"A posteriori" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is flung all too rapidly down stairs. Flung; and ignominiously descends, head foremost; accelerated by ignominious shovings from sentry after sentry; nay, as is written, by smitings, twitchings,—spurnings, a posteriori, not to be named. In this accelerated way, emerges, uncertain which end uppermost, man after man in black, through all issues, into the Tuileries Garden. Emerges, alas, into the arms of an indignant multitude, now gathered and gathering there, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... that of the occult influences of the planets (using the word occult in no bad sense but simply as meaning not thoroughly traced) can be approached in two ways—either by the a priori probability of the existence of such influences, or by the a posteriori evidence of their effects. If the two can be combined, the subject may be considered as claiming the dignity of a science. Even if the effects alone are certain, it may be considered that we have a science of inferior degree, wanting however that ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... Induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit, as an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something, which we may call perverseness, for want of a more characteristic term. In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive, a motive not motivirt. Through its promptings ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... people who objected to it; the idea was only too seductive in its perfection; it had the charm of art. Unity and Uniformity were the whole motive of philosophy, and if Darwin, like a true Englishman, preferred to back into it — to reach God a posteriori — rather than start from it, like Spinoza, the difference of method taught only the moral that the best way of reaching unity was to unite. Any road was good that arrived. Life depended on it. One had been, from the first, dragged hither and thither like a French ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... demonstrations of grief and attributes them to the effeminate Clisthenes. Sebinus the Anaphlystian is a coined name containing an obscene allusion, implying he was in the habit of allowing connexion with himself a posteriori, and being masturbated by ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al |
