that she could know nothing of their merits, nor feel any personal ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... equilateral triangle; or should defend the Pons Asinorum as Codes defended the Tiber bridge. But anyone who does not understand that does not understand the French Revolution—nor, for that matter, the American Revolution. "We hold these truths to be self-evident": it was the fanaticism of truism. But though Carlyle had no real respect for liberty, he had a real reverence for anarchy. He admired elemental energy. The violence which repelled most men from the Revolution was the one thing that attracted him to it. While a Whig ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... and seemed for the moment to have lost his usual loquacity. Porthos, who could never see anything that was not self-evident, talked to him as usual. He replied in monosyllables and Athos and Aramis looked significantly ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
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