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Inference   Listen
noun
Inference  n.  
1.
The act or process of inferring by deduction or induction. "Though it may chance to be right in the conclusions, it is yet unjust and mistaken in the method of inference."
2.
That which inferred; a truth or proposition drawn from another which is admitted or supposed to be true; a conclusion; a deduction. "These inferences, or conclusions, are the effects of reasoning, and the three propositions, taken all together, are called syllogism, or argument."
Synonyms: Conclusion; deduction; consequence. Inference, Conclusion. An inference is literally that which is brought in; and hence, a deduction or induction from premises, something which follows as certainly or probably true. A conclusion is stronger than an inference; it shuts us up to the result, and terminates inquiry. We infer what is particular or probable; we conclude what is certain. In a chain of reasoning we have many inferences, which lead to the ultimate conclusion. "An inference is a proposition which is perceived to be true, because of its connection with some known fact." "When something is simply affirmed to be true, it is called a proposition; after it has been found to be true by several reasons or arguments, it is called a conclusion."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inference" Quotes from Famous Books



... interrupted. "Bang! bang!" challenged another "express," the shots so close together as to be almost simultaneous. "Crack! crack! crack!" retorted the Winchesters, and from the fact that silence followed I drew a clear inference. I said to myself, "That is an ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford

... various witnesses in subsequent accounts do not describe the phenomena in the same terms or in precisely the same manner. The narrative differs in the various accounts, and the phenomena appear far more remarkable in some than in others. The inference is that none of them is right—certainly not the more remarkable ones—and that the inaccuracy of the ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... anthropology, they had those same remnants of information about other peoples, and the knowledge of the savagery of the occupants of those dim forests below. Nevertheless, they had inferred (marvelously keen on inference and deduction their minds were!) the existence and development of civilization in other places, much as we infer it on ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... substantiate, verify, make good, quote chapter and verse; bring home to, bring to book. Adj. showing &c. v.; indicative, indicatory; deducible &c. 478; grounded on, founded on, based on; corroborative, confirmatory. Adv. by inference; according to, witness, a fortiori; still more, still less; raison de plus[Fr]; in corroboration &c. n. of; valeat quantum[Lat]; under seal, under one's hand and seal. Phr. dictum de dicto[Lat]; mise ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... they do not ask for themselves. This inestimable right of representation they have never solicited. They mean not to exchange solid money for such airy honour. They say, and say willingly, that they cannot conveniently be represented; because their inference is, that they cannot be taxed. They are too remote to share the general government, and, therefore, claim the privilege ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... Meanwhile, I want you to call me Herbert, if you please, as a personal favour and a mark of confidence. Suppose I were to go on calling you Miss Briggs all the time! a pretty sort of thing that would be! what inference would you draw as to the depth of my affection? Well, now, Selah, how have these dreadful home authorities of yours been treating you, my dear girl, all the time since I ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... government in our sense of the word; it was represented only by restless feudal lords, to whom disorder was the very breath of life. When, on one occasion, Gregory declared the civil power to be the invention of evil men instigated by the devil, he was making a natural inference from what he observed of the conduct of the princes of his time. In the second place, it should be remembered that Gregory does not claim that the Church should manage the civil government, but that the papacy, which ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... leave to our readers to draw their own inference from; but the very kind reception which the Alpaca Umbrellas have hitherto received, justifies us in asserting, that no material has yet been brought forward which has so thoroughly fulfilled the required conditions. The weight of the ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster

... 8. It was not the book of Deuteronomy alone that they read. We might infer this from the extent of the reading, which was sufficient for all the preceptive parts of the Pentateuch. But here we are not left to mere inference. On the second day "they found written in the law which the Lord had commanded by Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast of the seventh month;" and that they should "fetch olive-branches, and pine-branches, and myrtle-branches, and palm-branches, and branches ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... not definitively adopted his characteristic method: that he was far from unwilling to gain the general ear: and that he was alert to the difficulties of popularisation of poetry written on lines similar to those of "Paracelsus." Nor would this inference be wrong: for, as a matter of fact, the poet, immediately upon the publication of "Paracelsus," determined to devote himself to poetic work which should have so direct a contact with actual life that its appeal should reach even to the most uninitiate ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... Oxford at the same period we have already touched upon, but since, like every other inference founded upon Domesday, the matter has become a subject of pretty violent discussion, it will bear, perhaps, a repeated and more ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... till eight at Night; at which time he came to a Club of his Friends, and diverted them with an Account what Censure it had at Will's in Covent-Garden, how dangerous it was believed to be at Child's, and what Inference they drew from it with Relation to Stocks at Jonathan's. I have had the Honour to travel with this Gentleman I speak of in Search of one of his Falshoods; and have been present when they have described the very Man they have spoken to, as him who first reported ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... matter, but must either swallow or choke, and is fed as they fatten turkeys for the market. The infant, on the other hand, sucks the bottle as it would suck its mother's breast; it rests when fatigued, it stops to play, it leaves off when it has had enough, and many a useful inference may be drawn by the observant nurse or mother who watches the infant sucking, and notices if the child sucks feebly, or leaves off panting from want of breath, or stops in the midst, and cries because its mouth is sore or ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... audience of Savonarola, having declined to put the letters into any hands but his, and with consummate art had admitted that incidentally, and by inference, he was able so far to conjecture their purport as to believe they referred to a rendezvous outside the gates, in which case he urged that the Frate should seek an armed guard from the Signoria, and offered his services in carrying the ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... of their own, but none of them bear the most distant resemblance to the descriptions in the Romance of the Monastery; and as the author could hardly have erred so grossly regarding a spot within a morning's ride of his own house, the inference is, that no resemblance was intended. Hillslap is remembered by the humours of the last inhabitants, two or three elderly ladies, of the class of Miss Raynalds, in the Old Manor House, though less important by birth and fortune. Colmslie ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... of woman a man would go perfectly mad about when he knew her well. I shall, I know." Then, as he saw his cousin's humorous expression, he laughed boyishly. "It does sound odd, I admit," he said, "the inference is that I don't know her well—and that is just it, Ethelrida, but only to you would I say it. Look here, my dear girl, I have got to be comforted this afternoon. She has just flattened me out. We are going to be married on the 25th of October, ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... own desires for other people's, but that she actually has. I would not be surprised if Esther did not have some secret or other." And Polly stopped suddenly, biting her tongue. Not for worlds would she even in the slightest fashion betray a suspicion or inference of her own concerning the friend who had been so loyal and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook

... that you mean intelligent, I thank you for the compliment, and I'm sorry that I can't—" She checked herself, but the inference was clear that she intended ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... interrupting lines; and Draper's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited solid is continuous, with no interrupting lines. And now the spectroscope was turned upon the nebula, and many of them were found to be gaseous. Here, then, was ground for the inference that in these nebulous masses at different stages of condensation—some apparently mere pitches of mist, some with luminous centres—we have the process of development actually going on, and observations like those of Lord Rosse and Arrest gave yet further confirmation ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... what we are after, we Knights of the Mystic Sign. Wisdom—the essence of lives lived; knocks, blows, pains, tortures reduced to fears, and these incorporated into a string or queue of people who have eyes, nerves, and powers of inference, and the initiative to experiment and the impulse to try, and try again. Result—a nugget no larger than a mustard seed of intellectual or spiritual radium, y-clept wisdom. It does not grow on ancestral trees or on college campuses, nor does it come out of laboratories or hospitals, tho' ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... them perfectly. Their resentment was very bitter. Mrs Brown had to remain ashore alone with her rage, but the steward was nursing his on board. Poor Flora had no greater enemy, the aggrieved mate had no greater sympathiser. And Mrs Brown, with a woman's quick power of observation and inference (the putting of two and two together) had come to a certain conclusion which she had imparted to her husband before leaving the ship. The morose steward permitted himself once to make an allusion to it in Powell's hearing. It was in the officers' mess-room at the end of a meal while he ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... casual mention of Judea or Jerusalem. Josephus attempts, too, with doubtful success, to combine the Phoenician and Babylonian records in order to prove that they agree about the date of the rebuilding of the Temple. The only justifiable inference from the passages, however, appears to be that both sources agreed on the existence of Cyrus, king ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... developed in consciousness, by the operation of a single faculty of the mind, in a simple, undivided act. It originates in the spontaneous operation of the whole mind. It is a necessary deduction from the facts of the universe, and the primitive intuitions of the reason,—a logical inference from the facts of sense, consciousness, and reason. A philosophy of religion which regards the feelings as supreme, and which brands the decisions of reason as uncertain, and well-nigh valueless, necessarily degenerates ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... no such inference. You will remember that so far as St. Marys is concerned I have depended on the town for nothing since my first ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... dinted in two places, but it is cut and marked all over from the habit of keeping other hard objects, such as coins or keys, in the same pocket. Surely it is no great feat to assume that a man who treats a fifty-guinea watch so cavalierly must be a careless man. Neither is it a very far-fetched inference that a man who inherits one article of such value is pretty well provided for ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... moral evil is not the obviously prime source within the play, it lies behind it: the situation with which Hamlet has to deal has been formed by adultery and murder. Julius Caesar is the only tragedy in which one is even tempted to find an exception to this rule. And the inference is obvious. If it is chiefly evil that violently disturbs the order of the world, this order cannot be friendly to evil or indifferent between evil and good, any more than a body which is convulsed by poison is friendly to it or indifferent ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... Beda, so opposed to that of Asser, I explain by supposing that it arose out of an inaccurate inference drawn from the similarity of the names of the Isle of Wight and the peninsula of Jutland, since we have seen that in both cases, there was a similar confusion between the syllables Jut- and Vit-. This is an error into which even ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... of years. It is well known that many centuries ago these falls were six miles nearer to Lake Ontario than they now are, making it evident that a steady wearing away of the rock and soil is all the time progressing. The inference seems to be plain enough. After the lapse of ages these mammoth falls may have receded so far as to open with one terrific plunge the eastern end of Lake Erie. Long before the Falls are reached we hear ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... exactly coinciding in sense, may nevertheless relate to one and the same thing, regarded in two different points of view. An illustration of this is afforded in the relation which exists between the words, "inference" and "proof." Whoever justly infers, proves; and whoever proves, infers; but the word "inference" leads the mind from the premises which have been assumed, to the conclusion which follows from them; while the word "proof" follows a reverse ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... article? How can we form our company if such a lie remains unchallenged? Nobody will look at our proposals. Everyone will say, "What have you done about the article that appeared in the Financial Field?" If we say we have done nothing, then, of course, the natural inference is that we are a pair of swindlers, and that our scheme ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... weeks. She hated herself for being suspicious; but Tom had been so unlike himself since Rose's visit, and it was such an unheard-of thing that he should take a day's holiday during her father's absence, that it was scarcely possible to avoid drawing the natural inference. She was very unhappy about him, but did not of course feel justified in saying a word to any one else about the matter. Charles Osmond happened to look in for a few minutes later on, expecting to find Raeburn at home, and then in her relief she did give him an account ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... certain Indian defects appear the more strongly as in the case of the color line of the quadroon and octoroon, but it must not be forgotten that these are only the contrasts of specific improvement, and the inference that the borrowed defects of a half breed exceed the original defects of the full-blooded aborigine is utterly illogical." He stopped suddenly and laid down his pen with a heightened color; the bugle had blown, the guard was turning out to ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... say you think me strange," she continued. "Most people do, because I speak the truth. It's the easiest way of concealing one's feelings. I can, for instance, talk quite openly about Mr. Peyton under shelter of your inference that I shouldn't do so if I were what is called 'interested' in him. And as I am interested in him, my method has its advantages!" She ended with one of the fluttering laughs which seemed to flit from point to point of her ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... cause the despair of many a modern housewife who has attempted the same thing. It must not be supposed, however, that the course of this domestic life was without annoyance, as even here at this early day servants were inclined to be exacting and hard to please. At least, that is the inference which may be drawn from a letter by an old notary of Florence, Lapo Mazzei, wherein he takes occasion to say, in inviting a friend to supper, that it will be entirely convenient to have him come, inasmuch as he has ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... surface appear most divergent. Or, on the other hand, the consecutive narrative of a particular series of operations may be given, in such detail as is necessary, accompanied by a running commentary or criticism, in which the successive occurrences are brought to the test of recognized standards; inference being drawn, or judgment passed, accordingly. The former is the more formal and methodical; it serves better, perhaps, for starting upon his career the beginner who proposes to make war the profession of his life; for it provides him, in a compact and systematic manner, with certain ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... check isn't worrying you much, Mr. Rock," he said easily. "We're both pretty well acquainted with Winfield & Camby's reputation and between you and me, I hardly think they would relish any inference like that coming from a ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... of individuals as forbidden to do a certain thing raises a just inference that all other classes not mentioned are not forbidden. A declaration that soldiers shall not be detailed to sell intoxicating drinks in post exchanges necessarily implies that such sale is not unlawful when conducted ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock

... Tintoret's immense creative power and the colours of Titian's painting which inspired Tintoret's ambition, as we remember—these were the effective influences Velasquez experienced in Italy. His purchases and his own later canvases afford that inference. On his return from Italy he painted a ceremonial picture as wall decoration for one of the palaces of Philip, and in it we can trace the influence of the great ceremonial paintings of the Venetians. The picture commemorates the surrender of Breda in North Brabant, when the ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... of it exists in the earliest writings of the Hindus, the Arabians, or Persians; who, had the tradition survived, would eagerly have chronicled a catastrophe so appalling.[2] Geologic analogy, so far as an inference is derivable from the formation of the adjoining coasts, both of India and Ceylon, is opposed to its probability; and not only plants, but animals, mammalia, birds, reptiles, and insects, exist in Ceylon, which are not to be found in the flora or ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... valuable gold watch, was coolly rebuked for carrying so much property about his person, and the case was dismissed! Had the sufferer been a home Spaniard possibly the result would have been different. The inference is plain and doubtless correct, that the official received half the stolen property, provided he would liberate the culprits. Sometimes, as we were assured, the victim outbids the rogues, and exemplary ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... 'speak out, my good {p.022} fellow; what has put it into your head to be on so much ceremony with me all of a sudden? But, I see how it is, the result is given in one word—Disappointment.' My silence admitted his inference to the fullest extent. His countenance certainly did look rather blank for a few seconds; in truth, he had been wholly unprepared for the event; for it is a singular fact, that before the public, or rather the booksellers, had given ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... or seven score years ago. I draw no inference from this queer picture—let all moralists here present deduce their own. Fancy the moral condition of that society in which a lady of fashion joked with a footman, and carved a great shoulder of veal, and provided besides a sirloin, a goose, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... under General McClellan for what the impatient country was disposed to think an interminable time. A War Department order in April, 1862, putting a stop to recruiting for the armies, added to the confidence, since an easy inference could be drawn from it, and the North settled down to await with high hopes the results of McClellan's long ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill

... the jury, where the people have failed to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt it is the duty of the court to direct a verdict. In this case, though by inference the testimony points strongly toward the prisoner, there is no direct proof against him and I am accordingly constrained—much as I regret it—to instruct you to return a verdict of ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... the harpy solitude from me. I like 'em, and cards, and a cheerful glass; but I mean merely to give you an idea between office confinement and after-office society, how little time I can call my own. I mean only to draw a picture, not to make an inference. I would not that I know of have it otherwise. I only wish sometimes I could exchange some of my faces and voices for the faces and voices which a late visitation brought most welcome, and carried away, leaving regret, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... Civil war, but he was then a mere child. He seems to have been introduced to imperial patronage by the publication of the first book of his Elegies at the age of about twenty. He died young, before he was thirty-five, if we may draw an inference from the latest allusions in his extant poems; he had then written four other books of elegiac pieces, which were probably published separately at intervals of a few years. In the last book there is a noticeable widening of range of subject, which foreshadows the further ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... so. Not worse, not better. No, Next morning found the Nation still divided; Since all were slain, the inference is plain They left the point they fought ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... imperative notions about the conditions of success. The authority of religion and that of custom coalesced into one indivisible obligation. Therefore the simple statement of experiment and expediency in the first paragraph above is not derived directly from actual cases, but is a product of analysis and inference. It must also be added that vanity and ghost fear produced needs which man was as eager to satisfy as those of hunger or the family. Folkways resulted for the former as well as for ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... got his personal answer. He faintly smiled as he passed on, but looked harassed and worn; while she, turning to me, with an exulting face and voice, exclaimed, "Je l'aurai! je l'aurai!" meaning what she had petitioned for—"car . . . tous ces gnraux m'ont demands mon nom!" (191) Could any inference ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... abound?" He returns this horrified answer: "God forbid! How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" (Rom. 5, 20-6, 2.) Actually there were people in the apostle's days who drew from his evangelical teaching this pernicious inference, that by sinning they gave the forgiving grace of God a larger opportunity to exert itself, hence, that they were glorifying grace by committing more sin. This meant putting a premium on sinning. For God's sake, how can ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... regard for character. In the Third Part, as in the Second, however, he transposes scenes, gives deeper life to the marionettes, and in various ways quickens the dramatic interest. This Third Part resembles "King John" in some respects and a similar inference can be drawn from it. As in "King John" we have the sharply contrasted figures of the Bastard and Arthur, so in this "Third Part" there are two contrasted characters, Richard Duke of Gloster and King ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... ideas on the subject; and we all said freely that as gunpowder destroyed the feudal system, so the capitalist system could not long survive the invention of dynamite. Not that we are dynamitards: indeed the absurdity of the inference shows how innocent we were of any practical acquaintance with explosives; but we thought that the statement about gunpowder and feudalism was historically true, and that it would do the capitalists good to remind them of it. Suddenly, ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... conclusion. He rejected all transcendental conceptions; yet he did his best, as Mr. Stephen shows, to find reasonable proofs of a Deity whose existence and attributes may be inferred by observation and experience. He agreed that such an inference is not inconsistent, a priori, with natural laws, and the argument from design was admitted as providing by analogy, or even inductively, a large balance of probability in favour of creation by Intelligence. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... life; and for him to whom that love is imputed, a marriage in heaven is provided after his decease, whatever has been his marriage in the world. From these considerations then results this short concluding observation, that no inference is to be drawn concerning any one, from appearances of marriages or of adulteries, whereby to decide that he has conjugial love, or not; wherefore Judge not, lest ye be condemned. ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... complains of a want of money, commits the same error as if he ascribed a scarcity or absence of grain, when it exists, to a too small number of wagons to carry it, or to the narrowness of country highways. The inference may, indeed, be sometimes well-founded, but certainly only by way of exception; and yet it is generally the first which politico-economical quacks think of in practice.(739) Like all tools or instruments, money constitutes a part ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... be of more value than the German erudition which tends to overburden the intelligence with too great a load of 'facts'. And, after all the labours of Carlyle and Froude, of Stubbs and Freeman, and all the delving into records and chronicles, who shall say what are facts, and what is inference, legitimate or ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... been frequently exposed. On this premise, we should at once conclude that there are no nociceptors for heat within the abdomen because, during countless years, the intra-abdominal region never came into contact with heat. That this inference is correct is shown by the fact that the application of a thermocautery to the intestines when completing a colostomy in a conscious patient is absolutely painless. One would conclude also that there are no touch receptors in the abdominal viscera, and ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile

... he had heard of it, and also that he had already drawn his own inference as to the contents ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... and Sardinia weak. Writers on this period have too readily assumed that the Church, by the law of its being, must always cry "no compromise!" Of course nothing can be more erroneous. The Church has yielded as many times as it thought itself obliged to yield. What other inference can be deduced from the strange and romantic story of the suppression of the Jesuits? and, to cite only one more instance, from the deposition of bishops for extra-canonical reasons conceded by Pius VII. to the First Consul? The ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... obvious inference: from every quarter have I heard exclamations against masculine women; but where are they to be found? If, by this appellation, men mean to inveigh against their ardour in hunting, shooting, and gaming, I shall most cordially ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... it said repeatedly in the course of this very debate, that the people of England are more free than ever they were, that the Government is more democratic than ever it was; and this is urged as an argument against Reform. I admit the fact; but I deny the inference. It is a principle never to be forgotten, in discussions like this, that it is not by absolute, but by relative misgovernment that nations are roused to madness. It is not sufficient to look merely at the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... perceptions into the language of sense: they did not embody them in visible images, but in breathing words. They were more taken up with what an object suggested to combine with the infinite stores of fancy or trains of feeling, than with the single object itself; more intent upon the moral inference, the tendency and the result, than the appearance of things, however imposing or expressive, at any given moment of time.... We should say that the eye in warmer climates drinks in greater pleasure from external sights, is more open and porous to them, as the ear is to sounds; that ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... made his settlement; who having, in short, exhausted the charms of every subject, and wasted all his ardour, sinks into languor and listless indifference? If so, we have found at least another simile to our purpose. But it is probable, that here too the resemblance is imperfect; and the inference that would follow, like that of most arguments drawn from analogy, tends rather to amuse the fancy, than to give any real information on the subject to which ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... explained that Adam meaning Man; Seth, placed; and Enosh, Misery: the mystic inference is that Man was placed ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... puff)—my friends—we all know, my friends, that bullocks blood is largely used in the sugar refineries in England, but, alas! there is no bullocks blood used in the refineries in the West Indies. This I will prove to you on the oath of six dissenting clergymen. No. What then is the inference? Oh, is it not palpable? Do you not every day, as jurors, hang men on circumstantial evidence? Are not many of yourselves hanged and transported every year, on the simple fact being proved, of your being found stooping down in pity over some poor fellow ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... came to the conclusion that she was an unhappy woman as far as her relations with her husband went; and without the slightest reason whatever to guide me to such an inference, felt that he, and not she, was to blame; and even as we talked, there was unconsciously taking possession of me a dislike to a man from whom I had experienced nothing but civility and kindness. Just as she was leaving the room to attend to her household duties, the man Tematau ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... Alexandria, and various grammarians or scholiasts. Ammianus Marcellinus (xxv. 4) says that the emperor Julian enjoyed reading Bacchylides. It is clear, then, that this poet continued to be popular during at least the first four centuries of our era. No inference adverse to his repute can fairly be drawn from the fact that no mention of him occurs in the extant work of any Attic writer. The only definite estimate of him by an ancient critic occurs in the treatise [Greek: Peri Hupsous] commonly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... the inference has been derived, that the orator was insincere in his opposition to the sales made of his people's lands. His sincerity though questioned now, was never after this a matter of doubt. If he had been insincere before, the effect of this sale on the destiny of his people, imposed upon him considerations ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... through the noise of cracking walnuts, and in came Elizabeth with the news that Mr Georgie wanted to know if he might come in for half-an-hour and chat. If it had been Olga Bracely herself, she could hardly have been more welcome; virtue (the virtue of observation and inference) was receiving ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... skim milk being remixed after separation. This process naturally removes the solid impurities as dirt, hairs, epithelial scales and cells, also some of the casein, making what is known as centrifuge slime. This conglomerate mass is incomparably rich in germ life and the natural inference would be that the bacterial content of the milk would be greatly reduced by this procedure. Eckles and Barnes[31] noted a reduction of 37 to 56 per cent. of the bacteria but others have failed to observe such reductions.[32] This condition is ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... gain the buck would raise his graceful neck to its full stretch, utter a slight blearing call, and look suspiciously around him. From these symptoms Hendrik drew the inference that it was shy game, and would ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... directly above and parallel with the arm is an arrow; and if we trace out the points of the compass as described in the diary, we find that the arm is pointing to the south, the arrow is pointing to the north; or in other words, the arm points to Hili-li; the arrow, by inference, back to the island on which the indentures exist. Now among most savages the arrow, as a symbol, represents war—a fight—individual ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... nothing whatever of any pedimental figures. Of course his silence does not prove that there were none; but with all the finds of acroteria, terracottas and the like, no trace of any such sculptures was discovered. The inference seems certain that the pedimental decoration, if present at all, was either of wood or of terracotta, or was merely painted on a smooth surface. The weight of authority inclines to the last view. It is held that, if artists ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... mother threw her arms about me and apologized for her mistaken inference. We laughed away the momentary hurt. Then she built a brisk fire on the ground in the tepee, and hung a blackened coffeepot on one of the prongs of a forked pole which leaned over the flames. Placing a pan on a heap of red embers, she baked some unleavened bread. This light luncheon she ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa

... qualified his language concerning their conduct, stating, that, "unless Brigham Young should retrace his steps, the Territory of Utah will be in a state of open rebellion," but declining to accept the logical inference from his own expression, that the rebellion was at the time open and manifest. He recommended no further legislation concerning the matter than that four regiments should be added to the army, to supply the place of those which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... his disciples, he is said to have told one of them who carried a bow to shoot an arrow. And when the latter had done this several times, he asked him whether he could do it indefinitely, and the man answered that if he continued doing it, the bow would break. Whence the Blessed John drew the inference that in like manner man's mind would break if its ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... pulse-beat, and the length of lines in songs and poems is determined by the inhalation and exhalation of the lungs," and this really goes near to the root of the matter; albeit we might derive therefrom the unsupported inference that a poet "fat and scant of breath" would write in lines of a foot each, while the more able-bodied bard, with the capacious lungs of a pearl-diver, would deliver himself all across his page, with "the spacious volubility of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... with the grass that had grown over them; and they all with one voice asserted that Caonabo and Mayreni had killed them; but notwithstanding all this, we began to hear complaints that one of the Spaniards had taken three women to himself, and another four; from whence we drew the inference that jealousy was the cause of the misfortune that had occurred. On the next morning, as no spot in that vicinity appeared suitable for our making a settlement, the Admiral ordered a caravel to go in one direction to look for a convenient locality, while some of us went with him another ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... the matter outside the family circle, "for there is treason in the very name"; and that he was himself a man distinguished by dash and daring, who was very anxious to make a substantial sum and return to England soon. The inference from his language and circumstances as to the scheme he had in hand ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... living upon the earth, especially if the moon be without water and atmosphere. As these two desiderata seem indispensable to lunar inhabitation, we may chiefly consider the question, Do these conditions exist? If so, inductive reasoning will lead us to the inference, which subsequent experience will strengthen, that the moon is inhabited like its superior planet. But if not, life on the satellite similar to life on the earth, is altogether improbable, if not ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... myself if sleep could be indeed so like death in its appearance. For that it was a sleeping woman I beheld, I did not seriously doubt. There were too many evidences of careless life in the room for any other inference. The clothes, left just as she had stepped from them in a circle on the floor; the liberal plate of food placed in waiting for her on the chair by the door, —food amongst which I recognized, even in this casual glance, the same dish which we had had for breakfast ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... a species of enchanter's wand in rendering your presence unknown to wildfowl. I have never tried it, having but little faith in cunning nostrums concocted for the taking of either birds or fish; but as he is a gentleman of standing and great experience, I will quote his words from which I drew my inference: ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... all, for everybody knew he had been wandering aimlessly about for days and nights past. The window shade or blanket had been disarranged and the window had been raised a few inches, probably for air. Everything else was as Craney remembered seeing it before he turned in, and the inference was clear to every mind that Case had never left the room and probably, after the second dose, never left ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... this case was exposed, been practised without any one being the wiser for it! It ought to be added that the betters make one claim that is altogether unreasonable, and that is—at least this is the only inference from their talk—that when they have once "taken" a horse, as they call it, in a race, the owner thereby loses a part of his proprietorship in the animal, and is bound to share his rights of ownership with them. But one cannot thus ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... [Footnote: Id., vol. xliv. p. 809, and Sherman's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 166.] "The motto 'Nothing venture, nothing win,' which you refer to, is most appropriate, and should I venture too much and happen to lose, I shall bespeak your charitable inference." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlvii. pt. ii. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... a fair inference that indictable offences were originally limited in the same way as those which gave rise to an appeal. For whether the indictment arose by a splitting up of the appeal, or in some other way, ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... qualities but that; that one writer had as much sense, another as much fancy, another as much knowledge of character, another the same depth of passion, and another as great a power of language. This statement is not true; nor is the inference from it well-founded, even if it were. This person does not seem to have been aware that, upon his own shewing, the great distinction of Shakspeare's genius was its virtually including the genius of all the great men of his age, and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... Fox trot, she played it with unaccountable spirit and taste, so that the sound did not jar me—but the inference hurt a little. I said nothing, however. Then she played "Smiles," and the sweet commonplace air said all sorts of things to me—Desire to live again, and dance, and enjoy foolish pleasures—How could this little iceberg of a girl put so much devilment into the way she touched the keys? If it had ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... the meal was soon finished, and the conversation resumed, partly by signs and inference, partly by Samoset's limited stock of English. By one means and the other the Pilgrims presently learned that Monhegan was a large island near to the mainland in a northeasterly direction, and a great resort of fishing vessels, mostly English, with whose masters Samoset, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... the two, for the moment so absorbed in each other, the Hollander has come from the house. He has been standing near enough to overhear Erik's last sentences; the significance of these seems scarcely ambiguous, his inference is natural. It is a lovers' meeting which he has chanced upon. Whatever her reasons for accepting him, the Hollander,—it is clear that this young huntsman has a claim on the girl who declared so glibly that the law of truth ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... doctrine of Satan, or the Devil, as something new and revealed then for the first time, but assumes a general though vague belief in such a being. This belief evidently existed among the Jews when Christ came. It as evidently was not taught in the Old Testament. The inevitable inference is that it grew up in the Jewish mind from its ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... influence theory. On the other hand, objections have been urged against the idea that the monuments were all built by one and the same race. Thus Dr. Montelius in his excellent Orient und Europa says, "In Europe at this time dwelt Aryans, but the Syrians and Sudanese cannot be Aryans," the inference being, of course, that the European dolmens were built by a different race from that which built those of Syria and the Sudan. Unfortunately, however, the major premise is not completely true, for though it is true that Aryans did live in Europe at this time, there were also people in Europe ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet

... "removal" of several of his father's most trusted lieutenants. He had seen the gradual upbuilding of the Hojo power on this hecatomb of victims. That he perceived something of his own danger would seem to be a natural inference. Yet if he entertained such apprehensions, he never communicated them to his mother, Masa, who, from her place of high prestige and commanding intellect, could have reshaped ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... friends at Newport at the time. Had Mrs. Marteen been there? Of course! He took up the incriminating documents again and thoroughly mastered their contents, every turn of phrase, every between-the-line inference. Accidents could happen; he must be prepared for the worst. Not that negotiations would fail—but—not until the originals were in his hands and personally done away with would he feel secure. He recalled Mrs. Marteen's graceful and sumptuously clad figure, her clear-cut, beautiful head, the ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... by inference, in the records of Oblong Meeting that proves this occupation of their building by soldiers. It was not voluntarily surrendered; other records show that the use of the building was supported by force; its surrender was grudging, not a matter to be recorded in the ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... generally used to introduce a clause of repetition, a clause stating the obverse, and a clause stating an inference. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... even thought of Aristotle, they were yet all accurately written according to his rules. This was no easy task, and he was obliged to have recourse to all manner of forced explanations. If he had been able to establish his case satisfactorily, it would but lead to the inference that the rules of Aristotle must be very loose and indeterminate, if works so dissimilar in spirit and form, as the tragedies of the Greeks and those of Corneille are yet ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... many recorded cases, the strongest barrier (viz., that against Mahometan alliances) is known to have given way, as in other cases innumerable, but forgotten, it must be presumed to have given way? this inference follows, viz., that if anywhere the Grecian blood remains in purity, the fact will be entirely without evidence; and for us, the result will be the same as if the fact had no existence. Simply as a matter of curiosity, if our own opinion were ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... of this statement it would seem to be a legitimate inference that even in the straitest sect of Lutherans in America the ultimate doctrine of Lutheranism, reduced to a single word, ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner

... actually broken. Had this been done in the dark? Must it not have been by a hand human as mine; must there not have been a human agency all the while in that room? Good cause to suspect it. I cannot tell. I cannot do more than state the fact fairly; the reader may draw his own inference. ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... case, and it follows from this explanation, that no part of the year ever can have the fractional or double date except the interval from January 1 to March 24 inclusively. And hence arises a practical inference, viz, that the very same reason, and no other, which formerly enjoined the use of the compound or fractional date, viz, the prevention of a capital ambiguity or dilemma, now enjoins its omission. For ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... Europe and America—dabblers in the Kabala—notwithstanding. But far even as those superior Intelligences have investigated (or, if preferred, are alleged to have investigated), and remotely as they may have searched by the help of inference and analogy, even They have failed to discover in the Infinity anything permanent but—SPACE. ALL IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Reflection, therefore, will easily suggest to the reader the further logical inference that in a Universe ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... "The inference is positive enough. The safe has been opened between the hours of ten at night and ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... bunch of "flimsies," as the tissue copies of the waybills are called. It was almost unbelievable that my luck had turned so soon, and yet the fact seemed undeniable. I had a job to which I had been recommended by the one man in the city who knew my record. No questions had been asked, and the inference seemed to be that none ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... black fur there are bones and fibres and muscles. Don't exaggerate them and call your task finished; merely remember always that they're there framing and padding the velvet skin. More is done by skilful inference than by parading every abstract fact you know and translating the sum-accumulative of your knowledge into the over-accented concrete. Reticence is a kind of vigour. It can even approach violence. The mentally garrulous kill their own inspiration. Inadequacy ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... uniting with that race to form a single Person or God, in the same way as he has himself united with other cells to form man. The existence, and much more the roundness of the earth itself, would be unknown to him, except by way of inference and deduction. The only universe which he could at all understand would be the body of the man of whom ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler

... some three or four of the pupils noted for talking. This talking, too, may have been about the lesson, or at all events was not such as to distract very perceptibly the current of instruction. Hence the inference that a moderate amount of talking, such as that was, is perfectly consistent with decorum ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... received another letter from Bastin which, as a scrawl on the flap of the envelope informed me, he had carried for a week in his pocket and forgotten to post. Except by inference it returned no thanks for my intended benefits. What it did say, however, was that he thought it wrong of me to have settled a matter of such spiritual importance in so great a hurry, though he had observed that rich ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... Moreover, the Ego, I, myself, as Will, as a continuously identic intelligent agent, am not given to myself immediately in my Presentment, any more than is the real object. The existence of my Ego, of my cogitant self, is an inference which I am compelled to draw from the facts of my mental activity. Cogito, ergo sum. Similarly, my energetic organism is the real a-logical thing-in-itself which I am compelled to postulate in order to explain my perception of physical phenomena in the light of ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... Warburton's accusations against "the Poet," he retorts some against the critic himself. Warburton often perplexed a controversy by a subtile change of a word; or by breaking up a sentence; or by contriving some absurdity in the shape of an inference, to get rid of it in a mock triumph. These little weapons against the laws of war are insidiously practised in the war ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... in blank astonishment, for these events befell in the days before I had joined him as his assistant, and his special knowledge and powers of inference were not then fully ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... to talk quietly and at once, and maintained a perfectly even flow of comment, reflection, anecdote, reminiscence, and sudden, flashing turns of inference. He seemed always to be searching after general principles, cosmic laws, and to be always jumping at them, testing them, finding them not comprehensive enough, and letting them drift behind him as he pursued his ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... wanted to know if anything could be more splendid than Mr. Bradley as Lord Ingleton; she confided to Stephen that that was what she called real wickedness, the kind that did the most harm, and invited him, by inference, to a liberal judgment of stupid sinners. He sat emitting short unsmiling sentences with eyes nervously fugitive from Lady Dolly's too proximate opulence until the third act began. Then he gave place with embarrassed ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... wandering down the latitudes, Until it puzzled came To continents of summer, To firmaments of sun, To strange, bright crowds of flowers, And birds of foreign tongue! I say, as if this little flower To Eden wandered in — What then? Why, nothing, only, Your inference therefrom! ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... a sequel to 'Home Influence,' wherein the further fortunes of the Hamilton family are so set forth that the wordly-minded reader is driven to the inference that the brilliant marriages of her children are a sensible part of Mrs. Hamilton's "recompense." The story is vividly and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... King was not there, and Madame would receive me. I thought, indeed, that her doors flew open with suspicious speed, and that way was made for me more easily than usual; and I soon found that I was not wrong in the inference I drew from these facts. For when I entered her chamber that remarkable woman, who, whatever her enemies may say, combined with her beauty a very uncommon degree of sense and discretion, met me with a low courtesy and a smile of derision. "So," she said, ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... without human inhabitants or recognizable landmarks, we might unwittingly pass the bend of a winding river and thus recede from badly needed water. The general landscape was, as a rule, so flat, and the trees were so high, that one could draw no inference as to the whereabouts of a river from the configuration ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... valuation) at will. The sorcerer is generally an old man. He does not, as a rule, deck himself in any special garb, or go through public incantations, as do most savage medicine-men. But he hints and threatens, and lets inference take its course, till eventually he becomes a recognized power, feared and obeyed by all. Extortion, false swearing, quarrels and murders, and all manner of iniquity, follow in his train. No native but fears him, however complete the training and education of ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox

... cases,—conquest, hard fighting, followed by wise guidance of the conquered;—but it was Harald the Fairhaired, his son, who conspicuously carried it on and completed it. Harald's birth-year, death-year, and chronology in general, are known only by inference and computation; but, by the latest reckoning, he died about the year 933 of our era, a man ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... cases out of the three this ingenious contrivance is at the close of the poem. In the Vercelli book it occurs in the Elene, the last of the poems in the manuscript, and Mr. Kemble remarked that it was "apparently intended as a tail-piece to the whole book."[131] This naturally suggests the inference, which indeed is generally accepted, that all the poems in the Vercelli book ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... to pity and well (though very likely useless) to pray for; they were named reprobates, goats, God's enemies, brands for the burning; and Archie tallied every mark of identification, and drew the inevitable private inference that the Lord Justice-Clerk was ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... living—till her brain seemed ready to burst its confinement with excess of throbbing. It was only natural that she should, by degrees, be unable to separate the discovery, which was matter of fact, from the suspicion of treachery on her husband's part, which was only matter of inference. And thus there arose in her a personal ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... contenting themselves with calling notice to it, and abstaining from asking Parliament to pronounce a formal judgment on it, since any express censure would have been unwarranted either by the facts of the case or by any inference to be drawn from previous usage, while an approval of it would wear the appearance not only of sanctioning, but even of inviting a repetition of an arrangement which, if ever attempted to be carried out in actual practice, must tend ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... addition of these portions in the seventh century shows at least a great diminution of musical productive power, and that the bulk of the Antiphoner of the Mass must have been composed before this date. This inference is supported by the conclusion which M. Gevaert draws from his examination of the Antiphons of Divine Service (La Melopee Antique, p. 175), viz., that the Golden Age for compositions of this class was the period 540-600. The ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt

... the citation of authorities made by Mr. Stevens, Mr. Raymond maintained that they did not lend the "slightest countenance to the inference ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... made that milk or cream causes the coffee liquid to become coagulated when it comes into contact with the acids of the stomach. This is true, but does not carry with it the inference that indigestibility accompanies this coagulation. Milk and cream, upon reaching the stomach, are coagulated by the gastric juice; but the casein product formed is not indigestible. These liquids, when added to coffee, are partially acted upon by the small acid content of the brew, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... worse tied white neckerchief round his throat, showed that he had not found leisure since he left the court to make any alteration in his dress; while the slovenly style of the remainder of his costume warranted the inference that his personal appearance would not have been very much improved if he had. Books of practice, heaps of papers, and opened letters, were scattered over the table, without any attempt at order or arrangement; the furniture of the room was old and rickety; ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... led to this last avowal, probably, by the desire of covering over the mortification of his defeat; a thin varnish, which could impose on nobody. The whole of the proceedings are of so ambiguous a character as to suggest the inevitable inference, that they flowed from habits of dissimulation too strong to be controlled, even when there was no occasion for its exercise. We occasionally meet with examples of a similar fondness for superfluous manoeuvring in the humbler concerns ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... secondary and tertiary epochs, Professor Heer having identified kindred specimens belonging to sixty species and eight genera in fossil remains generally distributed through the northern hemisphere. Whatever inference we may draw, it is at least certain that the tree was well represented in former times, if now it be the last of its race. It was first known to Kaempfer in 1690, and described by him in 1712, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... their corruption. It has sometimes been said, by way of severe reflection, of a moral sermon, that it could not be the Gospel, for that a Socinian might have heard it without offence. The objection is very absurd; but what then ought to be the inference drawn by the same persons, respecting the character of doctrines which, although in speculation they are fearful and appalling to the utmost, tend in reality to stupify the moral sense, and can be listened to by the profane and the profligate with complacency or apathy? ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull

... were so quick to guess at once the reason of my question," continued Hillyard, "I can draw an inference. Mario Escobar has been at Rackham ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... Tarrant," Ransom said, as if he knew all about it. He perceived in a moment that this was Mr. Filer, Olive Chancellor's agent; an inference instantly followed by the reflexion that such a personage would have been warned against him by his kinswoman and would doubtless attempt to hold him, or his influence, accountable for Verena's unexpected delay. Mr. Filer only glanced at him, however, and to Ransom's surprise ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... that her reply was open to more than a single construction. It might, of course, mean that she did not love Kulan Tith; and so, by inference, be taken to mean ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... energy in Lanceshire, the immeasurably profounder feelings generated by the mysteries which stand behind Christianity, as compared with the shallow mysteries that stood behind paganism, and it would be easy to draw the inference, that, in the capacity for the infinite and impassioned, for horror and for pathos, Mycenae could have had no pretentions to measure herself against Manchester. Not that I had drawn such an inference myself. Why should I? there ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... and probably useful performance," he replied; "but it does not accord with comprehensive conceptions of humanity, inasmuch as its main inference was drawn from the exception, and not from the rule. There always have been, and probably always will be, men possessed of the self-immolating or martyr spirit. Such instances are undoubtedly useful, and have my admiration; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... that, whatever names were used, it was his old colleague Li Hung Chang who sent for him, and the very first definite information he received on approaching the Chinese capital was that not Li, but persons whom by inference were inimical to Li, had sent for him. The first question that arises then was who was the real author of the invitation to Gordon that bore the name of Hart. It cannot be answered, for Gordon assured me that he himself did not know; but ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... details are not what I relish in the least. Putting me off with your Woolers and your Allbutts! If only you had told me about Jane Eyre!" For it turned out that all the time Mary Taylor had been told. The inference was that Mary Taylor, with her fits of caution, ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... circumstances are not normal. It is beginning to be believed that in the big business of this country nothing is disconnected from anything else. I do not mean in this particular instance to which I have referred, and I do not have in mind to draw any inference at all, for that would be unjust; but take any investment of an industrial character by a great bank. It is known that the directorate of that bank interlaces in personnel with ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty boards of directors of all sorts, of railroads which handle commodities, ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... the Inference of your first argument. You said, 'The dialogue of Plays is presented as the effect of sudden thought; but no one speaks suddenly or, ex tempore, in Rhyme' [p. 498]: and you inferred from thence, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... had told him in accents of contempt and anger, 'I hate the Turks'; and that English views generally as to Russian aggression and Turkish interests had been sensibly modified. All this was not untrue, but it was not true enough to bear the inference that was drawn from it at St. Petersburg. The deception was disastrous, and Brunnow was never forgiven ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... so cold and unnatural and inhuman! None of the cursed Gibbonian fine writing, so fine and composite. None of Dr. Robertson's periods with three members. None of Mr. Roscoe's sage remarks, all so apposite, and coming in so clever, lest the reader should have had the trouble of drawing an inference. Burnet's good old prattle I can bring present to my mind; I can make the Revolution present to me: the French Revolution, by a converse perversity in my nature, I fling as far from me. To quit this tiresome subject, and ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... believe that there is one corner of the earth where they are treated with respect. My own experiences have been so different that I have begun to believe that none of us are safe after we leave our cradles.' Then, as if suddenly realizing the inference, the color mounting to her cheeks, she added: 'But please do not misunderstand me. I am quite willing to accept your statement; for I ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... possible? There is no immediate knowledge of Matter; what we know is always Self Matter. The idea of a Matter which can exist by itself is an inference: is ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall

... compelled to say this captain was a fool and a tyrant, fools indeed must those officers be who draw the inference that I mean the impression to be general, that all captains are either fools or tyrants. Let the cavillers understand, that the tyranny and the folly are innate in the man, but that the service abhors and represses ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... aside, and neither can the inherited intellect. When the outer angle at the right of the eye is pressed upon, a light appears in the closed eye at the left, not at the right; not at the place touched. This optical illusion, which was known even in Newton's day, this wordless inductive inference, is hereditary and incorrigible; and, on the other hand, the hereditary wordless concept of food can neither be prevented from arising nor be set aside nor be formed otherwise than it was formed ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... peace to be made with Helen, too, Katy feared; for Helen had sent back the diamond ring, saying it was not suitable for her, but never hinting that she had drawn from Morris the inference that Wilford was not well pleased at having his wife thus dispose of his costly presents. Katy had cried when she received the ring, feeling that something was wrong and longing so much for the time when she ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... this sense is not sceptical. Even a charge that existing codes of morality and systems of thought are largely matters of social habit, or rules devised by church and state to maintain an arbitrary and profitable power, does not justify the inference that there is no truth. For there is no dilemma between public tyranny and private caprice. On the contrary, it means that tyranny is itself a form of caprice, and that caprice in any form must give way before reason and experiment. Certain contemporary popular ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... such ordinary claims, from which they differ more widely in the gravity of their character than in the magnitude of their amount, great even as is that difference. Not a word was found in the treaty, and not an inference could be drawn from it, to remove the sense of the unfriendliness of the course of Great Britain in our struggle for existence, which had so deeply and universally impressed itself upon ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... of deep night. Behind the veil of night are sometimes done evil deeds. The snail has been known to start before his time. Laying down these general postulates, I drew therefrom, late in the sultry gloom, this particular inference: Caesar's shallop might possibly breast the deep before dawn; and if Caesar was not on hand, she would carry his fortunes, but not him. Forthwith, groping through the obscurity, I found my fears without foundation. The shallop was quiescent in a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... sacred songs, and of the thoughts and words of the Virgin, justify the belief that Luke received his information from herself. When we find him assuring his friend Theophilus that he himself had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, the inference is natural that his information was obtained from the most trustworthy sources. There is no reason to doubt that Mary was associated with the Apostles of her Son, and had opportunities of imparting information regarding Him ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds

... observation which characterize the scientific laboratory. The control of the methods by which generalizations or theories are built up from these facts is also part of the logic of induction, and includes all the canons and regulations for inductive inference. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... Bailie. In the latter posture, it occasioned, no doubt, an unseemly projection of the person towards those who happened to walk behind; but those being at all times his inferiors (for Mr. Macwheeble was very scrupulous in giving place to all others), he cared very little what inference of contempt or slight regard they might derive from the circumstance. Hence, when he waddled across the court to and from his old grey pony, he somewhat resembled a turnspit walking upon its ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... same as is to be found in his undoubtedly independent work, appears alike in plays signed with him by persons so different as Middleton and Webster, as Chettle and Ford. When this is the case, the inference is certain, according to the strictest rules of logic. We can define Dekker's idiosyncrasy almost more certainly than if he had never written a line except under his own name. That idiosyncrasy consists, first, of an exquisite lyrical faculty, which, in the songs given in all collections of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury



Words linked to "Inference" :   extrapolation, deduction, infer, abstract thought, entailment, analogy, inferential, presumption, reasoning, derivation, illation, corollary, logical thinking



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