"Self-evident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cannot be avoided by excuses, nor can it be delegated. It is not enough for woman to point to the self-evident domination of man. Nor does it avail to plead the guilt of rulers and the exploiters of labor. It makes no difference that she does not formulate industrial systems nor that she is an instinctive believer in social justice. In her submission lies her ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... between the Schuylkill and Delaware, were formed somewhat earlier than the Lutheran congregations in their vicinity. As the members of the two religious bodies were closely intermarried and often worshipped in the same buildings, it is self-evident that the earlier organizations must have had an important influence on the later. Beside this, in Europe, especially in Holland, but also in Germany, there was a fuller self-government in the Reformed congregations than prevailed in the Lutheran in Germany. Their system was, therefore, better adapted ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker
... Among self-evident truths not one is more indisputable than that which, in the immortal words of our Declaration of Independence, asserts the right of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; but the only happiness that can be recognised by a true statesman as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all the frailties of human nature and all the possibilities of mankind, either for good or evil; incidentally he throws into marked contrast the despicable depreciation used by the Spanish writers in referring to the Filipinos, making clear the application of the self-evident proposition that no ordinary human being in the presence of superior force can very well conduct himself as a man unless he be treated ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... possible that some of the most common, and if I dared I should say the most narrow, the most self-evident of these prejudices may sway and terrify you from the plain path of equity? Dare you look the world's unjust contumelies stedfastly in the face? Dare you answer for yourself that you will not shudder at the performance of what you cannot ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... are self-evident to those who are versed in Speculations of Morality. For which Reason I shall not enlarge upon them, but proceed to a Point of the same Nature, which may open to us a more ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... glory of Bernard of Cluny's Celestial City, is more beautiful than true—probably. Orderly reason does not always have to be a visible part of all great things. Logic may possibly require that unity means something ascending in self-evident relation to the parts and to the whole, with no ellipsis in the ascent. But reason may permit, even demand an ellipsis, and genius may not need the self-evident part. In fact, these parts may be the "blind-spots" in the progress of unity. They may be filled with little but repetition. "Nature ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... "the kingdoms" in plural number; but there will be one kingdom, that is, one government of our Lord, and his Christ. And this will be a true Republican government—to give explanations about which there is no room here, but we remark, that this great truth will become self-evident to those who comprehend this book. And we expect, that you, respected President Buchanan, will comprehend it and then you will take the spiritual weapons, which are comprehended in our message, for the conversion of monarchs into true ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... at Toender had formed the peculiar custom of singing in German—even at the Danish service. It is self-evident, however, that such a custom could not be satisfactory to Brorson. He was a Pietist with the fervent longing of that movement for a real spiritual communion with his fellow Christians. But a custom that ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity, which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to glance at certain considerations which point to the by no means self-evident proposition, that this factor of irresponsible property is certain to be present in the social body a hundred years ahead. It has, no doubt, occurred to the reader that all the conditions of the shareholder's being unfit him ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... opinion of a great class. Probably their draftsman was Sebastian Lotzer, the tanner who for years past had preached apostolic communism. It is not impossible that the Anabaptist Balthasar Huebmaier had a hand in them. Their demands are moderate and would be considered matters of self-evident justice to-day. The first article is for the right of each community to choose its own pastor. The second protests against the minor tithes on vegetables paid to the clergy, though expressly admitting the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... likely still to flow from this large and growing accession to our marine strength, need scarcely be commented on. They are self-evident, and recommend themselves alike to the merchant, the trader, and the mere man of pastime, all of whom are in some degree participators. Besides the regularity and security attendant on the transmission of all sorts of merchandise, there is an immense ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... explosion of public indignation, which had for result that he was immediately set at liberty by the Chief of the State. The honourable character given the condemned man by all his fellow-citizens made the grossness of the blunder self-evident. The magistrates themselves admitted it, and yet out of caste considerations they did all they could to prevent the pardon being signed. In all similar affairs the jury, confronted with technical details it is unable to understand, naturally hearkens to the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... "positions" traversed by the stone lie "in reality" on a straight line or on a parabola? Moreover, what is meant here by motion "in space" ? From the considerations of the previous section the answer is self-evident. In the first place we entirely shun the vague word "space," of which, we must honestly acknowledge, we cannot form the slightest conception, and we replace it by "motion relative to a practically rigid body of reference." The positions relative to the body of reference ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... of all concerned changed completely. It hardly needed the Collector's order, given with the utmost promptitude, to cause the Temple woman to give the children up. To the Indian mind, quick to see the finger of God in such an event, the thing was self-evident. An unseen Power was at work here. Who were they that they should withstand it? A telegram told us the children were safe, and next day we ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... and scarce a popular expression esteemed figurative, but they affirm to be the simplest statement of fact. Then is their whole theory of social relations—both in and out of the body—most philosophical, and, though at variance with the popular theology, self-evident. It is only when they come to their descriptive theism, if I may say so, and then to their drollest heaven, and to some autocratic not moral decrees of God, that the mythus loses me. In general, too, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... intestines. The proper amount of food is absorbed and nourishes the man as it should. Now did not the thorough mastication of that food increase the value of the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates? The thing is a self-evident fact. In the first case a man takes food which quickly turns to a loathsome poison. In the second instance the same kind of food is so thoroughly mixed with the ptyalin in the saliva that whatever is eaten becomes of value as protein or fat ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... to assume that this force is self-evident and known to everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really quite ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is probably," says Mr. Russell, "the greatest achievement of which our own age has to boast.... It was assumed as self-evident, until Cantor and Dedekind established the opposite, that if, from any collection of things, some were taken away, the number of things left must always be less than the original number of things. This assumption, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... intricate a matter, and one of which a very slight thing can turn the scales, it is not easy to lay down rules by which good taste may be acquired. But there are instances of bad taste which can be avoided, and among them there is one which is self-evident, and does not relate either to harmony or to variety of colours. We allude to the good taste of dressing according to ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... there was no wall but one. Simson placed himself on the side next the ruins, so as to intercept any communication with the old house, which was what his mind was fixed upon. I was posted on the other side. To say that nothing could come near without being seen was self-evident. It had been so also on the previous night. Now, with our three lights in the midst of the darkness, the whole place seemed illuminated. Dr. Moncrieff's lantern, which was a large one, without any means of shutting up,—an old-fashioned ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... made an admirable speech. The sentiments were hackneyed, the observations self-evident, and the moral obvious. His phrases had the well-known ring which distinguishes the true orator. Mr. Jackson was recognised everywhere to be a fine platform speaker, but his varied excellence could not be appreciated in a summary, and he had a fine verbosity. It is sufficient ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... point of fact, it's quite a self-evident sort of thing. I am extremely anxious, Major, that my friend Dombey should hear me express my very great astonishment and regret, that my lovely and accomplished relative, who was possessed of every qualification to make a man happy, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Dillwyn, it is self-evident. You would not respect me if I allowed you to do it; and I should not respect myself. We New England folks, if we are nothing else, we ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... child; but we might break off one of those branches," opined Raymonde. "No, I know we can't reach it from below, that's self-evident. Your humble servant's going to climb. Here, Ave, you bluebottle, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... probably reflected accurately the intentions of his chief, as conceived in his tent on Saturday night. It was self-evident that Anderson and McLaws could be readily held in check, so long as Jackson's corps was kept sundered from them. Indeed, they would have necessarily remained on the defensive so long as isolated. Instead, then, of leaving the Third Corps, and one division of the Twelfth, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... feeling that something fearful had occurred. I replied, very much agitated, that I was not aware of any error. 'I thought so! Do you know where you are? You are in London, not in Bath!' The fact was so self-evident that I did not attempt to disprove it. 'You will be delivered up to scorn and contempt; the critics will immolate you; the eyes of this great metropolis are fixed upon you. I thought you were a well-educated young ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... without alloy, bright and lustrous for ever. For Lucian, it was no defect in the woman that she was desirous and faithless; he had not conceived an affection for certain moral or intellectual accidents, but for the very woman. Guided by the self-evident axiom that humanity is to be judged by literature, and not literature by humanity, he detected the analogy between Lycidas and Annie. Only the dullard would object to the nauseous cant of the one, or to the indiscretions of the other. A sober critic might say that the man who could ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... nothing solid to go upon in crying down the credit of the 54th beyond hearsay and the self-evident fact that they are half their nominal strength. To assume they won't put up a fight is a certain way of making the best troops gun-shy. We are standing up to our necks in a time problem, and the tide is on the rise. There is not a moment to spare. The Turks have reinforced and they have ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... local religions, the development of the individual in that which is most peculiar and individual in him. Its claim is in its grace, its freedom and happiness, its lively interest, the variety of its gifts to civilisation; its weakness is self-evident, and was what made the unity of Greece impossible. [253] It is this centrifugal tendency which Plato is desirous to cure, by maintaining, over against it, the Dorian influence of a severe simplification everywhere, in society, in culture, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... says the other, whose physical structure somewhat resembled a fat lath, and whose general contour made it self-evident that he was not given much to frivolity, jauntily-fitting coats and breeches, or perfumed ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... those accomplices had committed a murder. If the murder was premeditated, if the accusation of deliberate homicide could be supported by substantial proofs, it meant the scaffold. Now there was, at the very least, one self-evident proof, the cry for assistance which Leonard had sent over the telephone a ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... department of our thought, it remains to ask how far this necessity constitutes a sufficient reason for accepting this hypothesis.... Those who hold that the edifice of physical science is really constructed of conclusions logically inferred from self-evident premises, may reasonably demand that any practical judgments claiming philosophic certainty should be based on an equally firm foundation. If, on the other hand, we find that in our supposed knowledge of the world of nature propositions are commonly taken to be ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... voucher for the work, which is meant for all comers—for the passer-by, for the indifferent, and even for my country's foes. My wish is that the veriest looker-on, idly turning these pages, may be confronted only with documents whose authenticity will be self-evident, if he is willing to see, and whose ignominious tale will reach his heart, if ye ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... these truths to be We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with endowed by their creator with inherent and inalienable certain inalienable rights; rights; that among these are that among these are life, life, liberty, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... checked, and a train of serious reflection laid, which, like some of those self-evident convictions that fastened on the awakened conscience, the old ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... hearts, must have it in habitual exercise within them; and those who would have the comforting evidence of their being in covenant with God, must feel themselves drawn by his example, frequently to acknowledge themselves as devoted to him. It is self-evident, that every time that the people of God take hold on his Covenant, he, after some manner, makes a covenant with them. Every act of Covenanting, therefore, on the part of the saints of God, and especially ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... schoolroom, and intelligent effort to understand and improve one's own voice. I hope I shall not seem to assume the dignity of an authority which no personal taste can claim, if I beg a hearing for the following elements of manner and voice, which appeal to me as essential. They will, probably, appear self-evident to my readers, yet they are often found wanting in the public school teacher; it is so much easier to say "what were good to ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... of woman, we hold it as a self-evident truth, that she should be educated deeply, thoroughly, solidly; that the first work of every reformer, every philanthropist, every statesman, every Christian, is to help and urge onward ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... employed at twenty shillings a week. He has his orders, and would be marked for discouragement if he overstepped them. That the system is bad, there needs no lengthened argument to prove, because the fact is self-evident. If it were anything else, the results that have attended it could not possibly have come to pass. Who will say that under a good system, our streets could have ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... necessary in the first place to inquire in what respects electric baths differ from other methods of electrization—especially those recently introduced as "general"—that their physiological effects should merit individual consideration. They differ in two ways. One of these is self-evident. To the effects of electricity are superadded those of the warm bath. The effects of the warm bath per se are too familiar to every physician to require comment. Its effects in combination with electricity, ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... de la Billardiere, a man of sheer incapacity. This plan, so vast apparently yet so simple in point of fact, which did away with so many large staffs and so many little offices all equally useless, required for its presentation to the public mind close calculations, precise statistics, and self-evident proof. Rabourdin had long studied the budget under its double-aspect of ways and means and of expenditure. Many a night he had lain awake unknown to his wife. But so far he had only dared to conceive the plan and fit it prospectively to the administrative skeleton; all of which counted for nothing,—he ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... of giving him to understand that they were doing something for him. That had the end and object that the auditors know; and it is not unknown that the archbishop wrote in their favor to the royal Council. That was almost self-evident, for the explicit manner in which Licentiate Don Francisco de Rojas y Onate, visitor of these islands, enlightened him was not sufficient, when the visitor said that he had no right, and that neither ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... truths to be self-evident, that all men are created sober, and are endowed with certain inalienable rights, such as Life, Grievances, and the Pursuit of Other People's Happiness. Whenever any form of amusement becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the Pan-Antis to abolish it. Prudence, indeed, will dictate ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... effort" which had been found necessary in effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius quite another—nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom confound them. By and by, this proposition, with many which I have been just urging, will be received as self-evident. In the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities, they will not be ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... Christian perfection is the guidance of the soul by the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is attained, ordinarily, first by bringing whatever is inordinate in our animal propensities under the control of the dictates of reason by the practice of mortification and self-denial; for it is a self-evident principle that a rational being ought to be master of his animal appetites. And second, by bringing the dictates of reason under the control and inspiration of the Holy Spirit by recollection, and by fidelity ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... well as the merits of the new science, I tested its accuracy by the careful examination of living heads and skulls in comparison with ascertained character, and with the anatomy of the brain, not forgetting the self-evident principles of mental philosophy. Many thousand critical examinations were made between the years 1834 and 1841, leading to many positive conclusions. The first year's observations made me distinctly aware and certain of several defects in the doctrines, as to the functions ascribed to certain ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... work, will not hesitate to adopt it. It is evidently also necessary not to personify "nature" too much, though I am very apt to do it myself, since people will not understand that all such phrases are metaphors. Natural Selection is, when understood, so necessary and self-evident a principle that it is a pity it should be in any way obscured; and it therefore occurs to me that the free use of "survival of the fittest", which is a compact and accurate definition of it, would tend much to its being more widely accepted and prevent its ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Certain self-evident duties are imposed upon every rational being. One of the first of these is the duty of being usefully employed a large portion of our time. It is probable that nearly all young people have a certain dislike for ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... in their favor and prevented from seeing the truth. The second is the love of the evil which the truth condemns, which closes the mind against the truth, and, as it were, binds and imprisons the individual (see A. C. 5096). It must be self-evident to every intelligent Christian that if it is wrong to deliberately appropriate falses and evils "temperately" or moderately to the building up of our spiritual organizations, it is equally wrong to appropriate temperately those natural substances which correspond to falses and evils in ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... surrender to such self-evident demonstrations, and continued to request, each time more violently and in a higher key, that her younger sister might have a little shame, and her senor father a little feeling. But as nobody appeared with these requisites in their hands, to comply with these ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... self-evident as this truism is, it is constantly violated in teaching reading in the rural school. For the course in reading usually consists of a series of five readers, expected to cover seven or eight years of study. These readers contain less than one hundred pages ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... the guilt of most atrocious murder, is of little comparative consequence, or whether it should attach it to both sides equally; but that the deliberate starving to death of twenty thousand helpless persons should be regarded as a crime in one or both of the parties concerned in it, seems to me self-evident. The simplest course would seem to be, that all non-combatants should be allowed to go out of a blockaded town, and that the general who should refuse to let them pass, should be regarded in the same light as one who were to murder his prisoners, or who were to be in the habit of butchering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... this larva becomes self-evident. The young Meloe leaves the down of the Bee at the moment when the egg is laid; and, since contact with the honey would be fatal to the grub, it must, in order to save itself, adopt the tactics followed by ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... by proceeding step by step from more simple to more complex operations, we are enabled to express the same thing in many different forms. The equivalence of these different forms, though a necessary consequence of self-evident axioms, is not always, to our minds, self-evident; but the mathematician, who by long practice has acquired a familiarity with many of these forms, and has become expert in the processes which lead from one to another, can often transform a perplexing expression into another which ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... cords of wood, all of which had to be carried in from the hilltop or slopes and passed through the constricted doorway. This labor would be a sufficient guarantee of economical use; we may be sure that no fuel was wasted. If proof were needed of such a self-evident proposition, it would be found in the almost complete absence of charcoal; here and there, but seldom, a small mass of it showed that a burning chunk, covered up, had smoldered until the inflammable portion was consumed. Bunches or handfuls of coarse grass or small weeds had ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... of Will and me, his strong yellow teeth gleaming between a black beard and mustache. The Turk got up clumsily, and went out, muttering to himself. I glanced toward the corner where the self-evident gipsies sat, and observed that with perfect unanimity they were ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... value of such professional courses depends to a very marked degree upon the success with which they can be carried out where they are counted toward a higher degree (M.A. or Ph.D.) the difficulty is not so great, since their introductory nature is self-evident; but where they conclude, so to speak, the student's formal training the difficulty of making them "fit in" is often sadly apparent. At any rate, in this borderland between cultural and professional studies, where the college is merging with the university or professional ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... method a clear and simple rule which dispensed with the need for vain and subtle arguments, I returned with the help of this rule to the examination of such knowledge as concerned myself; I was resolved to admit as self-evident all that I could not honestly refuse to believe, and to admit as true all that seemed to follow directly from this; all the rest I determined to leave undecided, neither accepting nor rejecting it, nor yet troubling myself to clear up difficulties which did not lead ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... secrets incompatible with the common faith, or very important in themselves, could either have been propounded by the priests or received by the audience. And it may be further observed, in corroboration of so self-evident a truth, that it was held an impiety to the popular faith to reject the initiation of the mysteries—and that some of the very writers, most superstitious with respect to the one, attach the most solemnity to the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the immigrants brought their peculiarities with them, which were fixed already when they came, we must also accept as self-evident that the Negritos of the Philippines do not belong to the same stock as the more powerful, bright-colored Indios. As long as these islands have been known, more than three centuries, the skin of the Negritos has been dark brown, almost black, their hair short ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... opinions, in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me, in confirming my mistrust of the reality of material phenomena, and in making me rest in the thought of two, and two only, absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator. At the age of fifteen also I was deeply impressed by the works of Thomas Scott, by Law's "Serious Call," by Joseph Milner's "Church History," and by Newton, "On the Prophecies." Newton's book stained my imagination, till ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... suddenly self-evident. Logan had said he'd figured a table of overdrive fields for the Isis which would work for anything between one point five light-speeds to maximum. One point ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... as Hammond and myself held the creature suspended over the bed, "I can give you self-evident proof that here is a solid, ponderable body, which, nevertheless, you cannot see. Be good enough to watch the surface ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... it best to make no rejoinder. Instead, he took the little Tommy in his arms and began to stroke the cheeks of the nestling child. The diversion had the proper effect. Uncle Martin, perceiving that the results of his exhaustive meditations in medicine and theology, which were as plain as the most self-evident nose on a man's face, were not estimated at their par value, got up and explained that he must go to Greenpoint and call on a man who had lately lost a child; and then, fearing he wouldn't get back to supper, he said good-by, and come again, and always glad to see you, Charley, and good ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... These facts are so self-evident that it seems useless to state them. One has but to hold his hands before his eyes to convince himself that the mind sees by means of eyes, which are physical sense organs. One has but to hold his hands tight over his ears to find ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... practised. Whereas in the adult masturbation ordinarily culminates in ejaculation, in the child this is not usually the case; at any rate, as regards many children the occurrence of ejaculation is not demonstrable. I refer in this connexion to what I have already stated on page 54 et seq. It is self-evident from what has been previously said that during the second period of childhood masturbation is more likely than during the first period ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... 1861, with the assumption that the Confederacy was established; every step he had taken proved his persistence in the same idea; he never would consent to put obstacles in the way of recognition; and he was waiting only for the proper moment to interpose. All these points seemed so fixed — so self-evident — that no one in the Legation would have doubted or even discussed them except that Lord Russell obstinately denied the whole ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... they seemed not to understand them to avoid the shame of being baffled, they yielded not, but cried out louder than before. As they disputed more for victory than truth, they denied all things, even to those principles which are self-evident; pretending thereby to encumber their opponent. Xavier knew what use to make of his advantages; he turned the confusion upon them, by reducing them to manifest contradictions, from whence they could ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... war, which make it an immediate practical issue, involving not merely the welfare of the colored man, but the safety of society itself. If civil government is to be revived at all in the South, it is perfectly self-evident that the loyal men there must vote; but the loyal men are the negroes and the disloyal are the whites. To put back the governing power into the hands of the very men who brought on the war, and exclude those ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... an allusion to an eclipse of the Sun which possesses a two-fold interest—intrinsic and extrinsic. The former feature will be self-evident when the passage is read. The poet, in describing[166] the faded splendour of the fallen archangel, compares him to the Sun seen under circumstances which have temporarily deprived it of ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... not forget it, but I did not mention it, for I know how closely measured out are the moments of a king; and besides, it seems to me as self-evident that we think of our personal advantage as that when we buy a horse we also buy ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... groaned. What could he do but groan? The thing was self-evident, and if ever a man felt ashamed of himself that man was John Niel. He was a strictly honourable individual, and it cut him to the heart to think that he had entered on a course which, considering his engagement to Bessie, was not honourable. When a few minutes before he had told ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... increasing in this way, has any tendency to better the condition of the labouring poor. It is a self-evident proposition that any general rise in the price of labour, the stock of provisions remaining the same, can only be a nominal rise, as it must very shortly be followed by a proportional rise in the ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... design everywhere; and that the vast majority of the human race in every age and clime has seen it. Analogy from experience, sound induction—as we hold—from the works not only of men but of animals, has made it an all but self-evident truth to us, that wherever there is arrangement, there must be an arranger; wherever there is adaptation of means to an end, there must be an adapter; wherever an organization, there must be an organizer. The ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... sufficient for refraining from punishing Turkey. It is beside the point to quote what Turkey did during the war. It has suffered for it. The Times inquires wherein Turkey has been treated worse than the other Powers. I thought that the fact was self-evident. Neither Germany nor Austria and Hungary has been treated in the same way that Turkey has been. The whole of the Empire has been reduced to the retention of a portion of its capital, as it were, to mock the Sultan and that too has been done ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... self-evident fact that, according to the state of mind in which we are, things assume different proportions in the rendering of ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... it is one which, had it been less ingenious, I could hardly believe to have proceeded from so great a man. Indeed, I am lost in wonder, that a philosopher, who had stoutly asserted, that he would draw no conclusions which do not follow from self-evident premisses, and would affirm nothing which he did not clearly and distinctly perceive, and who had so often taken to task the scholastics for wishing to explain obscurities through occult qualities, could maintain a hypothesis, ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... with so evident a sense of its obviousness as a self-evident truth that none of us had the courage to brave her surprise by asking an explanation. My mother's air of surprise when any of us went wrong in any way was very terrible to us. One day, when in a fit of peevish temper, I had taken the liberty to cut off the baby's ear, her simple words, "John, you ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... are so many and so self-evident that they scarcely need a eulogist. Even the newspapers recognize and admit them. If you had asked a New York journalist to sing the praises of his craft, his native and professional modesty would have embarrassed his voice. If you had asked a Chicagoan, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... that lameness excluded from the supreme magistracy. That Roman citizenship was a condition for the regal office as well as for the consulate, is so very self-evident as to make it scarcely worth while to repudiate expressly the fictions respecting the burgess ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... And Henry Adams, in a letter to the American Historical Association already referred to, confesses that history has thus far been a fruitless quest for "the secret which would transform these odds and ends of philosophy into one self-evident, harmonious, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... self-evident but they are set down because their underlying principles can be transferred to a consideration of the preparation of conclusions ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... good a proof that they were innate, as to say they are innate because men assent to them when they come to the use of reason. I agree then with these men of innate principles, that there is no knowledge of these general and self-evident maxims in the mind, till it comes to the exercise of reason: but I deny that the coming to the use of reason is the precise time when they are first taken notice of; and if that were the precise time, I deny that it would prove them ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... application of this method would raise the position of the novel to the level of a science, and that it would become a medium for the expression of established truths. The fallacy of the argument has been exposed by more than one critic. It is self-evident that the "experiments" by the novelist cannot be made on subjects apart from himself, but are made by him and in him; so that they prove more regarding his own temperament than about what he professes to regard as the ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... as the themes which they treat suggest that the Gospels were the first to be written. It is, however, a self-evident fact that a book was not written—at least not in antiquity, when the making of books was both laborious and expensive—unless a real need for it was felt. If we go back, and live for a moment in imagination among ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... new train of thought. Certainly, infinity, omnipresence, could neither be limited nor outlined; those were self-evident facts. ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Most High—a common mistake among reformers! He did not feel the sovereignty of man with regard to his fellow man, his positive inalienable right to deal with his God alone in matters of faith and religious conviction. The golden rule of our Master, 'Do as you would be done by,' seems simple and self-evident, and yet it is a late fruit in the garden of human culture. Mr. Roscoe says: 'When Luther was engaged in his opposition to the Church of Rome, he asserted the right of private judgment with the confidence and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The resemblance between parents and children is very commonly remarkable. Family physiognomical resemblance is as undeniable as national physiognomical resemblance. To doubt this is to doubt what is self-evident. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... conclusion they signally erred. Mr. Adams, by birth, education, all the associations of his life, and the fixed principles of his moral and political character, was an opposer of slavery in every form. No man felt more keenly the wretched absurdity of professing to base our Government on the "self-evident truth, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—of proclaiming our Union the abode of liberty, the "home of the free," the asylum of the oppressed—while holding in our midst millions of fellow-beings ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... correspondents (Vol. ii., p. 405. and vol. iii., p. 52.) approve of, and confirm Mr. Knight's suggestion of a ring dial, as though it were so self-evident as to admit of no denial. Nevertheless, neither he nor they have shown any good reason for its adoption: even its superior antiquity over the portable time-piece is mere surmise on their parts, unaccompanied as yet by any direct proof. In point of fact, the sole argument advanced ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... when at war with you in old days, dominated your territory, but they made no progress towards destroying you. At last God granted them one day to push forward their dominion on the sea, and then in an instant you completely succumbed to them. (5) Is it not self-evident that your safety altogether depends upon the sea? The sea is your natural element—your birthright; it would be base indeed to entrust the hegemony of it to the Lacedaemonians, and the more so, since, as they themselves admit, they are far less acquainted with this business than yourselves; ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... any doubt on the matter. Alas, that I should have to say so, it is too self-evident. You persuade this poor creature to go out alone with you into the Pineta at an extraordinary hour of the morning, knowing then,—or according to your own showing, becoming aware soon after you started—that it was your uncle's intention by a marriage with this woman to destroy utterly every ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... rose and walked a few paces to knock out my post-breakfast pipe against an apple-tree. I was not so sure that he was right, self-evident as his statement appeared. Ideas moved confusedly in my mind, convictions somehow impressed when that golden-bronze spot of light so gently came to rest above my heart when I last stood at the Barrier; ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... reason, that all beings great and small came by the law of cause and effect, are we not bound to work by the laws of cause, if we wish an effect? If the heavens do move by cause when was its beings divorced from that great common law? Are we not bound to trust and work by the old and reliable self-evident laws, until something later has proven its superior ability to ward off disease and ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... natural course of reasoning, that there has never been an effected without a cause, and we infer from this, that there can be no action, either in animate or inanimate matter, without there first being some cause to produce it. And from this self-evident fact we know that there is some cause for every impulse or movement of either mind or matter, and that this law governs every action or movement of the animal kingdom. Then, according to this theory, there must be some cause ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... self-evident. Everyone will admit it to be expedient that all goods wanting to be sold should be sold as soon as they are ready; that every man who wants to work should find employment as soon as he is ready for it. ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... required. What is action? Most critics pass over this point, as if it were self-evident In the higher, proper signification, action is an activity dependent on the will of man. Its unity will consist in the direction towards a single end; and to its completeness belongs all that lies between the first determination and the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... conform to it. The non-resident owners would then express themselves in the terms of Sir Philip Gibbs, "that he should consider it as the fault of his manager, if he were not to keep up the number of his slaves." This reasoning concerning the different tendencies of the two systems was self-evident; but facts were not wanting to confirm it. Mr. Long had remarked, that all the insurrections and suicides in Jamaica had been found among the imported slaves, who, not having lost the consciousness of civil rights, which they had enjoyed in their own country, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... present. The result, then, is that the coronet bone forces the navicular hard against the flexor tendon, which, in turn, presses firmly against the navicular as the force of the contracting muscles lifts the tendon into place. It is self-evident, then, that the more rapid the pace and the greater the load, the greater must these contending forces be, and the greater the liability to injury. For the same reason horses with excessive knee action are more liable to suffer from this disease than others, concussion of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... in the physical, and therefore in the spiritual, world of so great importance that we shall not mis-spend time if we follow it, for further confirmation, into another department of nature. Its significance in Biology is self-evident; let us ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... rules; it enjoined the utmost possible cleanliness, and formulated a principle so self-evident that it seems astounding people should not have recognized it for themselves: that the smallest infant, like ourselves, should have regular meals, and should only take fresh nourishment when it has digested what has been ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... to Mr. Drury, in the last moment at the door, "Mr. Drury, if we could all get a conscience about the tithe, and pay attention to that conscience, half the Everyday Doctrines would not even need to be stated. They would be self-evident. And the other half could be put into practice with ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... Stuart and the Rue Montorgueil. Sint ut sunt, aut non sint, the grand words of the Jesuit, might be taken as a motto by the great in all countries. These social differences are patent in all ages; the fact is always accepted by the people; its "reasons of state" are self-evident; it is at once cause and effect, a principle and a law. The common sense of the masses never deserts them until demagogues stir them up to gain ends of their own; that common sense is based on the verities of social order; and the social order is the same everywhere, in Moscow as ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... survivor of the original firm of Chapman & Hall) has set down in writing, for similar preservation, his personal knowledge of the origin and progress of this book, of the monstrosity of the baseless assertions in question, and (tested by details) even of the self-evident impossibility of there being any truth in them." The "written testimony" alluded to is also in my possession, having been inclosed to me by Dickens, in 1867, with Mr. Chapman's letter ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and act under given circumstances; then it is manifest that there can be nothing like a wide comprehension of sociology, unless through a competent acquaintance with man in all his faculties, bodily, and mental. Consider the matter in the abstract, and this conclusion is self-evident. Thus:—Society is made up of individuals; all that is done in society is done by the combined actions of individuals; and therefore, in individual actions only can be found the solutions of social phenomena. But the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... "It is so self-evident that it is the way all governments are carried on. Wherefore, my good Paul, we only do what all other legislators do. We are never rogues so long as we call ourselves honest fellows, and we never commit a crime so long as we can term it a virtue. What ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... debating this question," continued Mr. Shellabarger, "I debate axioms, my apology is that there are not other questions to debate in Reconstruction. If," said he with well-timed sarcasm, "in the discussion, I make self-evident things obscure or incomprehensible, my defense shall be that I am conforming to the usages of Congress. I will not inquire whether any subject of this Government, by reason of the revolt, passed from under its sovereignty or ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... as a self-evident fact that men can know God with at least the same degree of immediacy as they know any other person or thing that comes within the field of their experience. The same terms are used to express the knowledge of God as are used to express knowledge of physical things. "O ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... believe in Him who stood by the lake-side in Galilee, and told men that not a sparrow fell to the ground without their Father's knowledge—and that they were of more value than many sparrows. Do those words now seem to some so self-evident as to be needless? They will never seem so to the Sanitary Reformer, who has called on the "British Public" to exert themselves in saving the lives of thousands yearly; and has received practical answers ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... of the text, when sense can by any rational supposition be made of it, as my opponent, or any true lover of the poet and the integrity of his language, can possibly be; but I see nothing rational in refusing to correct an almost self-evident misprint, which would redeem a fine passage that otherwise must always remain a stumbling-block to the most intelligent reader. We have all I trust but one object, i. e. to free the text of our great poet from obvious errors occasioned by extremely ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... intensity which give an awful life and power to all he said about religion. He realised with singular and pervading keenness that which a greater man than he speaks of as the first and the great discovery of the awakened soul—" the thought of two, and two only, supreme and luminously self-evident beings, himself and the Creator." "Alone with God," expresses the feeling which calmed his own anxieties and animated his religious appeals to others. And he realised with equal earnestness the great truth which is spoken of by Mr. Brooke, though in language which ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... defiance, and gave them to understand, with a repelling dignity of manner that bordered hard on haughtiness, that what she and her son might or might not do was no one's concern but their own. This self-evident truth, when it struck home to her well-wishers, made her no friends. Nor did she regret this. She had dwelt, as it were, apart, since her marriage and early widowhood—her husband had died seven months ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... were self-evident; while the Count read himself a thousand lessons upon the errors vanity is apt to lead one into. Yet his ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... we read, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Glorious words! But they were ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... matter of logical definition, it is well-nigh self-evident that the theory of natural selection is a theory of the origin, and cumulative development, of adaptations, whether these be distinctive of species, or of genera, orders, families, classes, and sub-kingdoms. It is only when the adaptations happen to be distinctive of the first ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... that led him nowhere. That today still leads untold millions nowhere. For the penalty of a wrong answer is failure to solve the problem. That non-science had failed to provide any answer beyond the primitive one was self-evident. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... to see once a week, "THUS SAITH THE LORD, Thou shalt not steal," and the rest: the lack of which reminder sometimes causes in Nonconformist circles, it is whispered, a deplorable separation of faith and works. The third maxim, axiom, or self-evident proposition is, that when people can steal without fear of consequences they will steal. All through the last century, and indeed far into this, the only influence brought to bear upon the common people was that of authority. The master ruled his servants; he watched over them; when ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... repeated, relaxing into the blandest of smiles. "Yes, thanks—I see I was right. It was unnecessary to name names.—Oh! undoubtedly, innumerable excuses, and of the most valid description, were they needed—were they not swallowed up in the single, self-evident excuse that the lady you mention is a ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... may be thought by some to be exceedingly commonplace and self-evident.—It may be so. If they be admitted, we ask no more.—Our purpose at present is answered, if we have detected a principle in education, by the operation of which the powers of the mind are invariably expanded and strengthened;—an effect which, so far as we yet know, in ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... then, from argument to constructive discussion, and many topics were gone over. Certain matters were, however, so self-evident that they ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... some things in language, since you are not familiar with the mechanism of thought transference. The Five, a self-perpetuating body, do what governing is necessary for the entire planet. Their decrees are founded upon self-evident truth, and are therefore the law. Population is regulated according to the needs of the planet, and since much work is now in progress, an increase in population was recommended by the Five. My companion and I therefore had ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... ungracious dilemma, instead of justifying himself by reason or argument, had recourse to recrimination. In the paper which he sent me next day, he insisted in general that he had carefully perused the case (which you will perceive was a self-evident untruth); he said the theory it contained was idle; that he was sure it could not be written by a physician; that, with respect to the disorder, he was still of the same opinion; and adhered to his former prescription; but if I had any doubts I might come to his house, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... affection sunders the dominant ties of earth and points to heaven. Nothing can compete with Christian Science, and its demonstration, in showing this solemn certainty in growing freedom and vindicating "the ways of God" to man. The absolute proof and self-evident propositions of Truth are immeasurably paramount to rubric and dogma in proving ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... standard of government and of public men would be greatly exalted, and the highest civilization of the whole country be advanced. But I will not pursue this topic any further. The truths I state are self-evident. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... would avoid him after such an act was self-evident—they had already refused to eat with him. On the other hand, it had brought nearer to him the favorites whom he had attracted to his person. Theocritus and Pandion, Antigonus and Epagathos, the priest of Alexander, who at Rome was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... friendship. He states his position lucidly, and with a rational understanding of all that it involves. His vision is wide enough to embrace its everlasting truth. Plato says the same thing in simpler language. He offers his truth as self-evident, and in no need of demonstration. When Lysis and Menexenus greet Socrates at the gymnasia, the philosopher asks which of the two ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the sole living contemporary witness of his mother's dishonor. Obed Chute himself was certainly the last man in the world, as Gualtier thought, who would have been capable of volunteering such information as that. These conclusions to which he came were natural, and were based on self-evident truths. Yet still the question remained: How was it that these two men, who more than all others were connected with those affairs which most deeply affected himself and Hilda, and from whom he had the chief if not the only reason to ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... that you, who ought to see these things, have believed that I have taken any step which is out of harmony with our friendly relations, for beside these facts which I have mentioned, which are undisputed and self-evident facts, there are many more intimate ties of friendship which I can scarcely put in words. Everything about you charms me, but most of all, on the one hand, your perfect loyalty in matters of friendship, your wisdom, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the wreck of time; but [1] whatever is of God, hath life abiding in it, and ulti- mately will be known as self-evident truth, as demonstra- ble as mathematics. Each successive period of progress is a period more humane and spiritual. The only logical [5] conclusion is that all is Mind and its manifestation, from the rolling of worlds, in the most subtle ether, to a ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... this proposition is self-evident; for no art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change. To require of an artist that he should always reproduce the same picture, would ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... adversaries, however, did not remove the inherent weakness of the position of the Protestants. The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the Pope. If the former is held by "faith," then the latter may be. If the latter is to be accepted, or rejected, by private judgment, why not the former? Even if the Bible could be proved anywhere to assert its own infallibility, the value of that ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Edmund's question, therefore, than mine. However, we need say no more about that. That is self-evident on the face of it. Well, my dearest Amy! The point arising, is he to go by himself, or is he not to go by himself, this other point arises, are we to be married here and shortly, or are we to be married at home ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... celebrates the nuptials—stained with murder, adultery, and crime of all sorts—of Frances Howard and Robert Carr. It is in Chapman's most allusive and thorniest style, but is less interesting intrinsically than as having given occasion to an indignant prose vindication by the poet, which, considering his self-evident honesty, is the most valuable document in existence for explaining the apparently grovelling panegyric of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. It makes clear (what indeed an intelligent reader might ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... love, everybody who owes anything to anybody should always pay it. That is so self-evident that one would almost suppose that it might be understood without being enunciated. But the virtue of paying your debts is incompatible with an absence of money. Now, if you please, we will not say anything more about Mrs. Parker. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... broken through the rule which, in compliance with her mother's advice, she had at first laid down for herself, to abstain from recommending persons for preferment; and had pressed many a petition on the minister's notice as to which it was self-evident that she could know nothing of their merits, nor feel any personal ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... equilateral triangle; or should defend the Pons Asinorum as Codes defended the Tiber bridge. But anyone who does not understand that does not understand the French Revolution—nor, for that matter, the American Revolution. "We hold these truths to be self-evident": it was the fanaticism of truism. But though Carlyle had no real respect for liberty, he had a real reverence for anarchy. He admired elemental energy. The violence which repelled most men from the Revolution was the one thing that attracted him to it. While a Whig ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... so self-evident that the doctor checked Dan'l as he was about to make another skull-fracturing dash with the rake; and the next minute Dexter's hand clutched the grass on the bank, and he crawled out, with the water streaming down out ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... and seemed for the moment to have lost his usual loquacity. Porthos, who could never see anything that was not self-evident, talked to him as usual. He replied in monosyllables and Athos and Aramis looked significantly ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
