"Disprove" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... EMILIA. Disprove this villain, if thou be'st a man: He says thou told'st him that his wife was false: I know thou didst not, thou'rt not such a villain: Speak, ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... authority, not being Mosaic nor Prophetic, but only Rabbinical. One must have received from the other. Which was the bestower and which the recipient is quite plain.42 There is not a whit of evidence to show, but, on the contrary, ample presumption to disprove, that a certain cycle of notions were known among the Jews previous to a period of most intimate and constant intercourse between them and the Persians. But before that period those notions were an integral part of the Persian theology. Even Prideaux admits that the first Zoroaster ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... they contained might have appeared to Englishmen, if urged by themselves in support of their own rights, they had not much weight, when used to disprove the existence of their authority over others. The deep and solemn tone of conviction, however, conveyed in all these letters, ought to have produced a certainty that the principles assumed in them had made a strong impression, and would not be lightly abandoned. It ought to have been ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... node in November, she is on the under or southern side, and the meteors are less frequent. With this general explanation we shall close. If what we have advanced be an approximation to the truth, the theory itself affords ample indications of what observations are requisite to prove or disprove it; and, on this account, a theory is of great benefit, as suggestive of many questions and combinations of facts which otherwise might ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... White faces the deeper problems and speculations of life. He wants to know about things here and hereafter. With the same zest and simplicity of motive he faces the secret doors of existence; not to prove or disprove, but to see and find out. And when he comes to the Last Door he will go through without fear, with eyes open to see in the next undiscovered country what there is to be seen and to show that the heart of a brave and unshrinking man, truthful and open-handed and friendly, is at home ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... by surveyors on both sides, and supported and disputed by witnesses innumerable on both sides: old men coming up with ancient memories, hedgers and ditchers, farmers and bailiffs and people of all sorts and conditions, to prove and disprove where the boundary line really divides Neighbour Naboth's vineyard from ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... not so insistently as before. The guide said he had a theory about the cross and the supposed grave, a theory which he proposed to prove or disprove before leaving that night's ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... really no step in the bare process of producing this writing, as we have observed it, which might not be accomplished by trickery or by legerdemain. Of course, therefore, we were sincerely anxious to disprove in these experiments the presence of those discreditable elements, not only for the credit of human nature, but for the sake of the great scientific interest involved. We are perfectly ready to accept any fact of Spiritual power; and so far from flinching from an open avowal ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... house, containing a very unique collection of potted plants, which, under the skillful hands of this young enthusiast, are undergoing the different stages of experimental treatment, such as he may deem necessary, to prove or disprove his many pet theories or fancies, in regard to care, growth, insect enemies, and to application of electric light, sun light, heat, moisture and fertilizers. Each plant bears a fruitful crop of cards, giving a summary of results and conclusions. ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... of Mr. Padden's efforts to disprove his connection with an assault upon the person of a detective named Williams, who had come from St. Louis; but nowhere was there a word about the present condition of the plain-clothes man, nor the slightest hint toward explaining the conduct ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... the numerous charges brought against you, and which you do not attempt to disprove, you will, if you do not alter your conduct, be a disgrace to any community in which you may be found. You have been constantly guilty of drunkenness and tyranny, blasphemy and swearing, idleness, and utter negligence ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... mercy of as many oligarchies as there are States. It is true that the power of Congress to guarantee republican governments in the States through its intervention with the question of suffrage has not hitherto been exercised, but this certainly does not disprove the existence of such power, nor the expediency of its exercise now, under an additional and independent constitutional grant, and when a fit occasion for it has come through the madness of treason. Why temporize by adopting ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... and which appear utterly useless and inapplicable to any ostensibly known purpose. Respecting many of these mysterious records of a past age, page after page has been written to prove, and even disprove, the supposed intent of their constructors; and it cannot but be admitted that after perusing many an erudite disquisition, we are sometimes as well-informed, and as near arriving at a conclusion as to the original purpose for ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... conclusion, that so much persistent resolution and heroism must one day eventuate in success, and that Ireland, the country for which so many brave men have suffered with such unfaltering courage, is not destined to disprove the rule that— ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... can't disprove it.—"'Coridon,' said he, surveying his attendant from head to foot, and ultimately assuming a severity of countenance, 'Coridon, you are becoming gross, if not positively what the people call fat.' The Swiss attendant fell back in graceful astonishment three ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... go huntin' fer trouble. Try an' make White Slides one place thet'll disprove your name. All the same, don't shy at sight of anythin' ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... of employing this maxim in the sense in which it is used by Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and others, to prove there must be something self-existent and eternal, or in other words, "that nothing which once was not can ever of itself come into being," he uses it to disprove a divine creation, and even presents the maxim in an altered form—viz., "nothing is ever divinely generated from nothing;"[787] and he thence concludes that the world was by no means made for us by divine power.[788] Nature ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... how you can disprove my argument on the immortality of the soul, which, being contained in the best of my dialogues, and being often asked for among my friends, I carry ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... recollection suggested to his mind. It was calculated to create a deep sensation in favour of the royal sufferer, and is said to have passed through fifty editions in the course of the first year. During the commonwealth, Milton made a feeble attempt to disprove the king's claim to the composition of the book: after the restoration, Dr. Gauden, a clergyman of Bocking, in Essex, came forward and declared himself the real author. But he advanced his pretensions with secrecy, and received as the price of his silence, first the bishopric ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... establishment, he none the less sneered and jeered at it, exasperated as he was at having been in the wrong. He had, in fact, been beaten for the second time. Not only did the prodigious crops of Chantebled disprove his theory of the bankruptcy of the earth, that villainous earth in which, like an obstinate peasant weary of toil and eager for speedy fortune, he asserted nothing more would grow; but now that mill of his, which he had so ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... no gentleman, you would infer. I make no such confession. I would disprove Byron's assertion, by making ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... which is a senile as well as a juvenile condition; his venerable head, thatched with such imperceptible hair that, at a distance, it looks like a mild aureola, and his imperfect dental exhibition. But beside these physical peculiarities may be observed certain moral symptoms, which go to disprove his assumed youth. He is in the habit of falling into reveries, caused, I have no doubt, by some circumstance which suggests a comparison with his experience in his remoter boyhood, or by some serious retrospection of the past years. He has been detected ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... would prove, as its votaries probably understand, a too-painful mockery. Intelligently analyzed, therefore, this new revelation amounts to nothing more than a quite striking proof of the remarkable influence of the mind over the nervous system. Beyond this, the craze, in attempting to disprove the existence of disease, and to show that poisons do not kill, is simply running against the plain and inevitable facts of life, and can safely be left to perish through its ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... as he did from the Hydes. Lies of that sort always propagate themselves, like noisome weeds; it is the part of the wise to neglect them until they are established by proof.] were still large. There is not a tittle of evidence to disprove Clarendon's assertion, that he confined himself to those revenues of his office which were strictly legal; and to suppose otherwise would be to suppose him false to all those ideals which were the foundation of his ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... must be presumed eligible, until the contrary be shown. We have no evidence, that I am aware of, of a prior date to Magna Carta, to disprove that all freemen were eligible as jurors, unless it be the law of Ethelred, which requires that they be elderly [3] men. Since no specific age is given, it is probable, I think, that this statute meant nothing more than that they be more than twenty-one years old. If it ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... against the use of explosive bullets. The binding obligation of these instruments, which would doubtless be classed by your correspondent with the fleet among "old-fashioned treaties, protocols, and other diplomatic documents," has never been doubted, while each party has eagerly endeavoured to disprove alleged infractions ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... voraciously as the others, because they cultivate a large breed of dogs for their eating." Mr. W. Winwood Reade suspects them to be an offshoot of the great Fulah race, and there is nothing in point of dialect to disprove what we must at present consider a pure conjecture. "The Fulah pronouns have striking analogies with those of the Yoruba, Accra, Ashantee, and Timmanee, and even of the great Kaffir class of dialects, which reaches from the equator to the Cape," wrote the late learned E. Norris, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... teacher is to give the positive—to present, as he may, the vision of reality, for the perception of which, and not for the discovery of falsehood, is man created. This will not only cast out the demon, but so people the house that he will not dare return. If a man might disprove all the untruths in creation, he would hardly be a hair's breadth nearer the end of his own making. It is better to hold honestly one fragment of truth in the midst of immeasurable error, than to sit alone, if that were ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Fable of the Bees. The Book has run through several Impressions, and met with innumerable Enemies: Nothing was ever more reviled from the Pulpit as well as the Press. I have been call'd all the ugly Names in Print, that Malice or ill Manners can invent; but not one of my Adversaries has attempted to disprove what I had said, or overthrow any one Argument, I made Use of, otherwise than by exclaiming against it, and saying that it was not true: which to me is a Sign, that not only what I have advanced is not easy to refute, but ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... Buchanan. His Cabinet was necessarily filled with men inexperienced in national administration, for the party had been proscribed for six terms. The greatest attention was attracted by the two former Confederates, Garland and Lamar, whose career did much to disprove the "gloomy and baseless superstition" of twenty years, "that one half of the nation had become the irreconcilable enemies of the national unity and the national will." It was an American Administration, ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... nothing can be proved or disproved, respecting either the distinct existence, the substance, or the durability of the soul. So far, Kant is at one with Hume. But Kant adds, as you cannot disprove the immortality of the soul, and as the belief therein is very useful for moral purposes, you may assume it. To which, had Hume lived half a century later, he would probably have replied, that, if morality has no better foundation than an assumption, it is not likely ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... the works of Christ; miracles which they had investigated and could not disprove; a life which was its own witness; prophecies fulfilled; His own presence before their bar; the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... anomalies above mentioned are so great as to disprove the existence of any scale which should indicate descent; but the nearer we approach species, the smaller we see differences become, till with species itself we find them at ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... accomplices. But, what was more extraordinary than all the rest, was, that, although there was a ROOM FULL of witnesses for the prisoner, many of them most respectable, who were ready and willing to disprove a great deal that the witnesses for the prosecution had sworn, and to prove that several of the principal witnesses were not worthy to be believed upon their oath, yet, to the astonishment of the Court, to the grief and sorrow of the prisoner's friends and relations, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... all this, and although we do not think it is possible completely to disprove the truth of the hypothesis that some or all of these animal cults are vestiges of a once fully developed totemic system, we are inclined to reject it. We are led to do so by four considerations. In the first place, if by totemism we mean a social ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... amazed at the construction and possibilities of the human mind when I observed the manner in which certain suspected criminals were examined in order to prove or disprove the crime of which they were charged. The doors of the soul were unlocked and the past thought-images, with their mental impressions, were thrown open to view. How can a Muteite deny the crime which is photographed on the sensitive ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... Lowell still maintains the accuracy of the discovery made at Flagstaff that the existence of water vapour on Mars is demonstrated by the photographic spectrum of the Martian atmosphere; and he asserts that the attempt to disprove it has failed. A further discovery has since been made at the same observatory, viz. that oxygen also is present in ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely thereby is he at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial {274} molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... gave me the idea that I had trouve le noeud de l'affaire; the second made me doubt this; the subsequent ones went far to disprove it. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... noticed in passing that Dame Nelly's ordinary mode of consolation was to disprove the existence of any cause for distress; and she is said to have carried this so far as to comfort a neighbour, who had lost her husband, with the assurance that the dear defunct would be better to-morrow, which perhaps might not have proved an ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... them. Disprove this theft"—he held up the will—"of concealment, and enjoyment of property not your own, and then ask of me that politeness which makes so beautiful ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... exactly the strain in which Romanists are accustomed to speak of the plot. In short, the writer has written as a Romanist, and appears to have followed Lingard in every particular. Is such a man qualified to write a history for popular use? But to disprove all his assertions on this point, I simply quote a passage from the Trial, which will prove that no cruel means were resorted to in the case of Garnet. In addressing Garnet, the earl of Salisbury said: "You do best know that since ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... the truth, Clay reflected. He could take the man's word or not as he pleased. There was no way to disprove ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... meditating on your powerful objection to the mundane cold period (334/1. See Letter 49.), viz. that MANY-fold more of the warm-temperate species ought to have crossed the Tropics than of the sub-arctic forms. I really think that to those who deny the modification of species this would absolutely disprove my theory. But according to the notions which I am testing—viz. that species do become changed, and that time is a most important element (which I think I shall be able to show very clearly in this case)—in such change, I think, the result would be as follows. Some of the warm-temperate ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... environment with the existence of a creative intelligence. There was a time, remembered by many of us here, when the existence of reflex action and all the other harmonies between the organism and the world were held to prove a God. Now, they are held to disprove him. The next turn of the whirligig may bring back proof of ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... lxxxviii, places Endymion as early as Sept. 1579. Bond, vol. III. p. 10, attempts to disprove Baker's contention, and in vol. II. p. 309, he maintains chiefly on grounds of style that Campaspe was the earliest of Lyly's plays, being produced ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... occur? Undoubtedly, and often. Even infallible principles can have but imperfect application because of local limitations. The failure of a particular field of grain does not disprove the universal principle of vegetable growth. The imperfection of the healer, and the lack of receptivity in the patient, are local limitations. There are sudden cures, but as a rule recovery will be in the nature of a progressive growth. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... Galatians, First and Second Corinthians and Romans. "This group is the great repertory of Paul's doctrinal and ethical teaching. Galatians and Romans deal chiefly with his doctrine of justification by faith. They are designed to disprove the current Jewish teaching (which was invading the churches) that men might be saved by obedience to the Mosaic law. On the contrary Paul maintained that the sole basis of salvation is the grace of God to be appropriated ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... of Brussels, there to advise with them concerning the necessities of the land; but, as the principal calumny employed by their adversaries was that all the provinces and leading personages intended to change both sovereign and religion, at the instigation of his Excellency, it was desirable to disprove such fictions. They therefore very earnestly requested the Prince to make some contrary demonstration, by which it might be manifest to all that his Excellency, together with the estates of Holland and Zealand, intended faithfully to keep what they had promised. They prayed, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was to get a view of the Austrian trenches and barbed wire on the Tamburo, in order to observe from closer quarters than was possible from any of our O.P.'s the effects of our recent bombardments, and to verify or disprove a report that certain new defensive works were being constructed by the enemy at night. Our own trenches here were on a higher level than the enemy's, and the bottom of the valley between the Tamburo ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... Congress—the Moral and Social Benefits of Cheap Postage. This pamphlet has been wholly written since the vote of the Publishing Committee, which must be my apology for some repetitions. The main arguments cannot be overthrown, until men disprove arithmetic. ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... this case went far beyond the discoveries of previous investigators. Not only did he conceive new tests for old hypotheses, but he posited new hypotheses, as well as collected the data that would prove or disprove them. Thus, while he no doubt made much use of previous facts, he went far beyond that and succeeded in enlarging the confines of knowledge. That is a task that can be accomplished only by the most mature and ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... should do it. He had not been able always to restrain the violence of his men—and for that he needed forgiveness from her dear lips; and it would be easy enough to tell stories against him that it would be hard to disprove; but if she loved and trusted him, and he knew that she did, let her take his word for it that no injustice had been deliberately done, that on the other hand he had been the means under God of restraining many such acts, and that his conscience ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... in the impeachment of Laud. There is nothing, we believe, but the general statement of Clarendon that his friend regarded with horror the storm gathering against the archbishop, which the words of Falkland himself, just quoted, seem sufficient to disprove. Mr. Arnold tells us that "Falkland disliked Laud; he had a natural antipathy to his heat, fussiness, and arbitrary temper." He had an antipathy to a good deal more in Laud than this, and expressed his ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... to talk," growled Mr. Baggs. "But talk don't take the place of facts. I say a blackguard's always a blackguard and defy any man to disprove it." ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... untenable. In the first place, the facts marshalled in support of it do not prove it, and the analogies drawn from the animal and vegetable world do not countenance it; and, in the second place, there are facts which conclusively disprove it. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... I won my way, waiting patiently till the bosom, pleased with the relief, disgorged itself of all "its perilous stuff,"—not chiding, not even remonstrating, seeming almost to sympathize, till I got him, Socratically, to disprove himself. When I saw that he no longer feared me, that my company had become a relief to him, I proposed an excursion, and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... claimed descent from William of Orange. He had no genealogy to prove it, but on Venus there was no one who could disprove ...
— Wind • Charles Louis Fontenay
... hard to disprove this position, and they might have a good case if they would only leave it as it stands. But this they will not do; they must have assurance doubly sure; they must have the written word of the child itself as soon as it is born, giving the parents indemnity from all responsibility on the ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... may continue, unquestioned, to work out more and more of the wondrous story of Life on the globe. They can never disprove, or on any of their own grounds deny, that God is the Author of all things—matter, force, and mind alike; that He designed the form and relations of the earth; that He organized its light, its seasons, and its changes; that He has ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... no first-hand evidence; their only weapon was an appeal to common sense and sentiment combined; their only method was a flat denial of every statement which appeared to point to supernatural powers. They could not disprove the statements; they could not explain them without opposing the accepted religious beliefs of their time, and so weakening their cause by exposing themselves to the serious charge of atheism; therefore they denied ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... of Lindores were also plundered. Clearly it was believed that Beaton was down, and that church-pillage was authorised by Arran. Yet on September 3 Arran joined hands with Beaton! The Cardinal, by threatening to disprove Arran's legitimacy and ruin his hopes of the crown, or in some other way, had dominated the waverer, while Henry (August 29) was mobilising an army of 20,000 men for the invasion of Scotland. On September 9 Mary was crowned at Stirling. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... him thus far, could contain himself no longer, but interrupted the investigation with a loud laugh, and told him that his postulata put him in mind of a certain learned and ingenious gentleman, who undertook to disprove the existence of natural evil, and asked no other datum on which to found his demonstration, but an acknowledgment that "everything that is, is right." "You may therefore," said he, in a peremptory tone, "spare yourself the trouble of torturing your invention; for, after all, I am pretty certain ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... say that the odors, effluvia, and exhalations emitted from plants, earths, and ponds, are what give the initiative to such things. That when they have come forth, they are afterwards propagated either by eggs or offshoots, does not disprove their immediate generation; since every living creature, along with its minute viscera, receives organs of generation and means of propagation (see below, n. 347). In agreement with these phenomena is the fact heretofore unknown that there are like ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... and followed down some branch of the Madison river and reached Virginia City, or down Snake river and reached some settlement in that valley; and but for our anxiety to reach home and prove or disprove our expectations, we might have devoted much more time to visiting the objects of interest we have seen, and which we have ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... But we call upon the law-makers and law-breakers of the nation, to defend themselves for violating the fundamental principles of the Republic, or disprove their validity. Yes! they stand arrayed before the bar, not only of injured womanhood, but before the bar of moral consistency; for this question is awakening an interest abroad, as well as at home. Whatever human rights are claimed for man, moral consistency ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... hearsay evidence is equally unfounded. Its uses are said to be threefold, to convince in affairs of the world, to serve as the basis of action for business men, and to prevent opportunity for false witness. Yet it is not admissible in a court of justice to prove or disprove either a cause or a defence. The rules of evidence have been worked out by centuries of experience of courts in jury trials, and are admirably adapted to avoid the danger of error as to fact. I fully agree that in American courts the trial judges have not been entrusted with as wide ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... Eyre had made an error of thirty miles in longitude, placing it too far to the east. He got no further north. He thus confirmed the existence of a lake eastward of Lake Torrens (now Lake Frome), but achieved nothing to prove or disprove Eyre's theory of their continuity. Prior to this the pioneers had spread settlement both east and west of Eyre's track from Adelaide to the head of Spencer's Gulf. Amongst these early leaders of civilisation ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... knows what goes on in the world, or he would not speak so. How many myriads of men are there who have been bewitched by foxes? Why, there have been at least twenty or thirty men tricked by the brutes on the Maki Moor alone. It's hard to disprove facts that ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... in wit, beauty, and accomplishment those of the whole world, and challenged any knight to dispute it. Thereupon appeared the seven knights of The Burning Mountain, and by their herald announced that they would disprove by arms the vainglorious assertions of the knights of The Blended Rose and show that the ladies of The Burning Mountain as far excelled all others in charms as the knights themselves surpassed all ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... lips, and uttering a sigh as he did so, that came from the heart, "I promised to send to Julia, only when death overpowered me. Will you take it to her, and say that the wearer has gone to another world, where treachery and crime do not exist, and where I hope to meet her and her father, and then disprove the unjust accusation that was ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... against you. I'll pretend To be her father's friend, and bring the cause Before the judges. Who her father was, Her mother who, and how she's your relation, All this sham evidence I'll forge; by which The cause will turn entirely in my favor. You shall disprove no tittle of the charge; So I succeed.—Your father will return; Prosecute ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... provoked by Clint, who is a worthless bully, but we must face the fact that young Excell bears a bad name. He has been in trouble a great many times, and the prosecution will make much of that. Our business is to show the extent of the provocation, and secondly, to disprove, so far as we can, the popular conception of the youth. I can get nothing out of him which will aid in his defense. He refuses to talk. Unless we can wring the truth out of Slocum on the stand it will go hard with the boy. I wish you'd see what ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... knowledge reconciled To truth amid some odd confusions; Yet credulous, and loving much The problems hardest for her reason, Placing her lovely faith on such, And deeming disbelief a treason; Doubting that which she can disprove, And wisely trusting all ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... These facts disprove Mr Sadler's principle; and the fact on which he lays so much stress—that the fecundity is less in the great towns than in the small towns—does not tend in any degree to prove his principle. There is not the least reason to believe that the population is more ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Spain fresh information in regard to the motives of Ferdinand and Isabella, trustworthy statements as to the character and conduct of Pinzon, the ally of Columbus, and at the end he might have been able to prove or disprove the theory that Columbus had knowledge of the existence of this continent, or that he had or had not reasons for believing that land in the west had been visited by Scandinavian voyagers ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... attempt to answer. It would not, I conceive, answer it even if it were able to make out that the whole mental content in the percept can be traced back to elementary sensations and their combinations. For the fact that in the chemistry of mind elements may combine in perfectly new forms does not disprove that the forms thus arising, whether sentiments or quasi-cognitions, are invalid. Much less can psychology dispute the validity of a percept if it cannot be sure that the mind adds nothing to sensation and its grouping; that in the genesis of the perceptive state, with its intuition of ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... prisoner's counsel catch at supposed flaws of evidence, or bad character of witnesses, without meeting the case. Do they mean to deny the conspiracy? Do they mean to deny that the two Crowninshields and the two Knapps were conspirators? Why do they rail against Palmer, while they do not disprove, and hardly dispute, the truth of any one fact sworn to by him? Instead of this, it is made matter of sentimentality that Palmer has been prevailed upon to betray his bosom companions and to violate the sanctity of friendship. Again ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... assembly to rescind the lawful resolution of another. The too eager Hutchinson fell into the trap, and pointed out that it was the king, rather than the ministry, who must be charged with impudence. But this was not to disprove the impudence; it was simply to make the king instead of the ministry obnoxious to the charge, and to enlighten the people as to who their real enemy was. "The king," said Adams, "has placed us in a position ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... tomb to a knight in mixed armour of mail and plate, and by his side his lady, with kirtle, mantle, and flowing hair. Both wear SS collars, and this helps to give the age of the monument, by narrowing the date down to a year not earlier than 1399. The SS collars also tend to disprove that the monument is to Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and his countess, seeing that he died in 1361. On the knight's belt is a badge, very much worn down, which has been attributed to the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... saw that, all along, he had thought she would be able to disprove it! A smothering blackness closed in on him, and he had a physical struggle for breath. Then he forced himself to his feet and ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... gases fly forth from an exhaust vent to expand instantly, frictionlessly and impotently to the ends of the universe? In my story, "The World Behind the Moon," I assumed that would occur. And no man living is in a position positively to disprove it. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... who preach the opposite doctrine belie it so often by a happy inconsistency; that he who declares self-interest to be the mainspring of the world, can live a life of virtuous self-sacrifice; that he who denies, with Spinoza, the existence of free- will, can disprove his own theory, by willing, like Spinoza, amid all the temptations of the world, to live a life worthy of a Roman Stoic; and that he who represents men as the puppets of material circumstance, and who therefore has no logical right ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Being, and to worship the product of my own imagination! Oh, Leonie, beware of these modern thinkers, who assail the creed that has been the stronghold and comfort of humanity for sixteen hundred years, and who employ the reason which God has given them to disprove the existence of their Maker. Fareham insists that Spinoza is a religious man—and has beautiful ideas about God; but I found only doubt and despair in his pages; and I ascribe my poor brother's melancholic disposition in some part to his study of ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... but Arcite with disdain In haughty language thus replied again: "Forsworn thyself: the traitor's odious name I first return, and then disprove thy claim. If love be passion, and that passion nurst With strong desires, I loved the lady first. Canst thou pretend desire, whom zeal inflamed To worship, and a power celestial named? Thine was devotion to the blest above, I saw the woman, and desired her love; ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... evidence against him was vague and intangible, it was very hard to disprove. But, in his anxiety, the criminal has drawn the net so closely that one cut ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... opportunity of answering directly the complaints made against them, and of justifying their acts and laws. He therefore, in the Royal letter given above, dated April 6, 1666, required them within six months to send five of their number to England to answer and to disprove if they could complaints made against them, and to furnish proof of the professions and statements they had made in their address and petition. They could no longer evade or delay; they were brought face to face with the authority of King and Parliament; they could adduce nothing but ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... the Trouble of verbally refuting the Calumnies, and Invectives, with which he was daily loaded, but took Care to disprove them by his Conduct. The publick Finances had been quite exhausted, during the last Years of the great Zokitarezoul, and he took upon himself to restore them. It is true, that his Scheme ruined some Families; but besides that their Number was but small, and their Ruin rather owing to their inconsiderate ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... the anomaly by ignoring the fifth century B.C. in Athens, the fifteenth century in Italy, and the seventeenth in Holland, and humbly submitting that artists never appeared in numbers like swallows, but singly like aerolites. Now our task is not to disprove these statements, but to work out the relationship between the author of the "Butterfly Letters" and the painter of the portrait of "The Mother", "Lady Archibald Campbell", "Miss Alexander", and the other forty-one masterpieces ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... of enterprise that I have read of in history. Critics ambitious to say something new may rake out slanders from the archives of enemies and discover faults which derogate from the character we have been taught to admire and venerate; they may even point out spots, which we can not disprove, in that sun of glorious brightness which shed its beneficent rays over a century of darkness—but this we know, that whatever may be the force of detraction, his fame has been steadily increasing, even on the admission of his slanderers, for three centuries, and that ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... legate from His Holiness Stanley the Great. Bickerton had the sauce to send for me and to describe me as a ringleader in all your abominations. I represented to him that he was a liar, and had been known to be from his birth, and that he probably cheated at Bridge; and he told me to jolly well disprove his accusation by fetching you along. I explained they were making beasts of themselves over ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... I challenge you to disprove) that the Earth was made to be a Common Treasury of Livelihood for all, without respect of persons, and was not made to be bought and sold.... And this being a truth, as it is, then none ought to be Lords and Land Lords over another, but the Earth ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... "I am bound to believe what I cannot disprove, and what you so solemnly affirm. If there be no truth in your words, you may yet repent having so solemnly sworn; but whether true or false, I can never repent doing you ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... amenities which not infrequently betray the superior mind. Never were his clothes known to fit, being invariably too large or too small, too short or too long. As to his hair, the external evidences were of a character to disprove the rumor that he had a brush and comb, while the stubby beard frequently remained undisturbed upon the judicial chin for several weeks at a time. The atrocious story is even told that once upon a time, when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... whatever can be brought into the sphere of the understanding, as a dialectic subject, is not an Idea. It will be observed, however, that we do not say an idea may not be denied; but to deny is not to disprove. Many things are denied in direct contradiction to fact; for the mind can command, and in no measured degree, the power of self-blinding, so that it cannot see what is actually before it. This is a ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... To what extent have we in English a dative, an accusative, and instrumental case? Disprove the doctrine that the genitive in -s (the father's son) is formed out of the combination ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... occurrence took place, and it is thought that there is a connection between the crime and the haunting of this part of the Kimmage Road. Whatever the explanation may be, the whole story bears every evidence of truth, and it would be hard for anyone to disprove it. ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... are content to believe important things on hearsay, because, on the whole, they love or trust the people who teach them. The word 'believing,' when I use it, doesn't mean that a good man says it, and that I can't disprove it, but a sort of vital assent, so that I can act upon the belief almost as if I knew it. It means for me some sort of personal experience, I could not love or hate a man on hearsay, just because people whom I loved or trusted said that they either loved or hated him. I might be ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... vanity and self-consciousness sometimes carried him. From what is known of his disposition it seems probable that the sarcasms aimed by public writers at his infirmity inclined him to justify their attacks rather than to disprove them by his subsequent demeanor, and that some of his most extravagant outbursts of self-assertion were designed in a spirit of bravado and reckless good-nature to increase the laughter which satirists had raised against him. However this may be, his conduct drew upon him blows that would have ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... That the proponent, Harold Scott Mainwaring, is the lawful and only son of the beneficiary named therein, and as such the sole rightful and lawful heir to and owner of the Mainwaring estate. More than this, we propose at the same time and by the same evidence to forever disprove, confute, and silence any and every aspersion and insinuation which has been brought against the character of the proponent, Harold Scott Mainwaring; and in doing this, we shall at last lift the veil which, for the past five ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... opinion, never to be pointed out to the author without meeting with a candid and respectful acknowledgement." Following the example of so great a man, we can only say, that if any gentleman can prove or disprove the assertion of the Squireen O'Donahue, to wit, that the O'Donahues were kings of Ireland long before the O'Connors were heard of; we shall be most happy to acknowledge the favour, and insert his remarks in the next edition. We should be further obliged to the same party, or ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... And at last a paper of reasons, framed against y^t clause in y^e conditions, which as y^ey were delivered me open, so my answer is open to you all. And first, as they are no other but inconveniences, such as a man might frame 20. as great on y^e other side, and yet prove nor disprove nothing by them, so they misse & mistake both y^e very ground of y^e article and nature of y^e project. For, first, it is said, that if ther had been no divission of houses & lands, it had been better for y^e poore. True, and ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... an amendment that under no circumstances, and no matter how completely time and events disprove his lurid vaticinations, should the English-speaking world forget this man, nor fail to hold in honor his unsurpass'd conscience, his unique method, and his honest fame. Never were convictions more earnest and genuine. Never was there less of a flunkey or temporizer. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and examples cited in its favor disprove it. The communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports and to war. Even J. J. Rousseau—confounding communism ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... the pivot on which the whole British plan turned. This campaign in miniature gave French his chance finally to disprove the fallacies of the critics at home. Before his appointment in October, he had actually been described by some of his opponents as "inefficient to command in the field." This is the tragedy of many a brilliant cavalry ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... There is a very able dissertation upon the subject, by the Abbe de Vertot[46], who endeavors to disprove the whole story: first by the silence of all contemporary authors; then by the fact, that Yvetot was not at that time under the dominion of Clothair; then by an anachronism, which the story involves as to Pope Agapetus; and ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the mass. This net-work of lines constitutes what are called the Widmannstattian figures, from the name of their discoverer. When these figures are strongly developed the meteoric origin of the iron cannot be questioned, but their absence does not necessarily disprove such an origin. Native iron of terrestrial origin is ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... to question and disprove the unqualified statement of the Appeal, that "the original settled policy of the United States was non-extension of slavery." Less convincing was Douglas's attempt to prove that the Missouri Compromise was expressly annulled in 1850, when portions of Texas and of the former ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... was not one Witness at the Trial who will pretend he even had it in his Power to disprove one of the Charges in ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... thus prove the reference of Balaam's prophecy to an Israelitish kingdom, disprove also, not only the exclusive reference to David, but also the exclusive reference to Christ; although they imply at the same time that the prophecy, in its final reference, has Christ for its subject. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... she rode. The news had stunned her. She had only one thought—to see Hagar Catherson, to confirm or disprove Uncle Jepson's story. She could not have told whether the sun was shining, or whether it was afternoon or morning. But she must see Hagar Catherson at once, no matter what the time or the difficulties. She came to the break in the ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... you, Janet, when your discrimination is no greater than to lump everything marvellous, kelpies, ghosts, vampires, doubles, witches, fairies, nightmares, and I don't know what all, under the one head of ghosts; and we haven't been saying a word about them. If one were to disprove to you the existence of the afreets of Eastern tales, you would consider the whole argument concerning the reappearance of the departed upset. I congratulate you on your powers of analysis and induction, Miss Janet. But it matters very little whether we believe in ghosts, as you say, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... Colonel, "can you disprove these facts? Can you show that you did not expel M'Evoy from his farm, and put the husband of your illegitimate daughter into it? That you did not receive his rent, decline giving him a receipt, and afterwards compel him to pay twice, because he could not produce the receipt which ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... estates. On the day fixed for settling the accounts and entering into his rights, Baron de Saurac was arrested as a conspirator and imprisoned in the Temple. He had been denounced as having served in the army of Conde, and as being a secret agent of Louis XVIII. To disprove the first part of the charge, he produced certificates from America, where he had passed the time of his emigration, and even upon the rack he denied the latter. During his arrest, the eldest son discovered that Louis had become the owner ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Napoleon, and John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... began not earlier than the accession of Dubdalethe II. (965), and continued to the accession of Murtough. If there is no evidence that the three predecessors of Dubdalethe were of the Clann Sinaich, neither is there anything to disprove it. But their immediate predecessor, Joseph, was certainly not of that sept; for A.U. (MS. A, 935) tells us that he was of the Clann Gairb-gaela, and the list of coarbs in the Book of Leinster notes in addition that he came from Dalriada (R.I.A. xxxv. 327, 359). ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... one chooses to say that the creative work took place in the Cambrian or Laurentian epoch, in exactly that manner which Mr. Gladstone does, and natural science does not, affirm, natural science is not in a position to disprove the accuracy of the statement. Only one cannot have one's cake and eat it too, and such safety from the contradiction of science means the ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... insensible—because to him very natural—transition from the realities of feeling to those of thought, and to the underlying truth from which both series derive: and combats the idea that in thought, any more than in feeling, the present can disprove the past, the once true reveal itself as delusion. Time—otherwise growth—widens the range as it complicates the necessities of musical, i.e. emotional expression. It destroys the enfolding fictions which shield without ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the senator from Maryland (Mr. Smith) and the senator from Louisiana (Mr. Livingston) to disprove the statement ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... sorry!—but there seemed to be nothing that she could do. She HAD tried to help by insisting that he pay less for his board; but he had not only scouted that idea, but had brought her more chocolates and flowers than ever—for all the world as if he had divined her suspicions and wished to disprove them. ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... to build a wider new world—and that the world needs it—and that in Jamaica Mills, on land owned by a director of Plato College, there are two particularly vile saloons which you must wipe out before you disprove me!" Silence for ten seconds. Then, "That ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... together, made voluntary contribution and discharged the price, they earned their coat-of-arms of fifteen gold coins upon a sable ground, as well as their proud motto "One and All." It had been said (I forget if in my hearing), that the days of chivalry were past. Here was an opportunity to disprove it and declare that the spirit of their ancestors survived and animated the Cornishmen of to-day. (A Voice—"How about the Millennium?") He would pass over that interruption with the contempt it deserved. They were not met to bandy personalities, but as citizens united in the face ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... England. Some yellow journals even went so far as to suggest that I had received payment from the Russian Government for "whitewashing" its penal system, but I fancy the following pages should conclusively disprove the existence of any monetary transactions, past or present, between the Tsar's officials and myself, to say nothing of the fact that my favourable account of the prisons of Western Siberia has been endorsed by such reliable and well-known English ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... probably been reading some miserable cant about Southern humanity, for there are people everywhere who take the wrong side of every subject, from sheer obstinacy. What can disprove the laws of human nature? They require that things should be at the South as our theories lay ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... the circumstances have come under my own notice, and when Europeans have committed wanton aggressions on the Aborigines, and have then made up a plausible story to account for what had taken place, but where, from obvious circumstances, it was quite impossible to disprove or rebut their tale, however improbable it might be. In the Port Phillip District in 1841, Mr. Chief Protector thus writes ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... it was whispered every-where, that at least one of the children of Edward the Fourth was living. Such whispers prove two things; one, that the murder was very uncertain: the second, that it would have been very dangerous to disprove the murder; Henry being at least as much interested as Richard had been to have the children dead. Richard had set them aside as bastards, and thence had a title to the crown; but Henry was himself the issue of ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... consent; I don't think we should," said Deacon Blight. "We can't afford to have a scandal about our spiritual leader. Let's prove it or disprove ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Were crimsoned. One his brother slew, nor dared To spoil the corse, till severed from the neck He flung the head afar. Another dashed Full in his father's teeth the fatal sword, By murderous frenzy striving to disprove His kinship with the slain. Yet for each death We find no separate dirge, nor weep for men When peoples fell. Thus, Rome, thy doom was wrought At dread Pharsalus. Not, as in other fields, By soldiers slain, or captains; here were swept Whole nations to the death; ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... mild woman. He assured her she was mistaken; that he had not yielded to the point that the will was a forgery; that he never would confess that such was the case; that it should be his business to disprove the charge; that he hoped she did not suppose he yielded to the plaintiff, who was resolved to bring the matter into a court of justice. He would only ask her one little question; had she ever seen her father counterfeit different hands? Yes, she said, she had; he could counterfeit, copy, ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... age, because evil tongues had denounced her as a witch. The Baron did not believe in the charge, but, nevertheless, he was obliged to send her away. He had his own reputation in the country to think of, and the charge of witchcraft was no light one in those days, and not so easy to disprove. He gave her a handsome pension, and a comfortable house and troubled himself no ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt |
